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GnuCash
GnuCash is an accounting program that implements a double-entry bookkeeping system. It was initially aimed at developing capabilities similar to Intuit, Inc.'s Quicken application, but also has features for small business accounting. Recent development has been focused on adapting to modern desktop support-library requirements.
GnuCash is part of the GNU Project, and runs on Linux, GNU, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, macOS, and other Unix-like platforms. A Microsoft Windows (2000 or newer) port was made available starting with the 2.2.0 series.
Programming on GnuCash began in 1997, and its first stable release was in 1998. Small Business Accounting was added in 2001. A Mac installer became available in 2004. A Windows port was released in 2007.
In May 2012, the development of GnuCash for Android was announced. This is an expense-tracking companion app for GnuCash, as opposed to a stand-alone accounting package.
Gnucash does not maintain the ability to read older data files between major releases. If a user wishes to access historical data saved in old GnCash files, they must install an old version of GnuCash. The other alternative is for users to export transactions files to a CSV format prior to upgrading GnuCash. Exporting of the account tree must be done as a separate step.
GnuCash is written primarily in C, with a small fraction in Scheme. One of the available features is pure fixed-point arithmetic to avoid rounding errors which would arise with floating-point arithmetic. This feature was introduced with version 1.6.
The GnuCash app for Android is written in Java and does not share any code with the desktop version.
Users on the GnuCash mailing list have reported using it for United States 501(c)3 non-profit organizations successfully. However, the reports need to be exported and edited.
Slaw, a Canadian legal webzine, offered this advice to lawyers just starting out in practice, especially those who are trying to pay off student loans, "The GnuCash software...should present a great alternative for lawyers looking for a solid accounting system at low cost. Do not believe that open source software is somehow second-class."
In April 2011, the Minnesota State Bar Association made their GnuCash trust accounting guide freely available in PDF format.
As of July 2018, SourceForge shows a count of over 6.3 million downloads of the stable releases starting from November 1999 Also, Sourceforge shows that current downloads are running at ~7,000 per week. This does not include other software download sites as well as Linux distributions that provide download from their own repositories.
Open Hub's analysis based on commits up to May 2018 (noninclusive) concluded that the project has a mature, well established code base with increasing year-over-year development activity. Moreover, "Over the past twelve months, 51 developers contributed new code to GnuCash. This is one of the largest open-source teams in the world, and is in the top 2% of all project teams on Open Hub." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12880 |
Gallon
The gallon is a unit of measurement for volume and fluid capacity in both the US customary units and the British imperial systems of measurement. Three significantly different sizes are in current use:
There are four quarts in a gallon and eight pints in a gallon, and they have different sizes in different systems.
The IEEE standard symbol for the gallon is gal.
The gallon currently has one definition in the imperial system, and two definitions (liquid and dry) in the US customary system. Historically, there were many definitions and redefinitions.
There were a number of systems of liquid measurements in the United Kingdom prior to the 19th century.
The British imperial gallon is now defined as exactly . It is used in some Commonwealth countries. Until 1976 it was based on the volume of of water at . There are four quarts in a gallon, the imperial pint is defined as 0.56826125 litres (i.e. gallon) and there are 20 imperial fluid ounces in an imperial pint.
The US liquid gallon (frequently called simply "gallon") is legally defined as 231 cubic inches, which is exactly . A US liquid gallon of water weighs about at , making it about 16.6% lighter than the imperial gallon. There are four quarts in a gallon, two pints in a quart and 16 US fluid ounces in a US pint, which makes the US fluid ounce equal to of a US gallon. In order to overcome the effects of expansion and contraction with temperature when using a gallon to specify a quantity of material for purposes of trade, it is common to define the temperature at which the material will occupy the specified volume. For example, the volume of petroleum products and alcoholic beverages are both referenced to in government regulations.
Since the dry measure is one-eighth of a US "Winchester" bushel of cubic inches, it is therefore equal to exactly 268.8025 cubic inches, which is . The US dry gallon is not used in commerce, and is also not listed in the relevant statute, which jumps from the dry pint to the bushel.
Gallons used in fuel economy expression in Canada and the United Kingdom are imperial gallons.
Despite its status as a U.S. territory, and unlike American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico ceased selling gasoline by the US gallon in 1980.
The gallon was removed from the list of legally defined primary units of measure catalogued in the EU directive 80/181/EEC for trading and official purposes, with effect from 31 December 1994. Under the directive the gallon could still be used, but only as a supplementary or secondary unit. One of the effects of this directive was that the United Kingdom amended its own legislation to replace the gallon with the litre as a primary unit of measure in trade and in the conduct of public business, effective from 30 September 1995.
Ireland also passed legislation in response to the EU directive, with the effective date being 31 December 1993. Though the gallon has ceased to be the legally defined primary unit, it can still be legally used in both the UK and Ireland as a supplementary unit.
The United Arab Emirates started selling gasoline by the litre in 2010, while Guyana and Panama switched in 2013.
The UAE and Guyana, former British colonies, had used the imperial gallon and Panama the US gallon before this time.
Myanmar (Burma) switched from imperial gallon to litre sales before 2014.
Antigua and Barbuda planned to switch over to using litres by 2015, but due to various issues, the switch-over was only effected in 2019.
As of 2019, the imperial gallon continues to be used as a unit of measure in Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent & the Grenadines. In Qatar, the imperial gallon is still used for water-chiller bottles.
Other than the United States, the US gallon is still used in Belize, Colombia, The Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, and Peru, but only for the sale of gasoline; all other products in these countries are sold in litres, or multiples and submultiples of a litre.
In the Turks & Caicos Islands, both the U.S. gallon and imperial gallon are used. This is due to an increase in tax duties which was disguised by levying the same duty on the U.S. gallon (3.79 L) as was previously levied on the Imperial gallon (4.55 L).
Both the US liquid and imperial gallon are divided into four quarts ("quart"er gallons), which in turn are divided into two pints, which in turn are divided into two cups, which in turn are further divided into two gills. Thus, both gallons are equal to four quarts, eight pints, sixteen cups, or thirty-two gills.
The imperial gill is further divided into five fluid ounces whereas the US gill is divided into four fluid ounces, meaning an imperial fluid ounce is of an imperial pint, or of an imperial gallon, while a US fluid ounce is of a US pint, or of a US gallon. Since the imperial gallon, quart, pint, cup and gill are approximately 20% larger than their US counterparts, these are not interchangeable, while the imperial fluid ounce is only approximately 4% smaller than the US fluid ounce, and they are often therefore used interchangeably.
Historically, a common bottle size for liquor in the US was the "fifth", i.e. one-fifth of a US gallon (or one-sixth of an imperial gallon). While spirit sales in the US were switched to metric measures in 1976, a 750 mL bottle is still sometimes known as a "fifth".
The term derives most immediately from "galun, galon" in Old Northern French, but the usage was common in several languages, for example in Old French and (bowl) in Old English. This suggests a common origin in Romance Latin, but the ultimate source of the word is unknown.
The gallon originated as the base of systems for measuring wine and beer in England. The sizes of gallon used in these two systems were different from each other: the first was based on the wine gallon (equal in size to the US gallon), and the second one either the ale gallon or the larger imperial gallon.
By the end of the 18th century, there were three definitions of the gallon in common use:
The "corn" or "dry gallon" is used (along with the dry quart and pint) in the United States for grain and other dry commodities. It is one-eighth of the (Winchester) bushel, originally defined as a cylindrical measure of inches in diameter and 8 inches in depth, which made the dry gallon )2 × π ≈ 2150.42017 cubic inches. The bushel was later defined to be 2150.42 cubic inches exactly, thus making its gallon exactly (); in previous centuries, there had been a corn gallon of between 271 and 272 cubic inches.
The "wine", "fluid", or "liquid gallon" has been the standard US gallon since the early 19th century. The wine gallon, which some sources relate to the volume occupied by eight medieval merchant pounds of wine, was at one time defined as the volume of a cylinder 6 inches deep and 7 inches in diameter, i.e. . It was redefined during the reign of Queen Anne in 1706 as 231 cubic inches exactly, the result of the earlier definition with π approximated to . Although the wine gallon had been used for centuries for import duty purposes, there was no legal standard of it in the Exchequer, and a smaller gallon was actually in use, meaning this statute became necessary; it remains the US definition today.
In 1824, Britain adopted a close approximation to the "ale gallon" known as the "imperial gallon", and abolished all other gallons in favour of it. Inspired by the kilogram-litre relationship, the imperial gallon was based on the volume of 10 pounds of distilled water weighed in air with brass weights with the barometer standing at 30 inches of mercury and at a temperature of .
In 1963, this definition was refined as the space occupied by 10 pounds of distilled water of density weighed in air of density against weights of density (the original "brass" was refined as the density of brass alloys vary depending on metallurgical composition), which was calculated as to ten significant figures.
The precise definition of exactly cubic decimetres (also , ≈ ) came after the litre was redefined in 1964. This was adopted shortly afterwards in Canada, and adopted in 1976 in the United Kingdom.
Historically, gallons of various sizes were used in many parts of Western Europe. In these localities, it has been replaced as the unit of capacity by the litre.
!colspan="2"| Volume
!rowspan="2"| Definition
!rowspan="2"| Invertedvolume(gallons percubic foot)
!rowspan="2"| Approx.weight ofwater (poundsper gallon@ 62 °F)
!colspan="3"| Cylindrical approximation
! (cu in) !! (L or dm3)
! Diameter(in) !! Height(in) !! Relativeerror (%)
!colspan=8 |Current gallons
!colspan=8|Historic gallons | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12882 |
Gini coefficient
In economics, the Gini coefficient ( ), sometimes called the Gini index or Gini ratio, is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income inequality or wealth inequality within a nation or any other group of people. It was developed by the Italian statistician and sociologist Corrado Gini and published in his 1912 paper "Variability and Mutability" ().
The Gini coefficient measures the inequality among values of a frequency distribution (for example, levels of income). A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality, where all values are the same (for example, where everyone has the same income). A Gini coefficient of one (or 100%) expresses maximal inequality among values (e.g., for a large number of people, where only one person has all the income or consumption, and all others have none, the Gini coefficient will be very nearly one).
For larger groups, values close to one are very unlikely. Given the normalization of both the cumulative population and the cumulative share of income used to calculate the Gini coefficient, the measure is not overly sensitive to the specifics of the income distribution, but rather only on how incomes vary relative to the other members of a population. The exception to this is in the redistribution of income resulting in a minimum income for all people. When the population is sorted, if their income distribution were to approximate a well-known function, then some representative values could be calculated.
The Gini coefficient was proposed by Gini as a measure of inequality of income or wealth. For OECD countries, in the late 20th century, considering the effect of taxes and transfer payments, the income Gini coefficient ranged between 0.24 and 0.49, with Slovenia being the lowest and Mexico the highest. African countries had the highest pre-tax Gini coefficients in 2008–2009, with South Africa the world's highest, variously estimated to be 0.63 to 0.7, although this figure drops to 0.52 after social assistance is taken into account, and drops again to 0.47 after taxation. The global income Gini coefficient in 2005 has been estimated to be between 0.61 and 0.68 by various sources.
There are some issues in interpreting a Gini coefficient. The same value may result from many different distribution curves. The demographic structure should be taken into account. Countries with an aging population, or with a baby boom, experience an increasing pre-tax Gini coefficient even if real income distribution for working adults remains constant. Scholars have devised over a dozen variants of the Gini coefficient.
The Gini coefficient is a single number aimed at measuring the degree of inequality in a distribution. It is most often used in economics to measure how far a country's wealth or income distribution deviates from a totally equal distribution.
The Gini coefficient is usually defined mathematically based on the Lorenz curve, which plots the proportion of the total income of the population (y axis) that is cumulatively earned by the bottom "x" of the population (see diagram). The line at 45 degrees thus represents perfect equality of incomes. The Gini coefficient can then be thought of as the ratio of the area that lies between the line of equality and the Lorenz curve (marked "A" in the diagram) over the total area under the line of equality (marked "A" and "B" in the diagram); i.e., . It is also equal to 2"A" and to due to the fact that (since the axes scale from 0 to 1).
If all people have non-negative income (or wealth, as the case may be), the Gini coefficient can theoretically range from 0 (complete equality) to 1 (complete inequality); it is sometimes expressed as a percentage ranging between 0 and 100. In reality, both extreme values are not quite reached. If negative values are possible (such as the negative wealth of people with debts), then the Gini coefficient could theoretically be more than 1. Normally the mean (or total) is assumed positive, which rules out a Gini coefficient less than zero.
An alternative approach is to define the Gini coefficient as half of the relative mean absolute difference, which is mathematically equivalent to the definition based on the Lorenz curve. The mean absolute difference is the average absolute difference of all pairs of items of the population, and the relative mean absolute difference is the mean absolute difference divided by the average, formula_1, to normalize for scale. If "x""i" is the wealth or income of person "i", and there are "n" persons, then the Gini coefficient "G" is given by:
When the income (or wealth) distribution is given as a continuous probability distribution function "p"("x"), the Gini coefficient is again half of the relative mean absolute difference:
where formula_4 is the mean of the distribution, and the lower limits of integration may be replaced by zero when all incomes are positive.
While the income distribution of any particular country need not follow simple functions, these functions give a qualitative understanding of the income distribution in a nation given the Gini coefficient.
The extreme cases are the most equal society in which every person receives the same income () and the most unequal society where a single person receives 100% of the total income and the remaining people receive none ().
A more general simplified case also just distinguishes two levels of income, low and high. If the high income group is a proportion "u" of the population and earns a proportion "f" of all income, then the Gini coefficient is . An actual more graded distribution with these same values "u" and "f" will always have a higher Gini coefficient than .
The proverbial case where the richest 20% have 80% of all income (see Pareto principle) would lead to an income Gini coefficient of at least 60%.
An often cited case that 1% of all the world's population owns 50% of all wealth, means a wealth Gini coefficient of at least 49%.
In some cases, this equation can be applied to calculate the Gini coefficient without direct reference to the Lorenz curve. For example, (taking "y" to mean the income or wealth of a person or household):
Since the Gini coefficient is half the relative mean absolute difference, it can also be calculated using formulas for the relative mean absolute difference. For a random sample "S" consisting of values "y""i", "i" = 1 to "n", that are indexed in non-decreasing order ("y""i" ≤ "y""i"+1), the statistic:
is a consistent estimator of the population Gini coefficient, but is not, in general, unbiased. Like "G", has a simpler form:
There does not exist a sample statistic that is in general an unbiased estimator of the population Gini coefficient, like the relative mean absolute difference.
For a discrete probability distribution with probability mass function "f ( yi )", "i" = 1 to "n", where "f ( yi )" is the fraction of the population with income or wealth "yi ">0, the Gini coefficient is:
where
where
When the population is large, the income distribution may be represented by a continuous probability density function "f"("x") where "f"("x") "dx" is the fraction of the population with wealth or income in the interval "dx" about "x". If "F"("x") is the cumulative distribution function for "f"("x"), then the Lorenz curve "L"("F") may then be represented as a function parametric in "L"("x") and "F"("x") and the value of "B" can be found by integration:
The Gini coefficient can also be calculated directly from the cumulative distribution function of the distribution "F"("y"). Defining μ as the mean of the distribution, and specifying that "F"("y") is zero for all negative values, the Gini coefficient is given by:
The latter result comes from integration by parts. (Note that this formula can be applied when there are negative values if the integration is taken from minus infinity to plus infinity.)
The Gini coefficient may be expressed in terms of the quantile function "Q"("F") (inverse of the cumulative distribution function: "Q"("F"("x")) = "x")
For some functional forms, the Gini index can be calculated explicitly. For example, if "y" follows a lognormal distribution with the standard deviation of logs equal to formula_18, then formula_19 where formula_20 is the error function ( since formula_21, where formula_22 is the cumulative standard normal distribution). In the table below, some examples for probability density functions with support on formula_23 on are shown. The Dirac delta distribution represents the case where everyone has the same wealth (or income); it implies that there are no variations at all between incomes.
Sometimes the entire Lorenz curve is not known, and only values at certain intervals are given. In that case, the Gini coefficient can be approximated by using various techniques for interpolating the missing values of the Lorenz curve. If ("X""k", "Y""k") are the known points on the Lorenz curve, with the "X""k" indexed in increasing order ("X""k" – 1 < "X""k"), so that:
If the Lorenz curve is approximated on each interval as a line between consecutive points, then the area B can be approximated with trapezoids and:
is the resulting approximation for G. More accurate results can be obtained using other methods to approximate the area B, such as approximating the Lorenz curve with a quadratic function across pairs of intervals, or building an appropriately smooth approximation to the underlying distribution function that matches the known data. If the population mean and boundary values for each interval are also known, these can also often be used to improve the accuracy of the approximation.
The Gini coefficient calculated from a sample is a statistic and its standard error, or confidence intervals for the population Gini coefficient, should be reported. These can be calculated using bootstrap techniques but those proposed have been mathematically complicated and computationally onerous even in an era of fast computers. Ogwang (2000) made the process more efficient by setting up a "trick regression model" in which respective income variables in the sample are ranked with the lowest income being allocated rank 1. The model then expresses the rank (dependent variable) as the sum of a constant "A" and a normal error term whose variance is inversely proportional to "y""k";
Ogwang showed that "G" can be expressed as a function of the weighted least squares estimate of the constant "A" and that this can be used to speed up the calculation of the jackknife estimate for the standard error. Giles (2004) argued that the standard error of the estimate of "A" can be used to derive that of the estimate of "G" directly without using a jackknife at all. This method only requires the use of ordinary least squares regression after ordering the sample data. The results compare favorably with the estimates from the jackknife with agreement improving with increasing sample size.
However it has since been argued that this is dependent on the model's assumptions about the error distributions (Ogwang 2004) and the independence of error terms (Reza & Gastwirth 2006) and that these assumptions are often not valid for real data sets. It may therefore be better to stick with jackknife methods such as those proposed by Yitzhaki (1991) and Karagiannis and Kovacevic (2000). The debate continues.
Guillermina Jasso and Angus Deaton independently proposed the following formula for the Gini coefficient:
where formula_27 is mean income of the population, Pi is the income rank P of person i, with income X, such that the richest person receives a rank of 1 and the poorest a rank of N. This effectively gives higher weight to poorer people in the income distribution, which allows the Gini to meet the Transfer Principle. Note that the Jasso-Deaton formula rescales the coefficient so that its value is 1 if all the formula_28 are zero except one. Note however Allison's reply on the need to divide by N² instead.
FAO explains another version of the formula.
The Gini coefficient and other standard inequality indices reduce to a common form. Perfect equality—the absence of inequality—exists when and only when the inequality ratio, formula_29, equals 1 for all j units in some population (for example, there is perfect income equality when everyone's income formula_30 equals the mean income formula_31, so that formula_32 for everyone). Measures of inequality, then, are measures of the average deviations of the formula_32 from 1; the greater the average deviation, the greater the inequality. Based on these observations the inequality indices have this common form:
where "p""j" weights the units by their population share, and "f"("r""j") is a function of the deviation of each unit's "r""j" from 1, the point of equality. The insight of this generalised inequality index is that inequality indices differ because they employ different functions of the distance of the inequality ratios (the "r""j") from 1."
Gini coefficients of income are calculated on market income as well as disposable income basis. The Gini coefficient on market income—sometimes referred to as a pre-tax Gini coefficient—is calculated on income before taxes and transfers, and it measures inequality in income without considering the effect of taxes and social spending already in place in a country. The Gini coefficient on disposable income—sometimes referred to as after-tax Gini coefficient—is calculated on income after taxes and transfers, and it measures inequality in income after considering the effect of taxes and social spending already in place in a country.
The difference in Gini indices between OECD countries, on after-taxes and transfers basis, is significantly narrower. For OECD countries, over 2008–2009 period, Gini coefficient on pre-taxes and transfers basis for total population ranged between 0.34 and 0.53, with South Korea the lowest and Italy the highest. Gini coefficient on after-taxes and transfers basis for total population ranged between 0.25 and 0.48, with Denmark the lowest and Mexico the highest. For United States, the country with the largest population in OECD countries, the pre-tax Gini index was 0.49, and after-tax Gini index was 0.38, in 2008–2009. The OECD averages for total population in OECD countries was 0.46 for pre-tax income Gini index and 0.31 for after-tax income Gini Index. Taxes and social spending that were in place in 2008–2009 period in OECD countries significantly lowered effective income inequality, and in general, "European countries—especially Nordic and Continental welfare states—achieve lower levels of income inequality than other countries."
Using the Gini can help quantify differences in welfare and compensation policies and philosophies. However it should be borne in mind that the Gini coefficient can be misleading when used to make political comparisons between large and small countries or those with different immigration policies (see limitations section).
The Gini coefficient for the entire world has been estimated by various parties to be between 0.61 and 0.68. The graph shows the values expressed as a percentage in their historical development for a number of countries.
According to UNICEF, Latin America and the Caribbean region had the highest net income Gini index in the world at 48.3, on unweighted average basis in 2008. The remaining regional averages were: sub-Saharan Africa (44.2), Asia (40.4), Middle East and North Africa (39.2), Eastern Europe and Central Asia (35.4), and High-income Countries (30.9). Using the same method, the United States is claimed to have a Gini index of 36, while South Africa had the highest income Gini index score of 67.8.
Taking income distribution of all human beings, worldwide income inequality has been constantly increasing since the early 19th century. There was a steady increase in the global income inequality Gini score from 1820 to 2002, with a significant increase between 1980 and 2002. This trend appears to have peaked and begun a reversal with rapid economic growth in emerging economies, particularly in the large populations of BRIC countries.
The table below presents the estimated world income Gini coefficients over the last 200 years, as calculated by Milanovic.
More detailed data from similar sources plots a continuous decline since 1988. This is attributed to globalization increasing incomes for billions of poor people, mostly in countries like China and India. Developing countries like Brazil have also improved basic services like health care, education, and sanitation; others like Chile and Mexico have enacted more progressive tax policies.
Gini coefficient is widely used in fields as diverse as sociology, economics, health science, ecology, engineering and agriculture. For example, in social sciences and economics, in addition to income Gini coefficients, scholars have published education Gini coefficients and opportunity Gini coefficients.
Education Gini index estimates the inequality in education for a given population. It is used to discern trends in social development through educational attainment over time. From a study of 85 countries by three Economists of World Bank Vinod Thomas, Yan Wang, Xibo Fan, estimate Mali had the highest education Gini index of 0.92 in 1990 (implying very high inequality in education attainment across the population), while the United States had the lowest education inequality Gini index of 0.14. Between 1960 and 1990, China, India and South Korea had the fastest drop in education inequality Gini Index. They also claim education Gini index for the United States slightly increased over the 1980–1990 period.
Similar in concept to income Gini coefficient, opportunity Gini coefficient measures inequality of opportunity. The concept builds on Amartya Sen's suggestion that inequality coefficients of social development should be premised on the process of enlarging people's choices and enhancing their capabilities, rather than on the process of reducing income inequality. Kovacevic in a review of opportunity Gini coefficient explains that the coefficient estimates how well a society enables its citizens to achieve success in life where the success is based on a person's choices, efforts and talents, not his background defined by a set of predetermined circumstances at birth, such as, gender, race, place of birth, parent's income and circumstances beyond the control of that individual.
In 2003, Roemer reported Italy and Spain exhibited the largest opportunity inequality Gini index amongst advanced economies.
In 1978, Anthony Shorrocks introduced a measure based on income Gini coefficients to estimate income mobility. This measure, generalized by Maasoumi and Zandvakili, is now generally referred to as Shorrocks index, sometimes as Shorrocks mobility index or Shorrocks rigidity index. It attempts to estimate whether the income inequality Gini coefficient is permanent or temporary, and to what extent a country or region enables economic mobility to its people so that they can move from one (e.g., bottom 20%) income quantile to another (e.g., middle 20%) over time. In other words, Shorrocks index compares inequality of short-term earnings such as annual income of households, to inequality of long-term earnings such as 5-year or 10-year total income for same households.
Shorrocks index is calculated in number of different ways, a common approach being from the ratio of income Gini coefficients between short-term and long-term for the same region or country.
A 2010 study using social security income data for the United States since 1937 and Gini-based Shorrocks indices concludes that income mobility in the United States has had a complicated history, primarily due to mass influx of women into the American labor force after World War II. Income inequality and income mobility trends have been different for men and women workers between 1937 and the 2000s. When men and women are considered together, the Gini coefficient-based Shorrocks index trends imply long-term income inequality has been substantially reduced among all workers, in recent decades for the United States. Other scholars, using just 1990s data or other short periods have come to different conclusions. For example, Sastre and Ayala, conclude from their study of income Gini coefficient data between 1993 and 1998 for six developed economies, that France had the least income mobility, Italy the highest, and the United States and Germany intermediate levels of income mobility over those 5 years.
The Gini coefficient has features that make it useful as a measure of dispersion in a population, and inequalities in particular. It is a ratio analysis method making it easier to interpret. It also avoids references to a statistical average or position unrepresentative of most of the population, such as per capita income or gross domestic product. For a given time interval, Gini coefficient can therefore be used to compare diverse countries and different regions or groups within a country; for example states, counties, urban versus rural areas, gender and ethnic groups. Gini coefficients can be used to compare income distribution over time, thus it is possible to see if inequality is increasing or decreasing independent of absolute incomes.
Other useful features of the Gini coefficient include:
A Gini index value above 50 is considered high; countries including Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Botswana, and Honduras can be found in this category. A Gini index value of 30 or above is considered medium; countries including Vietnam, Mexico, the United States, Argentina, Russia, and Uruguay can be found in this category. A Gini index value lower than 30 is considered low; countries including Austria, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden, and Ukraine can be found in this category.
The Gini coefficient is a relative measure. Its proper use and interpretation is controversial. It is possible for the Gini coefficient of a developing country to rise (due to increasing inequality of income) while the number of people in absolute poverty decreases. This is because the Gini coefficient measures relative, not absolute, wealth. Changing income inequality, measured by Gini coefficients, can be due to structural changes in a society such as growing population (baby booms, aging populations, increased divorce rates, extended family households splitting into nuclear families, emigration, immigration) and income mobility. Gini coefficients are simple, and this simplicity can lead to oversights and can confuse the comparison of different populations; for example, while both Bangladesh (per capita income of $1,693) and the Netherlands (per capita income of $42,183) had an income Gini coefficient of 0.31 in 2010, the quality of life, economic opportunity and absolute income in these countries are very different, i.e. countries may have identical Gini coefficients, but differ greatly in wealth. Basic necessities may be available to all in a developed economy, while in an undeveloped economy with the same Gini coefficient, basic necessities may be unavailable to most or unequally available, due to lower absolute wealth.
Even when the total income of a population is the same, in certain situations two countries with different income distributions can have the same Gini index (e.g. cases when income Lorenz Curves cross). Table A illustrates one such situation. Both countries have a Gini coefficient of 0.2, but the average income distributions for household groups are different. As another example, in a population where the lowest 50% of individuals have no income and the other 50% have equal income, the Gini coefficient is 0.5; whereas for another population where the lowest 75% of people have 25% of income and the top 25% have 75% of the income, the Gini index is also 0.5. Economies with similar incomes and Gini coefficients can have very different income distributions. Bellù and Liberati claim that to rank income inequality between two different populations based on their Gini indices is sometimes not possible, or misleading.
A Gini index does not contain information about absolute national or personal incomes. Populations can have very low income Gini indices, yet simultaneously very high wealth Gini index. By measuring inequality in income, the Gini ignores the differential efficiency of use of household income. By ignoring wealth (except as it contributes to income) the Gini can create the appearance of inequality when the people compared are at different stages in their life. Wealthy countries such as Sweden can show a low Gini coefficient for disposable income of 0.31 thereby appearing equal, yet have very high Gini coefficient for wealth of 0.79 to 0.86 thereby suggesting an extremely unequal wealth distribution in its society. These factors are not assessed in income-based Gini.
Gini index has a downward-bias for small populations. Counties or states or countries with small populations and less diverse economies will tend to report small Gini coefficients. For economically diverse large population groups, a much higher coefficient is expected than for each of its regions. Taking world economy as one, and income distribution for all human beings, for example, different scholars estimate global Gini index to range between 0.61 and 0.68.
As with other inequality coefficients, the Gini coefficient is influenced by the granularity of the measurements. For example, five 20% quantiles (low granularity) will usually yield a lower Gini coefficient than twenty 5% quantiles (high granularity) for the same distribution. Philippe Monfort has shown that using inconsistent or unspecified granularity limits the usefulness of Gini coefficient measurements.
The Gini coefficient measure gives different results when applied to individuals instead of households, for the same economy and same income distributions. If household data is used, the measured value of income Gini depends on how the household is defined. When different populations are not measured with consistent definitions, comparison is not meaningful.
Deininger and Squire (1996) show that income Gini coefficient based on individual income, rather than household income, are different. For example, for the United States, they find that the individual income-based Gini index was 0.35, while for France it was 0.43. According to their individual focused method, in the 108 countries they studied, South Africa had the world's highest Gini coefficient at 0.62, Malaysia had Asia's highest Gini coefficient at 0.5, Brazil the highest at 0.57 in Latin America and Caribbean region, and Turkey the highest at 0.5 in OECD countries.
Expanding on the importance of life-span measures, the Gini coefficient as a point-estimate of equality at a certain time, ignores life-span changes in income. Typically, increases in the proportion of young or old members of a society will drive apparent changes in equality, simply because people generally have lower incomes and wealth when they are young than when they are old. Because of this, factors such as age distribution within a population and mobility within income classes can create the appearance of inequality when none exist taking into account demographic effects. Thus a given economy may have a higher Gini coefficient at any one point in time compared to another, while the Gini coefficient calculated over individuals' lifetime income is actually lower than the apparently more equal (at a given point in time) economy's. Essentially, what matters is not just inequality in any particular year, but the composition of the distribution over time.
Kwok claims income Gini coefficient for Hong Kong has been high (0.434 in 2010), in part because of structural changes in its population. Over recent decades, Hong Kong has witnessed increasing numbers of small households, elderly households and elderly living alone. The combined income is now split into more households. Many old people are living separately from their children in Hong Kong. These social changes have caused substantial changes in household income distribution. Income Gini coefficient, claims Kwok, does not discern these structural changes in its society. Household money income distribution for the United States, summarized in Table C of this section, confirms that this issue is not limited to just Hong Kong. According to the US Census Bureau, between 1979 and 2010, the population of United States experienced structural changes in overall households, the income for all income brackets increased in inflation-adjusted terms, household income distributions shifted into higher income brackets over time, while the income Gini coefficient increased.
Another limitation of Gini coefficient is that it is not a proper measure of egalitarianism, as it is only measures income dispersion. For example, if two equally egalitarian countries pursue different immigration policies, the country accepting a higher proportion of low-income or impoverished migrants will report a higher Gini coefficient and therefore may appear to exhibit more income inequality.
Some countries distribute benefits that are difficult to value. Countries that provide subsidized housing, medical care, education or other such services are difficult to value objectively, as it depends on quality and extent of the benefit. In absence of free markets, valuing these income transfers as household income is subjective. The theoretical model of Gini coefficient is limited to accepting correct or incorrect subjective assumptions.
In subsistence-driven and informal economies, people may have significant income in other forms than money, for example through subsistence farming or bartering. These income tend to accrue to the segment of population that is below-poverty line or very poor, in emerging and transitional economy countries such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe. Informal economy accounts for over half of global employment and as much as 90 per cent of employment in some of the poorer sub-Saharan countries with high official Gini inequality coefficients. Schneider et al., in their 2010 study of 162 countries, report about 31.2%, or about $20 trillion, of world's GDP is informal. In developing countries, the informal economy predominates for all income brackets except for the richer, urban upper income bracket populations. Even in developed economies, between 8% (United States) to 27% (Italy) of each nation's GDP is informal, and resulting informal income predominates as a livelihood activity for those in the lowest income brackets. The value and distribution of the incomes from informal or underground economy is difficult to quantify, making true income Gini coefficients estimates difficult. Different assumptions and quantifications of these incomes will yield different Gini coefficients.
Gini has some mathematical limitations as well. It is not additive and different sets of people cannot be averaged to obtain the Gini coefficient of all the people in the sets.
Given the limitations of Gini coefficient, other statistical methods are used in combination or as an alternative measure of population dispersity. For example, "entropy measures" are frequently used (e.g. the Atkinson index or the Theil Index and Mean log deviation as special cases of the generalized entropy index). These measures attempt to compare the distribution of resources by intelligent agents in the market with a maximum entropy random distribution, which would occur if these agents acted like non-interacting particles in a closed system following the laws of statistical physics.
The Gini coefficient is sometimes alternatively "defined" as twice the area between the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and its diagonal, in which case the AUC (Area Under the ROC Curve) measure of performance is given by formula_35. The Gini coefficient is also closely related to Mann–Whitney U.
The Gini index is also related to Pietra index—both of which are a measure of statistical heterogeneity and are derived from Lorenz curve and the diagonal line.
In certain fields such as ecology, inverse Simpson's index formula_36 is used to quantify diversity, and this should not be confused with the Simpson index formula_37. These indicators are related to Gini. The inverse Simpson index increases with diversity, unlike Simpson index and Gini coefficient which decrease with diversity. The Simpson index is in the range [0, 1], where 0 means maximum and 1 means minimum diversity (or heterogeneity). Since diversity indices typically increase with increasing heterogeneity, Simpson index is often transformed into inverse Simpson, or using the complement formula_38, known as Gini-Simpson Index.
Although the Gini coefficient is most popular in economics, it can in theory be applied in any field of science that studies a distribution. For example, in ecology the Gini coefficient has been used as a measure of biodiversity, where the cumulative proportion of species is plotted against cumulative proportion of individuals. In health, it has been used as a measure of the inequality of health related quality of life in a population. In education, it has been used as a measure of the inequality of universities. In chemistry it has been used to express the selectivity of protein kinase inhibitors against a panel of kinases. In engineering, it has been used to evaluate the fairness achieved by Internet routers in scheduling packet transmissions from different flows of traffic.
The Gini coefficient is sometimes used for the measurement of the discriminatory power of rating systems in credit risk management.
A 2005 study accessed US census data to measure home computer ownership, and used the Gini coefficient to measure inequalities amongst whites and African Americans. Results indicated that although decreasing overall, home computer ownership inequality is substantially smaller among white households.
A 2016 peer-reviewed study titled Employing the Gini coefficient to measure participation inequality in treatment-focused Digital Health Social Networks illustrated that the Gini coefficient was helpful and accurate in measuring shifts in inequality, however as a standalone metric it failed to incorporate overall network size.
The discriminatory power refers to a credit risk model's ability to differentiate between defaulting and non-defaulting clients. The formula formula_39, in calculation section above, may be used for the final model and also at individual model factor level, to quantify the discriminatory power of individual factors. It is related to accuracy ratio in population assessment models. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12883 |
GCHQ
Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance to the government and armed forces of the United Kingdom. Based in "The Doughnut" in the suburbs of Cheltenham, GCHQ is the responsibility of the country's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, but it is not a part of the Foreign Office and its Director ranks as a Permanent Secretary.
GCHQ was originally established after the First World War as the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) and was known under that name until 1946. During the Second World War it was located at Bletchley Park, where it was responsible for breaking the German Enigma codes. There are two main components of the GCHQ, the Composite Signals Organisation (CSO), which is responsible for gathering information, and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which is responsible for securing the UK's own communications. The Joint Technical Language Service (JTLS) is a small department and cross-government resource responsible for mainly technical language support and translation and interpreting services across government departments. It is co-located with GCHQ for administrative purposes.
In 2013, GCHQ received considerable media attention when the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the agency was in the process of collecting all online and telephone data in the UK via the Tempora programme. Snowden's revelations began a spate of ongoing disclosures of global surveillance. "The Guardian" newspaper was then forced to destroy all incriminating files given to them by Snowden because of the threats of lawsuits from the UK Government.
GCHQ is led by the Director of GCHQ, Jeremy Fleming, and a Corporate Board, made up of executive and non-executive directors. Reporting to the Corporate Board is:
During the First World War, the British Army and Royal Navy had separate signals intelligence agencies, MI1b and NID25 (initially known as Room 40) respectively. In 1919, the Cabinet's Secret Service Committee, chaired by Lord Curzon, recommended that a peacetime codebreaking agency should be created, a task which was given to the Director of Naval Intelligence, Hugh Sinclair. Sinclair merged staff from NID25 and MI1b into the new organisation, which initially consisted of around 25–30 officers and a similar number of clerical staff. It was titled the "Government Code and Cypher School", a cover-name which was chosen by Victor Forbes of the Foreign Office. Alastair Denniston, who had been a member of NID25, was appointed as its operational head. It was initially under the control of the Admiralty and located in Watergate House, Adelphi, London. Its public function was "to advise as to the security of codes and cyphers used by all Government departments and to assist in their provision", but also had a secret directive to "study the methods of cypher communications used by foreign powers". GC&CS officially formed on 1 November 1919, and produced its first decrypt prior to that date, on 19 October.
Before the Second World War, GC&CS was a relatively small department. By 1922, the main focus of GC&CS was on diplomatic traffic, with "no service traffic ever worth circulating" and so, at the initiative of Lord Curzon, it was transferred from the Admiralty to the Foreign Office. GC&CS came under the supervision of Hugh Sinclair, who by 1923 was both the Chief of SIS and Director of GC&CS. In 1925, both organisations were co-located on different floors of Broadway Buildings, opposite St. James's Park. Messages decrypted by GC&CS were distributed in blue-jacketed files that became known as "BJs". In the 1920s, GC&CS was successfully reading Soviet Union diplomatic cyphers. However, in May 1927, during a row over clandestine Soviet support for the General Strike and the distribution of subversive propaganda, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin made details from the decrypts public.
During the Second World War, GC&CS was based largely at Bletchley Park, in present-day Milton Keynes, working on understanding the German Enigma machine and Lorenz ciphers. In 1940, GC&CS was working on the diplomatic codes and ciphers of 26 countries, tackling over 150 diplomatic cryptosystems. Senior staff included Alastair Denniston, Oliver Strachey, Dilly Knox, John Tiltman, Edward Travis, Ernst Fetterlein, Josh Cooper, Donald Michie, Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman, Joan Clarke, Max Newman, William Tutte, I. J. (Jack) Good, Peter Calvocoressi and Hugh Foss.
An outstation in the Far East, the Far East Combined Bureau was set up in Hong Kong in 1935 and moved to Singapore in 1939. Subsequently, with the Japanese advance down the Malay Peninsula, the Army and RAF codebreakers went to the Wireless Experimental Centre in Delhi, India. The Navy codebreakers in FECB went to Colombo, Ceylon, then to Kilindini, near Mombasa, Kenya.
GC&CS was renamed the "Government Communications Headquarters" in June 1946.
GCHQ was at first based in Eastcote, but in 1951 moved to the outskirts of Cheltenham, setting up two sites there – Oakley and Benhall. Duncan Campbell and Mark Hosenball revealed the existence of GCHQ in 1976 in an article for "Time Out"; as a result, Hosenball was deported from the UK. GCHQ had a very low profile in the media until 1983 when the trial of Geoffrey Prime, a KGB mole within GCHQ, created considerable media interest.
Since the days of the Second World War, US and British intelligence have shared information. For the GCHQ this means that it shares information with, and gets information from, the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States.
In 1984, GCHQ was the centre of a political row when the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher prohibited its employees from belonging to a trade union. It was claimed that joining a union would be in conflict with national security. A number of mass national one-day strikes were held to protest this decision, seen as the first step to wider bans on trade unions. Appeals to British Courts and European Commission of Human Rights were unsuccessful. The government offered a sum of money to each employee who agreed to give up their union membership. Appeal to the ILO resulted in a decision that government's actions were in violation of Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention.
The ban was eventually lifted by the incoming Labour government in 1997, with the Government Communications Group of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) being formed to represent interested employees at all grades. In 2000, a group of 14 former GCHQ employees, who had been dismissed after refusing to give up their union membership, were offered re-employment, which three of them accepted.
The Intelligence Services Act 1994 placed the activities of the intelligence agencies on a legal footing for the first time, defining their purpose, and the British Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee was given a remit to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the three intelligence agencies. The objectives of GCHQ were defined as working as "in the interests of national security, with particular reference to the defence and foreign policies of Her Majesty's government; in the interests of the economic wellbeing of the United Kingdom; and in support of the prevention and the detection of serious crime". During the introduction of the Intelligence Agency Act in late 1993, the former Prime Minister Jim Callaghan had described GCHQ as a "full-blown bureaucracy", adding that future bodies created to provide oversight of the intelligence agencies should "investigate whether all the functions that GCHQ carries out today are still necessary."
In 1993, in the wake of the "Squidgygate" affair, GCHQ denied "intercepting, recording or disclosing" the telephone calls of the British Royal family.
In late 1993 civil servant Michael Quinlan advised a deep review of the work of GCHQ following the conclusion of his "Review of Intelligence Requirements and Resources", which had imposed a 3% cut on the agency. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Jonathan Aitken, subsequently held face to face discussions with the intelligence agency directors to assess further savings in the wake of Quinlan's review. Aldrich (2010) suggests that Sir John Adye, the then Director of GCHQ performed badly in meetings with Aitken, leading Aitken to conclude that GCHQ was "suffering from out-of-date methods of management and out-of-date methods for assessing priorities". GCHQ's budget was £850 million in 1993, (£ as of ) compared to £125 million for the Security Service and SIS (MI5 and MI6). In December 1994 the businessman Roger Hurn was commissioned to begin a review of GCHQ, which was concluded in March 1995. Hurn's report recommended a cut of £100 million in GCHQ's budget; such a large reduction had not been suffered by any British intelligence agency since the end of World War II. The J Division of GCHQ, which had collected SIGINT on Russia, disappeared as a result of the cuts. The cuts had been mostly reversed by 2000 in the wake of threats from violent non-state actors, and risks from increased terrorism, organised crime and illegal access to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
David Omand became the Director of GCHQ in 1996, and greatly restructured the agency in the face of new and changing targets and rapid technological change. Omand introduced the concept of "Sinews" (or "SIGINT New Systems") which allowed more flexible working methods, avoiding overlaps in work by creating fourteen domains, each with a well-defined working scope. The tenure of Omand also saw the planning and the creation of The Doughnut, GCHQ's modern headquarters. Located on a 176-acre site in Benhall, near Cheltenham, The Doughnut would be the largest building constructed for secret intelligence operations outside the United States.
Operations at GCHQ's Chung Hom Kok listening station in Hong Kong ended in 1994. GCHQ's Hong Kong operations were extremely important to their relationship with the NSA, who contributed investment and equipment to the station. In anticipation of the transfer of Hong Kong to the Chinese government in 1997, the Hong Kong stations operations were moved to Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station in Geraldton in Western Australia.
Operations that used GCHQ's intelligence-gathering capabilities in the 1990s included the monitoring of communications of Iraqi soldiers in the Gulf War, of dissident republican terrorists and the Real IRA, of the various factions involved in the Yugoslav Wars, and of the criminal Kenneth Noye. In the mid 1990s GCHQ began to assist in the investigation of cybercrime.
At the end of 2003, GCHQ moved to a new circular HQ (popularly known as "The Doughnut"). At the time, it was the second-largest public-sector building project in Europe, with an estimated cost of £337 million. The new building, which was designed by Gensler and constructed by Carillion, became the base for all of GCHQ's Cheltenham operations.
The public spotlight fell on GCHQ in late 2003 and early 2004 following the sacking of Katharine Gun after she leaked to "The Observer" a confidential email from agents at the United States' National Security Agency addressed to GCHQ agents about the wiretapping of UN delegates in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war.
GCHQ gains its intelligence by monitoring a wide variety of communications and other electronic signals. For this, a number of stations have been established in the UK and overseas. The listening stations are at Cheltenham itself, Bude, Scarborough, Ascension Island, and with the United States at Menwith Hill. Ayios Nikolaos Station in Cyprus is run by the British Army for GCHQ.
In March 2010, GCHQ was criticised by the Intelligence and Security Committee for problems with its IT security practices and failing to meet its targets for work targeted against cyber attacks.
As revealed by Edward Snowden in "The Guardian", GCHQ spied on foreign politicians visiting the 2009 G-20 London Summit by eavesdropping phonecalls and emails and monitoring their computers, and in some cases even ongoing after the summit via keyloggers that had been installed during the summit.
According to Edward Snowden, GCHQ has two principal umbrella programs for collecting communications:
GCHQ also has had access to the US internet monitoring programme PRISM since at least June 2010. PRISM is said to give the National Security Agency and FBI easy access to the systems of nine of the world's top internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, and Skype.
In February 2014, "The Guardian", based on documents provided by Snowden, revealed that GCHQ had indiscriminately collected 1.8 million private Yahoo webcam images from users across the world. In the same month NBC and The Intercept, based on documents released by Snowden, revealed the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group and the Computer Network Exploitation units within GCHQ. Their mission was cyber operations based on "dirty tricks" to shut down enemy communications, discredit, and plant misinformation on enemies. These operations were 5% of all GCHQ operations according to a conference slideshow presented by the GCHQ.
Soon after becoming Director of GCHQ in 2014, Robert Hannigan wrote an article in the "Financial Times" on the topic of internet surveillance, stating that "however much [large US technology companies] may dislike it, they have become the command and control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals" and that GCHQ and its sister agencies "cannot tackle these challenges at scale without greater support from the private sector", arguing that most internet users "would be comfortable with a better and more sustainable relationship between the [intelligence] agencies and the tech companies". Since the 2013 global surveillance disclosures, large US technology companies have improved security and become less co-operative with foreign intelligence agencies, including those of the UK, generally requiring a US court order before disclosing data. However the head of the UK technology industry group techUK rejected these claims, stating that they understood the issues but that disclosure obligations "must be based upon a clear and transparent legal framework and effective oversight rather than, as suggested, a deal between the industry and government".
In 2015, documents obtained by "The Intercept" from US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that GCHQ had carried out a mass-surveillance operation, codenamed KARMA POLICE, since about 2008. The operation swept up the IP address of Internet users visiting websites, and was established with no public scrutiny or oversight. KARMA POLICE is a powerful spying tool in conjunction with other GCHQ programs because IP addresses could be cross-referenced with other data. The goal of the program, according to the documents, was "either (a) a web browsing profile for every visible user on the internet, or (b) a user profile for every visible website on the internet."
In 2015, GCHQ admitted for the first time in court that it conducts computer hacking.
In 2017, US Press Secretary Sean Spicer alleged that GCHQ had conducted surveillance on US President Donald Trump, basing the allegation on statements made by a media commentator during a Fox News segment. The US government formally apologised for the allegations and promised they would not be repeated. However, surveillance of Russian agents did pick up contacts made by Trump's campaign team in the run-up to his election, which were passed on to US agencies.
On 31 October 2018, GCHQ joined Instagram.
As well as a mission to gather intelligence, GCHQ has for a long-time had a corresponding mission to assist in the protection of the British government's own communications. When the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) was created in 1919, its overt task was providing security advice. GC&CS's Security section was located in Mansfield College, Oxford during the Second World War.
In April 1946, GC&CS became GCHQ, and the now GCHQ Security section moved from Oxford to join the rest of the organisation at Eastcote later that year.
From 1952 to 1954, the intelligence mission of GCHQ relocated to Cheltenham; the Security section remained at Eastcote, and in March 1954 became a separate, independent organisation: the London Communications Security Agency (LCSA), which in 1958 was renamed to the London Communications-Electronic Security Agency (LCESA).
In April 1965, GPO and MOD units merged with LCESA to become the Communications-Electronic Security Department (CESD).
In October 1969, CESD was merged into GCHQ and becoming Communications-Electronic Security Group (CESG).
In 1977 CESG relocated from Eastcote to Cheltenham.
CESG continued as the UK National Technical Authority for information assurance, including cryptography. CESG did not manufacture security equipment, but worked with industry to ensure the availability of suitable products and services, while GCHQ itself funded research into such areas, for example to the Centre for Quantum Computation at Oxford University and the Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research at the University of Bristol.
In the 21st century, CESG ran a number of assurance schemes such as CHECK, CLAS, Commercial Product Assurance (CPA) and CESG Assisted Products Service (CAPS).
In late 1969 the concept for public-key encryption was developed and proven by James H. Ellis, who had worked for CESG (and before it, CESD) since 1965. Ellis lacked the number theory expertise necessary to build a workable system. Subsequently, a feasible implementation scheme via an asymmetric key algorithm was invented by another staff member Clifford Cocks, a mathematics graduate. This fact was kept secret until 1997.
In 2016, the National Cyber Security Centre was established under GCHQ but located in London, as the UK's authority on cybersecurity. It absorbed and replaced CESG as well as activities that had previously existed outside GCHQ: the Centre for Cyber Assessment (CCA), Computer Emergency Response Team UK (CERT UK) and the cyber-related responsibilities of the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI).
The Joint Technical Language Service (JTLS) was established in 1955, drawing on members of the small Ministry of Defence technical language team and others, initially to provide standard English translations for organisational expressions in any foreign language, discover the correct English equivalents of technical terms in foreign languages and discover the correct expansions of abbreviations in any language. The remit of the JTLS has expanded in the ensuing years to cover technical language support and interpreting and translation services across the UK Government and to local public sector services in Gloucestershire and surrounding counties. The JTLS also produces and publishes foreign language working aids under crown copyright and conducts research into machine translation and on-line dictionaries and glossaries. The JTLS is co-located with GCHQ for administrative purposes.
GCHQ operates in partnership with equivalent agencies worldwide in a number of bi-lateral and multi-lateral relationships. The principal of these is with the United States (National Security Agency), Canada (Communications Security Establishment), Australia (Australian Signals Directorate) and New Zealand (Government Communications Security Bureau), through the mechanism of the UK-US Security Agreement, a broad intelligence-sharing agreement encompassing a range of intelligence collection methods. Relationships are alleged to include shared collection methods, such as the system described in the popular media as ECHELON, as well as analysed product.
GCHQ's legal basis is enshrined in the Intelligence Services Act 1994 Section 3 as follows:
Activities that involve interception of communications are permitted under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000; this kind of interception can only be carried out after a warrant has been issued by a Secretary of State. The Human Rights Act 1998 requires the intelligence agencies, including GCHQ, to respect citizens' rights as described in the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Prime Minister nominates cross-party Members of Parliament to an Intelligence and Security Committee. The remit of the Committee includes oversight of intelligence and security activities and reports are made directly to Parliament. Its functions were increased under the Justice and Security Act 2013 to provide for further access and investigatory powers.
Judicial oversight of GCHQ's conduct is exercised by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. The UK also has an independent Intelligence Services Commissioner and Interception of Communications Commissioner, both of whom are former senior judges.
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled in December 2014 that GCHQ does not breach the European Convention of Human Rights, and that its activities are compliant with Articles 8 (right to privacy) and 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention of Human Rights. However, the Tribunal stated in February 2015 that one particular aspect, the data-sharing arrangement that allowed UK Intelligence services to request data from the US surveillance programmes Prism and Upstream, had been in contravention of human rights law prior to this until two paragraphs of additional information, providing details about the procedures and safeguards, were disclosed to the public in December 2014.
Furthermore, the IPT ruled that the legislative framework in the United Kingdom does not permit mass surveillance and that while GCHQ collects and analyses data in bulk, it does not practice mass surveillance. This complements independent reports by the Interception of Communications Commissioner, and a special report made by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament; although several shortcomings and potential improvements to both oversight and the legislative framework were highlighted.
Despite the inherent secrecy around much of GCHQ's work, investigations carried out by the UK government after the Snowden disclosures have admitted various abuses by the security services. A report by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) in 2015 revealed that a small number of staff at UK intelligence agencies had been found to misuse their surveillance powers, in one case leading to the dismissal of a member of staff at GCHQ, although there were no laws in place at the time to make these abuses a criminal offence.
Later that year, a ruling by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal found that GCHQ acted unlawfully in conducting surveillance on two human rights organisations. The closed hearing found the government in breach of its internal surveillance policies in accessing and retaining the communications of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and the Legal Resources Centre in South Africa. This was only the second time in the IPT's history that it had made a positive determination in favour of applicants after a closed session.
At another IPT case in 2015, GCHQ conceded that "from January 2010, the regime for the interception/obtaining, analysis, use, disclosure and destruction of legally privileged material has not been in accordance with the law for the purposes of Article 8(2) of the European convention on human rights and was accordingly unlawful". This admission was made in connection with a case brought against them by Abdelhakim Belhaj, a Libyan opponent of the former Gaddafi regime, and his wife Fatima Bouchard. The couple accused British ministers and officials of participating in their unlawful abduction, kidnapping and removal to Libya in March 2004, while Gaddafi was still in power.
In 2015 there was a complaint by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas that British intelligence services, including GCHQ, had been spying on MPs allegedly "in defiance of laws prohibiting it." GCHQ had introduced a policy in March 2015 that did not require approval by the Prime Minister, or any minister, before deliberately targeting the communications of a parliamentarian.
Then-Home Secretary, Theresa May, had told Parliament in 2014 that:
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal investigated the complaint, and ruled that contrary to the allegation, there was no law that gave the communications of parliament any special protection. The Wilson Doctrine merely acts as a political convention.
A controversial GCHQ case determined the scope of judicial review of prerogative powers (the Crown's residual powers under common law). This was "Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service" [1985] AC 374 (often known simply as the "GCHQ case"). In this case, a prerogative Order in Council had been used by the prime minister (who is the Minister for the Civil Service) to ban trade union activities by civil servants working at GCHQ. This order was issued without consultation. The House of Lords had to decide whether this was reviewable by judicial review. It was held that executive action is not immune from judicial review simply because it uses powers derived from common law rather than statute (thus the prerogative is reviewable).
The following is a list of the heads of the operational heads of GCHQ and GC&CS:
The following are stations and former stations that have operated since the Cold War.
Stations:
Former stations:
The GCHQ Certified Training (GCT) scheme was established to certify two main levels of cybersecurity training. There are also degree and masters level courses. These are:
The GCT scheme was designed to help organisations find the right training that also met GCHQ's exacting standards. It was designed to assure high-quality cybersecurity training courses where the training provider had also undergone rigorous quality checks. The GCT process is carried out by APMG as the independent certification body. The scheme is part of the National Cyber Security Programme established by the Government to develop knowledge, skills and capability in all aspects of cybersecurity in the, and is based on the IISP Skills Framework.
The historical drama film "The Imitation Game" (2014) featured Benedict Cumberbatch portraying Alan Turing's efforts to break the Enigma code while employed by the Government Code and Cypher School.
GCHQ have set a number of cryptic online challenges to the public, used to attract interest and for recruitment, starting in late 1999. The response to the 2004 challenge was described as "excellent", and the challenge set in 2015 had over 600,000 attempts. It also published the "GCHQ puzzle book" in 2016 which sold more than 300,000 copies, with the proceeds going to charity. A second book was published in October 2018.
GCHQ appeared on the "Doctor Who" 2019 special "Resolution" as the site of an attack from a Reconnaissance Scout Dalek, which was seeking to use the organisation's resources to summon a Dalek fleet.
GCHQ units:
GCHQ specifics:
UK agencies:
Elsewhere: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12884 |
Francis Gary Powers
Francis Gary Powers (August 17, 1929 – August 1, 1977) was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 incident.
He later worked as a helicopter pilot for KNBC in Los Angeles and died in a 1977 helicopter crash.
Powers was born August 17, 1929, in Jenkins, Kentucky, the son of Oliver Winfield Powers (1904–1970), a coal miner, and his wife Ida Melinda Powers (; 1905–1991). His family eventually moved to Pound, Virginia, just across the state border. He was the second born and only male of six children.
His family lived in a mining town, and because of the hardships associated with the life in such a town, his father wanted Powers to become a physician. He hoped his son would achieve the higher earnings of such a profession and felt that this would involve less hardships than any job in his hometown.
Graduating with a bachelor's degree from Milligan College in Tennessee in June 1950, he enlisted in the United States Air Force in October. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in December 1952 after completing his advanced training with USAF Pilot Training Class 52-H at Williams Air Force Base, Arizona. Powers was then assigned to the 468th Strategic Fighter Squadron at Turner Air Force Base, Georgia, as an F-84 Thunderjet pilot.
He married Barbara Gay Moore in Newnan, Georgia, on April 2, 1955.
In January 1956 he was recruited by the CIA. In May 1956 he began U-2 training at Watertown Strip, Nevada. His training was complete by August 1956 and his unit, the Second Weather Observational Squadron (Provisional) or Detachment 10-10, was deployed to Incirlik Air Base, Turkey. By 1960, Powers was already a veteran of many covert aerial reconnaissance missions. Family members believed that he was a NASA weather reconnaissance pilot.
Powers was discharged from the Air Force in 1956 with the rank of captain. He then joined the CIA's U-2 program at the civilian grade of GS-12. U-2 pilots flew espionage missions at altitudes of , supposedly above the reach of Soviet air defenses. The U-2 was equipped with a state-of-the-art camera designed to take high-resolution photos from the stratosphere over hostile countries, including the Soviet Union. U-2 missions systematically photographed military installations and other important sites.
The primary mission of the U-2s was overflying the Soviet Union. Soviet intelligence had been aware of encroaching U-2 flights at least since 1958 if not earlier but lacked effective countermeasures until 1960. On May 1, 1960, Powers's U-2A, "56-6693", departed from a military airbase in Peshawar, Pakistan, with support from the U.S. Air Station at Badaber (Peshawar Air Station). This was to be the first attempt "to fly all the way across the Soviet Union ... but it was considered worth the gamble. The planned route would take us deeper into Russia than we had ever gone, while traversing important targets never before photographed."
Powers was shot down by an S-75 Dvina (SA-2 Guideline) surface-to-air missile over Sverdlovsk. A total of 14 Dvinas were launched, one of which hit a MiG-19 jet fighter which was sent to intercept the U-2 but could not reach a high enough altitude. Its pilot, Sergei Safronov, ejected but died of his injuries. Another Soviet aircraft, a newly manufactured Su-9 on a transit flight, also attempted to intercept Powers's U-2. The unarmed Su-9 was directed to ram the U-2, but missed because of the large differences in speed. (The Su-9 flew above Mach 1.1, while the U-2 flew at approximately Mach 0.6.)
As Powers flew near Kosulino in the Ural Region, three S-75 Dvinas were launched at his U-2, with the first one hitting the aircraft. "What was left of the plane began spinning, only upside down, the nose pointing upward toward the sky, the tail down toward the ground." Powers was unable to activate the plane's self-destruct mechanism before he was thrown out of the plane after releasing the canopy and his seat belt. While descending under his parachute, Powers had time to scatter his escape map, and rid himself of part of his suicide device, a silver dollar coin suspended around his neck containing a poison-laced injection pin, though he kept the poison pin. "Yet I was still hopeful of escape." He hit the ground hard, was immediately captured, and taken to Lubyanka Prison in Moscow. Powers did note a second chute after landing on the ground, "some distance away and very high, a lone red and white parachute".
When the U.S. government learned of Powers's disappearance over the Soviet Union, they lied that a "weather plane" had strayed off course after its pilot had "difficulties with his oxygen equipment". What CIA officials did not realize was that the plane crashed almost fully intact, and the Soviets recovered its equipment. Powers was interrogated extensively by the KGB for months before he made a confession and a public apology for his part in espionage.
Powers tried to lie to limit the information he shared with the KGB to that which could be determined from the remains of his plane's wreckage. He was hampered by information appearing in the western press. A KGB major stated "there's no reason for you to withhold information. We'll find it out anyway. Your Press will give it to us." However, he limited his divulging of CIA contacts to one individual, with a pseudonym of "Collins". At the same time, he repeatedly stated the maximum altitude for the U-2 was , significantly lower than its actual flight ceiling.
The incident set back talks between Khrushchev and Eisenhower. Powers's interrogations ended on June 30, and his solitary confinement ended on July 9. On August 17, 1960, his trial began for espionage before the military division of the Supreme Court of the USSR. Lieutenant General Borisoglebsky, Major General Vorobyev, and Major General Zakharov presided. Roman Rudenko acted as prosecutor in his capacity of Procurator General of the Soviet Union. Mikhail I. Grinev served as Powers's defense counsel. In attendance were his parents and sister, and his wife Barbara and her mother. His father brought along his attorney Carl McAfee, while the CIA provided two additional attorneys.
On August 19, 1960, Powers was convicted of espionage, "a grave crime covered by Article 2 of the Soviet Union's law 'On Criminality Responsibility for State Crimes'". His sentence consisted of 10 years' confinement, three of which were to be in a prison, with the remainder in a labor camp. The US Embassy "News Bulletin" stated, according to Powers, "as far as the government was concerned, I had acted in accordance with the instructions given me and would receive my full salary while imprisoned".
He was held in Vladimir Central Prison, about east of Moscow, in building number 2 from September 9, 1960 until February 8, 1962. His cellmate was Zigurds Krūmiņš, a Latvian political prisoner. Powers kept a diary and a journal while confined. Additionally he took up carpet weaving from his cellmate to pass the time. He could send and receive a limited number of letters from his family. The prison now contains a small museum with an exhibit on Powers, who allegedly developed a good rapport with Soviet prisoners there. Some pieces of the plane and Powers's uniform are on display at the Monino Airbase museum near Moscow.
On February 10, 1962, Powers was exchanged, along with U.S. student Frederic Pryor, in a well-publicized spy swap at the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin. The exchange was for Soviet KGB Colonel William Fisher, known as "Rudolf Abel", who had been caught by the FBI and tried and jailed for espionage. Powers credited his father with the swap idea. When released, Powers's total time in captivity was 1 year, 9 months, and 10 days.
In 2010, CIA documents were released indicating that U.S. officials did not believe Powers's account of the incident at the time, because it was contradicted by a classified National Security Agency (NSA) report which alleged that the U-2 had descended from before changing course and disappearing from radar. The NSA report remains classified.
Powers initially received a cold reception on his return home. He was criticized for not activating his aircraft's self-destruct charge to destroy the camera, photographic film, and related classified parts. He was also criticized for not using a CIA-issued "suicide pill" to kill himself (a coin with shellfish toxin embedded in its grooves, revealed during CIA testimony to the Church Committee in 1975).
He was debriefed extensively by the CIA, Lockheed Corporation, and the Air Force, after which a statement was issued by CIA director John McCone that "Mr. Powers lived up to the terms of his employment and instructions in connection with his mission and in his obligations as an American." On March 6, 1962, he appeared before a Senate Armed Services Select Committee hearing chaired by Senator Richard Russell Jr. which included Senators Prescott Bush, Leverett Saltonstall, Robert Byrd, Margaret Chase Smith, John Stennis, Strom Thurmond, and Barry Goldwater. During the hearing, Senator Saltonstall stated, "I commend you as a courageous, fine young American citizen who lived up to your instructions and who did the best you could under very difficult circumstances." Senator Bush declared, "I am satisfied he has conducted himself in exemplary fashion and in accordance with the highest traditions of service to one's country, and I congratulate him upon his conduct in captivity." Senator Goldwater sent him a handwritten note: "You did a good job for your country."
Powers and his wife Barbara separated in 1962 and divorced in January 1963. Powers stated that the reasons for the divorce included her infidelity and alcoholism, adding that she constantly threw tantrums and overdosed on pills shortly after his return. He started a relationship with Claudia Edwards "Sue" Downey, whom he had met while working briefly at CIA Headquarters. Downey had a child, Dee, from her previous marriage. They were married on October 26, 1963. Their son Francis Gary Powers II was born on June 5, 1965. The marriage proved to be a very happy one, and Sue worked hard to preserve her husband's legacy after his death.
During a speech in March 1964, former CIA Director Allen Dulles said of Powers, "He performed his duty in a very dangerous mission and he performed it well, and I think I know more about that than some of his detractors and critics know, and I am glad to say that to him tonight."
Powers worked for Lockheed as a test pilot from 1962 to 1970, though the CIA paid his salary. In 1970, he wrote the book "Operation Overflight" with co-author Curt Gentry. Lockheed fired him, because "the book's publication had ruffled some feathers at Langley." Powers became a helicopter traffic pilot reporter for KNBC News Channel 4.
Powers was piloting a helicopter for KNBC Channel 4 over West Los Angeles on August 1, 1977, when the aircraft crashed, killing him and his cameraman George Spears. They had been recording video tape following bush fires in Santa Barbara County in the KNBC helicopter and were heading back from them.
His Bell 206 JetRanger helicopter ran out of fuel and crashed at the Sepulveda Dam recreational area in Encino, California, several miles short of its intended landing site at Burbank Airport. The National Transportation Safety Board report attributed the probable cause of the crash to pilot error. According to Powers's son, an aviation mechanic had repaired a faulty fuel gauge without informing Powers, who subsequently misread it.
At the last moment, he noticed children playing in the area and directed the helicopter elsewhere to avoid landing on them. He might have landed safely if not for the last-second deviation, which compromised his autorotative descent.
Powers was survived by his wife, children Claudia Dee and Francis Gary Powers Jr., and five sisters. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery as an Air Force veteran.
Powers received the CIA's Intelligence Star in 1965 after his return from the Soviet Union. Powers was originally scheduled to receive it in 1963 along with other pilots involved in the CIA's U-2 program, but the award was postponed for political reasons. In 1970, Powers published his first—and only—book review, on a work about aerial reconnaissance, "Unarmed and Unafraid" by Glenn Infield, in the monthly magazine "Business & Commercial Aviation". "The subject has great interest to me," he said, in submitting his review.
In 1998, newly declassified information revealed that Powers's mission had been a joint USAF/CIA operation. In 2000, on the 40th anniversary of the U-2 Incident, his family was presented with his posthumously awarded Prisoner of War Medal, Distinguished Flying Cross, and National Defense Service Medal. In addition, CIA Director George Tenet authorized Powers to posthumously receive the CIA's coveted Director's Medal for extreme fidelity and extraordinary courage in the line of duty.
On June 15, 2012, Powers was posthumously awarded the Silver Star medal for "demonstrating 'exceptional loyalty' while enduring harsh interrogation in the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow for almost two years." Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz presented the decoration to Powers's grandchildren, Trey Powers, 9, and Lindsey Berry, 29, in a Pentagon ceremony.
Powers's son, Francis Gary Powers Jr., founded the Cold War Museum in 1996. Affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, it was essentially a traveling exhibit until it found a permanent home in 2011 on a former Army communications base outside Washington, D.C. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12888 |
Gospel of James
The Gospel of James, also known as the Protoevangelium of James, and the Infancy Gospel of James, is an apocryphal gospel probably written around the year AD 145, which expands backward in time the infancy stories contained in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and presents a narrative concerning the birth and upbringing of Mary herself. It is the oldest source to assert the virginity of Mary not only prior to, but during (and after) the birth of Jesus. The ancient manuscripts that preserve the book have different titles, including "The Birth of Mary", "The Story of the Birth of Saint Mary, Mother of God," and "The Birth of Mary; The Revelation of James." It is also referred to as "Genesis of Mary".
The protoevangelium presents itself as written by a source of moral and ecclesiastical authority, ending with the declaration: ""I, James, wrote this history in Jerusalem"." The purported author is thus James, the brother of Jesus, who held considerable influence within the early Christian community. However, textual scholarship has indicated that the text is a work of pseudepigrapha, a common literary style to this period. It was likely composed some time in the mid-second century.
Although earlier scholars claimed the author(s) had a Jewish background (due to references to the duties of the Jewish priestly office, various temple rituals and protocols, and Jewish legal practices common to the Second Temple period), in fact the author(s) appear to have been poorly informed about Jewish practices (e.g. "Joachim is forbidden to offer his gifts first because of childlessness; Mary is taken to be a ward of the Temple; Joseph plans to go from Bethlehem to Judea"; further, the "water of jealousy" was not administered to men and Simeon was not a high‐priest in the Bible). Many scholars have debated the issue and the text's relation to Judaism.
The style of the language that has been employed supports the argument that the text dates from the second century. The author describes various Jewish social and ecclesiastical activities that are heavily contested by scholars.
The consensus is that it was composed sometime in the middle of the second century. The first mention of it is in the early third century by Origen of Alexandria, who says the text, like that of a Gospel of Peter, was of dubious, recent appearance and shared with that book the claim that the "brethren of the Lord" were sons of Joseph by a former wife.
Although a number of church councils condemned it as an inauthentic writing of the New Testament, this did little to diminish its popularity. Pope Innocent I condemned this "Gospel of James" in his third epistle "ad Exuperium" in 405 AD, and the so-called Gelasian Decree also excluded it as canonical around 500 AD. Thomas Aquinas, in his "Summa Theologiae", rejects the Protevangelium of James teaching that midwives were present at Christ's birth, and invokes Jerome as contending that the words of the canonical gospels show that Mary was both mother and midwife, that she wrapped up the child with swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger. And thus concludes, "These words prove the falseness of the apocryphal ravings."
It does appear to have helped inform the Islamic tradition of the lives of Mary and Christ, and appears to directly relate to the references made to her piety in the pages of the Quran.
The Protoevangelium of James is one of several surviving Infancy Gospels within early Christian literature. The majority scholarly consensus is that it was composed by the early church to expand upon the canonical gospels in more extensive way, granting more details about the early life of Christ. The term 'Protoevangelium' stems from the Koine Greek cognate, meaning 'prior to the gospel', 'pre-gospel' or 'infancy gospel'. It is a title attributed to the text, but not explicitly used by the author(s).
Such a work was intended to be "apologetic, doctrinal, or simply to satisfy one's curiosity". The literary genre that these works represent shows stylistic features that suggest dates in the 2nd century and later. Other infancy gospels in this tradition include The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (based on the Protevangelium of James and on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas), and the so-called Arabic Infancy Gospel, all of which were regarded by the Church as apocryphal.
Some indication of the popularity of the Infancy Gospel of James may be drawn from the fact that over 150 Greek manuscripts containing it have survived. The Gospel of James was translated into Syriac, Ethiopian, Coptic, Georgian, Old Church Slavonic, Armenian, Arabic, Gaelic, and Vulgar Latin. Though no early Latin versions are known, it was relegated to the apocrypha in the Gelasian Decretal, so it must have been known in the Western church before the fifth century, though the vast majority of the manuscripts come from the 10th century or later. The earliest known manuscript of the text, a papyrus dating to the third or early fourth century, was found in 1958; it is kept in the Bodmer Library, Geneva (Papyrus Bodmer 5). Of the surviving Greek manuscripts, the fullest text is a 10th-century codex in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (Paris 1454),
The Protoevangelium of James is divided into twenty-four chapters, broken down into three sections:
One of the work's high points is the Lament of Anna. A primary theme is the work and grace of God in Mary's life, Mary's personal purity, and her perpetual virginity before, during and after the birth of Jesus, as confirmed by the midwife after she gave birth, and tested by Salome who is perhaps intended to be Salome, later the disciple of Jesus who is mentioned in the Gospel of Mark as being one of the women at the crucifixion. The check of Mary's virginity by Salome is the first written record of a gynecological examination. In theme with Mary's perpetual virginity, Salome's hand catches on fire as punishment for attempting to touch the Virgin Mary.
This is also the earliest text that explicitly claims that Joseph was a widower, with children, at the time that Mary is entrusted to his care. This feature is mentioned in the text of Origen, who adduces it to demonstrate that the 'brethren of the Lord' were sons of Joseph by a former wife.
Among further traditions not present in the four canonical gospels are the birth of Jesus in a cave, the martyrdom of John the Baptist's father Zechariah during the Massacre of the Innocents and Joseph's being elderly when Jesus was born. The Nativity reported as taking place in a cave remained in the popular imagination; many Early Renaissance Sienese and Florentine paintings of the Nativity continued to show such a setting, which is practically universal in Byzantine, Greek and Russian icons of the Nativity. The Gospel also describes the narrative of Mary’s early childhood in the holiest part of the temple, which was later also mentioned in the Qur’an. The Quran does not, specifically, say that Mary lived and grew up in a temple as the word miḥ'rāb in Surah 3:36 in its literal meaning refers to a private prayer chamber or a private chamber in general. Outside of this Surah there is no hint or any mention of a temple in which Mary supposedly grew up. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12890 |
Gene therapy
Gene therapy (also called human gene transfer) is a medical field which focuses on the utilization of the therapeutic delivery of nucleic acids into a patient's cells as a drug to treat disease. The first attempt at modifying human DNA was performed in 1980 by Martin Cline, but the first successful nuclear gene transfer in humans, approved by the National Institutes of Health, was performed in May 1989. The first therapeutic use of gene transfer as well as the first direct insertion of human DNA into the nuclear genome was performed by French Anderson in a trial starting in September 1990. It is thought to be able to cure many genetic disorders or treat them over time.
Between 1989 and December 2018, over 2,900 clinical trials were conducted, with more than half of them in phase I. As of 2017, Spark Therapeutics' Luxturna (RPE65 mutation-induced blindness) and Novartis' Kymriah (Chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy) are the FDA's first approved gene therapies to enter the market. Since that time, drugs such as Novartis' Zolgensma and Alnylam's Patisiran have also received FDA approval, in addition to other companies' gene therapy drugs. Most of these approaches utilize adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) and lentiviruses for performing gene insertions, "in vivo" and "ex vivo", respectively. ASO / siRNA approaches such as those conducted by Alnylam and Ionis Pharmaceuticals require non-viral delivery systems, and utilize alternative mechanisms for trafficking to liver cells by way of GalNAc transporters.
The introduction of CRISPR gene editing has opened new doors for its application and utilization in gene therapy. Solutions to medical hurdles, such as the eradication of latent human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) reservoirs and correction of the mutation that causes sickle cell disease, may soon become a tangible reality.
Not all medical procedures that introduce alterations to a patient's genetic makeup can be considered gene therapy. Bone marrow transplantation and organ transplants in general have been found to introduce foreign DNA into patients. Gene therapy is defined by the precision of the procedure and the intention of direct therapeutic effect.
Gene therapy was conceptualized in 1972, by authors who urged caution before commencing human gene therapy studies.
The first attempt, an unsuccessful one, at gene therapy (as well as the first case of medical transfer of foreign genes into humans not counting organ transplantation) was performed by Martin Cline on 10 July 1980. Cline claimed that one of the genes in his patients was active six months later, though he never published this data or had it verified and even if he is correct, it's unlikely it produced any significant beneficial effects treating beta-thalassemia.
After extensive research on animals throughout the 1980s and a 1989 bacterial gene tagging trial on humans, the first gene therapy widely accepted as a success was demonstrated in a trial that started on 14 September 1990, when Ashi DeSilva was treated for ADA-SCID.
The first somatic treatment that produced a permanent genetic change was initiated in 1993. The goal was to cure malignant brain tumors by using recombinant DNA to transfer a gene making the tumor cells sensitive to a drug that in turn would cause the tumor cells to die.
Gene therapy is a way to fix a genetic problem at its source. The polymers are either translated into proteins, interfere with target gene expression, or possibly correct genetic mutations.
The most common form uses DNA that encodes a functional, therapeutic gene to replace a mutated gene. The polymer molecule is packaged within a "vector", which carries the molecule inside cells.
Early clinical failures led to dismissals of gene therapy. Clinical successes since 2006 regained researchers' attention, although , it was still largely an experimental technique. These include treatment of retinal diseases Leber's congenital amaurosis and choroideremia, X-linked SCID, ADA-SCID, adrenoleukodystrophy, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), multiple myeloma, haemophilia, and Parkinson's disease. Between 2013 and April 2014, US companies invested over $600 million in the field.
The first commercial gene therapy, Gendicine, was approved in China in 2003 for the treatment of certain cancers. In 2011 Neovasculgen was registered in Russia as the first-in-class gene-therapy drug for treatment of peripheral artery disease, including critical limb ischemia.
In 2012 Glybera, a treatment for a rare inherited disorder, lipoprotein lipase deficiency became the first treatment to be approved for clinical use in either Europe or the United States after its endorsement by the European Commission.
Following early advances in genetic engineering of bacteria, cells, and small animals, scientists started considering how to apply it to medicine. Two main approaches were considered – replacing or disrupting defective genes. Scientists focused on diseases caused by single-gene defects, such as cystic fibrosis, haemophilia, muscular dystrophy, thalassemia, and sickle cell anemia. Glybera treats one such disease, caused by a defect in lipoprotein lipase.
DNA must be administered, reach the damaged cells, enter the cell and either express or disrupt a protein. Multiple delivery techniques have been explored. The initial approach incorporated DNA into an engineered virus to deliver the DNA into a chromosome. Naked DNA approaches have also been explored, especially in the context of vaccine development.
Generally, efforts focused on administering a gene that causes a needed protein to be expressed. More recently, increased understanding of nuclease function has led to more direct DNA editing, using techniques such as zinc finger nucleases and CRISPR. The vector incorporates genes into chromosomes. The expressed nucleases then knock out and replace genes in the chromosome. these approaches involve removing cells from patients, editing a chromosome and returning the transformed cells to patients.
Gene editing is a potential approach to alter the human genome to treat genetic diseases, viral diseases, and cancer. these approaches were still years from being medicine.
Gene therapy may be classified into two types:
In somatic cell gene therapy (SCGT), the therapeutic genes are transferred into any cell other than a gamete, germ cell, gametocyte, or undifferentiated stem cell. Any such modifications affect the individual patient only, and are not inherited by offspring. Somatic gene therapy represents mainstream basic and clinical research, in which therapeutic DNA (either integrated in the genome or as an external episome or plasmid) is used to treat disease.
Over 600 clinical trials utilizing SCGT are underway in the US. Most focus on severe genetic disorders, including immunodeficiencies, haemophilia, thalassaemia, and cystic fibrosis. Such single gene disorders are good candidates for somatic cell therapy. The complete correction of a genetic disorder or the replacement of multiple genes is not yet possible. Only a few of the trials are in the advanced stages.
In germline gene therapy (GGT), germ cells (sperm or egg cells) are modified by the introduction of functional genes into their genomes. Modifying a germ cell causes all the organism's cells to contain the modified gene. The change is therefore heritable and passed on to later generations. Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Switzerland, and the Netherlands prohibit GGT for application in human beings, for technical and ethical reasons, including insufficient knowledge about possible risks to future generations and higher risks versus SCGT. The US has no federal controls specifically addressing human genetic modification (beyond FDA regulations for therapies in general).
The delivery of DNA into cells can be accomplished by multiple methods. The two major classes are recombinant viruses (sometimes called biological nanoparticles or viral vectors) and naked DNA or DNA complexes (non-viral methods).
In order to replicate, viruses introduce their genetic material into the host cell, tricking the host's cellular machinery into using it as blueprints for viral proteins. Retroviruses go a stage further by having their genetic material copied into the genome of the host cell. Scientists exploit this by substituting a virus's genetic material with therapeutic DNA. (The term 'DNA' may be an oversimplification, as some viruses contain RNA, and gene therapy could take this form as well.) A number of viruses have been used for human gene therapy, including retroviruses, adenoviruses, herpes simplex, vaccinia, and adeno-associated virus. Like the genetic material (DNA or RNA) in viruses, therapeutic DNA can be designed to simply serve as a temporary blueprint that is degraded naturally or (at least theoretically) to enter the host's genome, becoming a permanent part of the host's DNA in infected cells.
Non-viral methods present certain advantages over viral methods, such as large scale production and low host immunogenicity. However, non-viral methods initially produced lower levels of transfection and gene expression, and thus lower therapeutic efficacy. Newer technologies offer promise of solving these problems, with the advent of increased cell-specific targeting and subcellular trafficking control.
Methods for non-viral gene therapy include the injection of naked DNA, electroporation, the gene gun, sonoporation, magnetofection, the use of oligonucleotides, lipoplexes, dendrimers, and inorganic nanoparticles.
More recent approaches, such as those performed by companies such as Ligandal, offer the possibility of creating cell-specific targeting technologies for a variety of gene therapy modalities, including RNA, DNA and gene editing tools such as CRISPR. Other companies, such as Arbutus Biopharma and Arcturus Therapeutics, offer non-viral, non-cell-targeted approaches that mainly exhibit liver trophism. In more recent years, startups such as Sixfold Bio, GenEdit, and Spotlight Therapeutics have begun to solve the non-viral gene delivery problem. Non-viral techniques offer the possibility of repeat dosing and greater tailorability of genetic payloads, which in the future will be more likely to take over viral-based delivery systems.
Companies such as Editas Medicine, Intellia Therapeutics, CRISPR Therapeutics, Casebia, Cellectis, Precision Biosciences, bluebird bio, and Sangamo have developed non-viral gene editing techniques, however frequently still use viruses for delivering gene insertion material following genomic cleavage by guided nucleases. These companies focus on gene editing, and still face major delivery hurdles.
BioNTech, Moderna Therapeutics and CureVac focus on delivery of mRNA payloads, which are necessarily non-viral delivery problems.
Alnylam, Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, and Ionis Pharmaceuticals focus on delivery of siRNA (antisense oligonucleotides) for gene suppression, which also necessitate non-viral delivery systems.
In academic contexts, a number of laboratories are working on delivery of PEGylated particles, which form serum protein coronas and chiefly exhibit LDL receptor mediated uptake in cells "in vivo".
Some of the unsolved problems include:
Three patients' deaths have been reported in gene therapy trials, putting the field under close scrutiny. The first was that of Jesse Gelsinger, who died in 1999 because of immune rejection response. One X-SCID patient died of leukemia in 2003. In 2007, a rheumatoid arthritis patient died from an infection; the subsequent investigation concluded that the death was not related to gene therapy.
In 1972 Friedmann and Roblin authored a paper in "Science" titled "Gene therapy for human genetic disease?" Rogers (1970) was cited for proposing that "exogenous good DNA" be used to replace the defective DNA in those who suffer from genetic defects.
In 1984 a retrovirus vector system was designed that could efficiently insert foreign genes into mammalian chromosomes.
The first approved gene therapy clinical research in the US took place on 14 September 1990, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), under the direction of William French Anderson. Four-year-old Ashanti DeSilva received treatment for a genetic defect that left her with ADA-SCID, a severe immune system deficiency. The defective gene of the patient's blood cells was replaced by the functional variant. Ashanti's immune system was partially restored by the therapy. Production of the missing enzyme was temporarily stimulated, but the new cells with functional genes were not generated. She led a normal life only with the regular injections performed every two months. The effects were successful, but temporary.
Cancer gene therapy was introduced in 1992/93 (Trojan et al. 1993). The treatment of glioblastoma multiforme, the malignant brain tumor whose outcome is always fatal, was done using a vector expressing antisense IGF-I RNA (clinical trial approved by NIH protocol no.1602 24 November 1993, and by the FDA in 1994). This therapy also represents the beginning of cancer immunogene therapy, a treatment which proves to be effective due to the anti-tumor mechanism of IGF-I antisense, which is related to strong immune and apoptotic phenomena.
In 1992 Claudio Bordignon, working at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, performed the first gene therapy procedure using hematopoietic stem cells as vectors to deliver genes intended to correct hereditary diseases. In 2002 this work led to the publication of the first successful gene therapy treatment for adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA-SCID). The success of a multi-center trial for treating children with SCID (severe combined immune deficiency or "bubble boy" disease) from 2000 and 2002, was questioned when two of the ten children treated at the trial's Paris center developed a leukemia-like condition. Clinical trials were halted temporarily in 2002, but resumed after regulatory review of the protocol in the US, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany.
In 1993 Andrew Gobea was born with SCID following prenatal genetic screening. Blood was removed from his mother's placenta and umbilical cord immediately after birth, to acquire stem cells. The allele that codes for adenosine deaminase (ADA) was obtained and inserted into a retrovirus. Retroviruses and stem cells were mixed, after which the viruses inserted the gene into the stem cell chromosomes. Stem cells containing the working ADA gene were injected into Andrew's blood. Injections of the ADA enzyme were also given weekly. For four years T cells (white blood cells), produced by stem cells, made ADA enzymes using the ADA gene. After four years more treatment was needed.
Jesse Gelsinger's death in 1999 impeded gene therapy research in the US. As a result, the FDA suspended several clinical trials pending the reevaluation of ethical and procedural practices.
The modified cancer gene therapy strategy of antisense IGF-I RNA (NIH n˚ 1602) using antisense / triple helix anti-IGF-I approach was registered in 2002 by Wiley gene therapy clinical trial - n˚ 635 and 636. The approach has shown promising results in the treatment of six different malignant tumors: glioblastoma, cancers of liver, colon, prostate, uterus, and ovary (Collaborative NATO Science Programme on Gene Therapy USA, France, Poland n˚ LST 980517 conducted by J. Trojan) (Trojan et al., 2012). This anti-gene antisense/triple helix therapy has proven to be efficient, due to the mechanism stopping simultaneously IGF-I expression on translation and transcription levels, strengthening anti-tumor immune and apoptotic phenomena.
Sickle-cell disease can be treated in mice. The mice – which have essentially the same defect that causes human cases – used a viral vector to induce production of fetal hemoglobin (HbF), which normally ceases to be produced shortly after birth. In humans, the use of hydroxyurea to stimulate the production of HbF temporarily alleviates sickle cell symptoms. The researchers demonstrated this treatment to be a more permanent means to increase therapeutic HbF production.
A new gene therapy approach repaired errors in messenger RNA derived from defective genes. This technique has the potential to treat thalassaemia, cystic fibrosis and some cancers.
Researchers created liposomes 25 nanometers across that can carry therapeutic DNA through pores in the nuclear membrane.
In 2003 a research team inserted genes into the brain for the first time. They used liposomes coated in a polymer called polyethylene glycol, which unlike viral vectors, are small enough to cross the blood–brain barrier.
Short pieces of double-stranded RNA (short, interfering RNAs or siRNAs) are used by cells to degrade RNA of a particular sequence. If a siRNA is designed to match the RNA copied from a faulty gene, then the abnormal protein product of that gene will not be produced.
Gendicine is a cancer gene therapy that delivers the tumor suppressor gene p53 using an engineered adenovirus. In 2003, it was approved in China for the treatment of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.
In March researchers announced the successful use of gene therapy to treat two adult patients for X-linked chronic granulomatous disease, a disease which affects myeloid cells and damages the immune system. The study is the first to show that gene therapy can treat the myeloid system.
In May a team reported a way to prevent the immune system from rejecting a newly delivered gene. Similar to organ transplantation, gene therapy has been plagued by this problem. The immune system normally recognizes the new gene as foreign and rejects the cells carrying it. The research utilized a newly uncovered network of genes regulated by molecules known as microRNAs. This natural function selectively obscured their therapeutic gene in immune system cells and protected it from discovery. Mice infected with the gene containing an immune-cell microRNA target sequence did not reject the gene.
In August scientists successfully treated metastatic melanoma in two patients using killer T cells genetically retargeted to attack the cancer cells.
In November researchers reported on the use of VRX496, a gene-based immunotherapy for the treatment of HIV that uses a lentiviral vector to deliver an antisense gene against the HIV envelope. In a phase I clinical trial, five subjects with chronic HIV infection who had failed to respond to at least two antiretroviral regimens were treated. A single intravenous infusion of autologous CD4 T cells genetically modified with VRX496 was well tolerated. All patients had stable or decreased viral load; four of the five patients had stable or increased CD4 T cell counts. All five patients had stable or increased immune response to HIV antigens and other pathogens. This was the first evaluation of a lentiviral vector administered in a US human clinical trial.
In May researchers announced the first gene therapy trial for inherited retinal disease. The first operation was carried out on a 23-year-old British male, Robert Johnson, in early 2007.
Leber's congenital amaurosis is an inherited blinding disease caused by mutations in the RPE65 gene. The results of a small clinical trial in children were published in April. Delivery of recombinant adeno-associated virus (AAV) carrying RPE65 yielded positive results. In May two more groups reported positive results in independent clinical trials using gene therapy to treat the condition. In all three clinical trials, patients recovered functional vision without apparent side-effects.
In September researchers were able to give trichromatic vision to squirrel monkeys. In November 2009, researchers halted a fatal genetic disorder called adrenoleukodystrophy in two children using a lentivirus vector to deliver a functioning version of ABCD1, the gene that is mutated in the disorder.
An April paper reported that gene therapy addressed achromatopsia (color blindness) in dogs by targeting cone photoreceptors. Cone function and day vision were restored for at least 33 months in two young specimens. The therapy was less efficient for older dogs.
In September it was announced that an 18-year-old male patient in France with beta-thalassemia major had been successfully treated. Beta-thalassemia major is an inherited blood disease in which beta haemoglobin is missing and patients are dependent on regular lifelong blood transfusions. The technique used a lentiviral vector to transduce the human ß-globin gene into purified blood and marrow cells obtained from the patient in June 2007. The patient's haemoglobin levels were stable at 9 to 10 g/dL. About a third of the hemoglobin contained the form introduced by the viral vector and blood transfusions were not needed. Further clinical trials were planned. Bone marrow transplants are the only cure for thalassemia, but 75% of patients do not find a matching donor.
Cancer immunogene therapy using modified antigene, antisense/triple helix approach was introduced in South America in 2010/11 in La Sabana University, Bogota (Ethical Committee 14 December 2010, no P-004-10). Considering the ethical aspect of gene diagnostic and gene therapy targeting IGF-I, the IGF-I expressing tumors i.e. lung and epidermis cancers were treated (Trojan et al. 2016).
In 2007 and 2008, a man (Timothy Ray Brown) was cured of HIV by repeated hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (see also allogeneic stem cell transplantation, allogeneic bone marrow transplantation, allotransplantation) with double-delta-32 mutation which disables the CCR5 receptor. This cure was accepted by the medical community in 2011. It required complete ablation of existing bone marrow, which is very debilitating.
In August two of three subjects of a pilot study were confirmed to have been cured from chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). The therapy used genetically modified T cells to attack cells that expressed the CD19 protein to fight the disease. In 2013, the researchers announced that 26 of 59 patients had achieved complete remission and the original patient had remained tumor-free.
Human HGF plasmid DNA therapy of cardiomyocytes is being examined as a potential treatment for coronary artery disease as well as treatment for the damage that occurs to the heart after myocardial infarction.
In 2011 Neovasculgen was registered in Russia as the first-in-class gene-therapy drug for treatment of peripheral artery disease, including critical limb ischemia; it delivers the gene encoding for VEGF. Neovasculogen is a plasmid encoding the CMV promoter and the 165 amino acid form of VEGF.
The FDA approved Phase 1 clinical trials on thalassemia major patients in the US for 10 participants in July. The study was expected to continue until 2015.
In July 2012, the European Medicines Agency recommended approval of a gene therapy treatment for the first time in either Europe or the United States. The treatment used Alipogene tiparvovec (Glybera) to compensate for lipoprotein lipase deficiency, which can cause severe pancreatitis. The recommendation was endorsed by the European Commission in November 2012 and commercial rollout began in late 2014. Alipogene tiparvovec was expected to cost around $1.6 million per treatment in 2012, revised to $1 million in 2015, making it the most expensive medicine in the world at the time. , only the patients treated in clinical trials and a patient who paid the full price for treatment have received the drug.
In December 2012, it was reported that 10 of 13 patients with multiple myeloma were in remission "or very close to it" three months after being injected with a treatment involving genetically engineered T cells to target proteins NY-ESO-1 and LAGE-1, which exist only on cancerous myeloma cells.
In March researchers reported that three of five adult subjects who had acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) had been in remission for five months to two years after being treated with genetically modified T cells which attacked cells with CD19 genes on their surface, i.e. all B-cells, cancerous or not. The researchers believed that the patients' immune systems would make normal T-cells and B-cells after a couple of months. They were also given bone marrow. One patient relapsed and died and one died of a blood clot unrelated to the disease.
Following encouraging Phase 1 trials, in April, researchers announced they were starting Phase 2 clinical trials (called CUPID2 and SERCA-LVAD) on 250 patients at several hospitals to combat heart disease. The therapy was designed to increase the levels of SERCA2, a protein in heart muscles, improving muscle function. The FDA granted this a Breakthrough Therapy Designation to accelerate the trial and approval process. In 2016 it was reported that no improvement was found from the CUPID 2 trial.
In July researchers reported promising results for six children with two severe hereditary diseases had been treated with a partially deactivated lentivirus to replace a faulty gene and after 7–32 months. Three of the children had metachromatic leukodystrophy, which causes children to lose cognitive and motor skills. The other children had Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome, which leaves them to open to infection, autoimmune diseases, and cancer. Follow up trials with gene therapy on another six children with Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome were also reported as promising.
In October researchers reported that two children born with adenosine deaminase severe combined immunodeficiency disease (ADA-SCID) had been treated with genetically engineered stem cells 18 months previously and that their immune systems were showing signs of full recovery. Another three children were making progress. In 2014 a further 18 children with ADA-SCID were cured by gene therapy. ADA-SCID children have no functioning immune system and are sometimes known as "bubble children."
Also in October researchers reported that they had treated six hemophilia sufferers in early 2011 using an adeno-associated virus. Over two years later all six were producing clotting factor.
In January researchers reported that six choroideremia patients had been treated with adeno-associated virus with a copy of REP1. Over a six-month to two-year period all had improved their sight. By 2016, 32 patients had been treated with positive results and researchers were hopeful the treatment would be long-lasting. Choroideremia is an inherited genetic eye disease with no approved treatment, leading to loss of sight.
In March researchers reported that 12 HIV patients had been treated since 2009 in a trial with a genetically engineered virus with a rare mutation (CCR5 deficiency) known to protect against HIV with promising results.
Clinical trials of gene therapy for sickle cell disease were started in 2014.
In February LentiGlobin BB305, a gene therapy treatment undergoing clinical trials for treatment of beta thalassemia gained FDA "breakthrough" status after several patients were able to forgo the frequent blood transfusions usually required to treat the disease.
In March researchers delivered a recombinant gene encoding a broadly neutralizing antibody into monkeys infected with simian HIV; the monkeys' cells produced the antibody, which cleared them of HIV. The technique is named immunoprophylaxis by gene transfer (IGT). Animal tests for antibodies to ebola, malaria, influenza, and hepatitis were underway.
In March, scientists, including an inventor of CRISPR, Jennifer Doudna, urged a worldwide moratorium on germline gene therapy, writing "scientists should avoid even attempting, in lax jurisdictions, germline genome modification for clinical application in humans" until the full implications "are discussed among scientific and governmental organizations".
In October, researchers announced that they had treated a baby girl, Layla Richards, with an experimental treatment using donor T-cells genetically engineered using TALEN to attack cancer cells. One year after the treatment she was still free of her cancer (a highly aggressive form of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia [ALL]). Children with highly aggressive ALL normally have a very poor prognosis and Layla's disease had been regarded as terminal before the treatment.
In December, scientists of major world academies called for a moratorium on inheritable human genome edits, including those related to CRISPR-Cas9 technologies but that basic research including embryo gene editing should continue.
In April the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency endorsed a gene therapy treatment called Strimvelis and the European Commission approved it in June. This treats children born with adenosine deaminase deficiency and who have no functioning immune system. This was the second gene therapy treatment to be approved in Europe.
In October, Chinese scientists reported they had started a trial to genetically modify T-cells from 10 adult patients with lung cancer and reinject the modified T-cells back into their bodies to attack the cancer cells. The T-cells had the PD-1 protein (which stops or slows the immune response) removed using CRISPR-Cas9.
A 2016 Cochrane systematic review looking at data from four trials on topical cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene therapy does not support its clinical use as a mist inhaled into the lungs to treat cystic fibrosis patients with lung infections. One of the four trials did find weak evidence that liposome-based CFTR gene transfer therapy may lead to a small respiratory improvement for people with CF. This weak evidence is not enough to make a clinical recommendation for routine CFTR gene therapy.
In February Kite Pharma announced results from a clinical trial of CAR-T cells in around a hundred people with advanced Non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
In March, French scientists reported on clinical research of gene therapy to treat sickle-cell disease.
In August, the FDA approved tisagenlecleucel for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Tisagenlecleucel is an adoptive cell transfer therapy for B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia; T cells from a person with cancer are removed, genetically engineered to make a specific T-cell receptor (a chimeric T cell receptor, or "CAR-T") that reacts to the cancer, and are administered back to the person. The T cells are engineered to target a protein called CD19 that is common on B cells. This is the first form of gene therapy to be approved in the United States. In October, a similar therapy called axicabtagene ciloleucel was approved for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
In December the results of using an adeno-associated virus with blood clotting factor VIII to treat nine haemophilia A patients were published. Six of the seven patients on the high dose regime increased the level of the blood clotting VIII to normal levels. The low and medium dose regimes had no effect on the patient's blood clotting levels.
In December, the FDA approved Luxturna, the first "in vivo" gene therapy, for the treatment of blindness due to Leber's congenital amaurosis. The price of this treatment was 850,000 US dollars for both eyes.
A need was identified for high quality randomised controlled trials assessing the risks and benefits involved with gene therapy for people with sickle cell disease.
In February, medical scientists working with Sangamo Therapeutics, headquartered in Richmond, California, announced the first ever "in body" human gene editing therapy to permanently alter DNA - in a patient with Hunter syndrome. Clinical trials by Sangamo involving gene editing using Zinc Finger Nuclease (ZFN) are ongoing.
In May, the FDA approved onasemnogene abeparvovec (Zolgensma) for treating spinal muscular atrophy in children under two years of age. The list price of Zolgensma was set at per dose, making it the most expensive drug ever.
In May, the EMA approved betibeglogene autotemcel (Zynteglo) for treating beta thalassemia for people 12 years of age and older.
In July, Allergan and Editas Medicine announced phase 1/2 clinical trial of AGN-151587 for the treatment of Leber congenital amaurosis 10. It will be the world's first "in vivo" study of a CRISPR-based human gene editing therapy, where the editing takes place inside the human body. The first injection of the CRISPR-Cas System was confirmed in March of 2020. This marks the first instance of genome editing within an adult human in the context of a scientific study. The very first in-vivo human genome editing however likely took place outside of academia in the context of a self-administered therapy by Biophysicist Josiah Zayner, PhD.
Speculated uses for gene therapy include:
Athletes might adopt gene therapy technologies to improve their performance. Gene doping is not known to occur, but multiple gene therapies may have such effects. Kayser et al. argue that gene doping could level the playing field if all athletes receive equal access. Critics claim that any therapeutic intervention for non-therapeutic/enhancement purposes compromises the ethical foundations of medicine and sports.
Genetic engineering could be used to cure diseases, but also to change physical appearance, metabolism, and even improve physical capabilities and mental faculties such as memory and intelligence. Ethical claims about germline engineering include beliefs that every fetus has a right to remain genetically unmodified, that parents hold the right to genetically modify their offspring, and that every child has the right to be born free of preventable diseases. For parents, genetic engineering could be seen as another child enhancement technique to add to diet, exercise, education, training, cosmetics, and plastic surgery. Another theorist claims that moral concerns limit but do not prohibit germline engineering.
A recent issue of the journal "Bioethics" was devoted to moral issues surrounding germline genetic engineering in people.
Possible regulatory schemes include a complete ban, provision to everyone, or professional self-regulation. The American Medical Association’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs stated that "genetic interventions to enhance traits should be considered permissible only in severely restricted situations: (1) clear and meaningful benefits to the fetus or child; (2) no trade-off with other characteristics or traits; and (3) equal access to the genetic technology, irrespective of income or other socioeconomic characteristics."
As early in the history of biotechnology as 1990, there have been scientists opposed to attempts to modify the human germline using these new tools, and such concerns have continued as technology progressed. With the advent of new techniques like CRISPR, in March 2015 a group of scientists urged a worldwide moratorium on clinical use of gene editing technologies to edit the human genome in a way that can be inherited. In April 2015, researchers sparked controversy when they reported results of basic research to edit the DNA of non-viable human embryos using CRISPR. A committee of the American National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine gave qualified support to human genome editing in 2017 once answers have been found to safety and efficiency problems "but only for serious conditions under stringent oversight."
Regulations covering genetic modification are part of general guidelines about human-involved biomedical research. There are no international treaties which are legally binding in this area, but there are recommendations for national laws from various bodies.
The Helsinki Declaration (Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects) was amended by the World Medical Association's General Assembly in 2008. This document provides principles physicians and researchers must consider when involving humans as research subjects. The Statement on Gene Therapy Research initiated by the Human Genome Organization (HUGO) in 2001 provides a legal baseline for all countries. HUGO's document emphasizes human freedom and adherence to human rights, and offers recommendations for somatic gene therapy, including the importance of recognizing public concerns about such research.
No federal legislation lays out protocols or restrictions about human genetic engineering. This subject is governed by overlapping regulations from local and federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the FDA and NIH's Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee. Researchers seeking federal funds for an investigational new drug application, (commonly the case for somatic human genetic engineering,) must obey international and federal guidelines for the protection of human subjects.
NIH serves as the main gene therapy regulator for federally funded research. Privately funded research is advised to follow these regulations. NIH provides funding for research that develops or enhances genetic engineering techniques and to evaluate the ethics and quality in current research. The NIH maintains a mandatory registry of human genetic engineering research protocols that includes all federally funded projects.
An NIH advisory committee published a set of guidelines on gene manipulation. The guidelines discuss lab safety as well as human test subjects and various experimental types that involve genetic changes. Several sections specifically pertain to human genetic engineering, including Section III-C-1. This section describes required review processes and other aspects when seeking approval to begin clinical research involving genetic transfer into a human patient. The protocol for a gene therapy clinical trial must be approved by the NIH's Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee prior to any clinical trial beginning; this is different from any other kind of clinical trial.
As with other kinds of drugs, the FDA regulates the quality and safety of gene therapy products and supervises how these products are used clinically. Therapeutic alteration of the human genome falls under the same regulatory requirements as any other medical treatment. Research involving human subjects, such as clinical trials, must be reviewed and approved by the FDA and an Institutional Review Board.
Gene therapy is the basis for the plotline of the film "I Am Legend" and the TV show "Will Gene Therapy Change the Human Race?". In 1994, gene therapy was a plot element in "The Erlenmeyer Flask", the first-season finale of "The X-Files"; it is also used in "Stargate" as a means of allowing humans to use Ancient technology. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12891 |
Grammatical case
"Case" is a linguistics term regarding a manner of categorizing nouns, pronouns, adjectives, participles, and numerals according to their traditionally corresponding grammatical functions within a given phrase, clause, or sentence. In some languages, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, determiners, participles, prepositions, numerals, articles and their modifiers take different inflected forms, depending on their case. As a language evolves, cases can merge (for instance, in Ancient Greek, the locative case merged with the dative case), a phenomenon formally called syncretism.
English has largely lost its inflected case system although personal pronouns still have three cases, which are simplified forms of the nominative, accusative and genitive cases. They are used with personal pronouns: subjective case (I, you, he, she, it, we, they, who, whoever), objective case (me, you, him, her, it, us, them, whom, whomever) and possessive case (my, mine; your, yours; his; her, hers; its; our, ours; their, theirs; whose; whosever). Forms such as "I", "he" and "we" are used for the subject ("I kicked the ball"), and forms such as "me", "him" and "us" are used for the object ("John kicked me").
Languages such as Ancient Greek, Armenian, Assamese, most Balto-Slavic languages, Basque, most Caucasian languages, most Dravidian languages, German, Icelandic, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Sanskrit, Tibetan (one of a few tonal languages), the Turkic languages and the Uralic languages have extensive case systems, with nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and determiners all inflecting (usually by means of different suffixes) to indicate their case. The number of cases differs between languages: Persian and Esperanto have two; modern English has three but for pronouns only; Modern Standard and Classical forms of Arabic have three; German and Icelandic have four; Romanian has five; Latin, Slovenian, Russian and Turkish each have at least six; Armenian, Czech, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak and Ukrainian have seven; Sanskrit and Tamil have eight; Assamese has 10; Estonian has 14; Finnish has 15; Hungarian has 18 and Tsez has 64 cases.
Commonly encountered cases include nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. A role that one of those languages marks by case is often marked in English with a preposition. For example, the English prepositional phrase "with (his) foot" (as in "John kicked the ball with his foot") might be rendered in Russian using a single noun in the instrumental case, or in Ancient Greek as (, meaning "the foot") with both words (the definite article, and the noun () "foot") changing to dative form.
More formally, case has been defined as "a system of marking dependent nouns for the type of relationship they bear to their heads". Cases should be distinguished from thematic roles such as "agent" and "patient". They are often closely related, and in languages such as Latin, several thematic roles have an associated case, but cases are a morphological notion, and thematic roles a semantic one. Languages having cases often exhibit free word order, as thematic roles are not required to be marked by position in the sentence.
It is widely accepted that the Ancient Greeks had a certain idea of the forms of a name in their own language. A fragment of Anacreon seems to prove this. Nevertheless, it cannot be inferred that the Ancient Greeks really knew what grammatical cases were. Grammatical cases were first recognized by the Stoics and from some philosophers of the Peripatetic school. The advancements of those philosophers were later employed by the philologists of the Alexandrian school.
The English word "case" used in this sense comes from the Latin , which is derived from the verb , "to fall", from the Proto-Indo-European root "". The Latin word is a calque of the Greek , , lit. "falling, fall". The sense is that all other cases are considered to have "fallen" away from the nominative. This imagery is also reflected in the word "declension", from Latin , "to lean", from the PIE root "".
The equivalent to "case" in several other European languages also derives from "casus", including in French, in Italian, in Spanish, in Portuguese and in German. The Russian word ("padyézh") is a calque from Greek and similarly contains a root meaning "fall", and the German and Czech simply mean "fall", and are used for both the concept of grammatical case and to refer to physical falls. The Finnish equivalent is , whose main meaning is "position" or "place".
Although not very prominent in modern English, cases featured much more saliently in Old English and other ancient Indo-European languages, such as Latin, Old Persian, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit. Historically, the Indo-European languages had eight morphological cases, though modern languages typically have fewer, using prepositions and word order to convey information that had previously been conveyed using distinct noun forms. Among modern languages, cases still feature prominently in most of the Balto-Slavic languages (except Macedonian and Bulgarian), with most having six to eight cases, as well as Icelandic, German and Modern Greek, which have four. In German, cases are mostly marked on articles and adjectives, and less so on nouns. In Icelandic, articles, adjectives, personal names and nouns are all marked for case, making it, among other things, the living Germanic language that could be said to most closely resemble Proto-Germanic.
The eight historical Indo-European cases are as follows, with examples either of the English case or of the English syntactic alternative to case:
All of the above are just rough descriptions; the precise distinctions vary significantly from language to language, and as such they are often more complex. Case is based fundamentally on changes to the noun to indicate the noun's role in the sentence – one of the defining features of so-called fusional languages. Old English was a fusional language, but Modern English does not work this way.
Modern English has largely abandoned the inflectional case system of Proto-Indo-European in favor of analytic constructions. The personal pronouns of Modern English retain morphological case more strongly than any other word class (a remnant of the more extensive case system of Old English). For other pronouns, and all nouns, adjectives, and articles, grammatical function is indicated only by word order, by prepositions, and by the "Saxon genitive" ("-'s").
Taken as a whole, English personal pronouns are typically said to have three morphological cases:
Most English personal pronouns have five forms: the nominative and oblique case forms, the possessive case, which has both a "determiner" form (such as "my", "our") and a distinct "independent" form (such as "mine", "ours") (with two exceptions: the third person singular masculine and the third person singular neuter "it", which use the same form for both determiner and independent ["his car", "it is his"]), and a distinct "reflexive" or "intensive" form (such as "myself", "ourselves"). The interrogative personal pronoun "who" exhibits the greatest diversity of forms within the modern English pronoun system, having definite nominative, oblique, and genitive forms ("who", "whom", "whose") and equivalently coordinating indefinite forms ("whoever", "whomever", and "whosever").
Though English "pronouns" can have subject and object forms (he/him, she/her), "nouns" show only a singular/plural and a possessive/non-possessive distinction (e.g. "chair", "chairs", "chair's", "chairs"'). Note that "chair" does not change form between "the chair is here" (subject) and "I saw the chair" (direct object), a distinction made by word order and context.
Cases can be ranked in the following hierarchy, where a language that does not have a given case will tend not to have any cases to the right of the missing case:
This is, however, only a general tendency. Many forms of Central German, such as Colognian and Luxembourgish, have a dative case but lack a genitive. In Irish nouns, the nominative and accusative have fallen together, whereas the dative–locative has remained separate in some paradigms; Irish also has genitive and vocative cases. In many modern Indo-Aryan languages, the accusative, genitive, and dative have merged to an oblique case, but much of these languages still retain vocative, locative, and ablative cases. Old English had an instrumental case, but not a locative or prepositional.
The traditional case order (nom-gen-dat-acc) was expressed for the first time in "The Art of Grammar" in the 2nd century BC:
Latin grammars, such as "Ars grammatica", followed the Greek tradition, but added the ablative case of Latin. Later other European languages also followed that Graeco-Roman tradition.
However, for some languages, such as Latin, due to case syncretism the order may be changed for convenience, where the accusative or the vocative cases are placed after the nominative and before the genitive. For example:
For similar reasons, the customary order of the four cases in Icelandic is nominative–accusative–dative–genitive, as illustrated below:
In the most common case concord system, only the head-word (the noun) in a phrase is marked for case. This system appears in many Papuan languages as well as in Turkic, Mongolian, Quechua, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, and other languages. In Basque and various Amazonian and Australian languages, only the phrase-final word (not necessarily the noun) is marked for case. In many Indo-European, Finnic, and Semitic languages, case is marked on the noun, the determiner, and usually the adjective. Other systems are less common. In some languages, there is double-marking of a word as both genitive (to indicate semantic role) and another case such as accusative (to establish concord with the head noun).
Declension is the process or result of altering nouns to the correct grammatical cases. Languages with rich nominal inflection (use grammatical cases for many purposes) typically have a number of identifiable declension classes, or groups of nouns with a similar pattern of case inflection or declension. Sanskrit has six declension classes, whereas Latin is traditionally considered to have five, and Ancient Greek three. For example, Slovak has fifteen noun declension classes, five for each gender (the number may vary depending on which paradigms are counted or omitted, this mainly concerns those that modify declension of foreign words; refer to article).
In Indo-European languages, declension patterns may depend on a variety of factors, such as gender, number, phonological environment, and irregular historical factors. Pronouns sometimes have separate paradigms. In some languages, particularly Slavic languages, a case may contain different groups of endings depending on whether the word is a noun or an adjective. A single case may contain many different endings, some of which may even be derived from different roots. For example, in Polish, the genitive case has "-a, -u, -ów, -i/-y, -e-" for nouns, and "-ego, -ej, -ich/-ych" for adjectives. To a lesser extent, a noun's animacy or humanness may add another layer of complexity. For example, in Russian:
vs.
and
Assamese has ten cases.
Australian languages represent a diversity of case paradigms in terms of their alignment (i.e. nominative-accusative vs. ergative-absolutive) and the morpho-syntactic properties of case inflection including where/how many times across a noun phrase the case morphology will appear. For typical r-expression noun phrases, most Australian languages follow a basic ERG-ABS template with additional cases for peripheral arguments; however, many Australian languages, the function of case marking extends beyond the prototypical function of specifying the syntactic and semantic relation of an NP to a predicate. Dench and Evans (1988) use a five-part system for categorizing the functional roles of case marking in Australian languages. They are enumerated below as they appear in Senge (2015):
To illustrate this paradigm in action, take the case-system of Wanyjirra for whose description Senge invokes this system. Each of the case markers functions in the prototypical relational sense, but many extend into these additional functions:
Wanyjirra is an example of a language in which case marking occurs on all sub-constituents of the NP; see the following example in which the demonstrative, head, and quantifier of the noun phrase all receive ergative marking:
However, this is by no means always the case or even the norm for Australian languages. For many, case-affixes are considered special-clitics (i.e. phrasal-affixes, see Anderson 2005) because they have a singular fixed position within the phrase. For Bardi, the case marker usually appears on the first phrasal constituent while the opposite is the case for Wangkatja (i.e. the case marker is attracted to the rightmost edge of the phrase). See the following examples respectively:
Bardi
Wangkatja
An example of a Belarusian case inflection is given below, using the singular forms of the Belarusian term for "country", which belongs to Belarusian's first declension class.
In German, grammatical case is largely preserved in the articles and adjectives, but nouns have lost many of their original endings. Below is an example of case inflection in German using the masculine definite article and one of the German words for "sailor".
An example with the feminine definite article with the German word for "woman".
An example with the neuter definite article with the German word for "book".
Modern Greek has four cases: nominative, genitive, accusative, and vocative. For neuters and most groups of feminines and plural masculines, the genitive case differs from the other three. Below is an example of the declension of (sky), which has a different form in the singular of all four cases, together with the appropriate article in both the singular and the plural:
Ancient Greek had one additional case, the dative. At some point, it was replaced with the preposition , followed by the accusative. This became necessary when pronunciation simplified, merging the two long vowels "eta" and "omega" to short. The result was that dative did not sound much different from the accusative in the singular of the first two groups. However, the dative case is still used in many expressions.
With time, only the sigma of was left and got attached to the article, except when an article is not used and it becomes instead. Note that this is not a different case from the accusative.
Below is an example with the dative case of the word (city):
Cases in Japanese are marked by particles placed after the nouns. A distinctive feature of Japanese is the presence of two cases, which are roughly equivalent to the nominative case in other languages: one representing the sentence topic, the other representing the subject. The most important case markers are the following:
Cases in Korean are marked by particles placed after the nouns, similar to Japanese. Like Japanese, the nominative case has two distinctions, one representing the topic of a sentence and the other the subject. In informal speech, nominative (이/가, 께서, and 에서) and accusative (을/를) particles are often omitted, while dative (에게) and ablative (에서) are shortened to simply 에, if the meaning of the sentence can easily be inferred from context. Most common case markers are the following:
An example of a Latin case inflection is given below, using the singular forms of the Latin term for "cook", which belongs to Latin's second declension class.
Latvian nouns have seven grammatical cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative and vocative. The instrumental case is always identical to the accusative in the singular and to the dative in the plural. It is used as a free-standing case (without a preposition) only in highly restricted contexts in modern Latvian.
An example of a Latvian case inflection is given below, using the singular forms of the Latvian term for "man", which belongs to the first declension class.
In Lithuanian, only the inflection usually changes in the seven different grammatical cases:
Vocative forms are given in parentheses after the nominative, as the only pronominal vocatives that are used are the third person ones, which only occur in compounds.
An example of a Polish case inflection is given below, using the singular forms of the Polish terms for "human" () and "monkey" ()
Hungarian declension is relatively simple with regular suffixes attached to the vast majority of nouns. The following table lists a few of the many cases used in Hungarian.
Romanian is the only modern major Romance language with a case system for all nouns, whereas all other Romance languages dropped the cases for nouns replacing them by prepositions. An example of Romanian case inflection is given below, using the singular form of the word "boy":
An example of a Russian case inflection is given below (with explicit stress marks), using the singular forms of the Russian term for "sailor", which belongs to Russian's first declension class.
Up to ten additional cases are identified by linguists, although today all of them are either incomplete (do not apply to all nouns or do not form full word paradigm with all combinations of gender and number) or degenerate (appear identical to one of the main six cases). The most recognized additional cases are locative (), partitive (), and two forms of vocative — old () and neo-vocative (). Sometimes, so called count-form (for some countable nouns after numerals) is considered to be a sub-case. See details.
Grammatical case was analyzed extensively in Sanskrit. The grammarian Pāṇini identified six semantic roles or "kāraka", which by default are related to the following eight Sanskrit cases in order:
For example, in the following sentence "leaf" is the agent ("kartā", nominative case), "tree" is the source ("apādāna", ablative case), and "ground" is the locus ("adhikaraṇa", locative case). The declensions are reflected in the morphemes "-āt", "-am", and "-au" respectively.
However, the cases may be deployed for other than the default thematic roles. A notable example is the passive construction. In the following sentence, "Devadatta" is the "kartā", but appears in the instrumental case, and "rice", the "karman", object, is in the nominative case (as subject of the verb). The declensions are reflected in the morphemes "-ena" and "-am".
The Tamil case system is analyzed in native and missionary grammars as consisting of a finite number of cases. The usual treatment of Tamil case (Arden 1942) is one in which there are seven cases: nominative (first case), accusative (second case), instrumental (third), dative (fourth), ablative (fifth), genitive (sixth), and locative (seventh). In traditional analyses, there is always a clear distinction made between post-positional morphemes and case endings. The vocative is sometimes given a place in the case system as an eighth case, but vocative forms do not participate in usual morphophonemic alternations and do not govern the use of any postpositions. Modern grammarians, however, argue that this eight-case classification is coarse and artificial and that Tamil usage is best understood if each suffix or combination of suffixes is seen as marking a separate case.
Telugu has eight cases.
An example of a Ukrainian case inflection is given below, using the singular forms of the Ukrainian word "мрія" ('dream', 'ambition', 'inspiration'), which is a soft feminine noun of the first declension class.
As languages evolve, case systems change. In early Ancient Greek, for example, the genitive and ablative cases became combined, giving five cases, rather than the six retained in Latin. In modern Hindi, the Sanskrit cases have been reduced to three: a direct case (for subjects and direct objects) and oblique case, and a vocative case. In English, apart from the pronouns discussed above, case has vanished altogether except for the possessive/non-possessive dichotomy in nouns.
The evolution of the treatment of case relationships can be circular. Adpositions can become unstressed and sound like they are an unstressed syllable of a neighboring word. A postposition can thus merge into the stem of a head noun, developing various forms depending on the phonological shape of the stem. Affixes can then be subject to various phonological processes such as assimilation, vowel centering to the schwa, phoneme loss, and fusion, and these processes can reduce or even eliminate the distinctions between cases. Languages can then compensate for the resulting loss of function by creating adpositions, thus coming full circle.
Recent experiments in agent-based modeling have shown how case systems can emerge and evolve in a population of language users. The experiments demonstrate that language users may introduce new case markers to reduce the cognitive effort required for semantic interpretation, hence facilitating communication through language. Case markers then become generalized through analogical reasoning and reuse.
Languages are categorized into several case systems, based on their "morphosyntactic alignment"—how they group verb agents and patients into cases:
The following are systems that some languages use to mark case instead of, or in addition to, declension:
The lemma form of words, which is the form chosen by convention as the canonical form of a word, is usually the most unmarked or basic case, which is typically the nominative, trigger, or absolutive case, whichever a language may have. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12898 |
Gestapo
The Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various security police agencies of Prussia into one organisation. On 20 April 1934, oversight of the Gestapo passed to "Schutzstaffel" (SS) national leader, Heinrich Himmler, who was also appointed Chief of German Police ("Chef der Deutschen Polizei") by Hitler in 1936. Instead of being exclusively a Prussian state agency, the Gestapo became a national one as a sub-office of the "Sicherheitspolizei" (SiPo; Security Police). From 27 September 1939, it was administered by the Reich Main Security Office ("Reichssicherheitshauptamt") [RSHA]. It became known as Amt (Dept) 4 of the RSHA and was considered a sister organisation to the "Sicherheitsdienst" (SD; Security Service). During World War II, the Gestapo played a key role in the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe.
After Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Hermann Göring—future commander of the Luftwaffe and the number two man in the Nazi Party—was named Interior Minister of Prussia. This gave Göring command of the largest police force in Germany. Soon afterward, Göring detached the political and intelligence sections from the police and filled their ranks with Nazis. On 26 April 1933, Göring merged the two units as the "Geheime Staatspolizei", which was abbreviated by a post office clerk for a franking stamp and became known as the "Gestapo". He originally wanted to name it the Secret Police Office ("Geheimes Polizeiamt"), but the German initials, "GPA", were too similar to those of the Soviet State Political Directorate ("Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie," or GPU).
The first commander of the Gestapo was Rudolf Diels, a protégé of Göring. Diels was appointed with the title of chief of "Abteilung Ia" (Department 1a) of the Political Police of the Prussian Interior Ministry. Diels was best known as the primary interrogator of Marinus van der Lubbe after the "Reichstag" fire. In late 1933, the "Reich" Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick wanted to integrate all the police forces of the German states under his control. Göring outflanked him by removing the Prussian political and intelligence departments from the state interior ministry. Göring took over the Gestapo in 1934 and urged Hitler to extend the agency's authority throughout Germany. This represented a radical departure from German tradition, which held that law enforcement was (mostly) a "Land" (state) and local matter. In this, he ran into conflict with Heinrich Himmler, who was police chief of the second most powerful German state, Bavaria. Frick did not have the political power to take on Göring by himself so he allied with Himmler. With Frick's support, Himmler (pushed on by his right-hand man, Reinhard Heydrich) took over the political police of state after state. Soon only Prussia was left.
Concerned that Diels was not ruthless enough to effectively counteract the power of the "Sturmabteilung" (SA), Göring handed over control of the Gestapo to Himmler on 20 April 1934. Also on that date, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of all German police outside Prussia. Heydrich, named chief of the Gestapo by Himmler on 22 April 1934, also continued as head of the SS Security Service ("Sicherheitsdienst"; SD). Himmler and Heydrich both immediately began installing their own personnel in select positions, several of whom were directly from the Bavarian Political Police, such as Heinrich Müller, Franz Josef Huber and Josef Meisinger. Many of the Gestapo employees in the newly established offices were young and highly educated in a wide-variety of academic fields and moreover, represented a new generation of National Socialist adherents, who were hard-working, efficient, and prepared to carry the Nazi state forward through the persecution of their political opponents.
By the spring of 1934 Himmler's SS controlled the SD and the Gestapo, but for him, there was still a problem, as technically the SS (and the Gestapo by proxy) was subordinated to the SA, which was under the command of Ernst Röhm. Himmler wanted to free himself entirely from Röhm, whom he viewed as an obstacle. Röhm's position was menacing as more than 4.5 million men fell under his command once the militias and veterans organisations were absorbed by the SA, a fact which fuelled Röhm's aspirations; his dream of fusing the SA and "Reichswehr" together was undermining Hitler's relationships with the leadership of Germany's armed forces. Several Nazi chieftains, among them Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess, and Himmler, began a concerted campaign to convince Hitler to take action against Röhm. Both the SD and Gestapo released information concerning an imminent putsch by the SA. Once persuaded, Hitler acted by setting Himmler's SS into action, who then proceeded to murder over 100 of Hitler's identified antagonists. The Gestapo supplied the information which implicated the SA and ultimately enabled Himmler and Heydrich to emancipate themselves entirely from the organisation. For the Gestapo, the next two years following the Night of the Long Knives, a term describing the putsch against Röhm and the SA, were characterised by "behind-the-scenes political wrangling over policing".
On 17 June 1936, Hitler decreed the unification of all police forces in Germany and named Himmler as Chief of German Police. This action effectively merged the police into the SS and removed it from Frick's control. Himmler was nominally subordinate to Frick as police chief, but as "Reichsführer-SS", he answered only to Hitler. This move also gave Himmler operational control over Germany's entire detective force. The Gestapo became a national state agency. Himmler also gained authority over all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies, which were amalgamated into the new "Ordnungspolizei" (Orpo; Order Police), which became a national agency under SS general Kurt Daluege. Shortly thereafter, Himmler created the "Kriminalpolizei" (Kripo; Criminal Police), merging it with the Gestapo into the "Sicherheitspolizei" (SiPo; Security Police), under Heydrich's command. Heinrich Müller was at that time the Gestapo operations chief. He answered to Heydrich; Heydrich answered only to Himmler and Himmler answered only to Hitler.
The Gestapo had the authority to investigate cases of treason, espionage, sabotage and criminal attacks on the Nazi Party and Germany. The basic Gestapo law passed by the government in 1936 gave the Gestapo "carte blanche" to operate without judicial review—in effect, putting it above the law. The Gestapo was specifically exempted from responsibility to administrative courts, where citizens normally could sue the state to conform to laws. As early as 1935, a Prussian administrative court had ruled that the Gestapo's actions were not subject to judicial review. The SS officer Werner Best, one-time head of legal affairs in the Gestapo, summed up this policy by saying, "As long as the police carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally".
On 27 September 1939, the security and police agencies of Nazi Germany—with the exception of the Order Police—were consolidated into the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), headed by Heydrich. The Gestapo became "Amt IV" (Department IV) of RSHA and Müller became the Gestapo Chief, with Heydrich as his immediate superior. After Heydrich's 1942 assassination, Himmler assumed the leadership of the RSHA until January 1943, when Ernst Kaltenbrunner was appointed chief. Müller remained the Gestapo Chief. His direct subordinate Adolf Eichmann headed the Gestapo's Office of Resettlement and then its Office of Jewish Affairs ("Referat IV B4" or Sub-Department IV, Section B4). During the Holocaust, Eichmann and his agency coordinated the mass deportation of European Jews to the Nazis' extermination camps.
The power of the Gestapo included the use of what was called, "Schutzhaft"—"protective custody", a euphemism for the power to imprison people without judicial proceedings. An oddity of the system was that the prisoner had to sign his own "Schutzhaftbefehl", an order declaring that the person had requested imprisonment—presumably out of fear of personal harm. In addition, thousands of political prisoners throughout Germany—and from 1941, throughout the occupied territories under the Night and Fog Decree—simply disappeared while in Gestapo custody.
The Polish government in exile in London during World War II received sensitive military information about Nazi Germany from agents and informants throughout Europe. After Germany conquered Poland in the autumn of 1939, Gestapo officials believed that they had neutralised Polish intelligence activities. However, certain Polish information about the movement of German police and SS units to the East during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1941 was similar to information British intelligence secretly obtained through intercepting and decoding German police and SS messages sent by radio telegraphy.
In 1942, the Gestapo discovered a cache of Polish intelligence documents in Prague and were surprised to see that Polish agents and informants had been gathering detailed military information and smuggling it out to London, via Budapest and Istanbul. The Poles identified and tracked German military trains to the Eastern front and identified four Order Police battalions sent to occupied areas of the Soviet Union in October 1941 that engaged in war crimes and mass murder.
Polish agents also gathered detailed information about the morale of German soldiers in the East. After uncovering a sample of the information the Poles had reported, Gestapo officials concluded that Polish intelligence activity represented a very serious danger to Germany. As late as 6 June 1944, Heinrich Müller—concerned about the leakage of information to the Allies—set up a special unit called "Sonderkommando Jerzy" that was meant to root out the Polish intelligence network in western and southwestern Europe.
Early in the regime's existence, harsh measures were meted out to political opponents and those who resisted Nazi doctrine (e.g., the Communists), a role the SA performed until the SD and Gestapo undermined their influence and took control of security in the Reich. Because the Gestapo seemed omniscient and omnipotent, the atmosphere of fear they created led to an overestimation of their reach and strength; a faulty assessment which hampered the operational effectiveness of underground resistance organisations.
Many parts of Germany (where religious dissent existed upon the Nazi seizure of power) saw a rapid transformation; a change as noted by the Gestapo in conservative towns such as Würzburg, where people acquiesced to the regime either through accommodation, collaboration, or simple compliance. Increasing religious objections to Nazi policies led the Gestapo to carefully monitor church organisations. For the most part, members of the church did not offer political resistance but simply wanted to ensure that organizational doctrine remained intact.
However, the Nazi regime sought to suppress any source of ideology other than its own, and set out to muzzle or crush the churches in the so-called "Kirchenkampf". When Church leaders (clergy) voiced their misgiving about the euthanasia program and Nazi racial policies, Hitler intimated that he considered them "traitors to the people" and went so far as to call them "the destroyers of Germany". The extreme anti-Semitism and neo-Pagan heresies of the Nazis caused some Christians to outright resist, and Pope Pius XI to issue the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge denouncing Nazism and warning Catholics against joining or supporting the Party. Some pastors, like the Protestant clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer, paid for their opposition with their lives.
In an effort to counter the strength and influence of spiritual resistance, Nazi records reveal that the Gestapo's "Referat B1" monitored the activities of bishops very closely—instructing that agents be set up in every diocese, that the bishops' reports to the Vatican should be obtained and that the bishops' areas of activity must be found out. Deans were to be targeted as the "eyes and ears of the bishops" and a "vast network" established to monitor the activities of ordinary clergy: "The importance of this enemy is such that inspectors of security police and of the security service will make this group of people and the questions discussed by them their special concern".
In "Dachau: The Official History 1933–1945", Paul Berben wrote that clergy were watched closely, and frequently denounced, arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps: "One priest was imprisoned in Dachau for having stated that there were good folk in England too; another suffered the same fate for warning a girl who wanted to marry an S.S. man after abjuring the Catholic faith; yet another because he conducted a service for a deceased communist". Others were arrested simply on the basis of being "suspected of activities hostile to the State" or that there was reason to "suppose that his dealings might harm society". Over 2700 Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox clergy were imprisoned at Dachau alone. After Heydrich (who was staunchly anti-Catholic and anti-Christian) was assassinated in Prague, his successor, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, relaxed some of the policies and then disbanded Department IVB (religious opponents) of the Gestapo.
Between June 1942 and March 1943, student protests were calling for an end to the Nazi regime. These included the non-violent resistance of Hans and Sophie Scholl, two leaders of the White Rose student group. However, resistance groups and those who were in moral or political opposition to the Nazis were stalled by the fear of reprisals from the Gestapo. Fearful of an internal overthrow, the forces of the Gestapo were unleashed on the opposition. Groups like the White Rose and others, such as the Edelweiss Pirates, and the Swing Youth, were placed under strict Gestapo observation. Some participants were sent to concentration camps. Leading members of the most famous of these groups, the White Rose, were arrested by the police and turned over to the Gestapo. For several leaders their punishment was death. During the first five months of 1943, the Gestapo arrested thousands suspected of resistance activities and carried out numerous executions. Student opposition leaders were executed in late February, and a major opposition organisation, the Oster Circle, was destroyed in April 1943. Efforts to resist the Nazi regime amounted to very little and had only minor chances of success, particularly since the broad percentage of the German people did not support such actions.
Between 1934 and 1938, opponents of the Nazi regime and their fellow travellers began to emerge. Among the first to speak out were religious dissenters but following in their wake were educators, aristocratic businessmen, office workers, teachers, and others from nearly every walk of life. Most people quickly learned that open opposition was dangerous since Gestapo informants and agents were widespread. Yet a significant number of them still worked against the National Socialist government.
During May 1935, the Gestapo broke up and arrested members of the "Markwitz Circle", a group of former socialists in contact with Otto Strasser, who sought Hitler's downfall. From the mid-1930s into the early 1940s—various groups made up of communists, idealists, working-class people, and far-right conservative opposition organisations covertly fought against Hitler's government, and several of them fomented plots that included Hitler's assassination. Nearly all of them, including: the Römer Group, Robby Group, Solf Circle, "Schwarze Reichswehr", the Party of the Radical Middle Class, "Jungdeutscher Orden", "Schwarze Front" and "Stahlhelm" were either discovered or infiltrated by the Gestapo. This led to corresponding arrests, being sent to concentration camps and execution. One of the methods employed by the Gestapo to contend with these resistance factions was 'protective detention' which facilitated the process in expediting dissenters to concentration camps and against which there was no legal defence.
Early efforts to resist the Nazis with aid from abroad were hindered when the opposition's peace feelers to the Western Allies did not meet with success. This was partly because of the Venlo incident of 9 November 1939, in which SD and Gestapo agents, posing as anti-Nazis in the Netherlands, kidnapped two British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) officers after having lured them to a meeting to discuss peace terms. This prompted Winston Churchill to ban any further contact with the German opposition. Later, the British and Americans did not want to deal with anti-Nazis because they were fearful that the Soviet Union would believe they were attempting to make deals behind their back.
The German opposition was in an unenviable position by the late spring and early summer of 1943. On one hand, it was next to impossible for them to overthrow Hitler and the party; on the other, the Allied demand for an unconditional surrender meant no opportunity for a compromise peace, which left the military and conservative aristocrats who opposed the regime no option (in their eyes) other than continuing the military struggle. Despite fear of the Gestapo after mass arrests and executions in the spring, the opposition still plotted and planned. One of the more famous schemes, Operation Valkyrie, involved a number of senior German officers and was carried out by Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. In an attempt to assassinate Hitler, Stauffenberg planted a bomb underneath a conference table inside the Wolf's Lair field headquarters. Known as the 20 July plot, this assassination attempt failed and Hitler was only slightly injured. Reports indicate that the Gestapo was caught unaware of this plot as they did not have sufficient protections in place at the appropriate locations nor did they take any preventative steps. Stauffenberg and his group were shot on 21 July 1944; meanwhile, his fellow conspirators were rounded up by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp. Thereafter, there was a show trial overseen by Roland Freisler, followed by their execution.
In Austria, there were groups still loyal to the Habsburgs, who unlike most across the greater German Reich, remained determined to resist the Nazis. These groups became a special focus of the Gestapo because of their insurrectionist goals—the overthrow of the Nazi regime, the re-establishment of an independent Austria under Habsburg leadership—and Hitler's hatred of the Habsburg family. Hitler vehemently rejected the centuries' old Habsburg pluralist principles of "live and let live" with regard to ethnic groups, peoples, minorities, religions, cultures and languages. Habsburg resistance fighter Karl Burian's (who was later executed) plan to blow up the Gestapo headquarters in Vienna represented a unique attempt to act aggressively against the Gestapo. Individuals in Austrian resistance groups led by Heinrich Maier also managed to pass along the plans and the location of production facilities for V-2 rockets, Tiger tanks, and aircraft to the Allies.
Some Germans were convinced that it was their duty to apply all possible expedients to end the war as quickly as possible. Sabotage efforts were undertaken by members of the "Abwehr" (military intelligence) leadership, as they recruited people known to oppose the Nazi regime. The Gestapo cracked down ruthlessly on dissidents in Germany, just as they did everywhere else. Opposition became more difficult. Arrests, torture, and executions were common. Terror against "state enemies" had become a way of life to such a degree that the Gestapo's presence and methods were eventually normalised in the minds of people living in Nazi Germany.
In January 1933, Hermann Göring, Hitler's minister without portfolio, was appointed the head of the Prussian Police and began filling the political and intelligence units of the Prussian Secret Police with Nazi Party members. A year after the organisations inception, Göring wrote in a British publication about having created the organisation on his own initiative and how he was "chiefly responsible" for the elimination of the Marxist and Communist threat to Germany and Prussia. Describing the activities of the organisation, Göring boasted about the utter ruthlessness required for Germany's recovery, the establishment of concentration camps for that purpose, and even went on to claim that excesses were committed in the beginning, recounting how beatings took place here and there. On 26 April 1933, he reorganised the force's "Amt III" as the "Gestapa" (better-known by the "sobriquet" Gestapo), a secret state police intended to serve the Nazi cause. Less than two weeks later in early May 1933, the Gestapo moved into their Berlin headquarters at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8.
As a result of its 1936 merger with the Kripo (National criminal police) to form sub-units of the "Sicherheitspolizei" (SiPo; Security Police), the Gestapo was officially classified as a government agency. Himmler's subsequent appointment to "Chef der Deutschen Polizei" (Chief of German Police) and status as "Reichsführer-SS" made him independent of Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick's nominal control.
The SiPo was placed under the direct command of Reinhard Heydrich who was already chief of the Nazi Party's intelligence service, the "Sicherheitsdienst" (SD). The idea was to fully identify and integrate the party agency (SD) with the state agency (SiPo). Most SiPo members joined the SS and held a rank in both organisations. Nevertheless, in practice there was jurisdictional overlap and operational conflict between the SD and Gestapo.
In September 1939, the SiPo and SD were merged into the newly created "Reichssicherheitshauptamt" (RSHA; Reich Main Security Office). Both the Gestapo and Kripo became distinct departments within the RSHA. Although the "Sicherheitspolizei" was officially disbanded, the term SiPo was figuratively used to describe any RSHA personnel throughout the remainder of the war. In lieu of naming convention changes, the original construct of the SiPo, Gestapo, and Kripo cannot be fully comprehended as "discrete entities", since they ultimately formed "a conglomerate in which each was wedded to each other and the SS through its Security Service, the SD".
The creation of the RSHA represented the formalisation, at the top level, of the relationship under which the SD served as the intelligence agency for the security police. A similar co-ordination existed in the local offices. Within Germany and areas which were incorporated within the Reich for the purpose of civil administration, local offices of the Gestapo, criminal police, and SD were formally separate. They were subject to co-ordination by inspectors of the security police and SD on the staffs of the local higher SS and police leaders, however, and one of the principal functions of the local SD units was to serve as the intelligence agency for the local Gestapo units. In the occupied territories, the formal relationship between local units of the Gestapo, criminal police, and SD was slightly closer.
The Gestapo became known as RSHA "Amt IV" ("Department or Office IV") with Heinrich Müller as its chief. In January 1943, Himmler appointed Ernst Kaltenbrunner RSHA chief; almost seven months after Heydrich had been assassinated. The specific internal departments of "Amt IV" were as follows:
Central administrative office of the Gestapo, responsible for card files of all personnel including all officials.
Administration for regions outside the "Reich".
In 1941 "Referat N", the central command office of the Gestapo was formed. However, these internal departments remained and the Gestapo continued to be a department under the RSHA umbrella. The local offices of the Gestapo, known as Gestapo "Leitstellen" and "Stellen", answered to a local commander known as the "Inspekteur der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD" ("Inspector of the Security Police and Security Service") who, in turn, was under the dual command of "Referat N" of the Gestapo and also his local SS and Police Leader.
The Gestapo also maintained offices at all Nazi concentration camps, held an office on the staff of the SS and Police Leaders, and supplied personnel as needed to formations such as the "Einsatzgruppen". Personnel assigned to these auxiliary duties were often removed from the Gestapo chain of command and fell under the authority of branches of the SS.
The Gestapo maintained police detective ranks which were used for all officers, both those who were and who were not concurrently SS members.
Sources:
According to regulations issued by the Reich Main Security Office in 1940, women that had been trained in social work or having a similar education could be hired as female detectives. Female youth leaders, lawyers, business administrators with experience in social work, female leaders in the "Reichsarbeitsdienst" and personnel administrators in the Bund Deutscher Mädel were hired as detectives after a one-year course if they had several years professional experience. Later also nurses, kindergarten teachers and trained female commercial employees with an aptitude for police work were hired as female detectives after a two-year course After two years as "Kriminaloberassistentin" promotion to "Kriminalsekretärin" could take place, after another two or three years in that grade the female detective could be promoted to "Kriminalobersekretärin". Further promotions to "Kriminalkommissarin" and "Kriminalrätin" was also possible.
In 1933, there was no purge of the German police forces. The vast majority of Gestapo officers came from the police forces of the Weimar Republic; members of the SS, the SA, and the NSDAP also joined the Gestapo but were less numerous. By March 1937, the Gestapo employed an estimated 6,500 people in fifty-four regional offices across the Reich. Additional staff were added in March 1938 consequent the annexation of Austria and again in October 1938 with the acquisition of the Sudetenland. In 1939, only 3,000 out of the total of 20,000 Gestapo men held SS ranks, and in most cases, these were honorary. One man who served in the Prussian Gestapo in 1933 recalled that most of his co-workers "were by no means Nazis. For the most part they were young professional civil service officers..." The Nazis valued police competence more than politics, so in general in 1933, almost all of the men who served in the various state police forces under the Weimar Republic stayed on in their jobs. In Würzburg, which is one of the few places in Germany where most of the Gestapo records survived, every member of the Gestapo was a career policeman or had a police background.
The Canadian historian Robert Gellately wrote that most Gestapo men were not Nazis, but at the same time were not opposed to the Nazi regime, which they were willing to serve, in whatever task they were called upon to perform. Over time, membership in the Gestapo included ideological training, particularly once Werner Best assumed a leading role for training in April 1936. Employing biological metaphors, Best emphasised a doctrine which encouraged members of the Gestapo to view themselves as 'doctors' to the 'national body' in the struggle against "pathogens" and "diseases"; among the implied sicknesses were "communists, Freemasons, and the churches—and above and behind all these stood the Jews". Heydrich thought along similar lines and advocated both defensive and offensive measures on the part of the Gestapo, so as to prevent any subversion or destruction of the National Socialist body.
Whether trained as police originally or not, Gestapo agents themselves were shaped by their socio-political environment. Historian George C. Browder contends that there was a four-part process (authorisation, bolstering, routinisation, and dehumanisation) in effect which legitimised the psycho-social atmosphere conditioning members of the Gestapo to radicalised violence. Browder also describes a sandwich effect, where from above; Gestapo agents were subjected to ideologically oriented racism and criminal biological theories; and from below, the Gestapo was transformed by SS personnel who did not have the proper police training, which showed in their propensity for unrestrained violence. This admixture certainly shaped the Gestapo's public image which they sought to maintain despite their increasing workload; an image which helped them identify and eliminate enemies of the Nazi state.
The Gestapo was a secretive plainclothes agency and agents typically wore civilian suits. There were strict protocols protecting the identity of Gestapo field personnel. When asked for identification, an operative was required only to present his warrant disc and not a picture identification. This disc identified the operative as a member of the Gestapo without revealing personal information, except when ordered to do so by an authorised official.
Leitstellung (district office) staff did wear the grey SS service uniform, but with police-pattern shoulderboards, and SS rank insignia on the left collar patch. The right collar patch was black without the runes. The SD sleeve diamond (SD "Raute") insignia was worn on the lower left sleeve, even by SiPo men who were not in the SD. Uniforms were also worn by Gestapo men assigned to the "Einsatzgruppen" in occupied territories, were at first undistinguishable from the Waffen-SS field uniform. Complaints from the Waffen-SS led to change of rank insignia shoulder boards from those of the Waffen-SS to those of the Ordnungspolizei.
Contrary to popular belief, the Gestapo was not the all-pervasive, omnipotent agency in German society. In Germany proper, many towns and cities had fewer than 50 official Gestapo personnel. For example, in 1939 Stettin and Frankfurt am Main only had a total of 41 Gestapo men combined. In Düsseldorf, the local Gestapo office of only 281 men were responsible for the entire Lower Rhine region, which comprised 4 million people. "V-men", as undercover Gestapo agents were known, were used to infiltrate Social Democratic and Communist opposition groups, but this was more the exception, not the rule. The Gestapo office in Saarbrücken had 50 full-term informers in 1939. The District Office in Nuremberg, which had the responsibility for all of northern Bavaria, employed a total of 80–100 full-term informers between 1943 and 1945. The majority of Gestapo informers were not full-term informers working undercover, but were rather ordinary citizens who chose to denounce other people to the Gestapo.
According to Canadian historian Robert Gellately's analysis of the local offices established, the Gestapo was—for the most part—made up of bureaucrats and clerical workers who depended upon denunciations by citizens for their information. Gellately argued that it was because of the widespread willingness of Germans to inform on each other to the Gestapo that Germany between 1933 and 1945 was a prime example of panopticism. The Gestapo—at times—was overwhelmed with denunciations and most of its time was spent sorting out the credible from the less credible denunciations. Many of the local offices were understaffed and overworked, struggling with the paper load caused by so many denunciations. Gellately has also suggested that the Gestapo was "a reactive organisation" "... which was constructed within German society and whose functioning was structurally dependent on the continuing co-operation of German citizens".
After 1939, when many Gestapo personnel were called up for war-related work such as service with the "Einsatzgruppen", the level of overwork and understaffing at the local offices increased. For information about what was happening in German society, the Gestapo continued to be mostly dependent upon denunciations. 80% of all Gestapo investigations were started in response to information provided by denunciations by ordinary Germans; while 10% were started in response to information provided by other branches of the German government and another 10% started in response to information that the Gestapo itself unearthed. The information supplied by denunciations often led the Gestapo in determining who was arrested.
The popular picture of the Gestapo with its spies everywhere terrorising German society has been rejected by many historians as a myth invented after the war as a cover for German society's widespread complicity in allowing the Gestapo to work. Work done by social historians such as Detlev Peukert, Robert Gellately, Reinhard Mann, Inge Marssolek, René Otto, Klaus-Michael Mallamann and Paul Gerhard, which by focusing on what the local offices were doing has shown the Gestapos almost total dependence on denunciations from ordinary Germans, and very much discredited the older "Big Brother" picture with the Gestapo having its eyes and ears everywhere. For example, of the 84 cases in Würzburg of "Rassenschande" ("race defilement"—sexual relations with non-Aryans), 45 (54%) were started in response to denunciations by ordinary people, two (2%) by information provided by other branches of the government, 20 (24%) via information gained during interrogations of people relating to other matters, four (5%) from information from (Nazi) NSDAP organisations, two (2%) during "political evaluations" and 11 (13%) have no source listed while none were started by Gestapos own "observations" of the people of Würzburg.
An examination of 213 denunciations in Düsseldorf showed that 37% were motivated by personal conflicts, no motive could be established in 39%, and 24% were motivated by support for the Nazi regime. The Gestapo always showed a special interest in denunciations concerning sexual matters, especially cases concerning "Rassenschande" with Jews or between Germans and foreigners, in particular Polish slave workers; the Gestapo applied even harsher methods to the foreign workers in the country, especially those from Poland, Jews, Catholics and homosexuals. As time went by, anonymous denunciations to the Gestapo caused trouble to various NSDAP officials, who often found themselves being investigated by the Gestapo.
Of the political cases, 61 people were investigated for suspicion of belonging to the KPD, 44 for the SPD and 69 for other political parties. Most of the political investigations took place between 1933 and 1935 with the all-time high of 57 cases in 1935. After that year, political investigations declined with only 18 investigations in 1938, 13 in 1939, two in 1941, seven in 1942, four in 1943 and one in 1944. The "other" category associated with non-conformity included everything from a man who drew a caricature of Hitler to a Catholic teacher suspected of being lukewarm about teaching National Socialism in his classroom. The "administrative control" category concerned whose were breaking the law concerning residency in the city. The "conventional criminality" category concerned economic crimes such as money laundering, smuggling and homosexuality.
Normal methods of investigation included various forms of blackmail, threats and extortion to secure "confessions". Beyond that, sleep deprivation and various forms of harassment were used as investigative methods. Failing that, torture and planting evidence were common methods of resolving a case, especially if the case concerned someone Jewish. Brutality on the part of interrogators—often prompted by denunciations and followed with roundups—enabled the Gestapo to uncover numerous resistance networks; it also made them seem like they knew everything and could do anything they wanted.
While the total numbers of Gestapo officials was limited when contrasted against the represented populations, the average "Volksgenosse" (Nazi term for the "member of the German people") was typically not under observation, so the statistical ratio between Gestapo officials and inhabitants is "largely worthless and of little significance" according to some recent scholars. As historian Eric Johnson remarked, "The Nazi terror was selective terror", with its focus upon political opponents, ideological dissenters (clergy and religious organisations), career criminals, the Sinti and Roma population, handicapped persons, homosexuals and above all, upon the Jews. "Selective terror" by the Gestapo, as mentioned by Johnson, is also supported by historian Richard Evans who states that, "Violence and intimidation rarely touched the lives of most ordinary Germans. Denunciation was the exception, not the rule, as far as the behaviour of the vast majority of Germans was concerned." The involvement of ordinary Germans in denunciations also needs to be put into perspective so as not to exonerate the Gestapo. As Evans makes clear, "...it was not the ordinary German people who engaged in surveillance, it was the Gestapo; nothing happened until the Gestapo received a denunciation, and it was the Gestapo's active pursuit of deviance and dissent that was the only thing that gave denunciations meaning." The Gestapo's effectiveness remained in the ability to "project" omnipotence...they co-opted the assistance of the German population by using denunciations to their advantage; proving in the end a powerful, ruthless and effective organ of terror under the Nazi regime that was seemingly everywhere. Lastly, the Gestapo's effectiveness, while aided by denunciations and the watchful eye of ordinary Germans, was more the result of the co-ordination and co-operation amid the various police organs within Germany, the assistance of the SS, and the support provided by the various Nazi Party organisations; all of them together forming an organised persecution network.
Between 14 November 1945 and 3 October 1946, the Allies established an International Military Tribunal (IMT) to try 22 major Nazi war criminals and six groups for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Nineteen of the 22 were convicted, and twelve—Martin Bormann (in absentia), Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Hermann Göring, Alfred Jodl, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Fritz Sauckel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Julius Streicher—were given the death penalty. Three—Walther Funk, Rudolf Hess, Erich Raeder—received life terms; and the remaining four—Karl Dönitz, Konstantin von Neurath, Albert Speer, and Baldur von Schirach—received shorter prison sentences. Three others—Hans Fritzsche, Hjalmar Schacht, and Franz von Papen—were acquitted. At that time, the Gestapo was condemned as a criminal organisation, along with the SS. However, Gestapo leader Heinrich Müller was never tried, as he disappeared at the end of the war.
Leaders, organisers, investigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit the crimes specified were declared responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan. The official positions of defendants as heads of state or holders of high government offices were not to free them from responsibility or mitigate their punishment; nor was the fact that a defendant acted pursuant to an order of a superior to excuse him from responsibility, although it might be considered by the IMT in mitigation of punishment.
At the trial of any individual member of any group or organisation, the IMT was authorised to declare (in connection with any act of which the individual was convicted) that the group or organisation to which he belonged was a criminal organisation. When a group or organisation was thus declared criminal, the competent national authority of any signatory had the right to bring persons to trial for membership in that organisation, with the criminal nature of the group or organisation assumed proved.
These groups—the Nazi party and government leadership, the German General staff and High Command (OKW); the "Sturmabteilung" (SA); the "Schutzstaffel" (SS), including the "Sicherheitsdienst" (SD); and the Gestapo—had an aggregate membership exceeding two million, making a large number of their members liable to trial when the organisations were convicted.
The trials began in November 1945. On 1 October 1946, the IMT rendered its judgement on 21 top Nazi figures: 18 were sentenced to death or to long prison terms, and three acquitted. The IMT also convicted three of the groups: the Nazi leadership corps, the SS (including the SD) and the Gestapo. Gestapo members Hermann Göring, Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Arthur Seyss-Inquart were individually convicted. Three groups were acquitted of collective war crimes charges, but this did not relieve individual members of those groups from conviction and punishment under the denazification programme. Members of the three convicted groups were subject to apprehension by Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and France.
In 1997, Cologne transformed the former regional Gestapo headquarters in Cologne—the EL-DE Haus—into a museum to document the Gestapo's actions.
After the war, U.S. Counterintelligence Corps employed the former Lyon Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie for his anti-communist efforts and also helped him escape to Bolivia.
Informational notes
Citations
Bibliography | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12899 |
Grammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation () is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (alteration of form according to rules of grammar). Verbs may inflect for grammatical categories such as person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, case, possession, definiteness, politeness, causativity, clusivity, interrogativity, transitivity, valency, polarity, telicity, volition, mirativity, evidentiality, animacy, associativity, pluractionality, and reciprocity. Verbs may also be affected by agreement, polypersonal agreement, incorporation, noun class, noun classifiers, and verb classifiers. Agglutinative and polysynthetic languages tend to have the most complex conjugations albeit some fusional languages such as Archi can also have extremely complex conjugation. Typically the principal parts are the root and/or several modifications of it (stems). All the different forms of the same verb constitute a lexeme, and the canonical form of the verb that is conventionally used to represent that lexeme (as seen in dictionary entries) is called a lemma.
The term conjugation is applied only to the inflection of verbs, and not of other parts of speech (inflection of nouns and adjectives is known as declension). Also it is often restricted to denoting the formation of finite forms of a verb – these may be referred to as "conjugated forms", as opposed to non-finite forms, such as the infinitive or gerund, which tend not to be marked for most of the grammatical categories.
Conjugation is also the traditional name for a group of verbs that share a similar conjugation pattern in a particular language (a "verb class"). For example, Latin is said to have four conjugations of verbs. This means that any regular Latin verb can be conjugated in any person, number, tense, mood, and voice by knowing which of the four conjugation groups it belongs to, and its principal parts. A verb that does not follow all of the standard conjugation patterns of the language is said to be an irregular verb. The system of all conjugated variants of a particular verb or class of verbs is called a verb paradigm; this may be presented in the form of a conjugation table.
Indo-European languages usually inflect verbs for several grammatical categories in complex paradigms, although some, like English, have simplified verb conjugation to a large extent. Below is the conjugation of the verb "to be" in the present tense (of the infinitive, if it exists, and indicative moods), in English, German, Yiddish, Dutch, Afrikaans, Icelandic, Faroese, Swedish, Norwegian, Latvian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Slovenian, Macedonian, Urdu or Hindi, Persian, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Albanian, Armenian, Irish, Ukrainian, Ancient Attic Greek and Modern Greek. This is usually the most irregular verb. The similarities in corresponding verb forms may be noticed. Some of the conjugations may be disused, like the English "thou"-form, or have additional meanings, like the English "you"-form, which can also stand for second person singular or be impersonal.
Verbal agreement, or concord, is a morpho-syntactic construct in which properties of the subject and/or objects of a verb are indicated by the verb form. Verbs are then said to agree with their subjects (resp. objects).
Many English verbs exhibit subject agreement of the following sort: whereas "I go", "you go", "we go", "they go" are all grammatical in standard English, "she go" is not (except in the subjunctive, as "They requested that "she go" with them"). Instead, a special form of the verb "to go" has to be used to produce "she goes". On the other hand "I goes", "you goes" etc. are not grammatical in standard English. (Things are different in some English dialects that lack agreement.) A few English verbs have no special forms that indicate subject agreement ("I may", "you may", "she may"), and the verb "to be" has an additional form "am" that can only be used with the pronoun "I" as the subject.
Verbs in written French exhibit more intensive agreement morphology than English verbs: "je suis" (I am), "tu es" ("you are", singular informal), "elle est" (she is), "nous sommes" (we are), "vous êtes" ("you are", plural), "ils sont" (they are). Historically, English used to have a similar verbal paradigm. Some historic verb forms are used by Shakespeare as slightly archaic or more formal variants ("I do", "thou dost", "she doth", typically used by nobility) of the modern forms.
Some languages with verbal agreement can leave certain subjects implicit when the subject is fully determined by the verb form. In Spanish, for instance, subject pronouns do not need to be explicitly present, but in French, its close relative, they are obligatory. The Spanish equivalent to the French "je suis" (I am) can be simply "soy" (lit. "am"). The pronoun "yo" (I) in the explicit form "yo soy" is used only for emphasis or to clear ambiguity in complex texts.
Some languages have a richer agreement system in which verbs agree also with some or all of their objects. Ubykh exhibits verbal agreement for the subject, direct object, indirect object, benefaction and ablative objects ("a.w3.s.xe.n.t'u.n", "you gave it to him for me").
Basque can show agreement not only for subject, direct object and indirect object but it also can exhibit agreement for the listener as the implicit benefactor: "autoa ekarri digute" means "they brought us the car" (neuter agreement for listener), but "autoa ekarri ziguten" means "they brought us the car" (agreement for feminine singular listener).
Languages with a rich agreement morphology facilitate relatively free word order without leading to increased ambiguity. The canonical word order in Basque is subject–object–verb, but all permutations of subject, verb and object are permitted.
In some languages, predicative adjectives and copular complements receive a form of person agreement that is distinct from that used on ordinary predicative verbs. Although that is a form of conjugation in that it refers back to the person of the subject, it is not "verbal" because it always derives from pronouns that have become cliticised to the nouns to which they refer. An example of nonverbal person agreement, along with contrasting verbal conjugation, can be found from Beja (person agreement affixes in bold):
Another example can be found from Ket:
In Turkic, and a few Uralic and Australian Aboriginal languages, predicative adjectives and copular complements take affixes that are identical to those used on predicative verbs, but their negation is different. For example, in Turkish:
Under negation, that becomes (negative affixes in bold):
Therefore, the person agreement affixes used with predicative adjectives and nominals in Turkic languages are considered to be nonverbal in character. In some analyses, they are viewed as a form of verbal takeover by a copular strategy.
These common grammatical categories affect how verbs can be conjugated:
Here are other factors that may affect conjugation:
One common feature of Pama–Nyungan languages, the largest family of Australian Aboriginal languages, is the notion of conjugation classes, which are a set of groups into which each lexical verb falls. They determine how a verb is conjugated for Tense–aspect–mood. The classes can but do not universally correspond to the transitivity or valency of the verb in question. Generally, of the two to six conjugation classes in a Pama-Nyungan language, two classes are open with a large membership and allow for new coinages, and the remainder are closed and of limited membership.
In Wati languages, verbs generally fall into four classes:
They are labelled by using common morphological components of verb endings in each respective class in infinitival forms. In the Wanman language these each correspond to la", "ya", "rra", and wa" verbs respectively.
See also a similar table of verb classes and conjugations in Pitjantjatjara, a Wati language wherein the correlating verb classes are presented below also by their imperative verbal endings -la, -∅, -ra and -wa respectively
Ngarla, a member of the Ngayarda sub-family of languages has a binary conjugation system labelled:
In the case of Ngarla, there is a notably strong correlation between conjugation class and transitivity, with transitive/ditransitive verbs falling in the l-class and intransitive/semi-transitive verbs in the ∅-class.
These classes even extend to how verbs are nominalized as instruments with the l-class verb including the addition of an "/l/" before the nominalizing suffix and the blank class remaining blank:
l-class example:
∅-class example
Yidiny has a ternary verb class system with two open classes and one closed class (~20 members). Verbs are classified as: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12900 |
Gomoku
Gomoku, also called "Five in a Row", is an abstract strategy board game. It is traditionally played with Go pieces (black and white stones) on a Go board. It can be played using the 15×15 board or the 19×19 board. Because pieces are typically not moved or removed from the board, Gomoku may also be played as a paper-and-pencil game. The game is known in several countries under different names.
Players alternate turns placing a stone of their color on an empty intersection. The winner is the first player to form an unbroken chain of five stones horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.
Gomoku has existed in Japan since the Meiji Restoration. The name "Gomoku" is from the Japanese language, in which it is referred to as . "Go" means five, "moku" is a counter word for pieces and "narabe" means "line-up". The game is also popular in Korea, where it is called "omok" (오목 [五目]) which has the same structure and origin as the Japanese name.
In the nineteenth century, the game was introduced to Britain where it was known as Go Bang, said to be a corruption of the Japanese word "goban", said to be adapted from Chinese "k'i pan (qí pán)" "go-board."
Besides many variations around the world, the Swap2 rule (based on "swap" from Renju) is currently adapted in tournaments among professional players, including Gomoku World Championships.
In Swap2 rule, the first player starts by placing three stones (2 black and 1 white, if black goes first) on the board. The second player then selects one of three options: play black, play white and place one more stone, or place two more stones to and let the first player choose the color. This is essentially a slightly more elaborate pie rule.
Swap2 solved the low complexity problem and makes the game fairer. Like other rules and variations, 100% fairness can be reached by playing two alternating games for each point.
Most variations are based on either Free-style gomoku or Standard gomoku.
Black (the player who makes the first move) was long known to have a big advantage, even before L. Victor Allis proved that black could force a win (see below). So a number of variations are played with extra rules that aimed to reduce black's advantage.
This game on the 15×15 board is adapted from the paper "Go-Moku and Threat-Space Search".
The opening moves show clearly black's advantage. An open row of three (one that is not blocked by an opponent's stone at either end) has to be blocked immediately, or countered with a threat elsewhere on the board. If not blocked or countered, the open row of three will be extended to an open row of four, which threatens to win in two ways.
White has to block open rows of three at moves 10, 14, 16 and 20, but black only has to do so at move 9.
Move 20 is a blunder for white (it should have been played next to black 19). Black can now force a win against any defence by white, starting with move 21.
There are two forcing sequences for black, depending on whether white 22 is played next to black 15 or black 21. The diagram on the right shows the first sequence. All the moves for white are forced. Such long forcing sequences are typical in gomoku, and expert players can read out forcing sequences of 20 to 40 moves rapidly and accurately.
The diagram on the right shows the second forcing sequence. This diagram shows why white 20 was a blunder; if it had been next to black 19 (at the position of move 32 in this diagram) then black 31 would not be a threat and so the forcing sequence would fail.
World Championships in Gomoku have occurred 2 times in 1989, 1991.
Since 2009 the tournament resumed, the opening rule being played was changed and now is swap2.
List of the tournaments occurred and title holders follows.
People have been applying artificial intelligence techniques on playing gomoku for several decades. In 1994, L. Victor Allis raised the algorithm of proof-number search (pn-search) and dependency-based search (db-search), and proved that when starting from an empty 15×15 board, the first player has a winning strategy using these searching algorithms. This applies to both free-style gomoku and standard gomoku without any opening rules. It seems very likely that black wins on larger boards too. In any size of a board, freestyle gomoku is an "m","n","k"-game, hence it is known that the first player can enforce a win or a draw. In 2001, Allis' winning strategy was also approved for renju, a variation of gomoku, when there was no limitation on the opening stage.
However, neither the theoretical values of all legal positions, nor the opening rules such as Swap2 used by the professional gomoku players have been solved yet, so the topic of gomoku artificial intelligence is still a challenge for computer scientists, such as the problem on how to improve the gomoku algorithms to make them more strategic and competitive. Nowadays, most of the state-of-the-art gomoku algorithms are based on the alpha-beta pruning framework.
Reisch proved that Generalized gomoku is PSPACE-complete. He also observed that the reduction can be adapted to the rules of k-in-a-Row for fixed k. Although he did not specify exactly which values of k are allowed, the reduction would appear to generalize to any k ≥ 5.
There exist several well-known tournaments for gomoku programs since 1989. The Computer Olympiad started with the gomoku game in 1989, but gomoku has not been in the list since 1993. The Renju World Computer Championship was started in 1991, and held for 4 times until 2004. The Gomocup tournament is played since 2000 and taking place every year, still active now, with more than 30 participants from about 10 countries. The Hungarian Computer Go-Moku Tournament was also played twice in 2005. There were also two Computer vs. Human tournaments played in the Czech Republic, in 2006 and 2011. Not until 2017 were the computer programs proved to be able to outperform the world human champion in public competitions. In the Gomoku World Championship 2017, there was a match between the world champion program Yixin and the world champion human player Rudolf Dupszki. Yixin won the match with a score of 2–0. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12902 |
Glyph
In typography, a glyph is an elemental symbol within an agreed set of symbols, intended to represent a readable character for the purposes of writing. Glyphs are considered to be unique marks that collectively add up to the spelling of a word or contribute to a specific meaning of what is written, with that meaning dependent on cultural and social usage.
In most languages written in any variety of the Latin alphabet, the dot on a lower-case "i" is not a glyph because it does not convey any distinction, and an "i" in which the dot has been accidentally omitted is still likely to be recognized correctly. However, in Turkish it is a glyph because that language has two distinct versions of the letter "i", with and without a dot. Also, in Japanese syllabaries, a number of the characters are made up of more than one separate mark, but in general these separate marks are not glyphs because they have no meaning by themselves. However, in some cases, additional marks fulfill the role of diacritics, to differentiate distinct characters. Such additional marks constitute glyphs. In general, a diacritic is a glyph, even if it is contiguous with the rest of the character like a cedilla in French, the ogonek in several languages, or the stroke on a Polish "Ł".
Some characters such as "æ" in Icelandic and the "ß" in German may be regarded as glyphs. They were originally ligatures, but over time have become characters in their own right; these languages treat them as separate letters. However, a ligature such as "ſi", that is treated in some typefaces as a single unit, is arguably not a glyph as this is just a quirk of the typeface, essentially an allographic feature, and includes more than one grapheme. In normal handwriting, even long words are often written "joined up", without the pen leaving the paper, and the form of each written letter will often vary depending on which letters precede and follow it, but that does not make the whole word into a single glyph.
Two or more glyphs which have the same significance, whether used interchangeably or chosen depending on context, are called allographs of each other.
The term has been used in English since 1727, borrowed from "glyphe" (in use by French antiquaries since 1701), from the Greek γλυφή, "glyphē", "carving," and the verb γλύφειν, "glýphein", "to hollow out, engrave, carve" (cognate with Latin "glubere" "to peel" and English "cleave").
The word "hieroglyph" (Greek for sacred writing) has a longer history in English, dating from an early use in an English to Italian dictionary published by John Florio in 1598, referencing the complex and mysterious characters of the Egyptian alphabet.
The word "glyph" first came to widespread European attention with the engravings and lithographs from Frederick Catherwood's drawings of undeciphered glyphs of the Maya civilization in the early 1840s.
In graphonomics, the term glyph is used for a noncharacter, i.e. either a subcharacter or multicharacter pattern. Most typographic glyphs originate from the characters of a typeface. In a typeface each character typically corresponds to a single glyph, but there are exceptions, such as a font used for a language with a large alphabet or complex writing system, where one character may correspond to several glyphs, or several characters to one glyph.
In archaeology, a glyph is a carved or inscribed symbol. It may be a pictogram or ideogram, or part of a writing system such as a syllable, or a logogram.
A glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language, which could be a grapheme, or part of a grapheme, or sometimes several graphemes in combination (a composed glyph). If there is more than one allograph of a unit of writing, and the choice between them depends on context or on the preference of the author, they now have to be treated as separate glyphs, because mechanical arrangements have to be available to differentiate between them and to print whichever of them is required. The same is true in computing. In computing as well as typography, the term "character" refers to a grapheme or grapheme-like unit of text, as found in natural language writing systems ("scripts"). In typography and computing, the range of graphemes is broader than in a written language in other ways too: a typographical font often has to cope with a range of different languages each of which contribute their own graphemes, and it may also be required to print other symbols such as dingbats. The range of glyphs required increases correspondingly. In summary, in typography and computing, a glyph is a graphical unit. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12904 |
Goth subculture
The goth subculture is a subculture that began in England during the early 1980s, where it developed from the audience of gothic rock, an offshoot of the post-punk genre. The name, goth subculture, was derived directly from the music genre. Notable post-punk groups that presaged that genre and helped develop and shape the subculture, include Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Bauhaus and The Cure. The goth subculture has survived much longer than others of the same era, and has continued to diversify and spread throughout the world. Its imagery and cultural proclivities indicate influences from 19th-century Gothic literature and gothic horror films. The scene is centered on music festivals, nightclubs and organized meetings, especially in Western Europe.
The goth subculture has associated tastes in music, aesthetics, and fashion. The music preferred by the goth subculture includes a number of different styles, e.g. gothic rock, death rock, post-punk, cold wave, dark wave, and ethereal wave. Styles of dress within the subculture draw on punk, new wave and new romantic fashion as well as fashion of earlier periods such as the Victorian and Edwardian eras ("Belle Époque"), or combinations of the above. The style usually includes dark attire (often black), dark makeup and black hair. The subculture continues to draw interest from a large audience decades after its emergence.
The term "gothic rock" was coined in 1967, by music critic John Stickney to describe a meeting he had with Jim Morrison in a dimly lit wine-cellar which he called "the perfect room to honor the Gothic rock of the Doors". That same year, Velvet Underground with a track like "All Tomorrow's Parties", created a kind of "mesmerizing gothic-rock masterpiece" according to music historian Kurt Loder. In 1977, the F Club night in Leeds began, which would be foundational to the development of the goth subculture, due to it leading to the formation of gothic rock band the Sisters of Mercy. In the late 1970s, the "gothic" adjective was used to describe the atmosphere of post-punk bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Magazine, and Joy Division. In a live review about a Siouxsie and the Banshees' concert in July 1978, critic Nick Kent wrote that concerning their music, "parallels and comparisons can now be drawn with gothic rock architects like the Doors and, certainly, early Velvet Underground". In March 1979, in his review of Magazine's second album "Secondhand Daylight", Kent noted that there was "a new austere sense of authority" in the music, with a "dank neo-Gothic sound". Later that year, the term was also used by Joy Division's manager, Tony Wilson on 15 September in an interview for the BBC TV programme's "Something Else". Wilson described Joy Division as "gothic" compared to the pop mainstream, right before a live performance of the band. The term was later applied to "newer bands such as Bauhaus who had arrived in the wake of Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees". Bauhaus's first single issued in 1979, "Bela Lugosi's Dead", is generally credited as the starting point of the gothic rock genre.
In 1979, "Sounds" described Joy Division as "Gothic" and "theatrical". In February 1980, "Melody Maker" qualified the same band as "masters of this Gothic gloom". Critic Jon Savage would later say that their singer Ian Curtis wrote "the definitive Northern Gothic statement". However, it was not until the early-1980s that gothic rock became a coherent music subgenre within post-punk, and that followers of these bands started to come together as a distinctly recognizable movement. They may have taken the "goth" mantle from a 1981 article published in UK rock weekly "Sounds": "The face of Punk Gothique", written by Steve Keaton. In a text about the audience of UK Decay, Keaton asked: "Could this be the coming of Punk Gothique? With Bauhaus flying in on similar wings could it be the next big thing?" In July 1982, the opening of the Batcave in London's Soho provided a prominent meeting point for the emerging scene, which would be briefly labelled "positive punk" by the "NME" in a special issue with a front cover in early 1983. The term "Batcaver" was then used to describe old-school goths.
Independent from the British scene, in the late 1970s and early 1980s in California, deathrock developed as a distinct branch of American punk rock, with acts such as Christian Death and 45 Grave.
The bands that defined and embraced the gothic rock genre included Bauhaus, early Adam and the Ants, the Cure, The Birthday Party, Southern Death Cult, Specimen, Sex Gang Children, UK Decay, Virgin Prunes, Killing Joke, and the Damned. Near the peak of this first generation of the gothic scene in 1983, "The Face" Paul Rambali recalled that there were "several strong Gothic characteristics" in the music of Joy Division. In 1984, Joy Division's bassist Peter Hook named Play Dead as one of their heirs: "If you listen to a band like Play Dead, who I really like, Joy Division played the same stuff that Play Dead are playing. They're similar."
By the mid-1980s, bands began proliferating and became increasingly popular, including the Sisters of Mercy, the Mission, Alien Sex Fiend, the March Violets, Xmal Deutschland, the Membranes, and Fields of the Nephilim. Record labels like Factory, 4AD and Beggars Banquet released much of this music in Europe, and through a vibrant import music market in the US, the subculture grew, especially in New York and Los Angeles, California, where many nightclubs featured "gothic/industrial" nights. The popularity of 4AD bands resulted in the creation of a similar US label, Projekt, which produces what was colloquially termed ethereal wave, a subgenre of dark wave music.
The 1990s saw further growth for some 1980s bands and the emergence of many new acts, as well as new goth-centric U.S. record labels such as Cleopatra Records, among others. According to Dave Simpson of "The Guardian", "in the 90s, goths all but disappeared as dance music became the dominant youth cult". As a result, the goth "movement went underground and mistaken for cyber goth, Shock rock, Industrial metal, Gothic metal, Medieval folk metal and the latest subgenre, horror punk". Marilyn Manson was seen as a "goth-shock icon" by "Spin".
The Goth subculture of the 1980s drew inspiration from a variety of sources. Some of them were modern or contemporary, others were centuries-old or ancient. Michael Bibby and Lauren M. E. Goodlad liken the subculture to a bricolage. Among the music subcultures that influenced it were Punk, New wave, and Glam. But it also drew inspiration from B movies, Gothic literature, horror films, vampire cults and traditional mythology. Among the mythologies that proved influential in Goth were Celtic mythology, Christian mythology, Egyptian mythology, and various traditions of Paganism.
The figures that the movement counted among its historic canon of ancestors were equally diverse. They included the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844‒1900), Comte de Lautréamont (1846‒1870), Salvador Dalí (1904‒1989) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905‒1980). Writers that have had a significant influence on the movement also represent a diverse canon. They include Ann Radcliffe (1764‒1823), John William Polidori (1795‒1821), Edgar Allan Poe (1809‒1849), Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873), Bram Stoker (1847‒1912), Oscar Wilde (1854‒1900), H. P. Lovecraft (1890‒1937), Anne Rice (1941‒), William Gibson (1948‒), Ian McEwan (1948‒), Storm Constantine (1956‒), and Poppy Z. Brite (1967‒).
Gothic literature is a genre of fiction that combines romance and dark elements to produce mystery, suspense, terror, horror and the supernatural. According to David H. Richter, settings were framed to take place at "…ruinous castles, gloomy churchyards, claustrophobic monasteries, and lonely mountain roads". Typical characters consisted of the cruel parent, sinister priest, courageous victor, and the helpless heroine, along with supernatural figures such as demons, vampires, ghosts, and monsters. Often, the plot focused on characters ill-fated, internally conflicted, and innocently victimized by harassing malicious figures. In addition to the dismal plot focuses, the literary tradition of the gothic was to also focus on individual characters that were gradually going insane.
English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel "The Castle of Otranto" is one of the first writers who explored this genre. The American Revolutionary War-era "American Gothic" story of the Headless Horseman, immortalized in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (published in 1820) by Washington Irving, marked the arrival in the New World of dark, romantic storytelling. The tale was composed by Irving while he was living in England, and was based on popular tales told by colonial Dutch settlers of the Hudson Valley, New York. The story would be adapted to film in 1922, in 1949 as the animated "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad", and again in 1999.
Throughout the evolution of the goth subculture, classic romantic, Gothic and horror literature has played a significant role. E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822), Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937), and other tragic and romantic writers have become as emblematic of the subculture as the use of dark eyeliner or dressing in black. Baudelaire, in fact, in his preface to "Les Fleurs du mal" ("Flowers of Evil") penned lines that could serve as a sort of goth malediction:
"C'est l'Ennui! —l'œil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,"
"Il rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka."
"Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,"
"—Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!"
It is Boredom! — an eye brimming with an involuntary tear,
He dreams of the gallows while smoking his water-pipe.
You know him, reader, this delicate monster,
—Hypocrite reader,—my twin,—my brother!
The gothic subculture has influenced different artists—not only musicians—but also painters and photographers. In particular their work is based on mystic, morbid and romantic motifs. In photography and painting the spectrum varies from erotic artwork to romantic images of vampires or ghosts. There is a marked preference for dark colours and sentiments, similar to Gothic fiction. At the end of the 19th century, painters like John Everett Millais and John Ruskin invented a new kind of Gothic.
Some people credit Jalacy "Screamin' Jay" Hawkins, perhaps best known for his 1956 song "I Put A Spell On You," as a foundation of modern goth style and music. Some people credit the band Bauhaus' first single "Bela Lugosi's Dead", released in August 1979, with the start of goth subculture.
The British sitcom, The IT Crowd featured a recurring goth character named Richmond Avenal, played by Noel Fielding. Fielding said in an interview that he himself had been a goth at age fifteen and that he had a series of goth girlfriends. This was the first time he dabbled in makeup. Fielding said that he loved his girlfriends dressing him up.
Notable examples of goth icons include several bandleaders: Siouxsie Sioux, of Siouxsie and the Banshees; Robert Smith, of The Cure; Peter Murphy, of Bauhaus; Rozz Williams, of Christian Death; Olli Wisdom, leader of the band Specimen and keyboardist Jonathan Melton aka Jonny Slut, who both evolved the Batcave style); Ian Curtis, of Joy Division;
and Dave Vanian, of The Damned. Some members of Bauhaus were, themselves, fine art students or active artists. Nick Cave was dubbed as "the grand lord of gothic lushness". Nico is also a notable icon of goth fashion and music, with pioneering records like "The Marble Index" and "Desertshore" and the persona she adopted after their release.
One female role model is Theda Bara, the 1910s femme fatale known for her dark eyeshadow. In 1977, Karl Lagerfeld hosted the Soirée Moratoire Noir party, specifying "tenue tragique noire absolument obligatoire" (black tragic dress absolutely required). The event included elements associated with leatherman style.
African and Caribbean influences on gothic style are often missing from conversations: Jalacy "Screamin' Jay" Hawkins used voodoo imagery mixed with "spooky theatrics" to create a unique style, positioning him as one of the first goths. He would often use onstage props that reflected his goth and voodoo style, such as skulls, staffs, candles, tombstones, and bones.
Siouxsie Sioux was particularly influential on the dress style of the Gothic rock scene; Paul Morley of "NME" described Siouxsie and the Banshees' 1980 gig at Futurama: "[Siouxsie was] modeling her newest outfit, the one that will influence how all the girls dress over the next few months. About half the girls at Leeds had used Sioux as a basis for their appearance, hair to ankle." Robert Smith, Musidora, Bela Lugosi, Bettie Page, Vampira, Morticia Addams, Nico, Rozz Williams, David Bowie, Lux Interior, Dave Vanian, are also style icons.
The 1980s established designers such as Drew Bernstein of Lip Service, while the 1990s saw a surge of US-based gothic fashion designers, many of whom continue to evolve the style through the current day. Style magazines such as Gothic Beauty have given repeat features to a select few gothic fashion designers who began their labels in the 1990s, such as Kambriel, Rose Mortem, and Tyler Ondine of Heavy Red.
Gothic fashion is marked by conspicuously dark, antiquated and homogeneous features. It is stereotyped as eerie, mysterious, complex and exotic. A dark, sometimes morbid fashion and style of dress, typical gothic fashion includes colored black hair and black period-styled clothing. Both male and female goths can wear dark eyeliner and dark fingernail polish, most especially black. Styles are often borrowed from punk fashion and − more currently − from the Victorian and Elizabethan periods. It also frequently expresses pagan, occult or other religious imagery. Gothic fashion and styling may also feature silver jewelry and piercings.
Ted Polhemus described goth fashion as a "profusion of black velvets, lace, fishnets and leather tinged with scarlet or purple, accessorized with tightly laced corsets, gloves, precarious stilettos and silver jewelry depicting religious or occult themes". Of the male "goth look", goth historian Pete Scathe draws a distinction between the Sid Vicious archetype of black spiky hair and black leather jacket, in contrast to the gender-ambiguous guys wearing makeup. The first is the early goth gig-going look, which was essentially punk, whereas the second is what evolved into the Batcave nightclub look. Early goth gigs were often very hectic affairs, and the audience dressed accordingly.
In contrast to the LARP-based Victorian and Elizabethan pomposity of the 2000s, the more Romantic side of 1980s trad-goth − mainly represented by women − was characterized by new wave/post-punk-oriented hairstyles (both long and short, partly shaved and teased) and street-compliant clothing, including black frill blouses, midi dresses or tea-length skirts, and floral lace tights, Dr. Martens, spike heels (pumps), and pointed toe buckle boots (winklepickers), sometimes supplemented with accessories such as bracelets, chokers and bib necklaces. This style, retroactively referred to as "Ethergoth", took its inspiration from Siouxsie Sioux and mid-1980s protagonists from the 4AD roster like Liz Fraser and Lisa Gerrard.
"The New York Times" noted: "The costumes and ornaments are a glamorous cover for the genre's somber themes. In the world of Goth, nature itself lurks as a malign protagonist, causing flesh to rot, rivers to flood, monuments to crumble and women to turn into slatterns, their hair streaming and lipstick askew".
Cintra Wilson declares that the origins of the dark romantic style are found in the "Victorian cult of mourning." Valerie Steele is an expert in the history of the style.
Goth fashion has a reciprocal relationship with the fashion world. In the later part of the first decade of the 21st century, designers such as Alexander McQueen, Anna Sui, Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh, Ann Demeulemeester, Philipp Plein, Hedi Slimane, John Richmond, John Galliano, Olivier Theyskens and Yohji Yamamoto brought elements of goth to runways. This was described as "Haute Goth" by Cintra Wilson in the "New York Times".
Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana, Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix have also been associated with the fashion trend. In Spring 2004, Riccardo Tisci, Jean Paul Gaultier, Raf Simons and Stefano Pilati dressed their models as "glamorous ghouls dressed in form-fitting suits and coal-tinted cocktail dresses". Swedish designer Helena Horstedt and jewelry artist Hanna Hedman also practice a goth aesthetic.
Gothic styling often goes hand in hand with aesthetics, authenticity and expression, and is mostly considered to be an "artistical concept". Clothes are frequently self-designed.
In recent times, especially in the course of commercialization of parts of the Goth subculture, many non-involved people developed an interest in dark fashion styles and started to adopt elements of Goth clothing (primarily mass-produced goods from malls) without being connected to subcultural basics, e.g. goth music and the history of the subculture. Within the Goth movement they have been regularly described as "poseurs" or "mallgoths." (see also section "Identity").
Some of the early gothic rock and deathrock artists adopted traditional horror film images and drew on horror film soundtracks for inspiration. Their audiences responded by adopting appropriate dress and props. Use of standard horror film props like swirling smoke, rubber bats, and cobwebs featured as gothic club décor from the beginning in The Batcave. Such references in bands' music and images were originally tongue-in-cheek, but as time went on, bands and members of the subculture took the connection more seriously. As a result, morbid, supernatural and occult themes became more noticeably serious in the subculture. The interconnection between horror and goth was highlighted in its early days by "The Hunger", a 1983 vampire film starring David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. The film featured gothic rock group Bauhaus performing "Bela Lugosi's Dead" in a nightclub. Tim Burton created a storybook atmosphere filled with darkness and shadow in some of his films like "Beetlejuice" (1988), "Batman" (1989), "Edward Scissorhands" (1990), "Batman Returns" (1992) and the stop motion films "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993), which was produced/co-written by Burton, and "Corpse Bride" (2005), which he co-produced. The Nickelodeon cartoon "Invader Zim" is also based off the goth subculture.
As the subculture became well-established, the connection between goth and horror fiction became almost a cliché, with goths quite likely to appear as characters in horror novels and film. For example, "The Craft", "The Crow", "The Matrix" and "Underworld" film series drew directly on goth music and style. The dark comedies "Beetlejuice", "The Faculty", "American Beauty", "Wedding Crashers", and a few episodes of the animated TV show "South Park" portray or parody the goth subculture. In "South Park", several of the fictional schoolchildren are depicted as goths. The goth kids on the show are depicted as finding it annoying to be confused with the Hot Topic "vampire" kids from the episode "The Ungroundable" in season 12, and even more frustrating to be compared with emo kids. The goth kids are usually depicted listening to goth music, writing or reading Gothic poetry, drinking coffee, flipping their hair, and smoking. Morticia Addams from The Addams Family created by Charles Addams. Morticia is a fictional character and the mother in the Addams family. Morticia was played by Carolyn Jones in the 1964 television show The Addams Family, and then played by Anjelica Huston in the 1991 version.
A prominent American literary influence on the gothic scene was provided by Anne Rice's re-imagining of the vampire in 1976. In "The Vampire Chronicles", Rice's characters were depicted as self-tormentors who struggled with alienation, loneliness, and the human condition. Not only did the characters torment themselves, but they also depicted a surreal world that focused on uncovering its splendor. These Chronicles assumed goth attitudes, but they were not intentionally created to represent the gothic subculture. Their romance, beauty, and erotic appeal attracted
many goth readers, making her works popular from the 1980s through the 1990s. While Goth has embraced Vampire literature both in its 19th-century form and in its later incarnations, Rice's postmodern take on the vampire mythos has had a "special resonance" in the subculture. Her vampire novels feature intense emotions, period clothing, and "cultured decadence". Her vampires are socially alienated monsters, but they are also stunningly attractive. Rice's goth readers tend to envision themselves in much the same terms and view characters like Lestat de Lioncourt as role models.
Richard Wright's novel "Native Son" contains gothic imagery and themes that demonstrate the links between blackness and the gothic; themes and images of "premonitions, curses, prophecies, spells, veils, demonic possessions, graves, skeletons" are present, suggesting gothic influence. Other classic themes of the gothic are present in the novel, such as transgression and unstable identities of race, class, gender, and nationality.
The re-imagining of the vampire continued with the release of Poppy Z. Brite's book "Lost Souls" in October 1992. Despite the fact that Brite's first novel was criticized by some mainstream sources for allegedly "lack[ing] a moral center: neither terrifyingly malevolent supernatural creatures nor (like Anne Rice's protagonists) tortured souls torn between good and evil, these vampires simply add blood-drinking to the amoral panoply of drug abuse, problem drinking and empty sex practiced by their human counterparts", many of these so-called "human counterparts" identified with the teen angst and goth music references therein, keeping the book in print. Upon release of a special 10th anniversary edition of "Lost Souls", "Publishers Weekly"—the same periodical that criticized the novel's "amorality" a decade prior—deemed it a "modern horror classic" and acknowledged that Brite established a "cult audience".
Neil Gaiman's graphic novel series "The Sandman" influenced goths with characters like the dark, brooding Dream and his sister Death. The 2002 release "21st Century Goth" by Mick Mercer, an author, noted music journalist and leading historian of gothic rock, explored the modern state of the goth scene around the world, including South America, Japan, and mainland Asia. His previous 1997 release, "Hex Files: The Goth Bible", similarly took an international look at the subculture.
In the US, "Propaganda" was a gothic subculture magazine founded in 1982. In Italy, "Ver Sacrum" covers the Italian goth scene, including fashion, sexuality, music, art and literature. Some magazines, such as the now-defunct "Dark Realms" and "Goth Is Dead" included goth fiction and poetry. Other magazines cover fashion (e.g., "Gothic Beauty"); music (e.g., "Severance") or culture and lifestyle (e.g., "Althaus" e-zine).
31 October 2011 ECW Press published the "Encyclopedia Gothica" written by author and poet Liisa Ladouceur with illustrations done by Gary Pullin. This non-fiction book describes over 600 words and phrases relevant to Goth subculture.
Visual contemporary graphic artists with this aesthetic include Gerald Brom, Dave McKean, and Trevor Brown as well as illustrators Edward Gorey, Charles Addams, Lorin Morgan-Richards, and James O'Barr. The artwork of Polish surrealist painter Zdzisław Beksiński is often described as gothic. British artist Anne Sudworth published a book on gothic art in 2007.
The goth scene continues to exist in the 2010s. In Western Europe, there are large annual festivals in Germany, including Wave-Gotik-Treffen (Leipzig) and M'era Luna (Hildesheim), both annually attracting tens of thousands of attendees. Famous Castle PArty is the biggest festival in Poland. The Lumous Gothic Festival (more commonly known as Lumous) is the largest festival dedicated to the goth subculture in Finland and the northernmost gothic festival in the world. The Ukrainian festival "Deti Nochi: Chorna Rada" (Children of the night) is the biggest gothic event in Ukraine. Goth events like "Ghoul School" and "Release the Bats" promote deathrock and are attended by fans from many countries, and events such as the Drop Dead Festival in the US attract attendees from over 30 countries. In England, Whitby Goth Weekend is a music festival held twice a year in Whitby, North Yorkshire. In the US, events such as Bats Day in the Fun Park celebrate the culture, as well as the Goth Cruise, and the Gothic Cruise.
In the 1980s, goths decorated their walls and ceiling with black fabrics and accessories like rosaries, crosses and plastic roses. Black furniture and cemetery-related objects like candlesticks, death lanterns and skulls. In the 1990s the interior design approach of the 1980s was replaced by a less macabre style.
Since the late 1970s, the UK goth scene refused "traditional standards of sexual propriety" and accepted and celebrated "unusual, bizarre or deviant sexual practices". In the 2000s, many members "... claim overlapping memberships in the queer, polyamorous, bondage-discipline/sadomasochism, and pagan communities".
Though sexual empowerment is not unique to women in the goth scene, it remains an important part of many goth women's experience: The "... [s]cene's celebration of active sexuality" enables goth women "... to resist mainstream notions of passive femininity". They have an "active sexuality" approach which creates "gender egalitarianism" within the scene, as it "allows them to engage in sexual play with multiple partners while sidestepping most of the stigma and dangers that women who engage in such behavior" outside the scene frequently incur, while continuing to "... see themselves as strong".
Men dress up in androgynous way: "... Men 'gender blend,' wearing makeup and skirts". In contrast, the "... women are dressed in sexy feminine outfits" that are "... highly sexualized" and which often combine "... corsets with short skirts and fishnet stockings". Androgyny is common among the scene: "... androgyny in Goth subcultural style often disguises or even functions to reinforce conventional gender roles". It was only "valorised" for male goths, who adopt a "feminine" appearance, including "make-up, skirts and feminine accessories" to "enhance masculinity" and facilitate traditional heterosexual courting roles.
While goth is "considered a music-based scene", "... to be Goth implies much more than shared musical tastes; it is ... an 'aesthetic,' a particular way of seeing and of being seen". Observers have raised the issue of to what degree individuals are truly members of the goth subculture. On one end of the spectrum is the "Uber goth", a person who is described as seeking a pallor so much that he or she applies "... as much white foundation and white powder as possible". On the other end of the spectrum another writer terms "poseurs": "goth wannabes, usually young kids going through a goth phase who do not hold to goth sensibilities but want to be part of the goth crowd..". It has been said that a "mall goth" is a teen who dresses in a goth style and spends time in malls with a Hot Topic store, but who does not know much about the goth subculture or its music, thus making him or her a poseur. In one case, even a well-known performer has been labelled with the pejorative term: a "number of goths, especially those who belonged to this subculture before the late-1980s, reject Marilyn Manson as a poseur who undermines the true meaning of goth".
The BBC described academic research that indicated that goths are "refined and sensitive, keen on poetry and books, not big on drugs or anti-social behaviour". Teens often stay in the subculture "into their adult life", and they are likely to become well-educated and enter professions such as medicine or law. The subculture carries on appealing to teenagers who are looking for meaning and for identity. The scene teaches teens that there are difficult aspects to life that you "have to make an attempt to understand" or explain.
"The Guardian" reported that a "glue binding the [goth] scene together was drug use"; however, in the scene, drug use was varied. Goth is one of the few subculture movements that is not associated with a single drug, in the way that the Hippie subculture is associated with cannabis and the Mod subculture is associated with amphetamines. A 2006 study of young goths found that those with higher levels of goth identification had higher drug use.
The goth scene is described as non-violent in an article by New Scientist
In the weeks following the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, media reports about the teen gunmen, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, portrayed them as part of a gothic cult. An increased suspicion of goth subculture subsequently manifested in the media. This led to a moral panic over teen involvement in goth subculture and a number of other activities, such as violent video games. Harris and Klebold had initially been thought to be members of "The Trenchcoat Mafia"; an informal club within Columbine High School. Later, such characterizations were considered incorrect.
Media reported that the gunman in the 2006 Dawson College shooting in Montreal, Quebec, Kimveer Singh Gill, was interested in goth subculture. Gill's self-professed love of Goth culture was the topic of media interest, and it was widely reported that the word "Goth", in Gill's writings, was a reference to the alternative industrial and goth subculture rather than a reference to gothic rock music. Gill, who committed suicide after the attack, wrote in his online journal: "I'm so sick of hearing about jocks and preps making life hard for the goths and others who look different, or are different". Gill described himself in his profile on Vampirefreaks.com as "... Trench ... the Angel of Death" and he stated that "Metal and Goth kick ass". An image gallery on Gill's Vampirefreaks.com blog had photos of him pointing a gun at the camera or wearing a long black trench coat.
Mick Mercer stated that Gill was "not a Goth. Never a Goth. The bands he listed as his chosen form of ear-bashing were relentlessly metal and standard grunge, rock and goth metal, with some industrial presence". Mercer stated that "Kimveer Gill listened to metal", "He had nothing whatsoever to do with Goth" and further commented "I realise that like many Neos [neophyte], Kimveer Gill may even have believed he somehow was a Goth, because they're [Neophytes] only really noted for spectacularly missing the point".
In part because of public misunderstanding surrounding gothic aesthetics, people in the goth subculture sometimes suffer prejudice, discrimination, and intolerance. As is the case with members of various other subcultures and alternative lifestyles, outsiders sometimes marginalize goths, either by intention or by accident. Actress Christina Hendricks talked of being bullied as a goth at school and how difficult it was for her to deal with societal pressure: "Kids can be pretty judgmental about people who are different. But instead of breaking down and conforming, I stood firm. That is also probably why I was unhappy. My mother was mortified and kept telling me how horrible and ugly I looked. Strangers would walk by with a look of shock on their face, so I never felt pretty. I just always felt awkward".
On 11 August 2007, a couple walking through Stubbylee Park in Bacup (Lancashire) were attacked by a group of teenagers because they were goths. Sophie Lancaster subsequently died from her injuries. On 29 April 2008, two teens, Ryan Herbert and Brendan Harris, were convicted for the murder of Lancaster and given life sentences; three others were given lesser sentences for the assault on her boyfriend Robert Maltby. In delivering the sentence, Judge Anthony Russell stated, "This was a hate crime against these completely harmless people targeted because their appearance was different to yours". He went on to defend the goth community, calling goths "perfectly peaceful, law-abiding people who pose no threat to anybody". Judge Russell added that he "recognised it as a hate crime without Parliament having to tell him to do so and had included that view in his sentencing". Despite this ruling, a bill to add discrimination based on subculture affiliation to the definition of hate crime in British law was not presented to parliament.
In 2013, police in Manchester announced they would be treating attacks on members of alternative subcultures, like goths, the same as they do for attacks based on race, religion, and sexual orientation.
A study published on the "British Medical Journal" concluded that "identification as belonging to the Goth subculture [at some point in their lives] was the best predictor of self harm and attempted suicide [among young teens]", and that it was most possibly due to a selection mechanism (persons that wanted to harm themselves later identified as goths, thus raising the percentage of those persons who identify as goths). According to "The Guardian", some goth teens are at more likely to harm themselves or attempt suicide. A medical journal study of 1,300 Scottish schoolchildren until their teen years found that the 53% of the goth teens had attempted to harm themselves and 47% had attempted suicide. The study found that the "correlation was stronger than any other predictor". The study was based on a sample of 15 teenagers who identified as goths, of which 8 had self-harmed by any method, 7 had self-harmed by cutting, scratching or scoring, and 7 had attempted suicide.
The authors held that most self-harm by teens was done before joining the subculture, and that joining the subculture would actually protect them and help them deal with distress in their lives. The authors insisted on the study being based on small numbers and on the need of replication to confirm the results. The study was criticized for using only a small sample of goth teens and not taking into account other influences and differences between types of goths; by taking a study from a larger number of people. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=12905 |
Premier League
The Premier League, often referred to as the English Premier League or the EPL outside England, is the top level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football League (EFL). Seasons run from August to May with each team playing 38 matches (playing all 19 other teams both home and away). Most games are played on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
The competition was founded as the FA Premier League on 20 February 1992 following the decision of clubs in the Football League First Division to break away from the Football League, founded in 1888, and take advantage of a lucrative television rights deal. The deal was worth around £1 billion a year domestically as of 2013–14, with Sky and BT Group securing the domestic rights to broadcast 116 and 38 games respectively. The league is a corporation in which the member clubs act as shareholders, and generates €2.2 billion per year in domestic and international television rights. Clubs were apportioned central payment revenues of £2.4 billion in 2016–17, with a further £343 million in solidarity payments to English Football League (EFL) clubs.
The Premier League is the most-watched sports league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643 million homes and a potential TV audience of 4.7 billion people. For the 2018–19 season average Premier League match attendance was at 38,181, second to the Bundesliga's 43,500, while aggregated attendance across all matches is the highest of any league at 14,508,981. Most stadium occupancies are near capacity. The Premier League ranks second in the UEFA coefficients of leagues based on performances in European competitions over the past five seasons as of 2019, only behind Spain's La Liga.
Forty-nine clubs have competed since the inception of the Premier League in 1992: forty-seven English and two Welsh clubs. Seven of them have won the title: Manchester United (13), Chelsea (5), Manchester City (4), Arsenal (3), Blackburn Rovers (1), Leicester City (1) and Liverpool (1). The record of most points in a Premier League season is 100, set by Manchester City in 2017–18.
Despite significant European success in the 1970s and early 1980s, the late 1980s marked a low point for English football. Stadiums were crumbling, supporters endured poor facilities, hooliganism was rife, and English clubs were banned from European competition for five years following the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985. The Football League First Division, the top level of English football since 1888, was behind leagues such as Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga in attendances and revenues, and several top English players had moved abroad.
By the turn of the 1990s the downward trend was starting to reverse. At the 1990 FIFA World Cup, England reached the semi-finals; UEFA, European football's governing body, lifted the five-year ban on English clubs playing in European competitions in 1990, resulting in Manchester United lifting the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1991. The Taylor Report on stadium safety standards, which proposed expensive upgrades to create all-seater stadiums in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster, was published in January 1990.
In the 1980s, major English clubs had begun to transform into business ventures, applying commercial principles to club administration to maximise revenue. Martin Edwards of Manchester United, Irving Scholar of Tottenham Hotspur, and David Dein of Arsenal were among the leaders in this transformation. The commercial imperative led to the top clubs seeking to increase their power and revenue; the clubs in Division One threatened to break away from the Football League, and in so doing they managed to increase their voting power and gain more favourable financial arrangement, taking a 50% share of all television and sponsorship income in 1986. They demanded that television companies should pay more for their coverage of football matches, and revenue from television grew in importance. The Football League received £6.3 million for a two-year agreement in 1986, but by 1988, in a deal agreed with ITV, the price rose to £44 million over four years with the leading clubs taking 75% of the cash. According to Scholar who was involved in the negotiations of television deals, each of the First Division clubs received only around £25,000 per year from television rights before 1986, this increased to around £50,000 in the 1986 negotiation, then to £600,000 in 1988. The 1988 negotiations were conducted under the threat of ten clubs leaving to form a "super league", but they were eventually persuaded to stay with the top clubs taking the lion's share of the deal. The negotiations also convinced the bigger clubs that in order to receive enough votes, they needed to take the whole of First Division with them instead of a smaller "super league". By the beginning of the 1990s, the big clubs again considered breaking away, especially now that they had to fund the cost of stadium upgrade as proposed by the Taylor Report.
In 1990, the managing director of London Weekend Television (LWT), Greg Dyke, met with the representatives of the "big five" football clubs in England (Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham, Everton and Arsenal) over a dinner. The meeting was to pave the way for a break away from The Football League. Dyke believed that it would be more lucrative for LWT if only the larger clubs in the country were featured on national television and wanted to establish whether the clubs would be interested in a larger share of television rights money. The five clubs agreed with the suggestion and decided to press ahead with it; however, the league would have no credibility without the backing of The Football Association and so David Dein of Arsenal held talks to see whether the FA were receptive to the idea. The FA did not enjoy an amicable relationship with the Football League at the time and considered it as a way to weaken the Football League's position. The FA released a report in June 1991, "Blueprint for the Future of Football", that supported the plan for Premier League with FA the ultimate authority that would oversee the breakaway league.
At the close of the 1991 season, a proposal was tabled for the establishment of a new league that would bring more money into the game overall. The Founder Members Agreement, signed on 17 July 1991 by the game's top-flight clubs, established the basic principles for setting up the FA Premier League. The newly formed top division would have commercial independence from The Football Association and the Football League, giving the FA Premier League licence to negotiate its own broadcast and sponsorship agreements. The argument given at the time was that the extra income would allow English clubs to compete with teams across Europe. Although Dyke played a significant role in the creation of the Premier League, Dyke and ITV would lose out in the bidding for broadcast rights as BSkyB won with a bid of £304 million over five years with the BBC awarded the highlights package broadcast on "Match of the Day".
In 1992, the First Division clubs resigned from the Football League en masse and on 27 May 1992 the FA Premier League was formed as a limited company working out of an office at the Football Association's then headquarters in Lancaster Gate. This meant a break-up of the 104-year-old Football League that had operated until then with four divisions; the Premier League would operate with a single division and the Football League with three. There was no change in competition format; the same number of teams competed in the top flight, and promotion and relegation between the Premier League and the new First Division remained the same as the old First and Second Divisions with three teams relegated from the league and three promoted.
The league held its first season in 1992–93. It was composed of 22 clubs for that season. The first Premier League goal was scored by Brian Deane of Sheffield United in a 2–1 win against Manchester United. The 22 inaugural members of the new Premier League were Arsenal, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Chelsea, Coventry City, Crystal Palace, Everton, Ipswich Town, Leeds United, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Middlesbrough, Norwich City, Nottingham Forest, Oldham Athletic, Queens Park Rangers, Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur, and Wimbledon. Luton Town, Notts County, and West Ham United were the three teams relegated from the old first division at the end of the 1991–92 season, and did not take part in the inaugural Premier League season.
One significant feature of the Premier League in the mid-2000s was the dominance of the so-called "Top Four" clubs: Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United. During this decade, they dominated the top four spots, which came with UEFA Champions League qualification, taking all top-four places in 5 out of 6 seasons from 2003–04 to 2008–09 inclusive, while every season during the 2000s saw the "Big Four" always qualifying for European competition. Following the 2003–04 season, Arsenal acquired the nickname "The Invincibles" as they became the first club to complete a Premier League campaign without losing a single game, the only time it has ever happened in the Premier League.
During the 2000s, only four sides outside the "Top Four" managed to qualify for the Champions League: Leeds United (1999–2000), Newcastle United (2001–02 and 2002–03), Everton (2004–05) and Tottenham Hotspur (2009–10) – each occupying the final Champions League spot, with the exception of Newcastle in the 2002–03 season, who finished third.
In May 2008 Kevin Keegan stated that "Top Four" dominance threatened the division, "This league is in danger of becoming one of the most boring but great leagues in the world." Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore said in defence: "There are a lot of different tussles that go on in the Premier League depending on whether you're at the top, in the middle or at the bottom that make it interesting."
Between 2005 and 2012, there was a Premier League representative in seven of the eight Champions League finals, with only "Top Four" clubs reaching that stage. Liverpool (2005), Manchester United (2008) and Chelsea (2012) won the competition during this period, with Arsenal (2006), Liverpool (2007), Chelsea (2008) and Manchester United (2009 and 2011) all losing Champions League finals. Leeds United were the only non-"Top Four" side to reach the semi-finals of the Champions League, in the 2000–01 season.
Additionally, between the 1999–2000 and 2009–10 seasons, four Premier League sides reached UEFA Cup or Europa League finals, with only Liverpool managing to win the competition in 2001. Arsenal (2000), Middlesbrough (2006) and Fulham (2010) all lost their finals.
Although the group's dominance was reduced to a degree after this period with the emergence of Manchester City and Tottenham, in terms of all time Premier League points won they remain clear by some margin. As of the end of the 2018–19 season – the 27th season of the Premier League – Liverpool, in fourth place in the all-time points table, were over 250 points ahead of the next team, Tottenham Hotspur. They are also the only teams to maintain a winning average of over 50% throughout their entire Premier League tenures.
The years following 2009 marked a shift in the structure of the "Top Four" with Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City both breaking into the top four places on a regular basis, turning the "Top Four" into the "Big Six". In the 2009–10 season, Tottenham finished fourth and became the first team to break the top four since Everton five years prior. Criticism of the gap between an elite group of "super clubs" and the majority of the Premier League has continued, nevertheless, due to their increasing ability to spend more than the other Premier League clubs. Manchester City won the title in the 2011–12 season, becoming the first club outside the "Big Four" to win since Blackburn Rovers in the 1994–95 season. That season also saw two of the "Big Four" (Chelsea and Liverpool) finish outside the top four places for the first time since that season.
With only four UEFA Champions League qualifying places available in the league, greater competition for qualification now exists, albeit from a narrow base of six clubs. If the teams are level on points and goal difference, play off for UEFA Champions League spots will be played in neutral ground. In the following five seasons after the 2011–12 campaign, Manchester United and Liverpool both found themselves outside of the top four three times while Chelsea finished 10th in the 2015–16 season. Arsenal finished 5th in 2016–17, ending their record run of 20 consecutive top-four finishes.
In the 2015–16 season, the top four was breached by a non-Big Six side for the first time since Everton in 2005. Leicester City were the surprise winners of the league, qualifying for the Champions League as a result.
Off the pitch, the "Big Six" wield significant financial power and influence, with these clubs arguing that they should be entitled to a greater share of revenue due to the greater stature of their clubs globally and the attractive football they aim to play. Objectors argue that the egalitarian revenue structure in the Premier League helps to maintain a competitive league which is vital for its future success.
The 2016–17 Deloitte Football Money League report showed the financial disparity between the "Big Six" and the rest of the division. All of the "Big Six" had revenues greater than €350 million, with Manchester United having the largest revenue in the league at €676.3 million. Leicester City was the closest club to the "Big Six" in terms of revenue, recording a figure of €271.1 million for that season – helped by participation in the Champions League. The eighth largest revenue generator West Ham, who didn't play in European competition, had revenues of €213.3 million, nearly half of the club with the fifth largest revenue, Liverpool (€424.2 million). A substantial part of the clubs' revenue by then came from television broadcast deals, with the biggest clubs each taking from around £150 million to nearly £200 million in the 2016–17 season from such deals. In Deloitte's 2019 report, all of the "Big Six" were in the top ten of the world's richest clubs.
The number of clubs was reduced to 20, down from 22, in 1995 when four teams were relegated from the league and only two teams promoted. The top flight had only been expanded to 22 teams at the start of the 1991–92 season – the year prior to the formation of the Premier League.
On 8 June 2006, FIFA requested that all major European leagues, including Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga, be reduced to 18 teams by the start of the 2007–08 season. The Premier League responded by announcing their intention to resist such a reduction. Ultimately, the 2007–08 season kicked off again with 20 teams.
The league changed its name from the "FA Premier League" to simply the "Premier League" in 2007.
From the 2019-20 season, video assistant referees were used in the league.
The Football Association Premier League Ltd (FAPL) is operated as a corporation and is owned by the 20 member clubs. Each club is a shareholder, with one vote each on issues such as rule changes and contracts. The clubs elect a chairman, chief executive, and board of directors to oversee the daily operations of the league. The Football Association is not directly involved in the day-to-day operations of the Premier League, but has veto power as a special shareholder during the election of the chairman and chief executive and when new rules are adopted by the league.
The current chairman is Sir Dave Richards, who was appointed in April 1999, and the chief executive is Richard Scudamore, appointed in November 1999. The former chairman and chief executive, John Quinton and Peter Leaver, were forced to resign in March 1999 after awarding consultancy contracts to former Sky executives Sam Chisholm and David Chance. Rick Parry was the league's first chief executive. On 13 November 2018, Susanna Dinnage was announced as Scudamore's successor due to start in early 2019.
The Premier League sends representatives to UEFA's European Club Association, the number of clubs and the clubs themselves chosen according to UEFA coefficients. For the 2012–13 season the Premier League has 10 representatives in the Association: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Everton, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur. The European Club Association is responsible for electing three members to UEFA's Club Competitions Committee, which is involved in the operations of UEFA competitions such as the Champions League and UEFA Europa League.
There are 20 clubs in the Premier League. During the course of a season (from August to May) each club plays the others twice (a double round-robin system), once at their home stadium and once at that of their opponents', for 38 games. Teams receive three points for a win and one point for a draw. No points are awarded for a loss. Teams are ranked by total points, then goal difference, and then goals scored. If still equal, teams are deemed to occupy the same position. If there is a tie for the championship, for relegation, or for qualification to other competitions, a play-off match at a neutral venue decides rank.
A system of promotion and relegation exists between the Premier League and the EFL Championship. The three lowest placed teams in the Premier League are relegated to the Championship, and the top two teams from the Championship promoted to the Premier League, with an additional team promoted after a series of play-offs involving the third, fourth, fifth and sixth placed clubs. The Premier League had 22 teams when it began in 1992, but this was reduced to the present 20-team format in 1995.
49 clubs have played in the Premier League from its inception in 1992, up to and including the 2019–20 season.
The following 20 clubs are competing in the Premier League during the 2019–20 season.
a: Founding member of the Premier League
b: Never been relegated from Premier League
c: One of the original 12 Football League teams
The following clubs are not competing in the Premier League during the 2019–20 season, but have previously competed in the Premier League for at least one season.
a: Founding member of the Premier League
b: One of the original 12 Football League teams
c: Club based in Wales
In 2011, a Welsh club participated in the Premier League for the first time after Swansea City gained promotion. The first Premier League match to be played outside England was Swansea City's home match at the Liberty Stadium against Wigan Athletic on 20 August 2011. The number of Welsh clubs in the Premier League increased to two in 2013–14, as Cardiff City gained promotion, but they were relegated after their maiden season. Cardiff were promoted again in 2017–18 but the number of Welsh clubs remained the same for the 2018–19 Premier League season as Swansea City were relegated from the Premier League in 2017–18. Following Cardiff City's relegation in 2018–19 there are currently no Welsh clubs participating in the Premier League.
Because they are members of the Football Association of Wales (FAW), the question of whether clubs like Swansea should represent England or Wales in European competitions has caused long-running discussions in UEFA. Swansea took one of England's three available places in the Europa League in 2013–14 by winning the League Cup in 2012–13. The right of Welsh clubs to take up such English places was in doubt until UEFA clarified the matter in March 2012, allowing them to participate.
Participation in the Premier League by some Scottish or Irish clubs has sometimes been discussed, but without result.
The idea came closest to reality in 1998, when Wimbledon received Premier League approval to relocate to Dublin, Ireland, but the move was blocked by the Football Association of Ireland. Additionally, the media occasionally discusses the idea that Scotland's two biggest teams, Celtic and Rangers, should or will take part in the Premier League, but nothing has come of these discussions.
The top four teams in the Premier League qualify for the subsequent season's UEFA Champions League group stage. The winners of the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League also qualify for the subsequent season's UEFA Champions League group stage. If this means six Premier League teams qualify, then the fourth-placed team in the Premier League instead plays in the UEFA Europa League, as any single nation is limited to a maximum of 5 teams.
The fifth-placed team in the Premier League, as well as the winner of the FA Cup, qualifies for the subsequent season's UEFA Europa League group stage, but if the winner also finished in the top five places in the Premier League or has won one of UEFA's major tournaments, then this place reverts to the team that finished sixth. The winner of the EFL Cup qualifies for the subsequent season's UEFA Europa League second qualifying round, but if the winner already qualified for a UEFA competition via their performance in another competition, then this place reverts to the team that finished sixth in the Premier League, or seventh if the FA Cup result already caused the sixth-placed team to qualify.
The number of places allocated to English clubs in UEFA competitions is dependent upon the position a country holds in the UEFA country coefficients, which are calculated based upon the performance of teams in UEFA competitions in the previous five years. Currently the ranking of England (and de facto the Premier League) is 2nd behind Spain.
An exception to the usual European qualification system happened in 2005, after Liverpool won the Champions League the year before, but did not finish in a Champions League qualification place in the Premier League that season. UEFA gave special dispensation for Liverpool to enter the Champions League, giving England five qualifiers. UEFA subsequently ruled that the defending champions qualify for the competition the following year regardless of their domestic league placing. However, for those leagues with four entrants in the Champions League, this meant that if the Champions League winner finished outside the top four in its domestic league, it would qualify at the expense of the fourth-placed team in the league. At that time, no association could have more than four entrants in the Champions League. This occurred in 2012, when Chelsea – who had won the Champions League that summer, but finished sixth in the league – qualified for the Champions League in place of Tottenham Hotspur, who went into the Europa League.
From 2015–16, the Europa League winners qualify for the Champions League, increasing the maximum number of participants per country to five. This took effect in England in 2016–17, when Manchester United finished sixth in the Premier League and won the Europa League, giving England five Champions League entrants for 2017–18. In these instances, any Europa League berth vacated will not be handed down to the next-best Premier League finisher outside a qualifying place and so the association's Europa League entrants for the following season will be reduced. If it happens that both Champions League and Europa League winners are of the same association and both finish outside the top four, then the fourth-placed team will be transferred to the Europa League.
Between the 1992–93 and the 2018–19 seasons, Premier League clubs won the UEFA Champions League five times (and had seven runners-up), behind Spain's La Liga with eleven wins, level with Italy's Serie A, and ahead of, among others, Germany's Bundesliga with three wins. The FIFA Club World Cup (originally called the FIFA Club World Championship) has been won twice by a Premier League club (Manchester United in 2008 and Liverpool in 2019), with two runners-up (Liverpool in 2005 and Chelsea in 2012), behind Spain's La Liga with seven wins, Brazil's Brasileirão with four wins, and tied with Italy's Serie A with two wins.
From 1993 to 2016, the Premier League had title sponsorship rights sold to two companies, which were Carling brewery and Barclays Bank PLC; Barclays was the most recent title sponsor, having sponsored the Premier League from 2001 until 2016 (until 2004, the title sponsorship was held through its Barclaycard brand before shifting to its main banking brand in 2004).
Barclays' deal with the Premier League expired at the end of the 2015–16 season. The FA announced on 4 June 2015 that it would not pursue any further title sponsorship deals for the Premier League, arguing that they wanted to build a "clean" brand for the competition more in line with those of major U.S. sports leagues.
As well as sponsorship for the league itself, the Premier League has a number of official partners and suppliers. The official ball supplier for the league is Nike who have had the contract since the 2000–01 season when they took over from Mitre. Under its "Merlin" brand, Topps held the licence to produce collectables for the Premier League between 1994 and 2019 including stickers (for their sticker album) and trading cards. Launched in the 2007–08 season, Topps’ Match Attax, the official Premier League trading card game, is the best selling boys collectable in the UK, and is also the biggest selling sports trading card game in the world. In October 2018, Panini were awarded the licence to produce collectables from the 2019–20 season.
Since 2017, the chocolate company Cadbury is the official snack partner of the Premier League, and sponsors the Golden Boot, Golden Glove, and Playmaker of the Season awards.
The Premier League has the highest revenue of any football league in the world, with total club revenues of €2.48 billion in 2009–10. In 2013–14, due to improved television revenues and cost controls, the Premier League had net profits in excess of £78 million, exceeding all other football leagues. In 2010 the Premier League was awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise in the International Trade category for its outstanding contribution to international trade and the value it brings to English football and the United Kingdom's broadcasting industry.
The Premier League includes some of the richest football clubs in the world. Deloitte's "Football Money League" listed seven Premier League clubs in the top 20 for the 2009–10 season, and all 20 clubs were in the top 40 globally by the end of the 2013–14 season, largely as a result of increased broadcasting revenue. From 2013, the league generates €2.2 billion per year in domestic and international television rights.
Premier League clubs agreed in principle in December 2012, to radical new cost controls. The two proposals consist of a break-even rule and a cap on the amount clubs can increase their wage bill by each season. With the new television deals on the horizon, momentum has been growing to find ways of preventing the majority of the cash going straight to players and agents.
Central payments for the 2016–17 season amounted to £2,398,515,773 across the 20 clubs, with each team receiving a flat participation fee of £35,301,989 and additional payments for TV broadcasts (£1,016,690 for general UK rights to match highlights, £1,136,083 for each live UK broadcast of their games and £39,090,596 for all overseas rights), commercial rights (a flat fee of £4,759,404) and a notional measure of "merit" which was based upon final league position. The merit component was a nominal sum of £1,941,609 multiplied by each finishing place, counted from the foot of the table (e.g., Burnley finished 16th in May 2017, five places counting upwards, and received 5 × £1,941,609 = £9,708,045 merit payment).
Television has played a major role in the history of the Premier League. The League's decision to assign broadcasting rights to BSkyB in 1992 was at the time a radical decision, but one that has paid off. At the time pay television was an almost untested proposition in the UK market, as was charging fans to watch live televised football. However, a combination of Sky's strategy, the quality of Premier League football and the public's appetite for the game has seen the value of the Premier League's TV rights soar.
The Premier League sells its television rights on a collective basis. This is in contrast to some other European Leagues, including La Liga, in which each club sells its rights individually, leading to a much higher share of the total income going to the top few clubs. The money is divided into three parts: half is divided equally between the clubs; one quarter is awarded on a merit basis based on final league position, the top club getting twenty times as much as the bottom club, and equal steps all the way down the table; the final quarter is paid out as facilities fees for games that are shown on television, with the top clubs generally receiving the largest shares of this. The income from overseas rights is divided equally between the twenty clubs.
The first Sky television rights agreement was worth £304 million over five seasons. The next contract, negotiated to start from the 1997–98 season, rose to £670 million over four seasons. The third contract was a £1.024 billion deal with BSkyB for the three seasons from 2001 to 2002 to 2003–04. The league brought in £320 million from the sale of its international rights for the three-year period from 2004 to 2005 to 2006–07. It sold the rights itself on a territory-by-territory basis. Sky's monopoly was broken from August 2006 when Setanta Sports was awarded rights to show two out of the six packages of matches available. This occurred following an insistence by the European Commission that exclusive rights should not be sold to one television company. Sky and Setanta paid £1.7 billion, a two-thirds increase which took many commentators by surprise as it had been widely assumed that the value of the rights had levelled off following many years of rapid growth. Setanta also hold rights to a live 3 pm match solely for Irish viewers. The BBC has retained the rights to show highlights for the same three seasons (on "Match of the Day") for £171.6 million, a 63 per cent increase on the £105 million it paid for the previous three-year period. Sky and BT have agreed to jointly pay £84.3 million for delayed television rights to 242 games (that is the right to broadcast them in full on television and over the internet) in most cases for a period of 50 hours after 10 pm on matchday. Overseas television rights fetched £625 million, nearly double the previous contract. The total raised from these deals is more than £2.7 billion, giving Premier League clubs an average media income from league games of around £40 million-a-year from 2007 to 2010.
The TV rights agreement between the Premier League and Sky has faced accusations of being a cartel, and a number of court cases have arisen as a result. An investigation by the Office of Fair Trading in 2002 found BSkyB to be dominant within the pay TV sports market, but concluded that there were insufficient grounds for the claim that BSkyB had abused its dominant position. In July 1999 the Premier League's method of selling rights collectively for all member clubs was investigated by the UK Restrictive Practices Court, who concluded that the agreement was not contrary to the public interest.
The BBC's highlights package on Saturday and Sunday nights, as well as other evenings when fixtures justify, will run until 2016. Television rights alone for the period 2010 to 2013 have been purchased for £1.782 billion. On 22 June 2009, due to troubles encountered by Setanta Sports after it failed to meet a final deadline over a £30 million payment to the Premier League, ESPN was awarded two packages of UK rights containing 46 matches that were available for the 2009–10 season as well as a package of 23 matches per season from 2010 to 2011 to 2012–13. On 13 June 2012, the Premier League announced that BT had been awarded 38 games a season for the 2013–14 through 2015–16 seasons at £246 million-a-year. The remaining 116 games were retained by Sky who paid £760 million-a-year. The total domestic rights have raised £3.018 billion, an increase of 70.2% over the 2010–11 to 2012–13 rights. The value of the licensing deal rose by another 70.2% in 2015, when Sky and BT paid £5.136 billion to renew their contracts with the Premier League for another three years up to the 2018–19 season.
UK highlights
In August 2016, it was announced the BBC would be creating a new magazine-style show for the Premier League entitled "The Premier League Show".
In June 2018, it was announced that Amazon Video would televise 20 games per season in a three-year deal beginning in the 2019–20 season. The telecasts will be produced by a partnership of Sunset + Vine and BT Sport.
The Premier League is the most-watched football league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643 million homes and a potential TV audience of 4.7 billion people. The Premier League's production arm, Premier League Productions, is operated by IMG Productions and produces all content for its international television partners.
The Premier League is particularly popular in Asia, where it is the most widely distributed sports programme. In Australia, Optus telecommunications holds exclusive rights to the Premier League, providing live broadcasts and online access (Fox Sports formerly held rights). In India, the matches are broadcast live on STAR Sports. In China, the broadcast rights were awarded to Super Sports in a six-year agreement that began in the 2013–14 season. As of the 2019–20 season, Canadian broadcast rights to the Premier League are owned by DAZN, after having been jointly owned by Sportsnet and TSN from 2013–14.
The Premier League is broadcast in the United States through NBC Sports.
Premier League viewership has increased rapidly, with NBC and NBCSN averaging a record 479,000 viewers in the 2014–15 season, up 118% from 2012–13 when coverage still aired on Fox Soccer and ESPN/ESPN2 (220,000 viewers), and NBC Sports has been widely praised for its coverage. NBC Sports reached a six-year extension with the Premier League in 2015 to broadcast the league through the 2021–22 season in a deal valued at $1 billion (£640 million).
Between the 1998–99 season and the 2012–13 season, RTÉ broadcast highlights on "Premier Soccer Saturday" and occasionally "Premier Soccer Sunday". Between the 2004–05 season and the 2006–07 season, RTÉ broadcast a live match on 15 Saturday afternoons with each match being called "Premiership Live".
The Premier League is broadcast by SuperSport across sub-Saharan Africa.
There has been an increasing gulf between the Premier League and the Football League. Since its split with the Football League, many established clubs in the Premier League have managed to distance themselves from their counterparts in lower leagues. Owing in large part to the disparity in revenue from television rights between the leagues, many newly promoted teams have found it difficult to avoid relegation in their first season in the Premier League. In every season except 2001–02, 2011–12 and 2017–18, at least one Premier League newcomer has been relegated back to the Football League. In 1997–98, all three promoted clubs were relegated at the end of the season.
The Premier League distributes a portion of its television revenue to clubs that are relegated from the league in the form of "parachute payments". Starting with the 2013–14 season, these payments are in excess of £60 million over four seasons. Though designed to help teams adjust to the loss of television revenues (the average Premier League team receives £41 million while the average Football League Championship club receives £2 million), critics maintain that the payments actually widen the gap between teams that have reached the Premier League and those that have not, leading to the common occurrence of teams "bouncing back" soon after their relegation. For some clubs who have failed to win immediate promotion back to the Premier League, financial problems, including in some cases administration or even liquidation have followed. Further relegations down the footballing ladder have ensued for several clubs unable to cope with the gap.
As of the 2017–18 season, Premier League football has been played in 58 stadiums since the formation of the division. The Hillsborough disaster in 1989 and the subsequent Taylor Report saw a recommendation that standing terraces should be abolished. As a result, all stadiums in the Premier League are all-seater. Since the formation of the Premier League, football grounds in England have seen constant improvements to capacity and facilities, with some clubs moving to new-build stadiums. Nine stadiums that have seen Premier League football have now been demolished. The stadiums for the 2017–18 season show a large disparity in capacity. For example, Wembley Stadium, the temporary home of Tottenham Hotspur, has a capacity of 90,000 while Dean Court, the home of Bournemouth, has a capacity of 11,360. The combined total capacity of the Premier League in the 2017–18 season is 806,033 with an average capacity of 40,302.
Stadium attendances are a significant source of regular income for Premier League clubs. For the 2016–17 season, average attendances across the league clubs were 35,838 for Premier League matches with an aggregate attendance of 13,618,596. This represents an increase of 14,712 from the average attendance of 21,126 recorded in the Premier League's first season (1992–93). However, during the 1992–93 season, the capacities of most stadiums were reduced as clubs replaced terraces with seats in order to meet the Taylor Report's 1994–95 deadline for all-seater stadiums. The Premier League's record average attendance of 36,144 was set during the 2007–08 season. This record was then beaten in the 2013–14 season recording an average attendance of 36,695 with an attendance of just under 14 million, the highest average in England's top flight since 1950.
Managers in the Premier League are involved in the day-to-day running of the team, including the training, team selection and player acquisition. Their influence varies from club-to-club and is related to the ownership of the club and the relationship of the manager with fans. Managers are required to have a UEFA Pro Licence which is the final coaching qualification available, and follows the completion of the UEFA 'B' and 'A' Licences. The UEFA Pro Licence is required by every person who wishes to manage a club in the Premier League on a permanent basis ("i.e.", more than 12 weeks, the amount of time an unqualified caretaker manager is allowed to take control). Caretaker appointments are managers that fill the gap between a managerial departure and a new appointment. Several caretaker managers have gone on to secure a permanent managerial post after performing well as a caretaker, including Paul Hart at Portsmouth and David Pleat at Tottenham Hotspur.
Arsène Wenger is the longest-serving manager, having been in charge of Arsenal in the Premier League from 1996 to his retirement at the conclusion of the 2017–18 season, and holds the record for most matches managed in the Premier League with 828, all with Arsenal. He broke the record set by Alex Ferguson, who had managed 810 matches with Manchester United from the Premier League's inception to his retirement at the end of the 2012–13 season. Ferguson was in charge of Manchester United from November 1986 until his retirement at the end of the 2012–13 season, meaning he was manager for the last five years of the old Football League First Division and all of the first 21 seasons of the Premier League.
During the 2019–20 season, 6 managers have been sacked as of 28 December: Javi Gracia and Quique Sánchez Flores of Watford, Mauricio Pochettino of Tottenham Hotspur, Unai Emery of Arsenal, Marco Silva of Everton and Manuel Pellegrini of West Ham United.
There have been several studies into the reasoning behind, and effects of, managerial sackings. Most famously, Professor Sue Bridgewater of the University of Liverpool and Dr. Bas ter Weel of the University of Amsterdam, performed two separate studies which helped to explain the statistics behind managerial sackings. Bridgewater's study found clubs generally sack their managers upon dropping below an average of one point per match.
At the inception of the Premier League in 1992–93, just 11 players named in the starting line-ups for the first round of matches hailed from outside of the United Kingdom or Ireland. By 2000–01, the number of foreign players participating in the Premier League was 36% of the total. In the 2004–05 season, the figure had increased to 45%. On 26 December 1999, Chelsea became the first Premier League side to field an entirely foreign starting line-up, and on 14 February 2005, Arsenal were the first to name a completely foreign 16-man squad for a match. By 2009, under 40% of the players in the Premier League were English. By February 2020, 117 different nationalities had played in the Premier League, and 101 nationalities had scored in the competition.
In response to concerns that clubs were increasingly passing over young English players in favour of foreign players, in 1999, the Home Office tightened its rules for granting work permits to players from countries outside of the European Union. A non-EU player applying for the permit must have played for his country in at least 75 per cent of its competitive 'A' team matches for which he was available for selection during the previous two years, and his country must have averaged at least 70th place in the official FIFA world rankings over the previous two years. If a player does not meet those criteria, the club wishing to sign him may appeal.
Players may only be transferred during transfer windows that are set by the Football Association. The two transfer windows run from the last day of the season to 31 August and from 31 December to 31 January. Player registrations cannot be exchanged outside these windows except under specific licence from the FA, usually on an emergency basis. As of the 2010–11 season, the Premier League introduced new rules mandating that each club must register a maximum 25-man squad of players aged over 21, with the squad list only allowed to be changed in transfer windows or in exceptional circumstances. This was to enable the "home grown" rule to be enacted, whereby the Premier League would also from 2010 require at least eight members of the named 25-man squad to be "home-grown players".
There is no team or individual salary cap in the Premier League. As a result of the increasingly lucrative television deals, player wages rose sharply following the formation of the Premier League when the average player wage was £75,000 per year. In the 2018–19 season the average annual salary stood at £2.99 million.
The total salary bill for the 20 Premier League clubs in the 2018–19 was £1.62bn, this compares to £1.05bn in La Liga, £0.83bn in Serie A, £0.72bn in Bundesliga, and £0.54bn in Ligue 1. The club with the highest average wages is Manchester United at £6.5m. This is smaller than the club with the highest wage bill in Spain (Barcelona £10.5m), and Italy (Juventus £6.7m), but higher than in Germany (Bayern Munich £6.4m), and France (Paris St Germain 6.1m).
The ratio of the wages of the highest paid team to lowest paid in the Premier League is 6.82 to 1. This is much lower than in La Liga (19.1 to 1), Serie A (16 to 1), Bundesliga (20.5 to 1), and Ligue 1 (26.6 to 1). Because of the lower differential between team wage bills in the Premier League, it is often regarded as being more competitive than other top European leagues.
The record transfer fee for a Premier League player has risen steadily over the lifetime of the competition. Prior to the start of the first Premier League season Alan Shearer became the first British player to command a transfer fee of more than £3 million. The record has increased steadily and Philippe Coutinho is now the most expensive transfer involving a Premier League club at £106 million. The highest transfer fee paid by a Premier League club is £89 million for Paul Pogba.
"Italics" denotes players still playing professional football,Bold denotes players still playing in the Premier League.
The Golden Boot is awarded to the top Premier League scorer at the end of each season. Former Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United striker Alan Shearer holds the record for most Premier League goals with 260. Twenty-eight players have reached the 100-goal mark.
Since the first Premier League season in 1992–93, 14 players from 10 clubs have won or shared the top scorers title. Thierry Henry won his fourth overall scoring title by scoring 27 goals in the 2005–06 season. Andrew Cole and Alan Shearer hold the record for most goals in a season (34) – for Newcastle and Blackburn respectively. Ryan Giggs of Manchester United holds the record for scoring goals in consecutive seasons, having scored in the first 21 seasons of the league.
The Premier League maintains two trophies – the genuine trophy (held by the reigning champions) and a spare replica. Two trophies are held in the event that two clubs could win the League on the final day of the season. In the rare event that more than two clubs are vying for the title on the final day of the season – then a replica won by a previous club is used.
The current Premier League trophy was created by Royal Jewellers Asprey of London. It consists of a trophy with a golden crown and a malachite plinth base. The plinth weighs and the trophy weighs . The trophy and plinth are tall, wide and deep.
Its main body is solid sterling silver and silver gilt, while its plinth is made of malachite, a semi-precious stone. The plinth has a silver band around its circumference, upon which the names of the title-winning clubs are listed. Malachite's green colour is also representative of the green field of play. The design of the trophy is based on the heraldry of Three Lions that is associated with English football. Two of the lions are found above the handles on either side of the trophy – the third is symbolised by the captain of the title-winning team as he raises the trophy, and its gold crown, above his head at the end of the season. The ribbons that drape the handles are presented in the team colours of the league champions that year. In 2004, a special gold version of the trophy was commissioned to commemorate Arsenal winning the title without a single defeat.
In addition to the winner's trophy and the individual winner's medals awarded to players who win the title, the Premier League also issues other awards throughout the season.
A man of the match award is awarded to the player who has the greatest impact in an individual match.
Monthly awards are also given for the Manager of the Month, Player of the Month and Goal of the Month. These are also issued annually for Manager of the Season, Player of the Season. and Goal of the Season.
The Golden Boot award is given to the top goalscorer of every season, The Playmaker of the Season award is given to the player who make the most assists of every season and the Golden Glove award is given to the goalkeeper with the most clean sheets at the end of the season.
From the 2017–18 season, players also receive a milestone award for 100 appearances and every century there after and also players who score 50 goals and multiples thereof. Each player to reach these milestones will receive a presentation box from the Premier League containing a special medallion and a plaque commemorating their achievement.
In 2012, the Premier League celebrated its second decade by holding the 20 Seasons Awards: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11250 |
Fine Gael
Fine Gael (, ; English: "Family (or Tribe) of the Irish") is a liberal-conservative political party in Ireland. Fine Gael is currently the third-largest party in Ireland in terms of members of Dáil Éireann and largest in terms of Irish members of the European Parliament. The party has a membership of 21,000. From 2016 to 2020 Fine Gael was the senior partner governing in a minority coalition with several independent politicians, with party leader Leo Varadkar serving as Taoiseach. Varadkar succeeded Enda Kenny as party leader on 2 June 2017 and as Taoiseach on 14 June; Kenny had been leader since 2002, and Taoiseach since 2011.
Fine Gael was founded on 8 September 1933 following the merger of its parent party Cumann na nGaedheal, the National Centre Party and the National Guard. Its origins lie in the struggle for Irish independence and the pro-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War and Michael Collins, in particular, is often identified as the founder of the movement.
Fine Gael is generally considered to be more of a proponent of market liberalism than its traditional rival, Fianna Fáil. Apart from brief minority governments (as in 1987), Fine Gael has rarely governed Ireland without a coalition that also included the Labour Party, a social-democratic, centre-left party. Fine Gael describes itself as a "party of the progressive centre" which it defines as acting "in a way that is right for Ireland, regardless of dogma or ideology". It lists its core values as "equality of opportunity, free enterprise and reward, security, integrity and hope." In international politics, the party is in favour of the European Union, nevertheless, it generally supports strong relations with the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth of Nations and is opposed to physical force Irish republicanism. The party's youth wing, Young Fine Gael, was formed in 1977, and has approximately four thousand members. Fine Gael is a founding member of the European People's Party.
The following is a timeline of participation in governments and positions on proposed constitutional referenda:
The Fine Gael party has been described as liberal-conservative, Christian-democratic, centre-right liberal, conservative, and pro-European, combining cultural conservatism and economic liberalism.
Fine Gael adopted the 'Just Society' policy statement in the 1960s, based on principles of social justice and equality. It was created by the emerging social democratic wing of the party, led by Declan Costello. The ideas expressed in the policy statement had a significant influence on the party in the years to come.
While Fine Gael was traditionally socially conservative for most of the twentieth century due to the conservative Christian ethos of Irish society during this time, its members are variously influenced by social liberalism, social democracy and Christian democracy on issues of social policy. Under Garret FitzGerald, the party's more socially liberal, or pluralist, wing gained prominence. Proposals to allow divorce were put by referendum by two Fine Gael–led governments, in 1986 under FitzGerald, and in 1995 under John Bruton, passing very narrowly on this second attempt.
Fine Gael supported civil unions for same-sex couples from 2003, voting for the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Bill 2010, and the party approved a motion at its 2012 Ard Fheis to prioritise the consideration of same-sex marriage in the upcoming constitutional convention. In 2013 party leader and Taoiseach Enda Kenny declared his support for same-sex marriage. The Fine Gael-led government held a referendum on the subject on 22 May 2015. The referendum passed, with the electorate voting to extend full marriage rights to same-sex couples, with 62.1% in favour and 37.9% opposed. The party has run advertisements in GCN (Gay Community News) advertising its commitments to same-sex couples.
In 2015, months before the marriage equality referendum, Leo Varadkar became the first Irish government minister to come out as gay. In May 2019, former Rose of Tralee Maria Walsh, was elected as a Fine Gael MEP for the Midlands-Northwest constituency in the 2019 European Parliament election, running alongside Mairéad McGuinness MEP. Walsh was Fine Gael's first openly lesbian candidate.
Fine Gael has an LGBT+ section, Fine Gael LGBT, and in 2017, Leo Varadkar became the first Taoiseach to march in Dublin's Pride Parade.
In 1983, having initially supported the proposal, Fine Gael came out in opposition to the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution that was being submitted in a referendum in 1983, which sought to introduce a constitutional prohibition on abortion. Under then leader and Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald it campaigned for a 'No' vote, arguing, on the advice of the Attorney General Peter Sutherland, that the wording, which had been drafted under the previous government, when analysed was ambiguous and open to many interpretations. This referendum resulted in the Eighth Amendment to the Irish constitution, giving the unborn child a qualified equal right to life to that of the mother. Its stance conflicted with that of the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign (PLAC) and Catholic bishops, and Fianna Fáil, the largest party in the State at the time, but then in opposition.
The party also campaigned against the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution in 2002, which proposed to remove suicide as a grounds for granting a termination of a pregnancy. Suicide had been ruled as a ground, under the 8th amendment, in the X Case judgement of the Irish Supreme Court. The amendment was rejected by Irish voters.
In 2013 it proposed, and supported, the enactment of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013, which implemented in statute law the "X case" ruling of the Irish Supreme Court, granting access to a termination of a pregnancy where there is a real and substantial risk to the life, not the health, of the mother, including a threat of suicide. Five TDs & two Senators, including Minister of State Lucinda Creighton, lost the Fine Gael party whip for voting against the legislation. Creighton later left Fine Gael to found Renua The Act was criticised by various pro-life groups and Catholic bishops, but supported by a majority of the electorate in opinion polls, with many indicating they wished to see a more liberal law on abortion.
Enda Kenny's Fine Gael–led minority government took office after the 2016 election with a programme which promised a randomly selected Citizens' Assembly to report on possible changes to the Eighth Amendment, which would be considered by an Oireachtas committee, to whose report the government would respond officially in debates in both houses of the Oireachtas. Fine Gael Oireachtas members were promised a free vote on the issue. Leo Varadkar succeeded Enda Kenny as Taoiseach on 14 June 2017 and promised to hold a referendum on abortion in 2018. Several Fine Gael TDs, notably Health Minister Simon Harris and Kate O'Connell, were prominent supporters of the pro-choice side before and during the referendum. While the party was divided, the majority of Fine Gael TDs and Senators, as well as most members, were in favour of repealing the Eighth Amendment. A referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment was held on 25 May 2018 and was passed by 66.4% of voters.
Although Ireland's political spectrum was traditionally divided along Civil War lines, rather than the traditional European left–right spectrum, Fine Gael is described generally as a centre-right party, with a focus on law and order, enterprise and reward, and "fiscal rectitude". As the descendant of the pro-Treaty factions in the Irish Civil War, Fine Gael has a strong affinity with Michael Collins and his legacy. He remains a symbol for the party, and the anniversary of his death is commemorated each year in August.
Fine Gael has, since its inception, portrayed itself as a party of fiscal rectitude and minimal government interference in economics, advocating pro-enterprise policies. In that they followed the line of the previous pro-Treaty government that believed in minimal state intervention, low taxes and social expenditures. Newly elected politicians for the party in the Dáil have strongly advocated liberal economic policies. Lucinda Creighton (who has since left the party) and Leo Varadkar in particular have been seen as strong advocates of a neoliberal approach to Ireland's economic woes and unemployment problems. Varadkar in particular has been a strong proponent of small, indigenous business, advocating that smaller firms should benefit from the government's recapitalisation program. Its former finance spokesman Richard Bruton's proposals have been seen as approaching problems from a pro-enterprise point of view. Its fairer budget website in 2011 suggested that its solutions are "tough but fair". Other solutions conform generally to conservative governments' policies throughout Europe, focusing on cutting numbers in the public sector, while maintaining investment in infrastructure.
Fine Gael's proposals have sometimes been criticised mostly by smaller political groupings in Ireland, and by some of the trade unions, who have raised the idea that the party's solutions are more conscious of business interests than the interests of the worker. The SIPTU trade union has stated its opposition to the Taoiseach Enda Kenny's assertion, in response to Ireland's economic crisis, that the national wage agreement should be suspended. Kenny's comments had support however and the party attributes its significant rise in polls in 2008 to this.
Fine Gael's Simon Coveney launched what the party termed a radical re-organisation of the Irish semi-state company sector. Styled the "New Economy and Recovery Authority" (or "NewERA"), Coveney said that it is an economic stimulus plan that will ""reshape the Irish economy for the challenges of the 21st century"". Requiring an €18.2 billion investment in Energy, Communications and Water infrastructure over a four-year period, it was promoted as a way to enhance energy security and digital reputation of Ireland. A very broad ranging document, it proposed the combined management of a portfolio of semi-state assets, and the sale of all other, non-essential services. The release of equity through the sale of the various state resources, including electricity generation services belonging to the ESB, Bord na Móna and Bord Gáis, in combination with use of money in the National Pensions Reserve Fund, was Fine Gael's proposed funding source for its national stimulus package.
The plan was seen at being the basis of a Fine Gael program for government. Seen as being the longer term contribution to Fine Gael's economic plan, it has been publicised in combination with a more short term policy proposal from Leo Varadkar. This document, termed ""Hope for a Lost Generation"", promises to bring 30,000 young Irish people off the Live Register in a year by combining a National Internship Program, a Second Chance Education Scheme, an Apprenticeship Guarantee and Community Work Program, as well as instituting a German style, Workshare program.
Commentary on Fine Gael's economic proposals has generally been positive from some economic commentators including Eddie Hobbs and David McWilliams who have praised the proposals stating that they have considerable potential. The Labour Party has launched policies which are seen to be broadly consistent with the FG platform.
Fine Gael is seen as being a constitutional party, with members and public representatives always showing considerable deference to the institutional organs of the Irish state. The party leadership has been eager to be seen to engage in an ongoing constitutional debate in Ireland on the topic of political reform. The debate which has been monitored by the "Irish Times" in its Renewing the Republic opinion pieces, has largely centred on the make up of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament. Fine Gael's Phil Hogan TD, now a European Commissioner, has published the party's proposals for political and constitutional reform. In a policy document entitled "New Politics", Hogan suggested creating a country with "a smaller, more dynamic and more responsive political system," reducing the size of the Dáil by 20, changing the way the Dáil works, and in a controversial move, abolishing the Irish senate, Seanad Éireann.
Aiming to carry out the parties proposals through a series of constitutional referendums, the proposals were echoed by then Labour leader Eamon Gilmore, when he proposed his own constitutional "crusade" at his 2010 party conference, shortly after.
The Irish health system, being administered centrally by the Health Service Executive, is seen to be poor by comparison to other countries in Europe, ranking outside expected levels at 25th according to the Euro Health Consumer Index 2006.
Fine Gael wants Ireland to break with the system of private health insurance, public medical cards and what it calls the two tiers of the health system and has launched a campaign to see the system reformed. Speaking in favour of the campaign, Fine Gael then health spokesman James Reilly stated ""Over the last 10 years the health service has become a shambles. We regularly have over 350 people on trolleys in A&E, waiting lists that go on for months, outpatient waiting lists that go on for years and cancelled operations across the country...""
Fine Gael launched its "FairCare" campaign and website in April 2009, which stated that the health service would be reformed away from a costly ineffective endeavour, into a publicly regulated system where compulsory universal health insurance would replace the existing provisions.
This strategy was criticised by Fianna Fáil's then Minister for Children, Barry Andrews. The spokesperson for family law and children, Alan Shatter TD, robustly defended its proposals as the only means of reducing public expenditure, and providing a service in Ireland more akin to the Canadian, German, Dutch and Austrian health systems.
Fine Gael is among the most pro-European integration parties in Ireland, having supported the European Constitution, the Lisbon Treaty, and advocating participation in European common defence. Under Enda Kenny, the party questioned Irish neutrality, with Kenny claiming that "the truth is, Ireland is not neutral. We are merely unaligned." The party's youth wing, Young Fine Gael, passed a motion in 2016 calling on the government to apply for membership of NATO.
Since Brexit, Fine Gael has taken a strong pro-European stance, stating that Ireland's place is 'at the heart of Europe'. In government, the party has launched the 'Global Ireland' plan to develop alliances with other small countries across Europe and the world.
Fine Gael is a founding member of the European People's Party (EPP), the largest European political party comprising liberal conservative and Christian democratic national-level parties from across Europe. Fine Gael's MEPs sit with the EPP Group in the European Parliament, and FG parliamentarians also sit with the EPP Groups in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and Committee of the Regions. Young Fine Gael is a member of the Youth of the European People's Party (YEPP).
It is inferred from Fine Gael's relationship to European counterparts via membership of the European People's Party that FG belongs on the centre-right. The party conforms generally with European political parties that identify themselves as being Christian democratic. Some younger parliamentarians are identified with the centre-right. The Irish Times supplement described front bench member Leo Varadkar TD as having explicitly centre-right views.
At the 2011 general election, Fine Gael gained 25 seats bringing them to a total of 76. The party ran candidates in all 43 constituencies, and had candidates elected in every constituency except Dublin North-West.
Fine Gael won 19 seats in Seanad Éireann following the 2011 election, a gain of four from the previous election in 2007.
At the 2009 Local elections held on 5 June 2009, Fine Gael won 556 seats, surpassing Fianna Fáil which won 407 seats, and making Fine Gael the largest party of local government nationally. They gained 88 seats from their 2004 result.
At 2009 European Parliament election held on the same day as the Local elections, which saw a reduction in the number seats from 13 to 12 for Ireland, the party won four seats, retaining the largest number of seats of an Irish party in the European Parliament. This was a loss of one seat from its 2004 result.
While Fine Gael was responsible for the initial nomination of the uncontested, first President of Ireland, Douglas Hyde, a Fine Gael candidate has never won an election to the office of president. The most recent Fine Gael presidential candidate, Gay Mitchell, finished fourth in the 2011 presidential election, with 6.4% of the vote. In 2004, Fine Gael supported the re-election of President Mary McAleese.
In the 2016 general election the outgoing government consisting of Fine Gael and its partner the Labour Party was defeated. The previous government had the largest majority in the history of the state with a combined 113 seats out of the 166-seat Dáil Éireann. The aftermath of the general election resulted in months of negotiations for an agreement of government. A deal was reached with the main opposition and traditional rival Fianna Fáil to facilitate a minority Fine Gael-led government. Fine Gael now governs Ireland alone with eight Independent members of the Dáil.
The Moriarty Tribunal has sat since 1997 and has investigated the granting of a mobile phone license to Esat Telecom by Michael Lowry when he was Fine Gael Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications in the Rainbow Coalition of the mid-1990s. Lowry resigned from the Cabinet after it was revealed at the Moriarty Tribunal that businessman Ben Dunne had paid for an IR£395,000 extension to Lowry's County Tipperary home. Lowry, now an independent TD, supported the Fianna Fáil–Green Party government in Dáil Éireann until March 2011.
It was also revealed in December 1996 that Fine Gael had received some £180,000 from Ben Dunne in the period 1987 to 1993. This was composed of £100,000 in 1993, £50,000 in 1992 and £30,000 in 1989. In addition, Michael Noonan received £3,000 in 1992 towards his election campaign, Ivan Yates received £5,000, Michael Lowry received £5,000 and Sean Barrett received £1,000 in the earlier 1987 election. John Bruton said he had received £1,000 from Dunne in 1982 towards his election campaign, and Dunne had also given £15,000 to the Labour Party during the 1990 Presidential election campaign.
Following revelations at the Moriarty Tribunal on 16 February 1999, in relation to Charles Haughey and his relationship with AIB, former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald confirmed that AIB and Ansbacher wrote off debts of almost £200,000 that he owed in 1993, when he was in financial difficulties because of the collapse of the aircraft leasing company, GPA, in which he was a shareholder. The write-off occurred after Dr Fitzgerald left politics and Dr. Fitzgerald also said he believed his then Fine Gael colleague, Peter Sutherland, who was chairman of AIB at the time, was unaware of the situation.
The current leader of the Fine Gael party is Leo Varadkar, who, as well as being Ireland's youngest ever Taoiseach and is the country's first openly gay leader. The position of deputy leader has been held since 2017 by Simon Coveney TD, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The following are the terms of office as party leader and as Taoiseach (bolded) if applicable:
Young Fine Gael (YFG) is the youth movement of Fine Gael. It was founded in 1976 by the then leader Garret FitzGerald. It caters for young people under 35 with an interest in Fine Gael and politics, in cities, towns and third level colleges throughout Ireland. YFG has 4,000 members nationwide. YFG is led by its national executive consisting of ten members elected on a regional basis, and on a national panel. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11252 |
Fu Manchu
Dr. Fu Manchu is a fictional villain character who was introduced in a series of novels by the English author Sax Rohmer during the first half of the 20th century. The character was also extensively featured in cinema, television, radio, comic strips and comic books for over 90 years and he has also become an archetype of the evil criminal genius and mad scientist, while lending the name to the Fu Manchu mustache.
According to his own account, Sax Rohmer decided to start the Dr. Fu Manchu series after his Ouija board spelled out C-H-I-N-A-M-A-N when he asked what would make his fortune. During this time period, the notion of the "Yellow Peril" was spreading in North American society.
Rohmer wrote 14 novels concerning the villain. The image of Orientals invading Western nations became the foundation of Rohmer's commercial success, being able to sell 20 million copies in his lifetime.
Supervillain Dr. Fu Manchu's murderous plots are marked by the extensive use of arcane methods; he disdains guns or explosives, preferring dacoits, Thugs, and members of other secret societies as his agents (usually armed with knives), or using "pythons and cobras ... fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli ... my black spiders" and other peculiar animals or natural chemical weapons. He has a great respect for the truth (in fact, his word is his bond), and uses torture and other gruesome tactics to dispose of his enemies.
Dr. Fu Manchu is described as a mysterious villain because he seldom appears on the scene. He always sends his minions to commit crimes for him. In the novel "The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu", he sends a beautiful young girl to the crime scene to see the victim is dead. He also sends a dacoit to attack Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie.
In the novel "Fu Manchu's Bride" (1933), Dr. Fu Manchu claims to hold doctorates from four Western universities, while in "Emperor Fu Manchu" (1959), he states that he attended Heidelberg University, the Sorbonne, and the University of Edinburgh (in the film "The Mask of Fu Manchu", however, he states proudly that "I am a doctor of philosophy from Edinburgh, a doctor of law from Christ's College, a doctor of medicine from Harvard. My friends, out of courtesy, call me 'Doctor' ".). At the time of their first encounter (1911), Dr. Petrie believed that Dr. Fu Manchu was more than 70 years old. This would mean he was studying for his first doctorate in the 1860s or 1870s.
According to Cay Van Ash, Rohmer's biographer and former assistant who became the first author to continue the series after Rohmer's death, "Fu Manchu" was a title of honor, which meant "the warlike Manchu". Van Ash speculates that Dr. Fu Manchu had been a member of the imperial family of China, who had backed the losing side in the Boxer Rebellion. In the early books (1913–1917), Dr. Fu Manchu is an agent of the Chinese tong known as the Si-Fan and acts as the mastermind behind a wave of assassinations targeting Western imperialists. In the later books (1931–1959), he has gained control of the Si-Fan, which has been changed from a mere Chinese tong into an international criminal organization under his leadership which, in addition to attempting to take over the world and restore China to its ancient glory (Dr. Fu Manchu's main goals right from the beginning), also tries to rout fascist dictators and then halt the spread of worldwide Communism both for its leader's own selfish reasons, Dr. Fu Manchu knowing them both to be major rivals in his plans for world domination. The Si-Fan is largely funded through criminal activities, particularly the drug trade and human trafficking (or "white slavery"). Dr. Fu Manchu has extended his already considerable lifespan by use of the elixir of life, a formula that he had spent decades trying to perfect.
Opposing Dr. Fu Manchu in the stories are Sir Denis Nayland Smith and, in the first three books, Dr. Petrie. They are in the Holmes and Watson tradition, with Petrie narrating the stories (after the third book, they would be narrated by various others allied with Smith right up to the end of the series) while Smith carries the fight, combating Dr. Fu Manchu more by sheer luck and dogged determination than intellectual brilliance (except "in extremis"). Smith and Dr. Fu Manchu share a grudging respect for one another, as each believes that a man must keep his word, even to an enemy.
In the first three books, Smith is a colonial police commissioner in Burma granted a roving commission, which allows him to exercise authority over any group that can help him in his mission. He resembles Sherlock Holmes in physical description and acerbic manner, but not in deductive genius. He has been criticized as being a racist and jingoistic character, especially in the early books in the series, and gives voice to anti-Asian sentiments. When Rohmer revived the series in 1931, Smith (who has been knighted by this time for his efforts to defeat Dr. Fu Manchu, although he would always admit that the honor was not earned by superior intellect) is an ex-Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard. He later accepts a position with the British Secret Service. Several books have him placed on special assignment with the FBI.
Actors who played Dr. Fu Manchu:
Actors who played Sir Denis Nayland Smith:
Actors who played Dr. Petrie:
Prominent among Dr. Fu Manchu's agents was the "seductively lovely" Kâramanèh. Her real name is unknown. She was sold to the Si-Fan by Egyptian slave traders while she was still a child. Karamaneh falls in love with the narrator of the first three books in the series, Dr. Petrie. She rescues Petrie and Nayland Smith many times. Eventually, the couple are united and she wins her freedom. They marry and have a daughter, Fleurette, who figures in two later novels ("Fu Manchu's Bride" (1933) and its sequel, "The Trail of Fu Manchu" (1934)). Author Lin Carter later created a son for Dr. Petrie and Karamaneh, but this character is not considered canonical.
Dr. Fu Manchu's daughter, Fah Lo Suee, is a devious mastermind in her own right, frequently plotting to usurp her father's position in the Si-Fan and aiding his enemies both within, and outside of, the organization. Her real name is unknown; Fah Lo Suee was a childhood term of endearment. She was introduced anonymously while still a teenager in the third book in the series and plays a larger role in several of the titles of the 1930s and 1940s. She was known for a time as Koreani after being brainwashed by her father, but her memory was later restored. She is infamous for taking on false identities like her father, among them Madame Ingomar, Queen Mamaloi and Mrs. van Roorden. In film, she has been portrayed by numerous actresses over the years. Her character is usually renamed in film adaptations because of difficulties with the pronunciation of her name. Anna May Wong played Ling Moy in 1931's "Daughter of the Dragon". Myrna Loy portrayed the similarly-named Fah Lo See in 1932's "The Mask of Fu Manchu". Gloria Franklin had the role of Fah Lo Suee in 1940's "Drums of Fu Manchu". Laurette Luez played Karamaneh in 1956's "The Adventures of Dr. Fu Manchu", but the character owed more to Fah Lo Suee than Rohmer's depiction of Karamaneh. Tsai Chin portrayed Dr. Fu Manchu's daughter, Lin Tang, in the five Christopher Lee films of the 1960s.
As an ethnic fictional criminal mastermind, Dr. Fu Manchu has sparked numerous controversies of racism and "Orientalism", from his fiendish design to his faux Chinese name. After the release of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's film adaptation of "The Mask of Fu Manchu" (1932), which featured the Chinese villain telling an assembled group of "Asians" (consisting of caricatured Indians, Persians and Arabs) that they must "kill the white man and take his women", the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. issued a formal complaint against the film.
Following the release of Republic Pictures' serial adaptation of "Drums of Fu Manchu" (1940), the United States Department of State requested the studio make no further films about the character, as China was an ally against Japan during World War II. Likewise, Rohmer's publisher, Doubleday, refused to publish further additions to the best-selling series for the duration of World War II once the United States entered the conflict. BBC Radio and Broadway investors subsequently rejected Rohmer's proposals for an original Fu Manchu radio serial and stage show during the 1940s.
The re-release of "The Mask of Fu Manchu" in 1972 was met with protest from the Japanese American Citizens League, who stated that "the movie was offensive and demeaning to Asian Americans". Due to this protest, CBS television decided to cancel a showing of "The Vengeance of Fu Manchu". Los Angeles TV station KTLA shared similar sentiments, but ultimately decided to run "The Brides of Fu Manchu" with the disclaimer: "This feature is presented as fictional entertainment and is not intended to reflect adversely on any race, creed or national origin."
Rohmer responded to charges that his work demonized Asians in "Master of Villainy", a biography co-written by his wife:
It was Rohmer's contention that he based Dr. Fu Manchu and other "Yellow Peril" mysteries on real Chinese crime figures he met as a newspaper reporter covering Limehouse activities.
In May 2013, General Motors cancelled an advertisement after complaints that a phrase it contained, "the land of Fu Manchu", which was intended to refer to China, was offensive.
Characterizing Dr. Fu Manchu as an overtly racist creation has been criticized in the book "Lord of Strange Deaths: The Fiendish World of Sax Rohmer". In a review of the book in "The Independent", Dr. Fu Manchu is contextualized: "These magnificently absurd books, glowing with a crazed exoticism, are really far less polar, less black-and-white, less white-and-yellow, than they first seem."
The style of facial hair associated with him in film adaptations has become known as the Fu Manchu mustache. The "Fu Manchu" mustache is defined in the "Oxford English Dictionary" as a "long, narrow moustache whose ends taper and droop down to the chin", although Rohmer's writings described the character as wearing no such adornment.
Before the creation of Dr. Fu Manchu, Chinese people in Western culture were usually portrayed as victims in Western dominance. Dr. Fu Manchu was a new phase in Western culture where, suddenly, Chinese people were portrayed as the perpetrators and a threat to Western culture.
Because of this, the character of Dr. Fu Manchu became, for some, a stereotype embodying the "yellow peril". For some others, Dr. Fu Manchu became the most notorious personification of Western views towards the Chinese, and became the model for other villains in contemporary "yellow peril" thrillers: these villains often had characteristics consistent with the xenophobic ideologies towards East Asian people during the period of Western colonialism.
After World War II, the stereotype inspired by Dr. Fu Manchu increasingly became a subject of satire. Fred Fu Manchu, a "famous Chinese bamboo saxophonist", was a recurring character on "The Goon Show", a 1950s British radio comedy program. He was featured in the episode "The Terrible Revenge of Fred Fu Manchu" in 1955 (announced as "Fred Fu Manchu and his Bamboo Saxophone"), and made minor appearances in other episodes (including "China Story", "The Siege of Fort Night", and in "The Lost Emperor" as "Doctor Fred Fu Manchu, Oriental tattooist"). The character was created and performed by Spike Milligan, who used it to mock British xenophobia and self-satisfaction, the traits that summoned the original Fu Manchu into existence, and not as a slur against Asians. The character was further parodied in a later radio comedy, "Round the Horne", as Dr Chu En Ginsberg MA (failed), portrayed by Kenneth Williams.
In 1977, Trebor produced a "Fu Munchews" sweet.
Dr. Fu Manchu was parodied in the character of the Fiendish Dr. Wu in the action-comedy film "Black Dynamite" (2009), in which the executor of an evil plan against African-Americans is an insidious, mustache-sporting kung fu master.
Dr. Fu Manchu also made appearances in the following non-"Fu Manchu" books:
Dr. Fu Manchu first appeared on the big screen in the British silent film series "The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu" (1923) starring Harry Agar Lyons as Dr. Fu Manchu, a series of 15 short feature films, each running around 20 minutes. Lyons returned to the role in "The Further Mysteries of Dr. Fu Manchu" (1924), which comprised eight additional short feature films.
Dr. Fu Manchu made his American film debut in Paramount's early talkie, "The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu" (1929) starring Warner Oland, soon to be known for his portrayal of Charlie Chan. Oland repeated the role in "The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu" (1930) and "Daughter of the Dragon" (1931) as well as in the short film "Murder Will Out" (part of the omnibus film "Paramount on Parade") in which Dr. Fu Manchu confronts both Philo Vance and Sherlock Holmes.
The most controversial incarnation of the character was MGM's "The Mask of Fu Manchu" (1932) starring Boris Karloff and Myrna Loy. At the time of its first release, the film was considered racist and offensive by representatives of the Chinese government. The film was suppressed for many years, but has been released on DVD uncut.
Dr. Fu Manchu returned to the serial format in Republic Pictures' "Drums of Fu Manchu" (1940), a 15-episode serial considered to be one of the best the studio ever made. It was later edited and released as a feature film in 1943.
Other than an obscure, unauthorized Spanish spoof "El Otro Fu Manchu" (1946), the Devil Doctor was absent from the big screen for 25 years, until producer Harry Alan Towers began a series starring Christopher Lee in 1965. Towers and Lee would make five Dr. Fu Manchu films through to the end of the decade: "The Face of Fu Manchu" (1965), "The Brides of Fu Manchu" (1966), "The Vengeance of Fu Manchu" (1967), "The Blood of Fu Manchu" (1968), and "The Castle of Fu Manchu" (1969).
The character's last authorized film appearance was in the Peter Sellers spoof "The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu" (1980), with Sellers featured in a double role as both Dr. Fu Manchu and Nayland Smith. The film bore little resemblance to any prior film or the original books. In the film, Dr. Fu Manchu claims he was known as "Fred" at public school, a reference to the character of "The Terrible Revenge of Fred Fu Manchu" from a 1955 episode of "The Goon Show" which had co-starred Sellers.
Jess Franco, who had directed "The Blood of Fu Manchu" and "The Castle of Fu Manchu", also directed "The Girl From Rio", the second of three Harry Alan Towers films based on Rohmer's female Dr. Fu Manchu-like character, Sumuru. He later directed an unauthorized 1986 Spanish film featuring Dr. Fu Manchu's daughter, "Esclavas del Crimen".
In 2000, Lionsgate was developing a Fu Manchu reboot film, which was to have been directed by Álex de la Iglesia, and would have starred Antonio Banderas as an FBI agent on Manchu's trail. The unproduced film was scrapped due to an escalating budget.
In the film "Grindhouse" (2007), Nicolas Cage makes an uncredited comedic cameo appearance as Dr. Fu Manchu, during the "trailer" for the fake movie "Werewolf Women of the SS", directed by Rob Zombie.
A half-hour pilot was produced in 1952 for NBC's consideration starring Cedric Hardwicke as Sir Denis Nayland Smith, John Carradine as Dr. Fu Manchu, and Reed Hadley as Dr. John Petrie. NBC turned it down without broadcasting it, but it has been screened at special events.
The television arm of Republic Pictures produced a 13-episode syndicated series "The Adventures of Dr. Fu Manchu" (1956), starring Glen Gordon as Dr. Fu Manchu, Lester Matthews as Sir Denis Nayland Smith, and Clark Howat as Dr. John Petrie. The title sequence depicted Smith and Dr. Fu Manchu in a game of chess as the announcer stated that "the devil is said to play for men's souls. So does Dr. Fu Manchu, evil incarnate." At the conclusion of each episode, after Nayland Smith and Petrie had foiled Dr. Fu Manchu's latest fiendish scheme, Dr. Fu Manchu would be seen breaking a black chess piece in a fit of frustration (black king's bishop, always the same scene, repeated) just before the closing credits rolled. It was directed by Franklin Adreon, as well as William Witney. Dr. Fu Manchu was never allowed to succeed in this TV series. Unlike the Holmes/Watson type relationship of the films, the series featured Smith as a law enforcement officer and Petrie as a staff member for the Surgeon-General.
Dr. Fu Manchu's earliest radio appearances were on the "Collier Hour" 1927–1931 on the Blue Network. This was a radio program designed to promote "Collier's" magazine and presented weekly dramatizations of the current issue's stories and serials. Dr. Fu Manchu was voiced by Arthur Hughes. A self-titled show on CBS followed in 1932–33. John C. Daly, and later Harold Huber, played Dr. Fu Manchu.
In 2010 Fu Manchu's connections with Edinburgh University where he supposedly obtained a doctorate were investigated in a mockumentary by Miles Jupp for BBC Radio 4.
Additionally, there were "pirate" broadcasts from the Continent into Britain, from Radio Luxembourg and Radio Lyons in 1936 through 1937. Frank Cochrane voiced Dr. Fu Manchu. The BBC produced a competing series, "The Peculiar Case of the Poppy Club", starting in 1939. That same year, "The Shadow of Fu Manchu" aired in the United States as a thrice-weekly serial dramatizing the first nine novels.
Dr. Fu Manchu was first brought to newspaper comic strips in a black and white daily comic strip drawn by Leo O'Mealia (1884-1960) that ran from 1931 to 1933. The strips were adaptations of the first two Dr. Fu Manchu novels and part of the third. Unlike most other illustrators, O'Mealia drew Dr. Fu Manchu as a clean-shaven man with an abnormally large cranium. The strips were copyrighted by "Sax Rohmer and The Bell Syndicate, Inc.". Two of the Dr. Fu Manchu comic strip storylines were reprinted in the 1989 book "Fu Manchu: Two Complete Adventures".
Between 1962 and 1973, the French newspaper "Le Parisien Libéré" published a comic strip by Juliette Benzoni (script) and Robert Bressy (art). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11253 |
Friesland
Friesland ( , also , ; official ), historically known as Frisia, is a province of the Netherlands located in the northern part of the country. It is situated west of Groningen, northwest of Drenthe and Overijssel, north of Flevoland, northeast of North Holland, and south of the Wadden Sea. As of January 2020, the province had a population of 649,944 and a total area of .
The capital and seat of the provincial government is the city of Leeuwarden (West Frisian: "Ljouwert"), a city with 123,107 inhabitants. Other large municipalities in Friesland are Sneek (pop. 33,512), Heerenveen (pop. 50,257) and Drachten (pop. 55,938). Since 2017, Arno Brok is the King's Commissioner in the province. A coalition of the Christian Democratic Appeal, the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, the Labour Party and the Frisian National Party forms the executive branch. The province is divided into 18 municipalities. The area of the province was once part of the ancient, larger region of Frisia. The official languages of Friesland are West Frisian and Dutch.
In 1996 the States of Friesland resolved that the official name of the province should follow the West Frisian spelling rather than the Dutch spelling, resulting in "Friesland" being replaced by "Fryslân". In 2004 the Dutch government confirmed this resolution, putting in place a three-year scheme to oversee the name change and associated cultural programme.
The province of Friesland is occasionally referred to as "Frisia" by, amongst others, Hanno Brand, head of the history and literature department at the Fryske Akademy since 2009. However, the English-language webpage of the Friesland Provincial Council refers to the province as "Fryslân".
The Frisii were among the migrating Germanic tribes that, following the breakup of Celtic Europe in the 4th century BC, settled along the North Sea. They came to control the area from roughly present-day Bremen to Brugge, and conquered many of the smaller offshore islands. What little is known of the Frisii is provided by a few Roman accounts, most of them military. Pliny the Elder said their lands were forest-covered with tall trees growing up to the edge of the lakes. They lived by agriculture and raising cattle.
In his "Germania", Tacitus would describe all the Germanic peoples of the region as having elected kings with limited powers and influential military leaders who led by example rather than by authority. The people lived in spread-out settlements. He specifically noted the weakness of Germanic political hierarchies in reference to the Frisii, when he mentioned the names of two kings of the 1st century Frisii and added that they were kings "as far as the Germans are under kings".
In the 1st century BC, the Frisii halted a Roman advance and thus managed to maintain their independence. Some or all of the Frisii may have joined into the Frankish and Saxon peoples in late Roman times, but they would retain a separate identity in Roman eyes until at least 296, when they were forcibly resettled as "laeti" (Roman-era serfs) and thereafter disappear from recorded history. Their tentative existence in the 4th century is confirmed by archaeological discovery of a type of earthenware unique to 4th-century Frisia, called "terp Tritzum", showing that an unknown number of Frisii were resettled in Flanders and Kent, likely as "laeti" under the aforementioned Roman coercion. The lands of the Frisii were largely abandoned by c. 400 as a result of the conflicts of the Migration Period, climate deterioration, and the flooding caused by a rise in the sea level.
The area lay empty for one or two centuries, when changing environmental and political conditions made the region habitable again. At that time, during the Migration Period, "new" Frisians (probably descended from a merging of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisii) repopulated the coastal regions. These Frisians consisted of tribes with loose bonds, centred on war bands but without great power. The earliest Frisian records name four social classes, the "ethelings" ("nobiles" in Latin documents; "adel" in Dutch and German) and "frilings" ("vrijen" in Dutch and "Freien" in German), who together made up the "Free Frisians" who might bring suit at court, and the "laten" or "liten" with the slaves, who were absorbed into the "laten" during the Early Middle Ages, as slavery was not so much formally abolished, as evaporated. The "laten" were tenants of lands they did not own and might be tied to it in the manner of serfs, but in later times might buy their freedom.
Under the rule of King Aldgisl, the Frisians came in conflict with the Frankish mayor of the palace Ebroin, over the old Roman border fortifications. Aldgisl could keep the Franks at a distance with his army. During the reign of Redbad, however, the tide turned in favour of the Franks; in 690, the Franks were victorious in the Battle of Dorestad. In 733, Charles Martel sent an army against the Frisians. The Frisian army was pushed back to Eastergoa. The next year the Battle of the Boarn took place. Charles ferried an army across the Almere with a fleet that enabled him to sail up to De Boarn. The Frisians were defeated in the ensuing battle, and their last king Poppo was killed. The victors began plundering and burning heathen sanctuaries. Charles Martel returned with much loot, and broke the power of the Frisian kings for good. The Franks annexed the Frisian lands between the Vlie and the Lauwers. They conquered the area east of the Lauwers in 785, when Charlemagne defeated Widukind. The Carolingians laid Frisia under the rule of "grewan", a title that has been loosely related to count in its early sense of "governor" rather than "feudal overlord". About 100,000 Dutch drowned in a flood in 1228.
When, around 800, the Scandinavian Vikings first attacked Frisia, which was still under Carolingian rule, the Frisians were released from military service on foreign territory in order to be able to defend themselves against the heathen Vikings. With their victory in the Battle of Norditi in 884 they were able to drive the Vikings permanently out of East Frisia, although it remained under constant threat. Over the centuries, whilst feudal lords reigned in the rest of Europe, no aristocratic structures emerged in Frisia. This 'Frisian freedom' was represented abroad by "redjeven" who were elected from among the wealthier farmers or from elected representatives of the autonomous rural municipalities. Originally the "redjeven" were all judges, so-called "Asega", who were appointed by the territorial lords.
After significant territories were lost to Holland in the Friso-Hollandic Wars, Frisia saw an economic downturn in the mid-14th century. Accompanied by a decline in monasteries and other communal institutions, social discord led to the emergence of untitled nobles called "haadlingen" ("headmen"), wealthy landowners possessing large tracts of land and fortified homes who took over the role of the judiciary as well offering protection to their local inhabitants. Internal struggles between regional leaders resulted in bloody conflicts and the alignment of regions along two opposing parties: the Fetkeapers and Skieringers. On 21 March 1498, a small group of Skieringers from Westergo secretly met with Albert III, Duke of Saxony, the Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, in Medemblik requesting his help. Albrecht, who had gained a reputation as a formidable military commander, accepted and soon conquered all Friesland. Emperor Maximilian of Habsburg appointed Albrecht hereditary potestate and gubernator of Friesland in 1499.
In 1515, an army of peasant rebels and mercenaries known as the Arumer Zwarte Hoop started a peasants' revolt against the Habsburg authorities. The leader was the farmer Pier Gerlofs Donia, whose farm had been burned down and whose kinfolk had been killed by a marauding "Landsknecht" regiment. Since the regiment had been employed by the Habsburg authorities to suppress the civil war of the Fetkeapers and Skieringers, Donia put the blame on the authorities. After this he gathered angry peasants and some petty noblemen from Frisia and Gelderland and formed the "Arumer Zwarte Hoop".The rebels received financial support from Charles II, Duke of Guelders, who claimed the Duchy of Guelders in opposition to the House of Habsburg. Charles also employed mercenaries under command of his military commander Maarten van Rossum in their support. However, when the tides turned against the rebels after the Donia's death in 1520, Charles withdrew his support, without which the rebels could no longer afford to pay their mercenary army. The revolt was put to an end in 1523 and Frisia was incorporated into the Habsburg Netherlands, bringing an end to the Frisian freedom.
Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, became the first lord of the Lordship of Frisia. He appointed Georg Schenck van Toutenburg, who had crushed the peasants' revolt, as Stadtholder to rule over the province in his stead. When Charles abdicated in 1556, Frisia was inherited by Philip II of Spain along with the rest of the Netherlands. In 1566, Frisia joined the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule.
In 1577, George de Lalaing, Count of Rennenberg was appointed Stadtholder of Frisia and other provinces. A moderate, trusted by both sides, he tried to reconcile the rebels with the Crown. But in 1580, Rennenburg declared for Spain. The States of Frisia raised troops and took his strongholds of Leeuwarden, Harlingen and Stavoren. Rennenburg was deposed and Frisia became the fifth Lordship to join the rebels' Union of Utrecht. From 1580 onward, all stadtholders were members of the House of Orange-Nassau. With the Peace of Münster in 1648, Frisia became a full member of the independent Dutch Republic, a federation of provincies. In economic and therefore also political importance, Friesland was next in rank to the provinces of Holland and Zeeland.
In 1798, three years after the Batavian Revolution, the provincial lordship of Frisia was abolished and its territory was divided between the Eems and Oude IJssel departments. This was short-lived, however, as Frisia was revived, however as a department in 1802. When the Netherlands were annexed by the First French Empire in 1810, the department was in French renamed Frise. After Napoleon was defeated in 1813 and a new constitution was introduced in 1814, Friesland became a province of the Sovereign Principality of the United Netherlands, then of the unitary Kingdom of the Netherlands a year later.
Friesland is situated at in the northwest of the Netherlands, west of the province of Groningen, northwest of Drenthe and Overijssel, north of Flevoland, northeast of the IJsselmeer and North Holland, and south of the North Sea. It is the largest province of the Netherlands if one includes areas of water; in terms of land area only, it is the third-largest province.
Most of Friesland is on the mainland, but it also includes a number of West Frisian Islands, including Vlieland, Terschelling, Ameland and Schiermonnikoog, which are connected to the mainland by ferry. The province's highest point is a dune at above sea level, on the island of Vlieland.
There are four national parks of the Netherlands located in Friesland: Schiermonnikoog, De Alde Feanen, Lauwersmeer (partially in Groningen), and Drents-Friese Wold (also partially situated in Drenthe).
The ten urban areas in Friesland with the largest population are:
The province is divided into 18 municipalities, each with local government (municipal council, mayor and aldermen).
The province of Friesland has an oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfb).
In 2020, Friesland had a population of 649,944 and a population density of .
The years 1880–1900 show slower population growth due to a farm crisis during which some 20,000 Frisians emigrated to the United States.
Since the late Middle Ages, Friesland has been renowned for the exceptional height of its inhabitants, who were deemed among the tallest groups of Indo-Europeans. Even early Renaissance poet Dante Alighieri refers to the height of Frisians in his "Divine Comedy" when, in the canticle about Hell, he talks about the magnitude of an infernal demon by stating that "not even three tall Frieslanders, were they set one upon the other, would have matched his height".
Friesland is mainly an agricultural province. The black and white Frisian cattle, black and white Stabyhoun and the black Frisian horse originated here. Tourism is another important source of income: the principal tourist destinations include the lakes in the southwest of the province and the islands in the Wadden Sea to the north. There are 195 windmills in the province of Friesland, out of a total of about 1200 in the entire country.
The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the region was 19.8 billion € in 2018, accounting for 2.6% of the Netherlands economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 26,700 € or 89% of the EU27 average in the same year.
Friesland is the only one of the twelve provinces of the Netherlands to have its own language that is recognized as such, West Frisian. Before the 18th century, varieties of Frisian were also spoken in the provinces of North-Holland and Groningen, and together with the Frisian speakers in Ost-Friesland and North-Friesland a continuous linguistic area existed between Amsterdam and the present day Danish-German border.
According to a study carried out in 2007, West Frisian is the native language of the 54.3% of the inhabitants of the province of Friesland, followed by Dutch with 34.7%, and speakers of other regional languages, most of these restricted to Friesland, with 9.7%, and in the end other foreign languages with 1.4%. Frisian speakers are traditionally underrepresented in urban areas, and predominant in the countryside.
West-Frisian is also spoken in a small adjacent part of the province of Groningen. Up to the 18th century Frisian was spoken in the, at that time Prussian and Hannoveran, lordships of Ost-Friesland (East-Friesland). Since then the Ost-Frisian population switched to East Frisian ("Ostfriesisch"), a Low German dialect. Only in some, formerly remoted, East-Frisian villages (Saterland) a variety of historically East Frisian ("Seeltersk") is still in use but by an older generation. A collection of dialects named North Frisian, is or was spoken in North Friesland, alongside the North See Coast and on the islands of Slesvig-Holstein. The named Frisian languages are historically related to Old English which points at the fact that Anglians and Saxons, eventually accompanied by Frisians, came from these areas.
In Stellingwerf, in south-east Friesland, a dialect of Low Saxon is spoken.
The language policy in Friesland is preservation. West Frisian is a mandatory subject in Friesland in primary and secondary schools of the Frisian speaking districts. The bilingual (Dutch-Frisian) and trilingual (Dutch-English-Frisian) schools in the province of Friesland use in some lessons West-Frisian as a language of instruction, besides Dutch in most other lessons and next to them English. Literacy in Frisian however, is not often a core aim and that makes the number of Frisians speakers able to write in Frisian only 12%.
The provincial government takes various initiatives to preserve the West Frisian language. All parents in Friesland receive, at their children's birth, information about language and multilingualism (ex. 'taaltaske'). To support the use of Frisian in public and at public events, the province also invests in the development of speech pathology materials and strives to create information technology devices for the West Frisian language. The Frisian government subsidizes the Afûk organization, which offers language courses and actively promotes Frisian in all sectors of society as well as the corporate domain which as a rule is dominated by Dutch and Modern English. The province also promotes a wide range of art and entertainment in Frisian.
The province is famous for its speed skaters, with mass participation in cross-country ice skating when weather conditions permit. When winters are cold enough to allow the freshwater canals to freeze hard, the province holds its traditional Elfstedentocht (Eleven cities tour), a ice skating tour. A traditional sport is Frisian handball. Another Frisian practice is "fierljeppen", a sport with some similarities to pole vaulting. A jump consists of an intense sprint to the pole ("polsstok"), jumping and grabbing it, then climbing to the top while trying to control the pole's forward and lateral movements over a body of water and finishing with a graceful landing on a sand bed opposite to the starting point. Because of all the diverse skills required in fierljeppen, fierljeppers are considered to be very complete athletes with superbly developed strength and coordination. In the warmer months, many Frisians practice "wadlopen", the traditional art of wading across designated sections of the Wadden Sea at low tide.
There are currently two top level football clubs playing in Friesland: SC Cambuur from Leeuwarden (home stadium Cambuur Stadion) and SC Heerenveen (home stadium Abe Lenstra Stadion).
The King's Commissioner of Friesland is Arno Brok. The States of Friesland have 43 seats. The Provincial Executive is a coalition of the Christian Democratic Appeal, the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, the Labour Party and the Frisian National Party (FNP).
!colspan="2" align="left"|Party
!Votes
!Seats
!colspan="2" align="left"|Total
! 298.241
!align="center" | 43
The four motorways in the province are A6, A7 (E22), A31, and A32.
The main railway station of Friesland is Leeuwarden, which connects the railways Arnhem–Leeuwarden, Harlingen–Nieuweschans, and Leeuwarden–Stavoren which are all (partially) located in the province.
Ameland Airport near Ballum and Drachten Airfield near Drachten are the two general aviation airports in the province. The Royal Netherlands Air Force uses Vlieland Heliport and the Leeuwarden Air Base.
"Friesch Dagblad" and "Leeuwarder Courant" are daily newspapers mainly written in Dutch. Omrop Fryslân is the public broadcaster with radio and TV programs mainly in Frisian. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11254 |
Feminist science fiction
Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction (abbreviated "SF") focused on theories that include feminist themes including but not limited to gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, and reproduction. Feminist SF is political because of its tendency to critique the dominant culture. Some of the most notable feminist science fiction works have illustrated these themes using utopias to explore a society in which gender differences or gender power imbalances do not exist, or dystopias to explore worlds in which gender inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for feminist work to continue.
Feminist science fiction (SF) distinguishes between "female" SF authors and "feminist" SF authors. Both female and feminist SF authors are historically significant to the feminist SF subgenre, as female writers have increased women's visibility and perspectives in SF literary traditions, while the feminist writers have foregrounded political themes and tropes in their works. Because distinctions between female and feminist can be blurry, whether a work is considered feminist can be debatable, but there are generally agreed-upon canonical texts, which help define the subgenre.
As early as the English Restoration, female authors were using themes of SF and imagined futures to explore women's issues, roles, and place in society. This can be seen as early as 1666 in Margaret Cavendish's "The Blazing World", in which she describes a utopian kingdom ruled by an empress. This foundational work has garnered attention from some feminist critics, such as Dale Spender, who considered this a forerunner of the science fiction genre, more generally. Another early female writer of science fiction was Mary Shelley. Her novel "Frankenstein" (1818) dealt with the asexual creation of new life, and has been considered by some a reimagining of the Adam and Eve story.
Women writers involved in the utopian literature movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could be considered the first feminist SF authors. Their texts, emerging during the first-wave feminist movement, often addressed issues of sexism through imagining different worlds that challenged gender expectations. In 1881, "Mizora: A Prophecy" described a women-only world with technological innovations such as parthenogenesis, videophones, and artificial meat.
It was closely followed by other feminist utopian works, such as Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett's "New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future" (1889). In 1892, poet and abolitionist Frances Harper published "Iola Leroy", one of the first novels by an African American woman. Set during the antebellum South, it follows the life of a mixed race woman with mostly white ancestry and records the hopes of many African Americans for social equality—of race and gender—during Reconstruction. "Unveiling a Parallel" (1893) features a male protagonist who takes an "aeroplane" to Mars, visiting two different "Marsian" societies; in both, there is equality between men and women. In one, Paleveria, women have adopted the negative characteristics of men; in Caskia, the other, gender equality "has made both sexes kind, loving, and generous." Two American Populists, A.O. Grigsby and Mary P. Lowe, published "NEQUA or The Problem of the Ages" (1900), which explores issues of gender norms and posited structural inequality. This recently rediscovered novel displays familiar feminist SF conventions: a heroine narrator who masquerades as a man, the exploration of sexist mores, and the description of a future hollow earth society (like "Mizora") where women are equal.
"The Sultana's Dream" (1905), by Bengali Muslim feminist Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain, engages with the limited role of women in colonial India. Through depicting a gender-reversed purdah in an alternate technologically futuristic world, Hussain's book has been described as illustrating the potential for cultural insights through role reversals early on in the subgenre's formation. Along these same lines, Charlotte Perkins Gilman explores and critiques the expectations of women and men by creating a single-sex world in "Herland" (1915), possibly the most well-known of the early feminist SF and utopian novels.
During the 1920s and 1930s, many popular pulp science fiction magazines exaggerated views of masculinity and featured portrayals of women that were perceived as sexist. These views would be subtly satirized by Stella Gibbons in "Cold Comfort Farm" (1932) and much later by Margaret Atwood in "The Blind Assassin" (2000). As early as 1920, however, women writers of this time, such as Clare Winger Harris ("The Runaway World," 1926) and Gertrude Barrows Bennett ("Claimed", 1920), published science fiction stories written from female perspectives and occasionally dealt with gender and sexuality based topics.
John Wyndham, writing under his early pen-name of John Beynon Harris, was a rare pulp writer to include female leads in stories such as The Venus Adventure (Wonder Stories, 1932), in which a mixed crew travel to Venus. The story opens in a future in which women are no longer enslaved by pregnancy and childbirth thanks to artificial incubators, which are opposed by a religious minority. Women have used this freedom to enter professions including chemistry. Wyndham's outlook was so rare that in a serialisation of his novel Stowaway to Mars, one magazine editor "corrected" the name of the central character Joan to John. Wyndham then had to write them a new final instalment to replace the conclusion in which Joan fell in love and became pregnant.
The Post-WWII and Cold War eras were a pivotal and often overlooked period in feminist SF history. During this time, female authors utilized the SF genre to assess critically the rapidly changing social, cultural, and technological landscape. Women SF authors during the post-WWII and Cold War time periods directly engage in the exploration of the impacts of science and technology on women and their families, which was a focal point in the public consciousness during the 1950s and 1960s. These female SF authors, often published in SF magazines such as "The Avalonian", "Astounding", "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction", and "Galaxy", which were open to new stories and authors that pushed the boundaries of form and content.
At the beginning of the Cold War, economic restructuring, technological advancements, new domestic technologies (washing machines, electric appliances), increased economic mobility of an emerging middle class, and an emphasis on consumptive practices, carved out a new technological domestic sphere where women were circumscribed to a new job description – the professional housewife. Published feminist SF stories were told from the perspectives of women (characters and authors) who often identified within traditional roles of housewives or homemakers, a subversive act in many ways given the traditionally male-centered nature of the SF genre and society during that time.
In "Galactic Suburbia", author Lisa Yaszek recovers many women SF authors of the post-WWII era such as Judith Merril, author of "That Only a Mother" (1948), "Daughters of Earth" (1952), "Project Nursemaid" (1955), "The Lady Was a Tramp" (1957); Alice Eleanor Jones "Life, Incorporated" (1955), "The Happy Clown" (1955), "Recruiting Officer" (1955); and Shirley Jackson "One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts" (1955) and "The Omen" (1958). These authors often blurred the boundaries of feminist SF fiction and feminist speculative fiction, but their work laid substantive foundations for second-wave feminist SF authors to directly engage with the feminist project. "Simply put, women turned to SF in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s because it provided them with growing audiences for fiction that was both socially engaged and aesthetically innovative."
By the 1960s, science fiction was combining sensationalism with political and technological critiques of society. With the advent of second-wave feminism, women's roles were questioned in this "subversive, mind expanding genre". Three notable texts of this period are Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness" (1969), Marge Piercy's "Woman on the Edge of Time" (1976) and Joanna Russ' "The Female Man" (1970). Each highlights what the authors believe to be the socially constructed aspects of gender roles by creating worlds with genderless societies. Two of these authors were pioneers in feminist criticism of science fiction during the 1960s and 70s through essays collected in "The Language of the Night" (Le Guin, 1979) and "How To Suppress Women's Writing" (Russ, 1983). Men also contributed literature to feminist science fiction. Prominently, Samuel R. Delany's short story, "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" (1968), which won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1970, follows the life of a gay man that includes themes involving sadomasochism, gender, significance of language, and when high and low society encounter one another, while his novel "Babel-17" has an autistic woman of colour as its primary hero and protagonist. Octavia Butler's "Kindred" (1979) tells the story of an African American woman living in the United States in 1979 who uncontrollably time travels to the antebellum South. The novel poses complicated questions about the nature of sexuality, gender, and race when the present faces the past.
Feminist science fiction continues on into the 1980s with Margaret Atwood's novel "The Handmaid's Tale" (1985), a dystopic tale of a theocratic society in which women have been systematically stripped of all liberty. The book was motivated by fear of potential retrogressive effects on women's rights. Sheri S. Tepper is most known for her series The True Game, which explore the "Lands of the True Game", a portion of a planet explored by humanity somewhere in the future. In November 2015, she received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement for this series. Tepper has written under several pseudonyms, including A. J. Orde, E. E. Horlak, and B. J. Oliphant. Carol Emshwiller is another feminist SF author whose best known works are "Carmen Dog" (1988), "The Mount" (2002), and "Mister Boots" (2005). Emshwiller had also been writing SF for "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" since 1974. She won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2005 for her novel "The Mount" (2002). This novel explores the prey/predator mentality through an alien race. Another author of the 1980s, Pamela Sargent has written the "Seed Series", which included "Earthseed", "Farseed", and "Seed Seeker" (1983–2010), the "Venus Series" about the terraforming of Venus, which includes "Venus of Dreams", "Venus of Shadows", and "Child of Venus" (1986–2001), and "The Shore of Women" (1986). Sargent is also the 2012 winner of the Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions to SF/F studies. Lois McMaster Bujold has won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for her novella "The Mountains of Mourning", which is part of her series the "Vorkosigan Saga" (1986–2012). This saga includes points of view from a number of minority characters, and is also highly concerned with medical ethics, identity, and sexual reproduction.
More recent science fiction authors illuminate what they contend are injustices that are still prevalent. At the time of the LA Riots, Japanese-American writer Cynthia Kadohata's work "In the Heart of the Valley of Love" (1992) was published. Her story, set in the year 2052, examines tensions between two groups as defined as the "haves" and the "have-nots" and is written as seen through the eyes of a nineteen-year-old girl who is of Asian and African descent. Nalo Hopkinson's "Falling in Love With Hominids" (2015) is a collection of her short stories whose subjects range from an historical fantasy involving colonialism in the Caribbean, to age manipulation, to ethnic diversity in the land of Faerie, among others.
In the early 1990s, a new award opportunity for feminist SF authors was created. The James Tiptree, Jr. Award is an annual literary prize for works of science fiction or fantasy that expand or explore one's understanding of gender (Alice Sheldon was a female writer who published science fiction under the Tiptree pen name). Science fiction authors Pat Murphy and Karen Joy Fowler initiated this subsequent discussion at WisCon in February 1991. The authors' publishing in feminist SF after 1991 were now eligible for an award named after one of the genre's beloved authors. Karen Joy Fowler herself is considered a feminist SF writer for her short stories, such as "What I Didn't See", for which she received the Nebula Award in 2004. This story is an homage to Sheldon, and describes a gorilla hunting expedition in Africa. Pat Murphy won a number of awards for her feminist SF novels as well, including her second novel "The Falling Woman" (1986), a tale of personal conflict and visionary experiences set during an archaeological field study for which she won the Nebula Award in 1988. She won another Nebula Award in the same year for her story "Rachel in Love". Her short story collection, "Points of Departure" (1990) won the Philip K. Dick Award, and her 1990 novella "Bones" won the 1991 World Fantasy Award.
Other winners of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award include "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell (1996), "Black Wine" by Candas Jane Dorsey (1997), "Redwood and Wildfire" by Andrea Hairston (2011), "The Drowning Girl" by Caitlin R. Kiernan (2012), "The Carhullan Army" by Sarah Hall (2007), "Ammonite" by Nicola Griffith (1993), and "The Conqueror's Child" by Suzy McKee Charnas (1999). All of these authors have had an important impact on the SF world by adding a feminist perspective to the traditionally male genre.
Eileen Gunn's science fiction short story "Coming to Terms" received the Nebula Award (2004) in the United States and the Sense of Gender Award (2007) in Japan, and has been nominated twice each for the Hugo Award, Philip K. Dick Award and World Fantasy Award, and short-listed for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. Her most popular anthology of short stories is "Questionable Practices", which includes stories "Up the Fire Road" and "Chop Wood, Carry Water". She also edited "The WisCon Chronicles 2: Provocative Essays on Feminism, Race, Revolution, and the Future" with L. Timmel Duchamp. Duchamp has been known in the feminist SF community for her first novel "Alanya to Alanya" (2005), the first of a series of five titled "The Marq'ssan Cycle". "Alanya to Alanya" is set on a near-future earth controlled by a male-dominated ruling class patterned loosely after the corporate world of today. Duchamp has also published a number of short stories, and is an editor for Aqueduct Press. Lisa Goldstein is another well respected feminist sf author. The novelette "Dark Rooms" (2007) is one of her better known works, and another one of her novels, "The Uncertain Places", won the Mythopoeic Award for Best Adult Novel in 2012.
Works of feminist science fiction are often similar in the goals they work towards as well as the subjects and plotlines they focus on in order to achieve those goals. Feminist science fiction is science fiction that carries across feminist ideals and the promotion of societal values such as gender equality, and the elimination of patriarchal oppression. Feminist science fiction works often present tropes that are recurrent across science fiction with an emphasis on gender relations and gender roles. Many elements of science fiction, such as cyborgs and implants, as well as utopias and dystopias, are given context in a gendered environment, providing a real contrast with present-day gender relations while remaining a work of science fiction.
Representations of utopian and dystopian societies in feminist science fiction place an increased emphasis on gender roles while countering the anti-utopian philosophies of the 20th century. Male philosophers such as John Rawls, Isaiah Berlin, and Michael Oakeshott often criticize the idea of utopia, theorizing that it would be impossible to establish a utopia without violence and hegemony. Many male authored works of science fiction as well as threads of philosophical utopian thought dismiss utopias as something unattainable, whereas in feminist science fiction, utopian society is often presented as something both achievable and desirable.
Anti-utopian philosophies and feminist science fiction come to odds in the possibility of achieving utopia. In "Rehabilitating Utopia: Feminist Science Fiction and Finding the Ideal", an article published in Contemporary Justice Review, philosophers against the dream of utopia argue that "First is the expectation that utopia justifies violence, second is the expectation that utopia collapses individual desires into one communal norm, and third is the expectation that utopia mandates a robotic focus on problem-solving." In feminist science fiction, utopias are often realized through a communal want for an ideal society. One such novel is summarized in the aforementioned article, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novel "Herland", in which "Gilman perfectly captures the utopian impulse that all problems are solvable. She establishes a society where every consideration about a question aims for the rational answer." Gilman's utopia is presented as something attainable and achievable without conflict, neither enabling violence nor extinguishing individualism.
In the Parable trilogy by feminist science fiction novelist Octavia Butler, anti-utopian philosophies are criticized via a dystopian setting. In the first novel, "Parable of the Sower", following the destruction of her home and family, Lauren Olamina, one of many who live in a dystopian, ungoverned society, seeks to form her own utopian religion entitled 'Earthseed'. Olamina's utopian creation does not justify the use of violence as a means, no matter how expedient, to justify the end, achieving utopia, no matter how desirable. Yet we witness that she cannot avoid violence, as it results from little more than promulgating ideas different from those held by the majority of those living within the current social structure, however disorganized and ungoverned that social structure may be. Butler posits that utopian society can never be achieved as an entity entirely separate from the outside world, one of the more commonly held beliefs about conditions necessary to achieve utopia. Olamina's, and Butler's, utopia is envisioned as a community with a shared vision that is not forced on all within it.
One common trend in feminist science fiction utopias is the existence of utopian worlds as single-gendered – most commonly female. In literary works female utopias are portrayed as free of conflict, and intentionally free of men. The single gendered utopias of female science fiction are free of the conflicts that feminism aims to eliminate, such as patriarchal oppression and the gender inequality inherent in patriarchal society. In a statement about these single gendered utopias, Joanna Russ, author of "The Female Man" , theorized that male-only societies were not written because in patriarchal society, male oppression is not as pressing an issue as is female oppression.
Utopia as an ideal to strive for is not a concept wholly limited to feminist science fiction, however many non-feminist science fiction works often dismiss utopia as an unachievable goal, and as such, believe that pursuits for utopia should be considered dangerous and barren. Anti-utopian theory focuses on the 'how' in the transition from present to society to a utopian future. In feminist science fiction, the achievement of a utopian future depends on the ability to recognize the need for improvement and the perseverance to overcome the obstacles present in creating a utopian society.
Perhaps the most obvious attraction of science fiction to women writers – feminist or not – is the possibilities it offers for the creation of a female hero. The demands of realism in the contemporary or historical novel set limits which do not bind the universes available to science fiction. Although the history of science fiction reveals few heroic, realistic, or even original images of women, the genre had a potential recognized by the women writers drawn to it in the 1960s and 1970s. Before this time, the appeal for women writers was not that great. The impact of feminism on the science fiction field can be observed not only in science fiction texts themselves, but also on the development of feminist approaches to science fiction criticism and history, as well as conversations and debates in the science fiction community. One of the main debates is about the representation of women in science fiction.
In her article "Redefining Women's Power through Feminist Science Fiction", Maria DeRose suggests that, "One of the great early socialists said that the status of women in a society is a pretty reliable index of the degree of civilization of that society. If this is true, then the very low status of women in science fiction should make us ponder about whether science fiction is civilized at all". The women's movement has made most of us conscious of the fact that Science Fiction has totally ignored women. This "lack of appreciation" is the main reason that women are rebelling and actively fighting to be noticed in the field anyway.
Virginia Wolf relates to this aspect of feminist science fiction in the article "Feminist Criticism and Science Fiction for Children". As she discusses the scarcity of women in the field, she states, "During the first period, that of the nineteenth century, apparently only two women wrote Science Fiction, Mary Shelley and Rhoda Broughton," and continues, "In the early twentieth century, a few women were successful Science Fiction writers". But, "The times changed. Repression gave way to questioning and outright rebellion, and in the Science Fiction of the 1960s stylistic innovations and new concerns emerged 'Many of their stories, instead of dealing with the traditional hardware of science fiction, concentrated on the effects that different societies or perceptions would have on individual characters'". Andre Norton, a semi-well known analyst of Science fiction argues along these lines as well. As Norton explored one or more novels she came across, she realized that the creation of characters and how they are shown is a clear connection to the real world situation. From here, she goes in depth of characters in these feminist novels and relates them to the real world. She concludes here article along these lines. She wanted to get the idea out that feminists have a way to get their voice out there. Now, all their works are famous/ popular enough for their ideas to be let out. Virginia Wolf can attest to this fact. She introduced the idea that women were not represented well in the field till the early 1900s and added to the fact by stating, "Women are not represented well in Science Fiction".
Individual characters, as we come to know, have their own perception and observation of their surroundings. Characters in novels such as "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" by James Tiptree and Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" are fully aware of the situation at hand and their role in society. This idea is a continuation of the argument presented by Andre Norton. Wolf argues the same point in her analysis of Le Guin's writing, who has many contributions to the works of feminist Science Fiction. Wolf argues, "What matters to Le Guin is not what people look like or how they behave but whether or not they have choice and whether or not they receive respect for who they are and what they do rather than on the basis of sex. Feminism is for her not a matter of how many women (or characters in Science Fiction) are housewives but a part of our hope for survival, which she believes lies in the search for balance and integration". This stirs up many questions about equality (a debate which has been going on for many years) but nobody seems to have an answer. In this continual search for equality, many characters find themselves asking the same question: "Is Gender Necessary" (which is, coincidentally, one of Le Guin's novels and also another problem arising from gender biases). Robin Roberts, an American literary historian, addresses the link of these characters and what that means for our society today. Roberts believes that men and women would like to be equal, but are not equal. They should be fighting the same battle when in fact they are fighting each other. She also debates that gender equality has been a problem in every reach of feminism, not just in feminist science fiction. Wolf also tackles this problem, "As she explains in "Is Gender Necessary?", "The Left Hand of Darkness" convinced her that if men and women were completely and genuinely equal in their social roles, equal legally and economically, equal in freedom, in responsibility, and in self-esteem, ... our central problem would not be the one it is now: the problem of exploitation—exploitation of the woman, of the weak, of the earth' (p. 159)". Science fiction criticism has come a long way from its defensive desire to create a canon. All of these authors demonstrate that science fiction criticism tackles the same questions as other literary criticism: race, gender, and the politics of Feminism itself. Wolf believes that evaluating primarily American texts, written over the past one hundred and twenty years, these critics locate science fiction's merits in its speculative possibilities. At the same time, however, all note that the texts they analyze reflect the issues and concerns of the historical period in which the literature was written. DeRose introduces her article with, in effect, the same argument. She says, "the power of women in Science Fiction has greatly depreciated in the past few years".
Feminist science fiction offers authors the opportunity to imagine worlds and futures in which women are not bound by the standards, rules, and roles that exist in reality. Rather, the genre creates a space in which the gender binary might be troubled and different sexualities may be explored.
As Anna Gilarek explains, issues of gender have been a part of feminist discourse throughout the feminist movement, and the work of authors such as Joanna Russ and Marge Piercy explore and expose gender based oppression. Gilarek outlines two approaches to social critique via Feminist SF: the use of fantastical elements such as "invented worlds, planets, moons, and lands", used to call attention to the ills of society by exaggerating them, or a more straightforward approach, "relying on realist techniques to convey the message about the deficiencies of our world and its social organization, in particular the continued inequality of women". There are many examples of redefined gender roles and gender identity found in Feminist SF, ranging from the inversion of gendered oppression to the amplification of gender stereotypes and tropes. In the short story "The Matter of Seggri", by Ursula Le Guin, traditional gender roles are completely swapped. Men are relegated to roles of athletes and prostitutes while women control the means of production and have exclusive access to education. In Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale", gendered oppression is exaggerated in a dystopian society in which women's rights are stripped away and fertile women are relegated to the roles of handmaids who will bear children to further the human race. New books continue the dystopian theme of women living in a society which conforms to the wishes of men, at the expense of women's rights and well-being, such as in Louise O'Neill's young adult novel "Only Ever Yours". In this work, females are no longer born naturally but are genetically designed before birth to conform to the physical desires of men, then placed in a school in which they are taught not to think (they are never taught to read), and to focus on appearance until they are rated by beauty on a scale at age sixteen, with the top ten becoming the brides of elite men, the middle ten forced into concubinage, and the bottom ten forced to continue their lives as instructors at the school in very humiliating circumstances. At age forty, the women are euthanized. In the post-apocalyptic novel, "Gather the Daughters", by Jennie Melamed, females living in an island society are sexually exploited from the time they are girls, are forced to marry at adolescence, and after they become grandmothers must commit suicide.
Over the decades, SF and feminist SF authors have taken different approaches to criticizing gender and gendered society. Helen Merrick outlines the transition from what Joanna Russ describes as the "Battle of the Sexes" tradition to a more egalitarian or androgynous approach. Also known as the "Dominant Woman" stories, the "Battle of the Sexes" stories often present matriarchal societies in which women have overcome their patriarchal oppressors and have achieved dominance. These stories are representative of an anxiety that perceives women's power as a threat to masculinity and the heterosexual norm. As Merrick explains, "And whilst they may at least hint at the vision of a more equal gendered social order, this possibility is undermined by figuring female desire for greater equality in terms of a (stereotypical) masculine drive for power and domination." Examples of these types of stories, written in the 1920s and 30s through the 50s, include Francis Steven's "Friend Island" and Margaret Rupert's "Via the Hewitt Ray"; in 1978, Marion Zimmer Bradley released "The Ruins of Isis", a novel about a futuristic matriarchy on a human colony planet where the men are extremely oppressed.
In the 1960s and 1970s, feminist SF authors shifted from the "Battle of the Sexes" writing more egalitarian stories and stories that sought to make the feminine more visible. Ursula Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness" portrayed an androgynous society in which a world without gender could be imagined. In James Tiptree Jr.'s short story "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?", women are able to be seen in their full humanity due to the absence of men in a post-apocalyptic society. Joanna Russ's works, including "When it Changed" and "The Female Man" are other examples of exploring femininity and a "deconstruction of the acceptable, liberal 'whole' woman towards a multiple, shifting postmodernist sense of female 'selfhood'".
Feminist science fiction is evidenced in the globally popular mediums of comic books, manga, and graphic novels. One of the first appearances of a strong female character was that of the superhero Wonder Woman, co-created by husband and wife team William Moulton Marston and Elizabeth Holloway Marston. In December 1941, Wonder Woman came to life on the pages of "All Star Comics", and in the intervening years has been reincarnated in from animated TV series to live-action films, with significant cultural impact. By the early 1960s, Marvel Comics already contained some strong female characters, although they often suffered from stereotypical female weakness such as fainting after intense exertion. By the 1970s and 1980s, true female heroes started to emerge on the pages of comics. This was helped by the emergence of self-identified feminist writers including Ann Nocenti, Linda Fite, and Barbara Kesel. As female visibility in comics increased, the "fainting heroine" type began to fade into the past. However, some female comic book writers, such as Gail Simone, believe that female characters are still relegated to plot devices (see "Women in Refrigerators").
Feminism in science fiction shōjo manga has been a theme in the works of Moto Hagio among others, for whom the writings of Ursula K. Le Guin have been a major influence.
Feminism has driven the creation of a considerable body of action-oriented science fiction with female protagonists: Wonder Woman (originally created in 1941) and "The Bionic Woman" during the time of the organized women's movement in the 1970s; "" and the "Alien tetralogy" in the 1980s; and "Xena, Warrior Princess", comic book character "Red Sonja", and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". 2001 science fiction TV series "Dark Angel" featured a powerful female protagonist, with gender roles between her and the main male character generally reversed.
However, feminists have also created science fiction that directly engages with feminism beyond the creation of female action heroes. Television and film have offered opportunities for expressing new ideas about social structures and the ways feminists influence science. Feminist science fiction provides a means to challenge the norms of society and suggest new standards for how societies view gender. The genre also deals with male/female categories, showing how female roles can differ from feminine roles. Hence feminism influences the film industry by creating new ways of exploring and looking at masculinity/femininity and male/female roles. A contemporary example of feminist science fiction television can be found in "Orphan Black", which deals with issues of reproductive justice, science, gender, and sexuality.
By the 1970s, the science fiction community was confronting questions of feminism and sexism within science fiction culture itself. Multiple Hugo-winning fan writer and professor of literature Susan Wood and others organized the "feminist panel" at the 1976 World Science Fiction Convention against considerable resistance. Reactions to the appearance of feminists among fannish ranks led indirectly to the creation of "A Women's APA" and WisCon.
Feminist science fiction is sometimes taught at the university level to explore the role of social constructs in understanding gender.
In the 1970s, the first feminist science fiction publications were created. The most well-known are fanzines "The Witch and the Chameleon" (1974–1976) and "Janus" (1975–1980), which later became "Aurora SF" (Aurora Speculative Feminism) (1981–1987). Windhaven, "A Journal of Feminist Science Fiction" was published from 1977 to 1979 by Jessica Amanda Salmonson in Seattle. Special issues of magazines linked to science fiction meetings were also published at that moment, like the Khatru symposium's fanzine "Women in Science Fiction" in 1975.
"Femspec" is a feminist academic journal specializing in speculative fiction, including science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, mythic explorations in poetry and post-modern fiction, and horror. There is a conscious multicultural focus of the journal, both in content and in the diverse makeup of its editorial group. The first issue came out in 1999 under the editorial direction of founder Batya Weinbaum, who is still the Editor-in-Chief. "Femspec" is still publishing and has brought over 500 authors, critics and artists into print. Having lost their academic home in May 2003, they increasingly cross genres and print write-ups of all books and media received, as well as of events that feature creative works that imaginatively challenge gender such as intentional communities, performance events, and film festivals. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11257 |
Fatwa
A fatwā (, also ; ; plural fatāwā ) is a nonbinding legal opinion on a point of Islamic law ("sharia") given by a qualified jurist in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist issuing fatwas is called a "mufti", and the act of issuing fatwas is called iftāʾ. Fatwas have played an important role throughout Islamic history, taking on new forms in the modern era.
Resembling "jus respondendi" in Roman law and rabbinic "responsa", privately issued fatwas historically served to inform Muslim populations about Islam, advise courts on difficult points of Islamic law, and elaborate substantive law. In later times, public and political fatwas were issued to take a stand on doctrinal controversies, legitimize government policies or articulate grievances of the population. During the era of European colonialism, fatwas played a part in mobilizing resistance to foreign domination.
Muftis acted as independent scholars in the classical legal system. Over the centuries, Sunni muftis were gradually incorporated into state bureaucracies, while Shia jurists in Iran progressively asserted an autonomous authority starting from the early modern era.
In the modern era, fatwas have reflected changing economic, social and political circumstances, and addressed concerns arising in varied Muslim communities. The spread of codified state laws and Western-style legal education in the modern Muslim world has displaced muftis from their traditional role of clarifying and elaborating the laws applied in courts. Instead, modern fatwas have increasingly served to advise the general public on other aspects of sharia, particularly questions regarding religious rituals and everyday life. Modern public fatwas have addressed and sometimes sparked controversies in the Muslim world, and some fatwas in recent decades have gained worldwide notoriety. The legal methodology of modern "ifta" often diverges from pre-modern practice, particularly so in the West. Emergence of modern media and universal education has transformed the traditional institution of "ifta" in various ways. While the proliferation of contemporary fatwas attests to the importance of Islamic authenticity to many Muslims, little research has been done to determine how much these fatwas affect the beliefs or behavior of the Muslim public.
The word "fatwa" comes from the Arabic root "f-t-y", whose meanings include 'youth, newness, clarification, explanation'. A number of terms related to "fatwa" derive from the same root. A jurist issuing fatwas is called a "mufti". The person who asks for a fatwa is known as "mustafti". The act of issuing fatwas is called "iftāʾ". The term "futyā" refers to soliciting and issuing fatwas.
In older English language works the spelling fetva, from Turkish, is used, relating to the Ottoman Empire.
The origins of the "fatwa" can be traced back to the Quran. On a number of occasions, the Quranic text instructs the Islamic prophet Muhammad how to respond to questions from his followers regarding religious and social practices. Several of these verses begin with the phrase "When they ask you concerning ..., say ..." In two cases (4:127, 4:176) this is expressed with verbal forms of the root "f-t-y", which signify asking for or giving an authoritative answer. In the hadith literature, this three-way relationship between God, Muhammad, and believers, is typically replaced by a two-way consultation, in which Muhammad replies directly to queries from his Companions ("sahaba").
According to Islamic doctrine, with Muhammad's death in 632, God ceased to communicate with mankind through revelation and prophets. At that point, the rapidly expanding Muslim community turned to Muhammad's Companions, as the most authoritative voices among them, for religious guidance, and some of them are reported to have issued pronouncements on a wide range of subjects. The generation of Companions was in turn replaced in that role by the generation of Successors ("tabi'un"). The concept of fatwa thus developed in Islamic communities under a question-and-answer format for communicating religious knowledge, and took on its definitive form with development of the classical theory of Islamic law.
The legal theory of the fatwa was formulated in the classical texts of "usul al-fiqh" (principles of jurisprudence), while more practical guidelines for muftis were found in manuals called "adab al-mufti" or "adab al-fatwa" (etiquette of the mufti/fatwa).
Fatwas are issued in response to a query. They can range from a simple yes/no answer to a book-length treatise. A short fatwa may state a well-known point of law in response to a question from a lay person, while a "major" fatwa may give a judgment on an unprecedented case, detailing the legal reasoning behind the decision. Queries to muftis were supposed to address real and not hypothetical situations and be formulated in general terms, leaving out names of places and people. Since a mufti was not supposed to inquire into the situation beyond the information included in the query, queries regarding contentious matters were often carefully constructed to elicit the desired response. A mufti's understanding of the query commonly depended on their familiarity with local customs and colloquialisms. In theory, if the query was unclear or not sufficiently detailed for a ruling, the mufti was supposed to state these caveats in their response.
Fatwas were solicited by men and women from all social classes. A mufti could be an obscure scholar, who occasionally replied to queries from people in his neighborhood, or, at the other extreme, a famous jurist or a powerful state official. The level of technical detail supplied in a fatwa, such as citations of sources or specification of legal methodologies employed, depended on the technical level of the petitioner. In theory, a petitioner was supposed to verify the mufti's scholarly reputation, but mufti manuals ("adab al-mufti") recognized that it would be difficult for a lay person to do so, and advised the petitioner to trust their sense of the mufti's piety and ideally follow the advice of a single scholar known for exemplary morals. The mufti was often a well-known figure in his neighborhood. Some petitioners could choose among several local muftis, while others had to or chose to travel to receive a fatwa. Judges commonly sent letters to solicit fatwas from prominent jurists in another town or even country. Sunni legal theory generally permits the petioner to obtain a fatwa from multiple jurists on the same query, provided that it addresses a real and not hypothetical situation. Some petitioners sought out a second fatwa because they were unsatisfied with the first, and the two sides in a legal dispute generally each sought to obtain a fatwa that would support their position. Muftis often consulted another mufti on difficult cases, though this practice was not foreseen by legal theory, which saw "futya" as a transaction between one qualified jurist and one "unqualified" petitioner.
In theory, a mufti was expected to issue fatwas free of charge. In practice, muftis commonly received support from the public treasury, public endowments or private donations. Taking of bribes was forbidden. Until the 11th or 12th century, the vast majority of jurists held other jobs to support themselves. These were generally lower- and middle-class professions such as tanning, manuscript copying or small trade.
In theory, fatwas could be delivered orally or in writing, but it is not clear how common oral fatwas were, aside from those issued by an Ottoman office established specifically for the purpose of issuing oral fatwas. Many routine, written fatwas were delivered directly to the petitioner on the piece of paper containing the query, leaving no documentary trace. However, large collections of ordinary fatwas are preserved in Ottoman and Indian archives. Mufti manuals contained a number of regulations about the standard format of a fatwa, such as avoiding blank space that could be used for a spurious addition and concluding the fatwa with an expression like "allahu a'lam" (God knows best). Nonetheless, fatwas took on a variety of forms depending on the local legal culture.
The classical institution of fatwa is similar to "jus respondendi" in Roman law and the "responsa" in Jewish law.
Fatwas have played three important roles in the classical legal system:
Before the rise of modern education, the study of law was a centerpiece of advanced education in the Islamic world. A relatively small class of legal scholars controlled the interpretation of sharia on a wide range of questions essential to the society, ranging from ritual to finance. It was considered a requirement for qualified jurists to communicate their knowledge through teaching or issuing fatwas. The ideal mufti was conceived as an individual of scholarly accomplishments and exemplary morals, and muftis were generally approached with the respect and deference corresponding to these expectations.
Judges generally sought an opinion from a mufti with higher scholarly authority than themselves for difficult cases or potentially controversial verdicts. Fatwas were routinely upheld in courts, and if a fatwa was disregarded, it was usually because another fatwa supporting a different position was judged to be more convincing. If a party in a dispute was not able to obtain a fatwa supporting their position, they would be unlikely to pursue their case in court, opting for informal mediation instead, or abandoning their claim altogether. Sometimes muftis could be petitioned for a fatwa relating to a court judgement that has already been passed, acting as an informal appeals process, but the extent of this practice and its mechanism varied across history. While in most of the Islamic world judges were not required to consult muftis by any political authority, in Muslim Spain this practice was mandatory, so that a judicial decision was considered invalid without prior approval by a legal specialist.
Author-jurists collected fatwas by muftis of high scholarly reputation and abstracted them into concise formulations of legal norms that could be used by judges, giving a summary of jurisprudence for a particular "madhhab" (legal school). Author-jurists sought out fatwas that reflected the social conditions of their time and place, often opting for later legal opinions which were at variance with the doctrine of early authorities. Research by Wael Hallaq and Baber Johansen has shown that fatwa compilations could, and sometimes did, have a significant impact on the development of Islamic law.
During the early centuries of Islam, the roles of mufti, author-jurist and judge were not mutually exclusive. A jurist could lead a teaching circle, conduct a fatwa session, and adjudicate court cases in a single day, devoting his night hours to writing a legal treatise. Those who were able to act in all four capacities were regarded as the most accomplished jurists.
From the standpoint of morality and religious obligation, the term "fatwa" has been contrasted with "taqwa" (piety, fear of God), particularly in Sufi literature. Fatwas may allow a choice between lenient and strict interpretation of "sharia" on a certain matter, or they may employ legalistic stratagems ("hiyal") to circumvent a stricter interpretation, while such strategies may not be acceptable from the standpoint of "taqwa".
The basic prerequisite for issuing fatwas under the classical legal theory was religious knowledge and piety. According to the "adab al-mufti" manuals, a mufti must be an adult, Muslim, trusted and reliable, of good character and sound mind, an alert and rigorous thinker, trained as a jurist, and not a sinner. On a practical level, the stature of muftis derived from their reputation for scholarly expertise and upright character.
According to legal theory, it was up to each mufti to decide when he was ready to practice. In practice, an aspiring jurist would normally study for several years with one or several recognized scholars, following a curriculum that included Arabic grammar, hadith, law and other religious sciences. The teacher would decide when the student was ready to issue fatwas by giving him a certificate ("ijaza").
During the first centuries of Islam, it was assumed that a mufti was a "mujtahid", i.e., a jurist who is capable of deriving legal rulings directly from the scriptural sources through independent reasoning ("ijtihad"), evaluating the reliability of hadith and applying or even developing the appropriate legal methodologies. Starting from around 1200 CE, legal theorists began to accept that muftis of their time may not possess the knowledge and legal skill to perform this activity. In addition, it was felt that the major question of jurisprudence had already been addressed by master jurists of earlier times, so that later muftis only had to follow the legal opinions established within their legal school ("taqlid"). At that point, the notions of "mufti" and "mujtahid" became distinguished, and legal theorists classified jurists into three or more levels of competence.
Among Twelver Shia, the Akhbari school of jurisprudence, which was predominant for a time during the early modern era, hold a different view on "ifta" from the currently predominant Usuli school. According to the Usulis, fatwas can be based on valid conjecture ("zann") arrived through "ijtihad", and every Muslim who is not qualified to be a "mujtahid" should become a follower ("muqallid") of a "mujtahid". In contrast, Akhbaris hold that all Shia Muslims must be "muqallids" of the Twelve Imams, and that fatwas should reflect only knowledge that is certain ("qatʿ") and based on the traditions of the Imams.
Unlike the post of "qadi", which is reserved for men in the classical sharia system, fatwas could be issued by qualified women as well as men. In practice, the vast majority of jurists who completed the lengthy curriculum in linguistic and religious sciences required to obtain the qualification to issue fatwas were men. Slaves and persons who were blind or mute were likewise theoretically barred from the post of a judge, but not that of mufti.
The mufti and the judge play different roles in the classical sharia system, with corresponding differences between a fatwa and a "qada" (court decision):
Before the 11th century CE, anyone who possessed scholarly recognition as an Islamic jurist could issue fatwas. Starting around that time, however, the public office of mufti began to appear alongside the private issuing of fatwas. In Khurasan, the rulers appointed a head of the local ulama, called "shaykh al-Islam", who also functioned as the chief mufti. The Mamluks appointed four muftis, one for each of the four Sunni madhhabs, to appellate courts in provincial capitals. The Ottomans organized muftis into a hierarchical bureaucracy with a chief mufti of the empire called "shaykh al-islam" at the top. The Ottoman "shaykh al-Islam" (Turk. "şeyhülislam"), was among the most powerful state officials. Scribes reviewed queries directed to Ottoman muftis and rewrote them to facilitate issuing of fatwas. In Mughal India and Safavid Iran the chief mufti had the title of "sadr".
For the first few centuries of Islam, muftis were educated in informal study circles, but beginning in the 11th and 12th centuries, the ruling elites began to establish institutions of higher religious learning known as madrasas in an effort to secure support and cooperation of the "ulema" (religious scholars). Madrasas, which were primarily devoted to the study of law, soon multiplied throughout the Islamic world, helping to spread Islamic learning beyond urban centers and to unite diverse Islamic communities in a shared cultural project.
In some states, such as Muslim Spain, muftis were assigned to courts in advisory roles. In Muslim Spain jurists also sat on a "shura" (council) advising the ruler. Muftis were additionally appointed to other public functions, such as market inspectors.
While the office of the mufti was gradually subsumed into the state bureaucracy in much of the Sunni Muslim world, Shia religious establishment followed a different path in Iran starting from the early modern era. During Safavid rule, independent Islamic jurists ("mujtahids") claimed the authority to represent the hidden imam. Under the Usuli doctrine that prevailed among Twelver Shias in the 18th century and under the Qajar dynasty, the "mujtahids" further claimed to act collectively as deputies of the imam. According to this doctrine, every Muslim is supposed to choose and follow a high-ranking living "mujtahid" bearing the title of "marja' al-taqlid", whose fatwas are considered binding, unlike fatwas in Sunni Islam. Thus, in contrast to Sunni muftis, Shia "mujtahids" gradually achieved increasing independence from the state.
While most fatwas were delivered to an individual or a judge, some fatwas that were public or political in nature played an important role in religious legitimation, doctrinal disputes, political criticism, or political mobilization. As muftis were progressively incorporated into government bureaucracies in the course of Islamic history, they were often expected to support government policies. Ottoman sultans regularly sought fatwas from the chief mufti for administrative and military initiatives, including fatwas sanctioning jihad against Mamluk Egypt and Safavid Iran. Fatwas by the Ottoman chief mufti were also solicited by the rulers to lend religious legitimacy to new social and economic practices, such as financial and penal laws enacted outside of sharia, printing of nonreligious books (1727) and vaccination (1845).
At other times muftis wielded their influence independently of the ruler, and several sultans in Morocco and the Ottoman Empire were dethroned as a result of fatwas issued by influential jurists. This happened, for example, to the Ottoman sultan Murad V on the grounds of his insanity. Public fatwas were also used to dispute doctrinal matters, and in some case to proclaim that certain groups or individuals who professed to be Muslim were to be excluded from the Islamic community (a practice known as "takfir"). In both political and scholarly sphere, doctrinal controversies between different states, denominations or centers of learning were accompanied by dueling fatwas. Muftis also acted to counteract the influence of judges and secular functionaries. By articulating grievances and legal rights of the population, public fatwas often prompted an otherwise unresponsive court system to provide redress.
Early in the era of Western colonialism, several fatwas were issued drawing on the classical legal distinction between lands under Islamic rule ("dar al-Islam") and lands of war ("dar al-harb") or unbelief ("dar al-kufr"). These fatwas classified countries under European domination as lands of war or unbelief and invoked the legal theory obliging Muslims to wage war against the rulers of these lands or emigrate. A number of such fatwas were issued during the 19th century, including in 1803 by Shah Abdul Aziz in India and in 1804 by Usman dan Fodio in West Africa. The unrealistic nature of these fatwas was soon recognized and in 1870 the "ulama" of northern India issued fatwas stating that Indian Muslims were not obliged to rebel or emigrate. A similar doctrinal controversy occurred in French-ruled Algeria. The fatwas solicited by the Algerian anti-colonial leader Abd al-Qadir differed in their technical detail, while the French authorities obtained fatwas from local muftis, stating that Muslims living under the rule of unbelievers were not obligated to fight or emigrate as long as they were granted religious freedom by the authorities.
On many other occasions, fatwas served as an effective tool for influencing the political process. For example, in 1904 a fatwa by Moroccan ulema achieved the dismissal of European experts hired by the Moroccan government, while in 1907 another Moroccan fatwa succeeded in deposing the sultan on accusation that he failed to mount a defense against French aggression. The 1891 tobacco protest fatwa by the Iranian "mujtahid" Mirza Shirazi, which prohibited smoking as long as the British tobacco monopoly was in effect, also achieved its goals.
Under European colonial rule, the institution of "dar al-ifta" was established in a number of madrasas (law colleges) as a centralized place for issuing of fatwas, and these organizations to a considerable extent replaced independent muftis as religious guides for the general population. Following independence, most Muslim states established national organizations devoted to issuing fatwas. One example is the Egyptian Dar al-Ifta, founded in 1895, which has served to articulate a national vision of Islam through fatwas issued in response to government and private queries. National governments in Muslim-majority countries also instituted councils of senior religious scholars to advise the government on religious matters and issue fatwas. These councils generally form part of the ministry for religious affairs, rather than the justice department, which may have a more assertive attitude toward the executive branch.
While chief muftis of earlier times oversaw a hierarchy of muftis and judges applying traditional jurisprudence, most modern states have adopted European-influenced legal codes and no longer employ traditional judicial procedures or traditionally trained judges. State muftis generally promote a vision of Islam that is compatible with state law of their country.
Although some early theorists argued that muftis should not respond to questions on certain subjects, such as theology, muftis have in practice handled queries relating to a wide range of subjects. This trend continued in modern times, and contemporary state-appointed muftis and institutions for "ifta" respond to government and private queries on varied issues, including political conflicts, Islamic finance, and medical ethics, contributing to shaping a national Islamic identity.
There exists no international Islamic authority to settle differences in interpretation of Islamic law. An International Islamic Fiqh Academy was created by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, but its legal opinions are not binding.
Modern fatwas have been marked by an increased reliance on the process of "ijtihad", i.e. deriving legal rulings based on an independent analysis rather than conformity with the opinions of earlier legal authorities ("taqlid"). While in the past muftis were associated with a particular school of law ("madhhab"), in the 20th century many muftis began to assert their independence from traditional schools of jurisprudence.
The most notorious result of disregarding classical jurisprudence are the fatwas of militant extremists who have interpreted the Quran and hadith as supporting suicide bombings, indiscriminate killing of bystanders, and declaration of self-professed Muslims as unbelievers ("takfir").
New forms of ijtihad have also given rise to fatwas that support such notions as gender equality and banking interest, which are at variance with classical jurisprudence. This is commonly accomplished by application of various traditional legal doctrines such as the "maqasid" (objectives) of sharia, "maslaha" (public interest) and "darura" (necessity), in place of adhering to the letter of scriptural sources. The main argument for this approach is that Islamic law is meant to serve the interest of Muslims and make their lives easier ("taysīr"). This form of ijtihad is particularly prominent in "fiqh al-aqallīyāt" (minority jurisprudence), a recently developed branch of Islamic jurisprudence that aims to address the needs of Muslims living in countries with a non-Muslim majority. Its opponents object that sharia is supposed to determine the interests of Muslims, and not the other way around.
On November 14, 1914 the Ottoman sultan proclaimed a jihad to mark the official entry of the Ottoman Empire into World War I. The proclamation was supported by a fatwa issued by the Shaykh al-Islam. Contrary to the German hopes that the proclamation would trigger Muslim revolts in British and French colonies, it was either rejected or quietly ignored by their Muslim authorities. It also quickly gave rise to a heated academic debate in Europe. The controversy was sparked by an 1915 article by the prominent Dutch orientalist C. Snouck Hurgronje, titled "Heilige Oorlog [Holy War] Made in Germany". In it Hurgronje denounced his German colleagues, who he felt instigated the jihad proclamation in an irresponsible appeal to an antiquated concept that threatened the project of modernizing the Muslim world. The article was widely circulated in an English translation and its accuracy continues to be debated by historians, who acknowledge both the German influence and the internal political calculations of the Ottoman government underlying the proclamation.
Several boycott fatwas were issued in modern times, such as the one issued by Iraqi ulema in 1933, calling on Muslims to boycott Zionist products. In 2004 Yusuf al-Qaradawi issued a fatwa calling for boycott of Israeli and American products, arguing that buying these goods would strengthen the "enemy" fighting against Muslims in the struggle over Palestine.
Some muftis in the modern era, like the mufti of the Lebanese republic in the mid-20th century and the Grand Mufti of the Sultanate of Oman, were important political leaders. In Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini used proclamations and fatwas to introduce and legitimize a number of institutions, including the Council of the Islamic Revolution and the Iranian Parliament.
Khomeini's most publicized fatwa was the proclamation condemning Salman Rushdie to death for his novel "The Satanic Verses". Khomeini himself did not call this proclamation a fatwa, and some scholars have argued that it did not qualify as one, since in Islamic legal theory only a court can decide whether an accused is guilty. However, after the proclamation was presented as a fatwa in Western press, this characterization was widely accepted by both its critics and its supporters, and the Rushdie Affair is credited with bringing the institution of fatwa to world attention. Together with later militant fatwas, it has contributed to the popular misconception of the fatwa as a religious death warrant.
Many militant and reform movements in modern times have disseminated fatwas issued by individuals who do not possess the qualifications traditionally required of a mufti. A famous example is the fatwa issued in 1998 by Osama bin Laden and four of his associates, proclaiming "jihad against Jews and Crusaders" and calling for killing of American civilians. In addition to denouncing its content, many Islamic jurists stressed that bin Laden was not qualified to either issue a fatwa or declare a jihad.
The Amman Message was a statement, signed in 2005 in Jordan by nearly 200 prominent Islamic jurists, which served as a "counter-fatwa" against a widespread use of "takfir" (excommunication) by jihadist groups to justify jihad against rulers of Muslim-majority countries. The Amman Message recognized eight legitimate schools of Islamic law and prohibited declarations of apostasy against them. The statement also asserted that fatwas can be issued only by properly trained muftis, thereby seeking to delegitimize fatwas issued by militants who lack the requisite qualifications.
Erroneous and sometimes bizarre fatwas issued by unqualified or eccentric individuals in recent times have sometimes given rise to complaints about a "chaos" in the modern practice of "ifta".
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, a group of Middle Eastern Islamic scholars issued a fatwa permitting Muslims serving in the U.S. army to participate in military action against Muslim countries, in response to a query from a U.S. Army Muslim chaplain. This fatwa illustrated two increasingly widespread practices. First, it drew directly on the Quran and hadith without referencing the body of jurisprudence from any of the traditional schools of Islamic law. Secondly, questions from Western Muslims directed to muftis in Muslim-majority countries have become increasingly common, as about one-third of Muslims now live in Muslim-minority countries.
Institutions devoted specifically to issuing fatwas to Western Muslims have been established in the West, including the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA, founded in 1986) and the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR, founded in 1997). These organizations aim to provide fatwas that address the concerns of Muslim minorities, helping them to comply with sharia, while stressing compatibility of Islam with diverse modern contexts. The FCNA was founded with the goal of developing legal methodologies for adopting Islamic law to life in the West. The ECRF draws on all major schools of Sunni law as well as other traditional legal principles, such as concern for the public good, local custom, and the prevention of harm, to derive fatwas suitable for life in Europe. For example, a 2001 ECRF ruling allowed a woman who had converted to Islam to remain married without requiring her husband's conversion, based in part on the existence of European laws and customs under which women are guaranteed the freedom of religion. Rulings of this kind have been welcomed by some, but also criticized by others as being overly eclectic in legal methodology and having potential to negatively impact the interpretation of sharia in Muslim-majority countries.
The needs of Western Muslims have given rise to a new branch of Islamic jurisprudence which has been termed the jurisprudence of (Muslim) minorities ("fiqh al-aqallīyāt"). The term is believed to have been coined in a 1994 fatwa by Taha Jabir Alalwani, then the chairman of FCNA, which encouraged Muslim citizens to participate in American politics. This branch of jurisprudence has since been developed primarily, but not exclusively for Muslim minorities in the West.
Advances in communication technology and the rise of the internet have changed the reception and role of fatwas in modern society. In the pre-modern era, most fatwas issued in response to private queries were read only by the petitioner. Early in the 20th century, the reformist Islamic scholar Rashid Rida responded to thousands of queries from around the Muslim world on a variety of social and political topics in the regular "fatwa" section of his Cairo-based journal "Al-Manar". In the late 20th century, when the Grand Mufti of Egypt Sayyid Tantawy issued a fatwa allowing interest banking, the ruling was vigorously debated in the Egyptian press by both religious scholars and lay intellectuals.
In the internet age, a large number of websites has appeared offering fatwas to readers around the world. For example, IslamOnline publishes an archive of "live fatwa" sessions, whose number approached a thousand by 2007, along with biographies of the muftis. Together with satellite television programs, radio shows and fatwa hotlines offering call-in fatwas, these sites have contributed to the rise of new forms of contemporary "ifta". Unlike the concise or technical pre-modern fatwas, fatwas delivered through modern mass media often seek to be more expansive and accessible to the wide public.
Modern media have also facilitated cooperative forms to "ifta". Networks of muftis are commonly engaged by fatwa websites, so that queries are distributed among the muftis in the network, who still act as individual jurisconsults. In other cases, Islamic jurists of different nationalities, schools of law, and sometimes even denominations (Sunni and Shia), coordinate to issue a joint fatwa, which is expected to command greater authority with the public than individual fatwas. The collective fatwa (sometimes called "ijtihād jamāʿī", "collective legal interpretation") is a new historical development, and it is found in such settings as boards of Islamic financial institutions and international fatwa councils.
As the role of fatwas on strictly legal issues has declined in modern times, there has been a relative increase in the proportion of fatwas dealing with rituals and further expansion in purely religious areas like Quranic exegesis, creed, and Sufism. Modern fatwas also deal with a wide variety of other topics, including insurance, sex-change operations, moon exploration, beer drinking, abortion in the case of fatal foetal abnormalities, or males and females sharing workplaces. Public "fatwa wars" have reflected political controversies in the Muslim world, from anti-colonial struggles to the Gulf War of the 1990s, when muftis in some countries issued fatwas supporting collaboration with the US-led coalition, while muftis from other countries endorsed the Iraqi call for jihad against the US and its collaborators. In the private sphere, some muftis have begun to resemble social workers, giving advice on various personal issues encountered in everyday life.
The social profile of the fatwa petitioner has also undergone considerable changes. Owing to the rise of universal education, those who solicit fatwas have become increasingly educated, which has transformed the traditional mufti–mustafti relationship based on restricted literacy. The questioner is now also increasingly likely to be female, and in the modern world Muslim women tend to address muftis directly rather than conveying their query through a male relative as in the past. Since women now represent a significant proportion of students studying Islamic law and qualifying as muftiyas, their prominence in its interpretation is likely to rise. A fatwa hotline in the United Arab Emirates provides access to either male or female muftis, allowing women to request fatwas from female Islamic legal scholars.
The vast amount of fatwas produced in the modern world attests to the importance of Islamic authenticity to many Muslims. However, there is little research available to indicate to what extent Muslims acknowledge the authority of various fatwas and heed their rulings in real life. Rather than reflecting the actual conduct or opinions of Muslims, these fatwas may instead represent a collection of opinions on what Muslims "ought to think". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11259 |
Relax (song)
"Relax" is the debut single by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, released in the United Kingdom by ZTT Records in 1983. The song was later included on the album "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" (1984).
Although fairly inauspicious upon initial release, "Relax" finally reached number one on the UK singles chart on 22 January 1984, ultimately becoming one of the most controversial and most commercially successful records of the decade. The single eventually sold a reported 2 million copies in the UK alone, making it the seventh best-selling single in the UK Singles Chart's history. Following the release of the group's second single, "Two Tribes", "Relax" rallied from a declining UK chart position during June 1984 to climb back up the UK charts and re-attain the number 2 spot behind "Two Tribes" at number 1, making them the only act at the time to have occupied the top two simultaneously apart from The Beatles and John Lennon.
Upon its release in the United States, "Relax" repeated its slow UK progress. In its initial release, it peaked at number 67 in May 1984. In January 1985, it re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 70, eventually reaching number 10 in March.
The song won Best British Single at the 1985 Brit Awards.
The song featured on the soundtrack of the films "Body Double" and "T2 Trainspotting", in the game "" in the fictional in-game radio station Wave 103, and on the soundtrack to "".
Singer Holly Johnson has claimed that the words of the song came to him as he was walking down Princess Avenue in Liverpool: "I mean they were just, you know, words that floated into my head one day when I was walking down Princess Avenue (in Liverpool) with no bus fare, trying to get to rehearsals – I mean there was no great sort of calculated, 'Oh I'll sing these words and this record’ll be banned'."
ZTT Records signed Frankie Goes to Hollywood after producer-turned-ZTT cofounder Trevor Horn saw the band play on the television show "The Tube", on which the group played an early version of "Relax". Horn described the original version of "Relax" as "More a jingle than a song", but he preferred to work with songs that were not professionally finished because he could then "fix them up" in his own style. Once the band was signed, ZTT co-founder Paul Morley mapped out the marketing campaign fashioned as a "strategic assault on pop". Morley opted to tackle the biggest possible themes in the band's singles ("sex, war, religion"), of which "Relax" would be the first, and emphasized the shock impact of Frankie members Holly Johnson's and Paul Rutherford's open homosexuality in the packaging and music videos.
Horn dominated the recording of "Relax" in his effort for perfectionism. The band were overawed and intimidated by Horn's reputation, and thus were too nervous to make suggestions. Johnson said in his autobiography, "Whatever he said we went along with". When attempts to record with the full band proved unsatisfactory, Horn hired former Ian Dury backing band the Blockheads for the sessions, with Norman Watt-Roy providing the original bass line. Those sessions were later deemed to be not modern sounding enough. Horn then constructed a more electronic-based version of the song with keyboards by session musician Andy Richards and with rhythm programming assistance from J. J. Jeczalik of Art of Noise. Horn developed this version of the recording in his west London studio while the band remained in their hometown of Liverpool. Horn had made 3 versions of "Relax" prior to Richards and guitarist Stephen Lipson joining his ZTT Production 'Theam' in late 1983. Horn left the studio late one night asking for Lipson to erase the multitrack (of version 3) due to lack of progress, but came back into the studio some time later to hear Richards playing a variety of modal chords based around the key of E minor with Lipson playing guitar along to the unerased multitrack. Ultimately lead vocalist Johnson was the only band member to perform on the record; the only contribution by the other members was a sample crafted from the sound of the rest of the band jumping into a swimming pool. Horn explained years later, "I was just... Look, 'Relax' "had" to be a hit." Despite the band's absence from the record, Horn said, "I could never have done these records in isolation. There was no actual playing by the band, but the whole "feeling" came from the band." Horn completed the recording having spent £70,000 in studio time.
Morley intentionally courted scandal with the promotion of "Relax". ZTT initiated the ad campaign for "Relax" with two quarter-page ads in the British music press. The first ad featured images of Rutherford in a sailor cap and a leather vest, and Johnson with a shaved head and rubber gloves. The images were accompanied by the phrase "ALL THE NICE BOYS LOVE SEA MEN", a pun on the music hall song "All the Nice Girls love a Sailor". It declared "Frankie Goes to Hollywood are coming ... making Duran Duran lick the shit off their shoes ... Nineteen inches that must be taken always." The second ad promised "theories of bliss, a history of Liverpool from 1963 to 1983, a guide to Amsterdam bars".
When first released in November 1983, the initial progress of "Relax" on the UK Top 75 was sluggish. First charting at number 67, by its seventh week on the chart it had progressed only to number 35, even falling back slightly during that time. But then on Thursday 5 January 1984, Frankie Goes to Hollywood performed "Relax" on the BBC flagship television chart show, "Top of the Pops". The following week it soared to number 6. On 11 January 1984, Radio 1 disc jockey Mike Read expressed on air his distaste for both the record's suggestive sleeve (designed by Anne Yvonne Gilbert) and its lyrics, which centred on the oft-repeated "Relax, don't do it/When you want to sock it to it/Relax, don't do it/ When you want to come." He announced his refusal to play the record, not knowing that the BBC had just decided that the song was not to be played on the BBC anyway. Holly Johnson contends that the lyrics were misheard, instead of, when you want to sock it to it, he sang, when you want to suck, chew it, contending he wrote and should know.
In support of their disc jockey, BBC Radio banned the single from its shows a reported two days later (although certain prominent night-time BBC shows – including those of Kid Jensen and John Peel – continued to play the record, as they saw fit, throughout 1984). The now-banned "Relax" rose to number 2 in the charts by 17 January, and hit the number-one spot on 24 January. By this time, the BBC Radio ban had extended to "Top of the Pops" as well, which displayed a still picture of the group during its climactic Number One announcement, before airing a performance by a non-Number One artist.
This went on for the five weeks that "Relax" was at number one. It then began a slow decline on the charts, falling back as far as number 31 in May 1984 before returning to number two in July whilst Frankie's follow-up single "Two Tribes" held the UK number-one spot. In the end, "Relax" remained on the Top 75 for 48 consecutive weeks and returned in February 1985 for four more, giving a total of 52.
The ban became an embarrassment for the BBC, especially given that UK commercial radio and television stations were still playing the song. Later in 1984 the ban was lifted and "Relax" featured on both the Christmas Day edition of "Top of the Pops" and Radio 1's rundown of the best-selling singles of the year.
Throughout the "Relax" controversy, the band continued to publicly deny that the song's lyrics were sexual. Nevertheless, by 1984, it was clear that the public were aware of the sexual nature of the lyrics, but the scandal had fuelled sales anyway. In 1985, with the release of the "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" album (which included "Relax"), the band dropped any public pretense about the lyrics:
The track was reissued in September 1993, the first of a string of Frankie Goes to Hollywood singles to be reissued that year. It debuted at a high number six on the UK singles chart and peaked at number five the next week. It spent seven weeks on the Top 75 this time, thus extending its combined total to 59, making it the third longest runner of all time (seven other singles have since surpassed it; now it is in joint 10th place).
Although the 7-inch version of the single remained unchanged throughout its initial release (a mix generally known as "Relax (Move)"), promotional 7-inch records featuring a substantially different mix of "Relax" (entitled either "The Last Seven Inches" or "Warp Mix" because it is a compilation of other versions) were the subject of a limited 1984 release.
Three principal 12-inch remixes of "Relax" were eventually created by producer Trevor Horn:
One of the reasons we did all the remixes was that the initial 12-inch version of 'Relax' contained something called 'The Sex Mix', which was 16 minutes long and didn't even contain a song. It was really Holly Johnson just jamming, as well as a bunch of samples of the group jumping in the swimming pool and me sort of making disgusting noises by dropping stuff into buckets of water! We got so many complaints about it — particularly from gay clubs, who found it offensive — that we cut it in half and reduced it down to eight minutes, by taking out some of the slightly more offensive parts [this became "Sex Mix (Edition 2)"]. Then we got another load of complaints, because the single version wasn't on the 12-inch — I didn't see the point in this at the time, but I was eventually put straight about it.
Horn attested that visits to New York's Paradise Garage club led to the creation of the final "Relax (New York Mix)", which ultimately replaced the original "Sex Mix" releases:
It was only when I went to this club and heard the sort of things they were playing that I really understood about 12-inch remixes. Although I myself had already had a couple of big 12-inch hits, I'd never heard them being played on a big sound system, and so I then went back and mixed 'Relax' again and that was the version which sold a couple of million over here [in the UK].
The original 12-inch version of "Relax", labelled "Sex Mix", ran for over 16 minutes, and is broadly as described by Horn above. The subsequent "Edition 2" was an 8-minute-plus edit of the "Sex Mix", and can only be distinguished by having "12ISZTAS1" etched on the vinyl. The final 12-inch mix, containing no elements from the foregoing versions, was designated the "New York Mix", and ran for approximately 7:20. This was the most commonly available 12-inch version of "Relax" during its worldwide 1984 chart success.
The UK cassette single featured "Greatest Bits", a unique amalgam of excerpts from the "Sex Mix", "New York Mix", "Move" and an instrumental version of "Move".
Since virtually all of the UK "Relax" 12-inch singles were labelled "Sex Mix", a method of differentiating between versions by reference to the record's matrix numbers necessarily became "de rigueur" for collectors of Frankie Goes to Hollywood releases (and ultimately collectors of ZTT records in general).
"Relax (Come Fighting)" was the version of the song included on the "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" album. This is ostensibly a variant of the 7-inch single "Move" mix, but is different from that version. For example, the "7" mix fades in on a foghorn type sound while the album mix fades in on sustained synth chords. Also, the backing vocals of the 7" mix are panned to the left, whereas they are mixed in the centre on the album version. Additionally, the 7" mix features a prominent reverberated kick drum sound during the introduction that also appears in other parts of the song, which is completely absent from the album mix. The album mix also has a certain post-production sheen (greater stereo separation of parts, more strategic uses of reverb, etc.) that is absent from the original 1983 7-inch single mix. The "Classic 1993 Version" is a version of the original 7" mix that uses "Bonus, Again" as the instrumental track, although modification with elements from "Come Fighting" thrown in (e.g. both the intro and outro come directly from it) and much of it made more clearer.
The original airing of Relax on The Tube, before the band were signed to ZTT, featured another verse that was edited from all the released versions, "In heaven everything is fine, you've got yours and I've got mine", presumably removed as it was taken directly from the David Lynch film "Eraserhead".
According to a fan iniquity by a member of the Alternate forum (a forum decided to ZTT) to Holly Johnson over accusation that "Edition 2" was created by a DJ, "Edition 2" was edited by Trevor Horn at the SARM East studio with JJ Jeczalik as engineer and Holly watching.
The 7-inch featured "One September Monday", an interview between ZTT's Paul Morley, Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford. During the interview, Holly revealed that the group's name derived from a page of the "New Yorker" magazine, headlined "Frankie Goes Hollywood" and featuring Frank Sinatra "getting mobbed by teenyboppers".
On all of the original 12-inch releases, the B-side featured a cover of "Ferry 'Cross the Mersey", followed by a brief dialogue involving Rutherford attempting to sign on, and an a cappella version of the title track's chorus, segueing into an instrumental version of "Relax", known as "Bonus, Again" (which resembles "Come Fighting" more than the 7" mix).
The UK cassette single included "Ferry 'Cross the Mersey" and interview sections not included on "One September Monday".
The first official video for "Relax", directed by Bernard Rose and set in a S&M themed gay nightclub, featuring the bandmembers accosted by buff leathermen, a glamorous drag queen, and an obese admirer dressed up as a Roman emperor, was allegedly banned by MTV and the BBC, prompting the recording of a second video, directed by Godley and Creme in early 1984, featuring the group performing with the help of laser beams. However, after the second video was made the song was banned completely by the BBC, meaning that neither video was ever broadcast on any BBC music programmes.
A live performance video of the song was directed by David Mallet, making the rounds at MTV.
Another MTV video of the studio version includes footage from the Brian De Palma film "Body Double". "Body Double", a popular 1984 erotic thriller film, contains a film within a film sequence in which Frankie Goes to Hollywood performs "Relax" on the set of a porn film.
The title track has periodically been reissued as a single in a number of remix forms. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11260 |
Two Tribes
"Two Tribes" is an anti-war song by British band Frankie Goes to Hollywood, released in the UK by ZTT Records on 4 June 1984. The song was later included on the album "Welcome to the Pleasuredome". Presenting a nihilistic, gleeful lyric expressing enthusiasm for nuclear war, it juxtaposes a relentless pounding bass line and guitar riff inspired by American funk and R&B pop with influences of Russian classical music, in an opulent arrangement produced by Trevor Horn.
The single was a phenomenal success in the UK, helped by a wide range of remixes and supported by an advertising campaign depicting the band as members of the Red Army. It entered the charts at number one on 10 June 1984 and stayed at the top of the UK Singles Chart for nine consecutive weeks, during which time the group's previous single "Relax" climbed back up the charts to number two. It was the longest-running number-one single in the UK of the 1980s. It has sold 1.58 million copies in the UK as of November 2012. Songwriters Johnson, Gill and O'Toole received the 1984 Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. In 2015 the song was voted by the British public as the nation's 14th-favourite 1980s number one in a poll for ITV.
A version of "Two Tribes" was originally recorded for a BBC John Peel session in October 1982. The session version makes clear that the basic structure of the song, including its signature bass-line, percussion arrangement and idiosyncratic introductory and middle eight sections, were already intact prior to any involvement from ZTT or eventual producer Trevor Horn.
Johnson also noted: "There's two elements in the music — an American funk line and a Russian line. It's the most obvious demonstration of two tribes that we have today." To accentuate the musical tension, Horn arranged the 'Russian' segments as a dramatic string arrangement. The driving funk/rock rhythm section was played on synthesisers.
The single was released at a time when the Cold War had intensified and fears about global nuclear warfare were at a peak. Although Johnson would attest in a 1984 radio interview that the "two tribes" of the song potentially represented any pair of warring adversaries (giving the examples of "cowboys and Indians or Captain Kirk and Klingons"), the line "On the air America/I modelled shirts by Van Heusen" is a clear reference to then US President Ronald Reagan. Reagan had advertised for Phillips Van Heusen in 1953 (briefly reviving the association in the early 1980s). The title of his first film had been "Love Is On the Air".
The lyric "working for the black gas" is, according to Johnson, "About oil surpassing gold. How you might as well be paid in petrol." And the line "Are we living in a land where sex and horror are the new gods?" was inspired by the 1959 British film "Cover Girl Killer". Johnson explained, "The TV was on in the background while I was doing me ironing and suddenly this character came out with that statement." (The actual dialogue, which occurs at about 48 minutes 24 seconds into the film, is "Surely sex and horror are the new gods in this polluted world of so-called entertainment?")
The track featured snippets of narration from actor Patrick Allen, recreating his narration from the British "Protect and Survive" public information films about how to survive a nuclear war. (The original "Protect and Survive" soundtracks were sampled for the 7-inch mixes.)
The 12-inch A- and B-sides featured voice parts by British actor Chris Barrie imitating Ronald Reagan. Barrie also voiced the Reagan puppet on "Spitting Image". Barrie's parts as 'Reagan' included praise for the band, as well as parts of Adolf Hitler's speech to a court after the Beer Hall Putsch: "You may pronounce us guilty a thousand times over, but the Goddess of the Eternal Court of History will smile and tear to tatters the brief of the State Prosecutor and the sentence of this court, for She acquits us." Barrie also voiced the last sentence of "History Will Absolve Me" (Spanish: "La historia me absolverá") which is the concluding sentence and subsequent title of a four-hour speech made by Fidel Castro on 16 October 1953. Castro made the speech in his own defense in court against the charges brought against him after leading an attack on the Moncada Barracks on 26 July 1953. Barrie would return for the band's next single, "The Power of Love", imitating Mike Read in a parody of the DJ's ban on their previous single, "Relax".
The song's title derives from the line "when two great warrior tribes go to war", from the film "Mad Max 2" (the line is also spoken by Holly Johnson at the beginning of the session version).
ZTT aggressively marketed the single in terms of its topical political angle, promoting it with images of the group wearing American military garb in combat, as well as Soviet-style army uniforms set against an American urban backdrop.
The original cover art featured a Soviet mural of Vladimir Lenin in St Petersburg, and images of Reagan and then-UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The sleeve notes, attributed to ZTT's Paul Morley, dispassionately reported details of the relative nuclear arsenals of each superpower.
The song appeared in the form of six mixes, including "Annihilation", "Carnage", "Hibakusha", "Cowboys and Indians", "We Don't Want to Die" and "For The Victims Of Ravishment".
The first 12-inch mix ("Annihilation") started with an air-raid siren, and included advice from Allen about how to tag and dispose of family members should they die in the fallout shelter (taken from the public information film "Casualties"). This version appeared on CD editions of the album. "Annihilation" was the basis for the "Hibakusha" mix, which was originally released in a limited edition, and appears on the Japanese-only 1985 album "Bang!".
"For The Victims Of Ravishment" appeared on the LP and cassette editions of the album "Welcome To The Pleasuredome". It is the shortest version, at 3:27 minutes. This mix derived from the "Carnage" mix, which prominently featured strings as well as vocal samples from Allen and the group's B-side interview.
Since 1984, "Two Tribes" has been re-issued several times, generally involving third-party remixes bearing little relation to the original releases in terms of either structure or character.
The 7-inch featured "One February Friday", an interview between Morley and the group's three musicians, Mark O'Toole, Brian Nash and Peter Gill, over an otherwise untitled instrumental track. A similar track had been included on the B-side of "Relax", with the title "One September Monday".
The principal B-side to the original 12-inch single was a cover version of "War", which became the subject of an extended remix (subtitled "Hidden") on the single's third UK 12-inch release, where it was promoted as a double A-side with "Carnage".
The UK cassette single featured a cut-together combination of "Surrender", "Carnage" and "Annihilation", plus Reagan snippets and interview sections not included on any other release.
The Godley & Creme-directed video depicted a wrestling match between then-US President Ronald Reagan and then-Soviet General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko in front of group members and an assembly of representatives from the world's nations. The match eventually degenerates into global destruction. Certain violent moments ("Reagan" is seen, for example, biting "Chernenko's" ear) were edited from the version shown on MTV.
A longer version of the video (based on the "Hibakusha" mix) included an introductory, heavily edited monologue by Richard Nixon taken from an ad from his 1960 US Presidential campaign ("No ... firm diplomacy ... No ... peace for America and the world"), plus similar contributions from other world leaders, including Lord Beaverbrook, Yasser Arafat and John F. Kennedy. The complete soundtrack to the extended video was eventually released as "Two Tribes (Video Destructo)" on the German version of the "Twelve Inches" compilation. A third version of the video, included on the band's "From An Wasteland to an Artificial Paradise" VHS, retains the introduction, but omits most of the inserted clips in the main wrestling sequence.
All discographical information pertains to the original UK single release only.
The A-side mix is commonly referred as "Cowboys and Indians" to avoid confusion with other mixes, as ZTT commonly gives the sides on singles separate names. Thus, "One February Friday" is sometimes subtitled as either "Doctors and Nurses" (as per the regular 7") or "Only Bullets Can Stop Them Now" (as per the picture disc B-side label).
The A-side is an alternative mix to the regular 7" (subtitled "We Don't Want To Die" on the B-side label). A common theory within many fans is that "We Don't Want To Die" is essentially "Surrender" with vocals.
Also issued as a regular 7" in Canada.
"Extended Version" is the same as "Annihilation".
"Two Tribes" on the B-side is the 7" picture disc mix.
"New York Mix" was mislabeled as "U.S mix".
"Keep The Peace" is a combination of Surrender, Carnage and Annihilation.
"Hibakush-ah!" is an early version of "Hibakusha". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11261 |
Welcome to the Pleasuredome (song)
"Welcome to the Pleasuredome" is the title track to the 1984 debut album by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The lyrics of the song were inspired by the poem "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
In March 1985, the album track was substantially abridged and remixed for release as the group's fourth UK single.
While criticized at the time of release and afterward for being a song that glorifies debauchery, the lyrics (and video) make clear that the point of the song, just as Coleridge's poem, is about the "dangers" of this kind of lifestyle. This song, along with "Relax", made Frankie Goes to Hollywood even more controversial than they already were.
Despite the group's record label (ZTT) pre-emptively promoting the single as "their fourth number one", an achievement that would have set a new UK record for consecutive number one singles by a debuting artist, "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" peaked at number two in the UK singles chart, being kept off the top spot by the Phil Collins/Philip Bailey duet "Easy Lover". The single spent a total of eleven weeks on the UK chart.
It was the first release by the group not to reach number one and, despite representing a creditable success in its own right, it symbolically confirmed the end of the chart invincibility that the group had enjoyed during 1984. Frankie Goes to Hollywood would not release another record for seventeen months, and they would ultimately fail to emulate their past glories upon their return.
The spoken-word introductions to both 12-inch mixes are adapted from Walter Kaufmann's 1967 translation of Friedrich Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy". The recitation on the first 12-inch ("Real Altered") is by Gary Taylor, whilst that on the second 12-inch ("Fruitness") and the cassette is by actor Geoffrey Palmer. It is unknown whether Palmer's concluding "Welcome To The Pleasured"r"ome" was a genuine mistake or a deliberately scripted one.
This is the only single from the group that was not released on a CD single at that time, the other being "Watching The Wildlife". "Relax", "Two Tribes", "The Power of Love" and "Rage Hard+" all saw a CD-maxi release in Germany at the end of the '80s. "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" was not given such a release. However, the 7" vinyl single was released in two different mixes, and it was purely random as to which one you ended up with, as both mixes were in identical sleeve designs and carried the same catalogue number. Not only that, but the subtitle used to identify different mixes was identical on both record labels, with only the matrix number on the run out groove giving the game away. The first 7" (matrix 7 A 1 U) carried the normal 7" single mix, which was guitar driven. However, the "secret" alternative mix (matrix 7 A 7 U or 7 A 8 U) was quite different, and featured on the Apple shaped Picture Disc. The subtitle for that disc was 'alternative reel' but on the 7" single the subtitle remained unchanged as 'altered real'.
In fact, although appearing to be identical sleeves, the two mixes were actually released in slightly different ones. The standard 7" mix came in a thick paper sleeve, whereas the "secret" one came in a thin paper sleeve.
All releases featured an edited version of "Get It On", originally recorded for a BBC Radio 1 session in 1983 (a full-length version was included on the cassette release), plus a faded or full length version of "Happy Hi!", a non-album track.
Both "Relax (International)" and "Born To Run" are live recordings (with some minor overdubs), based on an actual live appearance on "The Tube's" "Europe A-Go-Go" in Newcastle during early January 1985.
The video, by Bernard Rose, features the group stealing a car, going to a carnival and encountering all manner of deceptively "pleasureable" activities. The audio soundtrack of the video was included as part of the cassette single.
In 1984, a few months prior to the album's release, an early instrumental version of the album track was issued as a promotional 12-inch single, entitled "Welcome to the Pleasuredome (Pleasure Fix)", along with a similar early instrumental of "The Only Star in Heaven" (subtitled "Star Fix"). These tracks were subsequently given wider release as part of the B-side to the second 12-inch of "The Power of Love" single.
"Welcome to the Pleasuredome" was also used on several promotional records in the USA during 1985, featuring the following tracks in various combinations:
The track has periodically been reissued as a single, including during 1993 and 2000. Although these releases have some admirers, and have usefully made available various original mixes on CD for the first time, the accompanying A-side remixes by contemporary DJs have tended on the whole to bear little or no comparison to the spirit of the originals.
Reissues in the group's name have also tended to shun any overt reference to the identity of the original artists, and the reissue artwork has notably featured no images of the group. It has been suggested that this situation may relate to Johnson's successful but acrimonious court case against ZTT in 1989, which freed him (and effectively the other group members) from their unfair contract with the label.
1993 reissues
Track 4 is mislabeled. It's the "Real Altered" version from 12 ZTAS 7.
2000 reissues
2014 reissues
The instrumental "Into Battle Mix" appears on the soundtrack to the film "Toys", specifically utilized whenever the Tommy Tanks appeared. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11263 |
Rage Hard
"Rage Hard" is the fifth single by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It was released on 25 August 1986.
Having topped the charts around the world with "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" and its accompanying singles, Frankie Goes to Hollywood took off to Amsterdam to record the follow-up album, "Liverpool". Taking on a rockier edge, "Rage Hard" was the first single culled from the disc.
Of note, "Rage Hard" was a testament to the changing musical landscape in Britain at the time. It was not only the first Frankie single to be featured on CD single, it was also the first single to not feature a cassette release - new rules limited the number of items that could count towards the official charts, following the earlier ZTT excesses.
"Rage Hard" eventually hit Number 4 in the UK singles charts and Number 1 in Germany (for two weeks), #5 in Switzerland, #7 in the Netherlands, #12 in Austria, #19 in Sweden and #32 in France.
The B-sides to "Rage Hard" were, for the most part, straight forward cover songs. Firstly there was a cover of David Bowie's 1972 glam-rock classic "Suffragette City", slightly renamed to "SuffRAGEtte City" to fit in with the "Rage Hard" promotion. The second cover song was "Roadhouse Blues" by The Doors which featured on the 2nd 12". A shorter version features on the CD single.
The original B-side is an odd composition entitled "(Don't Lose What's Left) Of Your Little Mind". It was released in two versions, a 4-minute mix and a 6-minute mix and featured Holly Johnson & Brian (Nasher) Nash imitating Count von Count ("Ha ha ha/I am the Count") from the children's TV show "Sesame Street". This was complemented by sampled burps and belches over a backing track.
"rage rage"
(All discographical information pertains to UK releases only)
"Slam Bam"
Tracks 1 and 3.1 was rereleased in 2012 on CD Sexmix Disk 1, Tracks 14 and 15.
In 1993, a version of the song appeared on the b side of The Power Of Love reissue (FGTH 3) entitled "Original DJ mix". This version is the original 7" mix from 1986, but with the first chorus removed. Instead, the first verse and second verse are jointed together. This release can also be found on a large centre hole 7" disc with the label details stamped into the naked vinyl, as opposed to a paper or printed label. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11264 |
Liverpool (album)
Liverpool is Frankie Goes to Hollywood's second and final studio album, released in October 1986. It would be the band's final album of all-new material, and lead singer Holly Johnson would leave the band following the corresponding world tour, followed by a flurry of lawsuits from ZTT. The album's production was handled by Trevor Horn's engineer Stephen Lipson, who urged the band to play their own instruments on this album (Horn having replaced many of the band's performances and arrangements with his session musicians or his own performances on "Welcome to the Pleasuredome".) "Liverpool" therefore features a heavier rock sound than its predecessor.
The album was a commercial disappointment compared to the band's previous effort, though it charted generally high at #5 in the United Kingdom and Germany, #7 on the Austrian and Swiss music charts and #8 in Norway. The cover photo was different depending on what format was purchased (LP, cassette, or compact disc). It also produced the Top 5 single "Rage Hard" (#1 in Germany), Top 20 single "Warriors of the Wasteland" and Top 30 single "Watching the Wildlife".
All songs Gill/Johnson/Nash/O'Toole unless otherwise stated.
The 2000 German reissues includes two bonus tracks:
In 2011, a remastered Deluxe Edition of "Liverpool" was released, featuring a second disc containing rare and previously unreleased material. The first CD contains the LP version of the original album with extra tracks and the second CD rare and unreleased tracks. A few tracks were removed off later issues due to complainants by the band members. Issues with those tracks are "number 15 in the Element Series", and those without are "number 19 in the Element Series".
CD1
CD2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11267 |
Elementary particle
In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a with no substructure, i.e. it is not composed of other particles. Particles currently thought to be elementary include the fundamental fermions (quarks, leptons, antiquarks, and antileptons), which generally are "matter particles" and "antimatter particles", as well as the fundamental bosons (gauge bosons and the Higgs boson), which generally are "force particles" that mediate interactions among fermions. A particle containing two or more elementary particles is called a "composite particle".
Ordinary matter is composed of atoms, once presumed to be elementary particles—"atom" meaning "unable to cut" in Greek—although the atom's existence remained controversial until about 1910, as some leading physicists regarded molecules as mathematical illusions, and matter as ultimately composed of energy. Subatomic constituents of the atom were first identified in the early 1930s; the electron and the proton, along with the photon, the particle of electromagnetic radiation. At that time, the recent advent of quantum mechanics was radically altering the conception of particles, as a single particle could seemingly span a field as would a wave, a paradox still eluding satisfactory explanation.
Via quantum theory, protons and neutrons were found to contain quarks – up quarks and down quarks – now considered elementary particles. And within a molecule, the electron's three degrees of freedom (charge, spin, orbital) can separate via the wavefunction into three quasiparticles (holon, spinon, and orbiton). Yet a free electron – one which is "not" orbiting an atomic nucleus and hence lacks orbital motion – appears unsplittable and remains regarded as an elementary particle.
Around 1980, an elementary particle's status as indeed elementary – an "ultimate constituent" of substance – was mostly discarded for a more practical outlook, embodied in particle physics' Standard Model, what's known as science's most experimentally successful theory. Many elaborations upon and theories beyond the Standard Model, including the popular supersymmetry, double the number of elementary particles by hypothesizing that each known particle associates with a "shadow" partner far more massive, although all such superpartners remain undiscovered. Meanwhile, an elementary boson mediating gravitation – the graviton – remains hypothetical. Also, as hypotheses indicate, spacetime is probably quantized, so there most likely exist "atoms" of space and time itself.
All elementary particles are either bosons or fermions. These classes are distinguished by their quantum statistics: fermions obey Fermi–Dirac statistics and bosons obey Bose–Einstein statistics. Their spin is differentiated via the spin–statistics theorem: it is half-integer for fermions, and integer for bosons.
In the Standard Model, elementary particles are represented for predictive utility as point particles. Though extremely successful, the Standard Model is limited to the microcosm by its omission of gravitation and has some parameters arbitrarily added but unexplained.
According to the current models of big bang nucleosynthesis, the primordial composition of visible matter of the universe should be about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium-4 (in mass). Neutrons are made up of one up and two down quarks, while protons are made of two up and one down quark. Since the other common elementary particles (such as electrons, neutrinos, or weak bosons) are so light or so rare when compared to atomic nuclei, we can neglect their mass contribution to the observable universe's total mass. Therefore, one can conclude that most of the visible mass of the universe consists of protons and neutrons, which, like all baryons, in turn consist of up quarks and down quarks.
Some estimates imply that there are roughly baryons (almost entirely protons and neutrons) in the observable universe.
The number of protons in the observable universe is called the Eddington number.
In terms of number of particles, some estimates imply that nearly all the matter, excluding dark matter, occurs in neutrinos, which constitute the majority of the roughly elementary particles of matter that exist in the visible universe. Other estimates imply that roughly elementary particles exist in the visible universe (not including dark matter), mostly photons and other massless force carriers.
The Standard Model of particle physics contains 12 flavors of elementary fermions, plus their corresponding antiparticles, as well as elementary bosons that mediate the forces and the Higgs boson, which was reported on July 4, 2012, as having been likely detected by the two main experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (ATLAS and CMS). However, the Standard Model is widely considered to be a provisional theory rather than a truly fundamental one, since it is not known if it is compatible with Einstein's general relativity. There may be hypothetical elementary particles not described by the Standard Model, such as the graviton, the particle that would carry the gravitational force, and sparticles, supersymmetric partners of the ordinary particles.
The 12 fundamental fermions are divided into 3 generations of 6 particles each. Half of the fermions are leptons, three of which have an electric charge of −1, called the electron (), the muon (), and the tau (); the other three leptons are neutrinos (, , ), which are the only elementary fermions with neither electric nor color charge. The remaining six particles are quarks (discussed below).
The following table lists current measured masses and mass estimates for all the fermions, using the same scale of measure: millions of electron-volts relative to square of light speed (MeV/c²). For example, the most accurately known quark mass is of the top quark () at 172.7 GeV/c² or 172 700 MeV/c², estimated using the On-shell scheme.
Estimates of the values of quark masses depend on the version of quantum chromodynamics used to describe quark interactions. Quarks are always confined in an envelope of gluons which confer vastly greater mass to the mesons and baryons where quarks occur, so values for quark masses cannot be measured directly. Since their masses are so small compared to the effective mass of the surrounding gluons, slight differences in the calculation make large differences in the masses.
There are also 12 fundamental fermionic antiparticles that correspond to these 12 particles. For example, the antielectron (positron) "" is the electron's antiparticle and has an electric charge of +1.
Isolated quarks and antiquarks have never been detected, a fact explained by confinement. Every quark carries one of three color charges of the strong interaction; antiquarks similarly carry anticolor. Color-charged particles interact via gluon exchange in the same way that charged particles interact via photon exchange. However, gluons are themselves color-charged, resulting in an amplification of the strong force as color-charged particles are separated. Unlike the electromagnetic force, which diminishes as charged particles separate, color-charged particles feel increasing force.
However, color-charged particles may combine to form color neutral composite particles called hadrons. A quark may pair up with an antiquark: the quark has a color and the antiquark has the corresponding anticolor. The color and anticolor cancel out, forming a color neutral meson. Alternatively, three quarks can exist together, one quark being "red", another "blue", another "green". These three colored quarks together form a color-neutral baryon. Symmetrically, three antiquarks with the colors "antired", "antiblue" and "antigreen" can form a color-neutral antibaryon.
Quarks also carry fractional electric charges, but, since they are confined within hadrons whose charges are all integral, fractional charges have never been isolated. Note that quarks have electric charges of either + or −, whereas antiquarks have corresponding electric charges of either − or +.
Evidence for the existence of quarks comes from deep inelastic scattering: firing electrons at nuclei to determine the distribution of charge within nucleons (which are baryons). If the charge is uniform, the electric field around the proton should be uniform and the electron should scatter elastically. Low-energy electrons do scatter in this way, but, above a particular energy, the protons deflect some electrons through large angles. The recoiling electron has much less energy and a jet of particles is emitted. This inelastic scattering suggests that the charge in the proton is not uniform but split among smaller charged particles: quarks.
In the Standard Model, vector (spin-1) bosons (gluons, photons, and the W and Z bosons) mediate forces, whereas the Higgs boson (spin-0) is responsible for the intrinsic mass of particles. Bosons differ from fermions in the fact that multiple bosons can occupy the same quantum state (Pauli exclusion principle). Also, bosons can be either elementary, like photons, or a combination, like mesons. The spin of bosons are integers instead of half integers.
Gluons mediate the strong interaction, which join quarks and thereby form hadrons, which are either baryons (three quarks) or mesons (one quark and one antiquark). Protons and neutrons are baryons, joined by gluons to form the atomic nucleus. Like quarks, gluons exhibit color and anticolor – unrelated to the concept of visual color and rather the particles' strong interactions – sometimes in combinations, altogether eight variations of gluons.
There are three weak gauge bosons: W+, W−, and Z0; these mediate the weak interaction. The W bosons are known for their mediation in nuclear decay: The W− converts a neutron into a proton then decays into an electron and electron-antineutrino pair.
The Z0 does not convert particle flavor or charges, but rather changes momentum; it is the only mechanism for elastically scattering neutrinos. The weak gauge bosons were discovered due to momentum change in electrons from neutrino-Z exchange. The massless photon mediates the electromagnetic interaction. These four gauge bosons form the electroweak interaction among elementary particles.
Although the weak and electromagnetic forces appear quite different to us at everyday energies, the two forces are theorized to unify as a single electroweak force at high energies. This prediction was clearly confirmed by measurements of cross-sections for high-energy electron-proton scattering at the HERA collider at DESY. The differences at low energies is a consequence of the high masses of the W and Z bosons, which in turn are a consequence of the Higgs mechanism. Through the process of spontaneous symmetry breaking, the Higgs selects a special direction in electroweak space that causes three electroweak particles to become very heavy (the weak bosons) and one to remain with an undefined rest mass as it is always in motion (the photon). On 4 July 2012, after many years of experimentally searching for evidence of its existence, the Higgs boson was announced to have been observed at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. Peter Higgs who first posited the existence of the Higgs boson was present at the announcement. The Higgs boson is believed to have a mass of approximately 125 GeV. The statistical significance of this discovery was reported as 5 sigma, which implies a certainty of roughly 99.99994%. In particle physics, this is the level of significance required to officially label experimental observations as a discovery. Research into the properties of the newly discovered particle continues.
The graviton is a hypothetical elementary spin-2 particle proposed to mediate gravitation. While it remains undiscovered due to the difficulty inherent in its detection, it is sometimes included in tables of elementary particles. The conventional graviton is massless, although there exist models containing massive Kaluza–Klein gravitons.
Although experimental evidence overwhelmingly confirms the predictions derived from the Standard Model, some of its parameters were added arbitrarily, not determined by a particular explanation, which remain mysterious, for instance the hierarchy problem. Theories beyond the Standard Model attempt to resolve these shortcomings.
One extension of the Standard Model attempts to combine the electroweak interaction with the strong interaction into a single 'grand unified theory' (GUT). Such a force would be spontaneously broken into the three forces by a Higgs-like mechanism. This breakdown is theorized to occur at high energies, making it difficult to observe unification in a laboratory. The most dramatic prediction of grand unification is the existence of X and Y bosons, which cause proton decay. However, the non-observation of proton decay at the Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory rules out the simplest GUTs, including SU(5) and SO(10).
Supersymmetry extends the Standard Model by adding another class of symmetries to the Lagrangian. These symmetries exchange fermionic particles with bosonic ones. Such a symmetry predicts the existence of supersymmetric particles, abbreviated as "sparticles", which include the sleptons, squarks, neutralinos, and charginos. Each particle in the Standard Model would have a superpartner whose spin differs by from the ordinary particle. Due to the breaking of supersymmetry, the sparticles are much heavier than their ordinary counterparts; they are so heavy that existing particle colliders would not be powerful enough to produce them. However, some physicists believe that sparticles will be detected by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
String theory is a model of physics where all "particles" that make up matter are composed of strings (measuring at the Planck length) that exist in an 11-dimensional (according to M-theory, the leading version) or 12-dimensional (according to F-theory) universe. These strings vibrate at different frequencies that determine mass, electric charge, color charge, and spin. A "string" can be open (a line) or closed in a loop (a one-dimensional sphere, like a circle). As a string moves through space it sweeps out something called a "world sheet". String theory predicts 1- to 10-branes (a 1-brane being a string and a 10-brane being a 10-dimensional object) that prevent tears in the "fabric" of space using the uncertainty principle (e.g., the electron orbiting a hydrogen atom has the probability, albeit small, that it could be anywhere else in the universe at any given moment).
String theory proposes that our universe is merely a 4-brane, inside which exist the 3 space dimensions and the 1 time dimension that we observe. The remaining 7 theoretical dimensions either are very tiny and curled up (and too small to be macroscopically accessible) or simply do not/cannot exist in our universe (because they exist in a grander scheme called the "multiverse" outside our known universe).
Some predictions of the string theory include existence of extremely massive counterparts of ordinary particles due to vibrational excitations of the fundamental string and existence of a massless spin-2 particle behaving like the graviton.
Technicolor theories try to modify the Standard Model in a minimal way by introducing a new QCD-like interaction. This means one adds a new theory of so-called Techniquarks, interacting via so called Technigluons. The main idea is that the Higgs-Boson is not an elementary particle but a bound state of these objects.
According to preon theory there are one or more orders of particles more fundamental than those (or most of those) found in the Standard Model. The most fundamental of these are normally called preons, which is derived from "pre-quarks". In essence, preon theory tries to do for the Standard Model what the Standard Model did for the particle zoo that came before it. Most models assume that almost everything in the Standard Model can be explained in terms of three to half a dozen more fundamental particles and the rules that govern their interactions. Interest in preons has waned since the simplest models were experimentally ruled out in the 1980s.
Accelerons are the hypothetical subatomic particles that integrally link the newfound mass of the neutrino to the dark energy conjectured to be accelerating the expansion of the universe.
In this theory, neutrinos are influenced by a new force resulting from their interactions with accelerons, leading to dark energy. Dark energy results as the universe tries to pull neutrinos apart. Accelerons are thought to interact with matter more infrequently than they do with neutrinos.
The most important address about the current experimental and theoretical knowledge about elementary particle physics is the Particle Data Group, where different international institutions collect all experimental data and give short reviews over the contemporary theoretical understanding.
other pages are: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11274 |
Miami Marlins
The Miami Marlins are an American professional baseball team based in Miami, Florida. The Marlins compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) East division. Their home park is Marlins Park. Though one of only two MLB franchises to have never won a division title (the other being the Colorado Rockies), the Marlins have won two World Series championships as a wild card team.
The team began play as an expansion team in the 1993 season as the Florida Marlins and played home games from their inaugural season to the 2012 season at what was originally called Joe Robbie Stadium, which they shared with the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League (NFL). Since the 2012 season, they have played at Marlins Park in downtown Miami, on the site of the former Orange Bowl. The new park, unlike their previous home (which was criticized in its baseball configuration for poor sight lines in some locations), was designed foremost as a baseball park. Per an agreement with the city and Miami-Dade County (which owns the park), the Marlins officially changed their name to the "Miami Marlins" on November 11, 2011. They also adopted a new logo, color scheme, and uniforms.
The Marlins have the distinction of winning a World Series championship in every postseason they have qualified for to date, having won the World Series in 1997 and 2003 as National League wild card team. They also have the distinction of being the only franchise in the major four North American professional sports leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL) to have never lost a playoff round. They defeated the American League (AL) champion Cleveland Indians in the 1997 World Series, with shortstop Édgar Rentería driving in second baseman Craig Counsell for the series-clinching run in the 11th inning of the seventh and deciding game. In the 2003 season, manager Jeff Torborg was fired after 38 games. The Marlins were in last place in the NL East with a 16–22 record at the time. Torborg's successor, 72-year-old Jack McKeon, led them to the NL wild card berth in the postseason; they defeated the New York Yankees four games to two in the 2003 World Series.
Through the end of the 2019 season, the franchise holds the second longest postseason drought in the MLB, only behind the Seattle Mariners, and the third longest in the four major North American professional sports.
Wayne Huizenga, CEO of Blockbuster Entertainment Corporation, was awarded an expansion franchise in the National League (NL) for a $95 million expansion fee and the team began operations in 1993 as the Florida Marlins.
The Marlins qualified for the postseason and won the World Series in 1997 and 2003, but both titles were followed by controversial periods where the team sold off all the high-priced players and rebuilt. Although they followed their 2003 World Series win with a stretch in which the team posted winning records in four of the next six seasons, along with a surprise 2006 season in which they greatly exceeded expectations and stayed in the postseason race until September, the team has had the fewest winning seasons of any Major League Baseball franchise, with just six (1997, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, and 2009).
In 2012, the team moved to Marlins Park in downtown Miami, replacing the football-oriented Sun Life Stadium. As a condition of the move, the team was renamed the Miami Marlins, and adopted a new logo and colors.
The Marlins are the only team to win a World Series in their first two winning seasons (1997 and 2003); in fact, they are the only team to even make the playoffs in their first two winning seasons. In those two seasons, they managed to make a surprise run to the World Series, both times as heavy underdogs. They are also the only team to never lose a postseason series.
From 1993 until 2011, the Marlins had retired the number 5 in honor of Carl Barger, the first president of the Florida Marlins, who had died prior to the team's inaugural season. Barger's favorite player was Joe DiMaggio, thus the selection of number 5. With the move to the new ballpark, the team opted to honor Barger with a plaque instead, and opened number 5 to circulation. Logan Morrison, a Kansas City native and fan of Royals Hall-of-Famer George Brett (who wore that number with the Royals), became the first Marlins player to wear the number.
After José Fernández's death as a result of a boating accident on September 25, 2016, the Miami Marlins announced plans to build a memorial at Marlins Park in his honor. However, Fernández's number 16 has yet to be officially retired.
The Miami Marlins farm system consists of seven minor league affiliates.
The Marlins' flagship radio station from their inception in 1993 through 2007 was WQAM 560 AM. Although the Marlins had plans to leave WQAM after 2006, they remained with WQAM for the 2007 season. On October 11, 2007, the Marlins announced an agreement with WAXY 790 AM to broadcast all games for the 2008 season. Longtime Montreal Expo and current Marlins play-by-play radio announcer Dave Van Horne won the Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick Award for excellence in baseball broadcasting in 2010. He shares the play-by-play duties with Glenn Geffner.
Games are also broadcast in Spanish on Radio Mambi 710 AM. Felo Ramírez, who calls play-by-play on that station along with Luis Quintana, won the Ford C. Frick Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005.
Marlins games are televised by Fox Sports Florida. The last "free TV" broadcast of a game was on WPXM-TV in 2005.
In 1989, "Back to the Future Part II" had a reference to the Chicago Cubs defeating a baseball team from Miami in the 2015 World Series, ending the longest championship drought in all four of the major North American professional sports leagues. In actuality, the Cubs would end up getting swept in four games by the New York Mets in the NLCS, the Marlins failed to make the postseason, and the 2015 World Series was between the Kansas City Royals and the New York Mets, with the Royals winning in five games. Also, both the Cubs and Marlins are part of the National League, rendering a World Series matchup between the two teams impossible.
The Marlins were the first team in Major League Baseball to have a dance/cheer team. Debuting in 2003, the ""Marlins Mermaids"" influenced other MLB teams to develop their own cheer/dance squads; this was inspired in part by similar squads from the NFL and NBA. In 2008, the Florida Marlins debuted ""The Marlins Manatees"", Major League Baseball's first all-male dance/energy squad, to star alongside the Mermaids. As of 2012, the Marlins have abandoned the "Mermaids" and "Manatees" for in-game entertainment instead using an "energy squad", a co-ed group of dancers.
The following are the five best seasons in Marlins history:
The following are the five worst seasons in Marlins' history:
Other than their first few years as a franchise in the 1990s, the Marlins have consistently ranked as one of lowest attendance teams in the league, coming in last place (30th) several of the past 20 years. Even when Marlins Park was completed for the 2012 season, attendance was only average for the first year, dropping down to second to last by 2013.
Opening Day payrolls for 25-man roster (since 1993):
The annual financial records of the Marlins according to "Forbes" since 2001. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11278 |
Frontline (Australian TV series)
Frontline is an Australian comedy television series which satirised Australian television current affairs programmes and reporting. It ran for three series of 13 half-hour episodes and was broadcast on ABC TV in 1994, 1995 and 1997.
The series was written, directed and produced by Jane Kennedy, Santo Cilauro, Rob Sitch and Tom Gleisner. They created and performed in the television shows "The D-Generation" and "The Late Show" before creating "Frontline" (as well as "Funky Squad" between series 1 and 2 of "Frontline"). After "Frontline" they moved into feature films, making several popular Australian movies including "The Castle" and "The Dish", and hosted "The Panel" for several years, before moving on to "Thank God You're Here" and later "Have You Been Paying Attention?".
The series was partly inspired by a "60 Minutes" special "Has the media gone too far?". It bears some similarity to the UK series "Drop the Dead Donkey".
The series follows the fortunes of a fictional current affairs show, "Frontline". In the show, "Frontline" competes directly with Nine's "A Current Affair" and Seven's "Real Life", which changed its name to "Today Tonight" from 1995 onwards.
The "Frontline" office showcases and satirises the machinations of the ruthless producers, the self-obsessed airhead host, and the ambitious, cynical reporters, all of whom resort to any sort of underhanded trick to get ratings and maintain their status—including the use of hidden cameras, foot-in-the-door, bullying interview techniques, and chequebook journalism. They ingratiate themselves with the all-powerful network bosses, while the real work is in fact done by their long-suffering production staff.
The station itself also runs other television shows referenced by "Frontline" staff, such as 6 o'clock news program, a 3-hour news review show "Sunday Forum", a sketch show "The Komedy Bunch", a game show "Jackpot", a teen soap opera "Sunshine Cove" which later changed to "Rainbow Island", also lesser mentioned shows such as the football show "Ball-to-Ball", "Late-Night OZ", "Cartoon Crazies", "The Morning Show", "Face the Press" and "Vacation".
The characters and situations were often thinly-disguised parodies of recent real events and real people, giving the show's comedy a black edge. Episodes such as "The Siege" were replays of controversial events which often had occurred just a few months earlier, told as though "Frontline" itself had covered the story.
The dim-witted, egotistical host Mike Moore was a parody of current television hosts and journalists. Sitch has claimed that none of the characters were directly based on a single person, and indeed the character of Moore was a combination of well-known characteristics of a number of high-profile television figures, including "A Current Affair" host Ray Martin, Martin's predecessor Mike Willesee, and "Real Life" host Stan Grant.
The ABC's media review show "Media Watch" was featured prominently. Much of the real life journalistic misconduct reported on "Media Watch" later appeared on "Frontline" in fictionalised form. One example of this was when "Media Watch" reported that Dave "Sluggo" Richardson had made a highly misleading report on Christopher Skase for "Today Tonight". Richardson was suspended from duty for a month, and in the "One Rule for One" episode of "Frontline", fictional reporter Martin di Stasio is suspended for a month for doing exactly the same thing.
Multiple episodes of "Frontline" featured "Media Watch" segments criticising the show.
"Frontline" frequently featured celebrity cameos, unusually including major Australian politicians appearing as themselves, often but not always as interviewees. The most memorable appearance is that of Pauline Hanson in "The Shadow We Cast" (series 3), in which she turns her famous "please explain?" phrase on Mike. Noel Pearson appears as an interviewee later in the same episode. Other appearances include: John Hewson in "The Soufflé Rises" (series 1); Pat Cash in "The Desert Angel"; Cheryl Kernot in "We Ain't Got Dames" (series 1); Ben Elton, Bert Newton, Rosemary Margan, Amanda Keller and Anne Fulwood in "This Night of Nights" (series 1); Glenn Ridge in "Add Sex and Stir" and "Office Mole" (series 2); Glenn Robbins and Molly Meldrum in "Add Sex and Stir"; George Negus in "Add Sex and Stir" and "Dick on the Line" (series 3); and Ian Baker-Finch in "A Hole in the Heart". Harry Shearer appeared in the series 2 episode "Changing the Face of Current Affairs", where he played the character of Larry Hadges. Merv Hughes also starred in the series 2 episode "Workin' Class Man".
Other guest stars appeared in mock-ups of their own shows: Mike Moore appeared on fictitious episodes of "Burke's Backyard" with Don Burke, Rex Hunt's fishing show, and "The AFL Footy Show" with Sam Newman. Stuart Littlemore, who at the time was hosting the media commentary show "Media Watch", appeared in several fictitious episodes as a critic of "Frontline".
"Frontline" broke new ground for Australian situation comedy, by adopting some innovative production strategies. Its rapid production schedule was inspired by UK series "Drop the Dead Donkey", where each episode was written and taped in a single week and scripts were closely based on the real news stories of the preceding seven days.
The "Frontline" scripts were likewise written and the series filmed with a short period, often within a single week. It was a fully collaborative effort, with Cilauro, Kennedy, Gleisner and Sitch all sharing writing and directing duties, and the cast all contributing ideas during all stages of production. So sometimes when the show appeared on then-current events, it was a coincidence, as episodes were delayed by several months. In other cases there was direct commentary on real events, albeit not extremely recent ones.
To create a heightened illusion of grainy documentary realism, footage was shot under fluorescent lights in an actual office building set, and taped on hand-held Hi-8 camcorders usually operated by Gleisner and Cilauro. The footage was then transferred onto film and finally transferred back to videotape (see: Kinescope). Footage that was portrayed as being part of the "Frontline" broadcast (i.e. studio or field reports) was shot at broadcast quality, to increase the "realism" of the satire and complement the behind-the-scenes footage.
In 1997, Channel Seven bought the rights to the series; however, they only aired a handful of episodes. The show was perceived by management as "too close to the bone" for a network significantly focused upon its prime-time current affairs ratings battle with rival stations. The Comedy Channel has shown the series as late as 2005.
In America, "Frontline" was shown as either "Behind the Frontline" on cable or as "Breaking News" on PBS (which already has a news series entitled "Frontline").
In the UK, series 1 and 2 were shown by the Paramount Comedy Channel. Series 3, however, was never screened.
In Canada, it was aired as "Behind the Frontline" on Showcase in 1997.
The series was extremely popular through its run, winning a Logie Award for Most Outstanding Achievement in Comedy in 1995, and a Logie for Alison Whyte as most outstanding actress in 1997. A "Sydney Morning Herald" industry poll rated it No. 2 in the 25 all-time greatest Australian TV shows.
Six episodes from series one were a core text in the Year 12 English Advanced syllabus for the Higher School Certificate in New South Wales (2000–2008) for Module C: Representation and Text: Elective 1: Telling the Truth. The episodes are "Playing the Ego Card", "Add Sex and Stir", "The Siege", "Smaller Fish to Fry", "We Ain't Got Dames", and "This Night of Nights". The show has also been used as a text response for both Years 11 and 12 in the English units of the Victorian Certificate of Education. Episodes of "Frontline" have been analysed for the Media topic in the Year 10 English syllabus in New South Wales since at least 2001 and in Western Australia since at least 2009.
Sitch reprised the role of Mike Moore and "Frontline" during a short sketch on the "Friday Night Crack Up" in October 2014 as part of the ABC's "MentalAs" campaign to raise money and awareness for mental health issues. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11281 |
Frédéric Bastiat
Claude-Frédéric Bastiat (; ; 30 June 1801 – 24 December 1850) was a French economist, writer and a prominent member of the French Liberal School.
A Freemason and a member of the French National Assembly, Bastiat developed the economic concept of opportunity cost and introduced the parable of the broken window.
As an advocate of classical economics and the economics of Adam Smith, his views favored a free market and influenced the Austrian School.
Bastiat was born on 29 June 1801 in Bayonne, Aquitaine, a port town in the south of France on the Bay of Biscay. His father, Pierre Bastiat, was a prominent businessman in the town. His mother died in 1808 when Frédéric was seven years old. His father moved inland to the town of Mugron, with Frédéric following soon afterward. The Bastiat estate in Mugron had been acquired during the French Revolution and had previously belonged to the Marquis of Poyanne. Pierre Bastiat died in 1810, leaving Frédéric an orphan. He was fostered by his paternal grandfather and his maiden aunt Justine Bastiat. He attended a school in Bayonne, but his aunt thought poorly of it and so enrolled him in the school Saint-Sever. At age 17, he left school at Sorèze to work for his uncle in his family's export business. It was the same firm where his father had been a partner.
Bastiat began to develop an intellectual interest as he no longer wished to work with his uncle and desired to go to Paris for formal studies. This hope never came true as his grandfather was in poor health and wished to go to the Mugron estate. Bastiat accompanied him and cared for him. The next year when Bastiat was 24, his grandfather died, leaving him the family estate, thereby providing him with the means to further his theoretical inquiries. Bastiat developed intellectual interests in several areas including philosophy, history, politics, religion, travel, poetry, political economy and biography. After the middle-class Revolution of 1830, Bastiat became politically active and was elected justice of the peace of Mugron in 1831 and to the Council General (county-level assembly) of Landes in 1832. Bastiat was elected to the national legislative assembly after the French Revolution of 1848.
His public career as an economist began only in 1844, when his first article was published in the "Journal des économistes" during October of that year and it was ended by his untimely death in 1850. Bastiat contracted tuberculosis, probably during his tours throughout France to promote his ideas and that illness eventually prevented him from making further speeches (particularly at the legislative assembly to which he was elected in 1848 and 1849) and ended his life. In "The Law", he wrote: "Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate)".
This last line is understood by translators to be a reference to the effects of his tuberculosis. During the autumn of 1850, he was sent to Italy by his doctors and he first traveled to Pisa, then to Rome. On 24 December 1850, Bastiat called those with him to approach his bed and murmured twice the words "the truth" before he died at the age of 49.
Bastiat was the author of many works on economics and political economy, generally characterized by their clear organization, forceful argumentation and acerbic wit. Economist Murray Rothbard wrote that "Bastiat was indeed a lucid and superb writer, whose brilliant and witty essays and fables to this day are remarkable and devastating demolitions of protectionism and of all forms of government subsidy and control. He was a truly scintillating advocate of an unrestricted free market". However, Bastiat himself declared that subsidy should be available, albeit limited under extraordinary circumstances, saying the following: "Under extraordinary circumstances, for urgent cases, the State should set aside some resources to assist certain unfortunate people, to help them adjust to changing conditions".
Among his better known works is "Economic Sophisms", a series of essays (originally published in the "Journal des économistes") which contain a defence of free trade and many strongly worded attacks on statist policies. Bastiat wrote the work while living in England to advise the shapers of the French Republic on perils to avoid. "Economic Sophisms" was translated and adapted for an American readership in 1867 by the economist and historian of money Alexander del Mar, writing under the pseudonym Emile Walter.
Contained within "Economic Sophisms" is the satirical parable known as the candlemakers' petition in which candlemakers and tallow producers lobby the Chamber of Deputies of the French July Monarchy (1830–1848) to block out the Sun to prevent its unfair competition with their products. Also included in the "Sophisms" is a facetious petition to the king asking for a law forbidding the usage of everyone's right hand, based on a presumption by some of his contemporaries that more difficulty means more work and more work means more wealth.
Bastiat's most famous work is "The Law", originally published as a pamphlet in 1850. It defines a just system of laws and then demonstrates how such law facilitates a free society. In "The Law", Bastiat wrote that everyone has a right to protect "his person, his liberty, and his property". The state should be only a "substitution of a common force for individual forces" to defend this right. According to Bastiat, justice (meaning defense of one's life, liberty and property) has precise limits, but if government power extends further into philanthropic endeavors, then government becomes so limitless that it can grow endlessly. The resulting statism is "based on this triple hypothesis: the total inertness of mankind, the omnipotence of the law, and the infallibility of the legislator". The public then becomes socially engineered by the legislator and must bend to the legislators' will "like the clay to the potter", saying: Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.
I do not dispute their right to invent social combinations, to advertise them, to advocate them, and to try them upon themselves, at their own expense and risk. But I do dispute their right to impose these plans upon us by law – by force – and to compel us to pay for them with our taxes.
Bastiat posits that the law becomes perverted when it punishes one's right to self-defense (of his life, liberty and property) in favor of another's right to legalized plunder which he defines as "if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime" in which he includes the tax support of "protective tariffs, subsidies, guaranteed profits, guaranteed jobs, relief and welfare schemes, public education, progressive taxation, free credit, and public works". According to Bastiat, legal plunder can be committed in "an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism". Bastiat also made the following humorous point: "If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?"
In his 1850 essay "Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas" ("What is Seen and What is Unseen"), Bastiat introduced through the parable of the broken window the concept of opportunity cost in all but name. This term was not coined until over sixty years after his death by Friedrich von Wieser in 1914.
Bastiat also famously engaged in a debate between 1849 and 1850 with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon about the legitimacy of interest. As Robert Leroux argued, Bastiat had the conviction that Proudhon's anti-interest doctrine "was the complete antithesis of any serious approach". Proudhon famously lost his temper and declared to Bastiat: "Your intelligence is asleep, or rather it has never been awake. You are a man for whom logic does not exist. You do not hear anything, you do not understand anything. You are without philosophy, without science, without humanity. Your ability to reason, like your ability to pay attention and make comparisons is zero. Scientifically, Mr. Bastiat, you are a dead man".
Bastiat asserted that the sole purpose of government is to protect the right of an individual to life, liberty and property and why it is dangerous and morally wrong for government to interfere with an individual's other personal matters. From this, Bastiat concluded that the law cannot defend life, liberty and property if it promotes legal or legalized plunder which he defined as using government force and laws to take something from one individual and give it to others (as opposed to a transfer of property via mutually-agreed contracts without using fraud nor violent threats against the other party which Bastiat considered a legitimate transfer of property).
In "The Law", Bastiat explains that if the privileged classes or socialists use the government for legalized plunder, this will encourage the other socioeconomic class to also use legal plunder and that the correct response to the socialists is to cease all legal plunder. Bastiat also explains in "The Law" why his opinion is that the law cannot defend life, liberty and property if it promotes socialist policies. When used to obtain legalized plunder for any group, he says that the law is perverted against the only things (life, liberty and property) it is supposed to defend.
Bastiat was a strong supporter of free trade who was inspired by and routinely corresponded with Richard Cobden and the English Anti-Corn Law League and worked with free-trade associations in France.
Because of his stress on the role of consumer demand in initiating economic progress (a form of demand-side economics), Bastiat has been described by Mark Thornton, Thomas DiLorenzo and other economists as a forerunner of the Austrian School, with Thornton positing that through taking this position on the motivations of human action he demonstrates a pronounced "Austrian flavor". In his "Economic Harmonies", Bastiat states:
One of Bastiat's most important contributions to economics was his admonition to the effect that good economic decisions can be made only by taking into account the "full picture". That is, economic truths should be arrived at by observing not only the immediate consequences—that is, benefits or liabilities—of an economic decision, but also by examining the long-term second and third consequences. Additionally, one must examine the decision's effect not only on a single group of people (say candlemakers) or a single industry (say candlemaking), but on all people and all industries in the society as a whole. As Bastiat famously put it, an economist must take into account both "What is Seen and What is Not Seen". Bastiat's "rule" was later expounded and developed by Henry Hazlitt in his work "Economics in One Lesson" in which Hazlitt borrowed Bastiat's trenchant broken window fallacy and went on to demonstrate how it applies to a wide variety of economic falsehoods.
A famous section of "Economic Sophisms" concerns the way that tariffs are inherently counterproductive. Bastiat posits a theoretical railway between Spain and France that is built to reduce the costs of trade between the two countries. This is achieved by making goods move to and from the two nations faster and more easily. Bastiat demonstrates that this situation benefits both countries' consumers because it reduces the cost of shipping goods and therefore reduces the price at market for those goods. However, each country's producers begin to criticize their governments because the other country's producers can now provide certain goods to the domestic market at reduced price. Domestic producers of these goods are afraid of being outcompeted by the newly viable industry from the other country, therefore these domestic producers demand that tariffs be enacted to artificially raise the cost of the foreign goods back to their pre-railroad levels so that they can continue to compete. Thus, Bastiat makes two significant statements here:
To further demonstrate his statements, Bastiat suggests—in a classic "reductio ad absurdum"—that rather than enacting tariffs, the government should simply destroy the railroad anywhere that foreign goods can outcompete local goods. Since this would be just about everywhere, he goes on to suggest that this government should simply build a broken or "negative" railroad right from the start and not waste time with tariffs and rail building.
Bastiat died in Rome and is buried at San Luigi dei Francesi in the center of that city. He declared on his deathbed that his friend Gustave de Molinari (publisher of Bastiat's 1850 book "The Law") was his spiritual heir. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11282 |
Falsifiability
In the philosophy of science, falsifiability or refutability is the capacity for a statement, theory or hypothesis to be contradicted by evidence. For example, the statement "All swans are white" is falsifiable because one can observe that black swans exist.
Falsifiability was introduced by the philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book "Logik der Forschung" (1934, revised and translated into English in 1959 as "The Logic of Scientific Discovery"). He proposed it as the cornerstone of a solution to both the problem of induction and the problem of demarcation.
Popper argued for falsifiability and opposed this to the intuitively similar concept of verifiability. Whereas verifying the claim "All swans are white" would require assessment of all swans, which is not possible, the single observation of a black swan is sufficient to falsify it.
As a key notion in the separation of science from non-science, falsifiability has featured prominently in many scientific controversies and applications, even being used as legal precedent.
One of the questions in scientific method is: how does one move from observations to scientific laws? This is the problem of induction. Suppose we want to put the theory that all swans are white to the test. We come across a white swan. We cannot validly argue (or "induce") from "here is a white swan" to "all swans are white"; doing so would require a logical fallacy such as, for example, affirming the consequent.
Popper's idea to solve this problem is that while it is impossible to verify that every swan is white, finding a single black swan shows that "not" every swan is white. We might tentatively accept the proposal that every swan is white, while looking out for examples of non-white swans that would show our conjecture to be false. Falsification uses the valid inference "modus tollens": if from a statement formula_1 (say some law with some initial condition) we logically deduce but what is observed is we infer that formula_1 is false. For example, given the statement "all swans are white" and the initial condition "there is a swan here", we can deduce "the swan here is white", but if what is observed is "the swan here is not white" (say black), then "all swans are white" is false, or it was not a swan.
Popper said that this is the usual practice in science, i.e., induction is never used in science. This is the basis of critical rationalism. Popper's response to the problem of induction is simply that induction is actually never used in science. Instead, laws are conjectured, tested and the results are considered together with other aspects to decide which of these laws are applied in practice. In contrast, the logical empiricism movement, which included such philosophers as Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath and A.J. Ayer wanted to formalize the idea that, for a law to be scientific, it must be possible to argue on the basis of observations either in favor of its truth or its falsity. There was no consensus among these philosophers about how to achieve that, but the thought expressed by Mach's dictum that "where neither confirmation nor refutation is possible, science is not concerned" was accepted as a basic precept of critical reflection about science. In this logical positivism perspective, Popper's suggestion that we can only argue for the falsity of laws can be interpreted as if only falsifications, no confirmations, are possible in science.
Popper said that a demarcation criterion was still possible, but we have to use the "logical possibility" of falsifications, which is falsifiability. He cited his encounter with psychoanalysis in the 1910s. It did not matter what observation was presented, psychoanalysis could explain it. Unfortunately, the reason why it could explain everything is that it did not exclude anything also. For Popper, this was a failure, because it meant that it could not make any prediction. From a logical standpoint, if one finds an observation that does not contradict a law, it does not mean that the law is true. A verification has no value in itself. But, if the law makes risky predictions and these are corroborated, Popper says, there is a reason to prefer this law over another law that makes less risky predictions or no predictions at all. In the definition of falsifiability, contradictions with observations are not used for actual falsifications, but for "logical" "falsifications" that show that the law makes risky predictions, which is completely different.
On the basic philosophical side of this issue, Popper said that some philosophers of the Vienna Circle had mixed two different problems, that of meaning and that of demarcation, and had proposed in verificationism a single solution to both: a statement that could not be verified was considered meaningless. In opposition to this view, Popper said that there are meaningful theories that are not scientific, and that, accordingly, a criterion of meaningfulness does not coincide with a criterion of demarcation.
Any approach that relies on actual falsifications faces two challenges. The first challenge corresponds to decisions that must be agreed upon by scientists before an attempt to falsify a theory can be successful. The second challenge is how to use falsifications (successful attempts) and corroborations (rejected attempts) to explain progress in science. Imre Lakatos said that there were two incorrect approaches, which he called dogmatic falsificationism and naive falsificationism. Dogmatic falsificationism ignores both challenges, whereas naive falsificationism addresses the first challenge only. Lakatos contrasted them with sophisticated falsificationism, his own improvement on Popper's solution. Popper's methodology is not (and has never been) based on one of the two incorrect approaches. On the terminological side of this issue, Popper said that he never referred to his methodology as "falsificationism", tended to avoid this term and proposed instead the term "critical rationalism".
A dogmatic falsificationist ignores that every observation is theory impregnated. This leads to the critique that it is unclear which theory is falsified. Is it the one that is being studied or the one behind the observation? This is sometimes called the 'Duhem–Quine problem'. An example is Galileo's refutation of the theory that celestial bodies are faultless crystal balls. Many considered that it was the optical theory of the telescope that was false, not the theory of celestial bodies.
A dogmatic falsificationist ignores the role of auxiliary hypotheses, which could explain the contradicting observation. For the falsification to logically occur, a ceteris paribus clause must say that no auxiliary hypothesis is responsible for the contradicting observation. Again, this leads to the critique that it cannot be told if it is the theory or the ceteris paribus clause that is false. Lakatos gives the example of the path of a planet. If the path contradicts Newton's law, we will not know if it is Newton's law that is false or the assumption that no other body influenced the path. Popper was aware that one can always find another auxiliary hypothesis, though he clearly distinguished falsifiable theories such as Newton theory and non-falsifiable theories on this respect.
Lakatos says that Popper's solution to these criticisms requires that one relaxes the assumption that an observation can show a theory to be false:
Methodological falsificationism replaces the contradicting observation in a falsification with a "contradicting observation" accepted by convention among scientists, a convention that implies three decisions: the theory underlying the observation is correct, no auxiliary hypotheses explain this observation and the written form of the observation matches with an actual observation. The falsifiers thus depend on decisions made by scientists in view of the currently accepted technology and its associated theory. So, Popper says that "Science does not rest upon solid bedrock". He also says (see section ) that it's not an obstacle to the definition of an empirical basis and of falsifiability.
According to Lakatos, naive falsificationism is the claim that methodological falsifications can by themselves explain how scientific knowledge progresses. Very often one must deal with two or more competing theories which are both corroborated. Considering only falsifications, it is not clear why one theory is chosen above the other, even when one is corroborated more often than the other. In fact, a stronger version of the Quine-Duhem thesis says that it's not always possible to rationally pick one theory over the other using falsifications. Considering only falsifications, it is not clear why often a corroborating experiment is seen as a sign of progress. Popper's critical rationalism uses both falsifications and corroborations to explain progress in science. How corroborations and falsifications can explain progress in science was a subject of disagreement between many philosophers, especially between Lakatos and Popper.
Popper distinguished between the creative and informal process from which theories and accepted basic statements emerge and the logical and formal process where theories are falsified or corroborated. The main issue is whether the decision to select a theory among competing theories in the light of falsifications and corroborations should be moved in the logical part as some kind of formal logic. It is a delicate question, because this logic would be inductive: it selects a universal law in view of instances. The answer of Lakatos and many others to that question is that it should. In contradistinction, for Popper, the creative and informal part is guided by methodological rules, which naturally say to favor theories that are corroborated, but this methodology can hardly be made rigorous. Popper does not discuss corroborations when he describes the purely logical part.
Popper's way to analyze progress in science was through the concept of verisimilitude, a way to define how close a theory is to the truth, which he did not consider very significant, except (as an attempt) to describe a concept already clear in practice. Later, it was shown that the specific definition proposed by Popper cannot distinguish between two theories that are false, which is the case for all theories in the history of science. Today, there is still on going research on the general concept of verisimilitude.
Popper distinguished between the logic of science and its applied "methodology". The logical part consists of theories, statements and their purely logical relationship. The methodological part consists, in Popper's view, of informal rules, which are used to guess theories, accept observation statements as factual, etc. When this distinction is applied to the term "falsifiability", it corresponds to a distinction between two completely different meanings of the term. The same is true for the term "falsifiable". Popper said that he only uses "falsifiability" or "falsifiable" in reference to the logical side and that, when he refers to the methodological side, he speaks instead of "falsification" and its problems.
Popper said that methodological problems require proposing methodological rules. For example, one such rule is that, if one refuses to go along with falsifications, then one has retired oneself from the game of science. The logical side does not have such methodological problems, in particular with regard to the falsifiability of a theory, because basic statements are not required to be possible. Methodological rules are only needed in the context of actual falsifications.
So observations have two purposes in Popper's view. On the methodological side, observations can be used to show that a law is false, which Popper calls falsification. On the logical side, observations, which are purely logical constructions, do not show a law to be false, but contradict a law to show its falsifiability. Unlike falsifications and "free from the problems of falsification", these contradictions establish the value of the law, which may eventually be corroborated. He wrote that an entire literature exists because this distinction was not understood.
In Popper's view of science, statements of observation can be constructed within a logical structure independently of any factual observations. The set of all purely logical observations that can be created constitutes the empirical basis. Popper calls them the "basic statements" or "test statements". They are the statements that can be used to show the falsifiability of a theory. Popper says that a basic statement does not have to be possible in practice. It is sufficient that the values or properties that appear in the observations are associated with technologies. See the examples in section .
In more than twelve pages of "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" , Popper discusses informally which statements among those that can be constructed in the logical structure are basic statements. A logical structure uses universal classes to define laws. For example, in the law "all swans are white" the concept of swans is a universal class. It corresponds to a set of properties that every swan must have. It is not restricted to the swans that exist, existed or will exist. Informally, a basic statement is simply a statement that concerns only a finite number of specific instances in universal classes. In particular, an existential statement such as "there exists a black swan" is not a basic statement, because it is not specific about the instance. On the other hand, "this swan here is black" is a basic statement. Popper says that it is a singular existential statement or simply a singular statement. So, basic statements are singular (existential) statements.
Thornton says that basic statements are statements that correspond to particular "observation-reports". He then gives Popper's definition of falsifiability:
As in the case of actual falsifiers, decisions must be taken by scientists to accept a logical structure and its associated empirical basis, but these are usually part of a background knowledge that scientists have in common and, often, no discussion is even necessary. The first decision described by Lakatos is implicit in this agreement, but the other decisions are not needed. This agreement, if one can speak of agreement when there is not even a discussion, exists only in principle. This is where the distinction between the logical and methodological sides of science becomes important. When an actual falsifier is proposed, the technology used is considered in details and, as described in section , an actual agreement is needed. This may require using a deeper empirical basis, hidden within the current empirical basis, to make sure that the properties or values used in the falsifier were obtained correctly ( gives some examples).
Despite the fact that the empirical basis can be shaky, more comparable to a swamp than to a solid ground, the definition that is given above is simply the formalization of a natural requirement on scientific theories, without which, Popper says, the whole logical process of science would not be possible.
This article starts by stating that a falsifier must have parts that are separately technologically possible. Yet doesn't discuss multiple parts in a potential falsifier. This requires some explanation. In his analysis of the scientific nature of universal laws, Popper arrived at the conclusion that laws must "allow us to deduce, roughly speaking, more "empirical" singular statements than we can deduce from the initial conditions alone." A singular statement that has one part only can not contradict an universal law. It can only contradict a prediction that is obtained from the law together with another singular statement, the initial condition. A falsifier of a law has always two parts: the initial condition and the singular statement that contradicts the prediction. There was no need to require that falsifiers have two parts in the definition itself. This made the definition more general and allowed the basic statements themselves to be falsifiable.
Criteria that require that a law must be predictive, just as is required by falsifiability, Popper wrote, "have been put forward as criteria of the meaningfulness of sentences (rather than as criteria of demarcation applicable to theoretical systems) again and again after the publication of [his] book, even by critics who pooh-poohed [his] criterion of falsifiability."
In response to Lakatos who suggested that Newton's theory was as hard to show falsifiable than Freud's psychoanalytic theory, Popper gave the example of an apple that moves from the ground up to a branch and then starts to dance from one branch to another. It is clearly impossible, yet a basic statement that is a valid potential falsifier for Newton's theory, because the position of the apple at different times can be measured.
Another example of a basic statement is "The inert mass of this object is ten times larger than its gravitational mass." This is a basic statement because the inert mass and the gravitational mass can both be measured separately, even though it never happens that they are different. It is, as described by Popper, a valid falsifier for Einstein's equivalence principle.
An example of a basic statement in the theory of evolution is "In this industrial area, the relative fitness of the white-bodied peppered moth is high." Here "fitness" means "reproductive success over the next generation", which is the definition used as early as 1930 by Ronald Fisher and still the most widely accepted definition in modern biology. This is an example of a basic statement, because it is possible to separately determine the kind of environment, industrial vs natural, and the relative fitness of the white-bodied form (relative to the black-bodied form) in an area, even though it never happens that the white-bodied form has a high relative fitness in an industrial area. "In industrial areas, the black form of the peppered moth has higher relative fitness" is a famous example of a falsifiable statement that illustrates the effect of natural selection.
A famous example of a basic statement from J.B.S. Haldane is "[These are] fossil rabbits in the Precambrian era." This is a basic statement because it is possible to find a fossil rabbit and to determine that the date of a fossil is in the Precambrian era, even though it never happens that the date of a rabbit fossil is in the Precambrian era. Despite opinions to the contrary, some times wrongly attributed to Popper, this shows the scientific character of paleontology or the history of the evolution of life on Earth, because it contradicts the hypothesis in paleontology that all mammals existed in a much more recent era. Richard Dawkins adds that any other modern animal, such as a hippo, would suffice.
A simple example of a non-basic statement is "this angel does not have large wings". It is not a basic statement, because though the absence of large wings can be observed, no technology (independent of the presence of wings) exists to identify angels. Even if it is accepted that angels exist, the sentence "All angels have large wings" is not falsifiable.
Another example from Popper of a non-basic statement is "This human action is altruistic." It is not a basic statement, because no accepted technology allows us to determine whether or not an action is motivated by self-interest. The theory "All human actions are egotistic, motivated by self-interest", with all its variants in behaviorism, psychoanalysis, individual psychology, utilitarianism, vulgar-marxism, religion, and sociology of knowledge, Popper wrote, is not falsifiable.
Some adherents of young-Earth creationism make an argument (called the Omphalos hypothesis after the Greek word for navel) that the world was created with the appearance of age; e.g., the sudden appearance of a mature chicken capable of laying eggs. This ad hoc hypothesis introduced into young-Earth creationism makes it non-falsifiable because it says that the time of creation (of a species) measured by the accepted technology is illusory and no accepted technology is proposed to measure the claimed "actual" time of creation. Popper says that it's fine to modify a theory by the introduction of an auxiliary hypothesis, but the new theory must at the least remain falsifiable, which is not the case here. One can also present the Omphalos hypothesis as an auxiliary hypothesis that is introduced into the accepted theory. In this view, the new theory remains falsifiable, but its falsifiability does not increase, because no additional observations are predicted. In both views, the ad hoc hypothesis, seen by itself, is not falsifiable because there is no way to measure the claimed "actual" time of creation that is proposed by this hypothesis. This is discussed in details by Dienes in the case of a variation on the Omphalos hypothesis, which, in addition, specifies that God made the creation in this way to test our faith.
discussed statements such as "All men are mortal". This is not falsifiable, because it does not matter how old is a man, maybe it will die next year. Maxwell said that this statement is nevertheless useful, because it is often corroborated. He coined the term "corroboration without demarcation". Popper's view is that it is indeed useful, but only because it is indirectly corroborated by the corroboration of the falsifiable law "All men die before the age of 150." For Popper, if no such a falsifiable law exists, then the metaphysical law is not useful, because it's not indirectly corroborated.
Maxwell also used the example "All solids have a melting point." This is not falsifiable, because maybe the melting point will be reached at a higher temperature. The law is falsifiable and more useful if we specify an upper bound on melting points or a way to calculate this upper bound. Another example from Maxwell is "All beta decays are accompanied with a neutrino emission from the same nucleus." This is also not falsifiable, because maybe the neutrino can be detected in a different manner. The law is falsifiable and much more useful from a scientific point of view, if the method to detect the neutrino is specified.
Maxwell said that most scientific laws are metaphysical statements of this kind, which, Popper said, need to be made more precise before they can be indirectly corroborated. In his critique of the falsifiability criterion, Maxwell also considered the requirement for decisions in the detection of the neutrino and the determination of the melting point.
Another example, from the pepper moth example, is "In all areas, the white vs black trait of the pepper moth affects its fitness." This is also not falsifiable, because maybe the right environmental factor was not yet considered. When it is specified, namely, fitness in polluted industrial areas vs non polluted areas, then the law is falsifiable and it says which environmental factor should be considered to actually see an effect.
In the 5th and 6th editions of On the origin of species, following a suggestion of Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin used "Survival of the fittest", an expression first coined by Herbert Spencer, as a synonym for "Natural Selection". Popper and others said that, if one uses the most widely accepted definition of "fitness" in modern biology (see subsection ), namely reproductive success itself, the expression "survival of the fittest" is a tautology.
In practice, as illustrated by the peppered moth example of section , the questions asked are of the kind how specific traits affect the survival rate or fitness of a species when confronted by an environmental factor such as industrial pollution. Great Darwinist Ronald Fisher worked out mathematical theorems to help answer this kind of questions. But, for Popper and others, there is no (falsifiable) law of Natural Selection in this, because it only applies to some rare traits. Instead, for Popper, the work of Fisher and others on Natural Selection is part of an important metaphysical research program.
Popper said that not all non-falsifiable statements are useless in science. Mathematical statements are good examples. Like all formal sciences, mathematics is not concerned with the validity of theories based on observations in the empirical world, but rather, mathematics is occupied with the theoretical, abstract study of such topics as quantity, structure, space and change. Methods of the mathematical sciences are, however, applied in constructing and testing scientific models dealing with observable reality. Albert Einstein wrote, "One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem, above all other sciences, is that its laws are absolutely certain and indisputable, while those of other sciences are to some extent debatable and in constant danger of being overthrown by newly discovered facts."
Theories of history or politics that allegedly predict future events have a logical form that renders them neither falsifiable nor verifiable. They claim that for every historically significant event, there exists an historical or economic law that "determines" the way in which events proceeded. Failure to identify the law does not mean that it does not exist, yet an event that satisfies the law does not prove the general case. Evaluation of such claims is at best difficult. On this basis, Popper "fundamentally criticized historicism in the sense of any preordained prediction of history" and said that neither Marxism nor psychoanalysis was science, although both made such claims.
Popper made a clear distinction between the original theory of Marx and what came to be known as Marxism later on. For Popper, the original theory of Marx contained genuine scientific laws. Though they could not make preordained predictions, these laws constrained how changes can occur in society. One of them was that changes in society cannot "be achieved by the use of legal or political means". For Popper, this was testable, and in fact falsified. "Yet instead of accepting the refutations", Popper wrote, "the followers of Marx re-interpreted both the theory and the evidence in order to make them agree. ... They thus gave a 'conventionalist twist' to the theory; and by this stratagem they destroyed its much advertised claim to scientific status."
Falsifiability has been used in the "McLean v. Arkansas" case (in 1982), the "Daubert" case (in 1993) and other cases. A survey of 303 federal judges conducted in 1998 found that "[P]roblems with the nonfalsifiable nature of an expert's underlying theory and difficulties with an unknown or too-large error rate were cited in less than 2% of cases."
In the ruling of the "McLean v. Arkansas" case, Judge William Overton used falsifiability as one of the criteria to determine that "creation science" was not scientific and should not be taught in Arkansas public schools as such (it can be taught as religion). In his testimony, philosopher Michael Ruse defined the characteristics which constitute science as (see and ):
In his conclusion related to this criterion Judge Overton stated that
In several cases of the United States Supreme Court, the court described scientific methodology using the five Daubert factors, which include falsifiability. The Daubert result cited Popper and other philosophers of science:
David H. Kaye said that references to the Daubert majority opinion confused falsifiability and falsification and that "inquiring into the existence of meaningful attempts at falsification is an appropriate and crucial consideration in admissibility determinations."
Section shows that falsifiability is useful to demarcate between scientific and non-scientific theories, but why should falsifiability be the criterion for scientific theories? The first reason that comes to mind is to support a methodological rule that can conclusively falsify these theories. However, as described in , rigorously speaking, it is not possible to falsify a theory. Moreover, as described in , falsification plays no decisive role in the choice of a new theory. Therefore, even if it was possible to rigorously falsify a theory, the usefulness of this methodological rule and indirectly of falsifiability would remain unclear. For Popper, this application of falsifiability or methodological rule suffers from the problems of falsification because it refers to an inadequate view of science, the bucket view of science. For Popper (see below), the correct application of falsifiability, i.e., his methodology, is as free from the problems of falsification as falsifiability itself, because it relies on a different view, the searchlight view of science.
Some tentative explanations for the growth of scientific knowledge are based on what Popper calls the bucket view of science. In this view, observation statements accumulate in a bucket through observations and various procedures are used to make sure that they are valid. Next, new laws are obtained in a way that can be "justified" using inference rules that are allowed to process all the knowledge that is available in the bucket. In this justificational picture, Hume said that we cannot obtain new universal laws (except what can be obtained through deductive rules). Hume's argument is based on reasonable premises: non-deductive rules are in need of justification, circular arguments are not valid, etc. If we accept Hume's premises, even probabilistic attempts to explain the growth of knowledge in terms of the bucket view of science, Popper stated, are doomed to fail.
Popper's solution to this problem is simply to reject the bucket view of science. His main argument is basically that he accepts Hume's argument, which shows that the bucket view fails to explain the growth of objective knowledge. Popper said that the processes in the bucket are better seen as physical processes and the laws that govern these processes are biological. To help people get rid of the limitations associated with the bucket view, Popper brought out the main issue with this view: it ignores the organismic aspect of knowledge. Given that the bucket view is a dead end, it is natural to accept that biological predispositions and expectations play an important role in these processes.
Popper proposed to replace the bucket view of science with what he called the searchlight view of science. In that view, Popper wrote, there is no reason why any methodology should work. It is easy, Popper said, to imagine universes where no methodology can work or even only exist. If you want to believe that the methodology will work, it must be postulated as an axiom. In Popper's case, the axiom is that the methodology of conjectures and refutations is going to work. The conjectures are the searchlight, because they lead to observational results. But this axiom will not help any objective rule in the justification of scientific knowledge. There is no point in attempting any justification in the searchlight view. For a popperian, the absence of these objective rules is expected. It is not a failure. In this line of thought, Einstein wrote that there is no logical path to science.
Popper's scientific methodology that accompanies falsifiability contains rules such as "He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game." In general, the rules of Popper's methodology influence which theories will be chosen or rejected, but these rules do that only through decisions taken by the scientists. As described in , every rule to determine or choose theories must rely on the good judgement of the scientists.
Back to the original question: why should falsifiability be the criterion? It is not that falsification directly leads to the rejection of a theory. That would be a rule of the bucket view of science. It is not that we must always look for theories that are more falsifiable. That would also be a rule of the bucket view of science. Popper's main methodological rule is that scientists must try to guess and corroborate (or equivalently falsify) bold and useful conjectures and take any falsification as a problem that can be used to start a critical discussion. In other words, the usefulness of falsifiability is that falsifiable conjectures say more, because they prohibit more and, in the case of their falsification, they lead to useful problems, which steer the creative process of science. For Popper, who knew most of section , this is exactly what we should expect from a scientific theory.
The original answer provided, which is the possibility to actually falsify a theory as if there was a rule to eliminate laws, missed the whole point: No rule can supersede the hidden organic aspect of knowledge in the processing of the available objective knowledge. If there is any inference rule, the final decision must still be left to the organic aspect or, more simply, to the scientists. For Popper, inference rules are tantamount to a "quest for certainty", which he saw as the main weakness of the bucket view of science.
In , it is seen that Lakatos reached the same conclusion in the following sense that he said that his methodology did not offer any "firm heuristic advice about what to do". Before Popper's time, in 1906, being aware of the problems of falsification, Pierre Duhem reached the same conclusion. Popper reemphasized non-justificationism, which was a good match for his added falsifiability criterion and associated critical methodology.
As described in section , Lakatos and Popper agreed that universal laws cannot be logically deduced (except from laws that say even more), but he felt that, if the explanation for new laws can not be deductive, it must be inductive. He urged Popper explicitly to adopt some inductive principle and sets himself the task to find an inductive methodology. However, the methodology that he found did not offer any exact inductive rules. In a response to Kuhn, Feyerabend and Musgrave, Lakatos acknowledged that the methodology depends on the good judgment of the scientists. Feyerabend wrote in "Against Method" that Lakatos' methodology of scientific research programmes is epistemological anarchism in disguise and Musgrave made a similar comment. In more recent work, Feyerabend says that Lakatos uses rules, but whether or not to follow any of these rules is left to the judgment of the scientists. This is also discussed elsewhere.
Popper also offered a methodology with rules, but these rules are also not inductive rules, because they are not by themselves used to accept laws or establish their validity. They do that through the creativity or "good judgment" of the scientists only. For Popper, the required non deductive component of science never had to be an inductive methodology. He always viewed this component as a creative process beyond the explanatory reach of any rational methodology, but yet used to decide which theories should be studied and applied, find good problems and guess useful conjectures. Quoting Einstein to support his view, Popper said that this renders obsolete the need for an inductive methodology or logical path to the laws. For Popper, no inductive methodology was ever proposed to satisfactorily explain science.
Section says that both Lakatos's and Popper's methodology are not inductive. Yet Lakatos's methodology extended importantly Popper's methodology: it added a historiographical component to it. This allowed Lakatos to find corroborations for his methodology in the history of science. The basic units in his methodology, which can be abandoned or pursued, are research programmes. Research programmes can be degenerative or progressive and only degenerative research programmes must be abandoned at some point. For Lakatos, this is mostly corroborated by facts in history.
In contradistinction, Popper did not propose his methodology as a tool to reconstruct the history of science. Yet, some times, he did refer to history to corroborate his methodology. For example, he remarked that theories that were considered great successes were also the most likely to be falsified. Zahar's view was that, with regard to corroborations found in the history of science, there was only a difference of emphasis between Popper and Lakatos.
As an anecdotal example, in one of his articles Lakatos challenged Popper to show that his theory was falsifiable: he asked "Under what conditions would you give up your demarcation criterion?". Popper replied "I shall give up my theory if Professor Lakatos succeeds in showing that Newton's theory is no more falsifiable by 'observable states of affairs' than is Freud's."
Thomas Kuhn analyzed what he calls periods of normal science as well as revolutions from one period of normal science to another, whereas Popper's view is that only revolutions are relevant. For Popper, the role of science, mathematics and metaphysics, actually the role of any knowledge, is to solve puzzles. In the same line of thought, Kuhn observes that in periods of normal science the scientific theories, which represent some paradigm, are used to routinely solve puzzles and the validity of the paradigm is hardly in question. It's only when important new puzzles emerge that cannot be solved by accepted theories that a revolution might occur. This can be seen as a viewpoint on the distinction made by Popper between the informal and formal process in science (see section ). In the big picture presented by Kuhn, the routinely solved puzzles are corroborations. Falsifications or otherwise unexplained observations are unsolved puzzles. All of these are used in the informal process that generates a new kind of theory. Kuhn says that Popper emphasizes formal or logical falsifications and fails to explain how the social and informal process works.
Popper often uses astrology as an example of a pseudo-science. He says that it is not falsifiable because both the theory itself and its predictions are too imprecise. Khun, as an historian of science, remarked that many predictions made by astrologers in the past were quite precise and they were very often falsified. He also said that astrologers themselves acknowledged these falsifications.
Paul Feyerabend rejected any prescriptive methodology at all. He rejected Lakatos' argument for "ad hoc" hypothesis, arguing that science would not have progressed without making use of any and all available methods to support new theories. He rejected any reliance on a scientific method, along with any special authority for science that might derive from such a method. He said that if one is keen to have a universally valid methodological rule, epistemological anarchism or "anything goes" would be the only candidate. For Feyerabend, any special status that science might have derives from the social and physical value of the results of science rather than its method.
In their book "Fashionable Nonsense" (from 1997, published in the UK as "Intellectual Impostures") the physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont criticised falsifiability. They include this critique in the "Intermezzo" chapter, where they expose their own views on truth in contrast to the extreme epistemological relativism of postmodernism. Even though Popper is clearly not a relativist, Sokal and Bricmont discuss falsifiability because they see postmodernist epistemological relativism as a reaction to Popper's description of falsifiability, and more generally, to his theory of science. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11283 |
Francisco I. Madero
Francisco Ignacio Madero González (; 30 October 1873 – 22 February 1913) was a Mexican revolutionary, writer and statesman who served as the 33rd president of Mexico from 1911 until shortly before his assassination in 1913. A wealthy landowner, he was nonetheless an advocate for social justice and democracy. Madero was notable for challenging long-time President Porfirio Díaz for the presidency in 1910 and being instrumental in sparking the Mexican Revolution.
Born into an extremely wealthy family in the northern state of Coahuila, Madero was an unusual politician, who until he ran for president in the 1910 elections, had never held office. In his 1908 book entitled "The Presidential Succession in 1910", Madero called on voters to prevent the sixth reelection of Porfirio Díaz, which Madero considered anti-democratic. His vision would lay the foundation for a democratic, twentieth-century Mexico, but without polarizing the social classes. To that effect, he bankrolled the opposition Anti-Reelectionist Party and urged voters to oust Díaz in the 1910 election. Madero's candidacy against Díaz garnered widespread support in Mexico. He was possessed of independent financial means, ideological determination, and the bravery to oppose Díaz when it was dangerous to do so. Díaz had Madero arrested before the elections, which were then seen as fraudulent. Madero escaped from prison and issued the Plan of San Luis Potosí from the United States. For the first time, he called for an armed uprising against the illegitimately elected Díaz, and outlined a program of reform. The armed phase of the Mexican Revolution dates to his plan.
Uprisings in Morelos under Emiliano Zapata and in the north by Pascual Orozco, Pancho Villa and others and the inability of the Federal Army to suppress them forced Díaz's resignation on 25 May 1911, after the signing of the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez; Madero was enormously popular among many sectors, but he did not assume the presidency. An interim president was installed and elections were scheduled for fall 1911. Madero was elected president on 15 October 1911 by almost 90% of the vote. Sworn into office on 6 November 1911, he became one of Mexico's youngest elected presidents, having just turned 38.
Madero's administration soon encountered opposition both from more radical revolutionaries and from conservatives. He did not move quickly on land reform, which was a key demand of many of his supporters. Former supporters Emiliano Zapata declared himself in rebellion against Madero in the Plan of Ayala as Pascual Orozco did in his Plan Orozquista. These were significant challenges to Madero's presidency. Labor also became disillusioned by his moderate policies. Foreign entrepreneurs were concerned that Madero was unable to maintain political stability that would keep their investments safe. Foreign governments were concerned that a destabilized Mexico would threaten the international order.
In February 1913, a military coup took place in the Mexican capital led by General Victoriano Huerta, the military commander of the city, and supported by the United States ambassador. Madero was arrested and a short time later assassinated along with his Vice-President, José María Pino Suárez, on 22 February 1913, following the series of events known as the Ten Tragic Days (la "Decena Trágica"). In death, Madero became a unifying force of disparate elements in Mexico opposed to the regime of Huerta. In the north, governor of Coahuila Venustiano Carranza led what became the Constitutionalist Army against Huerta, while Zapata continued in his rebellion under the Plan of Ayala. Once Huerta was ousted in July 1914, the opposition coalition held together by Madero's memory dissolved and Mexico entered a new stage of civil war.
Madero was born in the hacienda of El Rosario, in Parras de la Fuente, Coahuila, the first son of Francisco Ignacio Madero Hernández and Mercedes González Treviño, and the first grandson of family patriarch, Evaristo Madero, governor of Coahuila. He was sickly as a child, and was small in stature as an adult. It is widely believed that Madero's middle initial, I, stood for Indalecio, but according to his birth certificate it stood for Ignacio. Furthermore, on the birth certificate, Ignacio was written with the archaic spelling of Ygnacio.
His family has been described as one of the five wealthiest families in Mexico. His grandfather, Evaristo Madero, began as a founder of a regional carting business, but he took advantage of economic opportunity and transported cotton from the Confederate states to Mexican ports during the U.S. Civil War (1861–65). Having built a diversified fortune, but before his real success, Evaristo first married Rafaela Hernández Lombraña, half-sister of the powerful miner and banker Antonio V. Hernández. Alongside his brother-in-law, and other of his new political family's relations, he founded the "Compañía Industrial de Parras", initially involved in commercial vineyards, cotton, and textiles, and later also in mining, cotton mills, ranching, banking, coal, guayule rubber, and foundries in the later part of the nineteenth century. For many years, the family prospered during Porfirio Díaz's regime, and by 1910 the family was one of the richest in Mexico, worth 30 million pesos ($15 million U.S. dollars of the day, and almost $500 million U.S. dollars in today's money). Much of this wealth arose from the diversification of Madero lands during the 1890s into the production of "guayule" rubber plants.
After the death of his first wife, and having built his success, Evaristo Madero remarried to Doña Manuela de Farías Benavides, member of one of northern Mexico's most aristocratic families, daughter of Don Juan Francisco de Farías, mayor of Laredo. Evaristo Madero also served as governor of Coahuila from 1880 to 1884, during the four-year interregnum of Porfirio Díaz's rule. Afterwards, Evaristo was permanently sidelined from political office when Díaz returned to the presidency in 1884 and served until 1911. Evaristo Madero's two marriages were fruitful, with a total of 18 children, 14 of whom would survive until adulthood, and whose descendants make up some of Mexico's most influential families until this day. Thus, young Francisco was a member of a huge and powerful northern Mexican clan with a focus on commercial rather than political interests.
Francisco and his brother Gustavo A. Madero attended the Jesuit college in Saltillo, but his early Catholic education had little lasting impact. As a young man, his father sent him to carry out preparatory studies at the Culver Academies in the United States and later at the Lycée Hoche in Versailles, France, where he completed the classe préparatoire aux grandes écoles program. Soon after, he was admitted to study business at the prestigious École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Paris (HEC).
His father's subscription to the magazine "Revue Spirite" awakened in the young Madero an interest in Spiritism, an offshoot of Spiritualism. During his time in Paris, Madero made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Allan Kardec, the founder of Spiritism, and became a passionate advocate of the belief, soon coming to believe he was a medium.
Following business school, Madero traveled to the University of California, Berkeley, to study agricultural techniques and to improve his English. During his time there, he was influenced by the theosophist ideas of Annie Besant, which were prominent at nearby Stanford University.
In 1893, the 20-year-old Madero returned to Mexico and assumed management of the Madero family's hacienda at San Pedro, Coahuila. Well traveled and well educated, he was now in robust health. Proving an enlightened and progressive member of the Madero commercial complex, Francisco installed new irrigation, introduced American cotton and cotton machinery, and built a soap factory and also an ice factory. He embarked on a lifelong commitment to philanthropy. His employees were well paid and received regular medical exams; he built schools, hospitals, and community kitchens; and he paid to support orphans and award scholarships. He also taught himself homeopathy and offered medical treatments to his employees. Francisco became increasingly engaged with Spiritism and in 1901 was convinced that the spirit of his brother Raúl, who had died at age 4, was communicating with him, urging him to do charity work and practice self-discipline and self-abnegation. Madero became a vegetarian and stopped drinking alcohol and smoking.
Already well-connected to a wealthy family and now well-educated in business, he had built a personal fortune of over 500,000 pesos by 1899. The family was organized on patriarchal principles, so that even though young Francisco was wealthy in his own right, his father and especially his grandfather Evaristo viewed him as someone who should be under the authority of his elders. As the eldest sibling, Francisco exercised authority over his younger brothers and sisters. In January 1903, he married Sara Pérez, first in a civil ceremony, and then a Catholic nuptial mass celebrated by the archbishop.
On 2 April 1903, Bernardo Reyes, governor of Nuevo León, violently crushed a political demonstration, an example of the increasingly authoritarian policies of president Porfirio Díaz. Madero was deeply moved and, believing himself to be receiving advice from the spirit of his late brother Raúl, he decided to act. The spirit of Raúl told him, "Aspire to do good for your fellow citizens...working for a lofty ideal that will raise the moral level of society, that will succeed in liberating it from oppression, slavery, and fanaticism." Madero founded the Benito Juárez Democratic Club and ran for municipal office in 1904, though he lost the election narrowly. In addition to his political activities, Madero continued his interest in Spiritualism, publishing a number of articles under the pseudonym of Arjuna (a prince from the "Mahabharata").
In 1905, Madero became increasingly involved in opposition to the Díaz government. He organized political clubs and founded a political newspaper ("El Demócrata") and a satirical periodical ("El Mosco", "The Fly"). Madero's preferred candidate, Frumencio Fuentes, was defeated by that of Porfirio Díaz in Coahuila's 1905 gubernatorial elections. Díaz considered jailing Madero, but Bernardo Reyes suggested that Francisco's father be asked to control his increasingly political son.
In an interview with journalist James Creelman published in 17 February 1908 issue of "Pearson's Magazine", President Díaz said that Mexico was ready for a democracy and that the 1910 presidential election would be a free election.
Madero spent the bulk of 1908 writing a book, which he believed was at the direction of spirits, now including that of Benito Juárez himself. This book, published in January 1909, was titled "La sucesión presidencial en 1910" ("The Presidential Succession of 1910"). The book quickly became a bestseller in Mexico. The book proclaimed that the concentration of absolute power in the hands of one man – Porfirio Díaz – for so long had made Mexico sick. Madero pointed out the irony that in 1871, Porfirio Díaz's political slogan had been "No Re-election". Madero acknowledged that Porfirio Díaz had brought peace and a measure of economic growth to Mexico. However, Madero argued that this was counterbalanced by the dramatic loss of freedom, including the brutal treatment of the Yaqui people, the repression of workers in Cananea, excessive concessions to the United States, and an unhealthy centralization of politics around the person of the president. Madero called for a return of the Liberal 1857 Constitution. To achieve this, Madero proposed organizing a Democratic Party under the slogan "Sufragio efectivo, no reelección" ("Effective Suffrage. No Re-election"). Porfirio Díaz could either run in a free election or retire.
Madero's book was well received, and widely read. Many people began to call Madero "the Apostle of Democracy". Madero sold off much of his property – often at a considerable loss – in order to finance anti-re-election activities throughout Mexico. He founded the Anti-Re-election Center in Mexico City in May 1909, and soon thereafter lent his backing to the periodical "El Antirreeleccionista", which was run by the young lawyer/philosopher José Vasconcelos and another intellectual, Luis Cabrera Lobato. In Puebla, Aquiles Serdán, from a politically engaged family, contacted Madero and as a result, formed an Anti-Re-electionist Club to organize for the 1910 elections, particularly among the working classes. Madero traveled throughout Mexico giving anti-reelectionist speeches, and everywhere he went he was greeted by crowds of thousands. His candidacy cost him financially, since he sold much of his property at a loss to back his campaign.
In spite of the attacks by Madero and his earlier statements to the contrary, Díaz ran for re-election. In a show of U.S. support, Díaz and William Howard Taft planned a summit in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, for 16 October 1909, a historic first meeting between a Mexican and a U.S. president and also the first time a U.S. president would cross the border into Mexico. At the meeting, Diaz told John Hays Hammond, "Since I am responsible for bringing several billion dollars in foreign investments into my country, I think I should continue in my position until a competent successor is found." The summit was a great success for Díaz, but it could have been a major tragedy. On the day of the summit, Frederick Russell Burnham, the celebrated scout, and Private C.R. Moore, a Texas Ranger, discovered a man holding a concealed palm pistol along the procession route and they disarmed the assassin within only a few feet of Díaz and Taft.
The Porfirian regime reacted to Madero by placing pressure on the Madero family's banking interests, and at one point even issued a warrant for Madero's arrest on the grounds of "unlawful transaction in rubber". Madero was not arrested, though, apparently due in part to the intervention of Díaz's finance minister, José Yves Limantour, a friend of the Madero family. In April 1910, the Anti-Re-electionist Party met and selected Madero as their nominee for President of Mexico.
During the convention, a meeting between Madero and Díaz was arranged by the governor of Veracruz, Teodoro Dehesa, and took place in Díaz's residence on 16 April 1910. Only the candidate and the president were present for the meeting, so the only account of it is Madero's own in correspondence. A political solution and compromise might have been possible, with Madero withdrawing his candidacy. It became clear to Madero that Díaz was a decrepit old man, out of touch politically, and unaware of the extent of formal political opposition. The meeting was important for strengthening Madero's resolve that political compromise was not possible and he is quoted as saying "Porfirio is not an imposing chief. Nevertheless, it will be necessary to start a revolution to overthrow him. But who will crush it afterwards?" Madero was worried that Porfirio Díaz would not willingly relinquish office, warned his supporters of the possibility of electoral fraud and proclaimed that "Force shall be met by force!"
Madero campaigned across the country on a message of reform and met with numerous supporters. Resentful of the "peaceful invasion" from the United States "which came to control 90 percent of Mexico's mineral resources, its national railroad, its oil industry and, increasingly, its land," Mexico's poor and middle-class overwhelmingly showed their support for Madero. Fearful of a dramatic change in direction, on 6 June 1910, the Porfirian regime arrested Madero in Monterrey and sent him to a prison in San Luis Potosí. Approximately 5,000 other members of the Anti-Re-electionist movement were also jailed. Francisco Vázquez Gómez took over the nomination, but during Madero's time in jail, a fraudulent election was held on 21 June 1910 that gave Díaz an unbelievably large margin of victory.
Madero's father used his influence with the state governor and posted bond to give Madero the right to move about the city on horseback during the day. On 4th October 1910, Madero galloped away from his guards and took refuge with sympathizers in a nearby village. Three days later he was smuggled across the U.S. border, hidden in a baggage car by sympathetic railway workers.
Madero set up shop in San Antonio, Texas, and quickly issued his Plan of San Luis Potosí, which had been written during his time in prison, partly with the help of Ramón López Velarde. The plan proclaimed the elections of 1910 null and void, and called for an armed revolution to begin at 6 pm on 20 November 1910, against the "illegitimate presidency/dictatorship of Díaz". At that point, Madero declared himself provisional President of Mexico, and called for a general refusal to acknowledge the central government, restitution of land to villages and Indian communities, and freedom for political prisoners. Madero's policies painted him as a leader of each of the different castes in Mexican society at the time. He was a member of the upper class; the middle class saw that he sought to gain entry into political processes; the lower class saw that he promised fairer politics and a much more substantial, equitable economic system.
The family drew on its financial resources to make regime change possible, with Madero's brother Gustavo A. Madero hiring the law firm of Washington lawyer Sherburne Hopkins, the "world's best rigger of Latin American revolutions" to foment support in the U.S. A strategy to discredit Díaz with U.S. business and the U.S. government did meet some success, with Standard Oil engaging in talks with Gustavo Madero, but more importantly, the U.S. government "bent neutrality laws for the revolutionaries." The U.S. Senate held hearings in 1913 as to whether the U.S. had any role in fomenting revolution in Mexico, Hopkins gave testimony that "he did not believe that it cost the Maderos themselves more than $400,000 gold", with the aggregate cost being $1,500,000US.
On 20 November 1910, Madero arrived at the border and planned to meet up with 400 men raised by his uncle Catarino to launch an attack on Ciudad Porfirio Díaz (modern-day Piedras Negras, Coahuila). However, his uncle arrived late and brought only ten men. Madero decided to postpone the revolution. Instead, he and his brother Raúl (who had been given the same name as his late brother) traveled incognito to New Orleans, Louisiana.
On 14 February 1911, Madero crossed the border into Chihuahua state from Texas, and on 6 March 1911 led 130 men in an attack on Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. Madero was reported wounded in the fighting, but was saved by his personal bodyguard and Revolutionary general Máximo Castillo. He spent the next several months as the head of the Mexican Revolution. Madero successfully imported arms from the United States, with the American government under William Howard Taft doing little to halt the flow of arms to the Mexican revolutionaries. By April the Revolution had spread to eighteen states, including Morelos where the leader was Emiliano Zapata.
On 1 April 1911, Porfirio Díaz claimed that he had heard the voice of the people of Mexico, replaced his cabinet, and agreed to restitution of the lands of the dispossessed. Madero did not believe this statement and instead demanded the resignation of President Díaz and Vice-President Ramón Corral. Madero then attended a meeting with the other revolutionary leaders – they agreed to a fourteen-point plan which called for pay for revolutionary soldiers; the release of political prisoners; and the right of the revolutionaries to name several members of cabinet. Madero was moderate, however. He believed that the revolutionaries should proceed cautiously so as to minimize bloodshed and should strike a deal with Díaz if possible. In early May, Madero wanted to extend a ceasefire, but his fellow revolutionaries Pascual Orozco and Francisco Villa disagreed and went ahead without orders on 8 May to attack Ciudad Juárez, which surrendered after two days of bloody fighting. The revolutionaries won this battle decisively, making it clear that Díaz could no longer retain power. On 21 May 1911, the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez was signed.
Under the terms of the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez, Díaz and Corral agreed to resign by the end of May 1911, with Díaz's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Francisco León de la Barra, becoming interim president solely for the purpose of calling general elections.
This first phase of the Mexican Revolution thus ended with Díaz leaving for exile in Europe at the end of May 1911, escorted into exile by General Victoriano Huerta. On 7 June 1911, Madero entered Mexico City in triumph where he was greeted with huge crowds shouting ""¡Viva Madero!""
Although Madero and his supporters had forced Porfirio Díaz from power, he did not assume the presidency in June 1911. Instead, following the terms of the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez, he was a candidate for president and had no formal role in the Interim Presidency of Francisco León de la Barra, a diplomat and lawyer. Left in place was the Congress of Mexico, which was full of candidates whom Díaz had handpicked for the 1910 election. By doing this, Madero was true to his ideological commitment to constitutional democracy, but with members of the Díaz regime still in power, he was caused difficulties in the short and long term. The German ambassador to Mexico, Paul von Hintze, who associated with the Interim President, said of him that "De la Barra wants to accommodate himself with dignity to the inevitable advance of the ex-revolutionary influence, while accelerating the widespread collapse of the Madero party..." Madero sought to be a moderate democrat and follow the course outlined in treaty bringing about exile of Díaz, but by calling for the disarming and demobilization of his revolutionary base, he undermined his support. The Mexican Federal Army, just defeated by the revolutionaries, was to continue as the armed force of the Mexican state. Madero argued that the revolutionaries should henceforth proceed solely by peaceful means. In the south, revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata was skeptical about disbanding his troops, especially since the Federal Army from the Díaz era remained essentially intact. However, Madero traveled south to meet with Zapata at Cuernavaca and Cuautla, Morelos. Madero assured Zapata that the land redistribution promised in the Plan of San Luis Potosí would be carried out when Madero became president.
With Madero now campaigning for the presidency, which he was expected to win, several landowners from Zapata's state of Morelos took advantage of his not being head of state and appealed to President De la Barra and the Congress to restore their lands which had been seized by Zapatista revolutionaries. They spread exaggerated stories of atrocities committed by Zapata's irregulars, calling Zapata the "Attila of the South". De la Barra and the Congress, therefore, decided to send regular troops under Victoriano Huerta to suppress Zapata's revolutionaries. Madero once again traveled south to urge Zapata to disband his supporters peacefully, but Zapata refused on the grounds that Huerta's troops were advancing on Yautepec. Zapata's suspicions proved accurate as Huerta's Federal soldiers moved violently into Yautepec. Madero wrote to De la Barra, saying that Huerta's actions were unjustified and recommending that Zapata's demands be met. However, when he left the south, he had achieved nothing. Nevertheless, he promised the Zapatistas that once he became president, things would change. Most Zapatistas had grown suspicious of Madero, however.
Madero became president in November 1911, and, intending to reconcile the nation, appointed a cabinet which included many of Porfirio Díaz's supporters. A curious fact is that almost immediately after taking office in November, Madero became the first head of state in the world to fly in an airplane, which the Mexican press was later to mock. Madero was unable to achieve the reconciliation he desired since conservative Porfirians had organized themselves during the interim presidency and now mounted a sustained and effective opposition to Madero's reform program. Conservatives in the Senate refused to pass the reforms he advocated. At the same time, several of Madero's allies denounced him for being overly conciliatory with the Porfirians and with not moving aggressively forward with reforms.
After years of censorship, Mexican newspapers took advantage of their newly found freedom of the press to harshly criticize Madero's performance as president. Gustavo A. Madero, the president's brother, remarked that "the newspapers bite the hand that took off their muzzle." President Madero refused the recommendation of some of his advisors that he bring back censorship. The press was particularly critical of Madero's handling of rebellions that broke out against his rule shortly after he became president.
Despite internal and external opposition, the Madero administration had a number of important accomplishments, including freedom of the press. He freed political prisoners and abolished the death penalty. He did away with the practice of the Díaz government, which appointed local political bosses ("jefes políticos"), and instead set up a system of independent municipal authorities. State elections were free and fair. He was concerned about the improvement of education, establishing new schools and workshops. An important step was the creation of a federal department of labor, limited the workday to 10 hours, and set in place regulations on women's and children's labor. Unions were granted the right to freely organize. The "Casa del Obrero Mundial" ("House of the World Worker"), an organization with anarcho-syndicalist was founded during his presidency.
Madero alienated a number of his political supporters when he created a new political party, the Constitutionalist Progressive party, which replaced the Anti-Reelectionist Party. He ousted leftist Emilio Vázquez Gómez from his cabinet, brother of Francisco Vázquez Gómez, whom Madero had replaced as his vice presidential candidate with Pino Suárez.
Madero retained the Mexican Federal Army and ordered the demobilization of revolutionary forces. For revolutionaries who considered themselves the reason that Díaz resigned, this was a hard course to follow. Since Madero did not implement immediate, radical reforms that many of those had supported him had expected, he lost control of those areas in Morelos and Chihuahua. A series of internal rebellions challenged Madero's presidency before the February 1913 coup that deposed him.
In Morelos, Emiliano Zapata proclaimed the Plan of Ayala on 25 November 1911, which excoriated Madero's slowness on land reform. Zapata's plan recognized Pascual Orozco as fellow revolutionary, although Orozco was for the moment loyal to Madero, until 1912.
In December 1911, Bernardo Reyes (the popular general whom Porfirio Díaz had sent to Europe on a diplomatic mission because Díaz worried that Reyes was going to challenge him for the presidency) launched a rebellion in Nuevo León, where he had previously served as governor. Reyes's rebellion lasted only eleven days before Reyes surrendered at Linares, Nuevo León, and was sent to the Santiago Tlatelolco prison in Mexico City.
In March 1912, Madero's former general Pascual Orozco, who was personally resentful of how President Madero had treated him once he was in office, launched a rebellion in Chihuahua with the financial backing of Luis Terrazas, a former Governor of Chihuahua who was the largest landowner in Mexico. Madero dispatched troops under General José González Salas to put down the rebellion, but they were initially defeated by Orozco's troops. González Salas committed suicide and General Victoriano Huerta assumed control of the federalist forces. Huerta was more successful, defeating Orozco's troops in three major battles and forcing Orozco to flee to the United States in September 1912.
Relations between Huerta and Madero grew strained during the course of this campaign when Pancho Villa, the commander of the "División del Norte", refused orders from General Huerta. Huerta ordered Villa's execution, but Madero commuted the sentence and Villa was sent to the same Santiago Tlatelolco prison as Reyes from which he escaped on Christmas Day 1912. Angry at Madero's commutation of Villa's sentence, Huerta, after a long night of drinking, mused about reaching an agreement with Orozco and together deposing Madero as president. When Mexico's Minister of War learned of General Huerta's comments, he stripped Huerta of his command, but Madero intervened and restored Huerta to command.
October 1912, Félix Díaz (nephew of Porfirio Díaz) launched a rebellion in Veracruz, "to reclaim the honor of the army trampled by Madero." This rebellion was quickly crushed and Félix Díaz was imprisoned. Madero was prepared to have Félix Díaz executed, but the Supreme Court of Mexico declared that Félix Díaz would be imprisoned, but not executed.
In early 1913, General Félix Díaz (Porfirio Díaz's nephew) and General Bernardo Reyes plotted the overthrow of Madero, with the support of US Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson. Now known in Mexican history as the Ten Tragic Days, from 9 February to 19 February events in the capital led to the overthrow and murder of Madero and his vice president. Rebel forces bombarded the National Palace and downtown Mexico City from the military arsenal ("ciudadela"). Madero's loyalists initially held their ground, but Madero's commander, General Victoriano Huerta secretly switched sides to support the rebels. Madero's decision to appoint General Victoriano Huerta as commander of forces in Mexico City was one "for which he would pay for with his life." Madero and his vice president were arrested. Under pressure Madero resigned the presidency, with the expectation that he would go into exile, as had President Díaz in May 1911. Madero's brother and advisor Gustavo A. Madero was kidnapped off the street, tortured, and killed. Following Huerta's coup d'état on 18 February 1913, Madero was forced to resign. After a 45-minute term of office, Pedro Lascuráin was replaced by Huerta, who took over the presidency later that day.
Following his forced resignation, Madero and his Vice-President José María Pino Suárez were kept under guard in the National Palace. On the evening of 22 February, they were told that they were to be transferred to the main city penitentiary, where they would be safer. At 11:15 pm, reporters waiting outside the National Palace saw two cars containing Madero and Suárez emerge from the main gate under a heavy escort commanded by Major Francisco Cárdenas, an officer of the rurales. The journalists on foot were outdistanced by the motor vehicles, which were driven towards the penitentiary. The correspondent for the "New York World" was approaching the prison when he heard a volley of shots. Behind the building, he found the two cars with the bodies of Madero and Suárez nearby, surrounded by soldiers and gendarmes. Major Cárdenas subsequently told reporters that the cars and their escort had been fired on by a group, as they neared the penitentiary. The two prisoners had leapt from the vehicles and ran towards their presumed rescuers. They had however been killed in the cross-fire. This account was treated with general disbelief, although the American ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, a strong supporter of Huerta, reported to Washington that, "I am disposed to accept the (Huerta) government's version of the affair and consider it a closed incident".
President Madero, dead at 39, was buried quietly in the French cemetery of Mexico City. A series of contemporary photographs taken by Manuel Ramos show Maderos's coffin being carried from the penitentiary and placed on a special funeral tram car for transportation to the cemetery. Only his close family were permitted to attend, leaving for Cuba immediately after. Ambassador Wilson was later dismissed from his position after US president Woodrow Wilson took office. Following Huerta's overthrow, Francisco Cárdenas fled to Guatemala where he committed suicide in 1920 after the new Mexican government had requested his extradition to stand trial for the murder of Madero.
There was shock at Madero's murder, but there were many, Mexican elites and foreign entrepreneurs and governments, who saw the coup and the emergence of Victoriano Huerta as the desired strongman to return order to Mexico. Among elites in Mexico, Madero's death was a cause of rejoicing, seeing the time since Díaz's resignation as one of political instability and economic uncertainty. Ordinary Mexicans in the capital, however, were dismayed by the coup, since many considered Madero a friend, but their feelings did not translate into concrete action against the Huerta regime. In northern Mexico, Madero's overthrow and martyrdom united forces against Huerta's usurpation of power. Governor of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza refused to support the new regime although most state governors had. He brought together a coalition of revolutionaries under the banner of the Mexican Constitution, so that the Constitutionalist Army fought for the principles of constitutional democracry that Madero embraced. In southern Mexico, Zapata had been in rebellion against the Madero government for its slow action on land reform and continued in rebellion against the Huerta regime. However, Zapata repudiated his former high opinion of fellow revolutionary Pascual Orozco, who had also rebelled against Madero, when Orozco allied with Huerta. Madero's anti-reelectionist movement had mobilized revolutionary action that led to the resignation of Díaz. Madero's overthrow and murder during the Ten Tragic Days was a prelude to further years of civil war.
Madero was known as "The Apostle of Democracy," but "Madero the martyr meant more to the soul of Mexico."
Despite Madero's importance as a historical figure, there are relatively few memorials or monuments to him. It was not until the Monument to the Revolution was completed in 1938 that Madero had a public resting place. He had been interred in the French cemetery in Mexico City. After his death. His tomb had been an informal pilgrimage site on the anniversary of his murder (February 22) and the proclamation of his Plan of San Luis Potosí (November 20), which launched the Mexican Revolution. Initially, the monument to the Revolution held the remains of Madero, Carranza, and Villa and was planned as a collective commemoration of the Revolution, not individual revolutionaries. Although it was completed on 20 November 1938, there was no inaugural ceremony.
The date of Madero's Plan of San Luis Potosí, November 20, was a fixed official holiday in Mexico, Revolution Day, but a 2005 change in the law makes the third Monday in November the day of commemoration. During the Presidency of Venustiano Carranza, he ignored November 20 and commemorated March 26, the anniversary of his Plan de Guadalupe.
The Mexico City Metro has a stop named for Madero's vice president, Metro Pino Suárez, but not one to Madero. General Alvaro Obregón laid a foundation stone on the 10th anniversary of Madero's death of a planned Madero statue in the zócalo, but the statue was never built. A statue was erected in 1956 at a downtown intersection in Mexico City and has been moved to the presidential residence, Los Pinos, not easily viewable by the public. An exception is Avenida Madero in Mexico City. One contemporaneous honor by General Pancho Villa remains in Mexico City. On the morning of 8 December 1914, he declared that the street leading from the Zócalo in Mexico City towards the Paseo de la Reforma would be named for Madero. Still officially called Francisco I. Madero Avenue, but commonly known simply as Madero street, it is one of the most popular and historically significant streets in the city. It was pedestrianised in 2009.
Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada created an etching for a broadside, produced on the occasion of Madero's election in 1910, titled "Calavera de Madero" portraying Madero as a calavera.
Madero appears in the films "Viva Villa!" (1934), "Villa Rides" (1968) and "Viva Zapata!" (1952).
In the novel "The Friends of Pancho Villa" (1996) by James Carlos Blake, Madero is a major character. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11285 |
Foreign relations of Afghanistan
Foreign relations of Afghanistan are handled by the nation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is headed by Salahuddin Rabbani. He answers to, and receives guidance from, the President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani.
The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has close and friendly relations with a number of countries around the world, including: Turkey, United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Spain, South Korea, Italy, India, China, Canada, United Arab Emirates and many others.
Before the Soviet invasion, Afghanistan pursued a policy of neutrality and nonalignment rein its foreign relations, being one of a few independent nations to stay neutral in both World War I and World War II. In international forums, Afghanistan generally followed the voting patterns of Asian and African non-aligned countries. During the 1950s and 1960s, Afghanistan was able to use the Russian and American need for allies during the Cold War as a way to receive economic assistance from both countries. However, given that unlike Russia, America refused to give extensive military aid to the country, the government of Daoud Khan developed warmer ties with the USSR while officially remaining non-aligned. Following the coup of April 1978, the government under Nur Muhammad Taraki developed significantly closer ties with the Soviet Union and its communist satellites.
After the December 1979 Soviet invasion, Afghanistan's foreign policy mirrored that of the Soviet Union. Afghan foreign policymakers attempted, with little success, to increase their regime's low standing in the noncommunist world. With the signing of the Geneva Accords, President Najibullah unsuccessfully sought to end the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan's isolation within the Islamic world and in the Non-Aligned Movement.
Most Western countries, including the United States, maintained small diplomatic missions in the capital city of Kabul during the Soviet occupation. Many countries subsequently closed their missions due to instability and heavy fighting in Kabul after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
Many countries initially welcomed the introduction of the Taliban regime, who they saw as a stabilizing, law-enforcing alternative to the warlords who had ruled the country since the fall of Najibullah's government in 1992. The Taliban soon became alienated of those countries' positive feelings with knowledge of the harsh Sharia law being enforced in Taliban-controlled territories spreading around the world. The brutality towards women who attempted to work, learn, or leave the house without a male escort caused outside aid to the war-torn country to be limited.
Following the October 2001 American invasion and the Bonn Agreement the new government under the leadership of Hamid Karzai started to re-establish diplomatic relationships with many countries who had held close diplomatic relations before the communist coup d'état and the subsequent civil war.
The Afghan government is focused on securing continued assistance for rebuilding the economy, infrastructure, and military of the country. It has continued to maintain close ties with North America, the European Union, South Korea, Japan, Australia, India, China, Russia and the Greater Middle East as well as African nations. It also seeks to establish relations with more South American or Latin nations. In late 2011, relations between Afghanistan and Dominican Republic were established.
During the Soviet occupation, the United Nations was highly critical of the U.S.S.R.'s interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan and was instrumental in obtaining a negotiated Soviet withdrawal under the terms of the Geneva Accords.
In the aftermath of the Accords and subsequent Soviet withdrawal, the United Nations has assisted in the repatriation of refugees and has provided humanitarian aid such as health care, educational programs, and food and has supported mine-clearing operations. The UNDP and associated agencies have undertaken a limited number of development projects. However, the UN reduced its role in Afghanistan in 1992 in the wake of fierce factional strife in and around Kabul. The UN Secretary General has designated a personal representative to head the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan (UNOCHA) and the Special Mission to Afghanistan (UNSMA), both based in Islamabad, Pakistan. Throughout the late 1990s, 2000, and 2001, the UN unsuccessfully strived to promote a peaceful settlement between the Afghan factions as well as provide humanitarian aid, this despite increasing Taliban restrictions upon UN personnel and agencies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11288 |
Felony
The term felony originated from English common law (from the French medieval word "félonie"), to describe an offense that resulted in the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods, to which additional punishments including capital punishment could be added. Other crimes were called "misdemeanors". A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious. A felon is a person who has committed a felony. Following conviction of a felony in a court of law, a person may be described as a convicted felon.
Some common law countries and jurisdictions no longer classify crimes as felonies or misdemeanors and instead use other distinctions, such as by classifying serious crimes as indictable offences and less serious crimes as summary offences.
In the United States, where the felony/misdemeanor distinction is still widely applied, the federal government defines a felony as a crime punishable by death or imprisonment in excess of one year. If punishable by exactly one year or less, it is classified as a misdemeanor. The classification is based upon a crime's potential sentence, so a crime remains classified as a felony even if a defendant receives a sentence of less than a year of incarceration. Individual states may classify crimes by other factors, such as seriousness or context.
In some civil law jurisdictions, such as Italy and Spain, the term "delict" is used to describe serious offenses, a category similar to common law felony. In other nations, such as Germany, France, Belgium, and Switzerland, more serious offenses are described as "crimes", while "misdemeanors" or "delicts" (or délits) are less serious. In still others (such as Brazil and Portugal), "crimes" and "delicts" are synonymous (more serious) and are opposed to contraventions (less serious).
Felonies include but are not limited to the following:
Broadly, felonies can be characterized as either violent or nonviolent:
Some offenses, though similar in nature, may be felonies or misdemeanors depending on the circumstances. For example, the illegal manufacture, distribution or possession of controlled substances may be a felony, although possession of small amounts may be only a misdemeanor. Possession of a deadly weapon may be generally legal, but carrying the same weapon into a restricted area such as a school may be viewed as a serious offense, regardless of whether there is intent to use the weapon. Additionally, driving under the influence in some states may be a misdemeanor if a first offense, but a felony on subsequent offenses.
A felony may be punishable with imprisonment for two or more years or death in the case of the most serious felonies, such as murder. Indeed, historically at common law, felonies were crimes punishable by either death or forfeiture of property. All felonies remain a serious crime, but concerns of proportionality (i.e., that the punishment fit the crime) have in modern times prompted legislatures to require or permit the imposition of less serious punishments, ranging from lesser terms of imprisonment to the substitution of a jail sentence or even the suspension of all incarceration contingent upon a defendant's successful completion of probation. Standards for measurement of an offense's seriousness include attempts to quantitatively estimate and compare the effects of a crime upon its specific victims or upon society generally.
In some states, all or most felonies are placed into one of various classes according to their seriousness and their potential punishment upon conviction. The number of classifications and the corresponding crimes vary by state and are determined by the legislature. Usually, the legislature also determines the maximum punishment allowable for each felony class; doing so avoids the necessity of defining specific sentences for every possible crime. For example:
Sir William Blackstone wrote that felony "comprises every species of crime, which occasioned at common law the forfeiture of lands or goods". The word "felony" was feudal in origin, denoting the value of a man's entire property: "the consideration for which a man gives up his fief". Blackstone refutes the misconception that felony simply means an offense punishable by death, by demonstrating that not every felony is capital, and not every capital offense is a felony. However he concedes that "the idea of felony is indeed so generally connected with that of capital punishment, that we find it hard to separate them; and to this usage the interpretations of the law do now conform."
The death penalty for felony could be avoided by pleading benefit of clergy, which gradually evolved to exempt everybody (whether clergy or not) from that punishment for a first offense, except for high treason and offenses expressly excluded by statute. During the 19th century criminal law reform incrementally reduced the number of capital offenses to five "(see Capital punishment in the United Kingdom)", and forfeiture for felony was abolished by the Forfeiture Act 1870. Consequently, the distinction between felony and misdemeanor became increasingly arbitrary. The surviving differences consisted of different rules of evidence and procedure, and the Law Commission recommended that felonies be abolished altogether. This was done by the Criminal Law Act 1967, which made all felonies (except treason) misdemeanours, and introduced a new system of classifying crimes as either "arrestable" and "non-arrestable" offenses (according to which a general power of arrest was available for crimes punishable by five years' imprisonment or more).
Arrestable offenses were abolished in 2006, and today crimes are classified as indictable or summary offenses.
The Trials for Felony Act 1836 (6 & 7 Will. 4 c. 114) allowed persons indicted for felonies to be represented by counsel or attorney.
A person prosecuted for felony was called a prisoner.
In the law of the Republic of Ireland the distinction between felony and misdemeanor was abolished by section 3 of the Criminal Law Act, 1997, such that the law previously applied to misdemeanours was extended to all offences. Minister Joan Burton, introducing the bill in the Seanad, said "The distinction has been eroded over many years and in today's conditions has no real relevance. Today, for example, serious offences such as fraudulent conversion and obtaining property by false pretences are classified as misdemeanours whereas a relatively trivial offence such as stealing a bar of chocolate is a felony." The 1997 Act, modelled on the English Criminal Law Act 1967, introduced the category of "arrestable offence" for those with penalties of five years' imprisonment or greater.
The 1937 Constitution declares that the parliamentary privilege, which protects Oireachtas members from arrest travelling to or from the legislature, does not apply to "treason, felony, and breach of the peace". The 1996 Constitutional Review Group recommended replacing "felony" with "serious criminal offence".
The reform of harsh felony laws that had originated in Great Britain was deemed "one of the first fruits of liberty" after the United States became independent.
In many parts of the United States, a felon can face long-term legal consequences persisting after the end of their imprisonment.
The status and designation as a "felon" is considered permanent, and is not extinguished upon sentence completion even if parole, probation or early release was given. The status can be cleared only by a successful appeal or executive clemency. However, felons may qualify for restoration of some rights after a certain period of time has passed.
The consequences felons face in most states include:
Additionally, many job applications and rental applications ask about felony history (with the exception of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) and answering dishonestly on them can be grounds for rejecting the application, or termination if the lie is discovered after hire. Convicted felons may not be eligible for certain professional licenses or bonds, or may raise the cost of an employer's insurance.
It is broadly legal to discriminate against felons in hiring decisions as well as the decision to rent housing to a person, so felons can face barriers to finding both jobs and housing. Many landlords will not rent to felons, although a blanket ban on renting to felons may violate federal housing law. A common term of parole is to avoid associating with other felons. In some neighborhoods with high rates of felony conviction, this creates a situation where many felons live with a constant threat of being arrested for violating parole. Banks may refuse to issue loans to felons, and a felony conviction may prevent employment in banking or finance.
In some states, restoration of those rights depends on repayment of various fees associated with the felon's arrest, processing, and prison stay, such as restitution to victims, or outstanding fines.
The primary means of restoring civil rights that are lost as a result of a felony conviction are executive clemency and Expungement in the United States.
For state law convictions, expungement is determined by the law of the state. Many states do not allow expungement, regardless of the offense, though felons can seek pardons and clemency, potentially including restoration of rights.
Federal law does not have any provisions for persons convicted of federal felonies in a federal United States district court to apply to have their record expunged. At present the only relief that an individual convicted of a felony in federal court may receive is a presidential pardon, which does not expunge the conviction, but rather grants relief from the civil disabilities that stem from it.
Felonies ("Verbrechen") are defined as a crime that is punishable with a minimum of one year's imprisonment. Misdemeanours ("Vergehen") are all other crimes punishable by imprisonment with a minimum of less than one year or by fine.
However, in some cases a severe version misdemeanor may be punished with imprisonment of more than one year, yet the crime itself remains considered a misdemeanor. Same applies for a milder version of a felony that is punishable with imprisonment less than a year.
An attempt to commit a felony is always punishable, whilst an attempt to commit a misdemeanor is solely punishable if particularly prescribed by law.
A plea bargain (, popularly known as a "Deal") is not applicable for felony crimes at all. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11293 |
First aid
First aid is the first and immediate assistance given to any person suffering from either a minor or serious illness or injury, with care provided to preserve life, prevent the condition from worsening, or to promote recovery. It includes initial intervention in a serious condition prior to professional medical help being available, such as performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) while waiting for an ambulance, as well as the complete treatment of minor conditions, such as applying a plaster to a cut. First aid is generally performed by someone with basic medical training. Mental health first aid is an extension of the concept of first aid to cover mental health, while psychological first aid is used as early treatment of people who are at risk for developing PTSD. Conflict First Aid, focused on preservation and recovery of an individual's social or relationship well-being, is being piloted in Canada.
There are many situations which may require first aid, and many countries have legislation, regulation, or guidance which specifies a minimum level of first aid provision in certain circumstances. This can include specific training or equipment to be available in the workplace (such as an automated external defibrillator), the provision of specialist first aid cover at public gatherings, or mandatory first aid training within schools. First aid, however, does not necessarily require any particular equipment or prior knowledge, and can involve improvisation with materials available at the time, often by untrained people.
First aid can be performed on nearly all animals, such as pets, although this article relates to the care of human patients.
Skills of what is now known as first aid have been recorded throughout history, especially in relation to warfare, where the care of both traumatic and medical cases is required in particularly large numbers. The bandaging of battle wounds is shown on Classical Greek pottery from c. 500 BC, whilst the parable of the Good Samaritan includes references to binding or dressing wounds. There are numerous references to first aid performed within the Roman army, with a system of first aid supported by surgeons, field ambulances, and hospitals. Roman legions had the specific role of capsarii, who were responsible for first aid such as bandaging, and are the forerunners of the modern combat medic.
Further examples occur through history, still mostly related to battle, with examples such as the Knights Hospitaller in the 11th century AD, providing care to pilgrims and knights in the Holy Land.
During the late 18th century, drowning as a cause of death was a major concern amongst the population. In 1767, a society for the preservation of life from accidents in water was started in Amsterdam, and in 1773, physician William Hawes began publicizing the power of artificial respiration as means of resuscitation of those who appeared drowned. This led to the formation, in 1774, of the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned, later the Royal Humane Society, who did much to promote resuscitation.
Napoleon's surgeon, Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey, is credited with creating an ambulance corps (the ambulance volantes), which included medical assistants, tasked to administer first aid in battle.
In 1859 Jean-Henri Dunant witnessed the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino, and his work led to the formation of the Red Cross, with a key stated aim of "aid to sick and wounded soldiers in the field". The Red Cross and Red Crescent are still the largest provider of first aid worldwide.
In 1870, Prussian military surgeon Friedrich von Esmarch introduced formalized first aid to the military, and first coined the term "erste hilfe" (translating to 'first aid'), including training for soldiers in the Franco-Prussian War on care for wounded comrades using pre-learnt bandaging and splinting skills, and making use of the Esmarch bandage which he designed. The bandage was issued as standard to the Prussian combatants, and also included aide-memoire pictures showing common uses.
In 1872, the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in England changed its focus from hospice care, and set out to start a system of practical medical help, starting with making a grant towards the establishment of the UK's first ambulance service. This was followed by creating its own wheeled transport litter in 1875 (the St John Ambulance), and in 1877 established the St John Ambulance Association (the forerunner of modern-day St John Ambulance) "to train men and women for the benefit of the sick and wounded".
Also in the UK, Surgeon-Major Peter Shepherd had seen the advantages of von Esmarch's new teaching of first aid, and introduced an equivalent programme for the British Army, and so being the first user of "first aid for the injured" in English, disseminating information through a series of lectures. Following this, in 1878, Shepherd and Colonel Francis Duncan took advantage of the newly charitable focus of St John, and established the concept of teaching first aid skills to civilians. The first classes were conducted in the hall of the Presbyterian school in Woolwich (near Woolwich barracks where Shepherd was based) using a comprehensive first aid curriculum.
First aid training began to spread through the British Empire through organisations such as St John, often starting, as in the UK, with high risk activities such as ports and railways.
The primary goal of first aid is to prevent death or serious injury from worsening. The key aims of first aid can be summarized with the acronym of 'the three Ps':
Preserve life:: The overriding aim of all medical care which includes first aid, is to save lives and minimize the threat of death. First aid done correctly should help reduce the patient's level of pain and calm them down during the evaluation and treatment process.
Prevent further harm: Prevention of further harm includes addressing both external factors, such as moving a patient away from any cause of harm, and applying first aid techniques to prevent worsening of the condition, such as applying pressure to stop a bleed becoming dangerous.
Promote recovery: First aid also involves trying to start the recovery process from the illness or injury, and in some cases might involve completing a treatment, such as in the case of applying a plaster to a small wound.
It is important to note that first aid is not medical treatment and cannot be compared with what a trained medical professional provides. First aid involves making common sense decisions in best interest of an injured person.
Protocols such as ATLS, BATLS, SAFE-POINT are based on the principle of defining the priorities and the procedure where the correct execution of the individual steps achieves the required objective of saving human life. Basic points of these protocols include:
A major benefit of these protocols is that they require minimum resources, time and skills with a great degree of success in saving lives under conditions unfavourable for applying first aid.
Certain skills are considered essential to the provision of first aid and are taught ubiquitously. Particularly the "ABC"s of first aid, which focus on critical life-saving intervention, must be rendered before treatment of less serious injuries. ABC stands for "Airway", "Breathing", and "Circulation". The same mnemonic is used by emergency health professionals. Attention must first be brought to the airway to ensure it is clear. Obstruction (choking) is a life-threatening emergency. Following evaluation of the airway, a first aid attendant would determine adequacy of breathing and provide rescue breathing if necessary.
Assessment of circulation is now not usually carried out for patients who are not breathing, with first aiders now trained to go straight to chest compressions (and thus providing artificial circulation) but pulse checks may be done on less serious patients.
Some organizations add a fourth step of "D" for "Deadly bleeding" or "Defibrillation", while others consider this as part of the "Circulation" step simply referred as Disability. Variations on techniques to evaluate and maintain the ABCs depend on the skill level of the first aider. Once the ABCs are secured, first aiders can begin additional treatments or examination, as required if they possess the proper training (such as measuring pupil dilation). Some organizations teach the same order of priority using the "3Bs": "Breathing", "Bleeding", and "Bones" (or "4Bs": "Breathing", "Bleeding", "Burns", and "Bones"). While the ABCs and 3Bs are taught to be performed sequentially, certain conditions may require the consideration of two steps simultaneously. This includes the provision of both artificial respiration and chest compressions to someone who is not breathing and has no pulse, and the consideration of cervical spine injuries when ensuring an open airway.
The patient must have an open airway—that is, an unobstructed passage that allows air to travel from the open mouth or uncongested nose, down through the pharynx and into the lungs. Conscious people maintain their own airway automatically, but those who are unconscious (with a GCS of less than 8) may be unable to do so, as the part of the brain that manages spontaneous breathing may not be functioning.
Whether conscious or not, the patient may be placed in the recovery position, laying on their side. In addition to relaxing the patient, this can have the effect of clearing the tongue from the pharynx. It also avoids a common cause of death in unconscious patients, which is choking on regurgitated stomach contents.
The airway can also become blocked by a foreign object. To dislodge the object and prevent choking, the first aider may use techniques such as ‘back slaps’ and ‘abdominal thrusts’.
Once the airway has been opened, the first aider would reassess the patient's breathing. If there is no breathing, or the patient is not breathing normally (e.g. agonal breathing), the first aider would initiate CPR, which attempts to restart the patient's breathing by forcing air into the lungs. They may also manually massage the heart to promote blood flow around the body.
If the choking person is an infant, the procedure is to deliver five strong blows on the infant's upper back after placing the infant's face in the aider's forearm. If the infant is able to cough or cry, no breathing assistance should be given. Coughing and crying indicate the airway is open and the foreign object will likely to come out from the force the coughing or crying produces.
A first responder should know how to use an Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) in the case of a person having a sudden cardiac arrest. The survival rate of those who suffer a cardiac arrest outside of the hospital is low. Permanent brain damage sets in after 5 minutes of no oxygen delivery, so rapid action on the part of the rescuer is necessary. An AED is a device that can examine a heartbeat and produce electric shocks to restart the heart.
A first aider should be prepared to quickly deal with less severe problems such as cuts, grazes or bone fracture. They may be able to completely resolve a situation if they have the proper training and equipment. For situations that are more severe, complex or dangerous, a first aider might need to do the best they can with the equipment they have, and wait for an ambulance to arrive at the scene.
Basic principles, such as knowing the use of adhesive bandage or applying direct pressure on a bleed, are often acquired passively through life experiences. However, to provide effective, life-saving first aid interventions requires instruction and practical training. This is especially true where it relates to potentially fatal illnesses and injuries, such as those that require CPR; these procedures may be invasive, and carry a risk of further injury to the patient and the provider. As with any training, it is more useful if it occurs "before" an actual emergency, and in many countries, emergency ambulance dispatchers may give basic first aid instructions over the phone while the ambulance is on the way.
Training is generally provided by attending a course, typically leading to certification. Due to regular changes in procedures and protocols, based on updated clinical knowledge, and to maintain skill, attendance at regular refresher courses or re-certification is often necessary. First aid training is often available through community organizations such as the Red Cross and St. John Ambulance, or through commercial providers, who will train people for a fee. This commercial training is most common for training of employees to perform first aid in their workplace. Many community organizations also provide a commercial service, which complements their community programmes.
1.Junior level certificate Basic Life Support
2.Senior level certificate
3.Special certificate
There are several types of first aid (and first aider) which require specific additional training. These are usually undertaken to fulfill the demands of the work or activity undertaken.
Some people undertake specific training in order to provide first aid at public or private events, during filming, or other places where people gather. They may be designated as a first aider, or use some other title. This role may be undertaken on a voluntary basis, with organisations such as the
1.Red Cross society and
2.St John Ambulance, or as paid employment with a medical contractor.
People performing a first aid role, whether in a professional or voluntary capacity, are often expected to have a high level of first aid training and are often uniformed.
Although commonly associated with first aid, the symbol of a red cross is an official protective symbol of the Red Cross. According to the Geneva Conventions and other international laws, the use of this and similar symbols is reserved for official agencies of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, and as a protective emblem for medical personnel and facilities in combat situations. Use by any other person or organization is illegal, and may lead to prosecution.
The internationally accepted symbol for first aid is the white cross on a green background shown below.
Some organizations may make use of the Star of Life, although this is usually reserved for use by ambulance services, or may use symbols such as the Maltese Cross, like the Order of Malta Ambulance Corps and St John Ambulance. Other symbols may also be used.
"Also see Medical emergency."
Many accidents can happen in homes, offices, schools and laboratories which require immediate attention before the patient is attended by the doctor.
A first aid kit consists of a strong, durable bag or transparent plastic box. They are commonly identified with a white cross on a green background. A first aid kit does not have to be bought ready-made. The advantage of ready-made first aid kits are that they have well organized compartments and familiar layouts.
There is no universal agreement upon list for the contents of a first aid kit. The UK Health and Safety Executive stress that the contents of workplace first aid kits will vary according to the nature of the work activities. As an example of possible contents of a kit, British Standard "BS 8599 First Aid Kits for the Workplace" lists the following items: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11296 |
Feudalism
Feudalism was a combination of legal, economic, military and cultural customs that flourished in Medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships that were derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.
Although it is derived from the Latin word "feodum" or "feudum" (fief), which was used during the Medieval period, the term "feudalism" and the system which it describes were not conceived of as a formal political system by the people who lived during the Middle Ages. The classic definition, by François-Louis Ganshof (1944), describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations which existed among the warrior nobility and revolved around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs.
A broader definition of feudalism, as described by Marc Bloch (1939), includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but the obligations of all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clergy, and the peasantry, all of whom were bound by a system of manorialism; this is sometimes referred to as a "feudal society". Since the publication of Elizabeth A. R. Brown's "The Tyranny of a Construct" (1974) and Susan Reynolds's "Fiefs and Vassals" (1994), there has been ongoing inconclusive discussion among medieval historians as to whether feudalism is a useful construct for understanding medieval society.
There is no commonly accepted modern definition of feudalism, at least among scholars. The adjective "feudal" was coined in the 17th century, and the noun "feudalism", often used in a political and propaganda context, was not coined until the 19th century, from the French "féodalité" ("feudality"), itself an 18th-century creation.
According to a classic definition by François-Louis Ganshof (1944), "feudalism" describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations which existed among the warrior nobility and revolved around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs, though Ganshof himself noted that his treatment was only related to the "narrow, technical, legal sense of the word".
A broader definition, as described in Marc Bloch's "Feudal Society" (1939), includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but the obligations of all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clergy, and those who lived off their labor, most directly the peasantry which was bound by a system of manorialism; this order is often referred to as a "feudal society", echoing Bloch's usage.
Outside its European context, the concept of feudalism is often used by analogy, most often in discussions of feudal Japan under the "shoguns", and sometimes in discussions of the Zagwe dynasty in medieval Ethiopia, which had some feudal characteristics (sometimes called "semifeudal"). Some have taken the feudalism analogy further, seeing feudalism (or traces of it) in places as diverse as China during the Spring and Autumn period, ancient Egypt, the Parthian empire, the Indian subcontinent and the Antebellum and Jim Crow American South. Wu Ta-k'un argued that China's fengjian, being kinship-based and tied to land which was controlled by a king, was entirely distinct from feudalism. This despite the fact that in translation "fengjian" is frequently paired in both directions with "feudal".
The term "feudalism" has also been applied—often inappropriately or pejoratively—to non-Western societies where institutions and attitudes which are similar to those which existed in medieval Europe are perceived to prevail. Some historians and political theorists believe that the term "feudalism" has been deprived of specific meaning by the many ways it has been used, leading them to reject it as a useful concept for understanding society.
The term "féodal" was used in 17th-century French legal treatises (1614) and translated into English legal treatises as an adjective, such as "feodal government".
In the 18th century, Adam Smith, seeking to describe economic systems, effectively coined the forms "feudal government" and "feudal system" in his book "Wealth of Nations" (1776). In the 19th century the adjective "feudal" evolved into a noun: "feudalism". The term "feudalism" is recent, first appearing in French in 1823, Italian in 1827, English in 1839, and in German in the second half of the 19th century.
The term "feudal" or "feodal" is derived from the medieval Latin word "feodum". The etymology of "feodum" is complex with multiple theories, some suggesting a Germanic origin (the most widely held view) and others suggesting an Arabic origin. Initially in medieval Latin European documents, a land grant in exchange for service was called a "beneficium" (Latin). Later, the term "feudum", or "feodum", began to replace "beneficium" in the documents. The first attested instance of this is from 984, although more primitive forms were seen up to one-hundred years earlier. The origin of the "feudum" and why it replaced "beneficium" has not been well established, but there are multiple theories, described below.
The most widely held theory was proposed by Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern in 1870, being supported by, amongst others, William Stubbs and Marc Bloch. Kern derived the word from a putative Frankish term "*fehu-ôd", in which "*fehu" means "cattle" and "-ôd" means "goods", implying "a moveable object of value". Bloch explains that by the beginning of the 10th century it was common to value land in monetary terms but to pay for it with moveable objects of equivalent value, such as arms, clothing, horses or food. This was known as "feos", a term that took on the general meaning of paying for something in lieu of money. This meaning was then applied to land itself, in which land was used to pay for fealty, such as to a vassal. Thus the old word "feos" meaning movable property changed little by little to "feus" meaning the exact opposite: landed property.
Another theory was put forward by Archibald R. Lewis. Lewis said the origin of 'fief' is not "feudum" (or "feodum"), but rather "foderum", the earliest attested use being in Astronomus's "Vita Hludovici" (840). In that text is a passage about Louis the Pious that says "annona militaris quas vulgo foderum vocant", which can be translated as "Louis forbade that military provender (which they popularly call "fodder") be furnished.."
Another theory by Alauddin Samarrai suggests an Arabic origin, from "fuyū" (the plural of "fay", which literally means "the returned", and was used especially for 'land that has been conquered from enemies that did not fight'). Samarrai's theory is that early forms of 'fief' include "feo", "feu", "feuz", "feuum" and others, the plurality of forms strongly suggesting origins from a loanword. The first use of these terms is in Languedoc, one of the least Germanic areas of Europe and bordering Muslim Spain. Further, the earliest use of "feuum" (as a replacement for "beneficium") can be dated to 899, the same year a Muslim base at Fraxinetum (La Garde-Freinet) in Provence was established. It is possible, Samarrai says, that French scribes, writing in Latin, attempted to transliterate the Arabic word "fuyū" (the plural of "fay"), which was being used by the Muslim invaders and occupiers at the time, resulting in a plurality of forms – "feo, feu, feuz, feuum" and others – from which eventually "feudum" derived. Samarrai, however, also advises to handle this theory with care, as Medieval and Early Modern Muslim scribes often used etymologically "fanciful roots" in order to claim the most outlandish things to be of Arabian or Muslim origin.
Feudalism, in its various forms, usually emerged as a result of the decentralization of an empire: especially in the Carolingian Empire in 8th century AD/CE, which lacked the bureaucratic infrastructure necessary to support cavalry without allocating land to these mounted troops. Mounted soldiers began to secure a system of hereditary rule over their allocated land and their power over the territory came to encompass the social, political, judicial, and economic spheres.
These acquired powers significantly diminished unitary power in these empires. Only when the infrastructure existed to maintain unitary power—as with the European monarchies—did feudalism begin to yield to this new power structure and eventually disappear.
The classic François-Louis Ganshof version of feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations which existed among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs. In broad terms a lord was a noble who held land, a vassal was a person who was granted possession of the land by the lord, and the land was known as a fief. In exchange for the use of the fief and protection by the lord, the vassal would provide some sort of service to the lord. There were many varieties of feudal land tenure, consisting of military and non-military service. The obligations and corresponding rights between lord and vassal concerning the fief form the basis of the feudal relationship.
Before a lord could grant land (a fief) to someone, he had to make that person a vassal. This was done at a formal and symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony, which was composed of the two-part act of homage and oath of fealty. During homage, the lord and vassal entered into a contract in which the vassal promised to fight for the lord at his command, whilst the lord agreed to protect the vassal from external forces. "Fealty" comes from the Latin "fidelitas" and denotes the fidelity owed by a vassal to his feudal lord. "Fealty" also refers to an oath that more explicitly reinforces the commitments of the vassal made during homage. Such an oath follows homage.
Once the commendation ceremony was complete, the lord and vassal were in a feudal relationship with agreed obligations to one another. The vassal's principal obligation to the lord was to "aid", or military service. Using whatever equipment the vassal could obtain by virtue of the revenues from the fief, the vassal was responsible to answer calls to military service on behalf of the lord. This security of military help was the primary reason the lord entered into the feudal relationship. In addition, the vassal could have other obligations to his lord, such as attendance at his court, whether manorial, baronial, both termed court baron, or at the king's court.
It could also involve the vassal providing "counsel", so that if the lord faced a major decision he would summon all his vassals and hold a council. At the level of the manor this might be a fairly mundane matter of agricultural policy, but also included sentencing by the lord for criminal offences, including capital punishment in some cases. Concerning the king's feudal court, such deliberation could include the question of declaring war. These are examples; depending on the period of time and location in Europe, feudal customs and practices varied; see examples of feudalism.
In its origin, the feudal grant of land had been seen in terms of a personal bond between lord and vassal, but with time and the transformation of fiefs into hereditary holdings, the nature of the system came to be seen as a form of "politics of land" (an expression used by the historian Marc Bloch). The 11th century in France saw what has been called by historians a "feudal revolution" or "mutation" and a "fragmentation of powers" (Bloch) that was unlike the development of feudalism in England or Italy or Germany in the same period or later: Counties and duchies began to break down into smaller holdings as castellans and lesser seigneurs took control of local lands, and (as comital families had done before them) lesser lords usurped/privatized a wide range of prerogatives and rights of the state, most importantly the highly profitable rights of justice, but also travel dues, market dues, fees for using woodlands, obligations to use the lord's mill, etc. (what Georges Duby called collectively the ""seigneurie banale""). Power in this period became more personal.
This "fragmentation of powers" was not, however, systematic throughout France, and in certain counties (such as Flanders, Normandy, Anjou, Toulouse), counts were able to maintain control of their lands into the 12th century or later. Thus, in some regions (like Normandy and Flanders), the vassal/feudal system was an effective tool for ducal and comital control, linking vassals to their lords; but in other regions, the system led to significant confusion, all the more so as vassals could and frequently did pledge themselves to two or more lords. In response to this, the idea of a "liege lord" was developed (where the obligations to one lord are regarded as superior) in the 12th century.
Most of the military aspects of feudalism effectively ended by about 1500. This was partly since the military shifted from armies consisting of the nobility to professional fighters thus reducing the nobility's claim on power, but also because the Black Death reduced the nobility's hold over the lower classes. Vestiges of the feudal system hung on in France until the French Revolution of the 1790s, and the system lingered on in parts of Central and Eastern Europe as late as the 1850s. Slavery in Romania was abolished in 1856. Russia finally abolished serfdom in 1861.
Even when the original feudal relationships had disappeared, there were many institutional remnants of feudalism left in place. Historian Georges Lefebvre explains how at an early stage of the French Revolution, on just one night of August 4, 1789, France abolished the long-lasting remnants of the feudal order. It announced, "The National Assembly abolishes the feudal system entirely." Lefebvre explains:
Originally the peasants were supposed to pay for the release of seigneurial dues; these dues affected more than a quarter of the farmland in France and provided most of the income of the large landowners. The majority refused to pay and in 1793 the obligation was cancelled. Thus the peasants got their land free, and also no longer paid the tithe to the church.
The phrase "feudal society" as defined by Marc Bloch offers a wider definition than Ganshof's and includes within the feudal structure not only the warrior aristocracy bound by vassalage, but also the peasantry bound by manorialism, and the estates of the Church. Thus the feudal order embraces society from top to bottom, though the "powerful and well-differentiated social group of the urban classes" came to occupy a distinct position to some extent outside the classic feudal hierarchy.
The idea of "feudalism" was unknown and the system it describes was not conceived of as a formal political system by the people living in the Medieval Period. This section describes the history of the idea of feudalism, how the concept originated among scholars and thinkers, how it changed over time, and modern debates about its use.
The concept of a feudal state or period, in the sense of either a regime or a period dominated by lords who possess financial or social power and prestige, became widely held in the middle of the 18th century, as a result of works such as Montesquieu's "De L'Esprit des Lois" (1748; published in English as "The Spirit of the Laws"), and Henri de Boulainvilliers’s "Histoire des anciens Parlements de France" (1737; published in English as "An Historical Account of the Ancient Parliaments of France or States-General of the Kingdom", 1739). In the 18th century, writers of the Enlightenment wrote about feudalism to denigrate the antiquated system of the "Ancien Régime", or French monarchy. This was the Age of Enlightenment when writers valued reason and the Middle Ages were viewed as the "Dark Ages". Enlightenment authors generally mocked and ridiculed anything from the "Dark Ages" including feudalism, projecting its negative characteristics on the current French monarchy as a means of political gain. For them "feudalism" meant seigneurial privileges and prerogatives. When the French Constituent Assembly abolished the "feudal regime" in August 1789 this is what was meant.
Adam Smith used the term "feudal system" to describe a social and economic system defined by inherited social ranks, each of which possessed inherent social and economic privileges and obligations. In such a system wealth derived from agriculture, which was arranged not according to market forces but on the basis of customary labour services owed by serfs to landowning nobles.
Karl Marx also used the term in the 19th century in his analysis of society's economic and political development, describing feudalism (or more usually feudal society or the feudal mode of production) as the order coming before capitalism. For Marx, what defined feudalism was the power of the ruling class (the aristocracy) in their control of arable land, leading to a class society based upon the exploitation of the peasants who farm these lands, typically under serfdom and principally by means of labour, produce and money rents. Marx thus defined feudalism primarily by its economic characteristics.
He also took it as a paradigm for understanding the power-relationships between capitalists and wage-labourers in his own time: "in pre-capitalist systems it was obvious that most people did not control their own destiny—under feudalism, for instance, serfs had to work for their lords. Capitalism seems different because people are in theory free to work for themselves or for others as they choose. Yet most workers have as little control over their lives as feudal serfs." Some later Marxist theorists (e.g. Eric Wolf) have applied this label to include non-European societies, grouping feudalism together with Imperial Chinese and pre-Columbian Incan societies as 'tributary'.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, John Horace Round and Frederic William Maitland, both historians of medieval Britain, arrived at different conclusions as to the character of English society before the Norman Conquest in 1066. Round argued that the Normans had brought feudalism with them to England, while Maitland contended that its fundamentals were already in place in Britain before 1066. The debate continues today, but a consensus viewpoint is that England before the Conquest had commendation (which embodied some of the personal elements in feudalism) while William the Conqueror introduced a modified and stricter northern French feudalism to England incorporating (1086) oaths of loyalty to the king by all who held by feudal tenure, even the vassals of his principal vassals (holding by feudal tenure meant that vassals must provide the quota of knights required by the king or a money payment in substitution).
In the 20th century, two outstanding historians offered still more widely differing perspectives. The French historian Marc Bloch, arguably the most influential 20th-century medieval historian, approached feudalism not so much from a legal and military point of view but from a sociological one, presenting in "Feudal Society" (1939; English 1961) a feudal order not limited solely to the nobility. It is his radical notion that peasants were part of the feudal relationship that sets Bloch apart from his peers: while the vassal performed military service in exchange for the fief, the peasant performed physical labour in return for protection – both are a form of feudal relationship. According to Bloch, other elements of society can be seen in feudal terms; all the aspects of life were centered on "lordship", and so we can speak usefully of a feudal church structure, a feudal courtly (and anti-courtly) literature, and a feudal economy.
In contradistinction to Bloch, the Belgian historian François-Louis Ganshof defined feudalism from a narrow legal and military perspective, arguing that feudal relationships existed only within the medieval nobility itself. Ganshof articulated this concept in "Qu'est-ce que la féodalité?" ("What is feudalism?", 1944; translated in English as "Feudalism"). His classic definition of feudalism is widely accepted today among medieval scholars, though questioned both by those who view the concept in wider terms and by those who find insufficient uniformity in noble exchanges to support such a model.
Although he was never formally a student in the circle of scholars around Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre that came to be known as the Annales School, Georges Duby was an exponent of the "Annaliste" tradition. In a published version of his 1952 doctoral thesis entitled "La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise" ("Society in the 11th and 12th centuries in the Mâconnais region"), and working from the extensive documentary sources surviving from the Burgundian monastery of Cluny, as well as the dioceses of Mâcon and Dijon, Duby excavated the complex social and economic relationships among the individuals and institutions of the Mâconnais region and charted a profound shift in the social structures of medieval society around the year 1000. He argued that in early 11th century, governing institutions—particularly comital courts established under the Carolingian monarchy—that had represented public justice and order in Burgundy during the 9th and 10th centuries receded and gave way to a new feudal order wherein independent aristocratic knights wielded power over peasant communities through strong-arm tactics and threats of violence.
In 1939 the Austrian historian subordinated the feudal state as secondary to his concept of a persons association state (""), understanding it in contrast to the territorial state. This form of statehood, identified with the Holy Roman Empire, is described as the most complete form of medieval rule, completing conventional feudal structure of lordship and vassalage with the personal association between the nobility. But the applicability of this concept to cases outside of the Holy Roman Empire has been questioned, as by Susan Reynolds. The concept has also been questioned and superseded in German histography because of its bias and reductionism towards legitimating the Führerprinzip.
In 1974, the American historian Elizabeth A. R. Brown rejected the label "feudalism" as an anachronism that imparts a false sense of uniformity to the concept. Having noted the current use of many, often contradictory, definitions of "feudalism", she argued that the word is only a construct with no basis in medieval reality, an invention of modern historians read back "tyrannically" into the historical record. Supporters of Brown have suggested that the term should be expunged from history textbooks and lectures on medieval history entirely. In "Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted" (1994), Susan Reynolds expanded upon Brown's original thesis. Although some contemporaries questioned Reynolds's methodology, other historians have supported it and her argument. Reynolds argues:
Too many models of feudalism used for comparisons, even by Marxists, are still either constructed on the 16th-century basis or incorporate what, in a Marxist view, must surely be superficial or irrelevant features from it. Even when one restricts oneself to Europe and to feudalism in its narrow sense it is extremely doubtful whether feudo-vassalic institutions formed a coherent bundle of institutions or concepts that were structurally separate from other institutions and concepts of the time.
The term "feudal" has also been applied to non-Western societies in which institutions and attitudes similar to those of medieval Europe are perceived to have prevailed (See Examples of feudalism). Japan has been extensively studied in this regard. Friday notes that in the 21st century historians of Japan rarely invoke feudalism; instead of looking at similarities, specialists attempting comparative analysis concentrate on fundamental differences. Ultimately, critics say, the many ways the term "feudalism" has been used have deprived it of specific meaning, leading some historians and political theorists to reject it as a useful concept for understanding society.
Richard Abels notes that "Western Civilization and World Civilization textbooks now shy away from the term 'feudalism'."
Military:
Non-European: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11298 |
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. Foxes have a flattened skull, upright triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or "brush").
Twelve species belong to the monophyletic "true foxes" group of genus "Vulpes". Approximately another 25 current or extinct species are always or sometimes called foxes; these foxes are either part of the paraphyletic group of the South American foxes, or of the outlying group, which consists of the bat-eared fox, gray fox, and island fox. Foxes live on every continent except Antarctica. By far the most common and widespread species of fox is the red fox ("Vulpes vulpes") with about 47 recognized subspecies. The global distribution of foxes, together with their widespread reputation for cunning, has contributed to their prominence in popular culture and folklore in many societies around the world. The hunting of foxes with packs of hounds, long an established pursuit in Europe, especially in the British Isles, was exported by European settlers to various parts of the New World.
The word "fox" comes from Old English, which derived from Proto-Germanic *"fuhsaz". This in turn derives from Proto-Indo-European *"puḱ-", meaning ’thick-haired; tail’. Male foxes are known as dogs, tods or reynards, females as vixens, and young as cubs, pups, or kits, though the latter name is not to be confused with a distinct species called kit foxes. Vixen is one of very few words in modern English that retains the Middle English southern dialect "v" pronunciation instead of "f" (i.e. northern English "fox" versus southern English "vox"). A group of foxes is referred to as a skulk, leash, or earth.
Within the Canidae, the results of DNA analysis shows several phylogenetic divisions:
Foxes are generally smaller than some other members of the family Canidae such as wolves and jackals, while they may be larger than some within the family, such as Raccoon dogs. In the largest species, the red fox, males weigh on average between , while the smallest species, the fennec fox, weighs just . Foxy features typically include a triangular face, pointed ears, an elongated rostrum, and a bushy tail. Foxes are digitigrade; they walk on their toes. Unlike most members of the family Canidae, foxes have partially retractable claws. Fox vibrissae, or whiskers, are black. The whiskers on the muzzle, mystaciae vibrissae, average long, while the whiskers everywhere else on the head average to be shorter in length. Whiskers (carpal vibrissae) are also on the forelimbs and average long, pointing downward and backward. Other physical characteristics vary according to habitat and adaptive significance.
Fox species differ in fur color, length, and density. Coat colors range from pearly white to black-and-white to black flecked with white or grey on the underside. Fennec foxes (and other species of fox adapted to life in the desert, such as kit foxes), for example, have large ears and short fur to aid in keeping the body cool. Arctic foxes, on the other hand, have tiny ears and short limbs as well as thick, insulating fur, which aid in keeping the body warm. Red foxes, by contrast, have a typical auburn pelt, the tail normally ending with a white marking. A fox's coat color and texture may vary due to the change in seasons; fox pelts are richer and denser in the colder months and lighter in the warmer months. To get rid of the dense winter coat, foxes moult once a year around April; the process begins from the feet, up the legs, and then along the back. Coat color may also change as the individual ages.
A fox's dentition, like all other canids, is I 3/3, C 1/1, PM 4/4, M 3/2 = 42. (Bat-eared foxes have six extra molars, totalling in 48 teeth.) Foxes have pronounced carnassial pairs, which is characteristic of a carnivore. These pairs consist of the upper premolar and the lower first molar, and work together to shear tough material like flesh. Foxes' canines are pronounced, also characteristic of a carnivore, and are excellent in gripping prey.
In the wild, the typical lifespan of a fox is one to three years, although individuals may live up to ten years. Unlike many canids, foxes are not always pack animals. Typically, they live in small family groups, but some (such as Arctic foxes) are known to be solitary.
Foxes are omnivores. Their diet is made up primarily of invertebrates such as insects and small vertebrates such as reptiles and birds. They may also eat eggs and vegetation. Many species are generalist predators, but some (such as the crab-eating fox) have more specialized diets. Most species of fox consume around of food every day. Foxes cache excess food, burying it for later consumption, usually under leaves, snow, or soil. While hunting, foxes tend to use a particular pouncing technique, such that they crouch down to camouflage themselves in the terrain and then use their hind legs to leap up with great force and land on top of their chosen prey. Using their pronounced canine teeth, they can then grip the prey's neck and shake it until it is dead or can be readily disemboweled.
The gray fox is one of only two canine species known to regularly climb trees; the other is the raccoon dog.
The male fox's scrotum is held up close to the body with the testes inside even after they descend. Like other canines, the male fox has a baculum, or penile bone. The testes of red foxes are smaller than those of Arctic foxes. Sperm formation in red foxes begins in August–September, with the testicles attaining their greatest weight in December–February.
Vixens are in heat for one to six days, making their reproductive cycle twelve months long. As with other canines, the ova are shed during estrus without the need for the stimulation of copulating. Once the egg is fertilized, the vixen enters a period of gestation that can last from 52 to 53 days. Foxes tend to have an average litter size of four to five with an 80 percent success rate in becoming pregnant. Litter sizes can vary greatly according to species and environmentthe Arctic fox, for example, can have up to eleven kits.
The vixen usually has six or eight mammae. Each teat has 8 to 20 lactiferous ducts, which connect the mammary gland to the nipple, allowing for milk to be carried to the nipple.
The fox's vocal repertoire is vast:
In the case of domesticated foxes, the whining seems to remain in adult individuals as a sign of excitement and submission in the presence of their owners.
Canids commonly known as foxes include the following genera and species:
Several fox species are endangered in their native environments. Pressures placed on foxes include habitat loss and being hunted for pelts, other trade, or control. Due in part to their opportunistic hunting style and industriousness, foxes are commonly resented as nuisance animals. On the other hand, foxes, while often considered pests themselves, have been successfully employed to control pests on fruit farms while leaving the fruit intact.
The island fox, though considered a near-threatened species throughout the world, is becoming increasingly endangered in its endemic environment of the California Channel Islands. A population on an island is smaller than those on the mainland because of limited resources like space, food and shelter. Island populations, therefore, are highly susceptible to external threats ranging from introduced predatory species and humans to extreme weather. On the California Channel Islands, it was found that the population of the island fox was so low due to an outbreak of canine distemper virus from 1999 to 2000 as well as predation by non-native golden eagles. Since 1993, the eagles have caused the population to decline by as much as 95%. Because of the low number of foxes, the population went through an Allee effect; this is where at low enough densities, an individual's fitness decreases. Conservationists, therefore, had to take healthy breeding pairs out of the wild population to breed them in captivity until they had enough foxes to release back into the wild. Nonnative grazers were also removed so that native plants would be able to grow back to their natural height, thereby providing adequate cover and protection for the foxes against golden eagles.
Darwin's fox is considered critically endangered because of their small known population of 250 mature individuals as well as their restricted distribution. On the Chilean mainland, the population is limited to Nahuelbuta National Park and the surrounding Valdivian rainforest. Similarly on Chiloé Island, their population is limited to the forests that extend from the southernmost to the northwestern most part of the island. Though the Nahuelbuta National Park is protected, 90% of the species live on Chiloé Island. A major problem the species faces, therefore, is their dwindling, limited habitat due to the cutting and burning of the unprotected forests. Because of deforestation, the Darwin's fox habitat is shrinking, allowing for their competitor's (chilla fox) preferred habitat of open space, to increase; the Darwin's fox, subsequently, is being outcompeted. Another problem they face is their inability to fight off diseases transmitted by the increasing number of pet dogs. To conserve these animals, researchers suggest the need for the forests that link the Nahuelbuta National Park to the coast of Chile and in turn Chiloé Island and its forests, to be protected. They also suggest that other forests around Chile be examined to determine whether Darwin's foxes have previously existed there or can live there in the future, should the need to reintroduce the species to those areas arise. And finally, the researchers advise for the creation of a captive breeding program, in Chile, because of the limited number of mature individuals in the wild.
Foxes are often considered pests or nuisance creatures for their opportunistic attacks on poultry and other small livestock. Fox attacks on humans are not common.
Many foxes adapt well to human environments, with several species classified as "resident urban carnivores" for their ability to sustain populations entirely within urban boundaries. Foxes in urban areas can live longer and can have smaller litter sizes than foxes in non-urban areas. Urban foxes are ubiquitous in Europe, where they show altered behaviors compared to non-urban foxes, including increased population density, smaller territory, and pack foraging. Foxes have been introduced in numerous locations, with varying effects on indigenous flora and fauna.
In some countries, foxes are major predators of rabbits and hens. Population oscillations of these two species were the first nonlinear oscillation studied, and led to the now-famous Lotka–Volterra equation.
Fox hunting originated in the United Kingdom in the 16th century. Hunting with dogs is now banned in the United Kingdom, though hunting without dogs is still permitted. Red foxes were introduced into Australia in the early 19th century for sport, and have since become widespread through much of the country. They have caused population decline among many native species and prey on livestock, especially new lambs. Fox hunting is practiced as recreation in several other countries including Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Russia, United States and Australia.
There are many records of domesticated red foxes and others, but rarely of sustained domestication. A recent and notable exception is the Russian silver fox, which resulted in visible and behavioral changes, and is a case study of an animal population modeling according to human domestication needs. The current group of domesticated silver foxes are the result of nearly fifty years of experiments in the Soviet Union and Russia to domesticate the silver morph of the red fox. This selective breeding resulted in physical and behavioral traits appearing that are frequently seen in domestic cats, dogs, and other animals, such as pigmentation changes, floppy ears, and curly tails. Notably, the new foxes became more tame, allowing themselves to be petted, whimpering to get attention and sniffing and licking their caretakers.
In the United Kingdom, a number of cases of non-fatal attacks on humans were reported. They often involved children, or if there were gaps in homes through which foxes could pass.
Foxes are among the comparatively few mammals which have been able to adapt themselves to a certain degree to living in urban (mostly suburban) human environments. Their omnivorous diet allows them to survive on discarded food waste, and their skittish and often nocturnal nature means that they are often able to avoid detection, despite their larger size. Urban foxes, however, have been identified as threats to cats and small dogs, and for this reason there is often pressure to exclude them from these environments.
The San Joaquin kit fox is a highly endangered species that has, ironically, become adapted to urban living in the San Joaquin Valley and Salinas Valley of southern California. Its diet includes mice, ground squirrels, rabbits, hares, bird eggs, and insects, and it has claimed habitats in open areas, golf courses, drainage basins, and school grounds.
The fox appears in many cultures, usually in folklore. However, there are slight variations in their depictions in folklore. In Western folklore and also in Persian folklore, foxes are depicted as a symbol of cunning and trickery – a reputation derived especially from their reputed ability to evade hunters. This is usually represented as a character possessing these traits. These traits are used on a wide variety of characters, either making them a nuisance to the story, a misunderstood hero, or a devious villain.
In Asian folklore, foxes are depicted as a familiar spirit possessed of magic powers. Similar to Western folklore, foxes are depicted as mischievous, usually tricking other people, with the ability to disguise as an attractive female human. However, there are other depictions of foxes as a mystical, sacred creature, that can either bring wonder or ruin. Nine-tailed foxes appear in Chinese folklore, literature, and mythology, in which, depending on the tale can be a good or a bad omen. The motif was eventually introduced from Chinese to Japanese and Korean cultures.
The constellation Vulpecula represents a fox. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11299 |
Foundationalism
Foundationalism concerns philosophical theories of knowledge resting upon justified belief, or some secure foundation of certainty such as a conclusion inferred from a basis of sound premises. The main rival of the foundationalist theory of justification is the coherence theory of justification, whereby a body of knowledge, not requiring a secure foundation, can be established by the interlocking strength of its components, like a puzzle solved without prior certainty that each small region was solved correctly.
Identifying the alternatives as either circular reasoning or infinite regress, and thus exhibiting the regress problem, Aristotle made foundationalism his own clear choice, positing basic beliefs underpinning others. Descartes, the most famed foundationalist, discovered a foundation in the fact of his own existence and in the "clear and distinct" ideas of reason, whereas Locke found a foundation in experience. Differing foundations may reflect differing epistemological emphases—empiricists emphasizing "experience", rationalists emphasizing "reason"—but may blend both.
In the 1930s, debate over foundationalism revived. Whereas Moritz Schlick viewed scientific knowledge like a pyramid where a special class of statements does not require verification through other beliefs and serves as a foundation, Otto Neurath argued that scientific knowledge lacks an ultimate foundation and acts like a raft. In the 1950s, foundationalism fell into decline – largely due to the influence of Willard Van Orman Quine, whose ontological relativity found any belief networked to one's beliefs on all of reality, while auxiliary beliefs somewhere in the vast network are readily modified to protect desired beliefs.
Classically, foundationalism had posited infallibility of basic beliefs and deductive reasoning between beliefs—a strong foundationalism. Around 1975, weak foundationalism emerged. Thus recent foundationalists have variously allowed fallible basic beliefs, and inductive reasoning between them, either by enumerative induction or by inference to the best explanation. And whereas internalists require cognitive access to justificatory means, externalists find justification without such access.
Foundationalism was initiated by French early modern philosopher René Descartes. In his "Meditations", Descartes challenged the contemporary principles of philosophy by arguing that everything he knew he learnt from or through his senses. He used various arguments to challenge the reliability of the senses, citing previous errors and the possibilities that he was dreaming or being deceived by an Evil Demon. Descartes attempted to establish the secure foundations for knowledge to avoid scepticism. He contrasted the information provided by senses, which is unclear and uncertain, with the truths of geometry, which are clear and distinct. Geometrical truths are also certain and indubitable; Descartes thus attempted to find truths which were clear and distinct because they would be indubitably true and a suitable foundation for knowledge. His method was to question all of his beliefs until he reached something clear and distinct that was indubitably true. The result was his "cogito ergo sum" – 'I think therefore I am', or the belief that he was thinking – as his indubitable belief suitable as a foundation for knowledge. This resolved Descartes' problem of the Evil Demon – the possibility that he was being deceived by an Evil Demon, rendering all of his beliefs about the external world false. Even if his beliefs about the external world were false, his beliefs about what he was experiencing were still indubitably true, even if those perceptions do not relate to anything in the world.
Several other philosophers of the early modern period, including John Locke, G. W. Leibniz, George Berkeley, David Hume, and Thomas Reid, all accepted foundationalism as well. Baruch Spinoza was interpreted as metaphysical foundationalist by G. W. F. Hegel, a proponent of coherentism. Immanuel Kant's foundationalism rests on his theory of categories.
In late modern philosophy, foundationalism was defended by J. G. Fichte in his book "Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre" (1794/1795), Wilhelm Windelband in his book "Über die Gewißheit der Erkenntniss." (1873), and Gottlob Frege in his book "Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik" (1884).
In contemporary philosophy, foundationalism has been defended by Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell and John McDowell.
Foundationalism is an attempt to respond to the regress problem of justification in epistemology. According to this argument, every proposition requires justification to support it, but any justification also needs to be justified itself. If this goes on "ad infinitum", it is not clear how anything in the chain could be justified. Foundationalism holds that there are 'basic beliefs' which serve as foundations to anchor the rest of our beliefs. Strong versions of the theory assert that an indirectly justified belief is completely justified by basic beliefs; more moderate theories hold that indirectly justified beliefs require basic beliefs to be justified, but can be further justified by other factors.
During thousands of years, Western philosophy pursued a solid foundation as the ultimate and eternal reference system of knowledge called foundationalism. It has existed since ancient Greece, the focus of this theory is that all knowledge or cognitive awareness of the subject (human being) are based on a solid foundation. This foundation serves not only as the starting point merely as a basis for knowledge of the truth of existence. Thinking is the process of proving the validity of knowledge, not proving the rationality of the foundation from which knowledge is shaped. This means, with ultimate cause, the foundation is true, absolute, entire and impossible to prove. Neopragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty, a proponent of anti-foundationalism, said that the fundamentalism confirmed the existence of the "privileged representation" which constitutes the foundation, from which dominates epistemology. Plato's theory of Forms is the earliest foundationalism. So from the point of view of Plato, the Forms shows the general concept which plays as a model for the release of existence, which is only the faint copy of the Forms of eternity, that means, understanding the expression of objects leads to acquiring all knowledge, then acquiring knowledge accompanies achieving the truth. Achieving the truth means understanding the foundation. This idea still has some appeal in for example international relations studies.
Foundationalism holds basic beliefs exist, which are justified without reference to other beliefs, and that nonbasic beliefs must ultimately be justified by basic beliefs. Classical foundationalism maintains that basic beliefs must be infallible if they are to justify nonbasic beliefs, and that only deductive reasoning can be used to transfer justification from one belief to another. Laurence BonJour has argued that the classical formulation of foundationalism requires basic beliefs to be infallible, incorrigible, indubitable, and certain if they are to be adequately justified. Mental states and immediate experience are often taken as good candidates for basic beliefs because it is argued that beliefs about these do not need further support to be justified.
As an alternative to the classic view, modest foundationalism does not require that basic perceptual beliefs are infallible, but holds that it is reasonable to assume that perceptual beliefs are justified unless evidence to the contrary exists. This is still foundationalism because it maintains that all non-basic beliefs must be ultimately justified by basic beliefs, but it does not require that basic beliefs are infallible and allows inductive reasoning as an acceptable form of inference. For example, a belief that 'I see red' could be defeated with psychological evidence showing my mind to be confused or inattentive. Modest foundationalism can also be used to avoid the problem of inference. Even if perceptual beliefs are infallible, it is not clear that they can infallibly ground empirical knowledge (even if my belief that the table looks red to me is infallible, the inference to the belief that the table actually is red might not be infallible). Modest foundationalism does not require this link between perception and reality to be so strong; our perception of a table being yellow is adequate justification to believe that this is the case, even if it is not infallible.
Reformed epistemology is a form of modest foundationalism which takes religious beliefs as basic because they are non-inferentially justified: their justification arises from religious experience, rather than prior beliefs. This takes a modest approach to foundationalism – religious beliefs are not taken to be infallible, but are assumed to be "prima facie" justified unless evidence arises to the contrary.
Foundationalism can take internalist and externalist forms. Internalism requires that a believer's justification for a belief must be accessible to them for it to be justified. Foundationalist internalists have held that basic beliefs are justified by mental events or states, such as experiences, that do not constitute beliefs. Alternatively, basic beliefs may be justified by some special property of the belief itself, such as its being self-evident or infallible. Externalism maintains that it is unnecessary for the means of justification of a belief to be accessible to the believer.
Reliabilism is an externalist foundationalist theory, initially proposed by Alvin Goldman, which argues that a belief is justified if it is reliably produced, meaning that it will be probably true. Goldman distinguished between two kinds of justification for beliefs: belief-dependent and belief-independent. A belief-dependent process uses prior beliefs to produce new beliefs; a belief-independent process does not, using other stimuli instead. Beliefs produced this way are justified because the processes that cause them are reliable; this might be because we have evolved to reach good conclusions when presented with sense-data, meaning the conclusions we draw from our senses are usually true.
Critics of foundationalism often argue that for a belief to be justified it must be supported by other beliefs; in Donald Davidson's phrase, "only a belief can be a reason for another belief". For instance, Wilfrid Sellars argued that non-doxastic mental states cannot be reasons, and so noninferential warrant cannot be derived from them. Similarly, critics of externalist foundationalism argue that only mental states or properties the believer is aware of could make a belief justified.
According to skepticism, there are no beliefs that are so obviously certain that they require support from no other beliefs. Even if one does not accept this very strong claim, foundationalists have a problem with giving an uncontroversial or principled account of which beliefs are self-evident or indubitable.
Postmodernists and post-structuralists such as Richard Rorty and Jacques Derrida have attacked foundationalism on the grounds that the truth of a statement or discourse is only verifiable in accordance with other statements and discourses. Rorty in particular elaborates further on this, claiming that the individual, the community, the human body as a whole have a 'means by which they know the world' (this entails language, culture, semiotic systems, mathematics, science etc.). In order to verify particular means, or particular statements belonging to certain means (e.g., the propositions of the natural sciences), a person would have to 'step outside' the means and critique them neutrally, in order to provide a foundation for adopting them. However, this is impossible. The only way in which one can know the world is through the means by which they know the world; a method cannot justify itself. This argument can be seen as directly related to Wittgenstein's theory of language, drawing a parallel between postmodernism and late logical positivism that is united in critique of foundationalism. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11300 |
Felidae
Felidae is a family of mammals in the order Carnivora, colloquially referred to as cats, and constitutes a clade. A member of this family is also called a felid. The term "cat" refers both to felids in general and specifically to the domestic cat ("Felis catus").
Felidae species exhibit the most diverse fur pattern of all terrestrial carnivores. Cats have retractile claws, slender muscular bodies and strong flexible forelimbs. Their teeth and facial muscles allow for a powerful bite. They are all obligate carnivores, and most are solitary predators ambushing or stalking their prey. Wild cats occur in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas. Some wild cat species are adapted to forest habitats, some to arid environments, and a few also to wetlands and mountainous terrain. Their activity patterns range from nocturnal and crepuscular to diurnal, depending on their preferred prey species.
Reginald Innes Pocock divided the extant Felidae into three subfamilies: the Pantherinae, the Felinae and the Acinonychinae, differing from each other by the ossification of the hyoid apparatus and by the cutaneous sheaths which protect their claws.
This concept has been revised following developments in molecular biology and techniques for analysis of morphological data. Today, the living Felidae are divided in two subfamilies: the Pantherinae and Felinae, with the Acinonychinae subsumed into the latter. Pantherinae includes five "Panthera" and two "Neofelis" species, while Felinae includes the other 34 species in ten genera.
The first cats emerged during the Oligocene about , with the appearance of "Proailurus" and "Pseudaelurus". The latter species complex was ancestral to two main lines of felids: the cats in the extant subfamilies and a group of extinct cats of the subfamily Machairodontinae, which include the saber-toothed cats such as the "Smilodon". The "false sabre-toothed cats", the Barbourofelidae and Nimravidae, are not true cats, but are closely related. Together with the Felidae, Viverridae, hyaenas and mongooses, they constitute the Feliformia.
All members of the cat family have the following characteristics in common:
The colour, length and density of their fur is very diverse. Fur colour covers the gamut from white to black, and fur pattern from distinctive small spots, stripes to small blotches and rosettes. Most cat species are born with a spotted fur, except the jaguarundi ("Herpailurus yagouaroundi"), Asian golden cat ("Catopuma temminckii") and caracal ("Caracal caracal"). The spotted fur of lion ("Panthera leo") and cougar ("Puma concolor") cubs change to a uniform fur during their ontogeny. Those living in cold environments have thick fur with long hair, like the snow leopard ("Panthera uncia") and the Pallas's cat ("Otocolobus manul"). Those living in tropical and hot climate zones have short fur. Several species exhibit melanism with all-black individuals.
In the great majority of cat species, the tail is between a third and a half of the body length, although with some exceptions, like the "Lynx" species and margay. Cat species vary greatly in body and skull sizes, and weights:
Most cat species have a haploid number of 18 or 19. Central and South American cats have a haploid number of 18, possibly due to the combination of two smaller chromosomes into a larger one.
The family Felidae is part of the Feliformia, a suborder that diverged probably about into several families. The Felidae and the Asiatic linsangs are considered a sister group, which split about .
The earliest cats probably appeared about . "Proailurus" is the oldest known cat that occurred after the Eocene–Oligocene extinction event about ; fossil remains were excavated in France and Mongolia's Hsanda Gol Formation. Fossil occurrences indicate that the Felidae arrived in North America earliest . This is about later than the Ursidae and the Nimravidae, and about 10 million years later than the Canidae.
In the Early Miocene about , "Pseudaelurus" lived in Africa. Its fossil jaws were also excavated in geological formations of Europe's Vallesian, Asia's Middle Miocene and North America's late Hemingfordian to late Barstovian epochs.
In the Early or Middle Miocene, the sabre-toothed Machairodontinae evolved in Africa and migrated northwards in the Late Miocene. With their large upper canines, they were adapted to prey on large-bodied megaherbivores. "Miomachairodus" is the oldest known member of this subfamily. "Metailurus" lived in Africa and Eurasia about . Several "Paramachaerodus" skeletons were found in Spain. "Homotherium" appeared in Africa, Eurasia and North America around , and "Megantereon" about . "Smilodon" lived in North and South America from about . This subfamily became extinct in the Late Pleistocene.
Results of mitochondrial analysis indicate that the living Felidae species descended from a common ancestor, which originated in Asia in the Late Miocene epoch. They migrated to Africa, Europe and the Americas in the course of at least 10 migration waves during the past ~11 million years. Low sea levels, interglacial and glacial periods facilitated these migrations. "Panthera blytheae" is the oldest known pantherine cat dated to the late Messinian to early Zanclean ages about . A fossil skull was excavated in 2010 in Zanda County on the Tibetan Plateau. "Panthera palaeosinensis" from North China probably dates to the Late Miocene or Early Pliocene. The skull of the holotype is similar to that of a lion or leopard. "Panthera zdanskyi" dates to the Gelasian about . Several fossil skulls and jawbones were excavated in northwestern China. "Panthera gombaszoegensis" is the earliest known pantherine cat that lived in Europe about .
Living felids fall into eight evolutionary lineages or species clades. Genotyping of nuclear DNA of all 41 felid species revealed that hybridization between species occurred in the course of evolution within the majority of the eight lineages.
Modelling of felid coat pattern transformations revealed that nearly all patterns evolved from small spots.
Traditionally, five subfamilies have been distinguished within the Felidae based on phenotypical features: the Pantherinae, the Felinae, the Acinonychinae, and the extinct Machairodontinae and Proailurinae.
The following table shows the living genera within the Felidae, grouped according to the traditional phenotypical classification. Estimated genetic divergence times of the corresponding eight genotypical evolutionary lineages are indicated in million years ago (Mya), based on analysis of autosomal, xDNA, yDNA and mtDNA gene segments; and estimates based on analysis of biparental nuclear genomes.
The phylogenetic relationships of living felids are shown in the following cladogram: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11302 |
Folklore
Folklore is the expressive body of culture shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. These include oral traditions such as tales, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging from traditional building styles to handmade toys common to the group. Folklore also includes customary lore, the forms and rituals of celebrations such as Christmas and weddings, folk dances and initiation rites. Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a folklore artifact. Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain in a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts. Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another either through verbal instruction or demonstration. The academic study of folklore is called folklore studies or folkloristics, and it can be explored at undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. levels.
To fully understand folklore, it is helpful to clarify its component parts: the terms folk and lore. It is well-documented that the term was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms. He fabricated it to replace the contemporary terminology of "popular antiquities" or "popular literature". The second half of the compound word, "lore", proves easier to define as its meaning has stayed relatively stable over the last two centuries. Coming from Old English lār 'instruction,' and with German and Dutch cognates, it is the knowledge and traditions of a particular group, frequently passed along by word of mouth.
The concept of "folk" proves somewhat more elusive. When Thoms first created this term, "folk" applied only to rural, frequently poor and illiterate peasants. A more modern definition of "folk" is a social group which includes two or more persons with common traits, who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. "Folk is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family." This expanded social definition of "folk" supports a broader view of the material, i.e. the lore, considered to be "folklore artifacts". These now include all "things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)". Folklore is no longer circumscribed as being chronologically old or obsolete. The folklorist studies the traditional artifacts of a social group and how they are transmitted.
Transmission is a vital part of the folklore process. Without communicating these beliefs and customs within the group over space and time, they would become cultural shards relegated to cultural archaeologists. For folklore is also a verb. These folk artifacts continue to be passed along informally, as a rule anonymously and always in multiple variants. The folk group is not individualistic, it is community-based and nurtures its lore in community. "As new groups emerge, new folklore is created… surfers, motorcyclists, ". In direct contrast to high culture, where any single work of a named artist is protected by copyright law, folklore is a function of shared identity within a common social group.
Having identified folk artifacts, the professional folklorist strives to understand the significance of these beliefs, customs and objects for the group. For these cultural units would not be passed along unless they had some continued relevance within the group. That meaning can however shift and morph. So Halloween of the 21st century is not the All Hallows' Eve of the Middle Ages, and even gives rise to its own set of urban legends independent of the historical celebration. The cleansing rituals of Orthodox Judaism were originally good public health in a land with little water; now these customs signify for some people identification as an Orthodox Jew. Compare this to brushing your teeth, also transmitted within a group, which remains a practical hygiene and health issue and does not rise to the level of a group-defining tradition. For tradition is initially remembered behavior. Once it loses its practical purpose, there is no reason for further transmission unless it has been imbued with meaning beyond the initial practicality of the action. This meaning is at the core of folkloristics, the study of folklore.
With an increasingly theoretical sophistication of the social sciences, it has become evident that folklore is a naturally occurring and necessary component of any social group, it is indeed all around us. It does not have to be old or antiquated. It continues to be created, transmitted and in any group is used to differentiate between "us" and "them".
Folklore began to distinguish itself as an autonomous discipline during the period of romantic nationalism in Europe. A particular figure in this development was Johann Gottfried von Herder, whose writings in the 1770s presented oral traditions as organic processes grounded in locale. After the German states were invaded by Napoleonic France, Herder's approach was adopted by many of his fellow Germans who systematized the recorded folk traditions and used them in their process of nation building. This process was enthusiastically embraced by smaller nations like Finland, Estonia, and Hungary, which were seeking political independence from their dominant neighbours.
Folklore as a field of study further developed among 19th century European scholars who were contrasting tradition with the newly developing modernity. Its focus was the oral folklore of the rural peasant populations, which were considered as residue and survivals of the past that continued to exist within the lower strata of society. The "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" of the Brothers Grimm (first published 1812) is the best known but by no means only collection of verbal folklore of the European peasantry of that time. This interest in stories, sayings and songs continued throughout the 19th century and aligned the fledgling discipline of folkloristics with literature and mythology. By the turn into the 20th century the number and sophistication of folklore studies and folklorists had grown both in Europe and North America. Whereas European folklorists remained focused on the oral folklore of the homogenous peasant populations in their regions, the American folklorists, led by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict, chose to consider Native American cultures in their research, and included the totality of their customs and beliefs as folklore. This distinction aligned American folkloristics with cultural anthropology and ethnology, using the same techniques of data collection in their field research. This divided alliance of folkloristics between the humanities in Europe and the social sciences in America offers a wealth of theoretical vantage points and research tools to the field of folkloristics as a whole, even as it continues to be a point of discussion within the field itself.
The term "Folkloristics", along with its synonym "Folklore Studies", gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. With the passage in 1976 of the American Folklife Preservation Act, (P.L. 94-201), passed by the U.S. Congress in conjunction with the Bicentennial Celebration in 1976, folkloristics in the United States came of age.
"…[Folklife] means the traditional expressive culture shared within the various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, regional; expressive culture includes a wide range of creative and symbolic forms such as custom, belief, technical skill, language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance, drama, ritual, pageantry, handicraft; these expressions are mainly learned orally, by imitation, or in performance, and are generally maintained without benefit of formal instruction or institutional direction."
Added to the panoply of other legislation designed to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the United States, this law also marks a shift in national awareness. It gives voice to a growing understanding that cultural diversity is a national strength and a resource worthy of protection. Paradoxically, it is a unifying feature, not something that separates the citizens of a country. "We no longer view cultural difference as a problem to be solved, but as a tremendous opportunity. In the diversity of American folklife we find a marketplace teeming with the exchange of traditional forms and cultural ideas, a rich resource for Americans". This diversity is celebrated annually at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and many other folklife fests around the country.
The folk of the 19th century, the social group identified in the original term "folklore", was characterized by being rural, illiterate and poor. They were the peasants living in the countryside, in contrast to the urban populace of the cities. Only toward the end of the century did the urban proletariat (on the coattails of Marxist theory) become included with the rural poor as folk. The common feature in this expanded definition of folk was their identification as the underclass of society.
Moving forward into the 20th century, in tandem with new thinking in the , folklorists also revised and expanded their concept of the folk group. By the 1960s it was understood that social groups, i.e. folk groups, were all around us; each individual is enmeshed in a multitude of differing identities and their concomitant social groups. The first group that each of us is born into is the family, and each family has its own unique family folklore. As a child grows into an individual, its identities also increase to include age, language, ethnicity, occupation, etc. Each of these cohorts has its own folklore, and as one folklorist points out, this is "not idle speculation… Decades of fieldwork have demonstrated conclusively that these groups do have their own folklore." In this modern understanding, folklore is a function of shared identity within any social group.
This folklore can include jokes, sayings and expected behavior in multiple variants, always transmitted in an informal manner. For the most part it will be learned by observation, imitation, repetition or correction by other group members. This informal knowledge is used to confirm and re-inforce the identity of the group. It can be used both internally within the group to express their common identity, for example in an initiation ceremony for new members. Or it can be used externally to differentiate the group from outsiders, like a folkdance demonstration at a community festival. Significant to folklorists here is that there are two opposing but equally valid ways to use this in the study of a group: you can start with an identified group in order to explore its folklore, or you can identify folklore items and use them to identify the social group.
Beginning in the 1960s, a further expansion of the concept of folk began to unfold in folkloristics. Individual researchers identified folk groups which had previously been overlooked and ignored. One major example of this is found in an issue of "The Journal of American Folklore", published 1975. This edition is dedicated exclusively to articles on women's folklore, with approaches that were not coming from a man's perspective. Other groups that were highlighted as part of this broadened understanding of the folk group were non-traditional families, occupational groups, and families that pursued production of folk items through multiple generations.
Individual folklore artifacts are commonly classified as one of three types: material, verbal or customary lore. For the most part self-explanatory, these categories include physical objects (material folklore), common sayings, expressions, stories and songs (verbal folklore), and beliefs and ways of doing things (customary folklore). There is also a fourth major subgenre defined for children's folklore and games (childlore), as the collection and interpretation of this fertile topic is peculiar to school yards and neighborhood streets. Each of these genres and their subtypes is intended to organize and categorize the folklore artifacts; they provide common vocabulary and consistent labeling for folklorists to communicate with each other.
That said, each artifact is unique; in fact one of the characteristics of all folklore artifacts is their variation within genres and types. This is in direct contrast to manufactured goods, where the goal in production is to create products which are identical, and variations are considered mistakes. It is however just this required variation that makes identification and classification of the defining features a challenge. And while this classification is essential for the subject area of folkloristics, it remains just labeling, and adds little to an understanding of the traditional development and meaning of the artifacts themselves.
Necessary as they are, genre classifications are misleading in their oversimplification of the subject area. Folklore artifacts are never self-contained, they do not stand in isolation but are particulars in the self-representation of a community. Different genres are frequently combined with each other to mark an event. So a birthday celebration might include a song or formulaic way of greeting the birthday child (verbal), presentation of a cake and wrapped presents (material), as well as customs to honor the individual, such as sitting at the head of the table, and blowing out the candles with a wish. There might also be special games played at birthday parties which are not generally played at other times. Adding to the complexity of the interpretation, the birthday party for a seven-year-old will not be identical to the birthday party for that same child as a six-year-old, even though they follow the same model. For each artifact embodies a single variant of a performance in a given time and space. The task of the folklorist becomes to identify within this surfeit of variables the constants and the expressed meaning that shimmer through all variations: honoring of the individual within the circle of family and friends, gifting to express their value and worth to the group, and of course, the festival food and drink as signifiers of the event.
The formal definition of verbal lore is words, both written and oral, which are "spoken, sung, voiced forms of traditional utterance that show repetitive patterns." Crucial here are the repetitive patterns. Verbal lore is not just any conversation, but words and phrases conforming to a traditional configuration recognized by both the speaker and the audience. For narrative types by definition have consistent structure, and follow an existing model in their narrative form. As just one simple example, in English the phrase "An elephant walks into a bar…" instantaneously flags the following text as a joke. It might be one you've already heard, but it might be one that the speaker has just thought up within the current context. This is folklore in action. Another example is the child's song Old MacDonald Had a Farm, where each performance is distinctive in the animals named, their order and their sounds. Songs such as this are used to express cultural values (farms are important, farmers are old and weather-beaten) and teach children about different domesticated animals. This is folklore in action.
Verbal folklore was the original folklore, the artifacts defined by William Thoms as older, oral cultural traditions of the rural populace. In his 1846 published call for help in documenting antiquities, Thoms was echoing scholars from across the European continent to collect artifacts of verbal lore. By the beginning of the 20th century these collections had grown to include artifacts from around the world and across several centuries. A system to organize and categorize them became necessary. Antti Aarne published a first classification system for folktales in 1910. This was later expanded into the Aarne–Thompson classification system by Stith Thompson and remains the standard classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. As the number of classified oral artifacts grew, similarities were noted in items which had been collected from very different geographic regions, ethnic groups and epochs, giving rise to the Historic–Geographic Method, a methodology which dominated folkloristics in the first half of the 20th century.
When William Thoms first published his appeal to document the verbal lore of the rural populations, it was believed these folk artifacts would die out as the population became literate. Over the past two centuries this belief has proven to be wrong; folklorists continue to collect verbal lore in both written and spoken form from all social groups. Some variants might have been captured in published collections, but much of it is still transmitted orally and indeed continues to be generated in new forms and variants at an alarming rate.
Below is listed a small sampling of types and examples of verbal lore.
The genre of material culture includes all artifacts that you can touch, hold, live in or eat. They are tangible objects, with a physical presence intended for use either permanently or just at the next meal. Most of these folklore artifacts are single objects which have been created by hand for a specific purpose. However folk artifacts can also be mass-produced, such as dreidels or Christmas decorations. These items continue to be considered folklore due to their long (pre-industrial) history and their customary use. All of these material objects "existed prior to and continue alongside mechanized industry. … [They are] transmitted across the generations and subject to the same forces of conservative tradition and individual variation" that are found in all folk artifacts. Of interest to folklorists are their physical form, their method of manufacture or construction, their pattern of use as well as the procurement of the raw materials. The meaning to those who both make and use these objects is important. Of primary significance in these studies is the complex balance of continuity over change in both their design and their decoration.
In Europe before the Industrial Revolution everything was made by hand. While some folklorists of the 19th century wanted to secure the oral traditions of the rural folk before the populace became literate, other folklorists sought to identify hand-crafted objects before their production processes were lost to industrial manufacturing. Just as verbal lore continues to be actively created and transmitted in today's culture, so these handicrafts, possibly with a shift in purpose and meaning, can still be found all around us. For there are many reasons to continue to hand make objects for use. It could mean these skills are needed to repair manufactured items. Or perhaps a unique design is wanted which is not (or cannot be) found in the stores. Many crafts are considered to be simple home maintenance, such as cooking, sewing and carpentry. Handicrafts have also become for many an enjoyable and satisfying hobby. Last but not least, handmade objects have taken on the sheen of prestige, where extra time and thought is spent in their creation and their uniqueness is valued. For the folklorist, these hand-crafted objects embody multifaceted relationships in the lives of the craftsmen and the users, which is completely lacking in mass-produced items without connection to an individual craftsman. Regardless of the motivation for the handicraft, this is folklore in action.
Many traditional crafts have been elevated to the fine or applied arts and taught in art schools, such as ironworking and glass-making. Or they are repurposed as folk art, characterized as objects in which the decorative form supersedes its utilitarian needs. Folk art is found in hex signs on Pennsylvania Dutch barns, tin man sculptures made by metalworkers, front yard Christmas displays, decorated school lockers, carved gun stocks, and tattoos. "Words such as naive, self-taught, and individualistic are used to describe these objects, and the exceptional rather than the representative creation is featured." This is in contrast to our understanding of folklore artifacts which are nurtured and passed along in community.
Many objects of material folklore, big and small, are challenging to classify, difficult to archive and unwieldy to store. How do we preserve these bulky artifacts of material culture, and how do we use them? That is the assigned task of museums. Toward this goal the concept of the Living history or open-air museum has been developed, beginning in Scandinavia at the end of the 19th century. These museums are here to teach, not just display. Actors show how items were used, reenacting everyday living by people from all segments of society. In order to achieve this, these museums rely heavily on the material artifacts of a pre-industrial society. Many locations even duplicate the processing of the objects, thus creating new objects of an earlier historic time period. These Living history museums are now found throughout the United States and the world as part of a thriving heritage industry. This is folklore in action.
This list represents just a small sampling of objects and skills which are included in studies of material culture.
Customary culture is remembered enactment, i.e. re-enactment. It is the patterns of expected behavior within a group, the "traditional and expected way of doing things" A custom can be a single gesture, such as thumbs down or a handshake. It can also be a complex interaction of multiple folk customs and artifacts as seen in a child's birthday party, including verbal lore (Happy Birthday song), material lore (presents and a birthday cake), special games (Musical chairs) and individual customs (making a wish as you blow out the candles). Each of these is a folklore artifact in its own right, potentially worthy of investigation and cultural analysis. Together they combine to build the custom of a birthday party celebration, a scripted combination of multiple artifacts which have meaning within their social group.
Folklorists divide customs into several different categories. A custom can be a seasonal celebration, such as Thanksgiving or New Year's. It can be a life cycle celebration for an individual, such as baptism, birthday or wedding. A custom can also mark a community festival or event; examples of this are Carnival in Cologne or Mardi Gras in New Orleans. This category also includes the Smithsonian Folklife Festival celebrated each summer on the Mall in Washington, DC. A fourth category includes customs related to folk beliefs. Walking under a ladder is just one of many symbols considered unlucky. Occupational groups tend to have a rich history of customs related to their life and work, so the traditions of sailors or lumberjacks. The area of ecclesiastical folklore, which includes modes of worship not sanctioned by the established church tends to be so large and complex that it is usually treated as a specialized area of folk customs; it requires considerable expertise in standard church ritual in order to adequately interpret folk customs and beliefs that originated in official church practice.
Customary folklore is by definition folklore in action; it is always a performance, be it a single gesture or a complex of scripted customs. Participating in the custom, either as performer or audience, signifies acknowledgment of that social group. Some customary behavior is intended to be performed and understood only within the group itself, so the handkerchief code sometimes used in the gay community or the initiation rituals of the Freemasons. Other customs are designed specifically to represent a social group to outsiders, those who do not belong to this group. The St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York and in other communities across the continent is a single example of an ethnic group parading their separateness (differential behavior), and encouraging Americans of all stripes to show alliance to this colorful ethnic group.
These festivals and parades, with a target audience of people who do not belong to the social group, intersect with the interests and mission of public folklorists, who are engaged in the documentation, preservation, and presentation of traditional forms of folklife. With a swell in popular interest in folk traditions, these community celebrations are becoming more numerous throughout the western world. While ostensibly parading the diversity of their community, economic groups have discovered that these folk parades and festivals are good for business. All shades of people are out on the streets, eating, drinking and spending. This attracts support not only from the business community, but also from federal and state organizations for these local street parties. Paradoxically, in parading diversity within the community, these events have come to authenticate true community, where business interests ally with the varied (folk) social groups to promote the interests of the community as a whole.
This is just a small sampling of types and examples of customary lore.
Childlore is a distinct branch of folklore that deals with activities passed on by children to other children, away from the influence or supervision of an adult. Children's folklore contains artifacts from all the standard folklore genres of verbal, material and customary lore; it is however the child-to-child conduit that distinguishes these artifacts. For childhood is a social group where children teach, learn and share their own traditions, flourishing in a street culture outside the purview of adults. This is also ideally where it needs to be collected; as Iona and Peter Opie demonstrated in their pioneering book "Children's Games in Street and Playground". Here the social group of children is studied on its own terms, not as an derivative of adult social groups. It is shown that the culture of children is quite distinctive; it is generally unnoticed by the sophisticated world of adults, and quite as little affected by it.
Of particular interest to folklorists here is the mode of transmission of these artifacts; this lore circulates exclusively within an informal pre-literate children's network or folkgroup. It does not include artifacts taught to children by adults. However children can take the taught and teach it further to other children, turning it into childlore. Or they can take the artifacts and turn them into something else; so Old McDonald's farm is transformed from animal noises to the scatological version of animal poop. This childlore is characterized by "its lack of dependence on literary and fixed form. Children…operate among themselves in a world of informal and oral communication, unimpeded by the necessity of maintaining and transmitting information by written means. This is as close as folklorists can come to observing the transmission and social function of this folk knowledge before the spread of literacy during the 19th century.
As we have seen with the other genres, the original collections of children's lore and games in the 19th century was driven by a fear that the culture of childhood would die out. Early folklorists, among them Alice Gomme in Britain and William Wells Newell in the United States, felt a need to capture the unstructured and unsupervised street life and activities of children before it was lost. This fear proved to be unfounded. In a comparison of any modern school playground during recess and the painting of "Children's Games" by Pieter Breugel the Elder we can see that the activity level is similar, and many of the games from the 1560 painting are recognizable and comparable to modern variations still played today.
These same artifacts of childlore, in innumerable variations, also continue to serve the same function of learning and practicing skills needed for growth. So bouncing and swinging rhythms and rhymes encourage development of balance and coordination in infants and children. Verbal rhymes like Peter Piper picked... serve to increase both the oral and aural acuity of children. Songs and chants, accessing a different part of the brain, are used to memorize series (Alphabet song). They also provide the necessary beat to complex physical rhythms and movements, be it hand-clapping, jump roping, or ball bouncing. Furthermore, many physical games are used to develop strength, coordination and endurance of the players. For some team games, negotiations about the rules can run on longer than the game itself as social skills are rehearsed. Even as we are just now uncovering the neuroscience that undergirds the developmental function of this childlore, the artifacts themselves have been in play for centuries.
Below is listed just a small sampling of types and examples of childlore and games.
A strong case has been made for considering folk history as a distinct sub-category of folklore, which has received attention from such folklorists as Richard Dorson and has found a journal in "The Folklore Historian", sponsored by the History and Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society. The study of folk history has been particularly developed in Ireland, where the "Handbook of Irish Folklore" (the standard book used by all field workers of the Irish Folklore Commission) recognized "historical tradition" as a separate category, traditionally referred to as "seanchas". Henry Glassie, in his classic study "Passing the Time in Ballymenone", made a pioneering contribution. More than anybody else, Guy Beiner has presented in-depth studies of Irish folk history. Beiner has identified a number of characteristic genres for what he has named "history telling", such as stories (divided into tales and “mini-histories”), songs and ballads (especially rebel songs), poems, rhymes, toasts, prophecies, proverbs and sayings, place-names, and a variety of commemorative ritual practices. These are often recited by specially-dedicated storytellers ("seanchaithe") and folk-historians ("staireolaithe"). Beiner has since adopted the term "vernacular historiography" in order to move beyond the confines of "the artificial divides between oral and literary cultures that lie at the heart of conceptualizations of oral tradition".
Lacking context, the folklore artifacts in the Smithsonian Folklife Archive contain as much life as the stuffed elephant down the street in the Natural History Museum. It is only in performance that they come alive as an active and meaningful component of a social group; this is where the intergroup communication lives, where transmission of these cultural elements takes place. "Folklore is folklore only when performed". Without transmission, these items are not folklore, they are just individual quirky tales and objects.
This understanding in folkloristics only occurred in the second half of the 20th century, when the two terms "folklore performance" and "text and context" dominated discussions among folklorists. These terms are not contradictory or even mutually exclusive. As borrowings from other fields of study, one or the other linguistic formulation is more appropriate to any given discussion. Performance is frequently tied to verbal and customary lore, whereas context is used in discussions of material lore. Both formulations offer different perspectives on the same folkloric understanding, specifically that folklore artifacts need to remain embedded in their cultural environment if we are to gain insight into their meaning for the community.
The concept of cultural (folklore) performance is shared with ethnography and anthropology among other social sciences. The cultural anthropologist Victor Turner identified four universal characteristics of cultural performance. These are playfulness, framing, using symbolic language and employing the subjunctive mood. In performance the audience leaves the daily reality to move into a mode of make-believe, "what if". That this fits well with all types of verbal lore, where reality finds no footing among the symbols, fantasies, and nonsense of traditional tales, proverbs, and jokes is self-evident. Customs and the lore of children and games also fit easily into the language of a folklore performance.
Material culture requires some kneading to turn it into a performance. Should we consider the performance of the production, as in a quilting party, or the performance of the recipients who use the quilt to cover their marriage bed? Here the language of context works better to describe the quilting of patterns copied from the grandmother, quilting as a social event during the winter months, or the gifting of a quilt to signify the importance of the event. Each of these, the traditional pattern chosen, the social event and the gifting occur within the broader context of the community. That said, even in a discussion of context the structure and characteristics of performance can be recognized, including an audience, a framing event, and the use of decorative figures and symbols which go beyond the utility of the object.
Before the Second World War, folk artifacts had been understood and collected as cultural shards of an earlier time. They were considered individual vestigial artifacts, with little or no function in the contemporary culture. Given this understanding, the goal of the folklorist was to capture and document them before they disappeared. They were collected with no supporting data, bound in books, archived and classified more or less successfully. The Historic–Geographic Method worked to isolate and track these collected artifacts, mostly verbal lore, across space and time.
Following the Second World War, folklorists began to articulate a more holistic approach toward their subject matter. In tandem with the growing sophistication in the , attention was no longer limited to the isolated artifact, but extended to include the artifact embedded in an active cultural environment. One early proponent was Alan Dundes with his essay "Texture, Text and Context", first published 1964. A public presentation in 1967 by Dan Ben-Amos at the American Folklore Society brought the behavioral approach into open debate among folklorists. In 1972 Richard Dorson called out the "young Turks" for their movement toward a behavioral approach to folklore. This approach "shifted the conceptualization of folklore as an extractable item or 'text' to an emphasis on folklore as a kind of human behavior and communication. Conceptualizing folklore as behavior redefined the job of folklorists..."
Folklore became a verb, an action, something that people do, not just something that they have. It is in the performance and the active context that folklore artifacts get transmitted in informal, direct communication, either verbally or in demonstration. Performance includes all the different modes and manners in which this transmission occurs.
Transmission is a communicative process requiring a binary: one individual or group who actively transmits information in some form to another individual or group. Each of these is a defined role in the folklore process. The tradition-bearer is the individual who actively passes along the knowledge of an artifact; this can be either a mother singing a lullaby to her baby, or an Irish dance troupe performing at a local festival. They are named individuals, usually well known in the community as knowledgeable in their traditional lore. They are not the anonymous "folk", the nameless mass without of history or individuality.
The audience of this performance is the other half in the transmission process; they listen, watch, and remember. Few of them will become active tradition-bearers; many more will be passive tradition-bearers who maintain a memory of this specific traditional artifact, in both its presentation and its content.
There is active communication between the audience and the performer. The performer is presenting to the audience; the audience in turn, through its actions and reactions, is actively communicating with the performer. The purpose of this performance is not to create something new but to re-create something that already exists; the performance is words and actions which are known, recognized and valued by both the performer and the audience. For folklore is first and foremost remembered behavior. As members of the same cultural reference group, they identify and value this performance as a piece of shared cultural knowledge.
To initiate the performance, there must be a frame of some sort to indicate that what is to follow is indeed performance. The frame brackets it as outside of normal discourse. In customary lore such as life cycle celebrations (ex. birthday) or dance performances, the framing occurs as part of the event, frequently marked by location. The audience goes to the event location to participate. Games are defined primarily by rules, it is with the initiation of the rules that the game is framed. The folklorist Barre Toelken describes an evening spent in a Navaho family playing string figure games, with each of the members shifting from performer to audience as they create and display different figures to each other.
In verbal lore, the performer will start and end with recognized linguistic formulas. An easy example is seen in the common introduction to a joke: "Have you heard the one...", "Joke of the day...", or "An elephant walks into a bar". Each of these signals to the listeners that the following is a joke, not to be taken literally. The joke is completed with the punch line of the joke. Another traditional narrative marker in English is the framing of a fairy tale between the phrases "Once upon a time" and "They all lived happily ever after." Many languages have similar phrases which are used to frame a traditional tale. Each of these linguistic formulas removes the bracketed text from ordinary discourse, and marks it as a recognized form of stylized, formulaic communication for both the performer and the audience.
Framing as a narrative device serves to signal to both the story teller and the audience that the narrative which follows is indeed a fiction (verbal lore), and not to be understood as historical fact or reality. It moves the framed narration into the subjunctive mood, and marks a space in which "fiction, history, story, tradition, art, teaching, all exist within the narrated or performed expressive 'event' outside the normal realms and constraints of reality or time." This shift from the realis to the irrealis mood is understood by all participants within the reference group. It enables these fictional events to contain meaning for the group, and can lead to very real consequences.
The theory of self-correction in folklore transmission was first articulated by the folklorist Walter Anderson in the 1920s; this posits a feedback mechanism which would keep folklore variants closer to the original form.
This theory addresses the question about how, with multiple performers and multiple audiences, the artifact maintains its identity across time and geography. Anderson credited the audience with censoring narrators who deviated too far from the known (traditional) text.
Any performance is a two-way communication process. The performer addresses the audience with words and actions; the audience in turn actively responds to the performer. If this performance deviates too far from audience expectations of the familiar folk artifact, they will respond with negative feedback. Wanting to avoid more negative reaction, the performer will adjust his performance to conform to audience expectations. "Social reward by an audience [is] a major factor in motivating narrators..." It is this dynamic feedback loop between performer and audience which gives stability to the text of the performance.
In reality, this model is not so simplistic; there is multiple redundancy in the active folklore process. The performer has heard the tale multiple times, he has heard it from different story tellers in multiple versions. In turn, he tells the tale multiple times to the same or a different audience, and they expect to hear the version they know. This expanded model of redundancy in a non-linear narrative process makes it difficult to innovate during any single performance; corrective feedback from the audience will be immediate. "At the heart of both autopoetic self-maintenance and the 'virality' of meme transmission... it is enough to assume that some sort of recursive action maintains a degree of integrity [of the artifact] in certain features ... sufficient to allow us to recognize it as an instance of its type."
For material folk artifacts, it becomes more fruitful to return to the terminology of Alan Dundes: text and context. Here the text designates the physical artifact itself, the single item made by an individual for a specific purpose. The context is then unmasked by observation and questions concerning both its production and its usage. Why was it made, how was it made, who will use it, how will they use it, where did the raw materials come from, who designed it, etc. These questions are limited only by the skill of the interviewer.
In his study of southeastern Kentucky chair makers, Michael Owen Jones describes production of a chair within the context of the life of the craftsman. For Henry Glassie in his study of Folk Housing in Middle Virginia the investigation concerns the historical pattern he finds repeated in the dwellings of this region: the house is planted in the landscape just as the landscape completes itself with the house. The artisan in his roadside stand or shop in the nearby town wants to make and display products which appeal to customers. There is "a craftsperson's eagerness to produce 'satisfactory items' due to a close personal contact with the customer and expectations to serve the customer again." Here the role of consumer "... is the basic force responsible for the continuity and discontinuity of behavior."
In material culture the context becomes the cultural environment in which the object is made (chair), used (house), and sold (wares). None of these artisans is "anonymous" folk; they are individuals making a living with the tools and skills learned within and valued in the context of their community.
No two performances are identical. The performer attempts to keep the performance within expectations, but this happens despite a multitude of changing variables. He has given this performance one time more or less, the audience is different, the social and political environment has changed. In the context of material culture, no two hand-crafted items are identical. Sometimes these deviations in the performance and the production are unintentional, just part of the process. But sometimes these deviations are intentional; the performer or artisan want to play with the boundaries of expectation and add their own creative touch. They perform within the tension of conserving the recognized form and adding innovation.
The folklorist Barre Toelken identifies this tension as "... a combination of both changing ("dynamic") and static ("conservative") elements that evolve and change through sharing, communication and performance." Over time, the cultural context shifts and morphs: new leaders, new technologies, new values, new awareness. As the context changes, so must the artifact, for without modifications to map existing artifacts into the evolving cultural landscape, they lose their meaning. Joking as an active form of verbal lore makes this tension visible as joke cycles come and go to reflect new issues of concern. Once an artifact is no longer applicable to the context, transmission becomes a nonstarter; it loses relevancy for a contemporary audience. If it is not transmitted, then it is no longer folklore and becomes instead an historic relic.
It is too soon to identify how the advent of electronic communications will modify and change the performance and transmission of folklore artifacts. Just by looking at the development of one type of verbal lore, electronic joking, it is clear that the internet is modifying folkloric process, not killing it. Jokes and joking are as plentiful as ever both in traditional face-to-face interactions and through electronic transmission. New communication modes are also transforming traditional stories into many different configurations. The fairy tale Snow White is now offered in multiple media forms for both children and adults, including a television show and video game.
A more generalized analysis of folklore in the electronic age will have to wait for further studies to be published in the field. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11303 |
Fusion cuisine
Fusion cuisine is cuisine that combines elements of different culinary traditions that originate from different countries, regions, or cultures. Cuisines of this type are not categorized according to any one particular cuisine style and have played a part in innovations of many contemporary restaurant cuisines since the 1970s.
Fusion food is a general term for the combination of various forms of cookery and comes in several forms. Even though fusion food is often the invention by chefs, fusion cuisine can occur naturally within the different cuisines of a region or sub-region. These can include larger regions, such as East Asian cuisine, European cuisine, and Southwestern American cuisine, as well as more specific and lauded ethnic cuisines such as Chinese cuisine, Japanese cuisine, Korean cuisine, French cuisine, Italian cuisine, and New Mexican cuisine.
Chefs within Asian fusion restaurants combine the various cuisines of different Asian countries, have become popular in many parts of the United States and United Kingdom. Often featured are East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian dishes alongside one another and offering dishes that are inspired combinations of such cuisines. California cuisine is considered a fusion culture, taking inspiration particularly from Italy, France, Mexico, the idea of the European delicatessen, and East Asia, and then creating traditional dishes from these cultures with non-traditional ingredients - such as California pizza. One major example is Oceanic cuisine, which combines the different cuisines of the various island nations. In the United Kingdom, fish and chips can be seen as an early fusion dish due to its marrying of ingredients stemming from Jewish, French, and Belgian cuisines. Filipino cuisine is also sometimes characterized as the "original Asian fusion cuisine", combining native culinary traditions and ingredients with the very different cuisines of Spain, Latin America, China, and the United States, among others, due to its unique colonial history.
In Australia, due to the increasing influx of migrants, fusion cuisine is being reinvented and is becoming increasingly the norm at numerous cafes and restaurants, with Modern Australian Asian-fusion restaurants like Tetsuya's in Sydney ranking highly in The World's 50 Best Restaurants. Another incarnation of fusion cuisine implements a more eclectic approach, which generally features original dishes that combine varieties of ingredients from various cuisines and regions. Such a restaurant might feature a wide variety of dishes inspired by a combination of various regional cuisines with new ideas. Foods in Malaysia (also Indonesia) are another popular example of fusion cuisine between Malay, Javanese, Chinese and Indian and light influences from Thai, Portuguese, Dutch, and British cuisines.
Foods based on one culture, but prepared using ingredients and flavors inherent to another culture, are also considered forms of fusion cuisine. For instance, pizza made with cheddar and pepper jack cheese, salsa, refried beans or other common taco ingredients is often marketed as "Taco Pizza". This particular dish is a fusion of Italian and Mexican cuisines. Similar approaches have been used for fusion-sushi, such as rolling maki with different types of rice and ingredients such as curry and basmati rice, cheese and salsa with Spanish rice, or spiced ground lamb and capers rolled with Greek-style rice and grape leaves, which resembles inside-out dolmades. Some fusion cuisines have themselves become accepted as a national cuisine, as with Peruvian Nikkei cuisine, which combines Japanese spices and seasonings and Peruvian ingredients like ají (Peruvian peppers) with seafood. A quintessential Peruvian Nikkei dish is "‘Maki Acevichado’ or ceviche roll, containing Peruvian-style marinated fish rolled up with rice, avocado, or seaweed."
This type of restaurant's success depends on a number of factors. Among these are:
Wolfgang Puck is attributed as one of the pioneers of fusion cuisine, with some dispute. However, his restaurant "Chinois on Main" was named after the term attributed to Richard Wing, who in the 1960s combined French and Chinese cooking at the former Imperial Dynasty restaurant in Hanford, California. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11304 |
Frame problem
In artificial intelligence, the frame problem describes an issue with using first-order logic (FOL) to express facts about a robot in the world. Representing the state of a robot with traditional FOL requires the use of many axioms that simply imply that things in the environment do not change arbitrarily. For example, Hayes describes a "block world" with rules about stacking blocks together. In a FOL system, additional axioms are required to make inferences about the environment (for example, that a block cannot change position unless it is physically moved). The frame problem is the problem of finding adequate collections of axioms for a viable description of a robot environment.
John McCarthy and Patrick J. Hayes defined this problem in their 1969 article, "Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence". In this paper, and many that came after, the formal mathematical problem was a starting point for more general discussions of the difficulty of knowledge representation for artificial intelligence. Issues such as how to provide rational default assumptions and what humans consider common sense in a virtual environment. Later, the term acquired a broader meaning in philosophy, where it is formulated as the problem of limiting the beliefs that have to be updated in response to actions. In the logical context, actions are typically specified by what they change, with the implicit assumption that everything else (the frame) remains unchanged.
The frame problem occurs even in very simple domains. A scenario with a door, which can be open or closed, and a light, which can be on or off, is statically represented by two propositions formula_1 and formula_2. If these conditions can change, they are better represented by two predicates formula_3 and formula_4 that depend on time; such predicates are called fluents. A domain in which the door is closed and the light off at time 0, and the door opened at time 1, can be directly represented in logic by the following formulae:
The first two formulae represent the initial situation; the third formula represents the effect of executing the action of opening the door at time 1. If such an action had preconditions, such as the door being unlocked, it would have been represented by formula_8. In practice, one would have a predicate formula_9 for specifying when an action is executed and a rule formula_10 for specifying the effects of actions. The article on the situation calculus gives more details.
While the three formulae above are a direct expression in logic of what is known, they do not suffice to correctly draw consequences. While the following conditions (representing the expected situation) are consistent with the three formulae above, they are not the only ones.
Indeed, another set of conditions that is consistent with the three formulae above is:
The frame problem is that specifying only which conditions are changed by the actions does not entail that all other conditions are not changed. This problem can be solved by adding the so-called “frame axioms”, which explicitly specify that all conditions not affected by actions are not changed while executing that action. For example, since the action executed at time 0 is that of opening the door, a frame axiom would state that the status of the light does not change from time 0 to time 1:
The frame problem is that one such frame axiom is necessary for every pair of action and condition such that the action does not affect the condition. In other words, the problem is that of formalizing a dynamical domain without explicitly specifying the frame axioms.
The solution proposed by McCarthy to solve this problem involves assuming that a minimal amount of condition changes have occurred; this solution is formalized using the framework of circumscription. The Yale shooting problem, however, shows that this solution is not always correct. Alternative solutions were then proposed, involving predicate completion, fluent occlusion, successor state axioms, etc.; they are explained below. By the end of the 1980s, the frame problem as defined by McCarthy and Hayes was solved. Even after that, however, the term “frame problem” was still used, in part to refer to the same problem but under different settings (e.g., concurrent actions), and in part to refer to the general problem of representing and reasoning with dynamical domains.
The following solutions depict how the frame problem is solved in various formalisms. The formalisms themselves are not presented in full: what is presented are simplified versions that are sufficient to explain the full solution.
This solution was proposed by Erik Sandewall, who also defined a formal language for the specification of dynamical domains; therefore, such a domain can be first expressed in this language and then automatically translated into logic. In this article, only the expression in logic is shown, and only in the simplified language with no action names.
The rationale of this solution is to represent not only the value of conditions over time, but also whether they can be affected by the last executed action. The latter is represented by another condition, called occlusion. A condition is said to be "occluded" in a given time point if an action has been just executed that makes the condition true or false as an effect. Occlusion can be viewed as “permission to change”: if a condition is occluded, it is relieved from obeying the constraint of inertia.
In the simplified example of the door and the light, occlusion can be formalized by two predicates formula_12 and formula_13. The rationale is that a condition can change value only if the corresponding occlusion predicate is true at the next time point. In turn, the occlusion predicate is true only when an action affecting the condition is executed.
In general, every action making a condition true or false also makes the corresponding occlusion predicate true. In this case, formula_19 is true, making the antecedent of the fourth formula above false for formula_20; therefore, the constraint that formula_21 does not hold for formula_20. Therefore, formula_1 can change value, which is also what is enforced by the third formula.
In order for this condition to work, occlusion predicates have to be true only when they are made true as an effect of an action. This can be achieved either by circumscription or by predicate completion. It is worth noticing that occlusion does not necessarily imply a change: for example, executing the action of opening the door when it was already open (in the formalization above) makes the predicate formula_24 true and makes formula_1 true; however, formula_1 has not changed value, as it was true already.
This encoding is similar to the fluent occlusion solution, but the additional predicates denote change, not permission to change. For example, formula_27 represents the fact that the predicate formula_1 will change from time formula_29 to formula_30. As a result, a predicate changes if and only if the corresponding change predicate is true. An action results in a change if and only if it makes true a condition that was previously false or vice versa.
The third formula is a different way of saying that opening the door causes the door to be opened. Precisely, it states that opening the door changes the state of the door if it had been previously closed. The last two conditions state that a condition changes value at time formula_29 if and only if the corresponding change predicate is true at time formula_29. To complete the solution, the time points in which the change predicates are true have to be as few as possible, and this can be done by applying predicate completion to the rules specifying the effects of actions.
The value of a condition after the execution of an action can be determined by
the fact that the condition is true if and only if:
A successor state axiom is a formalization in logic of these two facts. For
example, if formula_38 and formula_39 are two
conditions used to denote that the action executed at time formula_29 was
to open or close the door, respectively, the running example is encoded as
follows.
This solution is centered around the value of conditions, rather than the
effects of actions. In other words, there is an axiom for every condition,
rather than a formula for every action. Preconditions to actions (which are not
present in this example) are formalized by other formulae. The successor state
axioms are used in the variant to the situation calculus proposed by
Ray Reiter.
The fluent calculus is a variant of the situation calculus. It solves the frame problem by using first-order logic
terms, rather than predicates, to represent the states. Converting
predicates into terms in first-order logic is called reification; the
fluent calculus can be seen as a logic in which predicates representing the
state of conditions are reified.
The difference between a predicate and a term in first-order logic is that a term is a representation of an object (possibly a complex object composed of other objects), while a predicate represents a condition that can be true or false when evaluated over a given set of terms.
In the fluent calculus, each possible state is represented by a term obtained by composition of other terms, each one representing the conditions that are true in state. For example, the state in which the door is open and the light is on is represented by the term formula_45. It is important to notice that a term is not true or false by itself, as it is an object and not a condition. In other words, the term formula_45 represent a possible state, and does not by itself mean that this is the current state. A separate condition can be stated to specify that this is actually the state at a given time, e.g., formula_47 means that this is the state at time formula_48.
The solution to the frame problem given in the fluent calculus is to specify the effects of actions by stating how a term representing the state changes when the action is executed. For example, the action of opening the door at time 0 is represented by the formula:
The action of closing the door, which makes a condition false instead of true, is represented in a slightly different way:
This formula works provided that suitable axioms are given about formula_51 and formula_52, e.g., a term containing the same condition twice is not a valid state (for example, formula_53 is always false for every formula_54 and formula_29).
The event calculus uses terms for representing fluents, like the fluent calculus, but also has axioms constraining the value of fluents, like the successor state axioms. In the event calculus, inertia is enforced by formulae stating that a fluent is true if it has been true at a given previous time point and no action changing it to false has been performed in the meantime. Predicate completion is still needed in the event calculus for obtaining that a fluent is made true only if an action making it true has been performed, but also for obtaining that an action had been performed only if that is explicitly stated.
The frame problem can be thought of as the problem of formalizing the principle that, by default, "everything is presumed to remain in the state in which it is" (Leibniz, "An Introduction to a Secret Encyclopædia", "c". 1679). This default, sometimes called the "commonsense law of inertia", was expressed by Raymond Reiter in default logic:
(if formula_57 is true in situation formula_54, and it can be assumed that formula_57 remains true after executing action formula_60, then we can conclude that formula_57 remains true).
Steve Hanks and Drew McDermott argued, on the basis of their Yale shooting example, that this solution to the frame problem is unsatisfactory. Hudson Turner showed, however, that it works correctly in the presence of appropriate additional postulates.
The counterpart of the default logic solution in the language of answer set programming is a rule with strong negation:
(if formula_63 is true at time formula_64, and it can be assumed that formula_63 remains true at time formula_66, then we can conclude that formula_63 remains true).
Separation logic is a formalism for reasoning about computer programs using pre/post specifications of the form formula_68. Separation logic is an extension of Hoare logic oriented to reasoning about mutable data structures in computer memory and other dynamic resources, and it has a special connective *, pronounced "and separately", to support independent reasoning about disjoint memory regions.
Separation logic employs a "tight" interpretation of pre/post specs, which say that the code can "only" access memory locations guaranteed to exist by the precondition. This leads to the soundness of the most important inference rule of the logic, the "frame rule"
formula_69
The frame rule allows descriptions of arbitrary memory outside the footprint (memory accessed) of the code to be added to a specification: this enables the initial specification to concentrate only on the footprint. For example, the inference
formula_70
captures that code which sorts a list "x" does not unsort a separate list "y," and it does this without mentioning "y" at all in the initial spec above the line.
Automation of the frame rule has led to significant increases in the scalability of automated reasoning techniques for code, eventually deployed industrially to codebases with 10s of millions of lines.
There appears to be some similarity between the separation logic solution to the frame problem and that of the fluent calculus mentioned above.
Action description languages elude the frame problem rather than solving it. An action description language is a formal language with a syntax that is specific for describing situations and actions. For example, that the action formula_71 makes the door open if not locked is expressed by:
The semantics of an action description language depends on what the language can express (concurrent actions, delayed effects, etc.) and is usually based on transition systems.
Since domains are expressed in these languages rather than directly in logic, the frame problem only arises when a specification given in an action description logic is to be translated into logic. Typically, however, a translation is given from these languages to answer set programming rather than first-order logic. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11306 |
Frans Eemil Sillanpää
Frans Eemil Sillanpää () (16 September 1888 – 3 June 1964) was one of the most famous Finnish writers and in 1939 became the first Finnish writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature "for his deep understanding of his country's peasantry and the exquisite art with which he has portrayed their way of life and their relationship with Nature".
Frans Eemil Sillanpää was born into a peasant farming family in Hämeenkyrö. Although his parents were poor, they managed to send him to school in Tampere. At school Sillanpää was a good student and with aid from his benefactor Henrik Liljeroos he entered the University of Helsinki in 1908 to study medicine. Here his acquaintances included the painters Eero Järnefelt and Pekka Halonen, composer Jean Sibelius and author Juhani Aho.
Five years later, in 1913 Sillanpää moved from Helsinki to his old home village and devoted himself to writing. In 1914 Sillanpää wrote articles for the newspaper "Uusi Suometar". In 1916 Sillanpää married Sigrid Maria Salomäki, whom he had met in 1914.
By principle, Sillanpää was against all forms of violence and believed in scientific optimism. In his work he portrayed rural people as living united with the land.
The novel "Hurskas kurjuus" (Meek Heritage) (1919) depicted the reasons for Finnish Civil War, and despite its objectivity, was controversial at the time.
Sillanpää won international fame for his novel "Nuorena nukkunut" (translated to English as "The Maid Silja") in 1931.
In 1939, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his deep understanding of his country's peasantry and the exquisite art with which he has portrayed their way of life and their relationship with Nature." A few days after he received the prize, talks between Finland and Soviet Union broke down and the Winter War began. Sillanpää donated the golden medal to be melted for funds to aid the war effort.
Before the Winter War, Sillanpää wrote the lyrics for what is known as "Sillanpään marssilaulu" to lift his spirits when his eldest son Esko was partaking in military practices at Karelian Isthmus.
In 1939 his wife Sigrid died of pneumonia leaving eight children with Sillanpää. Some time after, Sillanpää married his secretary Anna von Hertzen (1900-1983) and traveled to Stockholm to receive the Nobel prize.
In 1941 Sillanpää divorced his wife Anna. His alcoholism and other ailments needed hospital treatment. In 1943 he returned to public life as a bearded old 'Grandpa Sillanpää'. His radio appearances, especially his tradition of talking on Christmas Eve from 1945 to 1963 became very popular.
The asteroid 1446 Sillanpää, discovered on January 26, 1938 by the renowned Finnish astronomer and physicist Yrjö Väisälä, was named after him.
Sillanpää died on 3 June 1964 in Helsinki aged 75.
Numerous of his works have been made into films: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11307 |
Flambards
Flambards is a novel for children or young adults by K. M. Peyton, first published by Oxford University Press in 1967 with illustrations by Victor Ambrus. Alternatively, "Flambards" is the trilogy (1967–1969) or series (1967–1981) named after its first book. The series is set in England just before, during, and after World War I.
The novel "Flambards" (book one) features a teenage orphan and heiress Christina Parsons, who comes to live at Flambards, the impoverished Essex estate owned by her crippled and tyrannical uncle, William Russell, and his two sons, Mark and Will.
Christina Parsons, who has been shunted around the family since she was orphaned at the age of five years in 1901, is sent to live at Flambards with her mother's half-brother, the crippled Russell. Her Aunt Grace speculates that Russell plans for Christina to marry his son Mark to restore Flambards to its former glory using the money that she will inherit on her twenty-first birthday. Mark is as brutish as his father, with a great love for hunting, whereas the younger son William is terrified of horses after a hunting accident and aspires to be an aviator. Christina soon finds friendship with the injured William, who challenges her ideas on class boundaries, as well as her love for horses and hunting. William and Christina eventually fall in love and run away from the hunt ball to London, hoping to marry.
The fourth book controversially reversed the ending of the original trilogy, twelve years later and following the television series.
For "The Edge of the Cloud", Peyton won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. She was a commended runner-up for both the first and third books, the latter in competition with her Medal-winning work.
She also won the 1970 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, conferred by "The Guardian" newspaper and judged by a panel of British children's writers. Ordinarily the prize recognises one fiction book published during the preceding calendar year; exceptionally Peyton won for the Flambards trilogy completed in 1969.
The trilogy was adapted as a 13-part television series in 1979, "Flambards" starring Christine McKenna as Christina Parsons.
World Publishing issued a US edition of the first book in 1968, retaining the Ambrus illustrations. World (Cleveland and New York) also published US editions of the second and third books in 1969 and 1970, also with the original illustrations, although all three novels were reset with a greater page-counts. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11312 |
Father Ted
Father Ted is a sitcom created by Irish writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews and produced by British production company Hat Trick Productions for Channel 4. The show originally aired over three series from 21 April 1995 until 1 May 1998, including a Christmas special, for a total of 25 episodes. The show aired on RTÉ Two in Ireland, on Nine Network (series 1) and ABC Television (series 2 and 3) in Australia, and on TV3 in New Zealand.
Set on the fictional Craggy Island, a remote location off Ireland's west coast, the show starred Dermot Morgan as the eponymous Father Ted Crilly, alongside fellow priests Father Dougal McGuire (Ardal O'Hanlon) and Father Jack Hackett (Frank Kelly). Exiled on the island for various past incidents, the priests live together in the parochial house with their housekeeper Mrs Doyle (Pauline McLynn). The show was critically acclaimed, receiving several BAFTA awards, and remains a popular sitcom in the UK and Ireland. In a 2001 poll by Channel 4, Dougal was ranked fifth on their list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters. In 2019, "Father Ted" was ranked second to "Fawlty Towers" in a list of "the greatest British sitcoms" compiled by a panel of comedy experts for the "Radio Times".
The show follows the misadventures of three Irish Roman Catholic priests who live in a parish on the fictional Craggy Island, located off the west coast of Ireland. Father Ted Crilly, Father Dougal McGuire and Father Jack Hackett live chaotically together in Craggy Island's parochial house, along with their housekeeper Mrs Doyle, who always wants to serve them tea.
The three priests answer to Bishop Len Brennan, who has banished them to Craggy Island as punishment for different incidents in their past: Ted for alleged financial impropriety (apparently involving some money 'resting' in his account and a child being deprived of a visit to Lourdes so that Ted could go to Las Vegas), Dougal for something only referred to as the "Blackrock Incident" (resulting in many nuns' "lives [being] irreparably damaged"), and Jack for his alcoholism and womanising, particularly for an incident at a wedding in Athlone.
The show revolves around the priests' lives on Craggy Island, sometimes dealing with matters of the church but more often dealing with Father Ted's schemes to either resolve a situation with the parish or other Craggy Island residents, or to win games of one-upmanship against his enemy, Father Dick Byrne of the nearby Rugged Island parish.
"Father Ted" ran for three series from 1995 to 1998, including a Christmas special. A total of 25 episodes were produced.
Linehan and Mathews first met while working at "Hot Press". In the late 1980s, Mathews, Paul Woodfull and Kieran Woodfull formed The Joshua Trio, a U2 tribute band. The trio began writing comedy sketches to accompany their act. Mathews created the Father Ted character for his short-lived stand-up routine. Before The Joshua Trio played at gigs, Mathews would occasionally come on-stage as Father Ted and tell jokes involving his great friend, Father Dougal McGuire.
In 1991, Mathews left his job at "Hot Press" and moved into Linehan's London home. Over the next three to four years, they worked on rough ideas for shows while at the same time writing for sketch shows such as "The All New Alexei Sayle Show" and "The Fast Show". One of these ideas was for a comedy mockumentary series called "Irish Lives", with six episodes, each focusing on a different character living somewhere in Ireland. They scripted an episode centring on a priest named Father Ted Crilly, who visits his friends in the seminary in Maynooth College. Producer Geoffrey Perkins suggested that the episode's concept be dramatised and rewritten as a sitcom.
In the January 1994 issue of In Dublin (Vol 19, No2), Mathews and Linehan told Damian Corless, who had initially introduced the pair to each other, of their work in progress, describing Ted as "basically a nice man", Dougal as "nice but really stupid" and Jack as "a hideous creature". Linehan revealed: "They've all been sent to this isolated place called Craggy Island because they're crap priests." Mathews elaborated: "They've each a terrible secret which is why they've been banished to this place, and the terrible thing is that they can't get away from each other. Obviously it's not entirely reality based." Mathews was originally intended to play Ted, but decided he lacked the acting ability the role required. Maurice O'Donoghue, who plays Father Dick in the series, was their second choice for the role of Ted, being the right age and having a similar look and lightness. Mathews always preferred Dermot Morgan; Linehan was initially reluctant, fearing he would play Ted the same as "Father Trendy", a character he played on the RTÉ television show "The Live Mike", but Morgan lobbied hard for the role and was cast.
The show was pitched directly to the UK's Hat Trick Productions and Channel 4 by the duo, contrary to rumours that RTÉ (the Irish national broadcaster) were originally offered the series but rejected it.
Three series and one Christmas special were aired. Declan Lowney directed the first two series and the Christmas special, while the third series was directed by Linehan (location scenes) and Andy De Emmony (studio scenes). In addition, Morgan and O'Hanlon hosted an hour of Comic Relief in character, during which Kelly and McLynn also made brief guest appearances. One day after the shooting of series three wrapped, Dermot Morgan died of a heart attack, aged 45. As a mark of respect, the third series was first broadcast a week later than originally planned.
The show was already scheduled to conclude with the third season prior to Morgan's death, as Morgan said that he did not want to continue playing the role of Father Ted for fear of being typecast: "I don't want to be the next Clive Dunn and end up playing the same character for years."
Following Morgan's death, the production company received calls from numerous agents and casting directors suggesting either new actors for the role of Ted or spin-offs without the character; Linehan and Mathews declined all offers.
In 1994, the writers asked alternative rock band Pulp to compose the theme music for "Father Ted", requesting a parody of a typical sitcom theme. When Pulp declined involvement, they contacted Neil Hannon, frontman of Northern Irish chamber pop band The Divine Comedy. Hannon's first effort, a jaunty composition, was rejected on Geoffrey Perkins's advice. Hannon composed a second theme, which the team found acceptable. This theme was recorded by Hannon and co-producer Darren Allison at The Jesus and Mary Chain's private studio. One of William Reid's guitars was selected by Allison and Hannon to carry the main tune, which was played by Hannon. Both themes were also reworked, with new lyrics, for inclusion on The Divine Comedy's 1996 album "Casanova": the final "Father Ted" theme became "Songs of Love", while Hannon's rejected theme became "A Woman of the World".
In 2010, Linehan discussed the dramatic effect this choice had on the tone of the series: "'Woman of the World' was kind of like a jaunty, plinky-plonky song, and we wanted that song. He [Hannon] gave us two choices: he gave us that, and 'Songs of Love', and we wanted the plinky-plonky song because our idea was we were making fun of sitcoms. We were saying, you know, we don't like sitcoms. This is a parody of sitcoms. This is a kind of satire on sitcoms. And I remember Geoffrey [Perkins] looking really glum and sad about this, you know? And then he said, 'Why do you want to make fun of your characters?' He said, 'People will love these characters.' And that was just a real revelation for me, and after that, whatever he said went, as far as I was concerned."
The Divine Comedy also contributed most of the show's original music, including the songs "Big Men in Frocks" (for the episode "Rock-a-Hula Ted"), "My Lovely Horse" and "The Miracle is Mine" (for "A Song for Europe"), and "My Lovely Mayo Mammy" (for "Night of the Nearly Dead"). Neil Hannon also provided Ted and Dougal's vocals in the dream sequence version of "My Lovely Horse", which was produced by Allison and Hannon, and later appeared as a B-side on the band's single "Gin Soaked Boy".
Location work for "Father Ted" was done mostly in County Clare, including locations at Corofin, Ennis, Kilfenora, Ennistymon, and Kilnaboy. The Parochial House is McCormack's at Glenquin, on the Boston road from Kilnaboy. The cinema featured in "The Passion of St Tibulus" was the Ormonde Cinema, Greystones, County Wicklow and "The Field", the location for Funland in "'Good Luck, Father Ted'", is in Portrane, North County Dublin. The 'Very Dark Caves' featured in "The Mainland" were the Aillwee caves in the Burren, County Clare.
Some exterior shots for the episode "And God Created Woman" were filmed in Dún Laoghaire, South County Dublin. The opening sequence (including shots of the "Plassy" shipwreck) were filmed over Inisheer — the smallest of the Aran Islands. The interior scenes were recorded at the London Studios in front of a live studio audience.
The series is set in a humorously surreal world in which Ted is the only fully rounded normal character among "caricatures", according to Graham Linehan: "exaggerated-over-friendly, over-quiet, over-stupid, over-dull [...] they really only got one thing, they've got one job."
Embarrassment plays a role in many storylines, in a similar fashion to "Fawlty Towers". Linehan says, "if Ted is in a situation that is slightly embarrassing we get him out of it [...] by having him lying or cheating, basically digging a massive hole for himself". Arthur Mathews has described "Seinfeld" as a major influence on the comedy of "Father Ted", with himself and Linehan being "big fans" of the show. "Father Ted" also contains references to pop culture, and some film parodies, such as the episode "Speed 3".
Regarding the series's religious content, Linehan says "Ted doesn't have an anti-religious view of life, but a non-religious view. It's a job to him. He doesn't care about religion." While writing, he says the show's creators imagined Ted and Dougal as "just two people who happen to be [priests]".
"Father Ted" was met with critical acclaim and is one of the most popular sitcoms in Irish TV history.
In 1996 and 1999, the show won the BAFTA award for Best Comedy, while Morgan also won Best Comedy Performance. In 1995 the show won Best New TV Comedy at the British Comedy Awards, with O'Hanlon receiving Top TV Comedy Newcomer Award. At the 1996 British Comedy Awards the show won Top Channel 4 Sitcom Award, McLynn took the Top TV Comedy Actress award. In 1997 the show was given the Best Channel 4 Sitcom Award. It was also ranked at number 50 in the BFI's 2000 list of the 100 greatest British television programmes of the 20th century, the highest ranking Channel 4 production on the list. In 2004, it came 11th in the poll for Britain's Best Sitcom.
In August 2012, Channel 4 viewers voted the series as the No 1 in "C4's 30 Greatest Comedy Shows".
Notable fans of the show include director Steven Spielberg, musicians Liam Gallagher, Madonna, Cher and Moby, actors Jim Carrey and Steve Martin, comedian Ricky Gervais, and wrestler Sheamus. Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees was buried with a copy of the DVD box set. Singer-songwriter Sinéad O'Connor is a fan, and attended the recording of the Christmas special. Irish musician Bono also requested to appear in the series.
The Irish media frequently uses the series as a point of comparison in political stories.
In January 2007, a dispute arose between Inisheer and Inishmore over which island can claim to be Craggy Island, and thereby host a three-day Friends of Ted Festival. The dispute was settled by a five-a-side football match that February. Inishmore won 2–0 allowing them to use the title of Craggy Island until February 2008, while Inisheer was given the title of Rugged Island. The Friends of Ted Festival, better known as Ted Fest, has been held annually as a "Father Ted" fan convention since 2007.
On 1 January 2011, Channel 4 dedicated a night of programming to celebrate the show's 15th anniversary year. This included "Father Ted: Unintelligent Design", a documentary on the show's influences, and "Small, Far Away: The World of Father Ted", a documentary revisiting the show's history with the writers and many of the surviving cast (Pauline McLynn declined to take part).
In 2001, Pauline McLynn reprised her role as Mrs Doyle in a run of advertisements for the UK's Inland Revenue, reminding people to get their taxes in on time with her catchphrase from the programme ("Go on, go on, go on..."). It was voted in an Adwatch poll of 1,000 people as the year's worst advertisement.
Later in 2001, Ardal O'Hanlon returned to the role of Father Dougal for a series of PBS advertisements to coincide with "Father Ted"s American broadcast; these segments were included on later DVD releases as "Fundraising with Father Dougal".
In 2012, Frank Kelly made a brief appearance as Father Jack on an episode of "The One Show" with Graham Norton.
In 2014, guest star Ben Keaton returned to the role of Father Austin Purcell, performing a stand-up routine and hosting the pub quiz "Arse Biscuits" in-character. Keaton also set up a Twitter page for the character, and a website where fans can purchase customised Father Purcell video greetings. In 2015, he launched the spin-off web series "Cook Like a Priest".
In February 2016, Over The Top Wrestling marked the anniversary of Morgan's death with "Ah Ted", an event held in Dublin's Tivoli Variety Theatre. During the main-event tag-team match between The Lads From the Flats and The Kings of the North, Patrick McDonnell, Joe Rooney and Michael Redmond reprised their roles as Eoin McLove, Father Damo Lennon and Father Paul Stone respectively. McLove entered the ring first, withstanding one wrestler's attack on his crotch because he has "no willy", but was soon attacked by Father Damo, who brought the whistle he stole from Benson. Father Stone served as a special guest referee, performing a three-count so slow that one wrestler kicked out after two. In 2017, Rooney appeared as Father Damo in the video for Brave Giant's "The Time I Met the Devil", which follows him on the way to give Mass after a night of alcohol and sex.
Since the end of the series, several attempts to remake "Father Ted" have been reported, but none have yet materialised.
In July 2003, it was announced that the show would be remade for the American market. The remake would be scripted by Spike Feresten, who previously wrote for US sitcoms "Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons". Ferensten stated: "I was raised Catholic and this show just felt right to me. The essence of the show is about men who are also priests and, as men, they have many foibles." Hat Trick founders Denise O'Donoghue and Jimmy Mulville were set to produce. The US production company was Pariah Productions, which previously adapted "The Kumars at No. 42" for an American audience.
In March 2004, Supanet Limited reported that an American remake was in development. This version would be set on a fictional island off the coast of New York. Steve Martin and Graham Norton would reportedly play Ted and Dougal. Martin had not been expected to take the role because of his stature, but agreed because he was a fan of the original series, and would reportedly be paid £500,000 per episode. Norton was cast based on his popularity with American audiences, and in reference to his appearance as Father Noel Furlong in the original series.
In November 2007, a separate American remake was announced. Rather than Craggy Island, this version would be set in an unfortunate fishing village in New England. American actor John Michael Higgins was cast as Ted, but expressed concerns about the show's religious themes: "The English have a very robust history of being unkind about religion. We don't have that in our country, we're frightened of it. It's basically that you guys are doing an Irish joke also, we don't have that. So I'll be Father Ted, we'll see how it goes." Filming was scheduled to begin in January 2008.
In January 2015, Linehan said that there had been "a few attempts" by US broadcasters to remake the show, including one which would have been set in Boston – an idea Linehan considered "ridiculous".
In an interview with "Radio Times" in January 2015, Linehan revealed that he wanted to revive "Father Ted" as a musical stage production. He stated that he would never revive the television series itself, "because of the risk you poison people's memories of the original", but that the completely new format would make the project worthwhile. Linehan mentioned the possibility of a dance number with "spinning cardinals". He said that the musical would have to reference the Catholic child abuse scandals, stating, "The jokes would have to have a little bit more edge, because you just can't ignore this stuff." Mathews was "not as convinced" of the musical idea, though Linehan still insisted it could work.
In December, Mathews said that he and Paul Woodfull were developing a Joshua Trio musical and a show focusing on a "Father Michael Cleary-type character", and that the "Father Ted" musical may follow. He expressed concerns that it would "dilute the product" or be seen as a "cash-in", but said that he believed there was an audience for the project.
In April 2017, Linehan said that the musical would draw inspiration from "The Book of Mormon", and would "go for the jugular ... you get all the things people loved about it, all the innocence and all the sweetness, but introduce a harder edge". Linehan also said that, being a special event, the musical would need to focus on a "world-shaking" story, possibly with Ted becoming Pope due to "some weird succession thing". In June, Linehan said that he hoped The Divine Comedy frontman Neil Hannon, who wrote the show's music, would return to compose the songs.
In June 2018, Linehan announced that "Pope Ted: The Father Ted Musical" was nearing completion, with a script by Linehan and Mathews and music by Hannon. Linehan said, "It's the real final episode of "Father Ted". This is true and not one of my stupid jokes, I promise. Didn't want to do something until the right idea came along. This was the right idea. Arthur and I have been laughing our arses off while writing it. Just like the old days". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11313 |
Foster's Lager
Foster's Lager is an internationally distributed brand of lager. It is owned by the international brewing group AB InBev, and is brewed under licence in a number of countries, including its biggest market, the UK, where the European rights to the brand are owned by Heineken International.
Foster's annual sales amount to around 500 megalitres worldwide, largely buoyed by UK sales, where it is the second highest selling beer after Carling. While known internationally as the quintessential Australian beer brand, Foster's is not as popular and relatively rare in Australia, particularly when compared to other CUB beers such as Victoria Bitter and Carlton Draught.
Foster's was created by two Irish-American brothers, William M. and Ralph R. Foster, who arrived in Melbourne from New York in 1886. The brothers began brewing Foster's Lager in November 1888. It was made available to the public from February 1889. The product was first exported in 1901, when bottles were sent to Australian combatants in the Boer War.
In 1907, the company merged with five other brewing companies to form Carlton & United Breweries (CUB). Then only available in bottles, Foster's Lager was considered to be CUB's premium brand.
In 1958, steel cans were introduced.
Foster's Lager was first imported into the UK in 1971. It was launched in the US in 1972.
Commencing 1981, the brand was brewed under licence in the UK by Watney Mann and Truman Brewers. This was the first time that Fosters had been available on draught anywhere in the world; in Australia it had only been available first in bottles, then later in cans. The draught product was based on Carlton Lager, another Carlton United Brewers product, and it was first brewed in the UK at the pilot brewery at Truman's Brick Lane Brewery in mid 1981. In 1986, Courage obtained the rights to brew and distribute Foster's alongside Watney Mann and Truman Brewers. This was a result of a deal done following Courage's acquisition by Carlton United Breweries in 1990, which by that time had been re-named as Foster's Brewing Group. In 1990, Courage took over Watney Mann and Truman Brewers following the pubs for breweries swap with WMTB's parent company Grand Met.
In 2011, CUB and its product lines, including Foster's, were bought by the South African and British conglomerate SABMiller, which in turn was incorporated into the multinational (Belgian, Brazilian, and American) Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2016. In 2019, Anheuser-Busch InBev agreed to sell CUB including Fosters to Asahi Breweries. The deal is expected to completed in 2020.
Advertising from the early 20th century claimed Foster's Lager was adjuncted with cane sugar. A number of breweries advertised a sugar content, (e.g. Bulimba), as it implied a lighter less bitter brew than was commonly sold. (Rice malt and very light barley malts replaced sugar, which can be troublesome for brewers.) Continuing a "tradition" started in the early 20th century, the water used in the production is sourced from the nearby Yarra River which contributes to the beer's unique taste.
The Tim Foster's yeast in use today was brought to Carlton in 1923 from Professor Jorgensen in Denmark.
The lager is hopped with selected oil extracts of Super Pride of Ringwood hops, which like any modern beer, is added after fermentation to minimise losses to the yeast sediment. The hop is sourced from the only two farms in Australia that grow it.
The product is 4% ABV in Europe, Australia and India, and 5% in the US.
The European rights to the beer are owned by Heineken International, who brews and distributes a 4% ABV Foster's in most European countries. In the United States and India, rights to the brand are owned by SABMiller. In Canada and Brazil, Foster's is brewed by Molson Canada and Brasil Kirin under licence from Foster's Brewing International.
In the UK, Foster's is produced by Heineken at the Royal Brewery in Manchester.
Foster's is not vegetarian or vegan.
Production of the Australian regular brand recommenced in 2014, but it was only briefly promoted. It had been in continuous production from November 1888 to about 2002, making it the longest-lived beer label in Australia. Once a "premium" brand, Foster's Lager has been bypassed by the Foster's Group's favoured premium brands of Carlton Crown Lager and Stella Artois.
In Australia until the end of the 1970s, Foster's Lager was a reasonably popular bottled and canned beer with a somewhat premium image. Then in the early 1980s there were major changes in the Australian brewing industry, including the merger of Castlemaine (Brisbane), Swan (Perth) and Toohey's (Sydney) into a national brewing group, as a result of acquisitions by Perth entrepreneur Alan Bond.
Faced with inroads into its non-Victorian markets, Carlton and United Beverages (CUB) reviewed its product range and attempted to re-position some of its brands. Foster's Draught was introduced, served on tap alongside established draught brands such as Castlemaine XXXX and Toohey's Draught. Despite some initial success, bolstered by heavy advertising, the brand did not prove to be popular and was eventually withdrawn from sale.
The Foster's Group has tended to promote the brands of Carlton Draught (mainstream market) and Victoria Bitter (working class male market).
The CUB Yatala Road Brewery south of Brisbane, the site of the former Power's Brewery, brews all CUB mainstream and contract beers that are sold outside of Victoria. The Yatala Brewery is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. CUB's original Abbotsford Brewery now only supplies Victoria and South Australia, although the CUB headquarters remains there.
In late 2014 Foster's enjoyed some renewed success in the Australian market. Foster's lager was marketed as "Foster's Classic" and sold in 375ml cans with 4.0% ABV.
In April 2006, Scottish & Newcastle plc announced that it had agreed to acquire the Foster's brand in Europe (including Turkey), the Russian Federation and other countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States for approximately £309 million. In August 2006, SABMiller, now owned by AB InBev, announced that it had bought back rights to the Foster's brand in India for a reported $120m from private investors.
An odd case emerged in 2015 when a New York consumer of Foster's Lager sued the brewer after - he claimed - discovering it was not brewed in Australia. He proposed a class action on the grounds of deceptive marketing. The suit cited advertising slogans such as 'Foster's Australian for Beer' and 'How to Speak Australian' were intended to trick consumers into believing the beer is made in Australia - which in turn meant the beer could be sold at a higher, premium price.
A number of companies own marketing rights to Foster's including Heineken International in Europe and CIS, MillerCoors in the U.S., Labatt in Canada and Brasil Kirin in Brazil.
Scottish & Newcastle launched Foster's Twist, a beer with a hint of citrus that is marketed as a refreshing alternative to other heavier beers and Premium Packaged Spirits such as Smirnoff Ice. Foster's Twist is 4.5% abv. It has since been withdrawn from the market.
There is also Foster's Super Chilled, which is served at a colder temperature and is available in pubs and bars.
In 2008, Foster's was introduced with a widget called a "scuba" placed into the can to ensure good mixing. This variant is only currently available in the UK.
In the UK, customers are also able to purchase a keg of Foster's for private parties, collecting and returning the keg at a participating store or public house.
Also, there is Fosters Gold which has a slightly higher alcohol percentage of 4.5% sold only in bottles.
From 1964, the brand was promoted in the UK by comedian Barry Humphries and his "Private Eye" character Barry McKenzie, a bumbling Foster's swilling Australian expatriate.
Foster's Lager used the slogan "The Amber Nectar" in Australia and the UK, and "Australian for Beer", elsewhere overseas. The overseas advertising of the product often focuses on the Australian connotations of the beer, e.g. with reference to stereotypical Australian imagery such as kangaroos, exaggerated accents, and cork hats. This was true of a campaign in the 1980s fronted by the Australian comedian Paul Hogan.
The 2009 campaign for Foster's contains two 40-second adverts, "Backpacker" and "Deep Sea"; both end with the slogan, "Foster's – get some Australian in you."
The Foster's Lager brand was used as an advertising sponsorship deal with Norwich City F.C. from 1986 to 1989 (a period which included two top five finishes and a run to the FA Cup semi-finals). At its commencement, the sponsorship by Foster's was the most lucrative sponsorship ever given to an English football club.
The brand sponsored Formula One events regularly from 1986 to 2006. During this period it was the title sponsor for the Australian GP (1986–1993 and 2002–2006), the British GP (1990–1993 and 2000–2006) and the San Marino GP (2003–2006). It also was the prime sponsor and trackside sponsor of many other Grands Prix during this time. The brand was also used in a sponsorship deal with the A1 Team Australia from 2005 to 2007.
The UK division of the Foster's brand has focused on cultivating comedy-centric advertising and sponsorship arrangements and on 9 November 2011 they launched a trailer for their sponsored, online-only version of the hit 90s' television show "The Fast Show". The six weekly episodes started on 10 November and featured the original cast (with the exception of Mark Williams) and many of the characters from the previous series.
From 2010 to 2015 Foster's adverts featured "Good call", in which numerous Britons phone up Australians Brad and Dan for general advice. The campaign was revived in 2019. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11314 |
Friends
Friends is an American sitcom television series, created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004, lasting ten seasons. With an ensemble cast starring Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer, the show revolves around six friends in their 20s and 30s who live in Manhattan, New York City. The series was produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television. The original executive producers were Kevin S. Bright, Kauffman, and Crane.
Kauffman and Crane began developing "Friends" under the title "Insomnia Cafe" between November and December 1993. They presented the idea to Bright, and together they pitched a seven-page treatment of the show to NBC. After several script rewrites and changes, including title changes to "Six of One" and "Friends Like Us", the series was finally named "Friends".
Filming took place at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California. All ten seasons of "Friends" ranked within the top ten of the final television season ratings; it ultimately reached the number-one spot in its eighth season. The series finale aired on May 6, 2004, and was watched by around 52.5 million American viewers, making it the fifth most-watched series finale in television history, and the most-watched television episode of the 2000s.
"Friends" received acclaim throughout its run, becoming one of the most popular television shows of all time. The series was nominated for 62 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning the Outstanding Comedy Series award in 2002 for its eighth season. The show ranked no. 21 on "TV Guide"s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time, and no. 7 on "Empire" magazine's The 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. In 1997, the episode "The One with the Prom Video" was ranked 100 on "TV Guide"s 100 Greatest Episodes of All-Time. In 2013, "Friends" ranked no. 24 on the Writers Guild of America's 101 Best Written TV Series of All Time, and no. 28 on "TV Guide"s 60 Best TV Series of All Time.
Rachel Green, a sheltered but friendly woman, flees her wedding day and wealthy yet unfulfilling life, and finds childhood friend Monica Geller, a tightly-wound but caring chef. After Rachel becomes a waitress at West Village coffee house Central Perk, she and Monica become roommates at Monica's apartment located above Central Perk, and Rachel joins Monica's group of single people in their mid-20s: Previous roommate Phoebe Buffay, an eccentric, innocent masseuse; neighbor Joey Tribbiani, a dim-witted yet loyal struggling actor and womanizer; Joey's roommate Chandler Bing, a sarcastic, self-deprecating IT manager; and her older brother and Chandler's college roommate Ross Geller, a sweet-natured but insecure paleontologist.
Episodes depict the friends' comedic and romantic adventures and career issues, such as Joey auditioning for roles or Rachel seeking jobs in the fashion industry. The six characters each have many dates and serious relationships, such as Monica with Richard Burke, and Ross with Emily Waltham. Ross and Rachel's intermittent relationship is the most often-recurring storyline; during the ten seasons of the show, they repeatedly date and break up. Ross briefly marries Emily, Ross and Rachel have a child together after a one-night stand, Chandler and Monica date and marry each other, and Phoebe marries Mike Hannigan. Other frequently recurring characters include Ross and Monica's parents Jack and Judy Geller from Long Island; Ross's ex-wife Carol Willick, their son Ben Geller, and Carol's lesbian partner Susan Bunch; Central Perk barista Gunther; Chandler's ex-girlfriend Janice Goralnik; and Phoebe's twin sister Ursula.
In their original contracts for the first season, cast members were paid $22,500 per episode. The cast members received different salaries in the second season, beginning from the $20,000 range to $40,000 per episode. Before their salary negotiations for the third season, the cast decided to enter collective negotiations, despite Warner Bros.' preference for individual deals. The actors were given the salary of the least paid cast member. The stars were paid $75,000 per episode in season three, $85,000 in season four, $100,000 in season five, $125,000 in season six, $750,000 in seasons seven and eight, and $1 million in seasons nine and ten, making Aniston, Cox, and Kudrow the highest-paid TV actresses of all time. The cast also received syndication royalties beginning in 2000 after renegotiations. At the time, that financial benefit of a piece of the show's lucrative back-end profits had only been given out to stars who had ownership rights in a show, like Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Cosby.
Series creator David Crane wanted all six actors to be equally prominent, and the series was lauded as being "the first true 'ensemble' show." The cast members made efforts to keep the ensemble format and not allow one member to dominate; they entered themselves in the same acting categories for awards, opted for collective salary negotiations, and asked to appear together on magazine cover photos in the first season. The cast members also became best friends off-screen, so much so that recurring guest star Tom Selleck reported that he sometimes felt left out.
The cast remained good friends after the series run, most notably Cox and Aniston, with Aniston being godmother to Cox and David Arquette's daughter, Coco. In the official farewell commemorative book "Friends 'Til the End", each separately acknowledged in interviews that the cast had become their family.
The first season introduces the six main characters who live in New York City: Rachel Green, a waitress; professional chef Monica Geller; her paleontologist brother, Ross Geller; free-spirited masseuse Phoebe Buffay; struggling actor Joey Tribbiani, and Ross's college friend, Chandler Bing, whose precise occupation at a corporation is unknown. Rachel arrives at Central Perk, wearing her wedding dress, after leaving her fiancé, Barry, an orthodontist, at the altar. She moves into her high school friend Monica's apartment, and gets a waitress job at Central Perk. Ross, who has had a crush on Rachel since high school, often attempts to declare his feelings for her. However, many obstacles stand in his way, including his insecurities, Rachel dating an Italian neighbour named Paolo, and the fact that he is expecting a baby with his lesbian ex-wife, Carol, who gives birth to Ben later in the season. Joey never has a steady girlfriend and constantly sleeps with a variety of women. Phoebe is rather quirky and eccentric, mostly due to her mother's suicide when Phoebe was a child and having lived on the streets for a time. However, the gang loves her regardless. Chandler breaks up with his girlfriend, Janice (Maggie Wheeler), only to find himself reconnecting with her throughout the series. Near the end of the season, while Ross is at a paleontology dig in China, Chandler accidentally lets slip that Ross loves Rachel, who then realizes that she also cares for him. The season ends with Rachel waiting at the airport for Ross, who is returning from China.
Rachel greets Ross at the airport only to discover that he has returned with Julie (Lauren Tom), someone he knew from graduate school. Rachel's attempts to tell Ross that she loves him initially mirror his failed attempts in the first season. After he breaks up with Julie for Rachel, friction between them develops when Rachel discovers Ross's list of the cons of dating her. They eventually begin a relationship after Rachel sees an old home video from her and Monica's prom night and realizes Ross was going to stand in for her prom date who nearly stood her up. Monica is promoted to head chef at the Iridium restaurant, then gets fired for accepting gifts from a supplier, which is against company policy. Needing money, she is forced to take an embarrassing job as a waitress at a 1950s-style diner. She also begins dating Richard Burke (Tom Selleck), a recently divorced family friend who is 21 years her senior. They eventually break up when Monica realizes that Richard, already a father, does not want more children. Joey is cast in a fictional version of the soap opera, "Days of Our Lives" as neurosurgeon Dr. Drake Ramoray. He moves out of his and Chandler's apartment, forcing Chandler to get a new roommate, Eddie (Adam Goldberg). However, Eddie is annoying and somewhat deranged. When Joey claims in a soap opera magazine interview that he writes many of his own lines, offending the show's writer, his character is killed off. No longer able to afford his expensive new apartment, Joey moves back in with Chandler, kicking Eddie out in the process. In the season finale, Chandler talks to an anonymous woman in an online chat room. When they agree to meet in person, the woman turns out to be Janice.
Season 3 takes on a significantly more serialized format. Chandler and Janice date for several episodes until Joey catches Janice kissing her soon-to-be ex-husband. Not wanting to destroy her family, Chandler urges Janice to go back to her husband, then becomes depressed over the breakup for several episodes. Rachel quits her job at Central Perk and begins working at Bloomingdale's, an upscale department store chain. Ross soon becomes jealous of her colleague Mark. Ross is frustrated by Rachel's long work hours. She is tired of his constant jealousy and insecurity and decides they need a relationship break. Ross, hurt and somewhat drunk, immediately sleeps with Chloe, "the hot girl from the Xerox place," causing Rachel to break up with him fully. Although Phoebe initially believes she has no family except her twin sister Ursula (Lisa Kudrow), she learns she has a half-brother, Frank Jr. (Giovanni Ribisi) and discovers her birth mother, Phoebe Abbott (Teri Garr) over the course of the season. Joey falls in love with his acting partner Kate (Dina Meyer), but is jealous of her dating the director of their play. They begin a brief relationship that ends when she takes an acting job in Los Angeles. Monica dates millionaire Pete Becker (Jon Favreau), despite her initially not being attracted to him. However, she breaks up with Pete after he is seriously hurt trying to become the Ultimate Fighting Champion and refuses to quit. Phoebe sets Ross up on a date with her friend, Bonnie (Christine Taylor), inciting Rachel's jealousy. She tries sabotaging the relationship by coercing Bonnie to shave her head bald, and eventually admits to Ross that she still has feelings for him. The season closes with Ross having to choose between Rachel and Bonnie.
In the season 4 premiere, after Ross breaks up with Bonnie, he and Rachel briefly reconcile after Ross pretends to read a long letter that Rachel wrote for him. However, Ross continues to insist that the two were on a break when he slept with Chloe, so they break up again. Joey dates Kathy (Paget Brewster), a girl that Chandler has a crush on. Kathy and Chandler later kiss, which causes drama between Chandler and Joey. Joey only forgives Chandler and allows him to date Kathy after Chandler spends Thanksgiving in a box as punishment. Chandler's relationship with Kathy ends after he discovers that she cheated on him due to an argument. Phoebe loses her job as a masseuse after making out with one of her clients and she accompanies Monica, who has become a caterer for hire. They soon start a catering business together but Monica, after negatively reviewing a restaurant, Allesandro's, is offered the position of head chef. Despite initially being pressured by the wrath of her co-workers, Monica eventually asserts her dominance in the kitchen. Phoebe becomes a surrogate mother for her brother and his wife, Alice (Debra Jo Rupp). Monica and Rachel are forced to switch apartments with Joey and Chandler after losing a bet during a quiz game, but manage to switch back by bribing them with Knicks season tickets and a one-minute kiss (off-screen) between each other. After her boss dies, Rachel is demoted to personal shopping and meets and later dates a customer named Joshua (Tate Donovan). Ross begins dating an English woman named Emily (Helen Baxendale), and they quickly get engaged. Rachel struggles to cope and hastily suggests to Joshua that they marry, after which he rejects her. In the season finale, the group, apart from Phoebe and Rachel, travel to Ross and Emily's wedding in London. Chandler and Monica sleep together, and Rachel, realizing that she is still in love with Ross, rushes to London to stop Ross and Emily's wedding, but changes her mind when she sees them happy together. While saying his vows, Ross says Rachel's name at the altar, shocking his bride and the guests.
Ross and Emily marry, but an angry and humiliated Emily flees the reception. Rachel soon admits her love for Ross, but realizing how ridiculous this is, advises him to work on his marriage to Emily. She develops a crush on her neighbour Danny and they date briefly, until she realizes that he is too close with his sister. Monica and Chandler try to keep their new relationship a secret from their friends. Phoebe gives birth to triplets in the show's 100th episode. She gives birth to a boy, Frank Jr. Jr., and two girls, Leslie and Chandler. After weeks of trying to contact her, Emily agrees to reconcile with Ross and move to New York if he breaks off all communication with Rachel. Ross agrees, but later attends a dinner with all his friends, Rachel included. Emily phones Ross, discovers Rachel is there, realizes she does not trust him and ends their marriage. Ross takes out his anger at work, resulting in him being indefinitely suspended from the museum, and he moves in with Chandler and Joey until eventually getting a new apartment across the street from them. Rachel gets a new job at Ralph Lauren. Phoebe begins a relationship with a police officer, Gary (Michael Rapaport), after finding his badge and using it as her own. Monica and Chandler go public with their relationship, to the surprise and delight of their friends. They decide to get married on a trip to Las Vegas, but change their plans after witnessing Ross and Rachel drunkenly stumbling out of the wedding chapel.
In the season 6 premiere, Ross and Rachel's marriage turns out to be a drunken mistake that neither remembers until the other friends mention it. Ross promises Rachel he will get them an annulment, then secretly does nothing because he cannot face having three failed marriages. By the time Rachel discovers they are still married, an annulment is impossible due to their history; they are forced to get a divorce. After ignoring the numerous signs that they should get married, Monica and Chandler decide to live together, forcing Rachel to move in with Phoebe. Joey gets a new roommate, Janine (Elle Macpherson). They develop feelings for each other and date briefly until Janine criticizes Monica and Chandler, ending the relationship. After Janine moves out, Joey struggles with paying his bills so he takes a job at Central Perk. He soon lands a role on a cable TV series called "Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E.", starring alongside a crime-fighting robot. Ross gets a teaching job at New York University. He dates Elizabeth (Alexandra Holden), a student, despite it being against university policy. Elizabeth's father, Paul (Bruce Willis), disapproves of Ross but falls for Rachel, and they start dating. Both relationships soon end: Elizabeth is too immature for Ross, and previously reserved Paul opens up emotionally and is more than Rachel can handle. Phoebe and Rachel's apartment catches fire, and Rachel moves in with Joey, while Phoebe stays with Chandler and Monica, though they later switch. While at a museum that has a two-year wait for weddings, Monica puts her name on the reservation list as a joke. When Chandler intercepts the museum's phone call about a cancellation, he panics; however, Chandler has been planning to propose while pretending he may never want to marry. While dining at a fancy restaurant, Chandler's planned proposal is subverted by Monica's ex-boyfriend Richard Burke, who unexpectedly shows up. Richard later tells Monica he wants to marry her and have children. Monica becomes upset at Chandler, believing his ruse about not wanting to marry. Chandler believes Monica has left him until he comes home to find their apartment decorated with candles and her waiting to propose to him. When she becomes too emotional to continue, Chandler proposes and she accepts.
The seventh season mainly follows Monica and Chandler as they plan their wedding amid various problems. Joey's television series, "Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E" is canceled, but he is offered his old role on "Days of Our Lives"; the show is retconned with the revelation that Dr. Drake Ramoray has been in a four-year coma and is revived with a brain transplant from another character. Phoebe's repaired apartment now has one large bedroom instead of the original two, so Rachel permanently stays at Joey's. Rachel is promoted at Ralph Lauren and impulsively hires a young assistant, Tag Jones (Eddie Cahill), based on his looks, passing over a more qualified woman. Tag discovers her feelings about him at Thanksgiving dinner, and they begin dating, hiding it from co-workers. However, on her 30th birthday, Rachel ends their relationship, realizing Tag is too young and immature, particularly if she intends to follow her marriage schedule. Hours before Monica and Chandler's wedding ceremony, Chandler panics and goes into hiding just as Phoebe and Rachel find a positive pregnancy test in Monica and Chandler's bathroom. They assume Monica is pregnant. Ross and Phoebe find Chandler and convince him to return for the ceremony, though he briefly bolts again after overhearing Phoebe and Rachel discussing the pregnancy test. He quickly returns, embracing the idea of fatherhood. After the ceremony, Monica denies she is pregnant; unbeknown to everyone, the positive pregnancy test is Rachel's.
Season 8 begins at Monica and Chandler's wedding reception. Phoebe and Monica discover Rachel's pregnancy and persuade her to take another test to confirm it. Phoebe initially claims the test is negative, badly disappointing Rachel, then reveals it is positive, saying Rachel now knows how she really feels about having a baby. Ross is eventually revealed to be the father, and the season revolves around Rachel's pregnancy. Rachel and Ross agree to be co-parents without resuming their romantic relationship; Ross begins dating, Mona (Bonnie Somerville). Joey takes Rachel out to quell her fears about motherhood, and realizes he has romantic feelings for her. While suppressing his feelings, he encourages Rachel to stay at Ross's apartment so he can be involved in the pregnancy. The arrangement is too much for Mona, and she breaks up with Ross. Joey tells Ross about his feelings for Rachel. Ross initially is angry, then gives his blessing. Joey tells Rachel that he loves her, but she realizes she does not feel the same way, and they remain friends. When Rachel goes into labor, Ross's mother gives him a family heirloom ring and encourages him to propose to Rachel. Ross hesitates, and puts the ring in his jacket, which he later leaves in Rachel's room. After Monica jokes about having kids, she and Chandler decide to have a baby, starting while they are still at the hospital. After a prolonged labor, during which numerous other expectant mothers, including Janice, are taken to the delivery room, Rachel gives birth to baby Emma. She is left saddened and afraid after Janice later says that Ross may not always be there for her and the baby. When Joey comforts Rachel, the ring falls from Ross's jacket to the floor. Joey kneels to pick it up, and Rachel, believing he is proposing, impulsively says yes. Meanwhile, Ross intends to ask Rachel if she wants to resume their relationship.
Season nine begins with Ross and Rachel cohabitating with their daughter Emma, after Joey and Rachel clear up the proposal misunderstanding. Monica and Chandler run into obstacles as they try for a baby: Chandler unknowingly agrees to a work transfer to Tulsa just as Monica is offered a head chef job at a new restaurant, Javu, resulting in Chandler commuting back and forth. After being apart from Monica during Christmas, Chandler quits to pursue a new career in advertising, starting as an unpaid intern at an ad agency, and eventually being hired as a junior copywriter. Finally, Monica and Chandler discover they are physically incompatible to conceive and after considering multiple options, decide to adopt. Phoebe begins dating Mike Hannigan (Paul Rudd) for most of the season until Mike says that he never wants to marry again. Phoebe dates her ex-boyfriend from season 1, David (Hank Azaria) who plans on proposing to her, but Mike proposes first. Phoebe rejects both proposals but gets back together with Mike, only needing the reassurance that they have a future together. Rachel, believing that her co-worker Gavin (Dermot Mulroney) is trying to steal her job while she is on maternity leave, returns to Ralph Lauren early. She discovers at her birthday party that Gavin has feelings for her. They kiss but do not pursue a relationship due to her history with Ross. Meanwhile, Ross, having seen the kiss, retaliates by dating other women. After realizing that her and Ross's living situation is too weird, Rachel and Emma move in with Joey. Rachel develops a crush on him, only to be disheartened when he starts dating Charlie (Aisha Tyler), a new paleontology professor who Ross is attracted to. In the finale, the group travels to Barbados for Ross's keynote speech at a conference. Joey and Charlie break up upon realizing they have nothing in common. Joey then learns about Rachel's feelings for him, but says they cannot pursue this because of Ross. However, upon seeing Ross and Charlie kiss each other, he goes to Rachel's hotel room, and the finale ends with them kissing.
The tenth season brings several long-running story lines to a close. Joey and Rachel try to contend with Ross's feelings about their relationship, decide it is best they remain friends. Charlie breaks up with Ross to get back together with her ex-boyfriend. Mid-season, Joey officiates Phoebe and Mike's wedding outside the Central Perk coffee house after a snow storm paralyzes the city, preventing them and guests getting to the wedding venue. Monica and Chandler are chosen by Erica (Anna Faris) to adopt her baby. Following this, Monica and Chandler prepare to move to a house in the suburbs to raise their family, saddening everyone, particularly Joey, who is coping with all the changes in his life. In the series finale, Erica gives birth to fraternal twins, much to Monica and Chandler's surprise. Rachel is fired from Ralph Lauren after her boss happens to overhear her interviewing for a job at Gucci. She encounters her former Bloomingdale co-worker Mark, who offers her a new job at Louis Vuitton in Paris. Ross, believing Rachel wants to stay, tries bribing Mr. Zellner to rehire her until he realizes Rachel wants to go to Paris. When Rachel says a tearful personal goodbye to everyone except Ross at her going away party, Ross, hurt and angry confronts Rachel, and they end up sleeping together. Rachel leaves, and Ross – realizing how much he loves Rachel – chases her to the airport. When he reaches her, Rachel says she has to go to Paris. Before the plane takes off, Rachel calls Ross's home phone and leaves a voice mail, apologizing for the way it ended. While speaking, she realizes that she loves him too, and gets off the plane at the last minute. The series ends with all the friends, plus Monica and Chandler's new babies, leaving the empty apartment together for a final cup of coffee at Central Perk. The show ends first with a shot of everyone's keys to Monica and Chandler's apartment left on the counter top, and then pans to a shot of the apartment's purple door.
David Crane and Marta Kauffman began developing three new television pilots that would premiere in 1994 after their sitcom "Family Album" was cancelled by CBS in 1993. Kauffman and Crane decided to pitch the series about "six people in their 20s making their way in Manhattan" to NBC since they thought it would fit best there. Crane and Kauffman presented the idea to their production partner Kevin Bright, who had served as executive producer on their HBO series "Dream On". The idea for the series was conceived when Crane and Kauffman began thinking about the time when they had finished college and started living by themselves in New York; Kauffman believed they were looking at a time when the future was "more of a question mark." They found the concept to be interesting, as they believed "everybody knows that feeling", and because it was also how they felt about their own lives at the time. The team titled the series "Insomnia Cafe" and pitched the idea as a seven-page treatment to NBC in December 1993.
At the same time, Warren Littlefield, the then-president of NBC Entertainment, was seeking a comedy involving young people living together and sharing expenses. Littlefield wanted the group to share memorable periods of their lives with friends, who had become "new, surrogate family members." However, Littlefield found difficulty in bringing the concept to life and found the scripts developed by NBC to be terrible. When Kauffman, Crane and Bright pitched "Insomnia Cafe", Littlefield was impressed that they knew who their characters were. NBC bought the idea as a put pilot, meaning they risked financial penalties if the pilot was not filmed. Kauffman and Crane took three days to write the pilot script for a show they titled "Friends Like Us." Littlefield wanted the series to "represent Generation X and explore a new kind of tribal bonding", but the rest disagreed. Crane argued that it was not a series for one generation, and wanted to produce a series that everyone would enjoy watching. NBC liked the script and ordered the series. They changed the title to "Six of One", mainly because they felt "Friends Like Us" was too similar to the ABC sitcom "These Friends of Mine".
Once it became apparent that the series was a favored project at NBC, Littlefield reported that he was getting calls from every agent in town, wanting their client to be a part of the series. Auditions for the lead roles took place in New York and Los Angeles. The casting director shortlisted 1,000 actors who had applied for each role down to 75. Those who received a callback read in front of Crane, Kauffman and Bright. At the end of March, the number of potential actors had been reduced to three or four for each part, and were asked to read for Les Moonves, then-president of Warner Bros. Television.
Having worked with David Schwimmer in the past, the series creators wrote the character of Ross with him in mind, and he was the first actor cast. Cox wanted to play the role of Monica because she liked the "strong" character, but the producers had her in mind to play Rachel because of her "cheery, upbeat energy", which was not how they envisioned Monica; after Cox's audition, though, Kauffman agreed with Cox, and she got the role. When Matt LeBlanc auditioned for Joey, he put a "different spin" on the character. He played Joey more simple-minded than intended and gave the character heart. Although Crane and Kauffman did not want LeBlanc for the role at the time, they were told by the network to cast him. Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry and Lisa Kudrow were cast based on their auditions.
More changes occurred to the series's storylines during the casting process. The writers found that they had to adjust the characters they had written to suit the actors, and the discovery process of the characters occurred throughout the first season. Kauffman acknowledged that Joey's character became "this whole new being", and that "it wasn't until we did the first Thanksgiving episode that we realized how much fun Monica's neuroses are."
In the weeks after NBC's pick up of "Friends", Crane, Kauffman and Bright reviewed sent-in scripts that writers had originally prepared for other series, mainly unproduced "Seinfeld" episodes. Kauffman and Crane hired a team of seven young writers because "When you're 40, you can't do it anymore. The networks and studios are looking for young people coming in out of college." The creators felt that using six equal characters, rather than emphasizing one or two, would allow for "myriad storylines and give the show legs." The majority of the storyline ideas came from the writers, although the actors added ideas. Although the writers originally planned the big love story to be between Joey and Monica, the idea of a romantic interest between Ross and Rachel emerged during the period when Kauffman and Crane wrote the pilot script.
During the production of the pilot, NBC requested that the script be changed to feature one dominant storyline and several minor ones, but the writers refused, wanting to keep three storylines of equal weight. NBC also wanted the writers to include an older character to balance out the young ones. Crane and Kauffman were forced to comply and wrote a draft of an early episode that featured "Pat the Cop." who would be used to provide advice to the other characters. Crane found the storyline to be terrible, and Kauffman joked, "You know the book, "Pat the Bunny"? We had Pat the Cop." NBC eventually relented and dropped the idea.
Each summer, the producers would outline the storylines for the subsequent season. Before an episode went into production, Kauffman and Crane would revise the script written by another writer, mainly if something concerning either the series or a character felt foreign. The hardest episodes to write were always "the first one and the last one of each season." Unlike other storylines, the idea for a relationship between Joey and Rachel was decided on halfway through the eighth season. The creators did not want Ross and Rachel to get back together so soon, and while looking for a romantic impediment, a writer suggested Joey's romantic interest in Rachel. The storyline was incorporated into the season; however, when the actors feared that the storyline would make their characters unlikable, the storyline was wrapped up, until it again resurfaced in the season's finale. For the ninth season, the writers were unsure about the amount of storyline to give to Rachel's baby, as they wanted the show neither to revolve around a baby nor pretend there to be none. Crane said that it took them a while to accept the idea of a tenth season, which they decided to do because they had enough stories left to tell to justify the season. Kauffman and Crane would not have signed on for an eleventh season, even if all the cast members had wanted to continue.
The episode title format—"The One ..."—was created when the producers realized that the episode titles would not be featured in the opening credits, and therefore would be unknown to most of the audience. Episode titles officially begin with "The One ..." except the title of the pilot episode and the series finale "The Last One."
The first season was shot on Stage 5 at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California. NBC executives had worried that the coffee house setting was too hip and asked for the series to be set in a diner, but, eventually consented to the coffee house concept. The opening title sequence was filmed in a fountain at the Warner Bros. Ranch at 4:00 am, while it was particularly cold for a Burbank morning. At the beginning of the second season, production moved to the larger Stage 24, which was renamed "The Friends Stage" after the series finale. Filming for the series began during the summer of 1994 in front of a live audience, who were given a summary of the series to familiarize themselves with the six main characters; a hired comedian entertained the studio audience between takes. Each 22-minute episode took six hours to film—twice the length of most sitcom tapings—mainly due to the several retakes and rewrites of the script.
Although the producers always wanted to find the right stories to take advantage of being on location, "Friends" was never shot in New York. Bright felt that filming outside the studio made episodes less funny, even when shooting on the lot outside, and that the live audience was an integral part of the series. When the series was criticized for incorrectly depicting New York, with the financially struggling group of friends being able to afford huge apartments, Bright noted that the set had to be big enough for the cameras, lighting, and "for the audience to be able to see what's going on"; the apartments also needed to provide a place for the actors to execute the funny scripts. The fourth-season finale was shot on location in London because the producers were aware of the series's popularity in the UK. The scenes were shot in a studio with three audiences each made up of 500 people. These were the show's largest audiences throughout its run. The fifth-season finale, set in Las Vegas, was filmed at Warner Bros. Studios, although Bright met people who thought it was filmed on location.
The series's creators completed the first draft of the hour-long finale in January 2004, four months before its original airing. Crane, Kauffman and Bright watched the finales of other sitcoms to prepare the episode's outline, paying attention to what worked and what did not. They liked the ones that stayed true to the series, citing the finale of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" as the gold standard. Crane, Kauffman, and Bright had difficulty writing the finale. They did not want to do "something high concept, or take the show out of the show." The most critical parts of the finale were shot without an audience, and with a minimum number of crew members. The main cast enjoyed the finale and were confident that the fans would react similarly:
NBC heavily promoted the series finale, which was preceded by weeks of media hype. Local NBC affiliates organized viewing parties around the U.S., including an event at Universal CityWalk featuring a special broadcast of the finale on an outdoor Astrovision screen. The finale was the subject of two episodes of "Dateline NBC", one of which ran for two hours. A one-hour retrospective of clips from previous episodes was shown before to the airing of the episode. Following the finale, "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" was filmed on the set of the "Friends"' Central Perk coffee house, which featured the series's cast as guests. The advertising rates for the finale averaged $2 million for 30 seconds of commercial time, breaking the record held by the "Seinfeld" finale at $1.7 million.
In the U.S., 52.5 million viewers watched the finale on May 6, 2004, making it the most-watched entertainment telecast since the "Seinfeld" finale in 1998. Although not the most-watched episode of the series, the finale was the fourth most-watched series finale in television history, only behind the finales of "M*A*S*H", "Cheers" and "Seinfeld", which were respectively watched by 105, 80.4 and 76.2 million viewers. The retrospective episode was watched by fewer than 36 million viewers, and the finale was the second most-watched television broadcast of the year in the United States, only behind the Super Bowl. Following the finales of "Friends" and "Frasier", media critics speculated about the fate of the sitcom genre. Expressed opinions varied between a signalling of the end of the sitcom genre, a small decline in the large history of the genre, and a general reduction of scripted television in favor of reality shows.
Early reviews of the series were mixed; the first season holds a Metacritic score of 59 out of 100, based on 20 sampled reviews, indicating "mixed to average reviews." Tom Feran of "The Plain Dealer" wrote that the series traded "vaguely and less successfully on the hanging-out style of "Seinfeld"", while Ann Hodges of the "Houston Chronicle" called it "the new "Seinfeld" wannabe, but it will never be as funny as "Seinfeld"." In the "Los Angeles Daily News", Ray Richmond named the series as "one of the brighter comedies of the new season", and the "Los Angeles Times" called it "flat-out the best comedy series of the new season."
The "Chicago Sun-Times" Ginny Holbert found Joey and Rachel's characteristics to be underdeveloped, while Richmond commended the cast as a "likeable, youth ensemble" with "good chemistry." Robert Bianco of "USA Today" was complimentary of Schwimmer, calling him "terrific." He also praised the female leads, but was concerned that Perry's role as Chandler was "undefined" and that LeBlanc was "relying too much on the same brain-dead stud routine that was already tired the last two times he tried it." The authors of "Friends Like Us: The Unofficial Guide to Friends" thought that the cast was "trying just a little too hard", in particular, Perry and Schwimmer.
As the series progressed, reviews became more positive, and "Friends" became one of the most popular sitcoms of its time. It is now often ranked among the all-time best TV shows. Critics commended the series for having consistently sharp writing and for the chemistry between the main actors. Noel Holston of "Newsday", who had dismissed the pilot as a "so-so "Seinfeld" wannabe" in 1994, repudiated his earlier review after rewatching the episode and felt like writing an apology to the writers. Heather Havrilesky of Salon.com thought that the series "hit its stride" in the second season. Havrilesky found the character-specific jokes and situations "could reliably make you laugh out loud a few times each episode", and the quality of writing allowed the stories to be "original and innovative." Bill Carter of "The New York Times" called the eighth season a "truly stunning comeback." Carter found that by "generating new hot storylines and high-decibel laughs", the series made its way "back into the hearts of its fans." However, Liane Bonin of "Entertainment Weekly" felt that the direction of the ninth season was a "disappointing buzzkill", criticizing it for the non-stop celebrity guest spots and going into jump the shark territory. Although disappointed with the season, Bonin noted that "the writing [was] still sharp." Havrilesky thought that the tenth season was "alarmingly awful, far worse than you would ever imagine a show that was once so good could be." "Friends" was featured on "Time"s list of "The 100 Best TV Shows of All-Time", saying, "the well-hidden secret of this show was that it called itself "Friends", and was really about family."
Reviews of the series finale were mixed. "USA Today"s Robert Bianco described the finale as entertaining and satisfying and praised it for deftly mixing emotion and humor while highlighting each of the stars. Sarah Rodman of the "Boston Herald" praised Aniston and Schwimmer for their acting, but felt that their characters' reunion was "a bit too neat, even if it was what most of the show's legions of fans wanted." Roger Catlin of the "Hartford Courant" felt that newcomers to the series would be "surprised at how laughless the affair could be, and how nearly every strained gag depends on the sheer stupidity of its characters." Ken Parish Perkins, writing for "Fort Worth Star-Telegram", pointed out that the finale was "more touching than comical, more satisfying in terms of closure than knee-slappingly funny."
To maintain the series's ensemble format, the main cast members decided to enter themselves in the same acting categories for awards. Beginning with the series's eighth season, the actors decided to submit themselves in the lead actor balloting, rather than in the supporting actor fields. The series was nominated for 62 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning six. Aniston and Kudrow are the only main cast members to win an Emmy, while Cox is the only actor not to be nominated. The series won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2002, receiving nominations in 1995, 1996, 1999, 2000, and 2003. The series also won an American Comedy Award, one GLAAD Media Award, one Golden Globe Award, three Logie Awards, six People's Choice Awards, one Satellite Award, and one Screen Actors Guild Award.
The table below shows the ratings of "Friends" in the United States, where it consistently ranked within the top ten of the final television season ratings. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11315 |
FBI Most Wanted Terrorists
The FBI Most Wanted Terrorists is a list created and first released on October 10, 2001, with the authority of United States President Bush, following the September 11 attacks on the United States. Initially, the list contained 22 of the top suspected terrorists chosen by the FBI, all of whom had earlier been indicted for acts of terrorism between 1985 and 1998. None of the 22 had been captured by US or other authorities by that date. Of the 22, only Osama bin Laden was by then already listed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
No particular legal consequences flowed from the creation of and inclusion on the list. On January 17, 2002, the FBI released a third major FBI wanted list, which has now become known as the FBI Seeking Information – War on Terrorism list, to enlist the public's help in reporting information which may prevent future terrorist attacks. The information sought to be reported is not necessarily relating to any person on any of the FBI wanted lists.
On the fugitive group wanted poster, the FBI did not list the persons in any particular stated order, except perhaps for the consistent placing of bin Laden in the number one position of the top row. However, the 22 can easily fit into distinct categories over the two decades, based on the terrorist attacks in which they were, according to US authorities, involved.
For organization and ease of reference here, the relevant major terrorist attacks are listed by date below, with a brief summary for each, identifying the terror cells most directly responsible for the attack. The 22 on the list are then grouped beneath the attack for which each person was first accused of involvement.
Whereas the Most Wanted Terrorists list is reserved for terrorist fugitives who have been indicted by federal grand juries, the FBI recognized a further need to achieve a much quicker response time in order to prevent any future attacks which may be in the current planning stages. To enlist the public's help in this effort, the FBI sought a way to deliver the early known suspected terror attack information, often very limited, out to the public as quickly as possible. So, on January 17, 2002, the third major FBI wanted list was first released, which has now become known as the FBI Seeking Information – Terrorism list.
As the name of this list implies, the FBI's intent is to acquire any critical information from the public, as soon as possible, about the suspected terrorists, who may be in the planning stages of terror attacks against United States nationals at home and abroad. The first such list profiled five persons about whom little was known, but who were suspected of plotting terrorist attacks in martyrdom operations. The main evidence against the five was five videos they had produced, found in the rubble of Mohammed Atef's destroyed home outside Kabul, Afghanistan.
By 2006, more than four years had passed since the FBI had listed the original 22 alleged terrorists on the Most Wanted Terrorist list. Of those 22, by then four had been qualified for removal from the list, due to death or capture. Also by then, the FBI determined that new persons qualified to be listed as Most Wanted Terrorists. Some of these persons were indicted for attacks and plots that had taken place since the original list had been compiled. The original indictments had been for incidents only through 1998. Since then, the U.S. had become victim to at least two major terror attacks, which would generate some of the new indictments for the Most Wanted Terrorists, notably:
In addition, after the original 2001 list had been compiled and released to the public, the U.S. had foiled and issued indictments for numerous other plots, involving some new listed Most Wanted Terrorists. Those notable other plots involved:
In February 2006, the FBI completed two groups of additions to the Most Wanted Terrorists list, the first such additions in over four years. On February 24, 2006, the day after adding two name to the list, the FBI added an additional six fugitive terrorists, for various plots and attacks. One of the entries was for an indictment dating back to the June 14, 1985, hijacking of TWA flight 847 by Hezbollah (see above).
Additionally, the FBI also added to the Seeking Information – War on Terrorism list an additional three persons, most notably, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the notorious leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. This marked the first time that al-Zarqawi had appeared on any of the three major FBI wanted lists. On June 8, 2006, ABC News reported that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was confirmed to have been killed in Baghdad in a bombing raid by a United States task force. His death was confirmed by multiple sources in Iraq, including the United States government.
Since 1984, the United States government has also used the Rewards for Justice Program, which pays monetary rewards of up to $5 million, or now, in some cases more, upon special authorization by the United States Secretary of State, to individuals who provide information which substantially leads to countering of terrorist attacks against United States persons. More than $100 million had been paid to over 60 people through this program.
The Rewards for Justice Program was established by the 1984 Act to Combat International Terrorism, Public Law 98-533, and is administered by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, within the U.S. Department of State. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11318 |
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban, (; 22 January 15619 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England. His works are credited with developing the scientific method and remained influential through the scientific revolution.
Bacon has been called the father of empiricism. His works argued for the possibility of scientific knowledge based only upon inductive reasoning and careful observation of events in nature. Most importantly, he argued science could be achieved by use of a sceptical and methodical approach whereby scientists aim to avoid misleading themselves. Although his most specific proposals about such a method, the "Baconian method", did not have a long-lasting influence, the general idea of the importance and possibility of a sceptical methodology makes Bacon the father of the scientific method. This method was a new rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, the practical details of which are still central in debates about science and methodology.
Francis Bacon was a patron of libraries and developed a functional system for the cataloging of books by dividing them into three categories—history, poetry, and philosophy—which could further be divided into more specific subjects and subheadings. Bacon was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he rigorously followed the medieval curriculum, largely in Latin.
Bacon was the first recipient of the Queen's counsel designation, which was conferred in 1597 when Elizabeth I of England reserved Bacon as her legal advisor. After the accession of James VI and I in 1603, Bacon was knighted. He was later created Baron Verulam in 1618 and Viscount St. Alban in 1621.
Because he had no heirs, both titles became extinct upon his death in 1626, at 65 years. Bacon died of pneumonia, with one account by John Aubrey stating that he had contracted the condition while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat. He is buried at St Michael's Church, St Albans, Hertfordshire.
Francis Bacon was born on 22 January 1561 at York House near the Strand in London, the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon (Lord Keeper of the Great Seal) by his second wife, Anne (Cooke) Bacon, the daughter of the noted Renaissance humanist Anthony Cooke. His mother's sister was married to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, making Burghley Bacon's uncle.
Biographers believe that Bacon was educated at home in his early years owing to poor health, which would plague him throughout his life. He received tuition from John Walsall, a graduate of Oxford with a strong leaning toward Puritanism. He went up to Trinity College at the University of Cambridge on 5 April 1573 at the age of 12, living for three years there, together with his older brother Anthony Bacon under the personal tutelage of Dr John Whitgift, future Archbishop of Canterbury. Bacon's education was conducted largely in Latin and followed the medieval curriculum. He was also educated at the University of Poitiers. It was also at Cambridge that Bacon first met Queen Elizabeth, who was impressed by his precocious intellect, and was accustomed to calling him "The young lord keeper".
His studies brought him to the belief that the methods and results of science as then practised were erroneous. His reverence for Aristotle conflicted with his rejection of Aristotelian philosophy, which seemed to him barren, disputatious and wrong in its objectives.
On 27 June 1576, he and Anthony entered "de societate magistrorum" at Gray's Inn. A few months later, Francis went abroad with Sir Amias Paulet, the English ambassador at Paris, while Anthony continued his studies at home. The state of government and society in France under Henry III afforded him valuable political instruction. For the next three years he visited Blois, Poitiers, Tours, Italy, and Spain. During his travels, Bacon studied language, statecraft, and civil law while performing routine diplomatic tasks. On at least one occasion he delivered diplomatic letters to England for Walsingham, Burghley, and Leicester, as well as for the queen.
The sudden death of his father in February 1579 prompted Bacon to return to England. Sir Nicholas had laid up a considerable sum of money to purchase an estate for his youngest son, but he died before doing so, and Francis was left with only a fifth of that money. Having borrowed money, Bacon got into debt. To support himself, he took up his residence in law at Gray's Inn in 1579, his income being supplemented by a grant from his mother Lady Anne of the manor of Marks near Romford in Essex, which generated a rent of £46.
Bacon stated that he had three goals: to uncover truth, to serve his country, and to serve his church. He sought to further these ends by seeking a prestigious post. In 1580, through his uncle, Lord Burghley, he applied for a post at court that might enable him to pursue a life of learning, but his application failed. For two years he worked quietly at Gray's Inn, until he was admitted as an outer barrister in 1582.
His parliamentary career began when he was elected MP for Bossiney, Cornwall, in a by-election in 1581. In 1584 he took his seat in parliament for Melcombe in Dorset, and in 1586 for Taunton. At this time, he began to write on the condition of parties in the church, as well as on the topic of philosophical reform in the lost tract "Temporis Partus Maximus". Yet he failed to gain a position that he thought would lead him to success. He showed signs of sympathy to Puritanism, attending the sermons of the Puritan chaplain of Gray's Inn and accompanying his mother to the Temple Church to hear Walter Travers. This led to the publication of his earliest surviving tract, which criticized the English church's suppression of the Puritan clergy. In the Parliament of 1586, he openly urged execution for the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots.
About this time, he again approached his powerful uncle for help; this move was followed by his rapid progress at the bar. He became a bencher in 1586 and was elected a Reader in 1587, delivering his first set of lectures in Lent the following year. In 1589, he received the valuable appointment of reversion to the Clerkship of the Star Chamber, although he did not formally take office until 1608; the post was worth £1,600 a year.
In 1588 he became MP for Liverpool and then for Middlesex in 1593. He later sat three times for Ipswich (1597, 1601, 1604) and once for Cambridge University (1614).
He became known as a liberal-minded reformer, eager to amend and simplify the law. Though a friend of the crown, he opposed feudal privileges and dictatorial powers. He spoke against religious persecution. He struck at the House of Lords in its usurpation of the Money Bills. He advocated for the union of England and Scotland, which made him a significant influence toward the consolidation of the United Kingdom; and he later would advocate for the integration of Ireland into the Union. Closer constitutional ties, he believed, would bring greater peace and strength to these countries.
Bacon soon became acquainted with Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth's favorite. By 1591 he acted as the earl's confidential adviser.
In 1592 he was commissioned to write a tract in response to the Jesuit Robert Parson's anti-government polemic, which he titled "Certain observations made upon a libel", identifying England with the ideals of democratic Athens against the belligerence of Spain.
Bacon took his third parliamentary seat for Middlesex when in February 1593 Elizabeth summoned Parliament to investigate a Roman Catholic plot against her. Bacon's opposition to a bill that would levy triple subsidies in half the usual time offended the Queen: opponents accused him of seeking popularity, and for a time the Court excluded him from favour.
When the office of Attorney General fell vacant in 1594, Lord Essex's influence was not enough to secure the position for Bacon and it was given to Sir Edward Coke. Likewise, Bacon failed to secure the lesser office of Solicitor General in 1595, the Queen pointedly snubbing him by appointing Sir Thomas Fleming instead. To console him for these disappointments, Essex presented him with a property at Twickenham, which Bacon subsequently sold for £1,800.
In 1597 Bacon became the first Queen's Counsel designate, when Queen Elizabeth reserved him as her legal counsel. In 1597, he was also given a patent, giving him precedence at the Bar. Despite his designations, he was unable to gain the status and notoriety of others. In a plan to revive his position he unsuccessfully courted the wealthy young widow Lady Elizabeth Hatton. His courtship failed after she broke off their relationship upon accepting marriage to Sir Edward Coke, a further spark of enmity between the men. In 1598 Bacon was arrested for debt. Afterward, however, his standing in the Queen's eyes improved. Gradually, Bacon earned the standing of one of the learned counsels. His relationship with the Queen further improved when he severed ties with Essexa shrewd move, as Essex would be executed for treason in 1601.
With others, Bacon was appointed to investigate the charges against Essex. A number of Essex's followers confessed that Essex had planned a rebellion against the Queen. Bacon was subsequently a part of the legal team headed by the Attorney General Sir Edward Coke at Essex's treason trial. After the execution, the Queen ordered Bacon to write the official government account of the trial, which was later published as "A DECLARATION of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earle of Essex and his Complices, against her Majestie and her Kingdoms ..." after Bacon's first draft was heavily edited by the Queen and her ministers.
According to his personal secretary and chaplain, William Rawley, as a judge Bacon was always tender-hearted, "looking upon the examples with the eye of severity, but upon the person with the eye of pity and compassion". And also that "he was free from malice", "no revenger of injuries", and "no defamer of any man".
The succession of James I brought Bacon into greater favour. He was knighted in 1603. In another shrewd move, Bacon wrote his "Apologies" in defense of his proceedings in the case of Essex, as Essex had favoured James to succeed to the throne.
The following year, during the course of the uneventful first parliament session, Bacon married Alice Barnham. In June 1607 he was at last rewarded with the office of solicitor general. The following year, he began working as the Clerkship of the Star Chamber. Despite a generous income, old debts still could not be paid. He sought further promotion and wealth by supporting King James and his arbitrary policies.
In 1610 the fourth session of James's first parliament met. Despite Bacon's advice to him, James and the Commons found themselves at odds over royal prerogatives and the king's embarrassing extravagance. The House was finally dissolved in February 1611. Throughout this period Bacon managed to stay in the favor of the king while retaining the confidence of the Commons.
In 1613 Bacon was finally appointed attorney general, after advising the king to shuffle judicial appointments. As attorney general, Bacon, by his zealous efforts—which included torture—to obtain the conviction of Edmund Peacham for treason, raised legal controversies of high constitutional importance; and successfully prosecuted Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset, and his wife, Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, for murder in 1616. The so-called Prince's Parliament of April 1614 objected to Bacon's presence in the seat for Cambridge and to the various royal plans that Bacon had supported. Although he was allowed to stay, parliament passed a law that forbade the attorney general to sit in parliament. His influence over the king had evidently inspired resentment or apprehension in many of his peers. Bacon, however, continued to receive the King's favour, which led to his appointment in March 1617 as temporary Regent of England (for a period of a month), and in 1618 as Lord Chancellor. On 12 July 1618 the king created Bacon Baron Verulam, of Verulam, in the Peerage of England; he then became known as Francis, Lord Verulam.
Bacon continued to use his influence with the king to mediate between the throne and Parliament, and in this capacity he was further elevated in the same peerage, as Viscount St Alban, on 27 January 1621.
Bacon's public career ended in disgrace in 1621. After he fell into debt, a parliamentary committee on the administration of the law charged him with 23 separate counts of corruption. His lifelong enemy, Sir Edward Coke, who had instigated these accusations, was one of those appointed to prepare the charges against the chancellor. To the lords, who sent a committee to enquire whether a confession was really his, he replied, "My lords, it is my act, my hand, and my heart; I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed." He was sentenced to a fine of £40,000 and committed to the Tower of London at the king's pleasure; the imprisonment lasted only a few days and the fine was remitted by the king. More seriously, parliament declared Bacon incapable of holding future office or sitting in parliament. He narrowly escaped undergoing degradation, which would have stripped him of his titles of nobility. Subsequently, the disgraced viscount devoted himself to study and writing.
There seems little doubt that Bacon had accepted gifts from litigants, but this was an accepted custom of the time and not necessarily evidence of deeply corrupt behaviour. While acknowledging that his conduct had been lax, he countered that he had never allowed gifts to influence his judgement and, indeed, he had on occasion given a verdict against those who had paid him. He even had an interview with King James in which he assured:
He also wrote the following to Buckingham:
The true reason for his acknowledgement of guilt is the subject of debate, but some authors speculate that it may have been prompted by his sickness, or by a view that through his fame and the greatness of his office he would be spared harsh punishment. He may even have been blackmailed, with a threat to charge him with sodomy, into confession.
The British jurist Basil Montagu wrote in Bacon's defense, concerning the episode of his public disgrace:
Bacon was a devout Anglican. He believed that philosophy and the natural world must be studied inductively, but argued that we can only study arguments for the existence of God. Information on his attributes (such as nature, action, and purposes) can only come from special revelation. But Bacon also held that knowledge was cumulative, that study encompassed more than a simple preservation of the past. "Knowledge is the rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate," he wrote. In his Essays, he affirms that "a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."
Bacon's idea of idols of the mind may have self-consciously represented an attempt to Christianize science at the same time as developing a new, reliable scientific method; Bacon gave worship of Neptune as an example of the idola tribus fallacy, hinting at the religious dimensions of his critique of the idols.
When he was 36, Bacon courted Elizabeth Hatton, a young widow of 20. Reportedly, she broke off their relationship upon accepting marriage to a wealthier man, Bacon's rival, Sir Edward Coke. Years later, Bacon still wrote of his regret that the marriage to Hatton had not taken place.
At the age of 45, Bacon married Alice Barnham, the 14-year-old daughter of a well-connected London alderman and MP. Bacon wrote two sonnets proclaiming his love for Alice. The first was written during his courtship and the second on his wedding day, 10 May 1606. When Bacon was appointed lord chancellor, "by special Warrant of the King", Lady Bacon was given precedence over all other Court ladies. Bacon's personal secretary and chaplain, William Rawley, wrote in his biography of Bacon that his marriage was one of "much conjugal love and respect", mentioning a robe of honor that he gave to Alice and which "she wore unto her dying day, being twenty years and more after his death".
However, an increasing number of reports circulated about friction in the marriage, with speculation that this may have been due to Alice's making do with less money than she had once been accustomed to. It was said that she was strongly interested in fame and fortune, and when household finances dwindled, she complained bitterly. Bunten wrote in her "Life of Alice Barnham" that, upon their descent into debt, she went on trips to ask for financial favours and assistance from their circle of friends. Bacon disinherited her upon discovering her secret romantic relationship with Sir John Underhill. He subsequently rewrote his will, which had previously been very generousleaving her lands, goods, and incomeand instead revoked it all.
Several authors believe that, despite his marriage, Bacon was primarily attracted to men. Forker, for example, has explored the "historically documentable sexual preferences" of both Francis Bacon and King James I and concluded they were both orientated to "masculine love", a contemporary term that "seems to have been used exclusively to refer to the sexual preference of men for members of their own gender."
The well-connected antiquary John Aubrey noted in his "Brief Lives" concerning Bacon, "He was a Pederast. His Ganimeds and Favourites tooke Bribes". ("Pederast" in Renaissance diction meant generally "homosexual" rather than specifically a lover of minors; "ganimed" derives from the mythical prince abducted by Zeus to be his cup-bearer and bed warmer.)
The Jacobean antiquarian, Sir Simonds D'Ewes (Bacon's fellow Member of Parliament) implied there had been a question of bringing him to trial for buggery, which his brother Anthony Bacon had also been charged with.
In his Autobiography and Correspondence, D'Ewes discusses Bacon's love for his Welsh serving-men, in particular a "very effeminate-faced youth" whom he calls "his catamite and bedfellow" ("catamite" is a corruption of "Ganymede"). The diary entry for 3 May 1621—the date of Bacon's censure by Parliament—reveals the full extent of Bacon's homosexuality.
This conclusion has been disputed by others, who point to lack of consistent evidence, and consider the sources to be more open to interpretation. Publicly, at least, Bacon distanced himself from the idea of homosexuality. In his "New Atlantis", he described his utopian island as being "the chastest nation under heaven", and "as for masculine love, they have no touch of it".
On 9 April 1626, Francis Bacon died of pneumonia while at Arundel mansion at Highgate outside London. An influential account of the circumstances of his death was given by John Aubrey's "Brief Lives". Aubrey's vivid account, which portrays Bacon as a martyr to experimental scientific method, had him journeying to High-gate through the snow with the King's physician when he is suddenly inspired by the possibility of using the snow to preserve meat:They were resolved they would try the experiment presently. They alighted out of the coach and went into a poor woman's house at the bottom of Highgate hill, and bought a fowl, and made the woman exenterate it.
After stuffing the fowl with snow, Bacon contracted a fatal case of pneumonia. Some people, including Aubrey, consider these two contiguous, possibly coincidental events as related and causative of his death:The Snow so chilled him that he immediately fell so extremely ill, that he could not return to his Lodging … but went to the Earle of Arundel's house at Highgate, where they put him into … a damp bed that had not been layn-in … which gave him such a cold that in 2 or 3 days as I remember Mr Hobbes told me, he died of Suffocation.Aubrey has been criticized for his evident credulousness in this and other works; on the other hand, he knew Thomas Hobbes, Bacon's fellow-philosopher and friend.
Being unwittingly on his deathbed, the philosopher dictated his last letter to his absent host and friend Lord Arundel:My very good Lord,—I was likely to have had the fortune of Caius Plinius the elder, who lost his life by trying an experiment about the burning of Mount Vesuvius; for I was also desirous to try an experiment or two touching the conservation and in-duration of bodies. As for the experiment itself, it succeeded excellently well; but in the journey between London and High-gate, I was taken with such a fit of casting as I know not whether it were the Stone, or some surfeit or cold, or indeed a touch of them all three. But when I came to your Lordship's House, I was not able to go back, and therefore was forced to take up my lodging here, where your housekeeper is very careful and diligent about me, which I assure myself your Lordship will not only pardon towards him, but think the better of him for it. For indeed your Lordship's House was happy to me, and I kiss your noble hands for the welcome which I am sure you give me to it. I know how unfit it is for me to write with any other hand than mine own, but by my troth my fingers are so disjointed with sickness that I cannot steadily hold a pen.
Another account appears in a biography by William Rawley, Bacon's personal secretary and chaplain:He died on the ninth day of April in the year 1626, in the early morning of the day then celebrated for our Savior's resurrection, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, at the Earl of Arundel's house in Highgate, near London, to which place he casually repaired about a week before; God so ordaining that he should die there of a gentle fever, accidentally accompanied with a great cold, whereby the defluxion of rheum fell so plentifully upon his breast, that he died by suffocation.
He was buried in St Michael's church in St Albans. At the news of his death, over 30 great minds collected together their eulogies of him, which were then later published in Latin.
He left personal assets of about £7,000 and lands that realised £6,000 when sold. His debts amounted to more than £23,000, equivalent to more than £3m at current value.
Francis Bacon's philosophy is displayed in the vast and varied writings he left, which might be divided into three great branches:
Bacon's seminal work "Novum Organum" was influential in the 1630s and 1650s among scholars, in particular Sir Thomas Browne, who in his encyclopedia "Pseudodoxia Epidemica" (1646–72) frequently adheres to a Baconian approach to his scientific enquiries. This book entails the basis of the Scientific Method as a means of observation and induction.
According to Francis Bacon, learning and knowledge all derive from the basis of inductive reasoning. Through his belief of experimental encounters, he theorized that all the knowledge that was necessary to fully understand a concept could be attainable because of induction. In order to get to the point of an inductive conclusion, one must consider the importance of observing the particulars (specific parts of nature). “Once these particulars have been gathered together, the interpretation of Nature proceeds by sorting them into a formal arrangement so that they may be presented to the understanding.” Experimentation is essential to discovering the truths of Nature. When an experiment happens, parts of the tested hypothesis are started to be pieced together, forming a result and conclusion. Through this conclusion of particulars, an understanding of Nature can be formed. Now that an understanding of Nature has been arrived at, an inductive conclusion can be drawn. “For no one successfully investigates the nature of a thing in the thing itself; the inquiry must be enlarged to things that have more in common with it.”
Francis Bacon explains how we come to this understanding and knowledge because of this process in comprehending the complexities of nature. “Bacon sees nature as an extremely subtle complexity, which affords all the energy of the natural philosopher to disclose her secrets.” Bacon described the evidence and proof revealed through taking a specific example from nature and expanding that example into a general, substantial claim of nature. Once we understand the particulars in nature, we can learn more about it and become surer of things occurring in nature, gaining knowledge and obtaining new information all the while. “It is nothing less than a revival of Bacon’s supremely confident belief that inductive methods can provide us with ultimate and infallible answers concerning the laws and nature of the universe.” Bacon states that when we come to understand parts of nature, we can eventually understand nature better as a whole because of induction. Because of this, Bacon concludes that all learning and knowledge must be drawn from inductive reasoning.
During the Restoration, Bacon was commonly invoked as a guiding spirit of the Royal Society founded under Charles II in 1660. During the 18th-century French Enlightenment, Bacon's non-metaphysical approach to science became more influential than the dualism of his French contemporary Descartes, and was associated with criticism of the "ancien regime". In 1733 Voltaire introduced him to a French audience as the "father" of the scientific method, an understanding which had become widespread by the 1750s. In the 19th century his emphasis on induction was revived and developed by William Whewell, among others. He has been reputed as the "Father of Experimental Philosophy".
He also wrote a long treatise on Medicine, "History of Life and Death", with natural and experimental observations for the prolongation of life.
One of his biographers, the historian William Hepworth Dixon, states: "Bacon's influence in the modern world is so great that every man who rides in a train, sends a telegram, follows a steam plough, sits in an easy chair, crosses the channel or the Atlantic, eats a good dinner, enjoys a beautiful garden, or undergoes a painless surgical operation, owes him something."
In 1902 Hugo von Hofmannsthal published a fictional letter, known as "The Lord Chandos Letter", addressed to Bacon and dated 1603, about a writer who is experiencing a crisis of language.
Although Bacon’s works are extremely instrumental, his argument falls short because observation and the scientific method are not completely necessary for everything. Bacon takes the inductive method too far, as seen through one of his aphorisms which says, “Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature: Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything." As humans, we are capable of more than pure observation and can use deduction to form theories. In fact, we must use deduction because Bacon’s pure inductive method is incomplete. Thus, it is not Bacon’s ideas alone that form the scientific method we use today. If that were the case, we would not be able to fully understand the observations we make and deduce new theories. Author Ernst Mayr states, “Inductivism had a great vogue in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but it is now clear that a purely inductive approach is quite sterile." Mayr points out that an inductive approach on its own just doesn’t work. One could observe an experiment multiple times, but still be unable to make generalizations and correctly understand the knowledge. Bacon’s inductive method is beneficial, but incomplete and leaves gaps.
However, when combined with the ideas of Descartes, the gaps are filled in Bacon’s inductive method. The “anticipation of nature” as Bacon puts it, connects the information gained from observation, enabling hypotheses and theories to become more effective. Bacon’s inductive ideas now have more value. Jurgen Klein, who researched Bacon and analyzed his works, says, “The inductive method helps the human mind to find a way to ascertain truthful knowledge." Klein shows the value that Bacon’s method truly brings. It is not a value that stands on its own, for it has holes, but it is a value that supports and strengthens. The inductive method can be seen as a tool used alongside other ideas, such as deduction, which now creates a method which is most effective and used today: the scientific method. The inductive method is more prominent in the scientific method than other ideas, which leads to misconception, but the takeaway is that it has supporting ideas. Francis Bacon’s scientific method is extremely influential, but has been developed for its own good, as all great ideas are.
Bacon played a leading role in establishing the British colonies in North America, especially in Virginia, the Carolinas and Newfoundland in northeastern Canada. His government report on "The Virginia Colony" was submitted in 1609. In 1610 Bacon and his associates received a charter from the king to form "the Tresurer and the Companye of Adventurers and planter of the Cittye of London and Bristoll for the Collonye or plantacon in Newfoundland", and sent John Guy to found a colony there. Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, wrote: "Bacon, Locke and Newton. I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral sciences".
In 1910 Newfoundland issued a postage stamp to commemorate Bacon's role in establishing the colony. The stamp describes Bacon as "the guiding spirit in Colonization Schemes in 1610". Moreover, some scholars believe he was largely responsible for the drafting, in 1609 and 1612, of two charters of government for the Virginia Colony. William Hepworth Dixon considered that Bacon's name could be included in the list of Founders of the United States.
Although few of his proposals for law reform were adopted during his lifetime, Bacon's legal legacy was considered by the magazine "New Scientist" in 1961 as having influenced the drafting of the Napoleonic Code as well as the law reforms introduced by 19th-century British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. The historian William Hepworth Dixon referred to the Napoleonic Code as "the sole embodiment of Bacon's thought", saying that Bacon's legal work "has had more success abroad than it has found at home", and that in France "it has blossomed and come into fruit".
Harvey Wheeler attributed to Bacon, in "Francis Bacon's Verulamiumthe Common Law Template of The Modern in English Science and Culture", the creation of these distinguishing features of the modern common law system:
As late as the 18th century some juries still declared the law rather than the facts, but already before the end of the 17th century Sir Matthew Hale explained modern common law adjudication procedure and acknowledged Bacon as the inventor of the process of discovering unwritten laws from the evidences of their applications. The method combined empiricism and inductivism in a new way that was to imprint its signature on many of the distinctive features of modern English society. Paul H. Kocher writes that Bacon is considered by some jurists to be the father of modern Jurisprudence.
Bacon is commemorated with a statue in Gray's Inn, South Square in London where he received his legal training, and where he was elected Treasurer of the Inn in 1608.
More recent scholarship on Bacon's jurisprudence has focused on his advocating torture as a legal recourse for the crown. Bacon himself was not a stranger to the torture chamber; in his various legal capacities in both Elizabeth I's and James I's reigns, Bacon was listed as a commissioner on five torture warrants. In 1613(?), in a letter addressed to King James I on the question of torture's place within English law, Bacon identifies the scope of torture as a means to further the investigation of threats to the state: "In the cases of treasons, torture is used for discovery, and not for evidence." For Bacon, torture was not a punitive measure, an intended form of state repression, but instead offered a modus operandi for the government agent tasked with uncovering acts of treason.
Francis Bacon developed the idea that a classification of knowledge must be universal while handling all possible resources. In his progressive view, humanity would be better if the access to educational resources were provided to the public, hence the need to organise it. His approach to learning reshaped the Western view of knowledge theory from an individual to a social interest.
The original classification proposed by Bacon organised all types of knowledge in three general groups: history, poetry, and philosophy. He did that based on his understanding of how information is processed: memory, imagination, and reason, respectively. His methodical approach to the categorization of knowledge goes hand-in-hand with his principles of scientific methods. Bacon’s writings were the starting point for William Torrey Harris classification system for libraries in the United States by the second half of the 1800s.
The Baconian hypothesis of Shakespearean authorship, first proposed in the mid-19th century, contends that Francis Bacon wrote some or even all of the plays conventionally attributed to William Shakespeare.
Francis Bacon often gathered with the men at Gray's Inn to discuss politics and philosophy, and to try out various theatrical scenes that he admitted writing. Bacon's alleged connection to the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons has been widely discussed by authors and scholars in many books. However, others, including Daphne du Maurier in her biography of Bacon, have argued that there is no substantive evidence to support claims of involvement with the Rosicrucians. Frances Yates does not make the claim that Bacon was a Rosicrucian, but presents evidence that he was nevertheless involved in some of the more closed intellectual movements of his day. She argues that Bacon's movement for the advancement of learning was closely connected with the German Rosicrucian movement, while Bacon's "New Atlantis" portrays a land ruled by Rosicrucians. He apparently saw his own movement for the advancement of learning to be in conformity with Rosicrucian ideals.
The link between Bacon's work and the Rosicrucians' ideals which Yates allegedly found was the conformity of the purposes expressed by the Rosicrucian Manifestos and Bacon's plan of a "Great Instauration", for the two were calling for a reformation of both "divine and human understanding", as well as both had in view the purpose of mankind's return to the "state before the Fall".
Another major link is said to be the resemblance between Bacon's "New Atlantis" and the German Rosicrucian Johann Valentin Andreae's "Description of the Republic of Christianopolis" (1619). Andreae describes a utopic island in which Christian theosophy and applied science ruled, and in which the spiritual fulfilment and intellectual activity constituted the primary goals of each individual, the scientific pursuits being the highest intellectual callinglinked to the achievement of spiritual perfection. Andreae's island also depicts a great advancement in technology, with many industries separated in different zones which supplied the population's needswhich shows great resemblance to Bacon's scientific methods and purposes.
While rejecting occult conspiracy theories surrounding Bacon and the claim Bacon personally identified as a Rosicrucian, intellectual historian Paolo Rossi has argued for an occult influence on Bacon's scientific and religious writing. He argues that Bacon was familiar with early modern alchemical texts and that Bacon's ideas about the application of science had roots in Renaissance magical ideas about science and magic facilitating humanity's domination of nature. Rossi further interprets Bacon's search for hidden meanings in myth and fables in such texts as "The Wisdom of the Ancients" as succeeding earlier occultist and Neoplatonic attempts to locate hidden wisdom in pre-Christian myths. As indicated by the title of his study, however, Rossi claims Bacon ultimately rejected the philosophical foundations of occultism as he came to develop a form of modern science.
Rossi's analysis and claims have been extended by Jason Josephson-Storm in his study, "The Myth of Disenchantment". Josephson-Storm also rejects conspiracy theories surrounding Bacon and does not make the claim that Bacon was an active Rosicrucian. However, he argues that Bacon's "rejection" of magic actually constituted an attempt to purify magic of Catholic, demonic, and esoteric influences and to establish magic as a field of study and application paralleling Bacon's vision of science. Furthermore, Josephson-Storm argues that Bacon drew on magical ideas when developing his experimental method. Josephson-Storm finds evidence that Bacon considered nature a living entity, populated by spirits, and argues Bacon's views on the human domination and application of nature actually depend on his spiritualism and personification of nature.
The Rosicrucian organization AMORC claims that Bacon was the "Imperator" (leader) of the Rosicrucian Order in both England and the European continent, and would have directed it during his lifetime.
Bacon's influence can also be seen on a variety of religious and spiritual authors, and on groups that have utilized his writings in their own belief systems.
Some of the more notable works by Bacon are: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11319 |
First-order predicate
In mathematical logic, a first-order predicate is a predicate that takes only individual(s) constants or variables as argument(s). Compare second-order predicate and higher-order predicate.
This is not to be confused with a one-place predicate or monad, which is a predicate that takes only one argument. For example the expression "is a planet" is a one-place predicate, while the expression "is father of" is a two-place predicate. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11344 |
Snap (gridiron football)
A snap (colloquially called a "hike", "snapback", or "pass from center") is the backwards passing of the ball in gridiron football at the start of play from scrimmage.
The ball begins on the ground with its long axis parallel to the sidelines of the field, its ends marking each team's line of scrimmage in American football; in Canadian football, the line of scrimmage of the team without the ball is 1 yard past their side of the ball. The player snapping the ball (known officially as the "snapper" in rule books) delivers the ball to another player, and that action is the snap. The snapper may hand, throw, or even roll the ball to the other player. The snap must be a quick and continuous movement of the ball by one or both hands of the snapper, and the ball must leave the snapper's hands. The various rules codes have additional requirements, all of which have the effect of requiring the ball to go back to a player behind the line of scrimmage (i.e. in the "backfield"). The snapper almost always passes the ball between his legs, but only in Canadian football is that required.
In the standard gridiron football formation, the center/centre is the snapper and is situated in the middle of the line of scrimmage. Only in arena football is the center required by rule to be the snapper. In other codes, a guard, tackle, tight end or split end can legally deliver the snap; such scenarios, known as an "unbalanced line", are seldom used outside of trick plays and novelties.
For a handed snap, the snapper will usually have his head up, facing opponents. For a thrown snap, especially in formations wherein the ball may be snapped to players in different positions, the snapper will commonly bend over looking between his legs. Because of the vulnerability of a player in such a position, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the National Federation of State High School Associations ("Fed") have adopted rules providing that if a player is positioned at least 7 yards behind the neutral zone to receive a snap, opponents are not to deliberately contact the snapper until one second after the snap (NCAA), or until the snapper has a chance to react (Fed). However, in professional football it is common for a center to be able to practice a single "shotgun" formation thrown snap enough to keep his head up and toss it blindly.
A snap is considered a backwards pass, therefore if the ball is snapped and it hits the ground without any player gaining control of the ball the play is ruled as a fumble.
The team entitled to snap the ball will usually know in advance the moment when the snap is to occur as one of their players calls out signals, which usually include a loud sound such as "hut" voiced one or more times, the number of which they know; they are thus said to know the "snap count". Therefore, they have a considerable advantage over their opponents. The Center is not, however, allowed to make motions simulating part of the snap-action; therefore their opponents can be confident the first motion of the ball or the Center's hands is the beginning of the snap.
The snap count is decided on in the huddle, usually expressed as "...on ." being the final words spoken by the quarterback after calling the play but before the huddle breaks and the players go to the line of scrimmage. The snap count allows offensive players to have a small head start. The defensive players want to predict the snap, and build up speed such that they cross the line of scrimmage exactly as the play begins, to increase their chances of getting a tackle for a loss or a sack. By varying the snap count, a quarterback forces the defensive players to react to the movement of the offensive players, or risk being called for an offsides or encroachment penalty. Unfortunately for the offense, this advantage can sometimes become a disadvantage. When faced with an exceptionally loud stadium, players may be unable to hear the snap count and are forced to concentrate more on visual cues (silent snap count or a hard count), or risk false start penalties.
The offense must also be mindful of the play clock. If they fail to snap the ball in time they incur a delay of game penalty. Also, with a dwindling play clock, the defense has better chances of guessing when the ball will be snapped. It is easier to predict when the ball will be snapped with 2 seconds left on the play clock, rather than 5 seconds.
The defensive team is not allowed to simulate, by calling out numbers, the offense's snap count. Successfully simulating the count would cause members of the offensive team to act too early ruining co-ordination of the play and inviting penalties. Current rules, unlike earlier rules, position officials so far from the line of scrimmage for 50 minutes of the 60-minute game that it is extremely difficult to hear if the defense is simulating the count.
The snap, the set scrum and ruck in today's rugby union, and the play-the-ball in rugby league have common origins in rugby football. As the rules of rugby's scrimmage were written when the game came to North America, they had a significant flaw which was corrected by custom elsewhere, but by the invention of the snap-in American football.
The rule adopted by a committee for American football in 1880 first provided for the uncontested right of one side to play the ball by foot (in any direction) for a scrimmage. A certain use of the foot on the ball which had the same effect as heeling it back was known as a "snap". Later in the 19th Century, the option of snapping the ball back by hand was added. The option to play the ball with the foot was preserved, however, for several decades, although by early in the 20th Century it was restricted to kicking the ball forward. The kick forward in scrimmage was a surprise play that did not work against a prepared defense. Also for several decades alternatives to the scrimmage for playing the ball from across the sideline after it had gone out of bounds—a throw-in or "fair", and "bounding in"—existed. Until well into the 20th Century, rather than an official readying the ball for scrimmage, the side entitled to the snap had complete custody of the ball and could snap it from the required spot at any time; for instance, a tackled ball carrier might feign injury, then suddenly snap the ball while recumbent, there being no stance requirement yet. The neutral zone and the right of the Center not to be contacted by an opponent before the snap also was not an original feature. As the 20th Century drew to a close, the NCAA and National Federation of State High School Associations extended that protection to some time after the snap, in cases where a player is positioned at least 7 yards deep to receive a thrown snap.
Canadian football used the rugby scrimmage unaltered until near the end of the 19th Century, when, regionally at first, under the influence of the American scrimmage, the number of players in the scrimmage was limited to three—a "centre scrimmager" bound on either side by props called "side scrimmagers". The centre scrimmager was later renamed the "snap", and in intercollegiate play one side was given the right to put foot to ball first. Beginning regionally again and universally by 1923, the Burnside rules led to the 3-man scrimmage being reduced to the centre alone, the number of players on the field being reduced commensurately from 14 to 12, and a snap rule and neutral zone similar to that of American football was adopted. In addition to the between-the-legs requirement noted above, for several years after the adoption of the hand snap, a hand-to-hand snap was illegal, the ball required to be thrown instead, in Canadian football. (Though it was technically legal, the hand-to-hand snap was not used on the American side of the border until the 1930s.) Apparently, a complete break was desired from system of backheeling, and the T formation having gone into eclipse in American football at the time, the Canadian snap was modeled on the formations then in common use in the US, such as the single wing.
The game design rationale for requiring the snap to be a quick and continuous motion to the backfield is to eliminate the need for rules provisions for a live ball in scrimmage. In Rugby Union the ball may be retained by the forwards and played for a time via the foot in a scrummage (which Rugby League has as well) or ruck, or by the hands in a maul, necessitating additional restrictions on play and player positioning during those intervals. In American and Canadian football, the ball as it is put in play is only held in the line (by the Center) for a fraction of a second. The uncontested possession also, as Walter Camp pointed out, allows for better offensive and defensive planning by the side entitled to snap the ball and their opposition, respectively. A muffed snap can be recovered by either team. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11345 |
FIFO (computing and electronics)
FIFO – an acronym for first in, first out – in computing and in systems theory, is a method for organising the manipulation of a data structure – often, specifically a data buffer – where the oldest (first) entry, or 'head' of the queue, is processed first.
Such processing is analogous to servicing people in a queue area on a first-come, first-served basis, in the same sequence in which they had arrived at the queue's tail.
FCFS is also the jargon term for the FIFO operating system scheduling algorithm, which gives every process central processing unit (CPU) time in the order in which it is demanded. FIFO's opposite is LIFO, last-in-first-out, where the youngest entry or 'top of the stack' is processed first. A priority queue is neither FIFO or LIFO but may adopt similar behaviour temporarily or by default. Queueing theory encompasses these methods for processing data structures, as well as interactions between strict-FIFO queues.
Depending on the application, a FIFO could be implemented as a hardware shift register, or using different memory structures, typically a circular buffer or a kind of list. For information on the abstract data structure, see Queue (data structure). Most software implementations of a FIFO queue are not thread safe and require a locking mechanism to verify the data structure chain is being manipulated by only one thread at a time.
The following code shows a linked list FIFO C++ language implementation. In practice, a number of list implementations exist, including popular Unix systems C sys/queue.h macros or the C++ standard library std::list template, avoiding the need for implementing the data structure from scratch.
using namespace std;
template
class FIFO {
public:
};
The ends of a FIFO queue are often referred to as "head" and "tail". Unfortunately, a controversy exists regarding those terms:
In computing environments that support the pipes and filters model for interprocess communication, a FIFO is another name for a named pipe.
Disk controllers can use the FIFO as a disk scheduling algorithm to determine the order in which to service disk I/O requests.
Communication network bridges, switches and routers used in computer networks use FIFOs to hold data packets en route to their next destination. Typically at least one FIFO structure is used per network connection. Some devices feature multiple FIFOs for simultaneously and independently queuing different types of information.
FIFOs are commonly used in electronic circuits for buffering and flow control between hardware and software. In its hardware form, a FIFO primarily consists of a set of read and write pointers, storage and control logic. Storage may be static random access memory (SRAM), flip-flops, latches or any other suitable form of storage. For FIFOs of non-trivial size, a dual-port SRAM is usually used, where one port is dedicated to writing and the other to reading.
A synchronous FIFO is a FIFO where the same clock is used for both reading and writing. An asynchronous FIFO uses different clocks for reading and writing. Asynchronous FIFOs introduce metastability issues.
A common implementation of an asynchronous FIFO uses a Gray code (or any unit distance code) for the read and write pointers to ensure reliable flag generation. One further note concerning flag generation is that one must necessarily use pointer arithmetic to generate flags for asynchronous FIFO implementations. Conversely, one may use either a "leaky bucket" approach or pointer arithmetic to generate flags in synchronous FIFO implementations.
Examples of FIFO status flags include: full, empty, almost full, almost empty, etc.
The first known FIFO implemented in electronics was done by Peter Alfke in 1969 at Fairchild Semiconductors . Peter Alfke was later a director at Xilinx.
A hardware FIFO is used for synchronization purposes. It is often implemented as a circular queue, and thus has two pointers:
Read and write addresses are initially both at the first memory location and the FIFO queue is "empty".
In both cases, the read and write addresses end up being equal. To distinguish between the two situations, a simple and robust solution is to add one extra bit for each read and write address which is inverted each time the address wraps. With this set up, the disambiguation conditions are: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11347 |
Firewall (construction)
A firewall is a fire-resistant barrier used to prevent the spread of fire for a prescribed period of time. Firewalls are built between or through buildings, structures, or electrical substation transformers, or within an aircraft or vehicle.
Firewalls can be used to subdivide a building into separate fire areas and are constructed in accordance with the locally applicable building codes. Firewalls are a portion of a building's passive fire protection systems.
Firewalls can be used to separate-high value transformers at an electrical substation in the event of a mineral oil tank rupture and ignition. The firewall serves as a fire containment wall between one oil-filled transformer and other neighboring transformers, building structures, and site equipment.
There are three main classifications of "fire rated walls": fire walls, fire barriers, and fire partitions. To the layperson, the common use of language typically includes all three when referring to a "firewall" unless distinguishing between them becomes necessary. In addition specialty fire-rated walls such as a High Challenge Fire Wall would require further distinctions.
Fire barrier walls are typically continuous from an exterior wall to an exterior wall, or from a floor below to a floor or roof above, or from one fire barrier wall to another fire barrier wall, having a fire resistance rating equal to or greater than the required rating for the application. Fire barriers are continuous through concealed spaces (e.g., above a ceiling) to the floor deck or roof deck above the barrier. Fire partitions are not required to extend through concealed spaces if the construction assembly forming the bottom of the concealed space, such as the ceiling, has a fire resistance rating at least equal to or greater than the fire partition.
Portions of structures that are subdivided by fire walls are permitted to be considered separate buildings, in that fire walls have sufficient structural stability to maintain the integrity of the wall in the event of the collapse of the building construction on either side of the wall.
Firewalls are used in varied applications that require specific design and performance specifications. Knowing the potential conditions that may exist during a fire are critical to selecting and installing an effective firewall. For example, a firewall designed to meet National Fire Protection Agency, (NFPA), 221-09 section A.5.7 which indicates an average temperature of 800 °F, is not designed to withstand higher temperatures such as would be present in higher challenge fires, and as a result would fail to function for the expected duration of the listed wall rating.
Performance based design takes into account the potential conditions during a fire. Understanding thermal limitations of materials is essential to using the correct material for the application. Laboratory testing is used to simulate fire scenarios and wall loading conditions. The testing results in an assigned listing number for the fire-rated assembly that defines the expected fire resistance duration and wall structural integrity under the tested conditions. Designers may elect to specify a listed fire wall assembly or design a wall system that would require performance testing to certify the expected protections before use of the designed fire-rated wall system.
Firewalls are also regularly found in aircraft and in specially prepared cars for compartmentalisation and competition use. For example, a typical conversion of a production car for rallying will include a metal firewall which seals the fuel tank off from the interior of the vehicle. In the event of an accident, resulting in fuel spillage, the firewall can prevent burning fuel from entering the passenger compartment, where it could cause serious injury or death. In regular stock cars, the firewall separates the engine compartment from the cabin and can, at times, contain fibreglass insulation. Automotive firewalls have to be fitted so that they form a complete seal. Usually this is done by bonding the sheet metal to the bodywork using fibreglass resin.
The term firewall is also commonly used in American English to refer to the barrier between the passenger and engine compartments of a vehicle. The inner and outer surfaces of the firewall are often coated with noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) absorber to prevent most engine noise from reaching the passenger compartment. In British English, the term for this barrier is bulkhead.
Fire barriers are used around large electrical transformers as firewalls.
These barriers are used to isolate one transformer in case of fire or explosions, preventing fire propagation to neighboring transformers.
This could cause a domino effect and affect the surrounding electric grid, particularly during peak times.
Unlike most fire barriers, transformer fire barriers are often expected to not only defeat fire and heat, but also ballistics, explosions and fragmentation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11350 |
Felix Wankel
Felix Heinrich Wankel (13 August 1902 – 9 October 1988) was a German mechanical engineer and inventor after whom the Wankel engine was named.
Wankel was born in 1902 in Lahr in what was then the Grand Duchy of Baden in the Upper Rhine Plain of present-day southwestern Germany. He was the only son of Gerty Wankel (née Heidlauff) and Rudolf Wankel, a forest assessor. His father died in World War I. Thereafter, the family moved to Heidelberg. He went to high schools in Donaueschingen, Heidelberg, and Weinheim, and left school without Abitur in 1921. He learned the trade of purchaser at the Carl Winter Press in Heidelberg and worked for the publishing house until June 1926. He and some friends had already run an unofficial afterwork machine shop in a backyard shed in Heidelberg since 1924. Wankel now determined to receive unemployment benefits and to focus on the machine shop. One of his friends, who had graduated from university, gave his name and transformed the shop into an official garage for DKW and Cleveland motor bikes in 1927, where Wankel worked from time to time until his arrest in 1933.
Wankel was gifted since childhood with an ingenious spatial imagination and became interested in the world of machines, especially combustion engines. After his mother was widowed, Wankel could not afford university education or even an apprenticeship. He was, however, able to teach himself technical subjects. At age 17 he told friends that he had dreamt of constructing a car with "a new type of engine, half turbine, half reciprocating. It is my invention!". True to this prediction, he conceived the Wankel engine in 1924 and won his first patent in 1929.
During the early 1920s Wankel was a member of various radical anti-Semitic organizations. In 1921 he joined the Heidelberg branch of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund and in 1922 he became a member of the NSDAP, the National Socialist German Workers Party (or "Nazi Party") , which was banned soon afterwards. Wankel founded and led youth groups associated with a cover-up organization of the NSDAP. With them he conducted paramilitary training, scouting games and night walks. When his high esteem for technical innovations was not widely shared among the German Youth Movement, he was offered instead the opportunity to talk about the issue of technology and education to Adolf Hitler and other leading National Socialists in 1928.
In the meantime Wankel's mother had helped founding the local chapter of the NSDAP in his hometown Lahr. Here Wankel not only rejoined the party in 1926, but also met Gauleiter Robert Heinrich Wagner. In 1931 Wagner entrusted Wankel with the leadership of the Hitler Youth in Baden. But both soon fell out with each other, because Wankel tried to put a stronger emphasis on military training, whereas Wagner wished for the Hitler Youth to be a primarily political organization. In a particularly bitter and ugly controversy Wankel publicly accused Wagner of corruption. Wagner paid back by stripping Wankel of his office by early 1932 and managed to have him expelled from the party in October 1932. Wankel, who sympathized with the social-revolutionary wing of the NSDAP among Gregor Strasser anyway, then founded his own National Socialist splinter group in Lahr and continued his attacks on Wagner. Since the Nazi's seizure of power on 30 January 1933 had strengthened his position, Wagner had Wankel arrested and imprisoned in the Lahr jail in March 1933. Only by intervention of Hitler's economic adviser Wilhelm Keppler with Hitler himself, Wankel was set free in September 1933. Keppler had been a friend of Wankel's and an ardent supporter of his technological endeavors since 1927. He now helped Wankel to get state contracts and his own "Wankels Versuchs Werkstätten" in Lindau. Wankel tried to rejoin the NSDAP in 1937, but was turned down. With the help of Keppler, however, he was admitted to the SS in 1940 in the rank of Obersturmbannführer. Two years later his membership was revoked for reasons unknown.
During World War II, Wankel developed seals and rotary valves for German air force aircraft and navy torpedoes, for BMW and Daimler-Benz. After the war, he was imprisoned by France for some months in 1945 and his laboratory was closed by French occupation troops. Wankel's work was confiscated and he was prohibited from doing more work. However, by 1951, he got funding from the Goetze AG company to furnish the new Technical Development Center in his private house in Lindau on Lake Constance. He began development of the engine at NSU Motorenwerke AG, leading to the first running prototype on 1 February 1957. Unlike modern Wankel engines, this 21 horsepower version had both the rotor and housing rotating. His engine design was first licensed by Curtiss-Wright in New Jersey, United States.
On 19 January 1960 the rotary engine was presented for the first time to specialists and the press in a meeting of the German Engineers' Union at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. In the same year, with the KKM 250, the first practical rotary engine was presented in a converted NSU Prinz. At this time the "Wankel engine" became synonymous with the rotary engine, whereas previously it was called the "Motor nach System NSU/Wankel". At the 1963 IAA, the NSU company presented the NSU Wankel-Spider, the first consumer vehicle, which went into production in 1964. Great attention was received by the NSU in August 1967 for the very modern NSU Ro 80, which had a 115-horsepower engine with two rotors. It was the first German car selected as "Car of the Year" in 1968.
In Japan, the manufacturer Mazda solved the engine's chatter marks problem, by reducing apex seals' weight, that made it entering resonating vibrations. The engine has been successfully used by Mazda in several generations of their RX-series of coupés and sedans, including the Mazda Cosmo, R100, the RX-7 and more recently the RX-8. Mercedes-Benz completed its C111 experimental model in 1969 with 3-rotor Wankel engine. In 1970, the next model had a 4-rotor Wankel engine and could reach top speed 290 km/h but never reached serial production.
Wankel became a success in business by securing license agreements around the world. By 1958 Wankel and partners had founded the "Wankel GmbH" company, providing Wankel with a share of the profits for marketing the engine. Among the licensees were Daimler-Benz since 1961, General Motors since 1970, Toyota since 1971, among those who paid higher fees for Wankel RCE rights was a state-owned engineering firm of the DDR. Royalties for the Wankel GmbH for licensure were 40%, later 36%. In 1971 Wankel sold his share of the license royalties for 50 million Deutschmarks to the English conglomerate Lonrho. The year after he got his Technical Development Center back from the Fraunhofer Society.
From 1986 the Felix Wankel Institute cooperated with Daimler Benz AG. D-B provided the operating costs in return for the research rights. He sold the Institute to Daimler Benz for 100 million Marks.
Wankel married Emma "Mi" Kirin in 1936. Though married until death, they had no children.
He never had a driver's license, because he was extremely near-sighted. He was, however, the owner of an NSU Ro 80 with a Wankel engine, which was chauffeured for him.
In 1969, Wankel was granted an honorary Doctorate of Engineering from Technical University Munich. He was known for his championing of animal rights and opposition to the use of animals in testing.
Wankel died in Heidelberg, aged 86. His grave may be found in the Bergfriedhof of Heidelberg.
After his death, the Felix Wankel Foundation sold its real estate property to Volkswagen AG. The Heidelberg Fire Department showcases his last workshop. Wankel's papers are archived in the Technoseum in Mannheim. Furthermore, there is an exhibition "AUTOVISION · Tradition & Forum" in Altlußheim, a permanent showing of over 80 rotary engines and many cars equipped with Wankel motors. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11358 |
Fabio Taglioni
Fabio Taglioni (September 10, 1920 – July 18, 2001) was an Italian engineer.
Born in Lugo di Romagna, he was chief designer and technical director of Ducati from 1954 until 1989. His desmodromic 90° V-twin engine design is still used in all current Ducati motorcycle engines. Among the many race victories of his early desmo twin, the 1978 legendary return of Mike Hailwood at the Isle of Man is perhaps the most memorable.
After World War II, Taglioni designed engines for Ceccato motorcycles and Mondial before joining Ducati in 1954. He began by designing Ducati's OHC four-stroke singles, and in 1963 designed the prototype V4 Ducati Apollo. This led to the 1972 Ducati 750 Imola Desmo, and the 1970s and 1980s production Ducati L-twin motorcycles.
He died in Bologna in 2001. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11366 |
Fourth-generation programming language
A fourth-generation programming language (4GL) is any computer programming language that belongs to a class of languages envisioned as an advancement upon third-generation programming languages (3GL). Each of the programming language generations aims to provide a higher level of abstraction of the internal computer hardware details, making the language more programmer-friendly, powerful, and versatile. While the definition of 4GL has changed over time, it can be typified by operating more with large collections of information at once rather than focusing on just bits and bytes. Languages claimed to be 4GL may include support for database management, report generation, mathematical optimization, GUI development, or web development. Some researchers state that 4GLs are a subset of domain-specific languages. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11367 |
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra (born Francesco Rosario Capra; May 18, 1897 – September 3, 1991) was an Italian-American film director, producer and writer who became the creative force behind some of the major award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Italy and raised in Los Angeles from the age of five, his rags-to-riches story has led film historians such as Ian Freer to consider him the "American Dream personified."
Capra became one of America's most influential directors during the 1930s, winning three Academy Awards for Best Director from six nominations, along with three other Oscar wins from nine nominations in other categories. Among his leading films were "It Happened One Night" (1934), "You Can't Take It with You" (1938), and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939); Capra was nominated as Best Director and as producer for Academy Award for Best Picture on all three films, winning both awards on the first two. During World War II, Capra served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and produced propaganda films, such as the "Why We Fight" series.
After World War II, Capra's career declined as his later films, such as "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946), performed poorly when they were first released. In ensuing decades, however, "It's a Wonderful Life" and other Capra films were revisited favorably by critics. Outside of directing, Capra was active in the film industry, engaging in various political and social activities. He served as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, worked alongside the Writers Guild of America, and was head of the Directors Guild of America.
Capra was born Francesco Rosario Capra in Bisacquino, a village near Palermo, Sicily, Italy. He was the youngest of seven children of Salvatore Capra, a fruit grower, and the former Rosaria "Serah" Nicolosi. Capra's family was Roman Catholic. The name "Capra", notes Capra's biographer Joseph McBride, represents his family's closeness to the land, and means "goat". He notes that the English word "capricious" derives from it, "evoking the animal's skittish temperament", adding that "the name neatly expresses two aspects of Frank Capra's personality: emotionalism and obstinacy."
In 1903, when he was five, Capra emigrated to the United States with his family, who traveled in one of the steerage compartments of the steamship "Germania", which was the cheapest way to book passage. For Capra, the journey, which took 13 days, remained in his mind for the rest of his life as one of his worst experiences:
Capra remembers the ship's arrival in New York Harbor, where he saw "a statue of a great lady, taller than a church steeple, holding a torch above the land we were about to enter". He recalls his father's exclamation at the sight:
The family settled in Los Angeles's East Side (today Chinatown), which Capra described in his autobiography as an Italian "ghetto". Capra's father worked as a fruit picker and young Capra sold newspapers after school for 10 years, until he graduated from high school. Instead of working after graduating, as his parents wanted, he enrolled in college. He worked through college at the California Institute of Technology, playing banjo at nightclubs and taking odd jobs, which included working at the campus laundry facility, waiting tables, and cleaning engines at a local power plant. He studied electrical engineering and graduated in the spring of 1918. Capra later wrote that his college education had "changed his whole viewpoint on life from the viewpoint of an alley rat to the viewpoint of a cultured person".
Soon after graduating from college, Capra was commissioned in the United States Army as a second lieutenant, having completed campus ROTC. In the Army, he taught mathematics to artillerymen at Fort Point, San Francisco. His father died during the war in an accident (1916). In the Army, Capra contracted Spanish flu and was medically discharged to return home to live with his mother. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1920, taking the name Frank Russell Capra. Living at home with his siblings and mother, Capra was the only family member with a college education, yet he was the only one who remained chronically unemployed. After a year without work, seeing how his siblings had steady jobs, he felt he was a failure, which led to bouts of depression and abdominal pains, later discovered to have been an undiagnosed burst appendix.
After recovering at home, Capra moved out and spent the next few years living in flophouses in San Francisco and hopping freight trains, wandering the Western United States. To support himself, he took odd jobs on farms, as a movie extra, playing poker, and selling local oil well stocks.
During this time the 24-year-old Capra directed a 32-minute documentary film titled "La Visita Dell'Incrociatore Italiano Libya a San Francisco". Not only did it document the visit of the Italian naval vessel "Libya" to San Francisco, but also the reception given to the crew of the ship by San Francisco's L'Italia Virtus Club, now known as the San Francisco Italian Athletic Club.
At 25, Capra took a job selling books written and published by American philosopher, Elbert Hubbard. Capra recalled that he "hated being a peasant, being a scrounging new kid trapped in the Sicilian ghetto of Los Angeles. ... All I had was cockiness—and let me tell you that gets you a long way."
During his book sales efforts—and nearly broke—Capra read a newspaper article about a new movie studio opening in San Francisco. Capra phoned them saying he had moved from Hollywood, and falsely implied that he had experience in the budding film industry. Capra's only prior exposure in films was in 1915 while attending Manual Arts High School. The studio's founder, Walter Montague, was nonetheless impressed by Capra and offered him $75 to direct a one-reel silent film. Capra, with the help of a cameraman, made the film in two days and cast it with amateurs.
After that first serious job in films, Capra began efforts to finding similar openings in the film industry. He took a position with another minor San Francisco studio and subsequently received an offer to work with producer Harry Cohn at his new studio in Los Angeles. During this time, he worked as a property man, film cutter, title writer, and assistant director.
Capra later became a gag writer for Hal Roach's "Our Gang" series. He was twice hired as a writer for slapstick comedy director, Mack Sennett, in 1918 and 1924. Under him, Capra wrote scripts for comedian Harry Langdon. According to Capra, it was he who invented Langdon's character, the innocent fool living in a "naughty world."
When Langdon eventually left Sennett to make longer, feature-length movies with First National Studios, he took Capra along as his personal writer and director. They made three feature films together during 1926 and 1927, all of them successful with critics and the public. The films made Langdon a recognized comedian in the caliber of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Capra and Langdon later had a falling out, and Capra was fired. During the following years, Langdon's films went into decline without Capra's assistance. After splitting with Langdon, Capra directed a picture for First National, "For the Love of Mike", (1927). This was a silent comedy about three bickering godfathers, a German, a Jew, and an Irishman, starring a budding actress, Claudette Colbert. The movie was considered a failure.
Capra returned to Harry Cohn's studio, now named Columbia Pictures, which was then producing short films and two-reel comedies for "fillers" to play between main features. Columbia was one of many start-up studios on "Poverty Row" in Los Angeles. Like the others, Columbia was unable to compete with larger studios, which often had their own production facilities, distribution, and theaters. Cohn rehired Capra in 1928 to help his studio produce new, full-length feature films, to compete with the major studios. Capra would eventually direct 20 films for Cohn's studio, including all of his classics.
Because of Capra's engineering education, he adapted more easily to the new sound technology than most directors. He welcomed the transition to sound, recalling, "I wasn't at home in silent films." Most studios were unwilling to invest in the new sound technology, assuming it was a passing fad. Many in Hollywood considered sound a threat to the industry and hoped it would pass quickly; McBride notes that "Capra was not one of them." When he saw Al Jolson singing in "The Jazz Singer" in 1927, considered the first talkie, Capra recalled his reaction:
Few of the studio heads or crew were aware of Capra's engineering background until he began directing "The Younger Generation" in 1929. The chief cinematographer who worked with Capra on a number of films was likewise unaware. He describes this early period in sound for film:
During his first year with Columbia, Capra directed nine films, some of which were successful. After the first few, Harry Cohn said: "it was the beginning of Columbia making a better quality of pictures." According to Barson, "Capra became ensconced as Harry Cohn's most trusted director." His films soon established Capra as a "bankable" director known throughout the industry, and Cohn raised Capra's initial salary of $1,000 per film to $25,000 per year. Capra directed a film for MGM during this period, but soon realized he "had much more freedom under Harry Cohn's benevolent dictatorship", where Cohn also put Capra's "name above the title" of his films, a first for the movie industry. Capra wrote of this period and recalled the confidence that Cohn placed in Capra's vision and directing:
Capra directed his first "real" sound picture, "The Younger Generation", in 1929. It was a rags-to-riches romantic comedy about a Jewish family's upward mobility in New York City, with their son later trying to deny his Jewish roots to keep his rich, gentile girlfriend. According to Capra biographer Joseph McBride, Capra "obviously felt a strong identification with the story of a Jewish immigrant who grows up in the ghetto of New York ... and feels he has to deny his ethnic origins to rise to success in America." Capra, however, denied any connection of the story with his own life.
Nonetheless, McBride insists that "The Younger Generation" abounds with parallels to Capra's own life." McBride notes the "devastatingly painful climactic scene", where the young social-climbing son, embarrassed when his wealthy new friends first meet his parents, passes his mother and father off as house servants. That scene, notes McBride, "echoes the shame Capra admitted feeling toward his own family as he rose in social status."
During his years at Columbia, Capra worked often with screenwriter Robert Riskin (husband of Fay Wray), and cameraman Joseph Walker. In many of Capra's films, the wise-cracking and sharp dialogue was often written by Riskin, and he and Capra went on to become Hollywood's "most admired writer-director team."
Capra's films in the 1930s enjoyed immense success at the Academy Awards. "It Happened One Night" (1934) became the first film to win all five top Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay). Written by Robert Riskin, it is one of the first of the "screwball comedies", and with its release in the Great Depression, critics considered it an escapist story and a variation of the "American Dream". The film established the names of Capra, Columbia Pictures, and stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in the movie industry. The film has been called "picaresque." It was one of the earliest "road movies" and inspired variations on that theme by other filmmakers.
He followed the film with "Broadway Bill" (1934), a screwball comedy about horse racing. The film was a turning point for Capra, however, as he began to conceive an additional dimension to his movies. He started using his films to convey messages to the public. Capra explains his new thinking:
This added goal was inspired after meeting with a Christian Scientist friend who told him to view his talents in a different way:
Capra began to embody messages in subsequent films, many of which conveyed "fantasies of goodwill." The first of those was "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" (1936), for which Capra won his second Best Director Oscar. Critic Alistair Cooke observed that Capra was "starting to make movies about themes instead of people."
In 1938, Capra won his third Director Oscar in five years for "You Can't Take It with You", which also won Best Picture. In addition to his three directing wins, Capra received directing nominations for three other films ("Lady for a Day", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", and "It's a Wonderful Life"). On May 5, 1936, Capra hosted the 8th Academy Awards ceremony.
Although "It's a Wonderful Life" is his best-known film, Friedman notes that it was "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939), which most represented the "Capra myth." That film expressed Capra's patriotism more than any others, and "presented the individual working within the democratic system to overcome rampant political corruption."
The film, however, became Capra's most controversial. In his research before filming, he was able to stand close to President Franklin D. Roosevelt during a press conference after the recent acts of war by Germany in Europe. Capra recalls his fears:
When the filming was completed, the studio sent preview copies to Washington. Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., U.S. ambassador to the UK, wrote to Columbia head Harry Cohn, "Please do not play this picture in Europe." Politicians were concerned about the potential negative effect the film might have on the morale of the United States' allies, as World War II had begun. Kennedy wrote to President Roosevelt that, "In foreign countries this film must inevitably strengthen the mistaken impression that the United States is full of graft, corruption and lawlessness." Many studio heads agreed, nor did they want negative feelings about Hollywood instilled in political leaders.
Nonetheless, Capra's vision of the film's significance was clear:
Capra pleaded with Cohn to allow the film to go into distribution and remembers the intensity of their decision making:
Cohn and Capra chose to ignore the negative publicity and demands and released the film as planned. It was later nominated for 11 Academy Awards, only winning one (for Best Original Story) partly because of the number of major pictures that were nominated that year was 10, including "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind". Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons called it a "smash patriotic hit" and most critics agreed, seeing that audiences left the theaters with "an enthusiasm for democracy" and "in a glow of patriotism."
The significance of the film's message was established further in France, shortly after World War II began. When the French public was asked to select which film they wanted to see most, having been told by the Vichy government that soon no more American films would be allowed in France, the overwhelming majority chose it over all others. To a France soon to be invaded and occupied by Nazi forces, the film most expressed the "perseverance of democracy and the American way."
In 1941 Capra directed "Meet John Doe" (1941), which some consider Capra's most controversial movie. The film's hero, played by Gary Cooper, is a former baseball player now bumming around, lacking goals. He is selected by a news reporter to represent the "common man," to capture the imagination of ordinary Americans. The film was released shortly before America became involved in World War II, and citizens were still in an isolationist mood. According to some historians, the film was made to convey a "deliberate reaffirmation of American values," though ones that seemed uncertain with respect to the future.
Film author Richard Glazer speculates that the film may have been autobiographical, "reflecting Capra's own uncertainties." Glazer describes how, "John's accidental transformation from drifter to national figure parallels Capra's own early drifting experience and subsequent involvement in movie making ... "Meet John Doe", then, was an attempt to work out his own fears and questions."
Within four days after the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Capra quit his successful directing career in Hollywood and received a commission as a major in the United States Army. He also gave up his presidency of the Screen Directors Guild. Being 44 years of age, he was not asked to enlist, but, notes Friedman, "Capra had an intense desire to prove his patriotism to his adopted land."
Capra recalls some personal reasons for enlisting:
During the next four years of World War II, Capra's job was to head a special section on morale to explain to soldiers "why the hell they're in uniform", writes Capra, and were not "propaganda" films like those created by the Nazis and Japan. Capra directed or co-directed seven documentary war information films.
Capra was assigned to work directly under Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, the most senior officer in command of the Army, who later created the Marshall Plan and was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Marshall chose to bypass the usual documentary film-making department, Signal Corps, because he felt they were not capable of producing "sensitive and objective troop information films." One colonel explained the importance of these future films to Capra:
During his first meeting with General Marshall, Capra was told his mission:
The films included the seven-episode "Why We Fight" series – consisting of "Prelude to War" (1942), "The Nazis Strike" (1942), "Divide and Conquer" (1943), "The Battle of Britain" (1943), "The Battle of Russia" (1943), "The Battle of China" (1944), "War Comes to America" (1945) – plus "" (1945), "Here Is Germany" (1945), "Tunisian Victory" (1945), and "Two Down and One to Go" (1945) that do not bear the "Why We Fight" banner; as well as the African-American related film, "The Negro Soldier" (1944).
After he completed the first few documentaries, government officials and U.S. Army staff felt they were powerful messages and excellent presentations of why it was necessary for the United States to fight in the war. All footage came from military and government sources, whereas during earlier years, many newsreels secretly used footage from enemy sources. Animated charts were created by Walt Disney and his animators. A number of Hollywood composers wrote the background music, including Alfred Newman and Russian-born composer Dimitri Tiomkin. After the first complete film was viewed by General Marshall along with U.S. Army staff, Marshall approached Capra: "Colonel Capra, how did you do it? That is a most wonderful thing."
Officials made efforts to see that the films were seen in theaters throughout the U.S. They were translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese for use by other countries. Winston Churchill ordered that "all" of them be shown to the British public in theaters. They are today often broadcast on television and used as a teaching aid.
The "Why We Fight" series is widely considered a masterpiece of war information documentaries, and won an Academy Award. "Prelude to War" won the 1942 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. When his career ended, Capra regarded these films as his most important works. As a colonel, he received the Legion of Merit in 1943 and the Distinguished Service Medal in 1945.
After the war ended, along with directors William Wyler and George Stevens, Capra founded Liberty Films. Their studio became the first independent company of directors since United Artists in 1919 whose goal was to make films without interference by studio bosses. However, the only pictures completed by the studio were "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) and "State of the Union" (1948). The first of these was a box office disappointment but was nominated for five Academy Awards.
While the film did not resonate with audiences in 1946, its popularity has grown through the years. In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) named it one of the best films ever made, putting it at 11th on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list of the top American films of all time. In 2006, the AFI put the film at the top of its AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers list, ranking what AFI considers the most inspirational American movies of all time. It would become Capra's last film to win major acclaim—his successful years were now behind him, although he directed five more films over the next 14 years.
For "State of the Union" (1948), Capra changed studios. It would be the only time he ever worked for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Although the project had an excellent pedigree with stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, the film was not a success, and Capra's statement, "I think "State of the Union" was my most perfect film in handling people and ideas" has few adherents today.
In January 1952, the U.S. Ambassador to India asked Capra to represent the U.S. film industry at an International Film Festival to be held in India. A State Department friend of Capra asked him and explained why his trip would be important:
After two weeks in India, Capra discovered that Bowles' fears were warranted, as many film sessions were used by Russian and Chinese representatives to give long political speeches. At a lunch with 15 Indian directors and producers, he stressed that "they must preserve freedom as artists, and that any government control would hinder that freedom. A totalitarian system—and they would become nothing but publicity men for the party in power." Capra had a difficult time communicating this, however, as he noted in his diary:
When he returned to Washington to give his report, Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave Capra his commendation for "virtually single-handedly forestalling a possible Communist take-over of Indian films." Ambassador Bowles also conveyed gratitude to Capra for "one helluva job."
Following "It's a Wonderful Life" and "State of the Union," which were done soon after the war ended, Capra's themes were becoming out of step with changes in the film industry and the public mood. Friedman finds that while Capra's ideas were popular with depression-era and prewar audiences, they became less relevant to a prospering post-war America. Capra had become "disconnected from an American culture that had changed" during the previous decade. Biographer Joseph McBride argues that Capra's disillusionment was more related to the negative effect that the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had on the film industry in general. The HUAC interrogations in the early 1950s ended many Hollywood careers. Capra himself was not called to testify, although he was a prime target of the committee due to his past associations with many Hollywood blacklisted screenwriters.
Capra blamed his early retirement from films on the rising power of stars, which forced him to continually compromise his artistic vision. He also claimed that increasing budgetary and scheduling demands had constrained his creative abilities. Film historian Michael Medved agreed with Capra, noting that he walked away from the movie business because "he refused to adjust to the cynicism of the new order." In his autobiography, written in 1971, Capra expressed his feelings about the shifting film industry:
Capra added that in his opinion, "practically all the Hollywood film-making of today is stooping to cheap salacious pornography in a crazy bastardization of a great art to compete for the 'patronage' of deviates and masturbators."
Capra remained employable in Hollywood during and after the HUAC hearings but chose nonetheless to demonstrate his loyalty by attempting to re-enlist in the Army at the outbreak of the Korean War, in 1950. He was rejected due to his age. He was later invited to join the Defense Department's newly formed Think Tank project, VISTA, but was denied the necessary clearance. According to Friedman, "these two rejections were devastating to the man who had made a career of demonstrating American ideals in film", along with his directing award-winning documentary films for the Army.
Capra directed two films at Paramount Pictures starring Bing Crosby, "Riding High" (1950) and "Here Comes the Groom" (1951). By 1952, at the age of 55, Capra effectively retired from Hollywood filmmaking; he shifted to working with the California Institute of Technology, his alma mater, to produce educational films on science topics.
From 1952 to 1956, Capra produced four science-related television specials in color for The Bell System Science Series: "Our Mr. Sun" (1956), "Hemo the Magnificent" (1957), "The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays" (1957), and "Meteora: The Unchained Goddess" (1958). These educational science documentaries were popular favorites for school science classrooms. It was eight years before he directed another theatrical film, "A Hole in the Head" (1959) with Frank Sinatra and Edward G. Robinson, his first feature film in color. His final theatrical film was with Glenn Ford and Bette Davis, named "Pocketful of Miracles" (1961), a remake of his 1933 film "Lady for a Day". In the mid-1960s he worked on pre-production for an adaptation of Martin Caidin's novel "Marooned," but budgetary constraints caused him to eventually shelve it.
Capra's final film, "Rendezvous in Space" (1964), was an industrial film made for the Martin Marietta Company and shown at the 1964 New York World's Fair. It was exhibited at the New York Hall of Science after the Fair ended.
Capra's directing style relied on improvisation to a great extent. He was noted for going on the set with no more than the master scenes written. He explained his reasoning:
According to some experts, Capra used great, unobtrusive craftsmanship when directing, and felt it was bad directing to distract the audience with fancy technical gimmicks. Film historian and author William S. Pechter described Capra's style as one "of almost classical purity." He adds that his style relied on editing to help his films sustain a "sequence of rhythmic motion." Pechter describes its effect:
Film critic John Raeburn discusses an early Capra film, "American Madness" (1932), as an example of how he had mastered the movie medium and expressed a unique style:
As for Capra's subject matter, film author Richard Griffith tries to summarize Capra's common theme:
Capra's personality when directing gave him a reputation for "fierce independence" when dealing with studio bosses. On the set he was said to be gentle and considerate, "a director who displays absolutely no exhibitionism." As Capra's films often carry a message about basic goodness in human nature, and show the value of unselfishness and hard work, his wholesome, feel-good themes have led some cynics to term his style "Capra-corn." However, those who hold his vision in higher regard prefer the term "Capraesque".
Capra's basic themes of championing the common man, as well as his use of spontaneous, fast-paced dialogue and goofy, memorable lead and supporting characters, made him one of the most popular and respected filmmakers of the 20th century. His influence can be traced in the works of many directors, including Robert Altman, Ron Howard, Masaki Kobayashi, Akira Kurosawa, John Lasseter, David Lynch, John Milius, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone and François Truffaut
Capra married actress Helen Howell in 1923. They divorced in 1928. He married Lucille Warner in 1932, with whom he had a daughter and three sons, one of whom died in infancy.
Capra was four times president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and three times president of the Directors Guild of America, which he helped found. Under his presidency, he worked to give directors more artistic control of their films. During his career as a director, he retained an early ambition to teach science, and after his career declined in the 1950s, he made educational television films related to science subjects.
Physically, Capra was short, stocky, and vigorous, and enjoyed outdoor activities such as hunting, fishing, and mountain climbing. In his later years, he spent time writing short stories and songs, along with playing guitar. He collected fine and rare books during the 1930s and 1940s. Six hundred and forty items from his "distinguished library" were sold by Parke-Bernet Galleries at auction in New York in April 1949, realizing $68,000 ($ today).
His son Frank Capra Jr. was the president of EUE Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina, until his death on December 19, 2007. His grandsons, brothers Frank Capra III and Jonathan Capra, have both worked as assistant directors; Frank III worked on the 1995 film "The American President", which referred to Frank Capra in the film's dialogue.
Capra's political views coalesced in his movies, which promoted and celebrated the spirit of American individualism. A conservative Republican, Capra railed against Franklin D. Roosevelt during his tenure as governor of New York and opposed his presidency during the years of the Depression. Capra stood against government intervention during the national economic crisis.
In his later years, Capra became a self-described pacifist and was very critical of the Vietnam War.
Capra wrote in his early adulthood that he was a "Christmas Catholic".
In his later years, Capra returned to the Catholic Church and described himself as "a Catholic in spirit; one who firmly believes that the anti-moral, the intellectual bigots, and the Mafias of ill will may destroy religion, but they will never conquer the cross".
In 1985, aged 88, Capra suffered one of a series of strokes. He died in La Quinta, California, of a heart attack in his sleep in 1991 at the age of 94. He was interred at Coachella Valley Public Cemetery in Coachella, California.
He left part of his ranch in Fallbrook, California, to the California Institute of Technology, to be used as a retreat center. Capra's personal papers and some film related materials are contained in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives, which allows scholars and media experts full access.
During the golden age of Hollywood, Capra's "fantasies of goodwill" made him one of the two or three most famous and successful directors in the world. Film historian Ian Freer notes that at the time of his death in 1991, his legacy remained intact:
Director/actor John Cassavetes contemplating Capra's contribution to film quipped: "Maybe there really wasn't an America, it was only Frank Capra." Capra's films were his love letters to an idealized America—a cinematic landscape of his own invention. The performances his actors gave were invariable portrayals of personalities developed into recognizable images of popular culture, "their acting has the bold simplicity of an icon ..."
Like his contemporary, director John Ford, Capra defined and aggrandized the tropes of mythic America where individual courage invariably triumphs over collective evil. Film historian Richard Griffith speaks of Capra's "... reliance on sentimental conversation and the ultimate benevolence of ordinary America to resolve all deep conflicts." "Average America" is visualized as "... a tree-lined street, undistinguished frame houses surrounded by modest areas of grass, a few automobiles. For certain purposes, it assumed that all "real "Americans live in towns like this, and so great is the power of myth, even the born city-dweller is likely to believe vaguely that he too lives on this shady street, or comes from it, or is going to."
NYU professor Leonard Quart writes:
Although Capra's stature as a director had declined in the 1950s, his films underwent a revival in the 1960s:
French film historian John Raeburn, editor of "Cahiers du cinéma", noted that Capra's films were unknown in France, but there too his films underwent a fresh discovery by the public. He believes the reason for his renewed popularity had to do with his themes, which he made credible "an ideal conception of an American national character":
In 1982, the American Film Institute honored Capra by giving him their AFI Life Achievement Award. The event was used to create the television film, "The American Film Institute Salute to Frank Capra", hosted by James Stewart. In 1986, Capra received the National Medal of Arts. During his acceptance speech for the AFI award, Capra stressed his most important values:
Capra expanded on his visions in his 1971 autobiography, "The Name Above the Title":
The "Why We Fight" series earned Capra the Legion of Merit in 1943 and the Distinguished Service Medal in 1945.
In 1957, Capra was awarded the George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.
Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, by a vote of the city council, declared May 12, 1962 as "Frank Capra Day." George Sidney, President of the Directors Guild stated that "This is the first time in the history of Hollywood, that the city of Los Angeles has officially recognized a creative talent." At the event ceremony, director John Ford announced that Capra had also received an honorary Order of the British Empire (OBE) on the recommendation of Winston Churchill. Ford suggested publicly to Capra:
In 1966, Capra was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from his alma mater Caltech. (see section "Early Life", supra)
In 1975, Capra was awarded the Golden Anchor Award by the U.S Naval Reserve's Combat Camera Group for his contribution to World War II Naval photography and production of the "Why We Fight" series. The award ceremony included a video salute by President Ford. Attending were many of Capra's favorite actors including Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Pat O'Brien, Jean Arthur, and others.
An annual "It's a Wonderful Life" celebration that Capra attended in 1981, during which he said, "This is one of the proudest moments of my life," was recounted in "The New Yorker".
He was nominated six times for Best Director and seven times for Outstanding Production/Best Picture. Out of six nominations for Best Director, Capra received the award three times. He briefly held the record for winning the most Best Director Oscars when he won for the third time in 1938, until this record was matched by John Ford in 1941, and then later surpassed by Ford in 1952. William Wyler also matched this record upon winning his third Oscar in 1959.
The Academy Film Archive has preserved two of Capra's films, "The Matinee Idol" (1928) and "Two Down and One to Go!" (1945). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11369 |
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the "" (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the inaugural tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of the Second World War. The current champion is France, which won its second title at the 2018 tournament in Russia.
The current format involves a qualification phase, which takes place over the preceding three years, to determine which teams qualify for the tournament phase. In the tournament phase, 32 teams, including the automatically qualifying host nation(s), compete for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over about a month.
The 21 World Cup tournaments have been won by eight national teams. Brazil have won five times, and they are the only team to have played in every tournament. The other World Cup winners are Germany and Italy, with four titles each; Argentina, France, and inaugural winner Uruguay, with two titles each; and England and Spain, with one title each.
The World Cup is the most prestigious association football tournament in the world, as well as the most widely viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games. The cumulative viewership of all matches of the 2006 World Cup was estimated to be 26.29 billion with an estimated 715.1 million people watching the final match, a ninth of the entire population of the planet.
17 countries have hosted the World Cup. Brazil, France, Italy, Germany, and Mexico have each hosted twice, while Uruguay, Switzerland, Sweden, Chile, England, Argentina, Spain, the United States, Japan and South Korea (jointly), South Africa, and Russia have each hosted once. Qatar will host the 2022 tournament, and 2026 will be jointly hosted by Canada, the United States, and Mexico, which will give Mexico the distinction of being the first country to host games in three World Cups.
The world's first international football match was a challenge match played in Glasgow in 1872 between Scotland and England, which ended in a 0–0 draw. The first international tournament, the inaugural British Home Championship, took place in 1884. As football grew in popularity in other parts of the world at the start of the 20th century, it was held as a demonstration sport with no medals awarded at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics (however, the International Olympic Committee has retroactively upgraded their status to official events), and at the 1906 Intercalated Games.
After FIFA was founded in 1904, it tried to arrange an international football tournament between nations outside the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906. These were very early days for international football, and the official history of FIFA describes the competition as having been a failure.
At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, football became an official competition. Planned by The Football Association (FA), England's football governing body, the event was for amateur players only and was regarded suspiciously as a show rather than a competition. Great Britain (represented by the England national amateur football team) won the gold medals. They repeated the feat at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm.
With the Olympic event continuing to be contested only between amateur teams, Sir Thomas Lipton organised the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy tournament in Turin in 1909. The Lipton tournament was a championship between individual clubs (not national teams) from different nations, each one of which represented an entire nation. The competition is sometimes described as "The First World Cup", and featured the most prestigious professional club sides from Italy, Germany and Switzerland, but the FA of England refused to be associated with the competition and declined the offer to send a professional team. Lipton invited West Auckland, an amateur side from County Durham, to represent England instead. West Auckland won the tournament and returned in 1911 to successfully defend their title.
In 1914, FIFA agreed to recognise the Olympic tournament as a "world football championship for amateurs", and took responsibility for managing the event. This paved the way for the world's first intercontinental football competition, at the 1920 Summer Olympics, contested by Egypt and 13 European teams, and won by Belgium. Uruguay won the next two Olympic football tournaments in 1924 and 1928. Those were also the first two open world championships, as 1924 was the start of FIFA's professional era.
Due to the success of the Olympic football tournaments, FIFA, with President Jules Rimet as the driving force, again started looking at staging its own international tournament outside of the Olympics. On 28 May 1928, the FIFA Congress in Amsterdam decided to stage a world championship itself. With Uruguay now two-time official football world champions and to celebrate their centenary of independence in 1930, FIFA named Uruguay as the host country of the inaugural World Cup tournament.
The national associations of selected nations were invited to send a team, but the choice of Uruguay as a venue for the competition meant a long and costly trip across the Atlantic Ocean for European sides. Indeed, no European country pledged to send a team until two months before the start of the competition. Rimet eventually persuaded teams from Belgium, France, Romania, and Yugoslavia to make the trip. In total, 13 nations took part: seven from South America, four from Europe, and two from North America.
The first two World Cup matches took place simultaneously on 13 July 1930, and were won by France and the US, who defeated Mexico 4–1 and Belgium 3–0 respectively. The first goal in World Cup history was scored by Lucien Laurent of France. In the final, Uruguay defeated Argentina 4–2 in front of 93,000 people in Montevideo, and became the first nation to win the World Cup. After the creation of the World Cup, FIFA and the IOC disagreed over the status of amateur players, and so football was dropped from the 1932 Summer Olympics. Olympic football returned at the 1936 Summer Olympics, but was now overshadowed by the more prestigious World Cup.
The issues facing the early World Cup tournaments were the difficulties of intercontinental travel, and war. Few South American teams were willing to travel to Europe for the 1934 World Cup and all North and South American nations except Brazil and Cuba boycotted the 1938 tournament. Brazil was the only South American team to compete in both. The 1942 and 1946 competitions, which Germany and Brazil sought to host, were cancelled due to World War II and its aftermath.
The 1950 World Cup, held in Brazil, was the first to include British participants. British teams withdrew from FIFA in 1920, partly out of unwillingness to play against the countries they had been at war with, and partly as a protest against foreign influence on football, but rejoined in 1946 following FIFA's invitation. The tournament also saw the return of 1930 champions Uruguay, who had boycotted the previous two World Cups. Uruguay won the tournament again after defeating the host nation Brazil, in the match called "Maracanazo" (Portuguese: "Maracanaço").
In the tournaments between 1934 and 1978, 16 teams competed in each tournament, except in 1938, when Austria was absorbed into Germany after qualifying, leaving the tournament with 15 teams, and in 1950, when India, Scotland, and Turkey withdrew, leaving the tournament with 13 teams. Most of the participating nations were from Europe and South America, with a small minority from North America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. These teams were usually defeated easily by the European and South American teams. Until 1982, the only teams from outside Europe and South America to advance out of the first round were: USA, semi-finalists in 1930; Cuba, quarter-finalists in 1938; North Korea, quarter-finalists in 1966; and Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1970.
The tournament was expanded to 24 teams in 1982, and then to 32 in 1998, also allowing more teams from Africa, Asia and North America to take part. Since then, teams from these regions have enjoyed more success, with several having reached the quarter-finals: Mexico, quarter-finalists in 1986; Cameroon, quarter-finalists in 1990; South Korea, finishing in fourth place in 2002; Senegal, along with USA, both quarter-finalists in 2002; Ghana, quarter-finalists in 2010; and Costa Rica, quarter-finalists in 2014. Nevertheless, European and South American teams continue to dominate, e.g., the quarter-finalists in 1994, 1998, 2006 and 2018 were all from Europe or South America and so were the finalists of all tournaments so far.
Two hundred teams entered the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification rounds; 198 nations attempted to qualify for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, while a record 204 countries entered qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
In October 2013, Sepp Blatter spoke of guaranteeing the Caribbean Football Union's region a position in the World Cup. In the edition of 25 October 2013 of the "FIFA Weekly" Blatter wrote that: "From a purely sporting perspective, I would like to see globalisation finally taken seriously, and the African and Asian national associations accorded the status they deserve at the FIFA World Cup. It cannot be that the European and South American confederations lay claim to the majority of the berths at the World Cup." Those two remarks suggested to commentators that Blatter could be putting himself forward for re-election to the FIFA Presidency.
Following the magazine's publication, Blatter's would-be opponent for the FIFA Presidency, UEFA President Michel Platini, responded that he intended to extend the World Cup to 40 national associations, increasing the number of participants by eight. Platini said that he would allocate an additional berth to UEFA, two each to the Asian Football Confederation and the Confederation of African Football, two shared between CONCACAF and CONMEBOL, and a guaranteed place for the Oceania Football Confederation. Platini was clear about why he wanted to expand the World Cup. He said: "[The World Cup is] not based on the quality of the teams because you don't have the best 32 at the World Cup ... but it's a good compromise. ... It's a political matter so why not have more Africans? The competition is to bring all the people of all the world. If you don't give the possibility to participate, they don't improve."
In October 2016, FIFA president Gianni Infantino stated his support for a 48-team World Cup in 2026. On 10 January 2017, FIFA confirmed the 2026 World Cup will have 48 finalist teams.
By May 2015, the games were under a particularly dark cloud because of the 2015 FIFA corruption case, allegations and criminal charges of bribery, fraud and money laundering to corrupt the issuing of media and marketing rights (rigged bids) for FIFA games, with FIFA officials accused of taking bribes totaling more than $150 million over 24 years. In late May, the US Department of Justice announced a 47-count indictment with charges of racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy against 14 people. Arrests of over a dozen FIFA officials were made since that time, particularly on 29 May and 3 December. By the end of May 2015, a total of nine FIFA officials and five executives of sports and broadcasting markets had already been charged on corruption. At the time, FIFA president Sepp Blatter announced he would relinquish his position in February 2016.
On 4 June 2015 Chuck Blazer while co-operating with the FBI and the Swiss authorities admitted that he and the other members of FIFA's then-executive committee were bribed in order to promote the 1998 and 2010 World Cups. On 10 June 2015 Swiss authorities seized computer data from the offices of Sepp Blatter. The same day, FIFA postponed the bidding process for the 2026 FIFA World Cup in light of the allegations surrounding bribery in the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 tournaments. Then-secretary general Jérôme Valcke stated, "Due to the situation, I think it's nonsense to start any bidding process for the time being." On 28 October 2015, Blatter and FIFA VP Michel Platini, a potential candidate for presidency, were suspended for 90 days; both maintained their innocence in statements made to the news media.
On 3 December 2015 two FIFA vice-presidents were arrested on suspicion of bribery in the same Zurich hotel where seven FIFA officials had been arrested in May. An additional 16 indictments by the US Department of Justice were announced on the same day.
An equivalent tournament for women's football, the FIFA Women's World Cup, was first held in 1991 in China. The women's tournament is smaller in scale and profile than the men's, but is growing; the number of entrants for the 2007 tournament was 120, more than double that of 1991.
Men's football has been included in every Summer Olympic Games except 1896 and 1932. Unlike many other sports, the men's football tournament at the Olympics is not a top-level tournament, and since 1992, an under-23 tournament with each team allowed three over-age players. Women's football made its Olympic debut in 1996.
The FIFA Confederations Cup was a tournament held one year before the World Cup at the World Cup host nation(s) as a dress rehearsal for the upcoming World Cup. It is contested by the winners of each of the six FIFA confederation championships, along with the FIFA World Cup champion and the host country. The first edition took place in 1992 and the last edition was played in 2017. In March 2019, FIFA confirmed that the tournament would no longer be active owing to an expansion of the FIFA Club World Cup in 2021.
FIFA also organises international tournaments for youth football (FIFA U-20 World Cup, FIFA U-17 World Cup, FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup, FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup), club football (FIFA Club World Cup), and football variants such as futsal (FIFA Futsal World Cup) and beach soccer (FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup). The latter three do not have a women's version, although a FIFA Women's Club World Cup has been proposed.
The FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup is held the year before each Women's World Cup and both tournaments are awarded in a single bidding process. The U-20 tournament serves as a dress rehearsal for the larger competition.
From 1930 to 1970, the "Jules Rimet Trophy" was awarded to the World Cup winning team. It was originally simply known as the "World Cup" or "Coupe du Monde", but in 1946 it was renamed after the FIFA president Jules Rimet who set up the first tournament. In 1970, Brazil's third victory in the tournament entitled them to keep the trophy permanently. However, the trophy was stolen in 1983 and has never been recovered, apparently melted down by the thieves.
After 1970, a new trophy, known as the FIFA World Cup Trophy, was designed. The experts of FIFA, coming from seven countries, evaluated the 53 presented models, finally opting for the work of the Italian designer Silvio Gazzaniga. The new trophy is high, made of solid 18 carat (75%) gold and weighs . The base contains two layers of semi-precious malachite while the bottom side of the trophy bears the engraved year and name of each FIFA World Cup winner since 1974. The description of the trophy by Gazzaniga was: "The lines spring out from the base, rising in spirals, stretching out to receive the world. From the remarkable dynamic tensions of the compact body of the sculpture rise the figures of two athletes at the stirring moment of victory."
This new trophy is not awarded to the winning nation permanently. World Cup winners retain the trophy only until the post-match celebration is finished. They are awarded a gold-plated replica rather than the solid gold original immediately afterwards.
Currently, all members (players, coaches, and managers) of the top three teams receive medals with an insignia of the World Cup Trophy; winners' (gold), runners-up' (silver), and third-place (bronze). In the 2002 edition, fourth-place medals were awarded to hosts South Korea. Before the 1978 tournament, medals were only awarded to the eleven players on the pitch at the end of the final and the third-place match. In November 2007, FIFA announced that all members of World Cup-winning squads between 1930 and 1974 were to be retroactively awarded winners' medals.
Since 2006, winners of the competition are also awarded the right to wear the FIFA Champions Badge, up until the time at which the winner of the next competition is decided.
Since the second World Cup in 1934, qualifying tournaments have been held to thin the field for the final tournament. They are held within the six FIFA continental zones (Africa, Asia, North and Central America and Caribbean, South America, Oceania, and Europe), overseen by their respective confederations. For each tournament, FIFA decides the number of places awarded to each of the continental zones beforehand, generally based on the relative strength of the confederations' teams.
The qualification process can start as early as almost three years before the final tournament and last over a two-year period. The formats of the qualification tournaments differ between confederations. Usually, one or two places are awarded to winners of intercontinental play-offs. For example, the winner of the Oceanian zone and the fifth-placed team from the Asian zone entered a play-off for a spot in the 2010 World Cup. From the 1938 World Cup onwards, host nations receive automatic qualification to the final tournament. This right was also granted to the defending champions between 1938 and 2002, but was withdrawn from the 2006 FIFA World Cup onward, requiring the champions to qualify. Brazil, winners in 2002, were the first defending champions to play qualifying matches.
The current final tournament has been used since 1998 and features 32 national teams competing over the course of a month in the host nation(s). There are two stages: the group stage followed by the knockout stage.
In the group stage, teams compete within eight groups of four teams each. Eight teams are seeded, including the hosts, with the other seeded teams selected using a formula based on the FIFA World Rankings and/or performances in recent World Cups, and drawn to separate groups. The other teams are assigned to different "pots", usually based on geographical criteria, and teams in each pot are drawn at random to the eight groups. Since 1998, constraints have been applied to the draw to ensure that no group contains more than two European teams or more than one team from any other confederation.
Each group plays a round-robin tournament, in which each team is scheduled for three matches against other teams in the same group. This means that a total of six matches are played within a group. The last round of matches of each group is scheduled at the same time to preserve fairness among all four teams. The top two teams from each group advance to the knockout stage. Points are used to rank the teams within a group. Since 1994, three points have been awarded for a win, one for a draw and none for a loss (before, winners received two points).
If one considers all possible outcomes (win, draw, loss) for all six matches in a group, there are 729 (= 36) outcome combinations possible. However, 207 of these combinations lead to ties between the second and third places. In such case, the ranking among these teams is determined as follows:
The knockout stage is a single-elimination tournament in which teams play each other in one-off matches, with extra time and penalty shootouts used to decide the winner if necessary. It begins with the round of 16 (or the second round) in which the winner of each group plays against the runner-up of another group. This is followed by the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, the third-place match (contested by the losing semi-finalists), and the final.
On 10 January 2017, FIFA approved a new format, the 48-team World Cup (to accommodate more teams), which consists of 16 groups of three teams each, with two teams qualifying from each group, to form a round of 32 knockout stage, to be implemented by 2026.
Early World Cups were given to countries at meetings of FIFA's congress. The locations were controversial because South America and Europe were by far the two centres of strength in football and travel between them required three weeks by boat. The decision to hold the first World Cup in Uruguay, for example, led to only four European nations competing. The next two World Cups were both held in Europe. The decision to hold the second of these in France was disputed, as the South American countries understood that the location would alternate between the two continents. Both Argentina and Uruguay thus boycotted the 1938 FIFA World Cup.
Since the 1958 FIFA World Cup, to avoid future boycotts or controversy, FIFA began a pattern of alternating the hosts between the Americas and Europe, which continued until the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The 2002 FIFA World Cup, hosted jointly by South Korea and Japan, was the first one held in Asia, and the first tournament with multiple hosts. South Africa became the first African nation to host the World Cup in 2010. The 2014 FIFA World Cup was hosted by Brazil, the first held in South America since Argentina 1978, and was the first occasion where consecutive World Cups were held outside Europe.
The host country is now chosen in a vote by FIFA's Council. This is done under an exhaustive ballot system. The national football association of a country desiring to host the event receives a "Hosting Agreement" from FIFA, which explains the steps and requirements that are expected from a strong bid. The bidding association also receives a form, the submission of which represents the official confirmation of the candidacy. After this, a FIFA designated group of inspectors visit the country to identify that the country meets the requirements needed to host the event and a report on the country is produced. The decision on who will host the World Cup is usually made six or seven years in advance of the tournament. However, there have been occasions where the hosts of multiple future tournaments were announced at the same time, as was the case for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, which were awarded to Russia and Qatar, with Qatar becoming the first Middle Eastern country to host the tournament.
For the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, the final tournament is rotated between confederations, allowing only countries from the chosen confederation (Africa in 2010, South America in 2014) to bid to host the tournament. The rotation policy was introduced after the controversy surrounding Germany's victory over South Africa in the vote to host the 2006 tournament. However, the policy of continental rotation will not continue beyond 2014, so any country, except those belonging to confederations that hosted the two preceding tournaments, can apply as hosts for World Cups starting from 2018. This is partly to avoid a similar scenario to the bidding process for the 2014 tournament, where Brazil was the only official bidder.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup was chosen to be held in the United States, Canada and Mexico, marking the first time a World Cup has been shared by three host nations. The 2026 tournament will be the biggest World Cup ever held, with 48 teams playing 80 matches. Sixty matches will take place in the US, including all matches from the quarter-finals onward, while Canada and Mexico will host 10 games each.
Six of the eight champions have won one of their titles while playing in their own homeland, the exceptions being Brazil, who finished as runners-up after losing the deciding match on home soil in 1950 and lost their semi-final against Germany in 2014, and Spain, which reached the second round on home soil in 1982. England (1966) won its only title while playing as a host nation. Uruguay (1930), Italy (1934), Argentina (1978), and
France (1998) won their first titles as host nations but have gone on to win again, while Germany (1974) won their second title on home soil.
Other nations have also been successful when hosting the tournament. Switzerland (quarter-finals 1954), Sweden (runners-up in 1958), Chile (third place in 1962), South Korea (fourth place in 2002), and Mexico (quarter-finals in 1970 and 1986) all have their best results when serving as hosts. So far, South Africa (2010) has been the only host nation to fail to advance beyond the first round.
The best-attended single match, shown in the last three columns, has been the final in 11 of the 21 World Cups . Another match or matches drew more attendance than the final in 1930, 1938, 1958, 1962, 1970–1982, 1990, and 2006.
The World Cup was first televised in 1954 and is now the most widely viewed and followed sporting event in the world. The cumulative viewership of all matches of the 2006 World Cup is estimated to be 26.29 billion. 715.1 million individuals watched the final match of this tournament (a ninth of the entire population of the planet). The 2006 World Cup draw, which decided the distribution of teams into groups, was watched by 300 million viewers. The World Cup attracts many sponsors such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Adidas. For these companies and many more, being a sponsor strongly impacts their global brands. Host countries typically experience a multimillion-dollar revenue increase from the month-long event.
The governing body of the sport, FIFA, generated $4.8 billion in revenue from the 2014 tournament, and $6.1 billion from the 2018 tournament.
Each FIFA World Cup since 1966 has its own mascot or logo. "World Cup Willie", the mascot for the 1966 competition, was the first World Cup mascot. World Cups feature official match balls specially designed for each tournament. Each World Cup also has an official song, which have been performed by artists ranging from Shakira to Will Smith. Other songs, such as “Nessun dorma”, performed by The Three Tenors at four World Cup concerts, have also become identified with the tournament.
Forming a partnership with FIFA in 1970, Panini published its first sticker album for the 1970 World Cup. Since then, collecting and trading stickers and cards has become part of the World Cup experience, especially for the younger generation. FIFA has also licensed World Cup video games since 1986, with Electronic Arts the current license holder.
The World Cup even has a statistically significant effect on birth rates, the male/female sex ratio of newborns, and heart attacks in nations whose national teams are competing.
In all, 79 nations have played in at least one World Cup. Of these, eight national teams have won the World Cup, and they have added stars to their badges, with each star representing a World Cup victory. (Uruguay, however, choose to display four stars on their badge, representing their two gold medals at the 1924 and 1928 Summer Olympics and their two World Cup titles in 1930 and 1950).
With five titles, Brazil are the most successful World Cup team and also the only nation to have played in every World Cup (21) to date. Brazil were also the first team to win the World Cup for the third (1970), fourth (1994) and fifth (2002) time. Italy (1934 and 1938) and Brazil (1958 and 1962) are the only nations to have won consecutive titles. West Germany (1982–1990) and Brazil (1994–2002) are the only nations to appear in three consecutive World Cup finals. Germany has made the most top-four finishes (13), medals (12), as well as the most finals (8).
To date, the final of the World Cup has only been contested by teams from the UEFA (Europe) and CONMEBOL (South America) confederations. European nations have won twelve titles, while South American have won nine. Only two teams from outside these two continents have ever reached the semi-finals of the competition: United States (North, Central America and Caribbean) in 1930 and South Korea (Asia) in 2002. The best result of an African team is reaching the quarter-finals: Cameroon in 1990, Senegal in 2002, and Ghana in 2010. Only one Oceanian qualifier, Australia in 2006, has advanced to the second round.
Brazil, Argentina, Spain and Germany are the only teams to win a World Cup outside their continental confederation; Brazil came out victorious in Europe (1958), North America (1970 and 1994) and Asia (2002). Argentina won a World Cup in North America in 1986, while Spain won in Africa in 2010. In 2014, Germany became the first European team to win in the Americas. Only on five occasions have consecutive World Cups been won by teams from the same continent, and currently it is the first time with four champions in a row from the same continental confederation. Italy and Brazil successfully defended their titles in 1938 and 1962 respectively, while Italy's triumph in 2006 has been followed by wins for Spain in 2010, Germany in 2014 and France in 2018. Currently, it is also the first time that one of the currently winning continents (Europe) is ahead of the other (South America) by more than one championship.
At the end of each World Cup, awards are presented to the players and teams for accomplishments other than their final team positions in the tournament. There are currently six awards:
An "All-Star Team" consisting of the best players of the tournament has also been announced for each tournament since 1998.
Three players share the record for playing in the most World Cups; Mexico's Antonio Carbajal (1950–1966) and Rafael Márquez (2002–2018); and Germany's Lothar Matthäus (1982–1998) all played in five tournaments. Matthäus has played the most World Cup matches overall, with 25 appearances. Brazil's Djalma Santos (1954–1962), West Germany's Franz Beckenbauer (1966–1974), and Germany's Philipp Lahm (2006–2014) are the only players to be named to three World Cup All-Star Teams.
Miroslav Klose of Germany (2002–2014) is the all-time top scorer at the World Cup with 16 goals. He broke Ronaldo of Brazil's record of 15 goals (1998–2006) during the 2014 semi-final match against Brazil. West Germany's Gerd Müller (1970–1974) is third, with 14 goals. The fourth-placed goalscorer, France's Just Fontaine, holds the record for the most goals scored in a single World Cup; all his 13 goals were scored in the 1958 tournament.
In November 2007, FIFA announced that all members of World Cup-winning squads between 1930 and 1974 were to be retroactively awarded winners' medals. This made Brazil's Pelé the only player to have won three World Cup winners' medals (1958, 1962, and 1970, although he did not play in the 1962 final due to injury), with 20 other players who have won two winners' medals. Seven players have collected all three types of World Cup medals (winners', runner- ups', and third-place); five players were from West Germany's squad of 1966–1974 including Franz Beckenbauer, Jürgen Grabowski, Horst-Dieter Höttges, Sepp Maier, and Wolfgang Overath (1966–1974), Italy's Franco Baresi (1982, 1990, 1994) and the most recent has been Miroslav Klose of Germany (2002–2014) with four consecutive medals.
Brazil's Mário Zagallo, West Germany's Franz Beckenbauer and France's Didier Deschamps are the only people to date to win the World Cup as both player and head coach. Zagallo won in 1958 and 1962 as a player and in 1970 as head coach. Beckenbauer won in 1974 as captain and in 1990 as head coach, and Deschamps repeated the feat in 2018, after having won in 1998 as captain. Italy's Vittorio Pozzo is the only head coach to ever win two World Cups (1934 and 1938). All World Cup-winning head coaches were natives of the country they coached to victory.
Among the national teams, Germany and Brazil have played the most World Cup matches (109), Germany appeared in the most finals (8), semi-finals (13), and quarter-finals (16), while Brazil has appeared in the most World Cups (21), has the most wins (73) and has scored the most goals (229). The two teams have played each other twice in the World Cup, in the 2002 final and in the 2014 semi-final. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11370 |
Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus
Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, surnamed Cunctator ( 280–203 BC), was a Roman statesman and general of the third century BC. He was consul five times (233, 228, 215, 214, and 209 BC) and was appointed dictator in 221 and 217 BC. He was censor in 230 BC. His agnomen, "Cunctator", usually translated as "the delayer", refers to the strategy that he employed against Hannibal's forces during the Second Punic War. Facing an outstanding commander with superior numbers, he pursued a then-novel strategy of targeting the enemy's supply lines, and accepting only smaller engagements on favourable ground, rather than risking his entire army on direct confrontation with Hannibal himself. As a result, he is regarded as the originator of many tactics used in guerrilla warfare.
Born at Rome c. 280 BC, Fabius was a descendant of the ancient patrician Fabia gens. He was the son or grandson of Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges, three times consul and "princeps senatus", and grandson or great-grandson of Quintus Fabius Maximus Rullianus, a hero of the Samnite Wars, who like Verrucosus held five consulships, as well as the offices of dictator and censor. Many earlier ancestors had also been consuls. His cognomen, "Verrucosus", or "warty", used to distinguish him from other members of his family, derived from a wart on his upper lip.
According to Plutarch, Fabius possessed a mild temper and slowness in speaking. As a child, he had difficulties in learning, engaged in sports with other children cautiously and appeared submissive in his interactions with others. All the above were perceived by those who knew him superficially to be signs of inferiority. However, according to Plutarch, these traits proceeded from stability, greatness of mind, and lion-likeness of temper. By the time he reached adulthood and was roused by active life, his virtues exerted themselves; consequently, his lack of energy displayed during his earlier years was revealed as a result of a lack of passion and his slowness was recognised as a sign of prudence and firmness.
While still a youth in 265 BC, Fabius was consecrated an augur. It is unknown whether he participated in the First Punic War, fought between the Roman Republic and Carthage from 264 to 241 BC, or what his role might have been. Fabius' political career began in the years following that war. He was probably quaestor in 237 or 236 BC, and curule aedile about 235. During his first consulship, in 233 BC, Fabius was awarded a triumph for his victory over the Ligurians, whom he defeated and drove into the Alps. He was censor in 230, then consul a second time in 228. It is possible that he held the office of dictator for a first time around this time: according to Livy, Fabius's tenure of the dictatorship in 217 was his second term in that office, with Gaius Flaminius as his deputy and magister equitum during the first term: however Plutarch suggests that Flaminius was deputy instead to Marcus Minucius Rufus - presumably Fabius's great political rival of that name, who later served as deputy to Fabius himself (see below). It is of course possible that Flaminius was successively deputy to both, after Minucius's apparently premature deposition following bad augural omens: and also possible that little of note (other than, possibly, holding elections during the absence of consuls) was accomplished during either dictatorship.
According to Livy, in 218 BC Fabius took part in an embassy to Carthage, sent to demand redress for the capture of the supposedly neutral town of Saguntum in Spain. After the delegation had received the Carthaginians' reply, it was Fabius himself who, addressing the Carthaginian senate, issued a formal declaration of war between Carthage and the Roman Republic. However, Cassius Dio, followed by Zonaras, calls the ambassador "Marcus Fabius", suggesting that it was his cousin, Marcus Fabius Buteo, who issued the declaration of war against the Carthaginians.
When the Consul Gaius Flaminius was killed during the disastrous Roman defeat at the Battle of Lake Trasimene in 217 BC, panic swept Rome. With Consular armies destroyed in two major battles, and Hannibal approaching Rome's gates, the Romans feared the imminent destruction of their city. The Roman Senate decided to appoint a dictator, and chose Fabius for the role - possibly for the second time, though evidence of a previous term seems to be conflicting - in part due to his advanced age and experience. However, he was not allowed to appoint his own magister equitum; instead, the Romans chose a political enemy, Marcus Minucius. Then Fabius quickly sought to calm the Roman people by asserting himself as a strong Dictator at the moment of what was perceived to be the worst crisis in Roman history. He asked the Senate to allow him to ride on horseback, which Dictators were never allowed to do. He then caused himself to be accompanied by the full complement of twenty-four lictors, and ordered the surviving Consul, Gnaeus Servilius Geminus, to dismiss his lictors (in essence, surrendering his office), and to present himself before Fabius as a private citizen.
Plutarch tells us that Fabius believed that the disaster at Lake Trasimene was due, in part, to the fact that the gods had become neglected. Before that battle, a series of omens had been witnessed, including a series of lightning bolts, which Fabius had believed were warnings from the gods. He had warned Flaminius of this, but Flaminius had ignored the warnings. And so Fabius, as Dictator, next sought to please the gods. He ordered a massive sacrifice of the whole product of the next harvest season throughout Italy, in particular that of cows, goats, swine, and sheep. In addition, he ordered that musical festivities be celebrated, and then told his fellow citizens to each spend a precise sum of 333 sestertii and 333 denarii. Plutarch isn't sure exactly how Fabius came up with this number, although he believes it was to honor the perfection of the number three, as it is the first of the odd numbers, and one of the first of the prime numbers. It is not known if Fabius truly believed that these actions had won the gods over to the Roman side, although the actions probably did (as intended) convince the average Roman that the gods had finally been won over.
Fabius respected Hannibal's military skill and so refused to meet him in a pitched battle. Instead, he kept his troops close to Hannibal, hoping to exhaust him in a long war of attrition. Fabius was able to harass the Carthaginian foraging parties, limiting Hannibal's ability to wreak destruction, while conserving his own military force. The delaying tactics involved not directly engaging Hannibal, while also exercising a "scorched earth" practice to prevent Hannibal's forces from obtaining grain and other resources.
The Romans were unimpressed with this defensive strategy and at first gave Fabius his epithet Cunctator (delayer) as an insult. The strategy was in part ruined because of a lack of unity in the command of the Roman army, since Fabius' Master of the Horse, Minucius, was a political enemy of Fabius. At one point, Fabius was called by the priests to assist with certain sacrifices, and as such, Fabius left the command of the army in the hands of Minucius during his absence. Fabius had told Minucius not to attack Hannibal in his absence, but Minucius disobeyed and attacked anyway. The attack, though of no strategic value, resulted in the retreat of several enemy units, and so the Roman people, desperate for good news, believed Minucius to be a hero. On hearing of this, Fabius became enraged, and, as Dictator, could have ordered Minucius' execution for his disobedience. One of the Plebeian Tribunes (chief representatives of the people) for the year, Metilius, was a partisan of Minucius, and as such he sought to use his power to help Minucius. The Plebeian Tribunes were the only magistrates independent of the Dictator, and so with his protection, Minucius was relatively safe. Plutarch states that Metilius "boldly applied himself to the people in the behalf of Minucius", and had Minucius granted powers equivalent to those of Fabius. By this, Plutarch probably means that as a Plebeian Tribune, Metilius had the Plebeian Council, a popular assembly which only Tribunes could preside over, grant Minucius quasi-dictatorial powers.
Fabius did not attempt to fight the promotion of Minucius, but rather decided to wait until Minucius' rashness caused him to run headlong into some disaster. He realized what would happen when Minucius was defeated in battle by Hannibal. Fabius, we are told, reminded Minucius that it was Hannibal, and not he, who was the enemy. Minucius proposed that they share the joint control of the army, with command rotating between the two every other day. Fabius rejected this, and instead let Minucius command half of the army, while he commanded the other half. Minucius openly claimed that Fabius was cowardly because he failed to confront the Carthaginian forces. Near the present-day town of Larino in the Molise (then called Larinum), Hannibal had taken up position in a town called Gerione. In the valley between Larino and Gerione, Minucius decided to make a broad frontal attack on Hannibal's troops. Several thousand men were involved on either side. It appeared that the Roman troops were winning, but Hannibal had set a trap. Soon the Roman troops were being slaughtered. Upon seeing the ambush of Minucius' army, Fabius cried "O Hercules! how much sooner than I expected, though later than he seemed to desire, hath Minucius destroyed himself!" On ordering his army to join the battle and rescue their fellow Romans, Fabius exclaimed "We must make haste to rescue Minucius, who is a valiant man, and a lover of his country."
Fabius rushed to his co-commander's assistance and Hannibal's forces immediately retreated. After the battle, there was some feeling that there would be conflict between Minucius and Fabius; however, the younger soldier marched his men to Fabius' encampment and is reported to have said, "My father gave me life. Today you saved my life. You are my second father. I recognize your superior abilities as a commander." When Fabius' term as Dictator ended, consular government was restored, and Gnaeus Servilius Geminus and Marcus Atilius Regulus assumed the consulship for the remainder of the year.
The once looked down upon tactics employed by Fabius came then to be respected. It is said, asserts Plutarch, that even Hannibal acknowledged and feared the Fabian strategy and the Roman inexhaustible manpower. After Fabius lured him away from Apulia into the Bruttian territory and then proceeded to besiege Tarentum by treachery in 209 BC, Hannibal commented, "It seems that the Romans have found another Hannibal, for we have lost Tarentum in the same way that we took it."
Shortly after Fabius had laid down his dictatorship, Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus were elected as consuls. They rallied the people through the assemblies, and won their support for his plan to abandon Fabius' strategy, and engage Hannibal directly. Varro's rashness did not surprise Fabius, but when Fabius learned of the size of the army (eighty-eight thousand soldiers) that Varro had raised, he became quite concerned. Unlike the losses that had been suffered by Minucius, a major loss by Varro had the potential to kill so many soldiers that Rome might have had no further resources with which to continue the war. Fabius had warned the other consul for the year, Aemilius Paullus, to make sure that Varro remained unable to directly engage Hannibal. According to Plutarch, Paullus replied to Fabius that he feared the votes in Rome more than Hannibal's army.
When word reached Rome of the disastrous Roman defeat under Varro and Paullus at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, the Senate and the People of Rome turned to Fabius for guidance. They had believed his strategy to be flawed before, but now they thought him to be as wise as the gods. He walked the streets of Rome, assured as to eventual Roman victory, in an attempt to comfort his fellow Romans. Without his support, the senate might have remained too frightened to even meet. He placed guards at the gates of the city to stop the frightened Romans from fleeing, and regulated mourning activities. He set times and places for this mourning, and ordered that each family perform such observances within their own private walls, and that the mourning should be complete within a month; following the completion of these mourning rituals, the entire city was purified of its blood-guilt in the deaths. Although he did not again hold the office of dictator - and indeed, it was granted to others over him - he might as well have been one unofficially at this time, because whatever measures he proposed were immediately adopted with little or no further debate.
"Cunctator" became an honorific title, and his delaying tactic was followed in Italy for the rest of the war. Fabius' own military success was small, aside from the reconquest of Tarentum in 209 BC. For this victory, Plutarch tells us, he was awarded a second triumph that was even more splendid than the first. When Marcus Livius Macatus, the governor of Tarentum, claimed the merit of recovering the town, Fabius rejoined, "Certainly, had you not lost it, I would have never retaken it." After serving as Dictator, he served as a Consul twice more (in 215 BC and 214 BC), and for a fifth time in 209 BC. He was also Chief Augur (at a very young age) and Pontifex, but never Pontifex Maximus according to Gaius Stern (citing Livy on Fabius). The holding of seats in the two highest colleges was not repeated until either Julius Caesar or possibly Sulla.
In the senate, he opposed the young and ambitious Scipio Africanus, who wanted to carry the war to Africa. Fabius continued to argue that confronting Hannibal directly was too dangerous. Scipio planned to take Roman forces to Carthage itself and force Hannibal to return to Africa to defend the city. Scipio was eventually given limited approval, despite continuous opposition from Fabius, who blocked levies and restricted Scipio's access to troops. Fabius wished to ensure that sufficient forces remained to defend Roman territory if Scipio was defeated. Fabius became gravely ill and died in 203 BC, shortly after Hannibal's army left Italy, and before the eventual Roman victory over Hannibal at the Battle of Zama won by Scipio.
Part of his eulogy is preserved on a fragment, which praised his delaying strategy in his altercations with Hannibal during the Second Punic War. The inscription reads as follows: "...[as censor] he conducted the first revision of the senate membership and held committal elections in the consulship of Marcus Junius Pera and Marcus Barbula; he besieged and recaptured Tarentum and the strong-hold of Hannibal, and [obtained enormous booty?]; he won surpassing glory by his military [exploits?]."
Later, he became a legendary figure and the model of a tough, courageous Roman, and was bestowed the honorific title, "The Shield of Rome" (similar to Marcus Claudius Marcellus being named the "Sword of Rome"). According to Ennius, "unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem" – "one man, by delaying, restored the state to us." Virgil, in the Aeneid, has Aeneas' father Anchises mention Fabius Maximus while in Hades as the greatest of the many great Fabii, quoting the same line. While Hannibal is mentioned in the company of history's greatest generals, military professionals have bestowed Fabius' name on an entire strategic doctrine known as "Fabian strategy", and George Washington has been called "the American Fabius." Mikhail Kutuzov has likewise been called "the Russian Fabius" for his strategy against Napoleon.
According to its own ancient legend, the Roman princely family of Massimo descends from Fabius Maximus. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11371 |
Floating-point arithmetic
In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic using formulaic representation of real numbers as an approximation to support a trade-off between range and precision. For this reason, floating-point computation is often found in systems which include very small and very large real numbers, which require fast processing times. A number is, in general, represented approximately to a fixed number of significant digits (the significand) and scaled using an exponent in some fixed base; the base for the scaling is normally two, ten, or sixteen. A number that can be represented exactly is of the following form:
where significand is an integer, base is an integer greater than or equal to two, and exponent is also an integer.
For example:
The term "floating point" refers to the fact that a number's radix point ("decimal point", or, more commonly in computers, "binary point") can "float"; that is, it can be placed anywhere relative to the significant digits of the number. This position is indicated as the exponent component, and thus the floating-point representation can be thought of as a kind of scientific notation.
A floating-point system can be used to represent, with a fixed number of digits, numbers of different orders of magnitude: e.g. the distance between galaxies or the diameter of an atomic nucleus can be expressed with the same unit of length. The result of this dynamic range is that the numbers that can be represented are not uniformly spaced; the difference between two consecutive representable numbers varies with the chosen scale.
Over the years, a variety of floating-point representations have been used in computers. In 1985, the IEEE 754 Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic was established, and since the 1990s, the most commonly encountered representations are those defined by the IEEE.
The speed of floating-point operations, commonly measured in terms of FLOPS, is an important characteristic of a computer system, especially for applications that involve intensive mathematical calculations.
A floating-point unit (FPU, colloquially a math coprocessor) is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating-point numbers.
A number representation specifies some way of encoding a number, usually as a string of digits.
There are several mechanisms by which strings of digits can represent numbers. In common mathematical notation, the digit string can be of any length, and the location of the radix point is indicated by placing an explicit "point" character (dot or comma) there. If the radix point is not specified, then the string implicitly represents an integer and the unstated radix point would be off the right-hand end of the string, next to the least significant digit. In fixed-point systems, a position in the string is specified for the radix point. So a fixed-point scheme might be to use a string of 8 decimal digits with the decimal point in the middle, whereby "00012345" would represent 0001.2345.
In scientific notation, the given number is scaled by a power of 10, so that it lies within a certain range—typically between 1 and 10, with the radix point appearing immediately after the first digit. The scaling factor, as a power of ten, is then indicated separately at the end of the number. For example, the orbital period of Jupiter's moon Io is seconds, a value that would be represented in standard-form scientific notation as seconds.
Floating-point representation is similar in concept to scientific notation. Logically, a floating-point number consists of:
To derive the value of the floating-point number, the "significand" is multiplied by the "base" raised to the power of the "exponent", equivalent to shifting the radix point from its implied position by a number of places equal to the value of the exponent—to the right if the exponent is positive or to the left if the exponent is negative.
Using base-10 (the familiar decimal notation) as an example, the number , which has ten decimal digits of precision, is represented as the significand together with 5 as the exponent. To determine the actual value, a decimal point is placed after the first digit of the significand and the result is multiplied by to give , or . In storing such a number, the base (10) need not be stored, since it will be the same for the entire range of supported numbers, and can thus be inferred.
Symbolically, this final value is:
where is the significand (ignoring any implied decimal point), is the precision (the number of digits in the significand), is the base (in our example, this is the number "ten"), and is the exponent.
Historically, several number bases have been used for representing floating-point numbers, with base two (binary) being the most common, followed by base ten (decimal floating point), and other less common varieties, such as base sixteen (hexadecimal floating point), base eight (octal floating point), base four (quaternary floating point), base three (balanced ternary floating point) and even base 256 and base .
A floating-point number is a rational number, because it can be represented as one integer divided by another; for example is (145/100)×1000 or /100. The base determines the fractions that can be represented; for instance, 1/5 cannot be represented exactly as a floating-point number using a binary base, but 1/5 can be represented exactly using a decimal base (, or ). However, 1/3 cannot be represented exactly by either binary (0.010101...) or decimal (0.333...), but in base 3, it is trivial (0.1 or 1×3−1) . The occasions on which infinite expansions occur depend on the base and its prime factors.
The way in which the significand (including its sign) and exponent are stored in a computer is implementation-dependent. The common IEEE formats are described in detail later and elsewhere, but as an example, in the binary single-precision (32-bit) floating-point representation, formula_4, and so the significand is a string of 24 bits. For instance, the number π's first 33 bits are:
In this binary expansion, let us denote the positions from 0 (leftmost bit, or most significant bit) to 32 (rightmost bit). The 24-bit significand will stop at position 23, shown as the underlined bit above. The next bit, at position 24, is called the "round bit" or "rounding bit". It is used to round the 33-bit approximation to the nearest 24-bit number (there are specific rules for halfway values, which is not the case here). This bit, which is in this example, is added to the integer formed by the leftmost 24 bits, yielding:
When this is stored in memory using the IEEE 754 encoding, this becomes the significand . The significand is assumed to have a binary point to the right of the leftmost bit. So, the binary representation of π is calculated from left-to-right as follows:
where is the precision ( in this example), is the position of the bit of the significand from the left (starting at and finishing at here) and is the exponent ( in this example).
It can be required that the most significant digit of the significand of a non-zero number be non-zero (except when the corresponding exponent would be smaller than the minimum one). This process is called "normalization". For binary formats (which uses only the digits and ), this non-zero digit is necessarily . Therefore, it does not need to be represented in memory; allowing the format to have one more bit of precision. This rule is variously called the "leading bit convention", the "implicit bit convention", the "hidden bit convention", or the "assumed bit convention".
The floating-point representation is by far the most common way of representing in computers an approximation to real numbers. However, there are alternatives:
In 1914, Leonardo Torres y Quevedo designed an electro-mechanical version of Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, and included floating-point arithmetic.
In 1938, Konrad Zuse of Berlin completed the Z1, the first binary, programmable mechanical computer; it uses a 24-bit binary floating-point number representation with a 7-bit signed exponent, a 17-bit significand (including one implicit bit), and a sign bit. The more reliable relay-based Z3, completed in 1941, has representations for both positive and negative infinities; in particular, it implements defined operations with infinity, such as formula_11, and it stops on undefined operations, such as formula_12.
Zuse also proposed, but did not complete, carefully rounded floating-point arithmetic that includes formula_13 and NaN representations, anticipating features of the IEEE Standard by four decades. In contrast, von Neumann recommended against floating-point numbers for the 1951 IAS machine, arguing that fixed-point arithmetic is preferable.
The first "commercial" computer with floating-point hardware was Zuse's Z4 computer, designed in 1942–1945. In 1946, Bell Laboratories introduced the Mark V, which implemented decimal floating-point numbers.
The Pilot ACE has binary floating-point arithmetic, and it became operational in 1950 at National Physical Laboratory, UK. Thirty-three were later sold commercially as the English Electric DEUCE. The arithmetic is actually implemented in software, but with a one megahertz clock rate, the speed of floating-point and fixed-point operations in this machine were initially faster than those of many competing computers.
The mass-produced IBM 704 followed in 1954; it introduced the use of a biased exponent. For many decades after that, floating-point hardware was typically an optional feature, and computers that had it were said to be "scientific computers", or to have "scientific computation" (SC) capability (see also Extensions for Scientific Computation (XSC)). It was not until the launch of the Intel i486 in 1989 that "general-purpose" personal computers had floating-point capability in hardware as a standard feature.
The UNIVAC 1100/2200 series, introduced in 1962, supported two floating-point representations:
The IBM 7094, also introduced in 1962, supports single-precision and double-precision representations, but with no relation to the UNIVAC's representations. Indeed, in 1964, IBM introduced hexadecimal floating-point representations in its System/360 mainframes; these same representations are still available for use in modern z/Architecture systems. However, in 1998, IBM included IEEE-compatible binary floating-point arithmetic to its mainframes; in 2005, IBM also added IEEE-compatible decimal floating-point arithmetic.
Initially, computers used many different representations for floating-point numbers. The lack of standardization at the mainframe level was an ongoing problem by the early 1970s for those writing and maintaining higher-level source code; these manufacturer floating-point standards differed in the word sizes, the representations, and the rounding behavior and general accuracy of operations. Floating-point compatibility across multiple computing systems was in desperate need of standardization by the early 1980s, leading to the creation of the IEEE 754 standard once the 32-bit (or 64-bit) word had become commonplace. This standard was significantly based on a proposal from Intel, which was designing the i8087 numerical coprocessor; Motorola, which was designing the 68000 around the same time, gave significant input as well.
In 1989, mathematician and computer scientist William Kahan was honored with the Turing Award for being the primary architect behind this proposal; he was aided by his student (Jerome Coonen) and a visiting professor (Harold Stone).
Among the x86 innovations are these:
A floating-point number consists of two fixed-point components, whose range depends exclusively on the number of bits or digits in their representation. Whereas components linearly depend on their range, the floating-point range linearly depends on the significand range and exponentially on the range of exponent component, which attaches outstandingly wider range to the number.
On a typical computer system, a "double-precision" (64-bit) binary floating-point number has a coefficient of 53 bits (including 1 implied bit), an exponent of 11 bits, and 1 sign bit. Since 210 = 1024, the complete range of the positive normal floating-point numbers in this format is from 2−1022 ≈ 2 × 10−308 to approximately 21024 ≈ 2 × 10308.
The number of normalized floating-point numbers in a system ("B", "P", "L", "U") where
is formula_14.
There is a smallest positive normalized floating-point number,
which has a 1 as the leading digit and 0 for the remaining digits of the significand, and the smallest possible value for the exponent.
There is a largest floating-point number,
which has "B" − 1 as the value for each digit of the significand and the largest possible value for the exponent.
In addition, there are representable values strictly between −UFL and UFL. Namely, positive and negative zeros, as well as denormalized numbers.
The IEEE standardized the computer representation for binary floating-point numbers in IEEE 754 (a.k.a. IEC 60559) in 1985. This first standard is followed by almost all modern machines. It was revised in 2008. IBM mainframes support IBM's own hexadecimal floating point format and IEEE 754-2008 decimal floating point in addition to the IEEE 754 binary format. The Cray T90 series had an IEEE version, but the SV1 still uses Cray floating-point format.
The standard provides for many closely related formats, differing in only a few details. Five of these formats are called "basic formats" and others are termed "extended formats"; three of these are especially widely used in computer hardware and languages:
Increasing the precision of the floating point representation generally reduces the amount of accumulated round-off error caused by intermediate calculations.
Less common IEEE formats include:
Any integer with absolute value less than 224 can be exactly represented in the single precision format, and any integer with absolute value less than 253 can be exactly represented in the double precision format. Furthermore, a wide range of powers of 2 times such a number can be represented. These properties are sometimes used for purely integer data, to get 53-bit integers on platforms that have double precision floats but only 32-bit integers.
The standard specifies some special values, and their representation: positive infinity (+∞), negative infinity (−∞), a negative zero (−0) distinct from ordinary ("positive") zero, and "not a number" values (NaNs).
Comparison of floating-point numbers, as defined by the IEEE standard, is a bit different from usual integer comparison. Negative and positive zero compare equal, and every NaN compares unequal to every value, including itself. All values except NaN are strictly smaller than +∞ and strictly greater than −∞. Finite floating-point numbers are ordered in the same way as their values (in the set of real numbers).
Floating-point numbers are typically packed into a computer datum as the sign bit, the exponent field, and the significand or mantissa, from left to right. For the IEEE 754 binary formats (basic and extended) which have extant hardware implementations, they are apportioned as follows:
While the exponent can be positive or negative, in binary formats it is stored as an unsigned number that has a fixed "bias" added to it. Values of all 0s in this field are reserved for the zeros and subnormal numbers; values of all 1s are reserved for the infinities and NaNs. The exponent range for normalized numbers is [−126, 127] for single precision, [−1022, 1023] for double, or [−16382, 16383] for quad. Normalized numbers exclude subnormal values, zeros, infinities, and NaNs.
In the IEEE binary interchange formats the leading 1 bit of a normalized significand is not actually stored in the computer datum. It is called the "hidden" or "implicit" bit. Because of this, single precision format actually has a significand with 24 bits of precision, double precision format has 53, and quad has 113.
For example, it was shown above that π, rounded to 24 bits of precision, has:
The sum of the exponent bias (127) and the exponent (1) is 128, so this is represented in single precision format as
An example of a layout for 32-bit floating point is
and the 64 bit layout is similar.
In the IEEE 754 standard, zero is signed, meaning that there exist both a "positive zero" (+0) and a "negative zero" (−0). In most run-time environments, positive zero is usually printed as "0" and the negative zero as "-0". The two values behave as equal in numerical comparisons, but some operations return different results for +0 and −0. For instance, 1/(−0) returns negative infinity, while 1/+0 returns positive infinity (so that the identity 1/(1/±∞) = ±∞ is maintained). Other common functions with a discontinuity at "x"=0 which might treat +0 and −0 differently include log("x"), signum("x"), and the principal square root of for any negative number "y". As with any approximation scheme, operations involving "negative zero" can occasionally cause confusion. For example, in IEEE 754, "x" = "y" does not always imply 1/"x" = 1/"y", as 0 = −0 but 1/0 ≠ 1/−0.
Subnormal values fill the underflow gap with values
where the absolute distance between them is the same as for
adjacent values just outside the underflow gap.
This is an improvement over the older practice to just have zero in the underflow gap,
and where underflowing results were replaced by zero (flush to zero).
Modern floating-point hardware usually handles subnormal values (as well as normal values),
and does not require software emulation for subnormals.
The infinities of the extended real number line can be represented in IEEE floating-point datatypes,
just like ordinary floating-point values like 1, 1.5, etc.
They are not error values in any way, though they are often (but not always, as it depends on the rounding) used as
replacement values when there is an overflow. Upon a divide-by-zero exception,
a positive or negative infinity is returned as an exact result. An infinity can also be introduced as
a numeral (like C's "INFINITY" macro, or "∞" if the programming language allows that syntax).
IEEE 754 requires infinities to be handled in a reasonable way, such as
IEEE 754 specifies a special value called "Not a Number" (NaN) to be returned as the result of certain "invalid" operations, such as 0/0, ∞×0, or sqrt(−1). In general, NaNs will be propagated i.e. most operations involving a NaN will result in a NaN, although functions that would give some defined result for any given floating-point value will do so for NaNs as well, e.g. NaN ^ 0 = 1. There are two kinds of NaNs: the default "quiet" NaNs and, optionally, "signaling" NaNs. A signaling NaN in any arithmetic operation (including numerical comparisons) will cause an "invalid operation" to be signaled.
The representation of NaNs specified by the standard has some unspecified bits that could be used to encode the type or source of error; but there is no standard for that encoding. In theory, signaling NaNs could be used by a runtime system to flag uninitialized variables, or extend the floating-point numbers with other special values without slowing down the computations with ordinary values, although such extensions are not common.
It is a common misconception that the more esoteric features of the IEEE 754 standard discussed here, such as extended formats, NaN, infinities, subnormals etc., are only of interest to numerical analysts, or for advanced numerical applications; in fact the opposite is true: these features are designed to give safe robust defaults for numerically unsophisticated programmers, in addition to supporting sophisticated numerical libraries by experts. The key designer of IEEE 754, William Kahan notes that it is incorrect to "... [deem] features of IEEE Standard 754 for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic that ...[are] not appreciated to be features usable by none but numerical experts. The facts are quite the opposite. In 1977 those features were designed into the Intel 8087 to serve the widest possible market... Error-analysis tells us how to design floating-point arithmetic, like IEEE Standard 754, moderately tolerant of well-meaning ignorance among programmers".
In addition to the widely used IEEE 754 standard formats, other floating-point formats are used, or have been used, in certain domain-specific areas.
By their nature, all numbers expressed in floating-point format are rational numbers with a terminating expansion in the relevant base (for example, a terminating decimal expansion in base-10, or a terminating binary expansion in base-2). Irrational numbers, such as π or √2, or non-terminating rational numbers, must be approximated. The number of digits (or bits) of precision also limits the set of rational numbers that can be represented exactly. For example, the decimal number 123456789 cannot be exactly represented if only eight decimal digits of precision are available (would be rounded to 123456790 or 123456780 where the rightmost digit 0 is not explicitly stored).
When a number is represented in some format (such as a character string) which is not a native floating-point representation supported in a computer implementation, then it will require a conversion before it can be used in that implementation. If the number can be represented exactly in the floating-point format then the conversion is exact. If there is not an exact representation then the conversion requires a choice of which floating-point number to use to represent the original value. The representation chosen will have a different value from the original, and the value thus adjusted is called the "rounded value".
Whether or not a rational number has a terminating expansion depends on the base. For example, in base-10 the number 1/2 has a terminating expansion (0.5) while the number 1/3 does not (0.333...). In base-2 only rationals with denominators that are powers of 2 (such as 1/2 or 3/16) are terminating. Any rational with a denominator that has a prime factor other than 2 will have an infinite binary expansion. This means that numbers which appear to be short and exact when written in decimal format may need to be approximated when converted to binary floating-point. For example, the decimal number 0.1 is not representable in binary floating-point of any finite precision; the exact binary representation would have a "1100" sequence continuing endlessly:
where, as previously, "s" is the significand and "e" is the exponent.
When rounded to 24 bits this becomes
which is actually 0.100000001490116119384765625 in decimal.
As a further example, the real number π, represented in binary as an infinite sequence of bits is
but is
when approximated by rounding to a precision of 24 bits.
In binary single-precision floating-point, this is represented as "s" = 1.10010010000111111011011 with "e" = 1.
This has a decimal value of
whereas a more accurate approximation of the true value of π is
The result of rounding differs from the true value by about 0.03 parts per million, and matches the decimal representation of π in the first 7 digits. The difference is the discretization error and is limited by the machine epsilon.
The arithmetical difference between two consecutive representable floating-point numbers which have the same exponent is called a unit in the last place (ULP). For example, if there is no representable number lying between the representable numbers 1.45a70c22hex and 1.45a70c24hex, the ULP is 2×16−8, or 2−31. For numbers with a base-2 exponent part of 0, i.e. numbers with an absolute value higher than or equal to 1 but lower than 2, an ULP is exactly 2−23 or about 10−7 in single precision, and exactly 2−53 or about 10−16 in double precision. The mandated behavior of IEEE-compliant hardware is that the result be within one-half of a ULP.
Rounding is used when the exact result of a floating-point operation (or a conversion to floating-point format) would need more digits than there are digits in the significand. IEEE 754 requires "correct rounding": that is, the rounded result is as if infinitely precise arithmetic was used to compute the value and then rounded (although in implementation only three extra bits are needed to ensure this). There are several different rounding schemes (or "rounding modes"). Historically, truncation was the typical approach. Since the introduction of IEEE 754, the default method ("round to nearest, ties to even", sometimes called Banker's Rounding) is more commonly used. This method rounds the ideal (infinitely precise) result of an arithmetic operation to the nearest representable value, and gives that representation as the result. In the case of a tie, the value that would make the significand end in an even digit is chosen. The IEEE 754 standard requires the same rounding to be applied to all fundamental algebraic operations, including square root and conversions, when there is a numeric (non-NaN) result. It means that the results of IEEE 754 operations are completely determined in all bits of the result, except for the representation of NaNs. ("Library" functions such as cosine and log are not mandated.)
Alternative rounding options are also available. IEEE 754 specifies the following rounding modes:
Alternative modes are useful when the amount of error being introduced must be bounded. Applications that require a bounded error are multi-precision floating-point, and interval arithmetic.
The alternative rounding modes are also useful in diagnosing numerical instability: if the results of a subroutine vary substantially between rounding to + and − infinity then it is likely numerically unstable and affected by round-off error.
For ease of presentation and understanding, decimal radix with 7 digit precision will be used in the examples, as in the IEEE 754 "decimal32" format. The fundamental principles are the same in any radix or precision, except that normalization is optional (it does not affect the numerical value of the result). Here, "s" denotes the significand and "e" denotes the exponent.
A simple method to add floating-point numbers is to first represent them with the same exponent. In the example below, the second number is shifted right by three digits, and one then proceeds with the usual addition method:
In detail:
This is the true result, the exact sum of the operands. It will be rounded to seven digits and then normalized if necessary. The final result is
The lowest three digits of the second operand (654) are essentially lost. This is round-off error. In extreme cases, the sum of two non-zero numbers may be equal to one of them:
In the above conceptual examples it would appear that a large number of extra digits would need to be provided by the adder to ensure correct rounding; however, for binary addition or subtraction using careful implementation techniques only two extra "guard" bits and one extra "sticky" bit need to be carried beyond the precision of the operands.
Another problem of loss of significance occurs when two nearly equal numbers are subtracted. In the following example "e" = 5; "s" = 1.234571 and "e" = 5; "s" = 1.234567 are representations of the rationals 123457.1467 and 123456.659.
The best representation of this difference is "e" = −1; "s" = 4.877000, which differs more than 20% from "e" = −1; "s" = 4.000000. In extreme cases, all significant digits of precision can be lost (although gradual underflow ensures that the result will not be zero unless the two operands were equal). This "cancellation" illustrates the danger in assuming that all of the digits of a computed result are meaningful. Dealing with the consequences of these errors is a topic in numerical analysis; see also Accuracy problems.
To multiply, the significands are multiplied while the exponents are added, and the result is rounded and normalized.
Similarly, division is accomplished by subtracting the divisor's exponent from the dividend's exponent, and dividing the dividend's significand by the divisor's significand.
There are no cancellation or absorption problems with multiplication or division, though small errors may accumulate as operations are performed in succession. In practice, the way these operations are carried out in digital logic can be quite complex (see Booth's multiplication algorithm and Division algorithm).
For a fast, simple method, see the Horner method.
Floating-point computation in a computer can run into three kinds of problems:
Prior to the IEEE standard, such conditions usually caused the program to terminate, or triggered some kind
of trap that the programmer might be able to catch. How this worked was system-dependent,
meaning that floating-point programs were not portable. (The term "exception" as used in IEEE 754 is a general term meaning an exceptional condition, which is not necessarily an error, and is a different usage to that typically defined in programming languages such as a C++ or Java, in which an "exception" is an alternative flow of control, closer to what is termed a "trap" in IEEE 754 terminology).
Here, the required default method of handling exceptions according to IEEE 754 is discussed (the IEEE 754 optional trapping and other "alternate exception handling" modes are not discussed). Arithmetic exceptions are (by default) required to be recorded in "sticky" status flag bits. That they are "sticky" means that they are not reset by the next (arithmetic) operation, but stay set until explicitly reset. The use of "sticky" flags thus allows for testing of exceptional conditions to be delayed until after a full floating-point expression or subroutine: without them exceptional conditions that could not be otherwise ignored would require explicit testing immediately after every floating-point operation. By default, an operation always returns a result according to specification without interrupting computation. For instance, 1/0 returns +∞, while also setting the divide-by-zero flag bit (this default of ∞ is designed to often return a finite result when used in subsequent operations and so be safely ignored).
The original IEEE 754 standard, however, failed to recommend operations to handle such sets of arithmetic exception flag bits. So while these were implemented in hardware, initially programming language implementations typically did not provide a means to access them (apart from assembler). Over time some programming language standards (e.g., C99/C11 and Fortran) have been updated to specify methods to access and change status flag bits. The 2008 version of the IEEE 754 standard now specifies a few operations for accessing and handling the arithmetic flag bits. The programming model is based on a single thread of execution and use of them by multiple threads has to be handled by a means outside of the standard (e.g. C11 specifies that the flags have thread-local storage).
IEEE 754 specifies five arithmetic exceptions that are to be recorded in the status flags ("sticky bits"):
The default return value for each of the exceptions is designed to give the correct result in the majority of cases such that the exceptions can be ignored in the majority of codes. "inexact" returns a correctly rounded result, and "underflow" returns a denormalized small value and so can almost always be ignored. "divide-by-zero" returns infinity exactly, which will typically then divide a finite number and so give zero, or else will give an "invalid" exception subsequently if not, and so can also typically be ignored. For example, the effective resistance of n resistors in parallel (see fig. 1) is given by formula_17. If a short-circuit develops with formula_18 set to 0, formula_19 will return +infinity which will give a final formula_20 of 0, as expected (see the continued fraction example of for another example).
"Overflow" and "invalid" exceptions can typically not be ignored, but do not necessarily represent errors: for example, a root-finding routine, as part of its normal operation, may evaluate a passed-in function at values outside of its domain, returning NaN and an "invalid" exception flag to be ignored until finding a useful start point.
The fact that floating-point numbers cannot precisely represent all real numbers, and that floating-point operations cannot precisely represent true arithmetic operations, leads to many surprising situations. This is related to the finite precision with which computers generally represent numbers.
For example, the non-representability of 0.1 and 0.01 (in binary) means that the result of attempting to square 0.1 is neither 0.01 nor the representable number closest to it. In 24-bit (single precision) representation, 0.1 (decimal) was given previously as "e" = −4; "s" = 110011001100110011001101, which is
Squaring this number gives
Squaring it with single-precision floating-point hardware (with rounding) gives
But the representable number closest to 0.01 is
Also, the non-representability of π (and π/2) means that an attempted computation of tan(π/2) will not yield a result of infinity, nor will it even overflow. It is simply not possible for standard floating-point hardware to attempt to compute tan(π/2), because π/2 cannot be represented exactly. This computation in C:
/* Enough digits to be sure we get the correct approximation. */
double pi = 3.1415926535897932384626433832795;
double z = tan(pi/2.0);
will give a result of 16331239353195370.0. In single precision (using the tanf function), the result will be −22877332.0.
By the same token, an attempted computation of sin(π) will not yield zero. The result will be (approximately) 0.1225 in double precision, or −0.8742 in single precision.
While floating-point addition and multiplication are both commutative ("a" + "b" = "b" + "a" and "a" × "b" = "b" × "a"), they are not necessarily associative. That is, ("a" + "b") + "c" is not necessarily equal to "a" + ("b" + "c"). Using 7-digit significand decimal arithmetic:
They are also not necessarily distributive. That is, ("a" + "b") × "c" may not be the same as "a" × "c" + "b" × "c":
In addition to loss of significance, inability to represent numbers such as π and 0.1 exactly, and other slight inaccuracies, the following phenomena may occur:
"Machine precision" is a quantity that characterizes the accuracy of a floating-point system, and is used in backward error analysis of floating-point algorithms. It is also known as unit roundoff or "machine epsilon". Usually denoted Εmach, its value depends on the particular rounding being used.
With rounding to zero,
whereas rounding to nearest,
This is important since it bounds the "relative error" in representing any non-zero real number x within the normalized range of a floating-point system:
Backward error analysis, the theory of which was developed and popularized by James H. Wilkinson, can be used to establish that an algorithm implementing a numerical function is numerically stable. The basic approach is to show that although the calculated result, due to roundoff errors, will not be exactly correct, it is the exact solution to a nearby problem with slightly perturbed input data. If the perturbation required is small, on the order of the uncertainty in the input data, then the results are in some sense as accurate as the data "deserves". The algorithm is then defined as "backward stable". Stability is a measure of the sensitivity to rounding errors of a given numerical procedure; by contrast, the condition number of a function for a given problem indicates the inherent sensitivity of the function to small perturbations in its input and is independent of the implementation used to solve the problem.
As a trivial example, consider a simple expression giving the inner product of (length two) vectors formula_25 and formula_26, then
and so
where
where
by definition, which is the sum of two slightly perturbed (on the order of Εmach) input data, and so is backward stable. For more realistic examples in numerical linear algebra, see Higham 2002 and other references below.
Although, as noted previously, individual arithmetic operations of IEEE 754 are guaranteed accurate to within half a ULP, more complicated formulae can suffer from larger errors due to round-off. The loss of accuracy can be substantial if a problem or its data are ill-conditioned, meaning that the correct result is hypersensitive to tiny perturbations in its data. However, even functions that are well-conditioned can suffer from large loss of accuracy if an algorithm numerically unstable for that data is used: apparently equivalent formulations of expressions in a programming language can differ markedly in their numerical stability. One approach to remove the risk of such loss of accuracy is the design and analysis of numerically stable algorithms, which is an aim of the branch of mathematics known as numerical analysis. Another approach that can protect against the risk of numerical instabilities is the computation of intermediate (scratch) values in an algorithm at a higher precision than the final result requires, which can remove, or reduce by orders of magnitude, such risk: IEEE 754 quadruple precision and extended precision are designed for this purpose when computing at double precision.
For example, the following algorithm is a direct implementation to compute the function A(x) = (x−1) / (exp(x−1) − 1) which is well-conditioned at 1.0, however it can be shown to be numerically unstable and lose up to half the significant digits carried by the arithmetic when computed near 1.0.
double A(double X)
If, however, intermediate computations are all performed in extended precision (e.g. by setting line [1] to C99 long double), then up to full precision in the final double result can be maintained. Alternatively, a numerical analysis of the algorithm reveals that if the following non-obvious change to line [2] is made:
then the algorithm becomes numerically stable and can compute to full double precision.
To maintain the properties of such carefully constructed numerically stable programs, careful handling by the compiler is required. Certain "optimizations" that compilers might make (for example, reordering operations) can work against the goals of well-behaved software. There is some controversy about the failings of compilers and language designs in this area: C99 is an example of a language where such optimizations are carefully specified to maintain numerical precision. See the external references at the bottom of this article.
A detailed treatment of the techniques for writing high-quality floating-point software is beyond the scope of this article, and the reader is referred to, and the other references at the bottom of this article. Kahan suggests several rules of thumb that can substantially decrease by orders of magnitude the risk of numerical anomalies, in addition to, or in lieu of, a more careful numerical analysis. These include: as noted above, computing all expressions and intermediate results in the highest precision supported in hardware (a common rule of thumb is to carry twice the precision of the desired result i.e. compute in double precision for a final single precision result, or in double extended or quad precision for up to double precision results); and rounding input data and results to only the precision required and supported by the input data (carrying excess precision in the final result beyond that required and supported by the input data can be misleading, increases storage cost and decreases speed, and the excess bits can affect convergence of numerical procedures: notably, the first form of the iterative example given below converges correctly when using this rule of thumb). Brief descriptions of several additional issues and techniques follow.
As decimal fractions can often not be exactly represented in binary floating-point, such arithmetic is at its best when it is simply being used to measure real-world quantities over a wide range of scales (such as the orbital period of a moon around Saturn or the mass of a proton), and at its worst when it is expected to model the interactions of quantities expressed as decimal strings that are expected to be exact. An example of the latter case is financial calculations. For this reason, financial software tends not to use a binary floating-point number representation. The "decimal" data type of the C# and Python programming languages, and the decimal formats of the IEEE 754-2008 standard, are designed to avoid the problems of binary floating-point representations when applied to human-entered exact decimal values, and make the arithmetic always behave as expected when numbers are printed in decimal.
Expectations from mathematics may not be realized in the field of floating-point computation. For example, it is known that formula_32, and that formula_33, however these facts cannot be relied on when the quantities involved are the result of floating-point computation.
The use of the equality test (codice_2) requires care when dealing with floating-point numbers. Even simple expressions like codice_3 will, on most computers, fail to be true (in IEEE 754 double precision, for example, codice_4 is approximately equal to -4.44089209850063e-16). Consequently, such tests are sometimes replaced with "fuzzy" comparisons (codice_5, where epsilon is sufficiently small and tailored to the application, such as 1.0E−13). The wisdom of doing this varies greatly, and can require numerical analysis to bound epsilon. Values derived from the primary data representation and their comparisons should be performed in a wider, extended, precision to minimize the risk of such inconsistencies due to round-off errors. It is often better to organize the code in such a way that such tests are unnecessary. For example, in computational geometry, exact tests of whether a point lies off or on a line or plane defined by other points can be performed using adaptive precision or exact arithmetic methods.
Small errors in floating-point arithmetic can grow when mathematical algorithms perform operations an enormous number of times. A few examples are matrix inversion, eigenvector computation, and differential equation solving. These algorithms must be very carefully designed, using numerical approaches such as Iterative refinement, if they are to work well.
Summation of a vector of floating-point values is a basic algorithm in scientific computing, and so an awareness of when loss of significance can occur is essential. For example, if one is adding a very large number of numbers, the individual addends are very small compared with the sum. This can lead to loss of significance. A typical addition would then be something like
The low 3 digits of the addends are effectively lost. Suppose, for example, that one needs to add many numbers, all approximately equal to 3. After 1000 of them have been added, the running sum is about 3000; the lost digits are not regained. The Kahan summation algorithm may be used to reduce the errors.
Round-off error can affect the convergence and accuracy of iterative numerical procedures. As an example, Archimedes approximated π by calculating the perimeters of polygons inscribing and circumscribing a circle, starting with hexagons, and successively doubling the number of sides. As noted above, computations may be rearranged in a way that is mathematically equivalent but less prone to error (numerical analysis).
Two forms of the recurrence formula for the circumscribed polygon are:
Here is a computation using IEEE "double" (a significand with 53 bits of precision) arithmetic:
While the two forms of the recurrence formula are clearly mathematically equivalent, the first subtracts 1 from a number extremely close to 1, leading to an increasingly problematic loss of significant digits. As the recurrence is applied repeatedly, the accuracy improves at first, but then it deteriorates. It never gets better than about 8 digits, even though 53-bit arithmetic should be capable of about 16 digits of precision. When the second form of the recurrence is used, the value converges to 15 digits of precision. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11376 |
First Epistle to the Corinthians
The First Epistle to the Corinthians (), usually referred to as First Corinthians or 1 Corinthians is a Pauline epistle of the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The epistle is attributed to Paul the Apostle and a co-author named Sosthenes, and is addressed to the Christian church in Corinth. Scholars believe that Sosthenes was the amanuensis who wrote down the text of the letter at Paul's direction. It addresses various issues that had arisen in the Christian community at Corinth.
There is a consensus among historians and theologians that Paul is the author of the First Epistle to the Corinthians (c. AD 53–54). The letter is quoted or mentioned by the earliest of sources, and is included in every ancient canon, including that of Marcion of Sinope. Some scholars point to the epistle's potentially embarrassing references to the existence of sexual immorality in the church as strengthening the case for the authenticity of the letter.
However, the epistle does contain a passage that is widely believed to have been interpolated into the text by a later scribe:
Part of the reason for suspecting that this passage is an interpolation is that in some manuscripts, it is placed at the end of Chapter 14, instead of at its canonical location. This kind of variability is generally considered by textual critics to be a sign that a note, initially placed in the margins of the document, has been copied into the body of the text by a scribe. The passage also seems to contradict 11:5, where women are described as praying and prophesying in church.
Furthermore, some scholars believe that the passage constitutes a separate letter fragment or scribal interpolation because it equates the consumption of meat sacrificed to idols with idolatry, while Paul seems to be more lenient on this issue in and . Such views are rejected by other scholars who give arguments for the unity of .
About the year AD 50, towards the end of his second missionary journey, Paul founded the church in Corinth, before moving on to Ephesus, a city on the west coast of today's Turkey, about 180 miles by sea from Corinth. From there he traveled to Caesarea, and Antioch. Paul returned to Ephesus on his third missionary journey and spent approximately three years there (, , ). It was while staying in Ephesus that he received disconcerting news of the community in Corinth regarding jealousies, rivalry, and immoral behavior. It also appears that based on a letter the Corinthians sent Paul (e.g. ), the congregation was requesting clarification on a number of matters, such as marriage and the consumption of meat previously offered to idols.
By comparing Acts of the Apostles and mentions of Ephesus in the Corinthian correspondence, scholars suggest that the letter was written during Paul's stay in Ephesus, which is usually dated as being in the range of AD 53–57.
Anthony C. Thiselton suggests that it is possible that I Corinthians was written during Paul's first (brief) stay in Ephesus, at the end of his Second Journey, usually dated to early AD 54. However, it is more likely that it was written during his extended stay in Ephesus, where he refers to sending Timothy to them (, ).
The epistle may be divided into seven parts:
Some time before 2 Corinthians was written, Paul paid them a second visit (; ) to check some rising disorder (; ), and wrote them a letter, now lost (). They had also been visited by Apollos (), perhaps by Peter (), and by some Jewish Christians who brought with them letters of commendation from Jerusalem (; ; ; ).
Paul wrote this letter to correct what he saw as erroneous views in the Corinthian church. Several sources informed Paul of conflicts within the church at Corinth: Apollos (Acts 19:1), a letter from the Corinthians, the "household of Chloe", and finally Stephanas and his two friends who had visited Paul (1:11; 16:17). Paul then wrote this letter to the Corinthians, urging uniformity of belief ("that ye all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you", 1:10) and expounding Christian doctrine. Titus and a brother whose name is not given were probably the bearers of the letter to the church at Corinth (2 Corinthians 2:13; 8:6, 16–18).
In general, divisions within the church at Corinth seem to be a problem, and Paul makes it a point to mention these conflicts in the beginning. Specifically, pagan roots still hold sway within their community. Paul wants to bring them back to what he sees as correct doctrine, stating that God has given him the opportunity to be a "skilled master builder" to lay the foundation and let others build upon it (1 Cor 3:10).
Later, Paul wrote about immorality in Corinth by discussing an immoral brother, how to resolve personal disputes, and sexual purity. Regarding marriage, Paul states that it is better for Christians to remain unmarried, but that if they lacked self-control, it is better to marry than "burn" (πυροῦσθαι) which Christians have traditionally thought meant to burn with sinful desires. The Epistle may include marriage as an apostolic practice in 1 Corinthians 9:5, "Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas (Peter)?" (In the last case, the letter concurs with Matthew 8:14, which mentions Peter having a mother-in-law and thus, by inference, a wife.) However, the Greek word for "wife" is the same word for "woman". The Early Church Fathers including Tertullian, Jerome, and Augustine state the Greek word is ambiguous and the women in 1 Corinthians 9:5 were women ministering to the Apostles as women ministered to Christ (cf. , Luke 8:1–3), and were not wives, and assert they left their "offices of marriage" to follow Christ.
Paul also argues that married people must please their spouses, just as every Christian must please God. The letter is also notable for mentioning the role of women in churches, that for instance they must remain silent (1 Cor. 14:34–35), and yet they have a role of prophecy and apparently speaking tongues in churches (11:2–16). If 14:34–35 is not an interpolation, certain scholars resolve the tension between these texts by positing that wives were either contesting their husband's inspired speeches at church, or the wives/women were chatting and asking questions in a disorderly manner when others were giving inspired utterances. Their silence was unique to the particular situation in the Corinthian gatherings at that time, and on this reading, Paul did not intend his words to be universalized for all women of all churches of all eras. After discussing his views on worshipping idols, Paul finally ends with his views on resurrection. He states that Christ died for our sins, and was buried, and rose on the third day according to the scriptures (). Paul then asks: "Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?" (1 Cor. 15:12) and addresses the question of resurrection.
Throughout the letter, Paul presents issues that are troubling the community in Corinth and offers ways to fix them. Paul states that this letter is to "admonish" them as beloved children. They are expected to become imitators of Jesus and follow the ways in Christ as he, Paul, teaches in all his churches (1 Cor. 4:14–16).
This epistle contains some well-known phrases, including: "all things to all men" (), "through a glass, darkly" (), and "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child" ().
St. John Chrysostom, Doctor of the Church, wrote a commentary on 1 Corinthians, formed by 44 homilies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11378 |
File manager
A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating, opening (e.g. viewing, playing, editing or printing), renaming, moving or copying, deleting and searching for files, as well as modifying file attributes, properties and file permissions. Folders and files may be displayed in a hierarchical tree based on their directory structure. Some file managers contain features inspired by web browsers, including forward and back navigational buttons.
Some file managers provide network connectivity via protocols, such as FTP, HTTP, NFS, SMB or WebDAV. This is achieved by allowing the user to browse for a file server (connecting and accessing the server's file system like a local file system) or by providing its own full client implementations for file server protocols.
A term that predates the usage of "file manager" is "directory editor". An early directory editor, DIRED, was developed circa 1974 at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory by Stan Kugell.
A directory editor was written for EXEC 8 at the University of Maryland, and was available to other users at that time. The term was used by other developers, including Jay Lepreau, who wrote the dired program in 1980, which ran on BSD. This was in turn inspired by an older program with the same name running on TOPS-20. Dired inspired other programs, including dired, the editor script (for emacs and similar editors), and ded.
"File-list" file managers are lesser known and older than orthodox file managers.
One such file manager is flist, which was introduced sometime before 1980 on the Conversational Monitor System.
This is a variant of fulist, which originated before late 1978, according to comments by its author, Theo Alkema.
The flist program provided a list of files in the user's minidisk, and allowed sorting by any file attribute. The file attributes could be passed to scripts or function-key definitions, making it simple to use flist as part of CMS EXEC, EXEC 2 or XEDIT scripts.
This program ran only on IBM VM/SP CMS, but was the inspiration for other programs, including filelist (a script run via the Xedit editor), and programs running on other operating systems, including a program also called flist, which ran on OpenVMS, and fulist (from the name of the corresponding internal IBM program), which runs on Unix.
Orthodox file managers (sometimes abbreviated to "OFM") or command-based file managers are text-menu based file managers, that commonly have three windows (two panels and one command line window). Orthodox file managers are one of the longest running families of file managers, preceding graphical user interface-based types. Developers create applications that duplicate and extend the manager that was introduced by PathMinder and John Socha's famous Norton Commander for DOS. The concept dates to the mid-1980s—PathMinder was released in 1984, and Norton Commander version 1.0 was released in 1986. Despite the age of this concept, file managers based on Norton Commander are actively developed, and dozens of implementations exist for DOS, Unix, and Microsoft Windows. Nikolai Bezroukov publishes his own set of criteria for an OFM standard (version 1.2 dated June 1997).
An orthodox file manager typically has three windows. Two of the windows are called panels and are positioned symmetrically at the top of the screen. The third is the command line, which is essentially a minimized command (shell) window that can be expanded to full screen. Only one of the panels is active at a given time. The active panel contains the "file cursor". Panels are resizable and can be hidden. Files in the active panel serve as the source of file operations performed by the manager. For example, files can be copied or moved from the active panel to the location represented in the passive panel. This scheme is most effective for systems in which the keyboard is the primary or sole input device. The active panel shows information about the current working directory and the files that it contains. The passive (inactive) panel shows the content of the same or another directory (the default target for file operations). Users may customize the display of columns that show relevant file information. The active panel and passive panel can be switched (often by pressing the tab key).
The following features describe the class of orthodox file managers.
Other common features include:
The introduction of tabbed panels in some file managers (for example Total Commander) made it possible to manipulate more than one active and passive directory at a time.
Orthodox file managers are among the most portable file managers. Examples are available on almost any platform, with both command-line and graphical interfaces. This is unusual among command line managers in that something purporting to be a standard for the interface is published. They are also actively supported by developers. This makes it possible to do the same work on different platforms without much relearning of the interface.
Sometimes they are called dual-pane managers, a term that is typically used for programs such as the Windows File Explorer (see below). But they have three panes including a command line pane below (or hidden behind) two symmetric panes. Furthermore, most of these programs allow using just one of the two larger panes with the second hidden. Some also add an item to the Context Menu in Windows to "Open two Explorers, side by side".
Notable ones include:
A navigational file manager is a newer type of file manager. Since the advent of GUIs, it has become the dominant type of file manager for desktop computers.
Typically, it has two panes, with the filesystem tree in the left pane and the contents of the current directory in the right pane. For macOS, the Miller columns view in Finder (originating in NeXTStep) is a variation on the navigational file manager theme.
The interface in a navigational file manager often resembles a web browser, complete with "back" and "forward" buttons, and often "reload" buttons. Most also contain an address bar into which the file or directory path (or URI) can be typed.
Most navigational file managers have two panes, the left pane being a tree view of the filesystem. This means that unlike orthodox file managers, the two panes are asymmetrical in their content and use.
Selecting a directory in the Navigation pane on the left designates it as the current directory, displaying its contents in the Contents pane on the right. However, expanding (+) or collapsing (-) a portion of the tree without selecting a directory will not alter the contents of the right pane. The exception to this behavior applies when collapsing a parent of the current directory, in which case the selection is refocused on the collapsed parent directory, thus altering the list in the Contents pane.
The process of moving from one location to another need not open a new window. Several instances of the file manager can be opened simultaneously and communicate with each other via drag-and-drop and clipboard operations, so it is possible to view several directories simultaneously and perform cut-and paste operations between instances.
File operations are based on drag-and-drop and editor metaphors: users can select and copy files or directories onto the clipboard and then paste them in a different place in the filesystem or even in a different instance of the file manager.
Notable examples of navigational file managers include:
Spatial file managers use a spatial metaphor to represent files and directories as if they were actual physical objects. A spatial file manager imitates the way people interact with physical objects.
Some ideas behind the concept of a spatial file manager are:
As in navigational file managers, when a directory is opened, the icon representing the directory changes—perhaps from an image showing a closed drawer to an opened one, perhaps the directory's icon turns into a silhouette filled with a pattern—and a new window is opened to represent that directory.
Examples of file managers that use a spatial metaphor to some extent include:
Dysfunctional spatial file managers:
Some projects have attempted to implement a three-dimensional method of displaying files and directory structures. Three-dimensional file browsing has not become popular; the exact implementation tends to differ between projects, and there are no common standards to follow.
Examples of three-dimensional file managers include:
Web-based file managers are typically scripts written in either PHP, Ajax, Perl, ASP or another server-side language. When installed on a local server or on a remote server, they allow files and directories located there to be managed and edited, using a web browser, without the need for FTP Access.
More advanced, and usually commercially distributed, web-based file management scripts allow the administrator of the file manager to configure secure, individual user accounts, each with individual account permissions. Authorized users have access to documents stored on the server or in their individual user directories anytime, from anywhere, via a web browser.
A web-based file manager can serve as an organization's digital repository. For example, documents, digital media, publishing layouts, and presentations can be stored, managed, and shared between customers, suppliers, and remote workers, or just internally.
Web-based file managers are becoming increasingly popular due to the rise in popularity of dynamic web content management systems (CMS) and the need for non-technical website moderators to manage media on their websites powered by these platforms.
An example is net2ftp, a PHP- and JavaScript-based FTP client. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11382 |
File viewer
A file viewer is an application software that presents the data stored in a computer file in a human-friendly form. The file contents are generally displayed on the screen, or they may be printed. Also, they may be read aloud using speech synthesis.
File viewers do not edit files, yet it is common for them to be able to export data in a different file format, or to copy information from the viewed to the system-wide clipboard. A file viewer is limited-functionality software in the sense that it does not have a capability to create a file, or modify the content of an existing one. Instead, it is used only to display or print the content.
File viewers have to have sufficient knowledge about the file format to be viewed in order to handle different byte orders, code pages or newline styles.
Some file viewer may be classified as filters that translate binary files into plain text (one example antiword). However, depending on the competence of the translating routines, some information may be lost.
Image viewers display graphics files onscreen. Most viewers are capable of reading multiple graphics file formats but some such as JPEGview are dedicated to a single format. Common image viewer features include thumbnail preview and creation, and image zooming.
For more complex or proprietary file formats, file viewers are usually provided by the same companies that make the editing software using those formats. Viewers are usually distributed free of charge, while editors have to be bought. For example, the full version of Adobe Acrobat can be used to create content for most computer platforms. To ensure that people can access the documents created with Adobe Acrobat, the software publisher created a viewer program, the Acrobat Reader, and made it available for free. Microsoft also makes viewers for Word and PowerPoint documents freely available. These viewer applications allow the file format to be readable on all supported operating-systems, free of charge, making the commercial product a more attractive solution.
A web browser is a type of file viewer, which renders HTML markup into a human-friendly presentation. Although HTML is stored in plain text files, viewing an HTML file in a browser and in a text editor produces significantly different results. Web browsers may also be used to view image and multimedia files.
There are also types of data that are not intended for static display — these incorporate the time dimension. Viewers for such formats are named players. But the essence is the same — presenting file contents in human-friendly form (i.e. displaying video on the screen as intended, or playing sound through loudspeakers). And the same consideration of different file formats is present. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11385 |
First Epistle of Peter
The First Epistle of Peter, usually referred to simply as First Peter and often written 1 Peter, is a book of the New Testament. The author presents himself as Peter the Apostle, and, following Catholic tradition, the epistle has been held to have been written during his time as Bishop of Rome or Bishop of Antioch, though neither title is used in the epistle. The text of the letter states that it was written from Babylon. The letter is addressed to various churches in Asia Minor suffering religious persecution.
The authorship of 1 Peter has traditionally been attributed to the Apostle Peter because it bears his name and identifies him as its author (1:1). Although the text identifies Peter as its author, the language, dating, style, and structure of this letter have led many scholars to conclude that it is pseudonymous. Many scholars argue that Peter was not the author of the letter because its writer appears to have had a formal education in rhetoric and philosophy, and an advanced knowledge of the Greek language, none of which would be usual for a Galilean fisherman.
Graham Stanton rejects Petrine authorship because 1 Peter was most likely written during the reign of Domitian in AD 81, which is when he believes widespread Christian persecution began, which is long after the death of Peter. However, current scholarship has abandoned the persecution argument because the described persecution within the work does not necessitate a time period outside of the period of Peter. Other scholars doubt Petrine authorship because they are convinced that 1 Peter is dependent on the Pauline epistles and thus was written after Paul the Apostle’s ministry because it shares many of the same motifs espoused in Ephesians, Colossians, and the Pastoral Epistles. Others argue that it makes little sense to ascribe the work to Peter when it could have been ascribed to Paul. Alternatively, one theory supporting legitimate Petrine authorship of 1 Peter is the "secretarial hypothesis", which suggests that 1 Peter was dictated by Peter and was written in Greek by his secretary, Silvanus (5:12). John Elliot disagrees, suggesting that the notion of Silvanus as secretary or author or drafter of 1 Peter introduces more problems than it solves because the Greek rendition of 5:12 suggests that Silvanus was not the secretary, but the courier/bearer of 1 Peter, and some see Mark as a contributive amanuensis in the composition and writing of the work. On the one hand, some scholars such as Bart D. Ehrman are convinced that the language, dating, literary style, and structure of this text makes it implausible to conclude that 1 Peter was written by Peter; according to these scholars, it is more likely that 1 Peter is a pseudonymous letter, written later by one of the disciples of Peter in his honor. On the other hand, some scholars argue that there is enough evidence to conclude that Peter did, in fact, write 1 Peter. For instance, there are similarities between 1 Peter and Peter's speeches in the Biblical book of Acts, allusions to several historical sayings of Jesus indicative of eyewitness testimony (e.g., compare Luke 12:35 with 1 Peter 1:13, Matthew 5:16 with 1 Peter 2:12, and Matthew 5:10 with 1 Peter 3:14), and early attestation of Peter's authorship found in 2 Peter (AD 60–160) and the letters of Clement (AD 70-140), all supporting genuine Petrine origin. Ultimately, the authorship of 1 Peter remains contested.
1 Peter is addressed to the “elect resident aliens” scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. The five areas listed in 1:1 as the geographical location of the first readers were Roman provinces in Asia Minor. The order in which the provinces are listed may reflect the route to be taken by the messenger who delivered the circular letter. The recipients of this letter are referred to in 1:1 as “exiles of the Dispersion.” In 1:17, they are urged to “live in reverent fear during the time of your exile". The social makeup of the addressees of 1 Peter is debatable because some scholars interpret “strangers” (1:1) as Christians longing for their home in heaven, some interpret it as literal “strangers”, or as an Old Testament adaptation applied to Christian believers.
While the new Christians have encountered oppression and hostility from locals, Peter advises them to maintain loyalty to both their religion and the Roman Empire (1 Peter 2:17).
The author counsels (1) to steadfastness and perseverance under persecution (1–2:10); (2) to the practical duties of a holy life (2:11–3:13); (3) he adduces the example of Christ and other motives to patience and holiness (3:14–4:19); and (4) concludes with counsels to pastors and people (chap. 5).
David Bartlett lists the following outline to structure the literary divisions of 1 Peter.
The Petrine author writes of his addressees undergoing “various trials” (1 Peter 1:6), being “tested by fire” (which isn't a physical reference but a metaphor for a spiritual warfare) (1:7), maligned “as evildoers” (2:12) and suffering “for doing good” (3:17). Based on such internal evidence, biblical scholar John Elliott summarizes the addressees’ situation as one marked by undeserved suffering. Verse (), "Spirits in prison", is a continuing theme in Christianity, and one considered by most theologians to be enigmatic and difficult to interpret.
A number of verses in the epistle contain possible clues about the reasons Christians experienced opposition. Exhortations to live blameless lives (2:15; 3:9, 13, 16) may suggest that the Christian addressees were accused of immoral behavior, and exhortations to civil obedience (2:13–17) perhaps imply that they were accused of disloyalty to governing powers.
However, scholars differ on the nature of persecution inflicted on the addressees of 1 Peter. Some read the epistle to be describing persecution in the form of social discrimination, while some read them to be official persecution.
Some scholars believe that the sufferings the epistle's addressees were experiencing were social in nature, specifically in the form of verbal derision. Internal evidence for this includes the use of words like “malign” (2:12; 3:16), and “reviled” (4:14). Biblical scholar John Elliott notes that the author explicitly urges the addressees to respect authority (2:13) and even honor the emperor (2:17), strongly suggesting that they were unlikely to be suffering from official Roman persecution. It is significant to him that the author notes that “your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering” (5:9), indicating suffering that is worldwide in scope. Elliott sees this as grounds to reject the idea that the epistle refers to official persecution, because the first worldwide persecution of Christians officially meted by Rome did not occur until the persecution initiated by Decius in AD 250.
On the other hand, scholars who support the official persecution theory take the exhortation to defend one's faith (3:15) as a reference to official court proceedings. They believe that these persecutions involved court trials before Roman authorities, and even executions.
One common supposition is that 1 Peter was written during the reign of Domitian (AD 81–96). Domitian's aggressive claim to divinity would have been rejected and resisted by Christians. Biblical scholar Paul Achtemeier believes that persecution of Christians by Domitian would have been in character, but points out that there is no evidence of official policy targeted specifically at Christians. If Christians were persecuted, it is likely to have been part of Domitian’s larger policy suppressing all opposition to his self-proclaimed divinity. There are other scholars who explicitly dispute the idea of contextualizing 1 Peter within Domitian’s reign. Duane Warden believes that Domitian’s unpopularity even among Romans renders it highly unlikely that his actions would have great influence in the provinces, especially those under the direct supervision of the senate such as Asia (one of the provinces 1 Peter is addressed to).
Also often advanced as a possible context for 1 Peter is the trials and executions of Christians in the Roman province of Bithynia-Pontus under Pliny the Younger. Scholars who support this theory believe that a famous letter from Pliny to Emperor Trajan concerning the delation of Christians reflects the situation faced by the addressees of this epistle. In Pliny's letter, written in AD 112, he asks Trajan if the accused Christians brought before him should be punished based on the name ‘Christian’ alone, or for crimes associated with the name. For biblical scholar John Knox, the use of the word “name” in 4:14–16 is the “crucial point of contact” with that in Pliny’s letter. In addition, many scholars in support of this theory believe that there is content within 1 Peter that directly mirrors the situation as portrayed in Pliny’s letter. For instance, they interpret the exhortation to defend one’s faith “with gentleness and reverence” in 3:15–16 as a response to Pliny executing Christians for the obstinate manner in which they professed to be Christians. Generally, this theory is rejected mainly by scholars who read the suffering in 1 Peter to be caused by social, rather than official, discrimination.
The author refers to Jesus, after his death, proclaiming to spirits in prison (3:18–20). This passage, and a few others (such as Matthew 27:52 and Luke 23:43), are the basis of the traditional Christian belief in the descent of Christ into hell, or the harrowing of hell. Though interpretations vary, some theologians see this passage as referring to Jesus, after his death, going to a place (neither heaven nor hell in the ultimate sense) where the souls of pre-Christian people waited for the Gospel. The first creeds to mention the harrowing of hell were Arian formularies of Sirmium (359), Nike (360), and Constantinople (360). It spread through the west and later appeared in the Apostles' Creed.
Online translations of the First Epistle of Peter: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11387 |
First Council of the Lateran
The First Council of the Lateran was the 9th ecumenical council recognized by the Catholic Church. It was convoked by Pope Callixtus II in December 1122, immediately after the Concordat of Worms. The council sought to: (a) bring an end to the practice of the conferring of ecclesiastical benefices by people who were laymen; (b) free the election of bishops and abbots from secular influence; (c) clarify the separation of spiritual and temporal affairs; (d) re-establish the principle that spiritual authority resides solely in the Church; (e) abolish the claim of the emperors to influence papal elections.
The council convoked by Callixtus II was significant in size: three hundred bishops and more than six hundred abbots assembled at Rome in March, 1123; Callixtus II presided in person. During the Council the decisions of the Concordat of Worms were read and ratified. Various other decisions were promulgated.
The First Lateran Council was called by Pope Callixtus II whose reign began February 1, 1119. It demarcated the end of the Investiture Controversy which had begun before the time of Pope Gregory VII. The issues had been contentious and had continued with unabated bitterness for almost a century. Guido, as he was called before his elevation to the papacy, was the son of William I, Count of Burgundy. He was closely connected with nearly all the royal houses of Europe on both sides of his family. He had been named the papal legate to France by Pope Paschal II. During Guido's tenure in this office, Paschal II yielded to the military threats of Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor, and was induced to issue the Privilegium in the year 1111. By this document the Church gave up much of what had been claimed and subsequently attained by Pope Gregory VII and his Gregorian Reforms.
These concessions did not bring the expected peace but were received with violent reactionary opposition everywhere. Europe had come to expect an end to the Investiture controversy, and was not willing to return to the old days when the Holy Roman Emperor named the pope. The greatest resistance was seen in France and was led by Guido, who still held the office of the papal legate. He had been present in the Lateran Synod of 1112 which had proclaimed the Privilegium of 1111. On his return to France, Guido convoked an assembly of the French and Burgundian bishops at Vienne (1112). There the lay investiture of the clergy (the practice of the king, especially the Holy Roman Emperor naming bishops and the pope) was denounced as heretical. A sentence of excommunication was pronounced against Henry V, who had extorted through violence from the pope the concessions documented in the Privilegium. The agreement was deemed to be opposed to the interests of the Church. The decrees from the assembly of Vienne which denounced the Privilegium were sent to Paschal II with a request for confirmation. Pope Paschal II confirmed these which were received in general terms, on October 20, 1112.
Guido was later created cardinal by Pope Paschal II. The latter did not seem to have been pleased with Guido’s bold and forward attacks upon Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor. On the death of Paschal II, January 21, 1118, Gelasius II was elected pope. He was immediately seized by the Italian allies of Henry V, and on his liberation by the populace fled to Gaeta, where he was crowned. Henry V demanded the confirmation of the "Privilegium" and received no satisfactory reply. He then set about naming Burdinus, the archbishop of Braga, as his own pope. This pope assumed the name Gregory VIII, but came to be known as antipope Gregory VIII. Burdinus had already been deposed and excommunicated because he had crowned Henry V and the Holy Roman Emperor in Rome in 1117.
The excommunication of Bardinus was reiterated in Canon 6 of the document produced by Lateran I. Gelasius II promptly excommunicated the antipope Gregory VIII and Henry V. Gelasius was forced to flee under duress from the army of Henry V, and took refuge in the monastery of Cluny, where he died in January 1119. On the fourth day after the death of Gelasius II, February I, 1119, owing mainly to the exertions of Cardinal Cuno, Guido was elected pope and assumed the title of Callixtus II. He was crowned Pope at Vienne on February 9, 1119.
Because of his close connection with the great royal families of Germany, France, England and Denmark, Callixtus II's papacy was received with much anticipation and celebration throughout Europe. There was a real hope throughout the Continent that the Investiture Controversy might be settled once and for all. In the interest of conciliation, even the papal embassy was received by Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor at Strasburg. However, it soon became clear that Henry was not willing to concede his presumed and ancient right to name the pope and bishops within his kingdom. Perhaps to demonstrate conciliation or because of political necessity, Henry withdrew his support for antipope Gregory VIII.
It was agreed that Henry and Pope Callixtus II would meet at Mousson. On June 8, 1119, Callixtus II held a synod at Toulouse to proclaim the disciplinary reforms he had worked to attain in the French Church. In October, 1119, he opened the council at Reims. Louis VI of France and most of the barons of France attended this council along with more than four hundred bishops and abbots. The Pope was also to meet with Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor at Mousson. However, Henry showed up with an army of thirty thousand men. Callixtus II left Reims for Mousson, but upon learning of the warlike stance of Henry, quickly retreated back to Reims. Here, the Church dealt with issues of simony, concubinage of the clergy.
It was clear by now that Henry was in no mood to reconcile and a compromise with him was not to be had. The Conclave at Reims considered the situation and determined, as an entire Church, to formally excommunicate both Henry V and the antipope Gregory VIII. This occurred on October 30, 1119. While at Reims, Callixtus II tried to effect a settlement with Henry I of England and his brother Robert. This too, met with failure.
Callixtus II was determined to enter Rome which was occupied by the German forces and the antipope Gregory VIII. There was an uprising by the population which forced Gregory VIII to flee the city. After much political and military intrigue in Rome and the southern Italian states, Gregory VIII was formally deposed and Callixtus II was generally recognized as the legitimate Pope in 1121. Having become the established power in Italy, Callixtus II now returned the conflict with Henry V over the issue of lay investiture. Henry had been the recipient of great pressure from many of his barons in Germany over his conflict with the pope. Some had entered into open rebellion. Henry was forced by circumstances to seek a peace with Callstus. Initial negotiations were conducted in October, 1121, at Wurzburg. Lambert, the Cardinal of Ostia was dispatched to convoke a synod at Worms, which began on September 8, 1122. By September 23, the Concordat of Worms, also called the Pactum Calixtinum was concluded. On his side, the emperor gave up his claim to investiture with ring and crosier and granted freedom of election to the episcopal sees.
The elections of bishops could be witnessed by the emperor or his representatives. Callixtus II obtained the right to name bishops throughout Germany, but still did not have this power in much of Burgundy and Italy.
The First Lateran Council was convoked to confirm the Concordat of Worms. The council was most representative with nearly three hundred bishops and six hundred abbots from every part of Catholic Europe being present. It convened on March 18, 1123. Decrees were also passed directed against simony, concubinage among the clergy, church robbers, and forgers of Church documents; the council also reaffirmed indulgences for Crusaders.
In the remaining few years of his life, Callixtus II attempted to secure the status of the Church as it had existed at the end of the reign of Pope Gregory VII. He reorganized and reformed the churches around Rome, canonized Conrad of Constance, condemned the teaching of Peter de Bruis, confirmed the Bishop Thurston of York against the wishes of Henry I of England, and affirmed the freedom of York from the see of Canterbury. Callixtus II died December 13, 1124. He was succeeded by Pope Honorius II. Callixtus II was a strong figure who brought a relative, if tentative peace between Germany and the Church. The Concordat of Worms and the First Lateran Council changed forever the belief in the divine right of kings to name the pope and bishops, and reshaped the nature of church and state forever.
Texts of the First Lateran Council may vary in both wording and numbering of the canons depending on source. In this translation, the precepts of the Concordat of Worms are codified in Canons 2, 4 and 10.
CANON I
Summary. Ordinations and promotions made for pecuniary considerations are devoid of every dignity.
Text. Following the example of the holy fathers and recognizing the obligation of our office, we absolutely forbid in virtue of the authority of the Apostolic See that anyone be ordained or promoted for money in the Church of God. Has anyone thus secured ordination or promotion in the Church, the rank acquired shall be devoid of every dignity.
CANON 2
Summary. Only a priest may be made provost, archpriest, and dean; only a deacon may be archdeacon.
Text. No one except a priest shall be promoted to the dignity of provost, archpriest, or dean;
and no one shall be made archdeacon unless he is a deacon.
CANON 3
Summary. Priests, deacons, and subdeacons are forbidden to live with women other than such as were permitted by the Nicene Council.
Text. We absolutely forbid priests, deacons, and subdeacons to associate with concubines and women, or to live with women other than such as the Nicene Council (canon 3) for reasons of necessity permitted, namely, the mother, sister, or aunt, or any such person concerning whom no suspicion could arise.
CANON 4
Summary. Lay persons, no matter how pious they may be, have no authority to dispose of anything that belongs to the Church.
Text. In accordance with the decision of Pope Stephen, we declare that lay persons, no matter how devout they may be, have no authority to dispose of anything belonging to the Church, but according to the Apostolic canon the supervision of all ecclesiastical affairs belongs to the bishop, who shall administer them conformably to the will of God. If therefore any prince or other layman shall arrogate to himself the right of disposition, control, or ownership of ecclesiastical goods or properties, let him be judged guilty of sacrilege.
CANON 5
Summary. Marriages between blood-relatives are forbidden.
Text. We forbid marriages between blood-relatives because they are forbidden by the divine and secular laws. Those who contract such alliances, as also their offspring, the divine laws not only ostracize but declare accursed, while the civil laws brand them as infamous and deprive them of hereditary rights. We, therefore, following the example of our fathers, declare and stigmatize them as infamous.
CANON 6
Summary. Ordinations by Burdinus and the bishops consecrated by him are invalid.
Text. The ordinations made by the heresiarch Burdinus after his condemnation by the Roman Church, as also those made by the bishops consecrated by him after that point of time, we declare to be invalid.
CANON 7
Summary. No one is permitted to arrogate to himself the episcopal authority in matters pertaining to the cura animarum and the bestowal of benefices.
Text. No archdeacon, archpriest, provost, or dean shall bestow on another the care of souls or the prebends of a church without the decision or consent of the bishop; indeed, as the sacred canons point out, the care of souls and the disposition of ecclesiastical property are vested in the authority of the bishop. If anyone shall dare act contrary to this and arrogate to himself the power belonging to the bishop, let him be expelled from the Church.
CANON 8
Summary. Military persons are forbidden under penalty of anathema to invade or forcibly hold the city of Benevento.
Text. Desiring with the grace of God to protect the recognized possessions of the Holy Roman Church, we forbid under pain of anathema any military person to invade or forcibly hold Benevento, the city of St. Peter. If anyone act contrary to this, let him be anathematized.
CANON 9
Summary. Those excommunicated by one bishop, may not be restored by others.
Text. We absolutely forbid that those who have been excommunicated by their own bishops be received into the communion of the Church by other bishops, abbots, and clerics.
CANON 10
Summary. A bishop consecrated after an uncanonical election shall be deposed.
Text. No one shall be consecrated bishop who has not been canonically elected. If anyone dare do this, both the consecrator and the one consecrated shall be deposed without hope of reinstatement.
CANON 11
Summary. To those who give aid to the Christians in the Orient is granted the remission of sins, and their families and possessions are taken under the protection of the Roman Church.
Text. For effectively crushing the tyranny of the infidels, we grant to those who go to Jerusalem and also to those who give aid toward the defense of the Christians, the remission of their sins and we take under the protection of St. Peter and the Roman Church their homes, their families, and all their belongings, as was already ordained by Pope Urban II. Whoever, therefore, shall dare molest or seize these during the absence of their owners, shall incur excommunication. Those, however, who with a view of going to Jerusalem or to Spain (that is, against the Moors) are known to have attached the cross to their garments and afterward removed it, we command in virtue of our Apostolic authority to replace it and begin the journey within a year from the coming Easter. Otherwise we shall excommunicate them and interdict within their territory all divine service except the baptism of infants and the administration of the last rites to the dying.
CANON 12
Summary. The property of the porticani dying without heirs is not to be disposed of in a manner contrary to the wish of the one deceased.
Text. With the advice of our brethren and of the entire Curia, as well as with the will and consent of the prefect, we decree the abolition of that evil custom which has hitherto prevailed among the porticani, namely, of disposing, contrary to the wish of the one deceased, of the property of porticani dying without heirs; with this understanding, however, that in future the porticani remain faithful to the Roman Church, to us and to our successors.
CANON 13
Summary. If anyone violates the truce of God and after the third admonition does not make satisfaction, he shall be anathematized.
Text. If anyone shall violate the truce of God he shall be admonished three times by the bishop to make satisfaction. If he disregards the third admonition the bishop, either with the advice of the metropolitan or with that of two or one of the neighboring bishops, shall pronounce the sentence of anathema against the violator and in writing denounce him to all the bishops.
CANON 14
Summary. Laymen are absolutely forbidden to remove offerings from the altars of Roman churches.
Text. Following the canons of the holy fathers, we absolutely and under penalty of anathema forbid laymen to remove the offerings from the altars of the churches of St. Peter, of The Savior (Lateran Basilica), of St. Mary Rotund, in a word, from the altars of any of the churches or from the crosses. By our Apostolic authority we forbid also the fortifying of churches and their conversion to profane uses.
CANON 15
Summary. Counterfeiters of money shall be excommunicated.
Text. Whoever manufactures or knowingly expends counterfeit money, shall be cut off from the communion of the faithful (excommunicated) as one accursed, as an oppressor of the poor and a disturber of the city.
CANON 16
Summary. Robbers of pilgrims and of merchants shall be excommunicated.
Text. If anyone shall dare attack pilgrims going to Rome to visit the shrines of the Apostles and the oratories of other saints and rob them of the things they have with them, or exact from merchants new imposts and tolls, let him be excommunicated till he has made satisfaction.
CANON 17
Summary. Abbots and monks may not have the cura animarum.
Text. We forbid abbots and monks to impose public penances, to visit the sick, to administer extreme unction, and to sing public masses. The chrism, holy oil, consecration of altars, and ordination of clerics they shall obtain from the bishops in whose dioceses they reside.
CANON 18
Summary. The appointment of priests to churches belongs to the bishops, and without their consent they may not receive tithes and churches from laymen.
Text. Priests shall be appointed to parochial churches by the bishops, to whom they shall be responsible for the care of souls and other matters pertaining to them. They are not permitted to receive tithes and churches from laics without the will and consent of the bishops. If they act otherwise, let them be subject to the canonical penalties.
CANON 19
Summary. Taxes paid to bishops by monks since Gregory VII must be continued. Monks may not by prescription acquire the possessions of churches and of bishops.
Text. The tax (servitium) which monasteries and their churches have rendered to the bishops since the time of Gregory VII, shall be continued. We absolutely forbid abbots and monks to acquire by prescription after thirty years the possessions of churches and of shops.
CANON 20
Summary. Churches and their possessions, as well as the person and things connected with them, shall remain safe and unmolested.
Text. Having in mind the example of our fathers and discharging the duty of our pastoral office, we decree that churches and their possessions, as well as the persons connected with them, namely, clerics and monks and their servants (conversi), also the laborers and the things they use, shall remain safe and unmolested. If anyone shall dare act contrary to this and, recognizing his crime, does not within the space of thirty days make proper amends, let him be cut off from the Church and anathematized.
CANON 21
Summary. Clerics in major orders may not marry, and marriages already contracted must be dissolved.
Text. We absolutely forbid priests, deacons, subdeacons, and monks to have concubines or to contract marriage. We decree in accordance with the definitions of the sacred canons, that marriages already contracted by such persons must be dissolved, and that the persons be condemned to do penance.
CANON 22
Summary. The alienation of possessions of the exarchate of Ravenna is condemned, and the Ordinaries made by the intruders are invalid.
Text. The alienation that has been made especially by Otto, Guido, Jerome, and perhaps by Philip of possessions of the exarchate of Ravenna, we condemn. In a general way we declare invalid the alienations in whatever manner made by bishops and abbots whether intruded or canonically elected, and also the ordinations conferred by them whether with the consent of the clergy of the Church or simoniacally. We also absolutely forbid any cleric in any way to alienate his prebend or any ecclesiastical benefice. If he has presumed to do this in the past or shall presume to do so in the future, his action shall be null and he shall be subject to the canonical penalties .
Lateran I was the first of four Lateran Councils between the years 1123–1215. The first was not very original in its concept, nor one called to meet a pressing theological question. For the most part, Pope Callixtus II summoned the council to ratify the various meetings and concords which had been occurring in and around Rome for several years. The most pressing issue was that of the Investiture Controversy which had consumed nearly a century of contention and open warfare. At the heart of the question was the ancient right of the Holy Roman Emperor to name the pope as well as bishops and priests. These would be invested with some secular symbol such as a sword or scepter and the spiritual authority represented by a ring, miter and crosier. To an illiterate population, it appeared the bishop or abbot was now the king’s inferior and owed his position to the king. This issue came to the fore in the first part of the eleventh century when Rome and the pope sought autonomy from the Holy Roman Emperor. It had been a central issue in the reign of Pope Gregory VII and his battles with Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. The issue was never settled. Years of teaching by Roman trained priests and bishops in Germany had led to an educated generation which rejected the idea of divine right of kings.
The Third Lateran Council and the Fourth Lateran Council are generally considered to be of much greater significance than Lateran I. However, Lateran I marked the first time a general and large Council had been held in the West. All previous Councils had been in the East and dominated by Greek theologians and philosophers.
In the struggle between Stephen of England and Matilda, the daughter of Henry I of England, the English Church slipped away from the close control the Normans had exercised. Stephen was forced to make many concessions to the Church to gain some element of political control. Historians have largely considered his rule to be a disaster, calling it The Anarchy.
Because of political necessity, the Holy Roman Emperors were restrained from directly naming bishops in the kingdom. In practicality, the process continued to a certain extent. The issue of separation of church and state was simply recast in a different direction. Of all the Gregorian Reforms which were embodied by Lateran I, celibacy of the clergy was the most successful. Simony was curtailed. As time progressed, secular interference into the politics of the Church was seen to continue, albeit in different ways from that of the Investiture Controversy.
It has been argued by some historians that the Concordat of Worms and its reiteration by Lateran I were little more than face saving measures by the Church. Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor continued to name bishops within his kingdom. His control over the papacy was definitely abated. At the time, the Concordat of Worms was proclaimed as a great victory for Henry V inside the Holy Roman Empire. It did serve to constrain much of the most recent warfare in and outside the empire. In the end, Henry V died the monarch of a much diminished kingdom. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11391 |
Four Noble Truths
In Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths (Sanskrit: "catvāri āryasatyāni"; Pali: "cattāri ariyasaccāni", "The four Arya satyas") are "the truths of the Noble Ones", the truths or realities for the "spiritually worthy ones". The truths are:
They are traditionally identified as the first teaching given by the Buddha, and considered one of the most important teachings in Buddhism.
The four truths appear in many grammatical forms in the ancient Buddhist texts, and they have both a symbolic and a propositional function. Symbolically, they represent the awakening and liberation of the Buddha, and of the potential for his followers to reach the same religious experience as him. As propositions, the Four Truths are a conceptual framework that appear in the Pali canon and early Hybrid Sanskrit Buddhist scriptures. They are a part of the broader "network of teachings" (the ""dhamma" matrix"), which have to be taken together. They provide a conceptual framework for introducing and explaining Buddhist thought, which has to be personally understood or "experienced".
As a proposition, the four truths defy an exact definition, but refer to and express the basic orientation of Buddhism: unguarded sensory contact gives rise to craving and clinging to impermanent states and things, which are "dukkha", "incapable of satisfying" and painful. This craving keeps us caught in "samsara", "wandering," usually interpreted as the endless cycle of repeated rebirth, and the continued "dukkha" that comes with it. There is a way to end this cycle, namely by attaining "nirvana", cessation of craving, whereafter rebirth and the accompanying "dukkha" will no longer arise again. This can be accomplished by following the eightfold path, confining our automatic responses to sensory contact by restraining oneself, cultivating discipline and wholesome states, and practicing mindfulness and "dhyana" (meditation).
The function of the four truths, and their importance, developed over time and the Buddhist tradition slowly recognized them as the Buddha's first teaching. This tradition was established when "prajna", or "liberating insight", came to be regarded as liberating in itself, instead of or in addition to the practice of "dhyana". This "liberating insight" gained a prominent place in the sutras, and the four truths came to represent this liberating insight, as a part of the enlightenment story of the Buddha.
The four truths grew to be of central importance in the Theravada tradition of Buddhism by about the 5th-century CE, which holds that the insight into the four truths is liberating in itself. They are less prominent in the Mahayana tradition, which sees the higher aims of insight into "sunyata", emptiness, and following the Bodhisattva path as central elements in their teachings and practice. The Mahayana tradition reinterpreted the four truths to explain how a liberated being can still be "pervasively operative in this world". Beginning with the exploration of Buddhism by western colonialists in the 19th century and the development of Buddhist modernism, they came to be often presented in the west as the central teaching of Buddhism, sometimes with novel modernistic reinterpretations very different from the historic Buddhist traditions in Asia.
The four truths are best known from their presentation in the "Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta" text, which contains two sets of the four truths, while various other sets can be found in the Pāli Canon, a collection of scriptures in the Theravadan Buddhist tradition. The full set, which is most commonly used in modern expositions, contains grammatical errors, pointing to multiple sources for this set and translation problems within the ancient Buddhist community. Nevertheless, they were considered correct by the Pali tradition, which did not correct them.
According to the Buddhist tradition, the "Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta", "Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion", contains the first teachings that the Buddha gave after attaining full awakening, and liberation from rebirth. According to L. S. Cousins, many scholars are of the view that "this discourse was identified as the first sermon of the Buddha only at a later date," and according to professor of religion Carol S. Anderson the four truths may originally not have been part of this sutta, but were later added in some versions. Within this discourse, the four noble truths are given as follows ("bhikkus" is normally translated as "Buddhist monks"):
According to this sutra, with the complete comprehension of these four truths release from "samsara", the cycle of rebirth, was attained:
The comprehension of these four truths by his audience leads to the opening of the "Dhamma Eye", that is, the attainment of right vision:
According to K.R. Norman, the basic set is as follows:
According to K. R. Norman, the Pali canon contains various shortened forms of the four truths, the "mnemonic set", which were "intended to remind the hearer of the full form of the NTs." The earliest form of the mnemonic set was "dukkham samudayo nirodho magga", without the reference to the Pali terms "sacca" or "arya", which were later added to the formula. The four mnemonic terms can be translated as follows:
According to L.S. Cousins, the four truths are not restricted to the well-known form where "dukkha" is the subject. Other forms take "the world, the arising of the world" or "the āsavas, the arising of the āsavas" as their subject. According to Cousins, "the well-known form is simply shorthand for all of the forms." "The world" refers to the saṅkhāras, that is, all compounded things, or to the six sense spheres.
The various terms all point to the same basic idea of Buddhism, as described in five skandhas and twelve nidānas. In the five skandhas, sense-contact with objects leads to sensation and perception; the saṅkhāra ('inclinations', c.q. craving etc.) determine the interpretation of, and the response to, these sensations and perceptions, and affect consciousness in specific ways. The "twelve nidānas" describe the further process: craving and clinging ("upādāna") lead to "bhava" (becoming) and "jāti" (birth).
In the orthodox interpretation, "bhava" is interpreted as "kammabhava", that is , "karma", while "jāti" is interpreted as rebirth: from sensation comes craving, from craving comes karma, from karma comes rebirth. The aim of the Buddhist path is to reverse this causal chain: when there is no (response to) sensation, there is no craving, no karma, no rebirth. In Thai Buddhism, "bhava" is interpreted as behavior which serves craving and clinging, while "jāti" is interpreted as the repeated birth of the ego or self-sense, which perpetuates the process of self-serving responses and actions.
The Pali terms "ariya sacca" (Sanskrit: "arya satya") are commonly translated as "noble truths". This translation is a convention started by the earliest translators of Buddhist texts into English. According to K.R. Norman, this is just one of several possible translations. According to Paul Williams,
The term "arya" was later added to the four truths. The term "ariya" (Sanskrit: "arya") can be translated as "noble", "not ordinary", "valuable", "precious". "pure". Paul Williams:
The term "sacca" (Sanskrit: "satya") is a central term in Indian thought and religion. It is typically translated as "truth"; but it also means "that which is in accord with reality", or "reality". According to Rupert Gethin, the four truths are "four 'true things' or 'realities' whose nature, we are told, the Buddha finally understood on the night of his awakening." They function as "a convenient conceptual framework for making sense of Buddhist thought." According to K. R. Norman, probably the best translation is "the truth[s] of the noble one (the Buddha)". It is a statement of how things are seen by a Buddha, how things really are when seen correctly. It is the truthful way of seeing. Through not seeing things this way, and behaving accordingly, we suffer.
According to Anderson, the four truths have both a symbolic and a propositional function:
As a symbol, they refer to the possibility of awakening, as represented by the Buddha, and are of utmost importance:
As a proposition, they are part of the matrix or "network of teachings", in which they are "not particularly central", but have an equal place next to other teachings, describing how release from craving is to be reached. A long recognized feature of the Theravada canon is that it lacks an "overarching and comprehensive structure of the path to "nibbana"." The sutras form a network or matrix, and the four truths appear within this "network of teachings", which have to be taken together. Within this network, "the four noble truths are one doctrine among others and are not particularly central", but are a part of "the entire "dhamma" matrix". The four noble truths are be set and learnt in that network, learning "how the various teachings intersect with each other", and refer to the various Buddhist techniques, which are all explicitly and implicitly part of the passages which refer to the four truths. According to Anderson,
As a proposition, the four truths defy an exact definition, but refer to and express the basic orientation of Buddhism: sensory contact gives rise to clinging and craving to temporary states and things, which is ultimately unsatisfactory and painful, "dukkha", and sustains "samsara", the repeated cycle of "bhava" (becoming, habitual tendencies) and "jāti" ("birth", interpreted as either rebirth, the coming to be of a new existence; or as the arising of the sense of self as a mental phenomenon).
By following the Buddhist path, craving and clinging can be confined, peace of mind and real happiness
can be attained, and the repeated cycle of repeated becoming and birth will be stopped.
The truth of "dukkha", "incapable of satisfying", "painful", is the basic insight that "samsara", life in this "mundane world", with its clinging and craving to impermanent states and things" is "dukkha", unsatisfactory and painful. We expect happiness from states and things which are impermanent, and therefore cannot attain real happiness.
The truth of "samudaya", "arising", "coming together", or "dukkha-samudaya", the origination or arising of "dukkha", is the truth that repeated life in this world, and its associated "dukkha" arises, or continues, with taṇhā, "thirst", craving for and clinging to these impermanent states and things.
The truth of "nirodha", "cessation," "suppression," "renouncing," "letting go", or "dukkha-nirodha", the cessation of "dukkha", is the truth that "dukkha" ceases, or can be confined, when one renounces or confines craving and clinging, and nirvana is attained. "Nirvana" refers to the moment of attainment itself, and the resulting peace of mind and happiness ("khlesa-nirvana"), but also to the final dissolution of the five skandhas at the time of death ("skandha-nirvana" or "parinirvana"); in the Theravada-tradition, it also refers to a transcendental reality which is "known at the moment of awakening". According to Gethin, "modern Buddhist usage tends to restrict 'nirvāṇa' to the awakening experience and reserve 'parinirvāṇa' for the death experience. When "nirvana" is attained, no more karma is being produced, and rebirth and dissatisfaction will no longer arise again. Cessation is "nirvana", "blowing out", and peace of mind. Joseph Goldstein explains:
The truth of "magga", refers to the path to the cessation of, or liberation from "dukkha". By following the Noble Eightfold Path, to "moksha", liberation, restraining oneself, cultivating discipline, and practicing mindfulness and meditation, one starts to disengage from craving and clinging to impermanent states and things, and rebirth and dissatisfaction will be ended. The term "path" is usually taken to mean the Noble Eightfold Path, but other versions of "the path" can also be found in the Nikayas. The Theravada tradition regards insight into the four truths as liberating in itself.
The well-known eightfold path consists of the understanding that this world is fleeting and unsatisfying, and how craving keeps us tied to this fleeting world; a friendly and compassionate attitude to others; a correct way of behaving; mind-control, which means not feeding on negative thoughts, and nurturing positive thoughts; constant awareness of the feelings and responses which arise; and the practice of "dhyana", meditation. The tenfold path adds the right (liberating) insight, and liberation from rebirth.
The four truths are to be internalised, and understood or "experienced" personally, to turn them into a lived reality.
The four truths describe "dukkha" and its ending as a means to reach peace of mind in this life, but also as a means to end rebirth.
According to Geoffrey Samuel, "the Four Noble Truths [...] describe the knowledge needed to set out on the path to liberation from rebirth." By understanding the four truths, one can stop this clinging and craving, attain a pacified mind, and be freed from this cycle of rebirth and redeath. Patrick Olivelle explains that moksha is a central concept in Indian religions, and "literally means freedom from samsara." Melvin E. Spiro further explains that "desire is the cause of suffering because desire is the cause of rebirth." When desire ceases, rebirth and its accompanying suffering ceases. Peter Harvey explains:
The last sermon, the "Maha-parinibbana Sutta" (Last Days of the Buddha, Digha Nikaya 16)", states it as follows:
According to Bhikkhu Buddhadasa, "birth" does refer not to physical birth and death, but to the birth and death of our self-concept, the "emergence of the ego". According to Buddhadhasa,
Some contemporary teachers tend to explain the four truths psychologically, by taking "dukkha" to mean mental anguish in addition to the physical pain of life, and interpreting the four truths as a means to attain happiness in this life. In the contemporary Vipassana movement that emerged out of the Theravada Buddhism, freedom and the "pursuit of happiness" have become the main goals, not the end of rebirth, which is hardly mentioned in their teachings.
Yet, though freedom and happiness is a part of the Buddhist teachings, these words refer to something different in traditional Asian Buddhism. According to Gil Fronsdal, "when Asian teachers do talk about freedom, it is primarily in reference to what one is free from – that is, from greed, hate, delusion, grasping, attachment, wrong view, self, and most significantly, rebirth". "Nibbana" is the final freedom, and it has no purpose beyond itself. In contrast, freedom in the creative modern interpretation of Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path means living happily and wisely, "without drastic changes in lifestyle". Such freedom and happiness is not the goal of Four Noble Truths and related doctrines within traditional Buddhism, but the vipassana teachings in the West make no reference to traditional Theravada doctrines, instead they present only the pragmatic and experiential goals in the form of therapy for the audience's current lives. The creative interpretations are driven in part because the foundational premises of Buddhism do not make sense to audiences outside of Asia. According to Spiro, "the Buddhist message is not simply a psychological message", but an eschatological message.
According to Anderson, "the four truths are recognized as perhaps the most important teaching of the Buddha." Yet, as early as 1935 Caroline Rhys Davids wrote that for a teaching so central to Theravada Buddhism, it was missing from critical passages in the Pali canon. According to Gethin, the four truths and the eightfold path are only two lists of "literally hundreds of similar lists covering the whole range of the theory and practice of ancient Buddhism." The position of the four truths within the canon raises questions, and has been investigated throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
According to academic scholars, inconsistencies in the oldest texts may reveal developments in the oldest teachings. While the Theravada-tradition holds that the Sutta Pitaka is "the definitive recension of the Buddha-word", and Theravadins argue that it is likely that the sutras date back to the Buddha himself, in an unbroken chain of oral transmission, academic scholars have identified many such inconsistencies, and tried to explain them. Information of the oldest teachings of Buddhism, such as on the Four Noble Truths, has been obtained by analysis of the oldest texts and these inconsistencies, and are a matter of ongoing discussion and research. According to Schmithausen, three positions held by scholars of Buddhism can be distinguished regarding the possibility to retain knowledge of the oldest Buddhism:
According to Bronkhorst, the four truths may already have been formulated in earliest Buddhism, but did not have the central place they acquired in later buddhism. According to Anderson, only by the time of the commentaries, in the fifth century CE, did the four truths come to be identified in the Theravada tradition as the central teaching of the Buddha. According to Anderson,
According to Feer and Anderson, the four truths probably entered the Sutta Pitaka from the Vinaya, the rules for monastic order. They were first added to enlightenment-stories which contain the Four Jhanas, replacing terms for "liberating insight". From there they were added to the biographical stories of the Buddha.
Scholars have noted inconsistencies in the presentations of the Buddha's enlightenment, and the Buddhist path to liberation, in the oldest sutras. They offer that these inconsistencies show that the Buddhist teachings evolved, either during the lifetime of the Buddha, or thereafter. According to the Japanese scholar Ui, the four truths are not the earliest representation of the Buddha's enlightenment. Instead, they are a rather late theory on the content of the Buddha's enlightenment. According to Vetter and Bronkhorst, the earliest Buddhist path consisted of a set of practices which culminate in the practice of "dhyana", leading to a calm of mind and awareness (mindfulness) which according to Vetter "is" the liberation which is being sought. Later on, "liberating insight" came to be regarded as equally liberating. This "liberating insight" came to be exemplified by "prajna", or the insight in the "four truths", but also by other elements of the Buddhist teachings. According to Vetter and Bronkhorst, this growing importance of "liberating insight" was a response to other religious groups in India, which held that a liberating insight was indispensable for "moksha", liberation from rebirth. This change is reflected in the canon, where, according to Bronkhorst,
According to Vetter and Bonkhorst, the ideas on what exactly constituted this "liberating insight" was not fixed but developed over time. According to Bronkhorst, in earliest Buddhism the four truths did not serve as a description of "liberating insight". Initially the term "prajna" served to denote this "liberating insight". Later on, "prajna" was replaced in the suttas by the "four truths". This happened in those texts where practicing the four jhanas preceded the attainment of "liberating insight", and where this practice of the four jhanas then culminates in "liberating insight". This "liberating insight" came to be defined as "insight into the four truths", which is presented as the "liberating insight" which constituted the awakening, or "enlightenment" of the Buddha. When he understood these truths he was "enlightened" and liberated, as reflected in Majjhima Nikaya 26:42: "his taints are destroyed by his seeing with wisdom."
Bronkhorst points to an inconsistency, noting that the four truths refer here to the eightfold path as the means to gain liberation, while the attainment of insight into the four truths is portrayed as liberating in itself. According to Bronkhorst, this is an inconsistency which reveals a change which took place over time in the composition of the sutras. An example of this substitution, and its consequences, is Majjhima Nikaya 36:42–43, which gives an account of the awakening of the Buddha.
According to Schmithausen, the four truths were superseded by "pratityasamutpada", and still later, in the Hinayana schools, by the doctrine of the non-existence of a substantial self or person.. Schmithausen further states that still other descriptions of this "liberating insight" exist in the Buddhist canon:
In contrast, Thanissaro Bikkhu presents the view that the four truths, pratityasamutpada and anatta are inextricably intertwined.
In their symbolic function, the sutras present the insight into the four truths as the culmination of the Buddha's path to awakening. In the "Vinayapitaka" and the "Sutta-pitaka" they have the same symbolic function, in a reenactment by his listeners of the Buddha's awakening by attaining the "dhamma-eye". In contrast, here this insight serves as the starting point to path-entry for his audience. These sutras present a repeated sequence of events:
Yet, in other sutras, where the four truths have a propositional function, the comprehension of the four truths destroys the corruptions. They do so in combination with the practice of the "jhanas" and the attainment of the divine eye, with which past lives and the working of rebirth are being seen.
According to Anderson, following Schmithausen and Bronkhorst, these two presentations give two different models of the path to liberation, reflecting their function as a symbol and as a proposition. Most likely, the four truths were first associated with the culmination of the path in the destruction of the "āsavās", where they substituted the unspecified "liberating insight"; as the canon developed, they became more logically associated with the beginning of the Buddhist path.
According to Anderson there is a strong tendency within scholarship to present the four truths as the most essential teaching of Buddhism. According to Anderson, the four truths have been simplified and popularized in western writings, due to "the colonial project of gaining control over Buddhism." According to Crosby, the Buddhist teachings are reduced to a "simple, single rationalized account", which has parallels in the reinterpretation of the Buddha in western literature.
The presentation of the four truths as one of the most important teachings of the Buddha "has been [done] to reduce the four noble truths to a teaching that is accessible, pliable, and therefore readily appropriated by non-Buddhists." There is a great variety of teachings in the Buddhist literature, which may be bewildering for those who are unaware of this variety. The four truths are easily accessible in this regard, and are "readily [understood] by those outside the Buddhist traditions." For example Walpola Rahula's "What the Buddha Taught", a widely used introductory text for non-Buddhists, uses the four truths as a framework to present an overview of the Buddhist teachings.
According to Harris, the British in the 19th century crafted new representations of Buddhism and the Buddha. 19th century missionaries studied Buddhism, to be more effective in their missionary efforts. The Buddha was de-mystified, and reduced from a "superhuman" to a "compassionate, heroic human", serving "western historical method and the missionary agenda of situating the Buddha firmly below the divine." The four truths were discovered by the British by reading the Buddhist texts, and were not immediately granted the central position they later received.
The writings of British missionaries show a growing emphasis on the four truths as being central to Buddhism, with somewhat different presentations of them. This colonial project had a strong influence on some strands of Buddhism, culminating in so-called Protestant Buddhism, which incorporated several essentially Protestant attitudes regarding religion, such as the emphasis on written texts. According to Gimello, Rahula's book is an example of this Protestant Budhism, and "was created in an accommodating response to western expectations, and in nearly diametrical opposition to Buddhism as it had actually been practised in traditional Theravada."
Hendrik Kern proposed in 1882 that the model of the four truths may be an analogy with classical Indian medicine, in which the four truths function as a medical diagnosis, and the Buddha is presented as a physician. Kern's analogy became rather popular, but "there is not sufficient historical evidence to conclude that the Buddha deliberately drew upon a clearly defined medical model for his fourfold analysis of human pain."
According to Anderson, those scholars who did not place the four truths at the center of Buddhism, either "located the four truths in a fuller reading of the Theravada canon and the larger context of South Asian literature", or "located the teaching within an experience of Buddhism as practiced in a contemporary setting." According to Anderson, "these autors suggest a more complex reading of the four noble truths than those who locate the teaching as the key to or as a crucial element within the grand scheme of Buddhism."
The developing Buddhist tradition inserted the four truths, using various formulations, at various sutras. They are being used both as a symbol of all dhammas and the Buddha's awakening, and as a set of propositions which function within a matrix of teachings. According to Anderson, there is no single way to understand the teachings; one teaching may be used to explain another teaching, and vice versa. The teachings form a network, which should be apprehended as such to understand how the various teachings intersect with each other.
The "Mahasaccaka Sutta" ("The Greater Discourse to Saccaka", Majjhima Nikaya 36) gives one of several versions of the Buddha's way to liberation. He attains the three knowledges, namely knowledge of his former lifes, knowledge of death and rebirth, and knowledge of the destruction of the taints, the Four Noble Truths. After going through the four dhyanas, and gaining the first two knowledges, the story proceeds:
Bronkhorst dismisses the first two knowledges as later additions, and proceeds to notice that the recognition of the intoxicants is modelled on the four truths. According to Bronkhorst, those are added the bridge the original sequence of "I directed my mind to the knowledge of the destruction of the intoxicants. My mind was liberated", which was interrupted by the addition of the four truths. Bronkhorst points out that those do not fit here, since the four truths culminate in the knowledge of the path to be followed, while the Buddha himself is already liberated at that point.
According to the Buddhist tradition, the first talk of Gautama Buddha after he attained enlightenment is recorded in the "Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta" ("Setting in Motion the Wheel of Dhamma", Samyutta Nikaya 56.11). The "Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta" provides details on three stages in the understanding of each truth, for a total of twelve insights. The three stages for understanding each truth are:
These three stages of understanding are emphasized particularly in the Theravada tradition, but they are also recognized by some contemporary Mahayana teachers.
According to Cousins, many scholars are of the view that "this discourse was identified as the first sermon of the Buddha only at a later date." According to Stephen Batchelor, the "Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta" contains incongruities, and states that
According to Bronkhorst this "first sermon" is recorded in several sutras, with important variations. In the Vinaya texts, and in the "Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta" which was influenced by the Vinaya texts, the four truths are included, and Kondañña is enlightened when the "vision of Dhamma" arises in him: "whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation." Yet, in the "Ariyapariyesanā Sutta" ("The Noble Search", Majjhima Nikaya 26) the four truths are not included, and the Buddha gives the five ascetics personal instructions in turn, two or three of them, while the others go out begging for food. The versions of the "first sermon" which include the four truths, such as the "Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta", omit this instruction, showing that
According to Bronkhorst, this indicates that the four truths were later added to earlier descriptions of liberation by practicing the four dhyanas, which originally was thought to be sufficient for the destruction of the arsavas. Anderson, following Norman, also thinks that the four truths originally were not part of this sutta, and were later added in some versions.
According to Bronkhorst, the "twelve insights" are probably also a later addition, born out of unease with the substitution of the general term "prajna" for the more specific "four truths".
According to the Buddhist tradition, the "Maha-parinibbana Sutta" (Last Days of the Buddha, Digha Nikaya 16) was given near the end of the Buddha's life. This sutta "gives a good general idea of the Buddha's Teaching:" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11393 |
French Republican calendar
The French Republican calendar (), also commonly called the French Revolutionary calendar ("calendrier révolutionnaire français"), was a calendar created and implemented during the French Revolution, and used by the French government for about 12 years from late 1793 to 1805, and for 18 days by the Paris Commune in 1871. The revolutionary system was designed in part to remove all religious and royalist influences from the calendar, and was part of a larger attempt at decimalisation in France (which also included decimal time of day, decimalisation of currency, and metrication). It was used in government records in France and other areas under French rule, including Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Malta, and Italy.
Sylvain Maréchal, prominent anticlerical atheist, published the first edition of his "Almanach des Honnêtes-gens" (Almanac of Honest People) in 1788. The first month in the almanac is "Mars, ou Princeps" (March, or First), the last month is "Février, ou Duodécembre" (February, or Twelfth). (The months of September [meaning "the seventh"] through December [meaning "the tenth"] are already numeric names, although their meanings do not match their positions in either the Julian or the Gregorian calendar since the Romans added the months January and February to the original ten-month March to December year of King Romulus.) The lengths of the months are the same as those in the Gregorian calendar; however, the 10th, 20th, and 30th are singled out of each month as the end of a "décade" (group of ten). Individual days were assigned, instead of to the traditional saints, to noteworthy people. Later editions of the almanac would switch to the Republican Calendar.
The days of the French Revolution and Republic saw many efforts to sweep away various trappings of the "ancien régime" (the old feudal monarchy); some of these were more successful than others. The new Republican government sought to institute, among other reforms, a new social and legal system, a new system of weights and measures (which became the metric system), and a new calendar. Amid nostalgia for the ancient Roman Republic, the theories of the Enlightenment were at their peak, and the devisers of the new systems looked to nature for their inspiration. Natural constants, multiples of ten, and Latin as well as Ancient Greek derivations formed the fundamental blocks from which the new systems were built.
The new calendar was created by a commission under the direction of the politician Charles-Gilbert Romme seconded by Claude Joseph Ferry and Charles-François Dupuis. They associated with their work the chemist Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, the mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange, the astronomer Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande, the mathematician Gaspard Monge, the astronomer and naval geographer Alexandre Guy Pingré, and the poet, actor and playwright Fabre d'Églantine, who invented the names of the months, with the help of André Thouin, gardener at the Jardin des Plantes of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. As the rapporteur of the commission, Charles-Gilbert Romme presented the new calendar to the Jacobin-controlled National Convention on 23 September 1793, which adopted it on 24 October 1793 and also extended it proleptically to its epoch of 22 September 1792. It is because of his position as rapporteur of the commission that the creation of the republican calendar is attributed to Romme.
The calendar is frequently named the "French Revolutionary Calendar" because it was created during the Revolution, but this is a slight misnomer. Indeed, there was initially a debate as to whether the calendar should celebrate the Great Revolution, which began in July 1789, or the Republic, which was established in 1792. Immediately following 14 July 1789, papers and pamphlets started calling 1789 year of Liberty and the following years and . It was in 1792, with the practical problem of dating financial transactions, that the legislative assembly was confronted with the problem of the calendar. Originally, the choice of epoch was either 1 January 1789 or 14 July 1789. After some hesitation the assembly decided on 2 January 1792 that all official documents would use the "era of Liberty" and that the year of Liberty started on 1 January 1792. This usage was modified on 22 September 1792 when the Republic was proclaimed and the Convention decided that all public documents would be dated Year I of the French Republic. The decree of 2 January 1793 stipulated that the year II of the Republic began on 1 January 1793; this was revoked with the introduction of the new calendar, which set 22 September 1793 as the beginning of year . The establishment of the Republic was used as the epochal date for the calendar; therefore, the calendar commemorates the Republic, not the Revolution. In France, it is known as the "calendrier républicain" as well as the "calendrier révolutionnaire".
French coins of the period naturally used this calendar. Many show the year () in Arabic numbers, although Roman numerals were used on some issues. Year 11 coins typically have a date to avoid confusion with the Roman .
The French Revolution is usually considered to have ended with the coup of 18 Brumaire, Year (9 November 1799), the coup d'état of Napoleon Bonaparte against the established constitutional regime of the "Directoire".
The Concordat of 1801 re-established the Roman Catholic Church as an official institution in France, although not as the state religion of France. The concordat took effect from Easter Sunday, 28 Germinal, Year (8 April 1802); it restored the names of the days of the week to the ones from the Gregorian Calendar, and fixed Sunday as the official day of rest and religious celebration. However, the other attributes of the republican calendar, the months, and years, remained as they were.
The French Republic ended with the coronation of Napoleon I as "Empereur des Français" (Emperor of the French) on 11 Frimaire, Year (2 December 1804), but the republican calendar would remain in place for another year. Napoleon finally abolished the republican calendar with effect from 1 January 1806 (the day after 10 Nivôse Year ), a little over twelve years after its introduction. It was, however, used again briefly in the "Journal officiel" for some dates during a short period of the Paris Commune, 6–23 May 1871 (16 Floréal–3 Prairial Year ).
Years appear in writing as Roman numerals (usually), with epoch 22 September 1792, the beginning of the "Republican Era" (the day the French First Republic was proclaimed, one day after the Convention abolished the monarchy). As a result, Roman Numeral I indicates the first year of the republic, that is, the year before the calendar actually came into use. By law, the beginning of each year was set at midnight, beginning on the day the apparent autumnal equinox falls at the Paris Observatory.
There were twelve months, each divided into three ten-day weeks called "décades". The tenth day, "décadi", replaced Sunday as the day of rest and festivity. The five or six extra days needed to approximate the solar or tropical year were placed after the months at the end of each year and called complementary days. This arrangement was an almost exact copy of the calendar used by the Ancient Egyptians, though in their case the beginning of the year was marked by the summer solstice rather than the autumnal equinox.
A period of four years ending on a leap day was to be called a "Franciade". The name "Olympique" was originally proposed but changed to Franciade to commemorate the fact that it had taken the revolution four years to establish a republican government in France.
The leap year was called "Sextile", an allusion to the "bissextile" leap years of the Julian and Gregorian calendars, because it contained a sixth complementary day.
Each day in the Republican Calendar was divided into ten hours, each hour into 100 decimal minutes, and each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds. Thus an hour was 144 conventional minutes (more than twice as long as a conventional hour), a minute was 86.4 conventional seconds (44% longer than a conventional minute), and a second was 0.864 conventional seconds (13.6% shorter than a conventional second).
Clocks were manufactured to display this decimal time, but it did not catch on. Mandatory use of decimal time was officially suspended 7 April 1795, although some cities continued to use decimal time as late as 1801.
The numbering of years in the Republican Calendar by Roman numerals ran counter to this general decimalization tendency.
The Republican calendar year began the day the autumnal equinox occurred in Paris, and had twelve months of 30 days each, which were given new names based on nature, principally having to do with the prevailing weather in and around Paris. The extra five or six days in the year were not given a month designation, but considered Sansculottides or Complementary Days.
Note: On many printed calendars of Year II (1793–94), the month of "Thermidor" was named "Fervidor" (from Latin "fervidus", "burning hot").
Most of the month names were new words coined from French, Latin, or Greek. The endings of the names are grouped by season. "Dor" means "giving" in Greek.
In Britain, a contemporary wit mocked the Republican Calendar by calling the months: Wheezy, Sneezy and Freezy; Slippy, Drippy and Nippy; Showery, Flowery and Bowery; Hoppy, Croppy and Poppy. The historian Thomas Carlyle suggested somewhat more serious English names in his 1837 work "", namely Vintagearious, Fogarious, Frostarious, Snowous, Rainous, Windous, Buddal, Floweral, Meadowal, Reapidor, Heatidor, and Fruitidor. Like the French originals, they are neologisms suggesting a meaning related to the season.
The month is divided into three "décades" or "weeks" of ten days each, named simply:
Décades were abandoned in Floréal an X (April 1802).
The Catholic Church used a calendar of saints, which named each day of the year after an associated saint. To reduce the influence of the Church, Fabre d'Églantine introduced a Rural Calendar in which each day of the year had a unique name associated with the rural economy, stated to correspond to the time of year. Every "décadi" (ending in 0) was named after an agricultural tool. Each "quintidi" (ending in 5) was named for a common animal. The rest of the days were named for "grain, pasture, trees, roots, flowers, fruits" and other plants, except for the first month of winter, Nivôse, during which the rest of the days were named after minerals.
Five extra days – six in leap years – were national holidays at the end of every year. These were originally known as "les sans-culottides" (after "sans-culottes"), but after year III (1795) as "les jours complémentaires":
Below are the Gregorian dates each Republican year ("an" in French) began while the calendar was in effect.
The calendar was abolished in the year XIV (1805). After this date, opinions seem to differ on the method by which the leap years would have been determined if the calendar were still in force. There are at least four hypotheses used to convert dates from the Gregorian calendar:
The following table shows when several years of the Republican Era begin on the Gregorian calendar, according to each of the four above methods:
For this calendar, the Romme method of calculating leap years is used. Other methods may differ by one day. Time may be cached and therefore not accurate. Decimal time is according to Paris meantime, which is 9 minutes 21 seconds (6.49 decimal minutes) ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. (This tool calibrates the time, if calibration is desired.)
Leap years in the calendar are a point of great dispute, due to the contradicting statements in the establishing decree stating:
and:
These two specifications are incompatible, as leap years defined by the autumnal equinox in Paris do not recur on a regular four-year schedule. Thus, the years , , and were observed as leap years, and the years and were also planned as such, even though they were five years apart.
A fixed arithmetic rule for determining leap years was proposed in the name of the Committee of Public Education by Gilbert Romme on 19 Floréal An (8 May 1795). The proposed rule was to determine leap years by applying the rules of the Gregorian calendar to the years of the French Republic (years , , , etc. were to be leap years) except that year 4000 (the last year of ten 400-year periods) should be a common year instead of a leap year. Shortly thereafter, he was sentenced to the guillotine, and his proposal was never adopted and the original astronomical rule continued, which excluded any other fixed arithmetic rule. The proposal was intended to avoid uncertain future leap years caused by the inaccurate astronomical knowledge of the 1790s (even today, this statement is still valid due to the uncertainty in ΔT). In particular, the committee noted that the autumnal equinox of year 144 was predicted to occur at 11:59:40 pm local apparent time in Paris, which was closer to midnight than its inherent 3 to 4 minute uncertainty.
The calendar was abolished by an act dated 22 Fructidor an (9 September 1805) and signed by Napoleon, which referred to a report by Michel-Louis-Étienne Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély and Jean Joseph Mounier, listing two fundamental flaws.
The report also noted that the 10-day décade was unpopular and had already been suppressed three years earlier in favor of the 7-day week, removing what was considered by some as one of the calendar's main benefits. The 10-day décade was unpopular with laborers because they received only one full day of rest out of ten, instead of one in seven, although they also got a half-day off on the fifth day. It also, by design, conflicted with Sunday religious observances.
Another criticism of the calendar was that despite the poetic names of its months, they are tied to the climate and agriculture of metropolitan France and therefore not applicable to France's overseas territories.
The "18 Brumaire" or "Brumaire" was the coup d'état of Napoléon Bonaparte on 18 Brumaire An (9 November 1799), which many historians consider as the end of the French Revolution. Karl Marx's 1852 essay "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon" compares the coup d'état of 1851 of Louis Napoléon unfavorably to his uncle's earlier coup, with the statement "History repeats ... first as tragedy, then as farce".
Another famous revolutionary date is 9 Thermidor An (27 July 1794), the date the Convention turned against Robespierre, who, along with others associated with the Mountain, was guillotined the following day. Based on this event, the term "Thermidorian" entered the Marxist vocabulary as referring to revolutionaries who destroy the revolution from the inside and turn against its true aims. For example, Leon Trotsky and his followers used this term about Joseph Stalin.
Émile Zola's novel "Germinal" takes its name from the calendar's month of Germinal.
The seafood dish Lobster Thermidor was named after the 1891 play "Thermidor", set during the Revolution.
The French frigates of the "Floréal" class all bear names of Republican months.
The Convention of 9 Brumaire An , 30 October 1794, established the École normale supérieure. The date appears prominently on the entrance to the school.
The French composer Fromental Halévy was named after the feast day of 'Fromental' in the Revolutionary Calendar, which occurred on his birthday in year (27 May 1799).
Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" series included a story called "Thermidor" that takes place in that month during the French Revolution.
The "Liavek" shared world series uses a calendar that is a direct translation of the French Republican calendar.
Sarah Monette's "Doctrine of Labyrinths" series borrows the Republican calendar for one of the two competing calendars (their usage splits between social classes) in the fictional city of Mélusine.
Jacques Rivette's 1974 film "Celine and Julie Go Boating" refers to the calendar and its hours of the day.
Alain Tanner's 1979 film "Messidor" presents a haphazard summer road trip of two young women in Switzerland.
The character of Ash Crimson from The King of Fighters takes many of his move names from this calendar, such as Pluviose, Ventôse, Thermidor, Fructidor, and Floréal. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11396 |
Michael Moorcock
Michael John Moorcock (born 18 December 1939) is an English writer and musician, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published literary novels. He is best known for his novels about the character Elric of Melniboné, a seminal influence on the field of fantasy since the 1960s and '70s.
As editor of the British science fiction magazine "New Worlds", from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States, leading to the advent of cyberpunk. His publication of "Bug Jack Barron" (1969) by Norman Spinrad as a serial novel was notorious; in Parliament some British MPs condemned the Arts Council for funding the magazine. He is also a successful recording musician, contributing to the bands Hawkwind, Blue Öyster Cult and his own project.
In 2008, "The Times" named Moorcock in its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Michael Moorcock was born in London in December 1939, and the landscape of London, particularly the area of Notting Hill Gate and Ladbroke Grove, is an important influence in some of his fiction (such as the Cornelius novels).
Moorcock has mentioned "The Mastermind of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs, "The Apple Cart" by George Bernard Shaw and "The Constable of St. Nicholas" by Edwin Lester Arnold as the first three non-juvenile books that he read before beginning primary school. The first book he bought was a secondhand copy of "The Pilgrim's Progress".
Moorcock is the former husband of Hilary Bailey by whom he had three children: Sophie b.1963, Katherine b.1964, and Max b. 1972. He is also the former husband of Jill Riches, who later married Robert Calvert. She illustrated some of Moorcock's books, including covers, including the "Gloriana" dustjacket. In 1983, Linda Steele became Moorcock's third wife.
He was an original member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a loose-knit group of eight heroic fantasy authors founded in the 1960s and led by Lin Carter, self-selected by fantasy credentials alone.
Moorcock is the subject of four book-length works, a monograph and an interview, by Colin Greenland. In 1983, Greenland published "The Entropy Exhibition: Michael Moorcock and the British 'New Wave' in Science Fiction". He followed this with "Michael Moorcock: Death is No Obstacle", a book-length interview about technique, in 1992. "Michael Moorcock: Law of Chaos" by Jeff Gardiner and "Michael Moorcock: Fiction, Fantasy and the World's Pain" by Mark Scroggins were published more recently.
In the 1990s, Moorcock moved to Texas in the United States. His wife Linda is American. He spends half of the year in Texas, the other half in Paris.
Moorcock's works are noted for their political nature and content. In one interview, he states, "I am an anarchist and a pragmatist. My moral/philosophical position is that of an anarchist." Further, in describing how his writing relates to his political philosophy, Moorcock says, "My books frequently deal with aristocratic heroes, gods and so forth. All of them end on a note which often states quite directly that one should serve neither gods nor masters but become one's own master."
Besides using fiction to explore his politics, Moorcock also engages in political activism. In order to "marginalize stuff that works to objectify women and suggests women enjoy being beaten", he has encouraged W H Smiths to move John Norman's "Gor" series novels to the top shelf.
Moorcock began writing while he was still at school, contributing to a magazine he entitled "Outlaw's Own" from 1950 on.
In 1957 at the age of 17, Moorcock became editor of "Tarzan Adventures" (a national juvenile weekly featuring text and Tarzan comic strip), where he published at least a dozen of his own "Sojan the Swordsman" stories during that year and the next. At age 18 (in 1958), he wrote the allegorical fantasy novel "The Golden Barge". This remained unpublished until 1980, when it was issued by Savoy Books with an introduction by M. John Harrison. At 19 years of age Moorcock also edited "Sexton Blake Library" (serial pulp fiction featuring Sexton Blake, the poor man's Sherlock Holmes) and returned to late Victorian London for some of his books. Writing ever since, he has produced a huge volume of work. His first story in "New Worlds" was "Going Home" (1958; with Barrington J. Bayley). "The Sundered Worlds", a 57-page novella published in the November 1962 number of "Science Fiction Adventures", edited by John Carnell, became, with its sequel "The Blood Red Game" from the same magazine, the basis for his 190-page paperback debut novel three years later, "The Sundered Worlds" (Compact Books, 1965; in the U.S., Paperback Library, 1966).
Moorcock replaced Carnell as "New Worlds" editor from the May–June 1964 number. Under his leadership the magazine became central to "New Wave" science fiction. This movement promoted literary style and an existential view of technological change, in contrast to "hard science fiction", which extrapolated on technological change itself. Some "New Wave" stories were not recognisable as traditional science fiction, and "New Worlds" remained controversial for as long as Moorcock edited it.
During that time, he occasionally wrote as "James Colvin", a "house pseudonym" that was also used by other "New Worlds" critics. A spoof obituary of Colvin appeared in "New Worlds" #197 (January 1970), written by Charles Platt as "William Barclay". Moorcock makes much use of the initials "JC"; these are also the initials of Jesus Christ, the subject of his 1967 Nebula award-winning novella "Behold the Man", which tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a time-traveller who takes on the role of Christ. They are also the initials of various "Eternal Champion" Moorcock characters such as Jerry Cornelius, Jerry Cornell and Jherek Carnelian. In more recent years, Moorcock has taken to using "Warwick Colvin, Jr." as a pseudonym, particularly in his "Second Ether" fiction.
Moorcock talks about much of his writing in "Death Is No Obstacle" by Colin Greenland, which is a book-length transcription of interviews with Moorcock about the structures in his writing.
Moorcock has also published pastiches of writers for whom he felt affection as a boy, including Edgar Rice Burroughs, Leigh Brackett, and Robert E. Howard. All his fantasy adventures have elements of satire and parody, while respecting what he considers the essentials of the form. Although his heroic fantasies have been his most consistently reprinted books in the United States, he achieved prominence in the UK as a literary author, with the "Guardian" Fiction Prize in 1977 for "The Condition of Muzak", and with "Mother London" later shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize.
Novels and series such as the "Cornelius Quartet", "Mother London", "King of the City", the "Pyat Quartet" and the short story collection "London Bone" have established him in the eyes of critics such as Iain Sinclair, Peter Ackroyd and Allan Massie in publications including "The Times Literary Supplement" and the "London Review of Books" as a major contemporary literary novelist. In 2008 Moorcock was named by a critics' panel in "The Times" as one of the fifty best British novelists since 1945. Virtually all of his stories are part of his overarching "Eternal Champion" theme or "oeuvre", with characters (including Elric) moving from one storyline and fictional universe to another, all of them interconnected (though often only in dreams or visions).
Most of Moorcock's earlier work consisted of short stories and relatively brief novels: he has mentioned that "I could write 15,000 words a day and gave myself three days a volume. That's how, for instance, the Hawkmoon books were written." Over the period of the "New Worlds" editorship and his publishing of the original fantasy novels Moorcock has maintained an interest in the craft of writing and a continuing interest in the semi-journalistic craft of "pulp" authorship. This is reflected in his development of interlocking cycles which hark back to the origins of fantasy in myth and medieval cycles (see "Wizardry and Wild Romance – Moorcock" and "Death Is No Obstacle – Colin Greenland" for more commentary). This also provides an implicit link with the episodic origins of literature in newspaper/magazine serials from Trollope and Dickens onwards. None of this should be surprising given Moorcock's background in magazine publishing.
Since the 1980s, Moorcock has tended to write longer, more literary "mainstream" novels, such as "Mother London" and "Byzantium Endures," but he continues to revisit characters from his earlier works, such as Elric, with books such as "The Dreamthief's Daughter" or "The Skrayling Tree." With the publication of the third and last book in this series, "The White Wolf's Son", he announced that he was "retiring" from writing heroic fantasy fiction, though he continues to write Elric's adventures as graphic novels with his long-time collaborators Walter Simonson and the late James Cawthorn (1929–2008). Together, they produced the graphic novel, "Elric: the Making of a Sorcerer", published by DC Comics in 2007. He has also completed his "Colonel Pyat" sequence, dealing with the Nazi Holocaust. This began in 1981 with "Byzantium Endures", continued through "The Laughter of Carthage" (1984) and "Jerusalem Commands" (1992), and culminated with "The Vengeance of Rome" (2006).
Among other works by Moorcock are "The Dancers at the End of Time", set on Earth millions of years in the future, "Gloriana, or The Unfulfill'd Queen," set in an alternative Earth history and the 'Second Ether' sequence beginning with 'BLOOD'.
Moorcock is prone to revising his existing work, with the result that different editions of a given book may contain significant variations. The changes range from simple retitlings (the Elric story "The Flame Bringers" became "The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams" in the 1990s Victor Gollancz/White Wolf omnibus editions) to character name changes (such as detective "Minos Aquilinas" becoming first "Minos von Bek" and later "Sam Begg" in three different versions of the short story "The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius"), major textual alterations (for example, the addition of several new chapters to "The Steel Tsar" in the omnibus editions), and even complete restructurings (as with the 1966 novella "Behold the Man" being expanded to novel-length from the original version that appeared in "New Worlds" for republication as a book in 1969 by Allison and Busby).
A new, final revision of almost Moorcock's entire oeuvre, with the exception of his literary novels "Mother London", "King of the City" and the Pyat quartet, is being issued by Gollancz and many of his titles are being reprinted in the United States and France. Many comics based on his work are being reprinted by Titan Books under the general title The Michael Moorcock Library, while in France a new adaptation of the Elric series has been translated into many languages, including English.
Moorcock's best-selling works have been the "Elric of Melniboné" stories. In these books, Elric is written as a deliberate reversal of what Moorcock saw as clichés commonly found in fantasy adventure novels inspired by the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, and a direct antithesis of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian.
Moorcock's work is complex and multilayered. Central to many of his fantasy novels is the concept of an "Eternal Champion", who has potentially multiple identities across multiple dimensions of reality and alternative universes. This cosmology is called the "Multiverse" within his novels and independently mirrors the concept which arose in particle physics in the 1960s and is still a current theory in high energy physics. The Multiverse deals with various primal polarities such as good and evil, law and chaos, and order and entropy.
The success of Elric has overshadowed his many other works, though he has worked a number of the themes of the Elric stories into his other works (the "Hawkmoon" and "Corum" novels, for example) and Elric appears in the Jerry Cornelius and Dancers at the End of Time cycles. His Eternal Champion sequence has been collected in two different editions of omnibus volumes totalling 16 books (the U.S. edition was 15 volumes, while the British edition was 14 volumes, but due to various rights issues, the U.S. edition contained two volumes that were not included in the British edition, and the British edition likewise contained one volume that was not included in the U.S. edition) containing several books per volume, by Victor Gollancz in the UK and by White Wolf Publishing in the US. There have been several uncompleted attempts to make an Elric film. Currently The Mythology Company have a film project in hand with a script by Glen Mazzara. In February 2019 BBC Studios announced that they had secured the rights to the Runestaff series of fantasy novels, which feature Hawkmoon as their hero.
Another of Moorcock's creations is Jerry Cornelius, a kind of hip urban adventurer of ambiguous gender; the same characters featured in each of several Cornelius books. These books were most obviously satirical of modern times, including the Vietnam War, and continue to feature as another variation of the Multiverse theme. The first Jerry Cornelius book, "The Final Programme" (1968), was made into a feature film in 1973. Its story line is essentially identical to two of the Elric stories: "The Dreaming City" and "The Dead Gods' Book." Since 1998, Moorcock has returned to Cornelius in a series of new stories: "The Spencer Inheritance", "The Camus Connection", "Cheering for the Rockets", and "Firing the Cathedral", which was concerned with 9/11. All four novellas were included in the 2003 edition of "The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius". Moorcock's most recent Cornelius stories, "Modem Times", appeared in "The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume 2", published in 2008, this was expanded in 2011 as "Modem Times 2.0". Additionally, a version of Cornelius also appeared in Moorcock's 2010 "Doctor Who" novel "The Coming of the Terraphiles". "Pegging the President" (PS. 2018), "The Fracking Factory" (on FB, 2018) are two recent novellas and further stories are forthcoming.
Since the 1990s he has worked on novels containing autobiography and fake autobiography mixed with fantasy and parody beginning with "Blood" and "The War Amongst the Angels". His most recent sequence began with "The Whispering Swarm", published to critical success in 2015. "The Woods of Arcady" is forthcoming. With "Kaboul" (Denoel 2018) he continued to publish original work in France.
Moorcock is a fervent supporter of the works of Mervyn Peake.
He cites Fritz Leiber, an important sword and sorcery pioneer, as an author who writes fantasy that is not escapist and contains meaningful themes. These views can be found in his study of epic fantasy, "Wizardry and Wild Romance" (Gollancz, 1987) which was revised and reissued by MonkeyBrain Books in 2004—its first U.S. edition catalogued by ISFDB.
Moorcock is somewhat dismissive of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. He met both Tolkien and C. S. Lewis in his teens, and claims to have liked them personally even though he does not admire them on artistic grounds. Moorcock criticised works such as "The Lord of the Rings" for their "Merry England" point of view, famously equating Tolkien's novel to "Winnie-the-Pooh" in his essay "Epic Pooh". Even so, James Cawthorn and Moorcock included "The Lord of the Rings" in "Fantasy: The 100 Best Books" (Carroll & Graf, 1988), and their review is not dismissive.
Moorcock has also criticized writers for their political agendas. He included Robert A. Heinlein and H. P. Lovecraft among this group in a 1978 essay, "Starship Stormtroopers" ("Anarchist Review"). There he criticised the production of "authoritarian" fiction by certain canonical writers, and Lovecraft for having antisemitic, misogynistic and extremely racist viewpoints that he weaved into his short stories.
Moorcock has allowed a number of other writers to create stories in his fictional Jerry Cornelius universe. Brian Aldiss, M. John Harrison, Norman Spinrad, James Sallis, and Steve Aylett, among others, have written such stories. Many others have appeared on a Moorcock Facebook page. In an interview published in "The Internet Review of Science Fiction," Moorcock explains the reason for sharing his character:
Two short stories by Keith Roberts, "Coranda" and "The Wreck of the Kissing Bitch", are set in the frozen Matto Grosso plateau of Moorcock's 1969 novel, "The Ice Schooner".
Elric of Melnibone and Moonglum appear in Karl Edward Wagner's story "The Gothic Touch", where they meet with Kane, who borrows Elric for his ability to deal with demons.
He is a friend and fan of comic book writer Alan Moore, and allowed Moore the use of his own character, Michael Kane of Old Mars, mentioned in Moore's "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II". The two men appeared on stage at the Vanbrugh Theatre in London in January 2006 where they discussed Moorcock's work. The Green City from "Warriors of Mars" was also referenced in Larry Niven's "Rainbow Mars". Moorcock's character Jerry Cornelius appeared in Moore's "".
Cornelius also appeared in French artist Mœbius' comic series "Le Garage Hermétique".
In 1995–96, Moorcock wrote a script for a computer game/film/novel by Origin Systems. When Electronic Arts bought Origins, the game was cancelled, but Moorcock's 40,000-word treatment was fleshed out by Storm Constantine, resulting in the novel "Silverheart". The story is set in Karadur-Shriltasi, a city at the heart of the Multiverse. A second novel, "Dragonskin", was described as being in preparation, with Constantine as the main writer, but has not yet been delivered. Moorcock abandoned a memoir about his friends Mervyn Peake and Maeve Gilmore because he felt it was too personal.
He wrote prose and verse for "The Sunday Books" first publication in French to accompany a set of unpublished Peake drawings. His book "The Metatemporal Detective" was published in 2007. His most recent book to be published first in French is "Kaboul", in 2018.
In November 2009, Moorcock announced that he would be writing a "Doctor Who" novel for BBC Books in 2010, making it one of the few occasions when he has written stories set in other people's "shared universes". The novel "The Coming of the Terraphiles" was released in October 2010. The story merges Doctor Who with many of Moorcock's characters from the multiverse, notably Captain Cornelius and his pirates. In 2016 Moorcock published the first novel in what he terms a literary experiment, blending memoir and fantasy, "The Whispering Swarm". In 2018 he announced his completion of the second volume "The Woods of Arcady". His Jerry Cornelius novella "Pegging the President" was launched in 2018 at Shakespeare and Co, Paris, where he discussed his work with Hari Kunzru and reaffirmed his commitment to literary experiment.
Moorcock is a member of the College of Pataphysicians.
The first of an audiobook series of unabridged Elric novels, with new work read by Moorcock, began appearing from AudioRealms; however, Audio Realms is no longer in business. The second audiobook in the series – "The Sailor on the Seas of Fate" – was published in 2007. There have been audio-books of "Corum" and others, several of which were unofficial and "A Winter Admiral" and "Furniture" are audio versions of short stories.
Moorcock has his own music project, which records under the name Michael Moorcock & The Deep Fix. "The Deep Fix" was the title story of an obscure collection of short stories by James Colvin (a pen name of Moorcock) that was published in the 1960s. The Deep Fix was also the fictional band fronted by Moorcock's character Jerry Cornelius.
The first album "New Worlds Fair" was released in 1975. The album included Snowy White and a number of Hawkwind regulars in the credits. A second version of the "New Worlds" album was issued in 2004 under the album name "Roller Coaster Holiday". A non-album single, "Starcruiser" coupled with "Dodgem Dude", was belatedly issued in 1980.
The Deep Fix band gave a rare live performance at the Roundhouse, London on 18 June 1978 at "Nik Turner's Bohemian Love-In", headlined by Turner's band Sphynx and also featuring Tanz Der Youth with Brian James (ex-The Damned), Lightning Raiders, Steve Took's Horns, Roger Ruskin and others.
In 1982, as a trio with Pete Pavli and Drachen Theaker, some recordings were issued on "Hawkwind, Friends and Relations" and a limited-edition 7" single of "Brothel in Rosenstrasse" backed with "Time Centre".
In 2008, "The Entropy Tango & Gloriana Demo Sessions" by Michael Moorcock & The Deep Fix was released. These were sessions for planned albums based on two of Moorcock's novels, "Gloriana, or The Unfulfill'd Queen" and "The Entropy Tango", which were never completed.
Working with Martin Stone, Moorcock began recording a new Deep Fix album in Paris, "Live From the Terminal Cafe". Following Stone's death in 2016, Moorcock made plans to complete the album with producer Don Falcone. In 2019, Moorcock announced the completion of the album, and release date (11 October 2019).
Moorcock collaborated with the British rock band Hawkwind on many occasions: the Hawkwind track "The Black Corridor", for example, included verbatim quotes from Moorcock's novel of the same name, and he worked with the band on their album "Warrior on the Edge of Time, "for which he earned a gold disc. Moorcock also wrote the lyrics to "Sonic Attack", a Sci-Fi satire of the public information broadcast, that was part of Hawkwind's "Space Ritual" set. Hawkwind's album "The Chronicle of the Black Sword" was largely based on the Elric novels. Moorcock appeared on stage with the band on many occasions, including the Black Sword tour. His contributions were removed from the original release of the "Live Chronicles" album, recorded on this tour, for legal reasons, but have subsequently appeared on some double-CD versions. He can also be seen performing on the DVD version of "Chronicle of the Black Sword".
Moorcock also collaborated with former Hawkwind frontman and resident poet, Robert Calvert (who gave the chilling declamation of "Sonic Attack"), on Calvert's albums "Lucky Leif and the Longships" and "Hype", playing guitar and banjo and singing background vocals.
Moorcock wrote the lyrics to three album tracks by the American band Blue Öyster Cult: "Black Blade", referring to the sword Stormbringer in the Elric books, "Veteran of the Psychic Wars", showing us Elric's emotions at a critical point of his story (this song may also refer to the "Warriors at the Edge of Time", which figure heavily in Moorcock's novels about John Daker; at one point his novel "The Dragon in the Sword" they call themselves the "veterans of a thousand psychic wars"), and "The Great Sun Jester", about his friend, the poet Bill Butler, who died of a drug overdose. Moorcock has performed live with BÖC (in 1987 at the Atlanta, GA Dragon Con Convention).
Moorcock contributed vocals and harmonica to the Spirits Burning & Michael Moorcock CD "An Alien Heat," released in 2018. Most of the lyrics were lifted from or based on text in his novel "An Alien Heat". The album includes contributions from Albert Bouchard and other members of Blue Öyster Cult, as well as former members of Hawkwind. Moorcock also appeared on five tracks on the Spirits Burning CD "Alien Injection", released in 2008. He is credited with singing lead vocals and playing guitar and mandolin. The performances used on the CD were from "The Entropy Tango & Gloriana Demo Sessions".
Michael Moorcock has received great recognition for his career contributions as well as for particular works.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Moorcock in 2002, its seventh class of two deceased and two living writers. He also received life achievement awards at the World Fantasy Convention in 2000 (World Fantasy Award), at the Utopiales International Festival in 2004 (Prix Utopia), from the Horror Writers Association in 2005 (Bram Stoker Award), and from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2008 (named its 25th Grand Master).
He was "Co-Guest of Honor" at the 1976 World Fantasy Convention in New York City and one Guest of Honor at the 1997 55th World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio, Texas.
and other stories in various anthologies
As well as a series of "Best SF Stories from New Wolds" and "The Traps of Time" (Hart-Davis), Moorcock has also edited other volumes, including two bringing together examples of invasion literature: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19358 |
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Sinitic (Chinese) languages spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of Standard Chinese. Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin languages and dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as Northern Chinese (, "běifānghuà", 'northern speech'). Many varieties of Mandarin, such those of the Southwest (including Sichuanese) and the Lower Yangtze (including the old capital Nanjing), are not mutually intelligible or are only partially intelligible with the standard language. Nevertheless, Mandarin is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers (with nearly a billion).
Mandarin is by far the largest of the seven or ten Chinese dialect groups, spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area, stretching from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjiang in the northeast. This is generally attributed to the greater ease of travel and communication in the North China Plain compared to the more mountainous south, combined with the relatively recent spread of Mandarin to frontier areas.
Most Mandarin varieties have four tones. The final stops of Middle Chinese have disappeared in most of these varieties, but some have merged them as a final glottal stop. Many Mandarin varieties, including the Beijing dialect, retain retroflex initial consonants, which have been lost in southern varieties of Chinese.
The capital has been within the Mandarin area for most of the last millennium, making these dialects very influential. Some form of Mandarin has served as a national lingua franca since the 14th century. In the early 20th century, a standard form based on the Beijing dialect, with elements from other Mandarin dialects, was adopted as the national language. Standard Chinese is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan and one of the four official languages of Singapore. In several rebel group-controlled, multiethnic regions of Myanmar, Mandarin is either an official language (such as in Wa State) or the lingua franca (such as in Shan State Special region 4). It is used as one of the working languages of the United Nations. It is also one of the most frequently used varieties of Chinese among Chinese diaspora communities internationally and the most commonly taught Chinese variety.
The English word "mandarin" (from Portuguese "mandarim", from Malay "menteri", from Sanskrit "mantrin", meaning "minister or counsellor") originally meant an official of the Ming and Qing empires.
Since their native varieties were often mutually unintelligible, these officials communicated using a Koiné language based on various northern varieties. When Jesuit missionaries learned this standard language in the 16th century, they called it "Mandarin", from its Chinese name "Guānhuà" () or "language of the officials".
In everyday English, "Mandarin" refers to Standard Chinese, which is often called simply "Chinese". Standard Chinese is based on the particular Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing, with some lexical and syntactic influence from other Mandarin dialects. It is the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the "de facto" official language of the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan) and one of the four official languages of Singapore. It also functions as the language of instruction in Mainland China and in Taiwan. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, under the name "Chinese". Chinese speakers refer to the modern standard language as
but not as "Guānhuà".
Linguists use the term "Mandarin" to refer to the diverse group of dialects spoken in northern and southwestern China, which Chinese linguists call "Guānhuà". The alternative term "Běifānghuà" () or "Northern dialects", is used less and less among Chinese linguists. By extension, the term "Old Mandarin" or "Early Mandarin" is used by linguists to refer to the northern dialects recorded in materials from the Yuan dynasty.
Native speakers who are not academic linguists may not recognize that the variants they speak are classified in linguistics as members of "Mandarin" (or so-called "Northern dialects") in a broader sense. Within Chinese social or cultural discourse, there is not a common "Mandarin" identity based on language; rather, there are strong regional identities centred on individual dialects because of the wide geographical distribution and cultural diversity of their speakers. Speakers of forms of Mandarin other than the standard typically refer to the variety they speak by a geographic name—for example Sichuan dialect, Hebei dialect or Northeastern dialect, all being regarded as distinct from the standard language.
The hundreds of modern local varieties of Chinese developed from regional variants of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese. Traditionally, seven major groups of dialects have been recognized. Aside from Mandarin, the other six are Wu, Gan and Xiang in central China and Min, Hakka and Yue on the southeast coast. The "Language Atlas of China" (1987) distinguishes three further groups: Jin (split from Mandarin), Huizhou in the Huizhou region of Anhui and Zhejiang and Pinghua in Guangxi and Yunnan.
After the fall of the Northern Song (959–1126) and during the reign of the Jin (1115–1234) and Yuan (Mongol) dynasties in northern China, a common speech developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital, a language referred to as Old Mandarin. New genres of vernacular literature were based on this language, including verse, drama and story forms, such as the "qu" and "sanqu" poetry.
The rhyming conventions of the new verse were codified in a rime dictionary called the "Zhongyuan Yinyun" (1324). A radical departure from the rime table tradition that had evolved over the previous centuries, this dictionary contains a wealth of information on the phonology of Old Mandarin. Further sources are the 'Phags-pa script based on the Tibetan alphabet, which was used to write several of the languages of the Mongol empire, including Chinese and the "Menggu Ziyun", a rime dictionary based on 'Phags-pa. The rime books differ in some details, but overall show many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects, such as the reduction and disappearance of final plosives and the reorganization of the Middle Chinese tones.
In Middle Chinese, initial stops and affricates showed a three-way contrast between tenuis, voiceless aspirated and voiced consonants. There were four tones, with the fourth or "entering tone", a checked tone comprising syllables ending in plosives ("-p", "-t" or "-k"). Syllables with voiced initials tended to be pronounced with a lower pitch and by the late Tang dynasty, each of the tones had split into two registers conditioned by the initials. When voicing was lost in all languages except the Wu subfamily, this distinction became phonemic and the system of initials and tones was rearranged differently in each of the major groups.
The "Zhongyuan Yinyun" shows the typical Mandarin four-tone system resulting from a split of the "even" tone and loss of the entering tone, with its syllables distributed across the other tones (though their different origin is marked in the dictionary). Similarly, voiced plosives and affricates have become voiceless aspirates in the "even" tone and voiceless non-aspirates in others, another distinctive Mandarin development. However, the language still retained a final "-m", which has merged with "-n" in modern dialects and initial voiced fricatives. It also retained the distinction between velars and alveolar sibilants in palatal environments, which later merged in most Mandarin dialects to yield a palatal series (rendered "j-", "q-" and "x-" in pinyin).
The flourishing vernacular literature of the period also shows distinctively Mandarin vocabulary and syntax, though some, such as the third-person pronoun "tā" (他), can be traced back to the Tang dynasty.
Until the early 20th century, formal writing and even much poetry and fiction was done in Literary Chinese, which was modeled on the classics of the Warring States period and the Han dynasty. Over time, the various spoken varieties diverged greatly from Literary Chinese, which was learned and composed as a special language. Preserved from the sound changes that affected the various spoken varieties, its economy of expression was greatly valued. For example, ("yì", "wing") is unambiguous in written Chinese, but has over 75 homophones in Standard Chinese.
The literary language was less appropriate for recording materials that were meant to be reproduced in oral presentations, materials such as plays and grist for the professional story-teller's mill. From at least the Yuan dynasty, plays that recounted the subversive tales of China's Robin Hoods to the Ming dynasty novels such as "Water Margin", on down to the Qing dynasty novel "Dream of the Red Chamber" and beyond, there developed a literature in written vernacular Chinese (白话/白話, "báihuà"). In many cases, this written language reflected Mandarin varieties and since pronunciation differences were not conveyed in this written form, this tradition had a unifying force across all the Mandarin-speaking regions and beyond.
Hu Shih, a pivotal figure of the first half of the twentieth century, wrote an influential and perceptive study of this literary tradition, entitled "Báihuà Wénxuéshǐ" ("A History of Vernacular Literature").
Until the mid-20th century, most Chinese people living in many parts of South China spoke only their local variety. As a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties, known as "Guānhuà". Knowledge of this language was thus essential for an official career, but it was never formally defined.
Officials varied widely in their pronunciation; in 1728, the Yongzheng Emperor, unable to understand the accents of officials from Guangdong and Fujian, issued a decree requiring the governors of those provinces to provide for the teaching of proper pronunciation. Although the resulting Academies for Correct Pronunciation () were short-lived, the decree did spawn a number of textbooks that give some insight into the ideal pronunciation. Common features included:
As the last two of these features indicate, this language was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. This form remained prestigious long after the capital moved to Beijing in 1421, though the speech of the new capital emerged as a rival standard. As late as 1815, Robert Morrison based the first English–Chinese dictionary on this koiné as the standard of the time, though he conceded that the Beijing dialect was gaining in influence. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court.
In the early years of the Republic of China, intellectuals of the New Culture Movement, such as Hu Shih and Chen Duxiu, successfully campaigned for the replacement of Literary Chinese as the written standard by written vernacular Chinese, which was based on northern dialects. A parallel priority was the definition of a standard national language (). After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation, the National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic, founded in 1949, retained this standard, calling it "pǔtōnghuà" ().
Some 54% of speakers of Mandarin varieties could understand the standard language in the early 1950s, rising to 91% in 1984. Nationally, the proportion understanding the standard rose from 41% to 90% over the same period.
The national language is now used in education, the media and formal occasions in both Mainland China and Taiwan but not in Hong Kong and Macau. This standard can now be spoken intelligibly by most younger people in Mainland China and Taiwan with various regional accents. In Hong Kong and Macau, because of their colonial and linguistic history, the sole language of education, the media, formal speech and everyday life remains the local Cantonese. Mandarin is now common and taught in many schools but still has yet to gain traction with the local population. In Mandarin-speaking areas such as Sichuan and Chongqing, the local dialect is the native tongue of most of the population. The era of mass education in Standard Chinese has not erased these regional differences, and people may be either diglossic or speak the standard language with a notable accent.
From an official point of view, the mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese governments maintain their own forms of the standard under different names. Technically, both "Pǔtōnghuà" and "Guóyǔ" base their phonology on the Beijing accent, though "Pǔtōnghuà" also takes some elements from other sources. Comparison of dictionaries produced in the two areas will show that there are few substantial differences. However, both versions of "school-standard" Chinese are often quite different from the Mandarin varieties that are spoken in accordance with regional habits, and neither is wholly identical to the Beijing dialect. "Pǔtōnghuà" and "Guóyǔ" also have some differences from the Beijing dialect in vocabulary, grammar, and pragmatics.
The written forms of Standard Chinese are also essentially equivalent, although simplified characters are used in mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia, while people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan generally use traditional characters.
Most Han Chinese living in northern and southwestern China are native speakers of a dialect of Mandarin. The North China Plain provided few barriers to migration, leading to relative linguistic homogeneity over a wide area in northern China. In contrast, the mountains and rivers of southern China have spawned the other six major groups of Chinese varieties, with great internal diversity, particularly in Fujian.
However, the varieties of Mandarin cover a huge area containing nearly a billion people. As a result, there are pronounced regional variations in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, and many Mandarin varieties are not mutually intelligible.
Most of northeastern China, except for Liaoning, did not receive significant settlements by Han Chinese until the 18th century, and as a result the Northeastern Mandarin dialects spoken there differ little from the Beijing dialect. The Manchu people of the area now speak these dialects exclusively; their native language is only maintained in northwestern Xinjiang, where Xibe, a modern dialect, is spoken.
The frontier areas of Northwest China were colonized by speakers of Mandarin dialects at the same time, and the dialects in those areas similarly closely resemble their relatives in the core Mandarin area. The Southwest was settled early, but the population fell dramatically for obscure reasons in the 13th century, and did not recover until the 17th century. The dialects in this area are now relatively uniform. However, long-established cities even very close to Beijing, such as Tianjin, Baoding, Shenyang, and Dalian, have markedly different dialects.
Unlike their compatriots on the southeast coast, few Mandarin speakers engaged in overseas emigration until the late 20th century, but there are now significant communities of them in cities across the world.
The classification of Chinese dialects evolved during the 20th century, and many points remain unsettled. Early classifications tended to follow provincial boundaries or major geographical features.
In 1936, Wang Li produced the first classification based on phonetic criteria, principally the evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials. His Mandarin group included dialects of northern and southwestern China, as well as those of Hunan and northern Jiangxi.
Li Fang-Kuei's classification of 1937 distinguished the latter two groups as Xiang and Gan, while splitting the remaining Mandarin dialects between Northern, Lower Yangtze and Southwestern Mandarin groups.
The widely accepted seven-group classification of Yuan Jiahua in 1960 kept Xiang and Gan separate, with Mandarin divided into Northern, Northwestern, Southwestern and Jiang–Huai (Lower Yangtze) subgroups.
Of Yuan's four Mandarin subgroups, the Northwestern dialects are the most diverse, particularly in the province of Shanxi. The linguist Li Rong proposed that the northwestern dialects of Shanxi and neighbouring areas that retain a final glottal stop in the Middle Chinese entering tone (plosive-final) category should constitute a separate top-level group called Jin. He used this classification in the "Language Atlas of China" (1987). Many other linguists continue to include these dialects in the Mandarin group, pointing out that the Lower Yangtze dialects also retain the glottal stop.
The southern boundary of the Mandarin area, with the central Wu, Gan and Xiang groups, is weakly defined due to centuries of diffusion of northern features. Many border varieties have a mixture of features that make them difficult to classify.
The boundary between Southwestern Mandarin and Xiang is particularly weak, and in many early classifications the two were not separated. Zhou Zhenhe and You Rujie include the New Xiang dialects within Southwestern Mandarin, treating only the more conservative Old Xiang dialects as a separate group.
The Huizhou dialects have features of both Mandarin and Wu, and have been assigned to one or other of these groups or treated as separate by various authors. Li Rong and the "Language Atlas of China" treated it as a separate top-level group, but this remains controversial.
The "Language Atlas of China" calls the remainder of Mandarin a "supergroup", divided into eight dialect groups distinguished by their treatment of the Middle Chinese entering tone (see Tones below):
The "Atlas" also includes several unclassified Mandarin dialects spoken in scattered pockets across southeastern China, such as Nanping in Fujian and Dongfang on Hainan.
Another Mandarin variety of uncertain classification is apparently Gyami, recorded in the 19th century in the Tibetan foothills, who the Chinese apparently did not recognize as Chinese.
A syllable consists maximally of an initial consonant, a medial glide, a vowel, a coda, and tone. In the traditional analysis, the medial, vowel and coda are combined as a "final".
Not all combinations occur. For example, Standard Chinese (based on the Beijing dialect) has about 1,200 distinct syllables.
Phonological features that are generally shared by the Mandarin dialects include:
The maximal inventory of initials of a Mandarin dialect is as follows, with bracketed pinyin spellings given for those present in the standard language:
Most Mandarin dialects have three medial glides, , and (spelled "i", "u" and "ü" in pinyin), though their incidence varies.
The medial , is lost after apical initials in several areas.
Thus Southwestern Mandarin has "correct" where the standard language has "dui" .
Southwestern Mandarin also has in some words where the standard has "jie qie xie" . This is a stereotypical feature of southwestern Mandarin, since it is so easily noticeable. E.g. "hai" "shoe" for standard "xie", "gai" "street" for standard "jie".
Mandarin dialects typically have relatively few vowels. Syllabic fricatives, as in standard "zi" and "zhi", are common in Mandarin dialects, though they also occur elsewhere.
The Middle Chinese off-glides and are generally preserved in Mandarin dialects, yielding several diphthongs and triphthongs in contrast to the larger sets of monophthongs common in other dialect groups (and some widely scattered Mandarin dialects).
The Middle Chinese coda was still present in Old Mandarin, but has merged with in the modern dialects. In some areas (especially the southwest) final has also merged with . This is especially prevalent in the rhyme pairs "-en/-eng" and "-in/-ing" . As a result, "jīn" "gold" and "jīng" "capital" merge in those dialects.
The Middle Chinese final stops have undergone a variety of developments in different Mandarin dialects (see Tones below). In Lower Yangtze dialects and some north-western dialects they have merged as a final glottal stop. In other dialects they have been lost, with varying effects on the vowel. As a result, Beijing Mandarin and Northeastern Mandarin underwent more vowel mergers than many other varieties of Mandarin. For example:
R-coloring, a characteristic feature of Mandarin, works quite differently in the southwest. Whereas Beijing dialect generally removes only a final or when adding the rhotic final "-r" , in the southwest the "-r" replaces nearly the entire rhyme.
In general, no two Mandarin-speaking areas have exactly the same set of tone values, but most Mandarin-speaking areas have very similar tone "distribution". For example, the dialects of Jinan, Chengdu, Xi'an and so on all have four tones that correspond quite well to the Beijing dialect tones of (55), (35), (214), and (51). The exception to this rule lies in the distribution of syllables formerly ending in a stop consonant, which are treated differently in different dialects of Mandarin.
Middle Chinese stops and affricates had a three-way distinction between tenuis, voiceless aspirate and voiced (or breathy voiced) consonants.
In Mandarin dialects the voicing is generally lost, yielding voiceless aspirates in syllables with a Middle Chinese level tone and non-aspirates in other syllables.
Of the four tones of Middle Chinese, the level, rising and departing tones have also developed into four modern tones in a uniform way across Mandarin dialects; the Middle Chinese level tone has split into two registers, conditioned on voicing of the Middle Chinese initial, while rising tone syllables with voiced obstruent initials have shifted to the departing tone.
The following examples from the standard language illustrate the regular development common to Mandarin dialects (recall that pinyin "d" denotes a non-aspirate , while "t" denotes an aspirate ):
In traditional Chinese phonology, syllables that ended in a stop in Middle Chinese (i.e. /p/, /t/ or /k/) were considered to belong to a special category known as the "entering tone".
These final stops have disappeared in most Mandarin dialects, with the syllables distributed over the other four modern tones in different ways in the various Mandarin subgroups.
In the Beijing dialect that underlies the standard language, syllables beginning with original voiceless consonants were redistributed across the four tones in a completely random pattern. For example, the three characters , all "tsjek" in Middle Chinese (William H. Baxter's transcription), are now pronounced "jī", "jǐ" and "jì" respectively. Older dictionaries such as "Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary" mark characters whose pronunciation formerly ended with a stop with a superscript 5; however, this tone number is more commonly used for syllables that always have a neutral tone (see below).
In Lower Yangtze dialects, a minority of Southwestern dialects (e.g. Minjiang) and Jin Chinese (sometimes considered non-Mandarin), former final stops were not deleted entirely, but were reduced to a glottal stop . (This includes the dialect of Nanjing on which the Postal Romanization was based; it transcribes the glottal stop as a trailing "h".) This development is shared with Wu Chinese and is thought to represent the pronunciation of Old Mandarin. In line with traditional Chinese phonology, dialects such as Lower Yangtze and Minjiang are thus said to have five tones instead of four. However, modern linguistics considers these syllables as having no phonemic tone at all.
Although the system of tones is common across Mandarin dialects, their realization as tone contours varies widely:
* Dialects in and around the Nantong area typically have many more than 4 tones, due to influence from the neighbouring Wu dialects.
Mandarin dialects frequently employ neutral tones in the second syllables of words, creating syllables whose tone contour is so short and light that it is difficult or impossible to discriminate. These atonal syllables also occur in non-Mandarin dialects, but in many southern dialects the tones of all syllables are made clear.
There are more polysyllabic words in Mandarin than in all other major varieties of Chinese except Shanghainese. This is partly because Mandarin has undergone many more sound changes than have southern varieties of Chinese, and has needed to deal with many more homophones. New words have been formed by adding affixes such as "lao-" (), "-zi" (), "-(e)r" (/), and "-tou" (/), or by compounding, e.g. by combining two words of similar meaning as in "cōngmáng" (), made from elements meaning "hurried" and "busy".
A distinctive feature of southwestern Mandarin is its frequent use of noun reduplication, which is hardly used in Beijing. In Sichuan, one hears "bāobāo" () "handbag" where Beijing uses "bāo'r" ().
There are also a small number of words that have been polysyllabic since Old Chinese, such as () "butterfly".
The singular pronouns in Mandarin are () "I", ( or ) "you", () "you (formal)", and (, or /) "he/she/it", with - (/) added for the plural. Further, there is a distinction between the plural first-person pronoun (/), which is inclusive of the listener, and (/), which may be exclusive of the listener. Dialects of Mandarin agree with each other quite consistently on these pronouns. While the first and second person singular pronouns are cognate with forms in other varieties of Chinese, the rest of the pronominal system is a Mandarin innovation (e.g., Shanghainese has "non" / "you" and "yi" "he/she").
Because of contact with Mongolian and Manchurian peoples, Mandarin (especially the Northeastern varieties) has some loanwords from these languages not present in other varieties of Chinese, such as () "alley". Southern Chinese varieties have borrowed from Tai, Austroasiatic, and Austronesian languages.
There are also many Chinese words which come from foreign languages such as () from golf; () from bikini; () from hamburger.
In general, the greatest variation occurs in slang, in kinship terms, in names for common crops and domesticated animals, for common verbs and adjectives, and other such everyday terms. The least variation occurs in "formal" vocabulary—terms dealing with science, law, or government.
Chinese varieties of all periods have traditionally been considered prime examples of analytic languages, relying on word order and particles instead of inflection or affixes to provide grammatical information such as person, number, tense, mood, or case.
Although modern varieties, including the Mandarin dialects, use a small number of particles in a similar fashion to suffixes, they are still strongly analytic.
The basic word order of subject–verb–object is common across Chinese dialects, but there are variations in the order of the two objects of ditransitive sentences.
In northern dialects the indirect object precedes the direct object (as in English), for example in the Standard Chinese sentence:
In southern dialects, as well as many southwestern and Lower Yangtze dialects, the objects occur in the reverse order.
Most varieties of Chinese use post-verbal particles to indicate aspect, but the particles used vary.
Most Mandarin dialects use the particle "-le" (了) to indicate the perfective aspect and "-zhe" (着/著) for the progressive aspect.
Other Chinese varieties tend to use different particles, e.g. Cantonese "zo2" 咗 and "gan2" 紧/緊 respectively.
The experiential aspect particle "-guo" (过/過) is used more widely, except in Southern Min.
The subordinative particle "de" (的) is characteristic of Mandarin dialects.
Some southern dialects, and a few Lower Yangtze dialects, preserve an older pattern of subordination without a marking particle, while in others a classifier fulfils the role of the Mandarin particle.
Especially in conversational Chinese, sentence-final particles alter the inherent meaning of a sentence. Like much vocabulary, particles can vary a great deal with regards to the locale. For example, the particle "ma" (嘛), which is used in most northern dialects to denote obviousness or contention, is replaced by "yo" (哟) in southern usage.
Some characters in Mandarin can be combined with others to indicate a particular meaning just like prefix and suffix in English. For example, the suffix -er which means the person who is doing the action, e.g. teacher, person who teaches. In Mandarin the character 師 functions the same thing, it is combined with 教, which means teach, to form the word teacher.
List of several common Chinese prefixes and suffixes: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19359 |
Moby
Richard Melville Hall (born September 11, 1965), better known as Moby, is an American musician, songwriter, singer, producer, and animal rights activist. He has sold 20 million records worldwide.
AllMusic considers him to be "among the most important dance music figures of the early 1990s, helping bring dance music to a mainstream audience both in the United Kingdom and the United States".
After taking up guitar and piano at age nine, he played in several underground punk rock bands through the 1980s before turning to electronic dance music. In 1989, he moved to New York City and became a prolific figure as a DJ, producer and remixer. His 1991 single "Go" was his mainstream breakthrough, reaching No. 10 in the United Kingdom. Between 1992 and 1997 he scored eight top 10 hits on the "Billboard" Dance Club Songs chart including "Move (You Make Me Feel So Good)", "Feeling So Real", and "James Bond Theme (Moby Re-Version)". Through the decade he also produced music under various pseudonyms, released the critically acclaimed "Everything Is Wrong" (1995), and composed music for films. His punk-oriented album "Animal Rights" (1996) alienated much of his fan base.
Moby found commercial and critical success with his fifth album "Play" (1999) which, after receiving little recognition, became an unexpected global hit in 2000 after each track was licensed to films, television shows, and commercials. It remains his highest selling album with 12 million copies sold. Its seventh single, "South Side", featuring Gwen Stefani, remains his only one to appear on the US "Billboard" Hot 100, reaching No. 14. Moby followed "Play" with albums of varied styles including electronic, dance, rock, and downtempo music, starting with "18" (2002), "Hotel" (2005), and "Last Night" (2008). His later albums saw him explore ambient music, including the almost four-hour release "" (2016). Moby has not toured since 2014 but continues to record and release albums; his most recent is "All Visible Objects" (2020). Moby has co-written, produced, or remixed music for various artists.
In addition to his music career, Moby is known for his veganism and support for animal welfare and humanitarian aid. He is the owner of Little Pine, a vegan restaurant in Los Angeles, and organized the vegan music and food festival Circle V. He is the author of four books, including a collection of his photography and two memoirs: "" (2016) and "Then It Fell Apart" (2019).
Richard Melville Hall was born September 11, 1965, in the neighborhood of Harlem in Manhattan, New York City. He is the only child of Elizabeth McBride ("née" Warner), a medical secretary, and James Frederick Hall, a chemistry professor, who died in a car crash while drunk when Moby was two. His father gave him the nickname Moby three days after his birth as his parents considered the name Richard too large for a newborn baby. The name was also a reference to the family's ancestry; Hall says he is the great-great-great nephew of Herman Melville, author of "Moby-Dick".
Moby was raised by his mother, first in San Francisco from 1969 for a short period. He recalled being sexually abused by a staff member at his daycare during this time. This was followed by a move to Darien, Connecticut, living in a squat with "three or four other drug-addicted hippies, with bands playing in the basement." The two then moved to Stratford, Connecticut for a brief time. His mother struggled to support her son, often relying on food stamps and government welfare. They occasionally stayed with Moby's grandparents in Darien, but the affluence of the New York City suburb made him feel poor and ashamed. Shortly before his mother's death, Moby learned from her that he has a half brother. His first job was a caddy at a golf course.
Moby took up music at the age of nine. He started on classical guitar and received piano lessons from his mother before studying jazz, music theory, and percussion. In 1983, he became the guitarist in a hardcore punk band, the Vatican Commandos, playing on their debut EP "Hit Squad for God". Around this time he was the lead vocalist for Flipper for two days; Moby played bass for their reunion shows in the 2000s. Moby formed a post punk group named AWOL around the time of his eighteenth birthday. He is credited on their only release, a self-titled EP, as Moby Hall.
In 1983, Moby graduated from Darien High School and started a philosophy degree at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. Around this time he had found the instruments he had learned "sonically limiting" and moved to electronic music. He spun records at the campus radio station WHUS which led to DJ work in local clubs and bars. Moby grew increasingly unhappy at university, however, and transferred to State University of New York at Purchase, studying philosophy and photography, to try and renew his interest in studying. He dropped out in April 1984 to pursue DJing and music full-time, which started his interest in electronic dance music. For two years he lived in Greenwich, Connecticut where he DJ'd at The Cafe, an under-21 nightclub at the back of a church. In 1987, he started to send demos of his music to record labels in New York City; he failed to receive an offer which led to a two-year period of "very fruitless labor". Around 1988, Moby moved into a semi-abandoned factory in Stamford, Connecticut that had no bathroom or running water, but the free electricity supply allowed him to work on his music, using a 4-track recorder, synthesizer, and drum machine.
In 1989, Moby relocated to New York City with his close friend, artist Damian Loeb. In addition to performing DJ sets in local bars and clubs, he played guitar in alternative rock group Ultra Vivid Scene and appeared in the video for their 1989 single "Mercy Seat". In 1990, Moby joined Shopwell and played on their album "Peanuts". Moby's first live electronic music gig followed in the summer of 1990 at Club MK; he wore a suit for the show. His future manager Eric Härle, who was in attendance, recalled Moby's set: "The music was amazing, but the show was riddled with technical mishaps. It left me very intrigued and impressed in a strange way."
By mid-1990, Moby had signed a deal as the sole artist of Instinct Records, an independent New York City-based dance label then still in its infancy. The three-man operation saw Moby answer incoming calls and make records in a studio he set up in the owner's lounge. To appear that Instinct had more artists, Moby's early singles were put out under several names such as Voodoo Child, Barracuda, Brainstorm, and UHF. The first, "Time's Up" as The Brotherhood, was co-written by Moby and vocalist Jimmy Mack. This was followed by "Mobility", his first single released as Moby, in November 1990 which sold an initial 2,000 copies. He then scored a breakthrough hit with a remix of "Go", originally a B-side to "Mobility" with an added sample of "Laura Palmer's Theme" by Angelo Badalamenti from the television series "Twin Peaks". Released in March 1991, it peaked at No. 10 in the UK in October and earned him national exposure there with an appearance on "Top of the Pops". Instinct capitalised on Moby's success with the late 1991 compilation "Instinct Dance" featuring tracks by Moby and his pseudonyms. The following year, Moby revealed that "Go" had earned him just $2,000 in royalties.
The success of "Go" led to increased demand for Moby to produce more music and to remix other artists' songs. He often arranged for the artist and himself to trade remixes as opposed to being paid for his work, which was the case for his mixes for Billy Corgan and Soundgarden. The increased mainstream exposure led Moby to request a release from his contract with Instinct for a bigger label. Instinct refused, so Moby retaliated by holding out on new material. However, Instinct continued to put out records, mostly from demos, without his consent having previously copied many of his tapes and had the master rights. This was the case for Moby's debut album, "Moby", released in July 1992 and formed mostly of previously unreleased demos that Moby considered old and unrepresentative of the musical direction he had taken since. Nonetheless, he claimed Instinct had insisted and had the legal right to put it out. It was re-titled "The Story So Far" and presented with a different track listing for its UK release. Four singles were released: "Go", "Drop a Beat", "Next Is the E", and a double A-side of "I Feel It" with "Thousand". The latter was recognised by "Guinness World Records" as the fastest tempo in a recorded song at 1,015 beats-per-minute.
In 1992, Moby completed his first US tour as the opening act for The Shamen. In mid-1992, Moby estimated that he had earned between $8,000 to $11,000 a year for the past six years. At the 1992 "Mixmag" awards, he smashed his keyboard after his set. After his second nationwide tour, this time with The Prodigy and Richie Hawtin, in early 1993, a second compilation of Moby's work for Instinct followed named "Early Underground". His second and final album on Instinct, "Ambient", was released in August 1993. It is a collection of mostly ambient techno instrumentals of a more experimental style. By this time Instinct had agreed to release Moby who then took legal action, claiming that the label demanded "a ridiculous amount of money" that he did not have to leave. He also expressed disagreements over the way Instinct had packaged and handled his music. Moby was eventually released after he paid the label $10,000.
In 1993, Moby signed with Elektra Records which lasted for five years. He secured a deal with Mute Records, a British label, to handle his European distribution. Moby's output for Elektra/Mute began with "Move", a four-track EP released in August 1993. He attempted to make it in a professional studio, but he disliked the results and re-recorded it at home. The song "All That I Need Is to Be Loved (MV)" is his first song to feature his own vocals. The first single, "Move (You Make Me Feel So Good)", reached No. 1 on the US "Billboard" Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart and No. 21 in the UK. In 1993, Moby toured as the headlining act with Orbital and Aphex Twin. A rift developed between Aphex Twin and himself, partly due to Moby's refusal to tolerate their cigarette smoke, so he travelled to each gig by plane, leaving the rest on the tour bus. In 1994, Moby put out "Demons/Horses", an electronic album of two 20-minute tracks under the name Voodoo Child.
Moby's contract with Elektra allowed the opportunity to make his third full-length album, which was underway in 1994. He chose to include a variety of musical styles on the album that he either liked or had been influenced by, including electronic dance, ambient, rock, and industrial music. "Everything Is Wrong" was released in March 1995 to critical praise; "Spin" magazine named it Album of the Year and some commentators considered it to be an album ahead of its time as it failed to crack the "Billboard" 200 or have an impact on the dance charts. In the UK, the album reached No. 25 and the singles "Hymn" and "Feeling So Real" went to Nos. 31 and 30, respectively. Elektra took advantage of its diverse sound by distributing tracks of the same style to corresponding radio stations nationwide. Early copies put out in the UK and Germany included a bonus CD of ambient music entitled "Underwater". Moby toured the album with some headline spots on the second stage at the 1995 Lollapalooza festival. He followed it with a double remix album, "Everything Is Wrong—Mixed and Remixed".
The success of "Everything Is Wrong" had Moby reach a new peak in critical acclaim. The "Los Angeles Times" thought the 29-year-old Moby was "poised for greatness [...] to make that big crossover" from a respected underground artist to a mainstream dance and rock musician. "Billboard" declared him "King of techno" and "Spin" named him "the closest techno comes to a complete artist." In 1995, Moby was approached by Courtney Love to produce the next Hole album, but he declined. He directed the music video for "Young Man's Stride" by Mercury Rev. In 1995 and 1996, Moby put out a number of "self-indulgent dance" singles under the pseudonyms Lopez and DJ Cake on Trophy Records, his own Mute imprint, so he could release material that he was interested in without concern for its commercial impact. In 1996, Moby contributed "Republican Party" to the AIDS benefit album "" produced by the Red Hot Organization and released his second Voodoo Child album, "The End of Everything".
While touring "Everything Is Wrong", Moby had grown bored with the electronic scene and felt the press had failed to understand his records and take them seriously. This marked a major stylistic change for his next album, "Animal Rights", combining guitar-driven rock songs with Moby on lead vocals and softer ambient tracks. Upon completing the album Moby said that it was "weird, long, self-indulgent and difficult". Its lead single is a cover version of "That's When I Reach for My Revolver" by post-punk group Mission of Burma. "Animal Rights" was released in September 1996 in the UK, where it peaked at No. 38, and in February 1997 in the US. It was poorly received by his dance fan base who felt Moby had abandoned them, creating doubts as to what kind of artist Moby really was. Moby pointed out that he had not abandoned his electronic music completely and had worked on dance and house mixes and film scores while making "Animal Rights".
After "Animal Rights", Moby's manager recalled: "We found ourselves struggling for even the slightest bit of recognition. He became a has-been in the eyes of a lot of people in the industry". Despite the hit in sales and critical response, Moby promoted the album with a European tour with Red Hot Chili Peppers and Soundgarden, and headlined the Big Top tour with other dance and electronic DJs. He returned to the genre after liking the house music that a friend and DJ had played at a party. In October 1997, Moby displayed his range of music styles with the release of "I Like to Score", a compilation of his film soundtrack work with some re-recorded tracks. Among them are updated version of the "James Bond Theme" used for "Tomorrow Never Dies", music used in "Scream", and a cover of "New Dawn Fades" by Joy Division, an instrumental version of which appeared in "Heat". Late 1997 saw Moby start his first US tour in two years.
In 1998, Elektra granted Moby's request to be released from his deal on the condition that he paid to leave, which amounted to "quite a lot". He felt Elektra did little to capitalise on the critical success of "Everything Is Wrong", and that it was only interested in radio friendly hits. Left without an American distributor, his only deal remained with the UK-based Mute Records. Moby considered himself an artist that did not belong to a major label as his music did not fit with the genres that they promoted.
Moby's fifth album, "Play", was released by Mute and V2 Records, founded by Richard Branson three years prior, in May 1999. The project originated when a music journalist introduced Moby to the field recordings of Alan Lomax from the compilation album "Sounds of the South: A Musical Journey From the Georgia Sea Islands to the Mississippi Delta". Moby took an interest in the songs and formed samples from various tracks which he used to base new tracks of his own. Upon release in May 1999, "Play" had moderate sales but eventually sold over 10 million copies worldwide. Moby toured worldwide in support of the album which lasted 22 months. Every track on "Play" was licensed to various films, advertisements, and television shows, as well as independent films and non-profit groups. The move was criticised and led to some to consider that Moby had become a sellout, but he later maintained that the licenses were granted mostly to independent films and non-profit projects, and agreed to them due to the difficulty of getting his music heard on the radio and television in the past. In 2007, "The Washington Post" published an article about a mathematical equation dubbed the "Moby quotient" that determined to what degree had a musical artist sold out. It was named in reference to his decision to license music from "Play".
In 2000, Moby contributed "Flower" to "Gone in 60 Seconds". He co-wrote "Is It Any Wonder" with Sophie Ellis-Bextor for her debut solo album, "Read My Lips". "Moby: Play - The DVD", released in 2001, features the music videos produced for the album, live performances, and other bonus features. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video. In 2001, Moby founded the Area:One Festival which toured the US and Canada across 17 shows that summer with a range of artists. The set included Outkast, New Order, Incubus, Nelly Furtado, and Paul Oakenfold, with Moby headlining.
Moby started on the follow-up to "Play" in late 2000. Prior to working on tracks for "18", he got friends to search for records with vocals that he could use and make samples from and went on to write over 140 songs for the album. At the same time, Moby familiarised himself with the ProTools software and made "18" with it. Released in May 2002, "18" went to No. 1 in the UK and eleven other countries, and No. 4 in the US. It went on to sell over four million copies worldwide. Moby toured extensively for both "Play" and "18", playing over 500 shows in the next four years. The tour included the Area2 Festival in the summer of 2002, featuring a line-up of Moby, David Bowie, Blue Man Group, Busta Rhymes, and Carl Cox. In December 2002, during a tour stop at Paradise Rock Club in Boston, Moby was punched in the face and sprayed with mace by two or three assailants while signing autographs outside the venue. The incident left him with multiple bruises and cuts.
In February 2002, Moby performed at the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics. That month he hosted the half-hour MTV series "Señor Moby's House of Music", presenting a selection of electronic and dance music videos. His song "Extreme Ways" was used in all five of the "Bourne" films, from 2002 to 2012. Moby said that after it was used for the first, the producers originally sought a different artist for the second but they had too little time to secure someone, leading them to pick "Extreme Ways" for the entire series. In 2002, rapper Eminem mocked Moby in his song "Without Me" and its music video, dressing up like him and calling him an "old baldheaded fag" and his techno music outdated. Eminem had also shot a mock figure of Moby on stage. Moby put the attack down to Eminem having "this unrequited crush on me."
In 2003, Moby headlined the Glastonbury Festival on the final day. He co-wrote and produced "Early Mornin'" for Britney Spears' album "In the Zone" released that year. Moby returned to his dance and rave roots with the release of "Baby Monkey", the third album under his Voodoo Child moniker, in 2004. Later that year, he collaborated with Public Enemy on "Make Love Fuck War", a protest song against the Iraq War.
Moby's seventh album, "Hotel", was released in March 2005. The album contains little use of samples, which Moby reasoned to using different audio recording software which had a sampling function that was too difficult to learn, "so it was me just being lazy". He nonetheless said that "Hotel" is a more satisfying album as a result. The instruments were recorded live by Moby except for the drums, for which he enlisted his longtime live drummer Scott Frassetto. The album features vocals from six other performers, including Laura Dawn and Shayna Steele. In 2013, Moby looked back on the album as his least favourite of his career, pointing out that it was the only one not recorded at his home studio. The singles "Lift Me Up" and "Slipping Away" became top-10 hits across Europe. Early copies of the album included a bonus CD of remixes and ambient music entitled "Hotel: Ambient" that was released on its own in 2014.
In 2006, he accepted an offer to score the soundtrack for Richard Kelly's 2007 movie "Southland Tales", because he was a fan of Kelly's previous film, "Donnie Darko". In 2007, Moby also started a rock band, The Little Death with his friends Laura Dawn, Daron Murphy, and Aaron A. Brooks. Following the dissolution of V2 Records in 2007, Moby signed a new deal with Mute Records to handle his American distribution. In 2007 Moby produced and performed on a remake of "The Bulrushes" by The Bongos that appeared on the special anniversary edition of the group's debut album "Drums Along the Hudson", on Cooking Vinyl Records. From 2007 to 2008 he ran a series of New York club events titled "Degenerates".
In 2008, Moby released "Last Night", an electronic dance album inspired by a night out in his New York City neighborhood. The album was recorded in Moby's home studio and features various guest vocalists, including Wendy Starland, MC Grandmaster Caz, Sylvia of Kudu, MC Aynzli, and the Nigerian 419 Squad. The singles from "Last Night" include "Alice" and "Disco Lies".
Moby wished for the follow-up to "Last Night" to be emotional, personal, and melodic. He felt creatively inspired by a David Lynch speech at the BAFTA Award ceremony in the UK which prompted him to write new material that he liked with little regard to its mainstream commercial success. He decided against recording in a professional studio as he wanted to record the entire album at home, and chose to have the album mixed using analogue equipment. "Wait for Me" was released on June 30, 2009. Moby and Lynch discussed the recording process of "Wait for Me" on Lynch's online channel, David Lynch Foundation Television Beta. The video to the first single, "Shot in the Back of the Head", offered as a free download, was directed by Lynch.
Moby held a user-generated content competition to have fans create a video for "Wait for Me", the last single from the album, which was to be used as the official video. The winning entry was written and directed by Nimrod Shapira of Israel, and portrays the story of a girl who decides to invite Moby into her life. She attempts to do so by using a book called "How to Summon Moby, A Guide for Dummies", putting herself through bizarre and comical steps, each is a tribute to a different Moby video. The single was released in May 2010.
The "Wait for Me" tour featured a full band. Moby raised over $75,000 from three shows in California to help those affected by domestic violence after funding for the state's domestic violence program had been cut. The tour also saw Moby headline the Falls Festival in Australia and various Sunset Sounds festivals. An ambient version "Wait for Me" was released in late 2009 as "", which Moby did not produce.
In 2010, Moby enlisted vocalist Phil Costello as a songwriting partner for a new heavy metal band, Diamondsnake. After writing 13 songs, they recruited guitarist Dave Hill and a drummer named Tomato to complete the line-up. They recorded their self-titled debut album in one day and released it for free on their website. It was promoted with a series of gigs in New York City and Los Angeles. Moby contributed four songs to the soundtrack of "The Next Three Days", including the single "Mistake".
In January 2010, Moby announced that he had started work on a new album. He later summarised its style as: "Broken down melodic electronic music for empty cities at 2 a.m." The album was promoted with an EP containing three tracks from the album, given free to those who had signed up to Moby's mailing list, entitled "Be the One", in February 2011. The album, "Destroyed", was released in May 2011. A same-titled book of Moby's photography was released around the time of the album. Moby took to an online poll to decide the next single from "Destroyed"; the fans picked "Lie Down in Darkness". This was followed by "After" and "The Right Thing", both influenced as to what fans had picked. A limited edition remixed version of "Destroyed" was released in 2012 as "Destroyed Remixed" and includes new remixes by David Lynch, Holy Ghost! and System Divine, and a new 30-minute ambient track named "All Sides Gone".
Moby toured worldwide through 2013, completing acoustic and DJ sets at various concerts and festivals. His DJ set at Coachella was produced in collaboration with NASA with various images from space projected onto screens during the performance. On Record Store Day in 2013, Moby released a 7-inch record, "The Lonely Night", featuring Screaming Trees vocalist Mark Lanegan. The track was subsequently released as a download with remixes by Moby, Photek, Gregor Tresher, and Freescha.
In October 2013, Moby released "Innocents". He had worked on the album for the previous 18 months and hired Spike Stent to produce it. Moby used several guest vocalists on the album, and picked Neil Young and "Broken English" by Marianne Faithfull as the biggest influences to the musical style on the album. As with "Destroyed", the photography used for the artwork were all shot by Moby. The first single from the album was "A Case for Shame", followed by "The Perfect Life", which featured Wayne Coyne. A casting call for its video asked "for obese Speedo-sporting bikers, nude rollerskating ghosts, and an S&M gimp proficient in rhythmic gymnastics". Moby promoted the album with three shows at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles, following his decision to undergo little touring from 2014. He wrote: "Pretty much all I want to do in life is stay home and make music. So, thus: a 3 date world tour."
Six of Moby's songs are feature in "Charlie Countryman" (2013). His music set the tone to "Cathedrals of Culture" (2014), a 3D documentary film about the soul of buildings, directed by Wim Wenders. In December 2014, Moby performed three shows of ambient music at the Masonic Lodge in Hollywood Forever Cemetery to support the release of "Hotel: Ambient". The performances were accompanied by visuals created by himself and with David Lynch.
After "Innocents", Moby proceeded to make a new wave dance album with a choir, but realised the difficulty in recording a full choir in his home studio and resorted to multi-tracking vocals performed by himself and guests. He then decided against the new wave album and opted for one made by himself and seven guest vocalists he named the Void Pacific Choir. "These Systems Are Failing" was announced in September 2016 and coincided with the first single release, "Are You Lost In The World Like Me?". Its video, by animator Steve Cutts, addresses smartphone addiction which won a Webby Award. "These Systems Are Failing" was released on October 14, 2016. Moby's sole live performance of 2016 was at Circle V, a vegan food and music festival that he founded that took place on October 23 at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles. A second album with the Void Pacific Choir name followed in June 2017, entitled "More Fast Songs About the Apocalypse", influenced by the results of the 2016 United States presidential election. Released for free online, it was marketed from a spoof website using elected President Donald Trump's alleged PR alter-ego, John Miller.
Moby announced his fifteenth studio album, "Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt", in December 2017. The announcement coincided with the release of the first single, "Like a Motherless Child". In contrast to the politically inspired and punk nature of the two Void Pacific Choir records, the album explores themes of spirituality, individuality, and humanity. The album was released on March 2, 2018. The second single, "Mere Anarchy", was described by Moby as "post apocalypse, people are gone, and my friend Julie and I are time traveling aliens visiting the empty Earth." "This Wild Darkness" was the third single, released in February 2018. Moby described the song as "an existential dialog between me and the gospel choir: me talking about my confusion, the choir answering with longing and hope." Moby promoted the album with three live shows in March 2018 with a full band, one at The Echo in Los Angeles and two at Rough Trade in New York City . All profits from the album and gigs were donated to animal rights organizations.
In 2018, Moby was a guest performer on "A$AP Forever" by American rapper A$AP Rocky which samples "Porcelain". This resulted in Moby's second ever appearance on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 singles chart, having previously charted for "Southside", 17 years prior. Moby contributed several songs to the comedy "Half Magic" (2018) directed by Heather Graham.
In March 2019, Moby released a follow-up to his first long ambient album, "Long Ambients 2".
In January 2020, Moby announced that his new studio album "All Visible Objects" will be released on May 15. The first single, "Power is Taken" featuring D. H. Peligro, was released on the same day as the announcement. All profits from the album will be given to charity.
Moby has collaborated live with many of his heroes while on tour or at fundraisers. He has performed "Walk on the Wild Side" with Lou Reed, "Me and Bobby McGee" with Kris Kristofferson, "Heroes" and "Cactus" with David Bowie, "Helpless" with Bono and Michael Stipe, "New Dawn Fades" with New Order, "Make Love, Fuck War" with Public Enemy, "Whole Lotta Love" with Slash, and "That's When I Reach For My Revolver" with Mission of Burma.
He has performed two duets with the French singer Mylène Farmer ("Slipping Away (Crier la vie)" in 2006 and "Looking for My Name" in 2008) and produced seven songs on her eighth album, "Bleu Noir", released on December 6, 2010.
In 2006, Moby released a Spanish version of his song "Slipping Away" called "Escapar", in which the Spanish group Amaral took part.
In 2012, he collaborated with Spain-based group Dubsidia, making dubstep and electro house.
In 2013, Moby was responsible for the soundtrack of the documentary "The Crash Reel", who tells the story of snowboarder Kevin Pearce.
On October 16, 2015, Jean Michel Jarre released his compilation album "", which included the track "Suns have gone" co-produced by Jarre and Moby.
On September 24, 2016, Moby announced the release of an album titled "These Systems Are Failing", released under the name Moby & Void Pacific Choir. The followed the release of two singles from Moby & The Void Pacific Choir in 2015, "Almost Loved" & "The Light Is Clear In My Eyes".
He appeared in "Part 10" of TV series "Twin Peaks" accompanying American singer Rebekah Del Rio performing "No Stars".
Starz aired a special episode of "Blunt Talk," the Patrick Stewart comedy which involved Moby. He had been friends with Jonathan Ames for a long time, and "when we both lived in NY we did a lot of really strange, cabaret, vaudeville type shows together, and we just sort of stayed friends over the years. I guess when he and the other writers were writing "Blunt Talk" one of them thought it would be funny to include me as Patrick Stewart’s character's ex-wife’s current boyfriend."
Moby was one of the first musicians to have an episode on Netflix's new music documentary series titled "Once In a Lifetime Sessions"; where he records, discusses, and performs his music.
Starting in around 2001, Moby launched a series of co-owned business ventures, with the two most prominent being the Little Idiot Collective—a New York City, U.S. bricks-and-mortar clothing store, comics store, and animation studio that sold the work of an "illustrators collective". In May 2002, Moby launched a small raw and vegan restaurant and tea shop called TeaNY in New York City with his then girlfriend Kelly Tisdale. In 2006, Moby said he had removed himself from any previous business projects.
In November 2015, Moby opened the Vegan restaurant Little Pine in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The restaurant serves organic, vegan, Mediterranean-inspired dishes and has a retail section with art and books, curated by Moby himself. All profits are donated to animal welfare organizations; in May 2016, Moby estimated the year's donations at $250,000. In December 2019, Moby launched the Little Pine lifestyle range of products and merchandise, with all profits donated to six charities.
On August 23, 2016, Moby announced the inaugural Circle V Festival along with the official video for 'Don't Leave Me' by Moby & The Void Pacific Choir. The event took place at LA's Fonda Theatre and featured Blaqk Audio & Cold Cave on the bill amongst others in the evening and talks and vegan food stalls in the afternoon. Moby described Circle V as "the coming together of my life’s work, animal rights and music. I couldn’t be more excited about this event and am so proud to be head-lining."
The second Circle V event took place on November 18 this time at The Regent Theatre in Los Angeles. Moby headlined the event for the second year with artists Waka Flocka Flame, Dreamcar and Raury featuring on the bill.
Moby has posted updates on his blog via his official website since September 2000.
In March 2008, after Gary Gygax's death, Moby was one of several celebrities identifying themselves as former "Dungeons & Dragons" players.
Moby lived in New York City for 21 years. From 1996 to 2010, he lived in a studio apartment on Mott Street where he also recorded his albums. He then relocated to the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles, spending almost $4 million to purchase a castle known as Wolf's Lair (built in 1927 by developer L. Milton Wolf), spending an additional $2 million to restore it. He also owns an apartment in Little Italy, Manhattan. In 2014, Moby sold the castle and downsized to a smaller home in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.
In June 2013, Moby and numerous other celebrities appeared in a video showing support for Chelsea Manning. In January 2018, he stated that he was approached by friends in the CIA and told to post and spread content on the Trump–Russian collusion allegations through social media.
Moby identifies himself as heterosexual and cisgender and had felt "disappointed" to be straight. He dated Christina Ricci. In 2019, he claimed in a book to have had a brief relationship with actress Natalie Portman, though she has denied this and pointed out that her age in the book is incorrect (in reality, she was just 18 at the time). He does date, but has stated that he feels more comfortable alone than in a relationship. In 2016, he was in an eight-month relationship, his first in ten years. He has no children.
Moby practices meditation and has explored different types, including transcendental, Mettā, and Vipassanā.
In 1984, Moby was inspired to become a vegetarian by a cat named Tucker that he had found at a dump in Darien, Connecticut. "My mom and I, with the help of George the dachshund, took care of Tucker and he grew up to be the happiest, healthiest cat I'd ever known". In November 1987, while playing with Tucker, "I decided that just as I would never do anything to harm Tucker, or any of our rescued animals, I also would never do anything to harm any animal, anywhere", and became a vegan. He is a strong supporter of animal rights, and described it as his "day job" other than musical projects.
In March 2016, Moby supported the social media campaign #TurnYourNoseUp to end factory farming in association with the nonprofit organization Farms Not Factories.
In 2019, Moby had "Vegan for life" tattooed on his neck by his friend, tattoo artist Kat Von D. That November, he had "Animal rights" tattooed on his arms to commemorate the 32nd anniversary of being a vegan. He also had "VX" tattooed next to his right eye, the "V" standing for vegan and the "X" for straight edge, referencing his sobriety.
From 1987 to 1995, Moby described his life as a "very clean" one and abstained from drugs, alcohol, and "for the most part", sex. After taking LSD once at nineteen, he started to suffer from panic attacks which he continued to experience but learned to deal with them more effectively. Shortly after his mother died from lung cancer in 1997, Moby recalled that he had "an epiphany" and experimented with alcohol, drugs, and sex which continued for four years after the commercial success of "Play". He became a self-confessed "old-timey alcoholic". During his "18" tour in 2002 he found himself being argumentative and alienating close friends. At the end of the year he wished to make amends and live a healthier lifestyle and promised a girlfriend that he would quit alcohol for one month; he lasted two weeks. Moby continued to drink to excess and would ask audiences at concerts to give him drugs. Matters culminated shortly after he turned 43 when he attempted suicide; he had his last drink on October 18, 2008 and has since attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. In 2016, he said of his sobriety: "Since I stopped and reoriented myself towards things that have meaning, everything has gotten a million times better".
Moby has adopted different faiths throughout his life. He identified himself as an atheist when he was growing up, followed by agnostic, then "a good eight or ten years of being quite a serious Christian", during which time he taught Bible studies. Around 1985, he read the teachings of Christ, including the New Testament and the Gospels and "was instantly struck by the idea that Christ was somehow divine. When I say I love Christ and love the teachings of Christ, I mean that in the most simple and naïve and subjective way. I'm not saying I'm right, and I certainly wouldn't criticize anyone else's beliefs." In the liner notes of "Animal Rights" (1996), Moby wrote: "I wouldn't necessarily consider myself a Christian in the conventional sense of the word, where I go to church or believe in cultural Christianity, but I really do love Christ and recognize him in whatever capacity as I can understand it as God. One of my problems with the church and conventional Christianity is it seems like their focus doesn't have much to do with the teachings of Christ, but rather with their own social agenda". In 2014, Moby pointed out that if needed to label himself, it would be as a "Taoist–Christian–agnostic quantum mechanic." In 2019, Moby said that he is not a Christian, "but my life is geared towards God [...] I have no idea who or what God might be."
Moby is an advocate for a variety of causes, working with MoveOn.org, The Humane Society and Farm Sanctuary, among others. He created MoveOn Voter Fund's Bush in 30 Seconds contest along with singer and MoveOn Cultural Director Laura Dawn and MoveOn Executive Director Eli Pariser. The music video for the song "Disco Lies" from "Last Night" has heavy anti-meat industrial themes. He also actively engages in nonpartisan activism and serves on the Board of Directors of Amend.org, a nonprofit organization that implements injury prevention programs in Africa.
Moby is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to advancing scientific inquiry on music and the brain and to developing clinical treatments to benefit people of all ages. He has also performed on various benefit concerts to help increase awareness for music therapy and raise funds for the Institute. In 2004, he was honored with the IMNF's Music Has Power Award for his advocacy of music therapy and for his dedication and support to its recording studio program.
He is an advocate of net neutrality and he testified before United States House of Representatives committee debating the issue in 2006.
In 2007, Moby launched MobyGratis.com, a website of unlicensed music for filmmakers and film students for use in an independent, non-commercial, or non-profit film, video, or short. If a film is commercially successful, all revenue from commercial licence fees granted via Moby Gratis is donated to Humane Society of the United States.
In 2008, he participated in "Songs for Tibet", an album to support Tibet and the Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso.
In April 2009, Moby spoke about his personal experiences of Transcendental Meditation at the David Lynch Foundation benefit concert Change Begins Within benefit concert in New York City. In April 2015, Moby performed "Go" at The Evening of David Lynch tribute event at The Theatre at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, which highlighted the work of the David Lynch Foundation and raised funds to teach Transcendental Meditation to local youth.
In April 2018, Moby auctioned over 100 pieces of musical equipment via Reverb.com to raise funds for the non-profit organisation Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, thinking it was better to sell it for a good cause rather than in storage. Moby held a second sale for the organisation in June 2018 consisting of his personal record collection, including records that he used to use for DJ sets in his early career and his own personal copy of his albums. A third was held in October 2018 that included the sale of almost 200 analog drum machines, 100 instruments, and his entire vinyl collection.
In 2018, Moby participated in Al Gore's 24-hour broadcast on climate change and environmental issues.
Moby is an advocate for Best Friends; he was part of the No-Kill Los Angeles (NKLA) launch celebration and directed a lyric video for his song “Almost Home" which features dogs and cats from the Best Friends Pet Adoption and Spay/Neuter Center in Mission Hills, California.
Moby developed an interest in photography at age ten when his uncle, a photographer for "The New York Times", gave him a Nikon F camera. He cites Edward Steichen as a major early influence. At 17 he set up a darkroom in his basement and pursued photography while at university. Moby kept his photography private until 2010, when he put some of his work on public display at the Clic Gallery and the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. In May 2011, Moby released a photography book containing pictures that were taken during the "Wait for Me" tour in 2010 named "Destroyed". It was released in conjunction with his same-titled album, and pictures from it were also put on display. From October to December 2014, Moby showcased his Innocents collection of large-scale photographs at the Fremin Gallery, featuring a post-apocalyptic theme and a cast of fictitious cult members wearing masks.
In March 2010, Moby and animal activist Miyun Park released "Gristle: From Factory Farms to Food Safety (Thinking Twice About the Meat We Eat)", a collection of ten essays by various people in the food industry that they edited to detail "unbiased, factual information about the consequences of animal production" and factory farming.
In 2014, Moby announced his decision to write an autobiography covering his life and career from his move to New York City in the late 1980s to the recording of "Play" in 1999. He enjoyed the experience, and wrote approximately 300,000 words before cutting it by half to reach a rough edit of the book. "" was released on May 17, 2016, by Penguin Press. Moby put out the compilation album "Music from Porcelain" to coincide the book's release, featuring his own tracks and a mixtape of tracks by other artists.
In October 2018, Moby announced his second memoir, "Then It Fell Apart". It was released on May 2, 2019, and covers his life and career from 1999 to 2009. To promote the book, Moby embarked upon a book tour which included book signings, interviews, and live performances. Moby has expressed a wish to write a third.
Studio albums | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19361 |
Mötley Crüe
Mötley Crüe is an American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles in 1981. The group was founded by bassist Nikki Sixx, drummer Tommy Lee, lead guitarist Mick Mars and lead singer Vince Neil. Mötley Crüe has sold over 100 million albums worldwide. They have also achieved seven platinum or multi-platinum certifications, nine Top 10 albums on the "Billboard" 200 chart (including 1989's "Dr. Feelgood", which is Mötley Crüe's only album to reach number one), twenty-two Top 40 mainstream rock hits, and six Top 20 pop singles. The band experienced several short-term lineup changes in the 1990s and 2000s; these included the introduction of vocalist John Corabi (who was Neil's replacement from 1992 to 1996) and drummers Randy Castillo and Samantha Maloney, both of whom filled in for Lee during his absence from the band from 1999 to 2004.
The members of Mötley Crüe have often been noted for their hedonistic lifestyles and the androgynous personae they maintained. Following the hard rock and heavy metal origins on the band's first two albums, "Too Fast for Love" (1981) and "Shout at the Devil" (1983), the release of its third album "Theatre of Pain" (1985) saw Mötley Crüe joining the first wave of glam metal. The band has also been known for their elaborate live performances, which features flame thrower guitars, roller coaster drum kits, and heavy use of pyrotechnics. Mötley Crüe's most recent studio album, "Saints of Los Angeles", was released on June 24, 2008. What was planned to be the band's final show took place on New Year's Eve, December 31, 2015. The concert was filmed for a theatrical and Blu-ray release in 2016.
After two-and-a-half years of inactivity, Neil announced in September 2018 that Mötley Crüe had reunited and was working on new material. On March 22, 2019, the band released four new songs on the soundtrack for its Netflix biopic "The Dirt", based on the band's "New York Times" best-selling autobiography. The soundtrack went to Number 1 on the iTunes All Genres Album Chart, Number 3 on "Billboard" Top Album and Digital Album sales chart, Number 10 on Billboard Top 200, and Top 10 worldwide. The autobiography returned to "New York Times" Best Seller list at number 6 on Nonfiction Print and number 8 on Nonfiction Combined Print & E-Book.
Mötley Crüe was formed on January 17, 1981, when bassist Nikki Sixx left the band London and began rehearsing with drummer Tommy Lee and vocalist/guitarist Greg Leon. Lee had previously worked with Leon in a band called Suite 19 and the trio practiced together for some time; Leon eventually decided not to continue with them. Sixx and Lee then began a search for new members and soon met guitarist Bob Deal, better known as Mick Mars, after answering an advertisement that he placed in "The Recycler" that read: "Loud, rude and aggressive guitar player available". Mars auditioned for Sixx and Lee, and was subsequently hired. Although a lead vocalist named O'Dean was auditioned, Lee had known Vince Neil from their high school days at Charter Oak High School in Covina, California, and the two had performed in different bands on the garage band circuit. Upon seeing him perform with the band Rock Candy at the Starwood in Hollywood, California, Mars suggested they have Neil join the band. At first Neil refused the offer, but as the other members of Rock Candy became involved in outside projects, Neil grew anxious to try something else. Lee asked again; Neil was hired on April 1, 1981, and the band played its first gig at the Starwood nightclub on April 24.
The newly formed band did not yet have a name. Sixx has said that he told his bandmates that he was "thinking about calling the band "Christmas". The other members were not very receptive to that idea. Then, while trying to find a suitable name, Mars remembered an incident that occurred when he was playing with a band called White Horse, when one of the other band members called the group "a motley looking crew". He had remembered the phrase and later copied it down as 'Mottley Cru'. After modifying the spelling slightly, "Mötley Crüe" was eventually selected as the band's name, with the stylistic decision suggested by Neil to add the two sets of metal umlauts, supposedly inspired by the German beer Löwenbräu, which the members were drinking at the time. Other than the periods of February 1992 to September 1996 and of March 1999 to September 2004, the lineup of Neil, Sixx, Lee, and Mars remained the same.
The band soon met its first manager, Allan Coffman, the thirty-eight-year-old brother-in-law of a friend of Mars's driver. The band's first release was the single "Stick to Your Guns/Toast of the Town", which was released on its own record label, Leathür Records, which had a pressing and distribution deal with Greenworld Distribution in Torrance, California. In November 1981, its debut album "Too Fast for Love" was self-produced and released on Leathür, selling 20,000 copies. Coffman's assistant Eric Greif set up a tour of Canada, while Coffman and Greif used Mötley Crüe's success in the Los Angeles club scene to negotiate with several record labels, eventually signing a recording contract with Elektra Records in early 1982. The debut album was then re-mixed by producer Roy Thomas Baker and re-released on August 20, 1982—two months after its Canadian Warner Music Group release using the original Leathür mixes—to coincide with the tour.
During the "Crüesing Through Canada Tour '82", there were several widely publicized incidents. First, the band was arrested and then released at Edmonton International Airport for wearing their spiked stage wardrobe (considered "dangerous weapons") through customs, and for Neil arriving with a small carry-on filled with porn magazines (considered "indecent material"); both were staged PR stunts. Customs eventually had the confiscated items destroyed. Second, while playing Scandals Disco in Edmonton, a spurious "bomb threat" against the band made the front page of the "Edmonton Journal" on June 9, 1982; Lee and assistant band manager Greif were interviewed by police as a result. This too ended up being a staged PR stunt perpetrated by Greif. Lastly, Lee threw a television set from an upper story window of the Sheraton Caravan Hotel. Canadian rock magazine "Music Express" noted that the band was "banned for life" from the city. Despite the tour ending prematurely in financial disaster, it was the basis for the band's first international press.
In 1983, the band changed management from Coffman to Doug Thaler and Doc McGhee. McGhee is best known for managing Bon Jovi and later Kiss, starting with their reunion tour in 1996. Greif subsequently sued all parties in a Los Angeles Superior Court action that dragged on for several years, and coincidentally later re-surfaced as manager of Sixx's former band, London. Coffman himself was sued by several investors to whom he had sold "stock in the band", including Michigan-based Bill Larson. Coffman eventually declared bankruptcy, as he had mortgaged his home at least three times to cover band expenses.
The band became rapidly successful in the United States after playing at the US Festival in May of 1983, and also with the aid of the new medium of MTV. Their second album, "Shout at the Devil", was released in September 1983. The album represented the band's mainstream breakthrough and would eventually be certified 4x platinum. The album generated controversy for its title track and album imagery, both of which invoked Satanism. They then gained the attention of heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne and found themselves as the opening act for Osbourne on his 1984 Bark at the Moon Tour. The band members were well known for their backstage antics, outrageous clothing, extreme high-heeled boots, heavily applied make-up, and seemingly endless abuse of alcohol and drugs as well.
The band members also had their share of scrapes with the law. On December 8, 1984, Neil was driving home from a liquor run in his De Tomaso Pantera which ended in a head-on collision; his passenger, Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley, was killed. Neil, charged with a DUI and vehicular manslaughter, was sentenced to 30 days in jail (though he only served 18 days) and subsequently sued for $2,500,000. The short jail term was negotiated by his lawyers, enabling Neil to tour and pay the civil suit.
The band's third album "Theatre of Pain" was released in June 1985 and dedicated in Dingley's honor, and it started a new glam metal phase in the band's style. "Theatre of Pain" was commercially successful, reaching number 6 on the Billboard album charts and eventually being certified quadruple platinum. However, the recording of the album was fraught with tension in the wake of Neil's accident and Sixx's growing addiction, and members of the band have said that they consider it a creative disappointment.
Mötley Crüe spent most of the next year on a world tour in support of "Theatre of Pain". In February 1986 in London, England Sixx suffered a near-fatal heroin overdose, and the person who sold him the drugs dumped his unconscious body in a dumpster. The incident inspired Sixx to write the song "Dancing on Glass" for their next album.
The band's fourth album, "Girls, Girls, Girls", was released in May 1987 and debuted at number 2 on the Billboard 200. Sixx has said in interviews that he believes the album would have debuted at number 1 if not for behind the scenes maneuvering by Whitney Houston's record label. The band again changed their look for the album and subsequent tour, trading the glam elements of the previous album for a biker aesthetic. The band faced many of the same personal issues that plagued the recording of "Theatre of Pain" and Sixx has complained that those issues compromised the album's quality, although he has spoken more positively about the record in subsequent years.
On December 23, 1987, Sixx suffered a heroin overdose. He was declared legally dead on the way to the hospital, but the paramedic, who was a Crüe fan, revived Sixx with two shots of adrenaline. His two minutes in death were the inspiration for the song "Kickstart My Heart", which peaked at No. 16 on the Mainstream U.S. chart, and which was featured on the 1989 U.S. number one (their first) album "Dr. Feelgood". From 1986 to 1987, Sixx kept a daily diary of his heroin addiction and eventually entered rehab in January 1988.
In 1988, controversy again hit the band in the form of a lawsuit by Matthew Trippe. Trippe claimed that Sixx was hospitalized in 1983 after a car crash involving drugs and that he had been hired as Sixx's doppelgänger. The suit was regarding the loss of royalties from his time in Mötley Crüe and the case was not closed until 1993 when Trippe dropped his charges and disappeared from public view.
Their decadent lifestyles almost shattered the band until managers Thaler and McGhee pulled an intervention and refused to allow the band to tour in Europe, fearing that "some [of them] would come back in bodybags". Shortly after, all the band members jointly entered drug rehabilitation in an effort to move forward as a band.
After finding sobriety in 1989, Mötley Crüe reached its peak popularity with the release of their fifth album, the Bob Rock-produced "Dr. Feelgood", on September 1, 1989. Rock and the band recorded the album in Vancouver, with the band members recording their parts separately for the first time to reduce infighting and to focus on individual performance. Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler who was recording the album "Pump" at the same studio, provided backing vocals. On October 14 of that year, it became a No. 1 album and stayed on the charts for 114 weeks after its release. The band members each stated in interviews that, due in no small part to their collective push for sobriety, "Dr. Feelgood" was their most solid album musically to that point. The title track and "Kickstart My Heart" were both nominated for Grammys in the Best Hard Rock Category in 1990 and 1991, respectively, but lost both years to songs by Living Colour. The band did find some success at the American Music Awards, as "Dr. Feelgood" was nominated twice for Favorite Hard Rock/Metal Award, losing once to Guns N' Roses' "Appetite for Destruction", but winning the following year, beating out Aerosmith's "Pump" and Poison's "Flesh & Blood". Mötley Crüe was also nominated twice for Favorite Hard Rock/Metal Artist.
In 1989, McGhee was fired after the band alleged he had broken several promises that he made in relation to the Moscow Music Peace Festival, including giving his other band, Bon Jovi, advantages in terms of slot placement. Thaler then assumed the role of sole band manager.
The band spent the fall of 1989 and most of 1990 on a massive world tour, the band's biggest to that point. It was a major financial success but left the band feeling burnt out. In April 1990, Lee suffered a concussion during a mishap involving a rappelling drum kit stunt during a live concert in New Haven, Connecticut.
On October 1, 1991, the band's first compilation album, "Decade of Decadence 81-91", was released. It peaked at No. 2 on the "Billboard" 200 album chart. It was reportedly designed as "just something for the fans" while the band worked on the next "all new" album.
After "Decade of Decadence", Neil left in February 1992, at a time when other bands in the 1980s glam metal scene (Ratt, Stryper, White Lion, Winger, Europe, and Britny Fox) broke up amid the advent of grunge. Controversy persists over whether Neil was fired or quit. Sixx has long maintained that Neil quit. However, Neil insists that he was fired. "Any band has its little spats," Neil observed in 2000, "and this one basically just stemmed from a bunch of 'fuck you's in a rehearsal studio. It went from 'I quit' to 'You're fired' ... It was handled idiotically. The management just let one of the biggest bands in the world break up."
In the running for the vacant frontman position was Kik Tracee vocalist Stephen Shareaux. Ultimately Neil was replaced by John Corabi (formerly of Angora and the Scream). Although Mötley's self-titled March 1994 release made the "Billboard" top ten (#7), the album was a commercial failure. It also prompted negative reactions from many fans due to Neil's absence and its sound. Corabi suggested the band bring back Neil, believing the latter would always be seen as the voice of the band. This eventually resulted in his own firing in 1996. Corabi spoke about his time with the band and his thoughts on the first record with Mötley Crüe. Corabi said: "my record was the first record that they had done that didn't go platinum, didn't make some sort of crazy noise, and everybody panicked". During his time away from the band, Neil released a moderately successful solo album, "Exposed" in 1993, and a less commercially successful follow-up, "Carved in Stone" in 1995.
The band reunited with Neil in 1997, after their current manager, Allen Kovac, and Neil's manager, Bert Stein, set up a meeting between Neil, Lee, and Sixx. Agreeing to "leave their egos at the door", the band released "Generation Swine". Although it debuted at No. 4, and in spite of a live performance at the American Music Awards, the album was a commercial failure, due in part to lack of support from their label.
In 1998, Mötley's contractual ties with Elektra had expired, putting the band in total control of their future, including the ownership of the master recordings of all of their albums. Announcing the end of their relationship with Elektra, the band became one of the few groups to own and control their publishing and music catalog. They are one of only a handful of artists to own the masters to their material and reportedly did so by being the biggest pain they could be until Elektra got fed up and handed over the rights in order to get the band off their label. After leaving Elektra the band created their own label, Mötley Records.
Mötley released their compilation "Greatest Hits" in late 1998, featuring two new songs, "Bitter Pill" and "Enslaved." In 1999, the band rereleased all their albums, dubbed as "Crücial Crüe". These limited-edition digital remasters included demos, plus live, instrumental, and previously unreleased tracks. In 1999 the band also released "Supersonic and Demonic Relics", an updated version of "Decade of Decadence" featuring the original songs from that album and several previously unreleased B-sides and remixes, as well as their first official live album "" (which was the original working title for the studio album "Theatre of Pain"). The band then went on a co-headlining tour with The Scorpions.
In 1999, Lee quit to pursue a solo career, due to increasing tensions with Neil. "All we got was a call from his attorney saying he wasn't coming back". recalled the singer. "He wasn't into rock 'n' roll anymore. He even said that rock is dead ... It all happened during a void in Mötley. We weren't even rehearsing, so it was no big deal."
Lee was replaced by a longtime friend of the band, former Ozzy Osbourne drummer Randy Castillo. The band released "New Tattoo" in July 2000. Before the ensuing tour commenced, Castillo became ill with what was later determined to be cancer. The band brought in former Hole drummer Samantha Maloney for the Maximum Rock tour with Megadeth as Castillo concentrated on his health. However, he lost his fight with cancer on March 26, 2002. Soon afterward, the band went on hiatus.
While the band was on hiatus, Sixx played in side projects 58 and Brides of Destruction. Neil was featured on the first season of VH1's reality show "The Surreal Life", and had his own special titled "Remaking Vince Neil", which focused on his solo career and attempts to get in better physical shape. Mars, who suffers from a hereditary form of arthritis which causes extensive spinal pain called ankylosing spondylitis, went into seclusion in 2001 dealing with health issues. Lee went on to form Methods of Mayhem and also performed as a solo artist during this time.
A 2001 autobiography titled "The Dirt", co-authored by all four of the band members and Neil Strauss, presented Mötley as "the world's most notorious rock band." The book made the top ten on "The New York Times Best Seller list" and spent ten weeks there, and would return to the list after the film adaptation was released in spring 2019.
In 2003, the band released two box sets entitled "" and "", featuring the music from their entire career. The titles of the collections were heavily criticized by Hanoi Rocks singer Michael Monroe, among others, due to their possible reference to Vince Neil and Razzle's fatal automobile accident, and that Neil was found guilty of manslaughter for the incident.
A promoter in England, Mags Revell, began clamoring for a Mötley Crüe reunion, ostensibly presenting himself as the voice of anxious fans waiting for more from the band. After meeting with management several times, in September 2004, Sixx announced that he and Neil had returned to the studio and had begun recording new material. In December 2004, the four original members announced a reunion tour, staging an announcement event in which they arrived at the Hollywood Palladium in a hearse. The tour began on February 14, 2005, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The resulting compilation album, "Red, White & Crüe", was released in February 2005. It features the band members' favorite original songs plus three new tracks, "If I Die Tomorrow", "Sick Love Song" (co-written by Sixx and James Michael), and a cover of the Rolling Stones' classic "Street Fighting Man". A small controversy was caused when it was suggested that neither Lee nor Mars played on the new tracks (duties were supposedly handled by Vandals drummer Josh Freese). However, a VH1 documentary of the band's reunion later showed that Lee did indeed play on some of the tracks. The Japanese release of "Red, White & Crüe" includes an extra new track titled "I'm a Liar (and That's the Truth)". "Red, White & Crüe" charted at No. 6 and has since gone platinum.
On New Year's Eve 2004 the band appeared on a live episode of "The Tonight Show". Neil yelled an obscenity during the performance, leading to an FCC investigation. The NBC network responded by banning the band, leading to the band subsequently suing the network, claiming they were being unfairly punished. The lawsuit was eventually settled out of court and the band made several subsequent appearances on the network.
In 2005, Mötley Crüe was involved in an animation-comedy spoof "Disaster!", which was written by Paul Benson and Matt Sullivan and which was used as the introduction film to concerts on their Carnival of Sins tour. That tour continued throughout 2005 and was commemorated with the release of a live album and DVD in 2006. In the fall of 2005 the band re-recorded "Home Sweet Home" as a duet with Linkin Park lead singer Chester Bennington and donated the proceeds to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
In 2006, Mötley Crüe went on the Route of All Evil Tour, co-headlining with Aerosmith and taking performers from Lucent Dossier Experience on the road with them. 2006 also saw the band sign with Paramount Pictures and MTV Films to adapt their autobiography "The Dirt" into a movie, but the production was delayed for several years and the deal eventually fell through. In June 2007, Mötley Crüe set out on a small European tour. A lawsuit was filed by Neil, Mars and Sixx against Carl Stubner, Lee's manager. The three sued him for contracting for Lee to appear on two unsuccessful reality shows the band claim hurt its image. It was later reported on Motley.com that the lawsuit had been settled.
In 2007, Sixx published his diaries as the bestselling autobiography "", covering the band's "Girls, Girls, Girls" world tour and his 1987 overdose, and Sixx's side project band released "The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack" as a musical parallel to the novel.
The band hosted the Motley Cruise from January 24 to 28 in 2008; this featured Ratt, Skid Row & Slaughter.
On June 11, 2008, Mötley Crüe and manager Burt Stein filed suit against each other. Stein was Neil's personal manager and also, according to the band and rival manager Kovac, served as the band's manager at one time. The band and Kovac sued in Los Angeles County Superior Court, claiming Stein was not entitled to a cut of Mötley Crüe's earnings. Stein sued the same day in Nashville's federal court, saying he was entitled to 1.875 percent of what the band makes. Other litigation between the parties also ensued in Nevada. In July 2009, lawyers for both sides announced that the disputes had been "amicably resolved" through a "global settlement".
Mötley Crüe's ninth studio album, titled "Saints of Los Angeles", was released in Japan on June 17, 2008, and in America on June 24, 2008. The album was originally titled "The Dirt", as it was loosely based on the band's autobiography of the same name, but the title was later changed. In the US, the album was released by Eleven Seven Music. Eleven Seven also took over US distribution of their back catalog.
iTunes picked "Saints of Los Angeles" in their "Best of 2008" in the Rock category as the number one song. The song was also nominated for a Grammy Award in the "Best Hard Rock Performance" category, but lost to "Wax Simulacra" by The Mars Volta. The song was released in the music game series "Rock Band" as downloadable content the day the single was released. It was briefly sold as a "Rock Band" exclusive, making Mötley Crüe the first band to release a single exclusively through a video game. The song sold more units via "Rock Band" than it did via traditional streaming sites. Additionally, the entire "Dr. Feelgood" album was released as downloadable content in "Rock Band", excluding "T.n.T. (Terror 'n Tinseltown)".
In mid-2008, Mötley Crüe headlined the popular Crüe Fest music festival, which included opening acts Buckcherry, Papa Roach, Trapt, and They then spent the fall and winter of that year on tour with Hinder, Theory of a Deadman and The Last Vegas.
The band made a guest appearance in the fourth season finale of the FOX crime dramedy "Bones" on May 14, 2009, entitled "The End in the Beginning", performing the song "Dr. Feelgood". The following month they performed at the Download Festival at Donington Park (June 12–14, 2009), playing on the second stage on Friday night.
Mötley Crüe headlined the "Crüe Fest 2" festival, which ran from July to September 2009. Supporting them were Godsmack, Theory of a Deadman, Drowning Pool, and Charm City Devils. The band's set celebrated the 20th anniversary of "Dr. Feelgood" by performing the album in its entirety on each night of the tour. They also re-released the album as a special 20th anniversary deluxe edition.
Mötley Crüe headlined Ozzfest in 2010, along with Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Halford. That year Neil also released his third solo album and autobiography, both entitled "Tattoos and Tequila".
Mötley Crüe co-headlined a mid-year tour with Poison and special guests New York Dolls in 2011 for the band's 30th Anniversary and Poison's 25th anniversary. On August 30, 2011, Mötley Crüe, along with co-headliners Def Leppard and special guests Steel Panther, announced a UK Tour commencing in December 2011.
In February 2012 the band appeared along with supermodel Adriana Lima in a commercial for the Kia Optima, which premiered during Super Bowl XLVI. February 2012 also saw the band host its first residency at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. In March 2012, Mötley Crüe announced a co-headlining tour with Kiss. The tour kicked off July 20 in Bristow, Virginia, and ran through September 23. In the spring and summer of 2013 the band toured throughout Canada with Big Wreck. The band returned to Las Vegas for a second residency in the fall of 2013.
On January 28, 2014, at the conference inside Beacher's Madhouse Theater in Hollywood, Mötley Crüe announced the full details of its retirement, including a tour initially spanning 70 North American dates, with Alice Cooper playing as a special guest. The tour commenced in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on July 2, 2014. The band members had signed a "cessation of touring agreement", which prevented them from touring under the Mötley Crüe name beyond the end of 2015. In a later interview, Sixx talked about the possibility of releasing new music, saying that "We have music written, [but] it's not put together yet". He also speculated that the band would release it in a song-by-song format as opposed to a full-length album format, elaborating with "It's hard, to be honest with you, to spend six [or] nine months to write eleven songs—all those lyrics ... everything ... the vocals, the guitars, the bass, the sonics, the mixing, the mastering, the artwork. ... You put it out and nothing [happens], because now people cherry-pick songs. So we go, 'Why don't we write songs and find vehicles to get one, two or four songs to ten million people rather than eleven songs to a hundred thousand people."
During the tour the band played a new song, "All Bad Things", over the speakers throughout the venue before it took the stage. On November 22, 2014 in Spokane, Washington, at the Spokane Arena, Mötley Crüe played the final concert of the first North American leg of The Final Tour.
On January 15, 2015, it was announced that the band's career would end with international concerts in Japan, Australia, Brazil and Europe before heading out for a second leg of North American concerts throughout 2015, ending with a concert at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on December 27, followed by three concerts at Staples Center on December 28, 30 and 31, 2015. In May 2015, The Crüe and Alice Cooper himself announced a set of 12 concert dates for Europe at a conference in London.
On September 19, 2015, the band played the Rock in Rio festival on the main stage.
Motley Crue performed, for what was then intended to be the last time, at Staples Center in Los Angeles on December 31, 2015. The band reported that its New Year's Eve show was going to be released as a film in 2016; the movie was titled "Motley Crue: THE END".
On September 13, 2018, frontman Vince Neil announced on his Twitter account that Mötley Crüe was recording four new songs; this was later also confirmed by bassist Nikki Sixx, who said that the new material was recorded for the film adaptation of the band's biography, "The Dirt". Neil also clarified that, though the band has signed a contract to no longer tour, they still plan to continue putting out new music for the future.
Netflix released "The Dirt" biopic based on the book of the same name that coincided with an 18-song soundtrack on March 22, 2019. The film is directed by Jeff Tremaine, (""), produced by Julie Yorn and Erik Olsen, executive produced by Rick Yorn, and co-produced by Kovac who is Mötley Crüe's manager, CEO of Eleven Seven Label Group and founder of Tenth Street Entertainment. "The Dirt" stars Daniel Webber as Neil, Iwan Rheon ("Game of Thrones") as Mars, Douglas Booth as Sixx and Colson Baker (aka Machine Gun Kelly) as Lee. Also starring in the movie is Pete Davidson ("Saturday Night Live") as record executive Tom Zutaut. Rolling Stone wrote that "The Dirt" is "a truly debauched movie that delves deep into their rise from the early Eighties Sunset Strip metal scene to their days as arena headliners." The film has a 39% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The first new song from the soundtrack was "The Dirt (Est.1981)" and it was released on February 22, 2019. The band wrote two other new songs, "Ride With The Devil" and "Crash And Burn", and covered Madonna's "Like A Virgin", on the album. The soundtrack additionally included fourteen classic Mötley Crüe songs. It was produced by Bob Rock who helmed their hit "Dr. Feelgood" album, and was released on March 22, 2019 on Mötley Records and Eleven Seven Music.
The group's legacy was also featured on a 2019 episode of the Reelz documentary series "Breaking the Band". Both Neil and Sixx had a negative reaction to how things were portrayed in the episode. Sixx said they would be pursuing legal action and called Reelz "the bottom of the barrel."
In November 2019, rumors started to circulate of the band reuniting for a 2020 tour with Def Leppard and Poison after the success of Guns N' Roses reunion tour. The band responded to an online petition rallying for the group's return, saying "this is interesting...". On November 18, "Rolling Stone" magazine reported that all four band members had agreed to come back together for the tour, utilizing a loophole in their "Cessation of Touring" contract. Later that same day, the band confirmed all reports with a statement on their website, posting a press release and a video of the contract being destroyed. On December 4, 2019, it was officially confirmed that Mötley Crüe would embark on The Stadium Tour with Def Leppard, Poison and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts in the summer of 2020. Also in December 2019 Mick Mars announced that his debut solo album would be released in the spring of 2020. On June 1, 2020, Mötley Crüe announced that The Stadium Tour would be rescheduled to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Music critic Martin Popoff's book "The Top 500 Heavy Metal Songs of All Time" lists seven of the band's songs in its ranking. Mötley Crüe was ranked tenth on MTV's list of "Top 10 Heavy Metal Bands of All-Time" and ninth on "VH1's All Time Top Ten Metal Bands". Music website Loudwire named the band the 22nd greatest metal band of all-time. "Spin" named "Shout at the Devil" the 11th best metal album of all-time. In 2013 "LA Weekly" named the band the 3rd best "hair metal" band of all-time. "Rolling Stone" named "Too Fast For Love" the 22nd best metal album of all-time.
In 2006 the band received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 2014 the tribute album "" was released, featuring country music stars including Rascal Flatts, LeAnn Rimes and Darius Rucker covering various Mötley Crüe songs. The album debuted at number 5 on the Billboard album charts.
Current members
Former members
Touring musicians | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19364 |
Mandriva Linux
Mandriva Linux (a fusion of the French distribution Mandrake Linux and the Brazilian distribution Conectiva Linux) is a discontinued Linux distribution developed by Mandriva S.A.
Each release lifetime was 18 months for base updates (Linux, system software, etc.) and 12 months for desktop updates (window managers, desktop environments, web browsers, etc.). Server products received full updates for at least 5 years after their release.
The last release of Mandriva Linux was in August 2011. Most developers who were laid off went to Mageia. Later on, the remaining developers teamed up with community members and formed OpenMandriva, a continuation of Mandriva.
The first release of Mandrake was based on Red Hat Linux (version 5.1) and K Desktop Environment 1 in July 1998. It has since moved away from Red Hat's distribution and has become a completely separate distribution in its own right. Mandriva now includes a number of original tools, mostly to ease system configuration. Mandriva Linux is the brainchild of Gaël Duval, who wanted to focus on ease of use for new users.
This goal was met as Mandrake Linux gained a reputation as "one of the easiest to install and user-friendly Linux distributions". At this time Internet Explorer held a dominant share of the web browser market, and Microsoft a near monopoly in operating systems. Web browsers for Linux were limited to Mozilla, followed by a variety of poorly performing Linux-specific browsers such as Konqueror or Galeon. Mandrake Linux earned praise as a Linux distribution that users could use all the time, without dual booting into Windows for compatibility with web sites or software unavailable under Linux. CNET called the user experience of Mandrake Linux 8.0 the most polished available at that time.
Duval became the co-founder of Mandrakesoft, but was laid off from the company in 2006 along with many other employees.
From its inception until the release of version 8.0, Mandrake named its flagship distribution Linux-Mandrake. From version 8.1 to 9.2 the distribution name was reversed and called Mandrake Linux.
In February 2004, MandrakeSoft lost a court case against Hearst Corporation, owners of King Features Syndicate. Hearst contended that MandrakeSoft infringed upon King Features' trademarked character Mandrake the Magician. As a precaution, MandrakeSoft renamed its products by removing the space between the brand name and the product name and changing the first letter of the product name to lower case, thus creating one word. Starting from version 10.0, Mandrake Linux became known as mandrakelinux, and its logo changed accordingly. Similarly, MandrakeMove (a Live CD version) became Mandrakemove.
In April 2005, Mandrakesoft announced the corporate acquisition of Conectiva, a Brazilian-based company that produced a Linux distribution for Portuguese-speaking (Brazil) and Spanish-speaking Latin America. As a result of this acquisition and the legal dispute with Hearst Corporation, Mandrakesoft announced that the company was changing its name to Mandriva, and that their Linux distribution "Mandrake Linux" would henceforward be known as Mandriva Linux.
Mandriva Linux contained the Mandriva Control Center, which eases configuration of some settings. It has many programs known as Drakes or Draks, collectively named drakxtools, to configure many different settings. Examples include MouseDrake to set up a mouse, DiskDrake to set up disk partitions and drakconnect to set up a network connection. They are written using GTK+ and Perl, and most of them can run in both graphical and text mode using the ncurses interface.
Mandriva Linux 2011 was released only with KDE Plasma Desktop, whereas other desktop environments were available but not officially supported. Older Mandriva versions also used KDE as standard but others such as GNOME were also supported.
Mandriva Linux used a package manager called urpmi, which functions as a wrapper to the .rpm binaries. It is similar to apt from Debian & Ubuntu, pacman from Arch Linux, yum or dnf from Fedora in that it allows seamless installation of a given software package by automatically installing the other packages needed. It is also media-transparent due to its ability to retrieve packages from various media, including network/Internet, CD/DVD and local disk. Urpmi also has an easy-to-use graphical front-end called rpmdrake, which is integrated into the Mandriva Control Center.
A Live USB of Mandriva Linux can be created manually or with UNetbootin.
From 2007–2011, Mandriva was released on a 6-month fixed-release cycle, similar to Ubuntu and Fedora.
The latest stable version is Mandriva Linux 2011 ("Hydrogen"), released on 28 August 2011.
The development tree of Mandriva Linux has always been known as "Cooker". This tree is directly released as a new stable version.
Each release of Mandriva Linux was split into several different editions. Each edition is derived from the same master tree, most of which is available on the public mirrors: all free / open source software, and all non-free software which is under a license that allows unrestricted distribution to the general public, is available from the public mirrors. Only commercial software under a license that does not allow unrestricted distribution to the general public (but for which Mandriva has negotiated an agreement to distribute it with paid copies) is not available from public mirrors.
Mandriva Linux Free was a 'traditional' distribution (i.e. one that comes with a dedicated installer, to install the distribution to the computer before it is run). It was 'free' in both senses: it consists entirely of free and open-source software, and it was made available for public download at no charge. It was usually available in CD (three or four discs) and DVD editions for x86 32- and 64-bit CPU architectures. It was aimed at users to whom software freedom is important, and also at users who prefer a traditional installer to the installable live CD system used by One. The package selection was tailored towards regular desktop use. It consisted of a subset of packages from the 'main' and 'contrib' sections of the master tree. Mandriva Linux Free was phased in 2011 in favor of a single edition approach with Mandriva Desktop 2011.
Mandriva Linux One was a free to download hybrid distribution, being both a Live CD and an installer (with an installation wizard that includes disk partitioning tools).
Several Mandriva Linux One versions were provided for each Mandriva Linux release preceding Mandriva 2008. Users could choose between different languages, select either the KDE or GNOME desktops and include or exclude non-free software. The default version included the KDE desktop with non-free software included. The One images consist of a subset of packages from the 'main', 'contrib' and 'non-free' sections of the master tree, with the documentation files stripped from the packages to save space.
Mandriva Linux One 2008 has a smaller range of versions. There are KDE and GNOME versions with the default set of languages. There are also two KDE versions with alternative sets of languages. All versions include non-free software.
Mandriva Linux Powerpack was a 'traditional' distribution (in other words, one that comes with a dedicated installer, DrakX, which is first used to install the distribution to the hard disk of the computer before it is run). It is the main commercial edition of Mandriva Linux, and as such, requires payment for its use. It contains several non-free packages intended to add value for the end user, including non-free drivers like the NVIDIA and ATI graphics card drivers, non-free firmware for wireless chips and modems, some browser plugins such as Java and Flash, and some full applications such as Cedega, Adobe Reader and RealPlayer. It was sold directly from the Mandriva Store website and through authorized resellers. It was also made available via a subscription service, which allowed unlimited downloads of Powerpack editions for the last few Mandriva releases for a set yearly fee. It consisted of a subset of packages from the 'main', 'contrib', 'non-free' and 'restricted' sections of the master tree.
In Mandriva Linux 2008, the Discovery and Powerpack+ editions have been merged into Powerpack, which will become Mandriva's only commercial offering. Users will be able to choose between a novice-friendly Discovery-like setup or an installation process and desktop aimed at power users.
Mandriva Linux Discovery was a commercial distribution aimed at first-time and novice Linux users. It was sold via the Mandriva Store website and authorized resellers, or could be downloaded by some subscribers to the Mandriva Club. Mandriva Linux 2008 does not include a Discovery edition, having added optional novice-friendly features to the Powerpack edition.
In releases prior to Mandriva Linux 2007, Discovery was a 'traditional' distribution built on the DrakX installer. In Mandriva Linux 2007 and 2007 Spring, Discovery is a hybrid "Live DVD" which can be booted without installation or installed to hard disk in the traditional manner.
Discovery was a DVD rather than a CD, allowing all languages to be provided on one disc. It consisted of a subset of packages from the 'main', 'contrib', 'non-free' and 'non-free-restricted' sections of the master tree. The package selection was tailored towards novice desktop users. A theme chosen to be appealing to novice users was used, and the 'simplified' menu layout in which applications are described rather than named and not all applications are included was the default (for all other editions, the default menu layout was the 'traditional' layout, where all graphical applications installed on the system were included and were listed by name).
Mandriva Linux Powerpack+ was a version of Powerpack with additional packages, mostly commercial software. Like Powerpack, it was sold directly from the Mandriva Store website and through authorized resellers; it was also a free download for Mandriva Club members of the Gold level and above. Powerpack+ was aimed at SOHO (small office / home office) users, with the expectation that it could be used to run a small home or office server machine as well as desktop and development workstations. The package selection was tailored with this in mind, including a wide range of server packages. It consisted of a subset of packages from the 'main', 'contrib', 'non-free' and 'restricted' sections of the master tree.
Mandriva 2008 no longer includes a Powerpack+ edition; instead, the Powerpack edition includes all the available packages.
Derivatives are distributions that are based on Mandriva Linux, some by Mandriva itself, others by independent projects. Some maintain compatibility with Mandriva Linux, so that installing a Mandriva Linux .rpm also works on the offspring. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19368 |
Matteo Carcassi
Matteo Carcassi (1792 – 16 January 1853) was a famous Italian guitarist and composer.
Carcassi was born in Florence, Italy, and first studied the piano, but learned guitar when still a child. He quickly gained a reputation as a virtuoso concert guitarist.
He moved to Germany in 1810, gaining almost immediate success. In 1815, he was living in Paris, earning his living as a teacher of both the piano and the guitar. On a concert tour in Germany in 1819, he met his friend Antoine Meissonnier for the first time. Also a famous guitarist, Meissonnier published many of Carcassi's works in his Paris publishing house. For Meissonnier he also arranged a number of popular songs for guitar that were originally written for piano, including works by Théodore Labarre and Loïsa Puget.
From 1820 on, Carcassi spent the majority of his time in Paris. In 1823, he performed an extremely successful series of concerts in London that earned him great fame, both as a performing artist and as a teacher. However, in Paris, a long time passed before his talents were truly recognized, partly because of the presence of Ferdinando Carulli.
Carcassi was in Germany again during autumn 1824. Afterwards he performed in London, where his reputation now gave him access to more prestigious concert halls. Finally he returned to Paris. For several years, he made concert trips from here to the most important cultural towns of Europe, including London. After a short return to performing in 1836, he quit his concert practice around 1840 and died in Paris in 1853.
Carcassi wrote a method for guitar (op. 59), first published with Schott in Mainz, in 1836. It is still valuable, relevant and interesting. His most famous works are collected in his 25 Etudes op. 60. In these, he managed to blend technical skills and brilliant romantic music. This is the reason his music is still played by so many classical guitarists today. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19369 |
Mazda
In 2015, Mazda produced 1.5 million vehicles for global sales, the majority of which (nearly 1 million) were produced in the company's Japanese plants, with the remainder coming from a variety of other plants worldwide. In 2015, Mazda was the fifteenth biggest automaker by production worldwide.
The name Mazda came into existence with the production of the company's first three-wheeled trucks. Other candidates for a model name included Sumera-Go, Tenshi-Go and more.
Officially, the company states that
"The name was also associated with Ahura Mazda (God of Light), with the hope that it would brighten the image of these compact vehicles." The company website further notes that the name also derives from the name of the company's founder, Jujiro Matsuda. The other proposed names mean "god" ("Sumera") and "angel" ("Tenshi"); both indicate Matsuda's strong interest in human faith.
The Mazda lettering was used in combination with the corporate emblem of Mitsubishi, which was responsible for sales, to produce the Toyo Kogyo three-wheeled truck registered trademark.
Mazda began as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd, founded in Hiroshima, Japan, 30 January 1920. Toyo Cork Kogyo renamed itself to Toyo Kogyo Co., Ltd. in 1927. In the late 1920s the company had to be saved from bankruptcy by Hiroshima Saving Bank and other business leaders in Hiroshima.
In 1931 Toyo Kogyo moved from manufacturing machine tools to vehicles with the introduction of the Mazda-Go auto rickshaw. Toyo Kogyo produced weapons for the Japanese military throughout the Second World War, most notably the series 30 through 35 Type 99 rifle. The company formally adopted the Mazda name in 1984, though every automobile sold from the beginning bore that name. The Mazda R360 was introduced in 1960, followed by the Mazda Carol in 1962.
Beginning in the 1960s, Mazda was inspired by the NSU Ro 80 and decided to put a major engineering effort into development of the Wankel rotary engine as a way of differentiating itself from other Japanese auto companies. The company formed a business relationship with German company NSU and began with the limited-production Cosmo Sport of 1967, and continuing to the present day with the Pro Mazda Championship, Mazda has become the sole manufacturer of Wankel-type engines for the automotive market, mainly by way of attrition (NSU and Citroën both gave up on the design during the 1970s, and prototype Corvette efforts by General Motors never made it to production.)
This effort to bring attention to itself apparently helped, as Mazda rapidly began to export its vehicles. Both piston-powered and rotary-powered models made their way around the world. The rotary models quickly became popular for their combination of good power and light weight when compared to piston-engined competitors that required heavier V6 or V8 engines to produce the same power. The R100 and the RX series (RX-2, RX-3, and RX-4) led the company's export efforts.
During 1968, Mazda started formal operations in Canada (MazdaCanada) although Mazdas were seen in Canada as early as 1959. In 1970, Mazda formally entered the American market (Mazda North American Operations) and was very successful there, going so far as to create the Mazda Rotary Pickup (based on the conventional piston-powered B-Series model) solely for North American buyers. To this day, Mazda remains the only automaker to have produced a Wankel-powered pickup truck. Additionally, it is also the only marque to have ever offered a rotary-powered bus (the Mazda Parkway, offered only in Japan) or station wagon (within the RX-3 and RX-4 lines for certain markets). After nine years of development, Mazda finally launched its new model in the U.S. in 1970.
Mazda's rotary success continued until the onset of the 1973 oil crisis. As American buyers (as well as those in other nations) quickly turned to vehicles with better fuel efficiency, the relatively thirsty rotary-powered models began to fall out of favor.
Combined with being the least-efficient automaker in Japan (in terms of productivity), inability to adjust to excess inventory and over-reliance on the U.S. market, the company suffered a huge loss in 1975.
An already heavily indebted Toyo Kogyo was on the verge of bankruptcy and was only saved through the intervention of
Sumitomo keiretsu group, namely Sumitomo Bank, and the company’s subcontractors and distributors.
However, the company had not totally turned its back on piston engines, as it continued to produce a variety of four-cylinder models throughout the 1970s. The smaller Familia line in particular became very important to Mazda's worldwide sales after 1973, as did the somewhat larger Capella series.
Mazda refocused its efforts and made the rotary engine a choice for the sporting motorist rather than a mainstream powerplant. Starting with the lightweight RX-7 in 1978 and continuing with the modern RX-8, Mazda has continued its dedication to this unique powerplant. This switch in focus also resulted in the development of another lightweight sports car, the piston-powered Mazda MX-5 Miata (sold as the Eunos and later Mazda Roadster in Japan), inspired by the concept 'jinba ittai'. Introduced in 1989 to worldwide acclaim, the Roadster has been widely credited with reviving the concept of the small sports car after its decline in the late 1970s.
From 1974 to 2015, Mazda had a partnership with the Ford Motor Company, which acquired a 24.5% stake in 1979, upped to a 33.4% ownership of Mazda in May 1995. Under the administration of Alan Mulally, Ford gradually divested its stake in Mazda from 2008 to 2015, with Ford holding 2.1% of Mazda stock as of 2014 and severing most production as well as development ties.
This partnership with Ford began owing to Mazda's financial difficulties during the 1960s. Starting in 1979 by expanding their 7 percent financial stake to 24.5%, Ford expanded an existing partnership with Mazda, resulting in various joint projects. The cooperation had begun in 1971 when the Mazda B-Series spawned a Ford Courier variant for North America, a version which was later offered in other markets as well. Mazda's Bongo and Titan cab-over trucks were sold with Ford badging in mainly Asia and the Pacific region beginning in 1976. These included large and small efforts in all areas of the automotive landscape — most notably in the realm of pickup trucks and smaller cars. Mazda began supplying manual transaxles to Ford in the spring of 1980. Mazda's Familia platform was used for Ford models like the Laser and Escort beginning in 1980, while the Capella architecture found its way into Ford's Telstar sedan and Probe sports models.
During the 1980s, Ford-badged Mazda products replaced much of their own European-sourced lineup, especially in the Asia-Pacific markets, with the Laser replacing the Escort and the Telstar replacing the Cortina. In some cases, such as New Zealand and South Africa, these were assembled alongside their Mazda-badged equivalents, the Mazda 323 (Familia) and 626 (Capella).
Following the closure of its own assembly plant in New Zealand, Mazda established a joint venture with Ford New Zealand known as Vehicle Assemblers of New Zealand (VANZ), while in South Africa, Ford's local subsidiary merged with Sigma Motor Corporation, which already assembled Mazdas in the country, to form Samcor, although the sharing of models proved unpopular with both Ford and Mazda customers. In other markets such as Australia, however, the 323 and 626 were always fully imported, with only the Laser and Telstar assembled locally. In Japan, the Laser and Telstar were also sold alongside their Mazda-badged brethren, but the Festiva was not sold as a Mazda 121 on the Japanese market.
In North America, the Probe was built in a new Mazda company plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, along with the mainstream 626 sedan and a companion Mazda MX-6 sports coupe. Ford also lent Mazda some of its capacity when needed: the Mazda 121 sold in Europe and South Africa was, for a time, a variant of the Ford Fiesta built in plants in Europe and South Africa. Mazda also made an effort in the past to sell some of Ford's cars in Japan, mainly through its Autorama dealer group.
Mazda also helped Ford develop the 1991 Explorer, which Mazda sold as the 2-door only Mazda Navajo from 1991 through 1994. However, Mazda's version was unsuccessful, while the Ford (available from the start as a 4-door or 2-door model) instantly became the best selling sport-utility vehicle in the United States and kept that title for over a decade. Mazda has used Ford's Ranger pickup as the basis for its North American–market B-Series trucks, starting in 1994 and continuing through 2010, when Mazda discontinued importing its B-Series trucks to North America, due to costs associated with the chicken tax.
Following its long-held fascination with alternative engine technology, Mazda introduced the first Miller cycle engine for automotive use in the Millenia luxury sedan of 1995. Though the Millenia (and its Miller-type V6 engine) were discontinued in 2002, the company has recently introduced a much smaller Miller-cycle four-cylinder engine for use in its Demio starting in 2008. As with its leadership in Wankel technology, Mazda remains (so far) the only automaker to have used a Miller-cycle engine in the automotive realm.
Further financial difficulties at Mazda during the 1990s () caused Ford to increase its stake to a 33.4-percent controlling interest in May 1996. In June 1996, Henry Wallace was appointed President, and he set about restructuring Mazda and setting it on a new strategic direction. He laid out a new direction for the brand including the design of the present Mazda marque; he laid out a new product plan to achieve synergies with Ford, and he launched Mazda's digital innovation program to speed up the development of new products. At the same time, he started taking control of overseas distributors, rationalized dealerships and manufacturing facilities, and driving much needed efficiencies and cost reductions in Mazda's operations. Much of his early work put Mazda back into profitability and laid the foundations for future success. Wallace was succeeded by James Miller in November 1997, followed in December 1999 by Ford executive Mark Fields, who has been credited with expanding Mazda's new product lineup and leading the turnaround during the early 2000s. Ford's increased influence during the 1990s allowed Mazda to claim another distinction in history, having maintained the first foreign-born head of a Japanese car company, Henry Wallace.
Amid the world financial crisis in the fall of 2008, reports emerged that Ford was contemplating a sale of its stake in Mazda as a way of streamlining its asset base. "BusinessWeek" explained the alliance between Ford and Mazda has been a very successful one, with Mazda saving perhaps $90 million a year in development costs and Ford "several times" that, and that a sale of its stake in Mazda would be a desperate measure.
On November 18, 2008, Ford announced that it would sell a 20% stake in Mazda, reducing its stake to 13.4%, thus surrendering control of the company, which it held since 1996. The following day, Mazda announced that, as part of the deal, it was buying back 6.8% of its shares from Ford for about US$185 million while the rest would be acquired by business partners of the company. It was also reported that Hisakazu Imaki would be stepping down as chief executive, to be replaced by Takashi Yamanouchi. On November 18, 2010, Ford reduced its stake further to 3%, citing the reduction of ownership would allow greater flexibility to pursue growth in emerging markets, and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group was believed to become its largest shareholder. Ford and Mazda remained strategic partners through joint ventures and exchanges of technological information.
On September 30, 2015, when Ford's shares had sunk to a little over 2% due to stock dilution, Ford sold its remaining shares in Mazda.
In 2011, Mazda raised more than 150 billion yen (US$1.9 billion) in a record share sale to replenish capital, as it suffered its biggest annual loss in 11 years. Part of the proceeds were used to build an auto plant in Mexico. The Mexican plant was built jointly by the company and Sumitomo Corporation.
In May 2015, the company signed an agreement with Toyota to form a "long-term partnership", that would, among others, see Mazda supply Toyota with fuel-efficient SkyActiv gasoline and diesel engine technology in exchange for hydrogen fuel cell systems.
Mazda tried using a number of different marques in the Japanese (and occasionally Australian) markets in the 1990s, including Autozam, Eunos, and ɛ̃fini. This effort was phased out before the decade was over. The motivation was brought on by market competition from other Japanese automakers efforts in offering vehicles at multiple Japanese dealership networks offered by Toyota, Nissan, and Honda. Mazda's implementation of brand diversification reflected a Japanese engineering philosophy, called Kansei engineering, which was used as an advertising slogan in North America. This selective marketing experiment was ended in the mid-1990s due to economic conditions, largely attributed to the collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble in 1991.
This diversification stressed the product development groups at Mazda past its limits. Instead of having a half-dozen variations on any given platform, developers were asked to work on dozens of different models and consumers were confused as well by the explosion of similar new models. One of the oddest sub-marques was M2, used on three rare variants of the Eunos Roadster (the M2-1001, M2-1002 and M2-1028) and one of the Autozam AZ-1 (M2-1015). M2 even had its own avant-garde company headquarters, but was shut down after a very short period of operation.
Today, the former marques no longer exist in Japan as sales channels. The Carol was sold at the Autozam store (which specialized in small cars), but it now sold with the Mazda marque, not as the "Autozam Carol" as it once was.
In early 1992 Mazda planned to release a luxury marque, Amati, to challenge Acura, Infiniti, and Lexus in North America, which was to begin selling in late 1993. The initial Amati range would have included the Amati 500 (which became the Eunos 800 in Japan and Australia, Mazda Millenia in the U.S., and Mazda Xedos 9 in Europe), a rebadged version of the Mazda Cosmo and the Amati 1000 (a rear-wheel drive W12 successor to the Mazda Luce). The Amati marque was eventually scrapped before any cars hit the market. It is perhaps just a curiosity, but "Amati" happens to be an anagram of "Miata"
In Europe, the Xedos name was also associated with the Mazda Xedos 6, the two models were in production from 1992 until 1997. The Xedos line was marketed under the Mazda marque, and used the Mazda badge from the corresponding years.
North America is Mazda's biggest market. Mazda's market share in U.S. fell to a 10-year low in 2016 at 1.7 percent Mazda's brand loyalty was 39 percent in 2016, below the industry average of 53 percent.
Mazda has conducted research in hydrogen-powered vehicles for several decades.
Mazda has developed a hybrid version of its Premacy compact minivan using a version of its signature rotary engine that can run on hydrogen or gasoline named the Mazda Premacy Hydrogen RE Hybrid. Despite plans to release it in 2008,
as of 2010 the vehicle is in limited trials.
In 2010 Toyota and Mazda announced a supply agreement for the hybrid technology used in Toyota's Prius model.
Mazda is finding a host of alternative uses for a variety of materials and substances – ranging from plastic to milk – in its vehicles, as it aims to become more environmentally-friendly. Mazda introduced some of these innovations – bioplastic internal consoles and bio-fabric seats – in its Mazda5 model at EcoInnovasia 2008, at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center in Bangkok. Up to 30% of the interior parts in the Mazda5 are made of non-biomaterial components, e.g. Poti (gobar of cows).
SkyActiv technology is an umbrella name for a range of technologies used in certain new Mazda vehicles. These vehicles include the Mazda2/Demio, Mazda3/Axela, Mazda6/Atenza, and CX-5. Together these technologies increase fuel economy to a level similar to a hybrid drivetrain. Engine output is increased and emission levels are reduced. These technologies include high compression ratio gasoline engines (13.0 to 1), reduced compression diesel engines (14.0 to 1) with new 2-stage turbocharger design, highly efficient automatic transmissions, lighter weight manual transmissions, lightweight body designs and electric power steering. It is also possible to combine these technologies with a hybrid drivetrain for even greater fuel economy.
In the racing world, Mazda has had substantial success with both its signature Wankel-engine cars (in two-rotor, three-rotor, and four-rotor forms) as well as its piston-engine models. Mazda vehicles and engines compete in a wide variety of disciplines and series around the world. More Mazdas are raced every week than any other car brand (a large part of this statement speaks to the success of the MX-5/Miata and its widespread embrace by grassroots motorsports). In 1991, Mazda became the first Japanese automaker to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans overall.
Mazda's competition debut was on October 20, 1968, when two Mazda Cosmo Sport 110S coupes entered the 84-hour Marathon de la Route ultra-endurance race at the Nürburgring, one finishing in fourth place and the other breaking an axle after 81 hours. The next year, Mazda raced Mazda Familia R100 M10A coupes. After winning the Singapore Grand Prix in April 1969 and coming in fifth and sixth in the Spa 24 Hours (beaten only by Porsche 911s), on October 19, 1969, Mazda again entered the 84 hour Nürburgring race with four Familias. Only one of these finished, taking fifth place.
The first racing victory by a Wankel-engined car in the United States was in 1973, when Pat Bedard won an IMSA RS race at Lime Rock Park in a Mazda RX-2.
In 1976, Ray Walle, owner of Z&W Mazda, drove a Cosmo (Mazda RX-5) from the dealership in Princeton, New Jersey, to Daytona, won the Touring Class Under 2.5 Liters at the 24 Hours of Daytona, and drove the car back to New Jersey. The Cosmo placed 18th overall in a field of 72. The only modifications were racing brake pads, exhaust, and safety equipment.
After substantial successes by the Mazda RX-2 and Mazda RX-3, the Mazda RX-7 has won more IMSA races in its class than any other model of automobile, with its hundredth victory on September 2, 1990. Following that, the RX-7 won its class in the IMSA 24 Hours of Daytona race ten years in a row, starting in 1982. The RX-7 won the IMSA Grand Touring Under Two Liter (GTU) championship each year from 1980 through 1987, inclusive.
In 1991, a four-rotor Mazda 787B (2622 cc actual, rated by FIA formula at 4708 cc) won the 24 Hours of Le Mans auto race outright. The 787B's triumph remains unparalleled, as it remains the only non-piston-engined car ever to win at Le Mans, and Mazda is the first Japanese marque to have won overall at Le Mans – and only after Nissan had closed down its World Sportscar Championship programme and Toyota had opted to take a sabbatical for most of 1991 in order to develop its 3.5-litre TS010. This led to a ban on rotary engines in the Le Mans race starting in 1992, which has since been rescinded. After the 1991 race, the winning engine was publicly dismantled for internal examination, which demonstrated that despite 24 hours of extremely hard use it had accumulated very little wear.
The Le Mans win in 1991 followed a decade of class wins from other Mazda prototypes, including the 757 and 767. The Sigma MC74 powered by a Mazda 12A engine was the first engine and team from outside Western Europe or the United States to finish the entire 24 hours of the Le Mans race, in 1974. Mazda is also the most reliable finisher at Le Mans (with the exception of Honda, which has entered only three cars in only one year), with 67% of entries finishing. Mazda will return to prototype racing in 2005 with the introduction of the Courage C65 LMP2 car at the American Le Mans Series race at Road Atlanta. This prototype racer uses the Renesis Wankel from the RX-8.
Mazdas have also enjoyed substantial success in World Land Speed competition, SCCA competition, drag racing, pro rally competition (the Familia appeared in the WRC several times during the late '80s and early '90s), the One Lap of America race (winning SUV & truck in a MazdaSpeed5), and other venues. Wankel engines have been banned for some time from international Formula One racing, as well as from United States midget racing, after Gene Angelillo won the North East Midget Racing Association championship in 1985 with a car powered by a 13B engine, and again in 1986 in a car powered by a 12A engine.
The Cooper Tires Atlantic Championship powered by Mazda is a North American open wheel racing series. It is the top level of the MAZDASPEED ladder, a driver development program which rewards season winners of one level with automatic rides at the next level. Since 2006, the Atlantic Championship has been run exclusively with Swift 016.a chassis powered by Mazda-Cosworth MZR 2300 cc (2.3L) DOHC inline-4 engines producing . The cars are capable of speeds in excess of .
Formula Mazda features open wheel race cars with Mazda engines, adaptable to both oval tracks and road courses, on several levels of competition. Since 1991, the professionally organized Pro Mazda Championship has been the most popular format for sponsors, spectators, and upward bound drivers. It is the second-highest level on the aforementioned MAZDASPEED driver development ladder. Engines for the Star Mazda series are all built by one engine builder, certified to produce the prescribed power, and sealed to discourage tampering. They are in a relatively mild state of racing tune, so that they are extremely reliable and can go years between motor rebuilds.
Spec Miata has become one of the most popular and most affordable road racing classes in North America. The Spec Miata (SM) class is intended to provide the opportunity to compete in low cost, production-based cars with limited modifications, suitable for racing competition. The rules are intentionally designed to be more open than the Showroom Stock class but more restricted than the Improved Touring class.
Spec RX-7 is also a popular club racing class primarily due to the availability of first generation RX7 cars and the low startup cost.
Mazda is a major sponsor to several professional sports teams, including:
The company also sponsors various marathon and relay race events in Japan, such as the Hiroshima International Peace Marathon and the Hiroshima Prefectural Ekiden Race, along with numerous other sporting and charity endeavors in Hiroshima and Hofu. Mazda was also the league sponsor for the now-defunct Australian Rugby Championship.
Mazda also maintains sponsorship of the Laguna Seca racing course in California, going so far as to use it for its own automotive testing purposes as well as the numerous racing events (including several Mazda-specific series) that it hosts – as well as for the 2003 launch of the Mazda RX-8.
Mazda also sponsors the Western New York Flash, a professional women's soccer team that plays in the WPA and has some of the best players in the world, including world player of the year.
Mazda has been a sponsor of Club Deportivo Universidad Católica's basketball team of the Liga Nacional de Básquetbol de Chile.
Mazda's past advertising slogans included: "The more you look, the more you like" (1970s to early 1980s); "Experience Mazda" (mid-1980s); "An intense commitment to your total satisfaction, that's The Mazda Way" (late 1980s); "It Just Feels Right" along with advertising describing Mazda's use of Kansei engineering (1990–1995); "Passion for the road" (1996); "Get in. Be moved." (1997–2000). Another marketing slogan was "Sakes Alive!", for its truck line.
Since 2000, Mazda has used the phrase "Zoom-Zoom" to describe what it calls the "emotion of motion" that it claims is inherent in its cars. Extremely successful and long-lasting (when compared to other automotive marketing taglines), the Zoom-Zoom campaign has now spread around the world from its initial use in North America.
The Zoom-Zoom campaign has been accompanied by the "Zoom-Zoom-Zoom" song in many television and radio advertisements. The original version, performed by Jibril Serapis Bey (used in commercials in Europe, Japan and South Africa), was recorded long before it became the official song for Mazda as part of a soundtrack to the movie "Only The Strong" (released in 1993). The Serapis Bey version is a cover of a traditional Capoeira song, called "Capoeira Mata Um". In 2010, its current slogan is "Zoom Zoom Forever". The longer slogan (Used in TV ads) is "Zoom Zoom, Today, Tomorrow, Forever".
Early ads in the Zoom-Zoom campaign also featured a young boy (Micah Kanters) whispering the "Zoom-Zoom" tagline.
Since 2011, Mazda has still used the Zoom-Zoom tagline in another campaign called "What Do You Drive?". The punchline for this is "At Mazda, we believe because if it's not worth driving, it's not worth building. We build Mazdas. What do you drive?".
In 2015, Mazda had launched a new campaign under a new tagline, "Driving Matters", coinciding with the release of the redesigned MX-5. This campaign was meant to solidify Mazda's "Zoom Zoom" slogan. A 60-second long advertisement titled "A Driver's Life", coincided with the new tagline on the following week. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19370 |
Minute
The minute is a unit of time usually equal to (the first sexagesimal fraction) of an hour, or 60 seconds. In the UTC time standard, a minute on rare occasions has 61 seconds, a consequence of leap seconds (there is a provision to insert a negative leap second, which would result in a 59-second minute, but this has never happened in more than 40 years under this system). Although not an SI unit, the minute is accepted for use with SI units. The SI symbol for "minute" or "minutes" is min (without a dot). The prime symbol is also sometimes used informally to denote minutes of time.
Al-Biruni first subdivided the hour sexagesimally into minutes, seconds, thirds and fourths in 1000 while discussing Jewish months. Around 1235 John of Sacrobosco continued this tradition, although Oxford University historian Philipp Nothaft thought Sacrobosco was the first to do so.
Historically, the word "minute" comes from the Latin "pars minuta prima", meaning "first small part". This division of the hour can be further refined with a "second small part" (Latin: "pars minuta secunda"), and this is where the word "second" comes from. For even further refinement, the term "third" ( of a second) remains in some languages, for example Polish ("tercja") and Turkish ("salise"), although most modern usage subdivides seconds by using decimals. The symbol notation of the prime for minutes and double prime for seconds can be seen as indicating the first and second cut of the hour (similar to how the foot is the first cut of the yard or perhaps chain, with inches as the second cut). In 1267, the medieval scientist Roger Bacon, writing in Latin, defined the division of time between full moons as a number of hours, minutes, seconds, thirds, and fourths ("horae", "minuta", "secunda", "tertia", and "quarta") after noon on specified calendar dates. The introduction of the minute hand into watches was possible only after the invention of the hairspring by Thomas Tompion, an English watchmaker, in 1675. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19372 |
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest and he wrote on perception, art, and politics. He was on the editorial board of "Les Temps modernes", the leftist magazine established by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1945.
At the core of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is a sustained argument for the foundational role perception plays in understanding the world as well as engaging with the world. Like the other major phenomenologists, Merleau-Ponty expressed his philosophical insights in writings on art, literature, linguistics, and politics. He was the only major phenomenologist of the first half of the twentieth century to engage extensively with the sciences and especially with descriptive psychology. It is through this engagement that his writings became influential in the project of naturalizing phenomenology, in which phenomenologists use the results of psychology and cognitive science.
Merleau-Ponty emphasized the body as the primary site of knowing the world, a corrective to the long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge, and maintained that the body and that which it perceived could not be disentangled from each other. The articulation of the primacy of embodiment led him away from phenomenology towards what he was to call “indirect ontology” or the ontology of “the flesh of the world” ("la chair du monde"), seen in his final and incomplete work, "The Visible and Invisible", and his last published essay, “Eye and Mind”.
In his earlier work, Merleau-Ponty supported Soviet communism while remaining critical of Soviet policies and Marxism in general, adopting a skeptical stance which he termed Western Marxism. His endorsement of the Soviet show trials and prison camps was published as "Humanism and Terror" in 1947, though he would later denounce Soviet terror as being counter to the purportedly humanist aims of the revolution.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was born in 1908 in Rochefort-sur-Mer, Charente-Inférieure (now Charente-Maritime), France. His father died in 1913 when Merleau-Ponty was five years old. After secondary schooling at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Merleau-Ponty became a student at the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, and Jean Hyppolite. He attended Edmund Husserl's "Paris Lectures" in February 1929. In 1929, Merleau-Ponty received his DES degree ("", roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) from the University of Paris, on the basis of the (now-lost) thesis "La Notion de multiple intelligible chez Plotin" ("Plotinus's Notion of the Intelligible Many"), directed by Émile Bréhier. He passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1930. Merleau-Ponty was raised as a Catholic but left the Church at some point during the 1930s because he felt his socialist politics were not compatible with the social and political teaching of the Catholic Church.
An article published in French newspaper "Le Monde" in October 2014 makes the case of recent discoveries about Merleau-Ponty's likely authorship of the novel "Nord. Récit de l'arctique" (Grasset, 1928). Convergent sources from close friends (Beauvoir, Elisabeth "Zaza" Lacoin) seem to leave little doubt that Jacques Heller was a pseudonym of the 20-year-old Merleau-Ponty.
Merleau-Ponty taught first at the Lycée de Beauvais (1931–33) and then got a fellowship to do research from the . From 1934–1935 he taught at the Lycée de Chartres. He then in 1935 became a tutor at the École Normale Supérieure, where he was awarded his doctorate on the basis of two important books: "La structure du comportement" (1942) and "Phénoménologie de la Perception" (1945).
After teaching at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1948, Merleau-Ponty lectured on child psychology and education at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952.
He was awarded the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France from 1952 until his death in 1961, making him the youngest person to have been elected to a Chair.
Besides his teaching, Merleau-Ponty was also political editor for the leftist "Les Temps modernes" from the founding of the journal in October 1945 until December 1952. In his youth he had read Karl Marx's writings and Sartre even claimed that Merleau-Ponty converted him to Marxism. While he was not a member of the French Communist Party and did not identify as a Communist, he laid out an argument justifying the Soviet show trials and violence for progressive ends in general in the work "Humanism and Terror" in 1947. However, about three years later, he renounced his earlier support for political violence, and he rejected Marxism and advocated a liberal left position in "Adventures of the Dialectic" (1955). His friendship with Sartre and work with "Les Temps modernes" ended because of that, since Sartre still had a more favourable attitude towards Soviet communism. Merleau-Ponty was subsequently active in the French non-communist left and in particular in the Union of the Democratic Forces.
Merleau-Ponty died suddenly of a stroke in 1961 at age 53, apparently while preparing for a class on René Descartes, leaving an unfinished manuscript which was posthumously published in 1964, along with a selection of Merleau-Ponty's working notes, by Claude Lefort as "The Visible and the Invisible". He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
In his "Phenomenology of Perception" (first published in French in 1945), Merleau-Ponty develops the concept of the body-subject ("le corps propre") as an alternative to the Cartesian "ego cogito." This distinction is especially important in that Merleau-Ponty perceives the essences of the world existentially. Consciousness, the world, and the human body as a perceiving thing are intricately intertwined and mutually "engaged." The phenomenal thing is not the unchanging object of the natural sciences, but a correlate of our body and its sensory-motor functions. Taking up and "communing with" (Merleau-Ponty's phrase) the sensible qualities it encounters, the body as incarnated subjectivity intentionally elaborates things within an ever-present world frame, through use of its pre-conscious, pre-predicative understanding of the world's makeup. The elaboration, however, is "inexhaustible" (the hallmark of any perception according to Merleau-Ponty). Things are that upon which our body has a "grip" ("prise"), while the grip itself is a function of our connaturality with the world's things. The world and the sense of self are emergent phenomena in an ongoing "becoming."
The essential partiality of our view of things, their being given only in a certain perspective and at a certain moment in time does not diminish their reality, but on the contrary establishes it, as there is no other way for things to be copresent with us and with other things than through such ""Abschattungen"" (sketches, faint outlines, adumbrations). The thing transcends our view, but is manifest precisely by presenting itself to a range of possible views. The object of perception is immanently tied to its background—to the nexus of meaningful relations among objects within the world. Because the object is inextricably within the world of meaningful relations, each object reflects the other (much in the style of Leibniz's monads). Through involvement in the world – being-in-the-world – the perceiver tacitly experiences all the perspectives upon that object coming from all the surrounding things of its environment, as well as the potential perspectives that that object has upon the beings around it.
Each object is a "mirror of all others." Our perception of the object through all perspectives is not that of a propositional, or clearly delineated, perception; rather, it is an ambiguous perception founded upon the body's primordial involvement and understanding of the world and of the meanings that constitute the landscape's perceptual gestalt. Only after we have been integrated within the environment so as to perceive objects as such can we turn our attention toward particular objects within the landscape so as to define them more clearly. This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new "Gestalt" oriented toward a particular object. Because our bodily involvement with things is always provisional and indeterminate, we encounter meaningful things in a unified though ever open-ended world.
From the time of writing "Structure of Behavior" and "Phenomenology of Perception", Merleau-Ponty wanted to show, in opposition to the idea that drove the tradition beginning with John Locke, that perception was not the causal product of atomic sensations. This atomist-causal conception was being perpetuated in certain psychological currents of the time, particularly in behaviourism. According to Merleau-Ponty, perception has an active dimension, in that it is a primordial openness to the lifeworld (the ""Lebenswelt"").
This primordial openness is at the heart of his thesis of the primacy of perception. The slogan of Husserl's phenomenology is "all consciousness is consciousness of something", which implies a distinction between "acts of thought" (the noesis) and "intentional objects of thought" (the noema). Thus, the correlation between noesis and noema becomes the first step in the constitution of analyses of consciousness. However, in studying the posthumous manuscripts of Husserl, who remained one of his major influences, Merleau-Ponty remarked that, in their evolution, Husserl's work brings to light phenomena which are not assimilable to noesis–noema correlation. This is particularly the case when one attends to the phenomena of the body (which is at once body-subject and body-object), subjective time (the consciousness of time is neither an act of consciousness nor an object of thought) and the other (the first considerations of the other in Husserl led to solipsism).
The distinction between "acts of thought" (noesis) and "intentional objects of thought" (noema) does not seem, therefore, to constitute an irreducible ground. It appears rather at a higher level of analysis. Thus, Merleau-Ponty does not postulate that "all consciousness is consciousness of something", which supposes at the outset a noetic-noematic ground. Instead, he develops the thesis according to which "all consciousness is perceptual consciousness". In doing so, he establishes a significant turn in the development of phenomenology, indicating that its conceptualisations should be re-examined in the light of the primacy of perception, in weighing up the philosophical consequences of this thesis.
Taking the study of perception as his point of departure, Merleau-Ponty was led to recognize that one's own body ("le corps propre") is not only a thing, a potential object of study for science, but is also a permanent condition of experience, a constituent of the perceptual openness to the world. He therefore underlines the fact that there is an inherence of consciousness and of the body of which the analysis of perception should take account. The primacy of perception signifies a primacy of experience, so to speak, insofar as perception becomes an active and constitutive dimension.
Merleau-Ponty demonstrates a corporeity of consciousness as much as an intentionality of the body, and so stands in contrast with the dualist ontology of mind and body in Descartes, a philosopher to whom Merleau-Ponty continually returned, despite the important differences that separate them. In the "Phenomenology of Perception" Merleau-Ponty wrote: “Insofar as I have hands, feet, a body, I sustain around me intentions which are not dependent on my decisions and which affect my surroundings in a way that I do not choose” (1962, p. 440).
The question concerning corporeity connects also with Merleau-Ponty's reflections on space ("l'espace") and the primacy of the dimension of depth ("la profondeur") as implied in the notion of "being in the world" ("être au monde"; to echo Heidegger's "In-der-Welt-sein") and of one's own body ("le corps propre"). Reflections on spatiality in phenomenology are also central to the advanced philosophical deliberations in architectural theory.
The highlighting of the fact that corporeity intrinsically has a dimension of expressivity which proves to be fundamental to the constitution of the ego is one of the conclusions of "The Structure of Behavior" that is constantly reiterated in Merleau-Ponty's later works. Following this theme of expressivity, he goes on to examine how an incarnate subject is in a position to undertake actions that transcend the organic level of the body, such as in intellectual operations and the products of one's cultural life.
He carefully considers language, then, as the core of culture, by examining in particular the connections between the unfolding of thought and sense—enriching his perspective not only by an analysis of the acquisition of language and the expressivity of the body, but also by taking into account pathologies of language, painting, cinema, literature, poetry and song.
This work deals mainly with language, beginning with the reflection on artistic expression in "The Structure of Behavior"—which contains a passage on El Greco (p. 203ff) that prefigures the remarks that he develops in "Cézanne's Doubt" (1945) and follows the discussion in "Phenomenology of Perception". The work, undertaken while serving as the Chair of Child Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of the Sorbonne, is not a departure from his philosophical and phenomenological works, but rather an important continuation in the development of his thought.
As the course outlines of his Sorbonne lectures indicate, during this period he continues a dialogue between phenomenology and the diverse work carried out in psychology, all in order to return to the study of the acquisition of language in children, as well as to broadly take advantage of the contribution of Ferdinand de Saussure to linguistics, and to work on the notion of structure through a discussion of work in psychology, linguistics and social anthropology.
Merleau-Ponty distinguishes between primary and secondary modes of expression. This distinction appears in "Phenomenology of Perception" (p. 207, 2nd note [Fr. ed.]) and is sometimes repeated in terms of spoken and speaking language () ("The Prose of the World", p. 10). Spoken language (), or secondary expression, returns to our linguistic baggage, to the cultural heritage that we have acquired, as well as the brute mass of relationships between signs and significations. Speaking language (), or primary expression, such as it is, is language in the production of a sense, language at the advent of a thought, at the moment where it makes itself an advent of sense.
It is speaking language, that is to say, primary expression, that interests Merleau-Ponty and which keeps his attention through his treatment of the nature of production and the reception of expressions, a subject which also overlaps with an analysis of action, of intentionality, of perception, as well as the links between freedom and external conditions.
The notion of style occupies an important place in "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence". In spite of certain similarities with André Malraux, Merleau-Ponty distinguishes himself from Malraux in respect to three conceptions of style, the last of which is employed in Malraux's "The Voices of Silence". Merleau-Ponty remarks that in this work "style" is sometimes used by Malraux in a highly subjective sense, understood as a projection of the artist's individuality. Sometimes it is used, on the contrary, in a very metaphysical sense (in Merleau-Ponty's opinion, a mystical sense), in which style is connected with a conception of an "über-artist" expressing "the Spirit of Painting". Finally, it sometimes is reduced to simply designating a categorization of an artistic school or movement. (However, this account of Malraux's notion of style—a key element in his thinking—is open to serious question.)
For Merleau-Ponty, it is these uses of the notion of style that lead Malraux to postulate a cleavage between the objectivity of Italian Renaissance painting and the subjectivity of painting in his own time, a conclusion that Merleau-Ponty disputes. According to Merleau-Ponty, it is important to consider the heart of this problematic, by recognizing that style is first of all a demand owed to the primacy of perception, which also implies taking into consideration the dimensions of historicity and intersubjectivity. (However, Merleau-Ponty's reading of Malraux has been questioned in a recent major study of Malraux's theory of art which argues that Merleau-Ponty seriously misunderstood Malraux.) For Merleau-Ponty, style is born of the interaction between two or more fields of being. Rather than being exclusive to individual human consciousness, consciousness is born of the pre-conscious style of the world, of Nature.
In his essay "Cézanne's Doubt", in which he identifies Paul Cézanne's impressionistic theory of painting as analogous to his own concept of radical reflection, the attempt to return to, and reflect on, prereflective consciousness, Merleau-Ponty identifies science as the opposite of art. In Merleau-Ponty's account, whereas art is an attempt to capture an individual's perception, science is anti-individualistic. In the preface to his "Phenomenology of Perception", Merleau-Ponty presents a phenomenological objection to positivism: that it can tell us nothing about human subjectivity. All that a scientific text can explain is the particular individual experience of that scientist, which cannot be transcended. For Merleau-Ponty, science neglects the depth and profundity of the phenomena that it endeavors to explain.
Merleau-Ponty understood science to be an "ex post facto" abstraction. Causal and physiological accounts of perception, for example, explain perception in terms that are only arrived at after abstracting from the phenomenon itself. Merleau-Ponty chastised science for taking itself to be the area in which a complete account of nature may be given. The subjective depth of phenomena cannot be given in science as it is. This characterizes Merleau-Ponty's attempt to ground science in phenomenological objectivity and, in essence, institute a "return to the phenomena."
Merleau-Ponty's critical position with respect to science was stated in his Preface to the "Phenomenology"— he described scientific points of view as "always both naive and at the same time dishonest". Despite, or perhaps because of, this view, his work influenced and anticipated the strands of modern psychology known as post-cognitivism. Hubert Dreyfus has been instrumental in emphasising the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's work to current post-cognitive research, and its criticism of the traditional view of cognitive science.
Dreyfus's seminal critique of cognitivism (or the computational account of the mind), "What Computers Can't Do", consciously replays Merleau-Ponty's critique of intellectualist psychology to argue for the irreducibility of corporeal know-how to discrete, syntactic processes. Through the influence of Dreyfus's critique and neurophysiological alternative, Merleau-Ponty became associated with neurophysiological, connectionist accounts of cognition.
With the publication in 1991 of "The Embodied Mind" by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, this association was extended, if only partially, to another strand of "anti-cognitivist" or post-representationalist cognitive science: embodied or enactive cognitive science, and later in the decade, to neurophenomenology. In addition, Merleau-Ponty's work has also influenced researchers trying to integrate neuroscience with the principles of chaos theory.
It was through this relationship with Merleau-Ponty's work that cognitive science's affair with phenomenology was born, which is represented by a growing number of works, including
Merleau-Ponty has also been picked up by Australian and Nordic philosophers inspired by the French feminist tradition, including Rosalyn Diprose and .
Diprose's recent work takes advantage of Merleau-Ponty's conception of an intercorporeity, or indistinction of perspectives, to critique individualistic identity politics from a feminist perspective and to ground the irreducibility of generosity as a virtue, where generosity has a dual sense of giving and being given.
Heinämaa has argued for a rereading of Merleau-Ponty's influence on Simone de Beauvoir. (She has also challenged Dreyfus's reading of Merleau-Ponty as behaviorist, and as neglecting the importance of the phenomenological reduction to Merleau-Ponty's thought.)
Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body has also been taken up by Iris Young in her essay "," and its follow-up, "'Throwing Like a Girl': Twenty Years Later." Young analyzes the particular modalities of feminine bodily comportment as they differ from that of men. Young observes that while a man who throws a ball puts his whole body into the motion, a woman throwing a ball generally restricts her own movements as she makes them, and that, generally, in sports, women move in a more tentative, reactive way. Merleau-Ponty argues that we experience the world in terms of the "I can" – that is, oriented towards certain projects based on our capacity and habituality. Young's thesis is that in women, this intentionality is inhibited and ambivalent, rather than confident, experienced as an "I cannot."
"Ecophenomenology" can be described as the pursuit of the relationalities of worldly engagement, both human and those of other creatures (Brown & Toadvine 2003).
This engagement is situated in a kind of middle ground of relationality, a space that is neither purely objective, because it is reciprocally constituted by a diversity of lived experiences motivating the movements of countless organisms, nor purely subjective, because it is nonetheless a field of material relationships between bodies. It is governed exclusively neither by causality, nor by intentionality. In this space of in-betweenness phenomenology can overcome its inaugural opposition to naturalism.
David Abram explains Merleau-Ponty's concept of "flesh" ("chair") as "the mysterious tissue or matrix that underlies and gives rise to both the perceiver and the perceived as interdependent aspects of its spontaneous activity," and he identifies this elemental matrix with the interdependent web of earthly life. This concept unites subject and object dialectically as determinations within a more primordial reality, which Merleau-Ponty calls "the flesh," and which Abram refers to variously as "the animate earth," "the breathing biosphere," or "the more-than-human natural world." Yet this is not nature or the biosphere conceived as a complex set of objects and objective processes, but rather "the biosphere as it is experienced and "lived from within" by the intelligent body — by the attentive human animal who is entirely a part of the world that he, or she, experiences. Merleau-Ponty's ecophenemonology with its emphasis on holistic dialog within the larger-than-human world also has implications for the ontogenesis and phylogenesis of language, indeed he states that "language is the very voice of the trees, the waves and the forest."
Merleau-Ponty himself refers to "that primordial being which is not yet the subject-being nor the object-being and which in every respect baffles reflection. From this primordial being to us, there is no derivation, nor any break..." Among the many working notes found on his desk at the time of his death, and published with the half-complete manuscript of "The Visible and the Invisible", several make evident that Merleau-Ponty himself recognized a deep affinity between his notion of a primordial "flesh" and a radically transformed understanding of "nature." Hence in November 1960 he writes: "Do a psychoanalysis of Nature: it is the flesh, the mother." And in the last published working note, written in March 1961, he writes: "Nature as the other side of humanity (as flesh, nowise as 'matter')." This resonates with the conception of space, place, dwelling, and embodiment (in the flesh and physical, vs. virtual and cybernetic), especially as they are addressed against the background of the unfolding of the essence of modern technology. Such analytics figure in a Heideggerian take on “econtology” as an extension of Heidegger’s consideration of the question of being ("Seinsfrage") by way of the fourfold ("Das Geviert") of earth-sky-mortals-divinities ("Erde und Himmel, Sterblichen und Göttlichen"). In this strand of “ecophenomenology”, ecology is co-entangled with ontology, whereby the worldly existential analytics are grounded in earthiness, and environmentalism is orientated by ontological thinking.
The following table gives a selection of Merleau-Ponty's works in French and English translation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19373 |
Model organism
A model organism is a non-human species that is extensively studied to understand particular biological phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the model organism will provide insight into the workings of other organisms. Model organisms are widely used to research human disease when human experimentation would be unfeasible or unethical. This strategy is made possible by the common descent of all living organisms, and the conservation of metabolic and developmental pathways and genetic material over the course of evolution.
Studying model organisms can be informative, but care must be taken when generalizing from one organism to another.
In researching human disease, model organisms allow for better understanding the disease process without the added risk of harming an actual human. The species chosen will usually meet a determined taxonomic equivalency to humans, so as to react to disease or its treatment in a way that resembles human physiology as needed. Although biological activity in a model organism does not ensure an effect in humans, many drugs, treatments and cures for human diseases are developed in part with the guidance of animal models. There are three main types of disease models: homologous, isomorphic and predictive. Homologous animals have the same causes, symptoms and treatment options as would humans who have the same disease. Isomorphic animals share the same symptoms and treatments. Predictive models are similar to a particular human disease in only a couple of aspects, but are useful in isolating and making predictions about mechanisms of a set of disease features.
The use of animals in research dates back to ancient Greece, with Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and Erasistratus (304–258 BCE) among the first to perform experiments on living animals. Discoveries in the 18th and 19th centuries included Antoine Lavoisier's use of a guinea pig in a calorimeter to prove that respiration was a form of combustion, and Louis Pasteur's demonstration of the germ theory of disease in the 1880s using anthrax in sheep.
Research using animal models has been central to many of the achievements of modern medicine. It has contributed most of the basic knowledge in fields such as human physiology and biochemistry, and has played significant roles in fields such as neuroscience and infectious disease. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19374 |
Materialism
Materialism is a form of philosophical monism that holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are by-products or epiphenomena of material processes (such as the biochemistry of the human brain and nervous system), without which they cannot exist. This concept directly contrasts with idealism, where mind and consciousness are first-order realities to which matter is subject and material interactions are secondary.
Materialism is closely related to physicalism—the view that all that exists is ultimately physical. Philosophical physicalism has evolved from materialism with the theories of the physical sciences to incorporate more sophisticated notions of physicality than mere ordinary matter (e.g. spacetime, physical energies and forces, and dark matter). Thus the term "physicalism" is preferred over "materialism" by some, while others use the terms as if they were synonymous.
Philosophies contradictory to materialism or physicalism include idealism, pluralism, dualism, panpsychism, and other forms of monism.
Materialism belongs to the class of monist ontology. As such, it is different from ontological theories based on dualism or pluralism. For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism, neutral monism and spiritualism.
Despite the large number of philosophical schools and subtle nuances between many, all philosophies are said to fall into one of two primary categories, which are defined in contrast to each other: idealism and materialism. The basic proposition of these two categories pertains to the nature of reality—the primary distinction between them is the way they answer two fundamental questions: "what does reality consist of?" and "how does it originate?" To idealists, spirit or mind or the objects of mind (ideas) are primary, and matter secondary. To materialists, matter is primary, and mind or spirit or ideas are secondary—the product of matter acting upon matter.
The materialist view is perhaps best understood in its opposition to the doctrines of immaterial substance applied to the mind historically by René Descartes; however, by itself materialism says nothing about how material substance should be characterized. In practice, it is frequently assimilated to one variety of physicalism or another.
Materialism is often associated with reductionism, according to which the objects or phenomena individuated at one level of description, if they are genuine, must be explicable in terms of the objects or phenomena at some other level of description—typically, at a more reduced level. Non-reductive materialism explicitly rejects this notion, however, taking the material constitution of all particulars to be consistent with the existence of real objects, properties or phenomena not explicable in the terms canonically used for the basic material constituents. Jerry Fodor argues this view, according to which empirical laws and explanations in "special sciences" like psychology or geology are invisible from the perspective of basic physics.
Modern philosophical materialists extend the definition of other scientifically observable entities such as energy, forces and the curvature of space; however, philosophers such as Mary Midgley suggest that the concept of "matter" is elusive and poorly defined.
Materialism typically contrasts with dualism, phenomenalism, idealism, vitalism and dual-aspect monism. Its materiality can, in some ways, be linked to the concept of determinism, as espoused by Enlightenment thinkers.
During the nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels extended the concept of materialism to elaborate a "materialist conception of history" centered on the roughly empirical world of human activity (practice, including labor) and the institutions created, reproduced or destroyed by that activity (see materialist conception of history). They also developed dialectical materialism, through taking Hegelian dialectics, stripping them of their idealist aspects and fusing them with materialism (see Modern philosophy).
Materialism developed, possibly independently, in several geographically separated regions of Eurasia during what Karl Jaspers termed the Axial Age ( 800–200 BC).
In ancient Indian philosophy, materialism developed around 600 BC with the works of Ajita Kesakambali, Payasi, Kanada and the proponents of the Cārvāka school of philosophy. Kanada became one of the early proponents of atomism. The Nyaya–Vaisesika school (c. 600–100 BC) developed one of the earliest forms of atomism (although their proofs of God and their positing that consciousness was not material precludes labelling them as materialists). Buddhist atomism and the Jaina school continued the atomic tradition.
Ancient Greek atomists like Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus prefigure later materialists. The Latin poem "De Rerum Natura" by Lucretius (99 – c. 55 BC) reflects the mechanistic philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus. According to this view, all that exists is matter and void, and all phenomena result from different motions and conglomerations of base material particles called "atoms" (literally: "indivisibles"). "De Rerum Natura" provides mechanistic explanations for phenomena such as erosion, evaporation, wind and sound. Famous principles like "nothing can touch body but body" first appeared in the works of Lucretius. Democritus and Epicurus, however, did not hold to a monist ontology since they held to the ontological separation of matter and space (i.e. space being "another kind" of being) indicating that the definition of "materialism" is wider than the given scope of this article.
Wang Chong (27 – c. 100 AD) was a Chinese thinker of the early Common Era said to be a materialist.
Later Indian materialist Jayaraashi Bhatta (6th century) in his work "Tattvopaplavasimha" ("The upsetting of all principles") refuted the Nyaya Sutra epistemology. The materialistic Cārvāka philosophy appears to have died out some time after 1400; when Madhavacharya compiled "Sarva-darśana-samgraha" (a digest of all philosophies) in the 14th century, he had no Cārvāka/Lokāyata text to quote from or refer to.
In early 12th-century al-Andalus, the Arabian philosopher, Ibn Tufail ( Abubacer), wrote discussions on materialism in his philosophical novel, "Hayy ibn Yaqdhan" ("Philosophus Autodidactus"), while vaguely foreshadowing the idea of a historical materialism.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and Pierre Gassendi (1592–1665) represented the materialist tradition in opposition to the attempts of René Descartes (1596–1650) to provide the natural sciences with dualist foundations. There followed the materialist and atheist "abbé" Jean Meslier (1664–1729) and the works of the French materialists: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, the German-French Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789), Denis Diderot (1713–1784) and other French Enlightenment thinkers. In England, John "Walking" Stewart (1747–1822) insisted on seeing matter as endowed with a moral dimension, which had a major impact on the philosophical poetry of William Wordsworth (1770–1850).
In late modern philosophy, German atheist anthropologist Ludwig Feuerbach would signal a new turn in materialism through his book "The Essence of Christianity" (1841), which presented a humanist account of religion as the outward projection of man's inward nature. Feuerbach's anthropological materialism (a version of materialism which views materialist anthropology as the universal science) would later heavily influence Karl Marx, who in the late 19th century elaborated the concept of historical materialism—the basis for what Marx and Friedrich Engels outlined as scientific socialism:
Engels later developed a "materialist dialectic" philosophy of nature ("Dialectics of Nature", 1883). Engels's worldview was given the title "dialectical materialism" by Georgi Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism. In early 20th-century Russian philosophy, Vladimir Lenin further developed dialectical materialism in his book "Materialism and Empirio-criticism" (1909), which connected the political conceptions put forth by his opponents to their anti-materialist philosophies.
A more naturalist-oriented materialist school of thought that developed in the middle of the 19th century (also in Germany) was German materialism: members included Ludwig Büchner, Jacob Moleschott and Carl Vogt.
Contemporary analytic philosophers (e.g. Daniel Dennett, Willard Van Orman Quine, Donald Davidson, and Jerry Fodor) operate within a broadly physicalist or scientific materialist framework, producing rival accounts of how best to accommodate the mind, including functionalism, anomalous monism, identity theory, and so on.
Scientific materialism is often synonymous with, and has typically been described as being, a reductive materialism. In the early twenty-first century, Paul and Patricia Churchland advocated a radically contrasting position (at least, in regards to certain hypotheses); eliminativist materialism holds that some mental phenomena simply do not exist at all, and that talk of those mental phenomena reflects a totally spurious "folk psychology" and introspection illusion. An eliminative materialist might believe that a concept like "belief" simply has no basis in fact (e.g. the way folk science speaks of demon-caused illnesses). With reductive materialism being at one end of a continuum (our theories will "reduce" to facts) and eliminative materialism on the other (certain theories will need to be "eliminated" in light of new facts), revisionary materialism is somewhere in the middle.
Contemporary continental philosopher Gilles Deleuze has attempted to rework and strengthen classical materialist ideas. Contemporary theorists such as Manuel DeLanda, working with this reinvigorated materialism, have come to be classified as "new materialist" in persuasion. New materialism has now become its own specialized subfield of knowledge, with courses being offered on the topic at major universities, as well as numerous conferences, edited collections and monographs devoted to it. Jane Bennett's book "Vibrant Matter" (2010) has been particularly instrumental in bringing theories of monist ontology and vitalism back into a critical theoretical fold dominated by poststructuralist theories of language and discourse. Scholars such as Mel Y. Chen and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, however, have critiqued this body of new materialist literature for its neglect in considering the materiality of race and gender in particular. Métis scholar Zoe Todd and Mohawk (Bear Clan, Six Nations) and Anishinaabe scholar Vanessa Watts, query the colonial orientation of the race for a "new" materialism. Watts in particular describes the tendency to regard matter as a subject of feminist or philosophical care as a tendency that is too invested in the reanimation of a Eurocentric tradition of inquiry at the expense of an Indigenous ethic of responsibility. While, other scholars, such as Helene Vosters, echo their concerns and have questioned whether there is anything particularly "new" about this so-called "new materialism", as Indigenous and other animist ontologies have attested to what might be called the "vibrancy of matter" for centuries. Other scholars such as Thomas Nail have critiqued "vitalist" versions of new materialism for its depoliticizing "flat ontology" and for being ahistorical in nature.
Quentin Meillassoux proposed speculative materialism, a post-Kantian return to David Hume which is also based on materialist ideas.
The nature and definition of matter—like other key concepts in science and philosophy—have occasioned much debate. Is there a single kind of matter (hyle) which everything is made of, or multiple kinds? Is matter a continuous substance capable of expressing multiple forms (hylomorphism) or a number of discrete, unchanging constituents (atomism)? Does it have intrinsic properties (substance theory) or is it lacking them (prima materia)?
One challenge to the traditional concept of matter as tangible "stuff" came with the rise of field physics in the 19th century. Relativity shows that matter and energy (including the spatially distributed energy of fields) are interchangeable. This enables the ontological view that energy is prima materia and matter is one of its forms. On the other hand, the Standard Model of particle physics uses quantum field theory to describe all interactions. On this view it could be said that fields are prima materia and the energy is a property of the field.
According to the dominant cosmological model, the Lambda-CDM model, less than 5% of the universe's energy density is made up of the "matter" described by the Standard Model, and the majority of the universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy, with little agreement among scientists about what these are made of.
With the advent of quantum physics, some scientists believed the concept of matter had merely changed, while others believed the conventional position could no longer be maintained. For instance Werner Heisenberg said, "The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible... atoms are not things." Likewise, some philosophers feel that these dichotomies necessitate a switch from materialism to physicalism. Others use the terms "materialism" and "physicalism" interchangeably.
The concept of matter has changed in response to new scientific discoveries. Thus materialism has no definite content independent of the particular theory of matter on which it is based. According to Noam Chomsky, any property can be considered material, if one defines matter such that it has that property.
George Stack distinguishes between materialism and physicalism:
However, not all conceptions of physicalism are tied to verificationist theories of meaning or direct realist accounts of perception. Rather, physicalists believe that no "element of reality" is missing from the mathematical formalism of our best description of the world. "Materialist" physicalists also believe that the formalism describes fields of insentience. In other words, the intrinsic nature of the physical is non-experiential.
Rudolf Peierls, a physicist who played a major role in the Manhattan Project, rejected materialism, saying, "The premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being [...] including knowledge and consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing".
Erwin Schrödinger said, "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else".
Werner Heisenberg, who came up with the uncertainty principle, wrote, "The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible...Atoms are not things".
Some 20th-century physicists (such as Eugene Wigner and Henry Stapp) and modern day physicists and science writers (such as Stephen Barr, Paul Davies and John Gribbin) have argued that materialism is flawed due to certain recent scientific findings in physics, such as quantum mechanics and chaos theory. In 1991, Gribbin and Davies released their book "The Matter Myth", the first chapter of which, "The Death of Materialism", contained the following passage:
The objections of Davies and Gribbin are shared by proponents of digital physics who view information rather than matter to be fundamental. Famous physicist and proponent of digital physics John Archibald Wheeler wrote, "all matter and all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe". Their objections were also shared by some founders of quantum theory, such as Max Planck, who wrote:
James Jeans concurred with Planck saying, "The Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter".
According to Constantin Gutberlet writing in "Catholic Encyclopedia" (1911), materialism, defined as "a philosophical system which regards matter as the only reality in the world [...] denies the existence of God and the soul". In this view, materialism could be perceived incompatible with world religions that ascribe existence to immaterial objects. Materialism could be conflated with atheism. However, Friedrich Lange wrote in 1892, "Diderot has not always in the Encyclopædia expressed his own individual opinion, but it is just as true that at its commencement he had not yet got as far as Atheism and Materialism".
Most of Hinduism and transcendentalism regard all matter as an illusion called Maya, blinding humans from knowing the truth. Transcendental experiences like the perception of Brahman are considered to destroy the illusion.
Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, taught: "There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter." This spirit element is believed to always have existed and to be co-eternal with God.
Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science movement, denied the existence of matter on the basis of the allness of Mind (which she regarded as a synonym for God).
In the "Critique of Pure Reason", Immanuel Kant argued against materialism in defending his transcendental idealism (as well as offering arguments against subjective idealism and mind–body dualism). However, Kant with his refutation of idealism, argues that change and time require an enduring substrate. Postmodern/poststructuralist thinkers also express a skepticism about any all-encompassing metaphysical scheme. Philosopher Mary Midgley argues that materialism is a self-refuting idea, at least in its eliminative materialist form.
Arguments for idealism, such as those of Hegel and Berkeley, often take the form of an argument against materialism; indeed, the idealism of Berkeley was called "immaterialism". Now, matter can be argued to be redundant, as in bundle theory, and mind-independent properties can, in turn, be reduced to subjective percepts. Berkeley presents an example of the latter by pointing out that it is impossible to gather direct evidence of matter, as there is no direct experience of matter; all that is experienced is perception, whether internal or external. As such, the existence of matter can only be assumed from the apparent (perceived) stability of perceptions; it finds absolutely no evidence in direct experience.
If matter and energy are seen as necessary to explain the physical world, but incapable of explaining mind, dualism results. Emergence, holism and process philosophy seek to ameliorate the perceived shortcomings of traditional (especially mechanistic) materialism without abandoning materialism entirely.
Some critics object to materialism as part of an overly skeptical, narrow or reductivist approach to theorizing, rather than to the ontological claim that matter is the only substance.
Particle physicist and Anglican theologian John Polkinghorne objects to what he calls "promissory materialism"—claims that materialistic science "will" eventually succeed in explaining phenomena it has not so far been able to explain. Polkinghorne prefers "dual-aspect monism" to materialism.
Some scientific materialists have been criticized for failing to provide clear definitions for what constitutes matter, leaving the term "materialism" without any definite meaning. Noam Chomsky states that since the concept of matter may be affected by new scientific discoveries, as has happened in the past, scientific materialists are being dogmatic in assuming the opposite.
a. Indeed, it has been noted it is difficult if not impossible to define one category without contrasting it with the other. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19376 |
Microelectronics
Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics. As the name suggests, microelectronics relates to the study and manufacture (or microfabrication) of very small electronic designs and components. Usually, but not always, this means micrometre-scale or smaller. These devices are typically made from semiconductor materials. Many components of normal electronic design are available in a microelectronic equivalent. These include transistors, capacitors, inductors, resistors, diodes and (naturally) insulators and conductors can all be found in microelectronic devices. Unique wiring techniques such as wire bonding are also often used in microelectronics because of the unusually small size of the components, leads and pads. This technique requires specialized equipment and is expensive.
Digital integrated circuits (ICs) consist of billions of transistors, resistors, diodes, and capacitors. Analog circuits commonly contain resistors and capacitors as well. Inductors are used in some high frequency analog circuits, but tend to occupy larger chip area due to their lower reactance at low frequencies. Gyrators can replace them in many applications.
As techniques have improved, the scale of microelectronic components has continued to decrease. At smaller scales, the relative impact of intrinsic circuit properties such as interconnections may become more significant. These are called parasitic effects, and the goal of the microelectronics design engineer is to find ways to compensate for or to minimize these effects, while delivering smaller, faster, and cheaper devices.
Today, microelectronics design is largely aided by Electronic Design Automation software. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19377 |
Mind
The mind is the set of thinking faculties including cognitive aspects such as consciousness, imagination, perception, thinking, judgement, language and memory, as well as noncognitive aspects such as emotion. Under the scientific physicalist interpretation, the mind is housed at least in part in the brain. The primary competitors to the physicalist interpretations of the mind are idealism, substance dualism, and types of property dualism, and by some lights eliminative materialism and anomalous monism. There is a lengthy tradition in philosophy, religion, psychology, and cognitive science about what constitutes a mind and what are its distinguishing properties.
One open question regarding the nature of the mind is the mind–body problem, which investigates the relation of the mind to the physical brain and nervous system. Older viewpoints included dualism and idealism, which considered the mind somehow non-physical. Modern views often center around physicalism and functionalism, which hold that the mind is roughly identical with the brain or reducible to physical phenomena such as neuronal activity though dualism and idealism continue to have many supporters. Another question concerns which types of beings are capable of having minds (New Scientist 8 September 2018 p10). For example, whether mind is exclusive to humans, possessed also by some or all animals, by all living things, whether it is a strictly definable characteristic at all, or whether mind can also be a property of some types of human-made machines.
Whatever its nature, it is generally agreed that mind is that which enables a being to have subjective awareness and intentionality towards their environment, to perceive and respond to stimuli with some kind of agency, and to have consciousness, including thinking and feeling.
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different cultural and religious traditions. Some see mind as a property exclusive to humans whereas others ascribe properties of mind to non-living entities (e.g. panpsychism and animism), to animals and to deities. Some of the earliest recorded speculations linked mind (sometimes described as identical with soul or spirit) to theories concerning both life after death, and cosmological and natural order, for example in the doctrines of Zoroaster, the Buddha, Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient Greek, Indian and, later, Islamic and medieval European philosophers.
Important philosophers of mind include Plato, Patanjali, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Searle, Dennett, Fodor, Nagel, Chalmers, and Putnam. Psychologists such as Freud and James, and computer scientists such as Turing developed influential theories about the nature of the mind. The possibility of nonbiological minds is explored in the field of artificial intelligence, which works closely in relation with cybernetics and information theory to understand the ways in which information processing by nonbiological machines is comparable or different to mental phenomena in the human mind.
The mind is also portrayed as the stream of consciousness where sense impressions and mental phenomena are constantly changing.
The original meaning of Old English "gemynd" was the faculty of memory, not of thought in general. Hence "call to mind", "come to mind", "keep in mind", "to have mind of", etc. The word retains this sense in Scotland. Old English had other words to express "mind", such as "hyge" "mind, spirit".
The meaning of "memory" is shared with Old Norse, which has "munr". The word is originally from a PIE verbal root "", meaning "to think, remember", whence also Latin" mens" "mind", Sanskrit "" "mind" and Greek μένος "mind, courage, anger".
The generalization of "mind" to include all mental faculties, thought, volition, feeling and memory, gradually develops over the 14th and 15th centuries.
The attributes that make up the mind are debated. Some psychologists argue that only the "higher" intellectual functions constitute mind, particularly reason and memory. In this view the emotions — love, hate, fear, and joy — are more "primitive "or subjective in nature and should be seen as different from the mind as such. Others argue that various rational and emotional states cannot be so separated, that they are of the same nature and origin, and should therefore be considered all part of it as mind.
In popular usage, "mind "is frequently synonymous with "thought": the private conversation with ourselves that we carry on "inside our heads." Thus we "make up our minds," "change our minds" or are "of two minds" about something. One of the key attributes of the mind in this sense is that it is a private sphere to which no one but the owner has access. No one else can "know our mind." They can only interpret what we consciously or unconsciously communicate.
Broadly speaking, mental faculties are the various functions of the mind, or things the mind can "do".
Thought is a mental act that allows humans to make sense of things in the world, and to represent and interpret them in ways that are significant, or which accord with their needs, attachments, goals, commitments, plans, ends, desires, etc. Thinking involves the symbolic or semiotic mediation of ideas or data, as when we form concepts, engage in problem solving, reasoning, and making decisions. Words that refer to similar concepts and processes include deliberation, cognition, ideation, discourse and imagination.
Thinking is sometimes described as a "higher" cognitive function and the analysis of thinking processes is a part of cognitive psychology. It is also deeply connected with our capacity to make and use tools; to understand cause and effect; to recognize patterns of significance; to comprehend and disclose unique contexts of experience or activity; and to respond to the world in a meaningful way.
Memory is the ability to preserve, retain, and subsequently recall, knowledge, information or experience. Although memory has traditionally been a persistent theme in philosophy, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also saw the study of memory emerge as a subject of inquiry within the paradigms of cognitive psychology. In recent decades, it has become one of the pillars of a new branch of science called cognitive neuroscience, a marriage between cognitive psychology and neuroscience.
Imagination is the activity of generating or evoking novel situations, images, ideas or other qualia in the mind. It is a characteristically subjective "activity", rather than a direct or passive experience. The term is technically used in psychology for the process of reviving in the mind percepts of objects formerly given in sense perception. Since this use of the term conflicts with that of ordinary language, some psychologists have preferred to describe this process as "imaging" or "imagery" or to speak of it as "reproductive" as opposed to "productive" or "constructive" imagination. Things imagined are said to be seen in the "mind's eye". Among the many practical functions of imagination are the ability to project possible futures (or histories), to "see" things from another's perspective, and to change the way something is perceived, including to make decisions to respond to, or enact, what is imagined.
Consciousness in mammals (this includes humans) is an aspect of the mind generally thought to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, sentience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. It is a subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. Some philosophers divide consciousness into phenomenal consciousness, which is subjective experience itself, and access consciousness, which refers to the global availability of information to processing systems in the brain. Phenomenal consciousness has many different experienced qualities, often referred to as qualia. Phenomenal consciousness is usually consciousness "of" something or "about" something, a property known as intentionality in philosophy of mind.
Mental contents are those items that are thought of as being "in" the mind, and capable of being formed and manipulated by mental processes and faculties. Examples include thoughts, concepts, memories, emotions, percepts and intentions. Philosophical theories of mental content include internalism, externalism, representationalism and intentionality.
Memetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, which was originated by Richard Dawkins and Douglas Hofstadter in the 1980s. It is an evolutionary model of cultural information transfer. A meme, analogous to a gene, is an idea, belief, pattern of behaviour (etc.) "hosted" in one or more individual minds, and can reproduce itself from mind to mind. Thus what would otherwise be regarded as one individual influencing another to adopt a belief, is seen memetically as a meme reproducing itself.
In animals, the brain, or "encephalon" (Greek for "in the head"), is the control center of the central nervous system, responsible for thought. In most animals, the brain is located in the head, protected by the skull and close to the primary sensory apparatus of vision, hearing, equilibrioception, taste and olfaction. While all vertebrates have a brain, most invertebrates have either a centralized brain or collections of individual ganglia. Primitive animals such as sponges do not have a brain at all. Brains can be extremely complex. For example, the human brain contains around 86 billion neurons, each linked to as many as 10,000 others.
Understanding the relationship between the brain and the mind –the mind–body problem – is one of the central issues in the history of philosophy, a challenging problem both philosophically and scientifically. There are three major philosophical schools of thought concerning the answer: dualism, materialism, and idealism. Dualism holds that the mind exists independently of the brain; materialism holds that mental phenomena are identical to neuronal phenomena; and idealism holds that only mental phenomena exist.
Through most of history many philosophers found it inconceivable that cognition could be implemented by a physical substance such as brain tissue (that is neurons and synapses). Descartes, who thought extensively about mind-brain relationships, found it possible to explain reflexes and other simple behaviors in mechanistic terms, although he did not believe that complex thought, and language in particular, could be explained by reference to the physical brain alone.
The most straightforward scientific evidence of a strong relationship between the physical brain matter and the mind is the impact physical alterations to the brain have on the mind, such as with traumatic brain injury and psychoactive drug use. Philosopher Patricia Churchland notes that this drug-mind interaction indicates an intimate connection between the brain and the mind.
In addition to the philosophical questions, the relationship between mind and brain involves a number of scientific questions, including understanding the relationship between mental activity and brain activity, the exact mechanisms by which drugs influence cognition, and the neural correlates of consciousness.
Theoretical approaches to explain how mind emerges from the brain include connectionism, computationalism and Bayesian brain.
The evolution of human intelligence refers to several theories that aim to describe how human intelligence has evolved in relation to the evolution of the human brain and the origin of language.
The timeline of human evolution spans some 7 million years, from the separation of the genus "Pan" until the emergence of behavioral modernity by 50,000 years ago. Of this timeline, the first 3 million years concern "Sahelanthropus", the following 2 million concern "Australopithecus", while the final 2 million span the history of actual "Homo" species (the Paleolithic).
Many traits of human intelligence, such as empathy, theory of mind, mourning, ritual, and the use of symbols and tools, are already apparent in great apes although in lesser sophistication than in humans.
There is a debate between supporters of the idea of a sudden emergence of intelligence, or "Great leap forward" and those of a gradual or continuum hypothesis.
Theories of the evolution of intelligence include:
Philosophy of mind is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body. The "mind–body problem", i.e. the relationship of the mind to the body, is commonly seen as the central issue in philosophy of mind, although there are other issues concerning the nature of the mind that do not involve its relation to the physical body. José Manuel Rodriguez Delgado writes, "In present popular usage, soul and mind are not clearly differentiated and some people, more or less consciously, still feel that the soul, and perhaps the mind, may enter or leave the body as independent entities."
"Dualism" and "monism" are the two major schools of thought that attempt to resolve the mind–body problem. Dualism is the position that mind and body are in some way separate from each other. It can be traced back to Plato, Aristotle and the Nyaya, Samkhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy, but it was most precisely formulated by René Descartes in the 17th century. "Substance dualists" argue that the mind is an independently existing substance, whereas "Property dualists" maintain that the mind is a group of independent properties that emerge from and cannot be reduced to the brain, but that it is not a distinct substance.
The 20th century philosopher Martin Heidegger suggested that subjective experience and activity (i.e. the "mind") cannot be made sense of in terms of Cartesian "substances" that bear "properties" at all (whether the mind itself is thought of as a distinct, separate kind of substance or not). This is because the nature of subjective, "qualitative" experience is incoherent in terms of – or semantically incommensurable with the concept of – substances that bear properties. This is a fundamentally ontological argument.
The philosopher of cognitive science Daniel Dennett, for example, argues there is no such thing as a narrative center called the "mind", but that instead there is simply a collection of sensory inputs and outputs: different kinds of "software" running in parallel. Psychologist B.F. Skinner argued that the mind is an explanatory fiction that diverts attention from environmental causes of behavior; he considered the mind a "black box" and thought that mental processes may be better conceived of as forms of covert verbal behavior.
Philosopher David Chalmers has argued that the third person approach to uncovering mind and consciousness is not effective, such as looking into other's brains or observing human conduct, but that a first person approach is necessary. Such a first person perspective indicates that the mind must be conceptualized as something distinct from the brain.
The mind has also been described as manifesting from moment to moment, one thought moment at a time as a fast flowing stream, where sense impressions and mental phenomena are constantly changing.
"Monism" is the position that mind and body are not physiologically and ontologically distinct kinds of entities. This view was first advocated in Western Philosophy by Parmenides in the 5th Century BC and was later espoused by the 17th Century rationalist Baruch Spinoza. According to Spinoza's dual-aspect theory, mind and body are two aspects of an underlying reality which he variously described as "Nature" or "God".
The most common monisms in the 20th and 21st centuries have all been variations of physicalism; these positions include behaviorism, the type identity theory, anomalous monism and functionalism.
Many modern philosophers of mind adopt either a "reductive" or "non-reductive physicalist" position, maintaining in their different ways that the mind is not something separate from the body. These approaches have been particularly influential in the sciences, e.g. in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionary psychology and the various neurosciences. Other philosophers, however, adopt a non-physicalist position which challenges the notion that the mind is a purely physical construct.
Continued progress in neuroscience has helped to clarify many of these issues, and its findings have been taken by many to support physicalists' assertions. Nevertheless, our knowledge is incomplete, and modern philosophers of mind continue to discuss how subjective qualia and the intentional mental states can be naturally explained. Then, of course, there is the problem of Quantum Mechanics, which is best understood as a form of perspectivism.
Neuroscience studies the nervous system, the physical basis of the mind. At the systems level, neuroscientists investigate how biological neural networks form and physiologically interact to produce mental functions and content such as reflexes, multisensory integration, motor coordination, circadian rhythms, emotional responses, learning, and memory. The underlying physical basis of learning and memory is likely dynamic changes in gene expression that occur in brain neurons. Such expression changes are introduced by epigenetic mechanisms. Epigenetic regulation of gene expression ordinarily involves chemical modification of DNA or DNA-associated histone proteins. Such chemical modifications can cause long-lasting changes in gene expression. Epigenetic mechanisms employed in learning and memory include the DNMT3A promoted methylation and TET promoted demethylation of neuronal DNA as well as methylation, acetylation and deacetylation of neuronal histone proteins.
At a larger scale, efforts in computational neuroscience have developed large-scale models that simulate simple, functioning brains. As of 2012, such models include the thalamus, basal ganglia, prefrontal cortex, motor cortex, and occipital cortex, and consequentially simulated brains can learn, respond to visual stimuli, coordinate motor responses, form short-term memories, and learn to respond to patterns. Currently, researchers aim to program the hippocampus and limbic system, hypothetically imbuing the simulated mind with long-term memory and crude emotions.
By contrast, affective neuroscience studies the neural mechanisms of personality, emotion, and mood primarily through experimental tasks.
Cognitive science examines the mental functions that give rise to information processing, termed cognition. These include perception, attention, working memory, long-term memory, producing and understanding language, learning, reasoning, problem solving, and decision making. Cognitive science seeks to understand thinking "in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures".
Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior, mental functioning, and experience. As both an academic and applied discipline, Psychology involves the scientific study of mental processes such as perception, cognition, emotion, personality, as well as environmental influences, such as social and cultural influences, and interpersonal relationships, in order to devise theories of human behavior. Psychological patterns can be understood as low cost ways of information processing. Psychology also refers to the application of such knowledge to various spheres of human activity, including problems of individuals' daily lives and the treatment of mental health problems.
Psychology differs from the other social sciences (e.g. anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology) due to its focus on experimentation at the scale of the individual, or individuals in small groups as opposed to large groups, institutions or societies. Historically, psychology differed from biology and neuroscience in that it was primarily concerned with mind rather than brain. Modern psychological science incorporates physiological and neurological processes into its conceptions of perception, cognition, behaviour, and mental disorders.
By analogy with the health of the body, one can speak metaphorically of a state of health of the mind, or mental health. Merriam-Webster defines mental health as "A state of emotional and psychological well-being in which an individual is able to use his or her cognitive and emotional capabilities, function in society, and meet the ordinary demands of everyday life." According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is no one "official" definition of mental health. Cultural differences, subjective assessments, and competing professional theories all affect how "mental health" is defined. In general, most experts agree that "mental health" and "mental disorder" are not opposites. In other words, the absence of a recognized mental disorder is not necessarily an indicator of mental health.
One way to think about mental health is by looking at how effectively and successfully a person functions. Feeling capable and competent; being able to handle normal levels of stress, maintaining satisfying relationships, and leading an independent life; and being able to "bounce back," or recover from difficult situations, are all signs of mental health.
Psychotherapy is an interpersonal, relational intervention used by trained psychotherapists to aid clients in problems of living. This usually includes increasing individual sense of well-being and reducing subjective discomforting experience. Psychotherapists employ a range of techniques based on experiential relationship building, dialogue, communication and behavior change and that are designed to improve the mental health of a client or patient, or to improve group relationships (such as in a family). Most forms of psychotherapy use only spoken conversation, though some also use various other forms of communication such as the written word, art, drama, narrative story, or therapeutic touch. Psychotherapy occurs within a structured encounter between a trained therapist and client(s). Purposeful, theoretically based psychotherapy began in the 19th century with psychoanalysis; since then, scores of other approaches have been developed and continue to be created.
Animal cognition, or cognitive ethology, is the title given to a modern approach to the mental capacities of animals. It has developed out of comparative psychology, but has also been strongly influenced by the approach of ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology. Much of what used to be considered under the title of "animal intelligence" is now thought of under this heading. Animal language acquisition, attempting to discern or understand the degree to which animal cognition can be revealed by linguistics-related study, has been controversial among cognitive linguists.
In 1950 Alan M. Turing published "Computing machinery and intelligence" in "Mind", in which he proposed that machines could be tested for intelligence using questions and answers. This process is now named the Turing Test. The term Artificial Intelligence (AI) was first used by John McCarthy who considered it to mean "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines". It can also refer to intelligence as exhibited by an artificial ("man-made", "non-natural", "manufactured") entity. AI is studied in overlapping fields of computer science, psychology, neuroscience and engineering, dealing with intelligent behavior, learning and adaptation and usually developed using customized machines or computers.
Research in AI is concerned with producing machines to automate tasks requiring intelligent behavior. Examples include control, planning and scheduling, the ability to answer diagnostic and consumer questions, handwriting, natural language, speech and facial recognition. As such, the study of AI has also become an engineering discipline, focused on providing solutions to real life problems, knowledge mining, software applications, strategy games like computer chess and other video games. One of the biggest limitations of AI is in the domain of actual machine comprehension. Consequentially natural language understanding and connectionism (where behavior of neural networks is investigated) are areas of active research and development.
The debate about the nature of the mind is relevant to the development of artificial intelligence. If the mind is indeed a thing separate from or higher than the functioning of the brain, then hypothetically it would be much more difficult to recreate within a machine, if it were possible at all. If, on the other hand, the mind is no more than the aggregated functions of the brain, then it will be possible to create a machine with a recognisable mind (though possibly only with computers much different from today's), by simple virtue of the fact that such a machine already exists in the form of the human brain.
Many religions associate spiritual qualities to the human mind. These are often tightly connected to their mythology and ideas of afterlife.
The Indian philosopher-sage Sri Aurobindo attempted to unite the Eastern and Western psychological traditions with his integral psychology, as have many philosophers and New religious movements. Judaism teaches that "moach shalit al halev", the mind rules the heart. Humans can approach the Divine intellectually, through learning and behaving according to the Divine Will as enclothed in the Torah, and use that deep logical understanding to elicit and guide emotional arousal during prayer. Christianity has tended to see the mind as distinct from the soul (Greek "nous") and sometimes further distinguished from the spirit. Western esoteric traditions sometimes refer to a mental body that exists on a plane other than the physical. Hinduism's various philosophical schools have debated whether the human soul (Sanskrit "atman") is distinct from, or identical to, "Brahman", the divine reality. Taoism sees the human being as contiguous with natural forces, and the mind as not separate from the body. Confucianism sees the mind, like the body, as inherently perfectible.
Buddhist teachings explain the moment-to-moment manifestation of the mind-stream. The components that make up the mind are known as the five aggregates (i.e., material form, feelings, perception, volition, and sensory consciousness), which arise and pass away continuously. The arising and passing of these aggregates in the present moment is described as being influenced by five causal laws: biological laws, psychological laws, physical laws, volitional laws, and universal laws. The Buddhist practice of mindfulness involves attending to this constantly changing mind-stream.
According to Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti, the mind has two fundamental qualities: "clarity and cognizes". If something is not those two qualities, it cannot validly be called mind. "Clarity" refers to the fact that mind has no color, shape, size, location, weight, or any other physical characteristic, and "cognizes" that it functions to know or perceive objects. "Knowing" refers to the fact that mind is aware of the contents of experience, and that, in order to exist, mind must be cognizing an object. You cannot have a mind – whose function is to cognize an object – existing without cognizing an object.
Mind, in Buddhism, is also described as being "space-like" and "illusion-like". Mind is space-like in the sense that it is not physically obstructive. It has no qualities which would prevent it from existing. In Mahayana Buddhism, mind is illusion-like in the sense that it is empty of inherent existence. This does not mean it does not exist, it means that it exists in a manner that is counter to our ordinary way of misperceiving how phenomena exist, according to Buddhism. When the mind is itself cognized properly, without misperceiving its mode of existence, it appears to exist like an illusion. There is a big difference however between being "space and illusion" and being "space-like" and "illusion-like". Mind is not composed of space, it just shares some descriptive similarities to space. Mind is not an illusion, it just shares some descriptive qualities with illusions.
Buddhism posits that there is no inherent, unchanging identity (Inherent I, Inherent Me) or phenomena (Ultimate self, inherent self, Atman, Soul, Self-essence, Jiva, Ishvara, humanness essence, etc.) which is the experiencer of our experiences and the agent of our actions. In other words, human beings consist of merely a body and a mind, and nothing extra. Within the body there is no part or set of parts which is – by itself or themselves – the person. Similarly, within the mind there is no part or set of parts which are themselves "the person". A human being merely consists of five aggregates, or "skandhas" and nothing else.
In the same way, "mind" is what can be validly conceptually labelled onto our mere experience of clarity and knowing. There is something separate and apart from clarity and knowing which is "Awareness", in Buddhism. "Mind" is that part of experience the sixth sense door, which can be validly referred to as mind by the concept-term "mind". There is also not "objects out there, mind in here, and experience somewhere in-between". There is a third thing called "awareness" which exists being aware of the contents of mind and what mind cognizes. There are five senses (arising of mere experience: shapes, colors, the components of smell, components of taste, components of sound, components of touch) and mind as the sixth institution; this means, expressly, that there can be a third thing called "awareness" and a third thing called "experiencer who is aware of the experience". This awareness is deeply related to "no-self" because it does not judge the experience with craving or aversion.
Clearly, the experience arises and is known by mind, but there is a third thing calls Sati what is the "real experiencer of the experience" that sits apart from the experience and which can be aware of the experience in 4 levels. (Maha Sathipatthana Sutta.)
To be aware of these four levels one needs to cultivate equanimity toward Craving and Aversion. This is Called Vipassana which is different from the way of reacting with Craving and Aversion. This is the state of being aware and equanimous to the complete experience of here and now. This is the way of Buddhism, with regards to mind and the ultimate nature of minds (and persons).
Due to the mind–body problem, a lot of interest and debate surrounds the question of what happens to one's conscious mind as one's body dies. During brain death all brain function permanently ceases. According to some neuroscientific views which see these processes as the physical basis of mental phenomena, the mind fails to survive brain death and ceases to exist. This permanent loss of consciousness after death is sometimes called "eternal oblivion". The belief that some spiritual or incorporeal component (soul) exists and that it is preserved after death is described by the term "afterlife".
Parapsychology is a study of certain types of paranormal phenomena, or of phenomena which appear to be paranormal or not have any scientific basis , for instance, precognition, telekinesis and telepathy.
The term is based on the Greek para (beside/beyond), psyche (soul/mind), and logos (account/explanation) and was coined by psychologist Max Dessoir in or before 1889. J.B. Rhine tried to popularize "parapsychology" using fraudulent techniques as a replacement for the earlier term "psychical research", during a shift in methodologies which brought experimental methods to the study of psychic phenomena. Parapsychology is not accepted among the scientific community as science, as psychic abilities have not been demonstrated to exist. The status of parapsychology as a science has also been disputed, with many scientists regarding the discipline as pseudoscience. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19378 |
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist, who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British Rule, and in turn inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahātmā (Sanskrit: "great-souled", "venerable"), first applied to him in 1914 in South Africa, is now used throughout the world.
Born and raised in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat, western India, Gandhi was trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, and called to the bar at age 22 in June 1891. After two uncertain years in India, where he was unable to start a successful law practice, he moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. He went on to stay for 21 years. It was in South Africa that Gandhi raised a family, and first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India. He set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and above all for achieving "Swaraj" or self-rule.
The same year Gandhi adopted the Indian loincloth, or short "dhoti" and, in the winter, a shawl, both woven with yarn hand-spun on a traditional Indian spinning wheel, or "charkha", as a mark of identification with India's rural poor. Thereafter, he lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community, ate simple vegetarian food, and undertook long fasts as a means of self-purification and political protest. Bringing anti-colonial nationalism to the common Indians, Gandhi led them in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India.
Gandhi's vision of an independent India based on religious pluralism was challenged in the early 1940s by a new Muslim nationalism which was demanding a separate Muslim homeland carved out of India. In August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab and Bengal. Eschewing the official celebration of independence in Delhi, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to provide solace. In the months following, he undertook several fasts unto death to stop religious violence. The last of these, undertaken on 12 January 1948 when he was 78, also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan. Some Indians thought Gandhi was too accommodating. Among them was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, who assassinated Gandhi on 30 January 1948 by firing three bullets into his chest.
Gandhi's birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence. Gandhi is commonly, though not formally, considered the Father of the Nation in India, and was commonly called Bapu (Gujarati: endearment for "father", "papa").
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 into an Indian Gujarati Hindu Modh Baniya family in Porbandar (also known as "Sudamapuri"), a coastal town on the Kathiawar Peninsula and then part of the small princely state of Porbandar in the Kathiawar Agency of the Indian Empire. His father, Karamchand Uttamchand Gandhi (1822–1885), served as the "diwan" (chief minister) of Porbandar state.
Although he only had an elementary education and had previously been a clerk in the state administration, Karamchand proved a capable chief minister. During his tenure, Karamchand married four times. His first two wives died young, after each had given birth to a daughter, and his third marriage was childless. In 1857, Karamchand sought his third wife's permission to remarry; that year, he married Putlibai (1844–1891), who also came from Junagadh, and was from a Pranami Vaishnava family. Karamchand and Putlibai had three children over the ensuing decade: a son, Laxmidas (c. 1860–1914); a daughter, Raliatbehn (1862–1960); and another son, Karsandas (c. 1866–1913).
On 2 October 1869, Putlibai gave birth to her last child, Mohandas, in a dark, windowless ground-floor room of the Gandhi family residence in Porbandar city. As a child, Gandhi was described by his sister Raliat as "restless as mercury, either playing or roaming about. One of his favourite pastimes was twisting dogs' ears." The Indian classics, especially the stories of Shravana and king Harishchandra, had a great impact on Gandhi in his childhood. In his autobiography, he admits that they left an indelible impression on his mind. He writes: "It haunted me and I must have acted Harishchandra to myself times without number." Gandhi's early self-identification with truth and love as supreme values is traceable to these epic characters.
The family's religious background was eclectic. Gandhi's father Karamchand was Hindu and his mother Putlibai was from a Pranami Vaishnava Hindu family. Gandhi's father was of Modh Baniya caste in the varna of Vaishya. His mother came from the medieval Krishna bhakti-based Pranami tradition, whose religious texts include the "Bhagavad Gita", the "Bhagavata Purana", and a collection of 14 texts with teachings that the tradition believes to include the essence of the Vedas, the Quran and the Bible. Gandhi was deeply influenced by his mother, an extremely pious lady who "would not think of taking her meals without her daily prayers... she would take the hardest vows and keep them without flinching. To keep two or three consecutive fasts was nothing to her."
In 1874, Gandhi's father Karamchand left Porbandar for the smaller state of Rajkot, where he became a counsellor to its ruler, the Thakur Sahib; though Rajkot was a less prestigious state than Porbandar, the British regional political agency was located there, which gave the state's "diwan" a measure of security. In 1876, Karamchand became "diwan" of Rajkot and was succeeded as "diwan" of Porbandar by his brother Tulsidas. His family then rejoined him in Rajkot.
At age 9, Gandhi entered the local school in Rajkot, near his home. There he studied the rudiments of arithmetic, history, the Gujarati language and geography. At age 11, he joined the High School in Rajkot. He was an average student, won some prizes, but was a shy and tongue tied student, with no interest in games; his only companions were books and school lessons.
In May 1883, the 13-year-old Mohandas was married to 14-year-old Kasturbai Makhanji Kapadia (her first name was usually shortened to "Kasturba", and affectionately to "Ba") in an arranged marriage, according to the custom of the region at that time. In the process, he lost a year at school, but was later allowed to make up by accelerating his studies. His wedding was a joint event, where his brother and cousin were also married. Recalling the day of their marriage, he once said, "As we didn't know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets and playing with relatives." As was prevailing tradition, the adolescent bride was to spend much time at her parents' house, and away from her husband.
Writing many years later, Mohandas described with regret the lustful feelings he felt for his young bride, "even at school I used to think of her, and the thought of nightfall and our subsequent meeting was ever haunting me." He later recalled feeling jealous and possessive of her, such as when she would visit a temple with her girlfriends, and being sexually lustful in his feelings for her.
In late 1885, Gandhi's father Karamchand died. Gandhi, then 16 years old, and his wife of age 17 had their first baby, who survived only a few days. The two deaths anguished Gandhi. The Gandhi couple had four more children, all sons: Harilal, born in 1888; Manilal, born in 1892; Ramdas, born in 1897; and Devdas, born in 1900.
In November 1887, the 18-year-old Gandhi graduated from high school in Ahmedabad. In January 1888, he enrolled at Samaldas College in Bhavnagar State, then the sole degree-granting institution of higher education in the region. But he dropped out and returned to his family in Porbandar.
Gandhi came from a poor family, and he had dropped out of the cheapest college he could afford. Mavji Dave Joshiji, a Brahmin priest and family friend, advised Gandhi and his family that he should consider law studies in London. In July 1888, his wife Kasturba gave birth to their first surviving son, Harilal. His mother was not comfortable about Gandhi leaving his wife and family, and going so far from home. Gandhi's uncle Tulsidas also tried to dissuade his nephew. Gandhi wanted to go. To persuade his wife and mother, Gandhi made a vow in front of his mother that he would abstain from meat, alcohol and women. Gandhi's brother Laxmidas, who was already a lawyer, cheered Gandhi's London studies plan and offered to support him. Putlibai gave Gandhi her permission and blessing.
On 10 August 1888, Gandhi aged 18, left Porbandar for Mumbai, then known as Bombay. Upon arrival, he stayed with the local Modh Bania community while waiting for the ship travel arrangements. The head of the community knew Gandhi's father. After learning Gandhi's plans, he and other elders warned Gandhi that England would tempt him to compromise his religion, and eat and drink in Western ways. Gandhi informed them of his promise to his mother and her blessings. The local chief disregarded it, and excommunicated him from his caste. But Gandhi ignored this, and on 4 September, he sailed from Bombay to London. His brother saw him off.
Gandhi attended University College, London which is a constituent college of University of London.
His time in London was influenced by the vow he had made to his mother. He tried to adopt "English" customs, including taking dancing lessons. However, he could not appreciate the bland vegetarian food offered by his landlady and was frequently hungry until he found one of London's few vegetarian restaurants. Influenced by Henry Salt's writing, he joined the London Vegetarian Society and was elected to its executive committee under the aegis of its president and benefactor Arnold Hills. An achievement while on the committee was the establishment of a Bayswater chapter. Some of the vegetarians he met were members of the Theosophical Society, which had been founded in 1875 to further universal brotherhood, and which was devoted to the study of Buddhist and Hindu literature. They encouraged Gandhi to join them in reading the "Bhagavad Gita" both in translation as well as in the original.
Gandhi had a friendly and productive relationship with Hills, but the two men took a different view on the continued LVS membership of fellow committee member Dr Thomas Allinson. Their disagreement is the first known example of Gandhi challenging authority, despite his shyness and temperamental disinclination towards confrontation.
Allinson had been promoting newly available birth control methods, but Hills disapproved of these, believing they undermined public morality. He believed vegetarianism to be a moral movement and that Allinson should therefore no longer remain a member of the LVS. Gandhi shared Hills views on the dangers of birth control, but defended Allinson's right to differ. It would have been hard for Gandhi to challenge Hills; Hills was 12 years his senior and unlike Gandhi, highly eloquent. He bankrolled the LVS and was a captain of industry with his Thames Ironworks company employing more than 6,000 people in the East End of London. He was also a highly accomplished sportsman who would go on to found the football club West Ham United.
A motion to remove Allinson was raised, and was debated and voted on by the committee. Gandhi's shyness was an obstacle to his defence of Allinson at the committee meeting. He wrote his views down on paper but shyness prevented him reading out his arguments, so Hills, the President, asked another committee member to read them out for him. Although some other members of the committee agreed with Gandhi, the vote was lost and Allinson excluded. There were no hard feelings, with Hills proposing the toast at the LVS farewell dinner in honour of Gandhi's return to India.
Gandhi, at age 22, was called to the bar in June 1891 and then left London for India, where he learned that his mother had died while he was in London and that his family had kept the news from him. His attempts at establishing a law practice in Bombay failed because he was psychologically unable to cross-examine witnesses. He returned to Rajkot to make a modest living drafting petitions for litigants, but he was forced to stop when he ran afoul of a British officer Sam Sunny.
In 1893, a Muslim merchant in Kathiawar named Dada Abdullah contacted Gandhi. Abdullah owned a large successful shipping business in South Africa. His distant cousin in Johannesburg needed a lawyer, and they preferred someone with Kathiawari heritage. Gandhi inquired about his pay for the work. They offered a total salary of £105 (~$17,200 in 2019 money) plus travel expenses. He accepted it, knowing that it would be at least a one-year commitment in the Colony of Natal, South Africa, also a part of the British Empire.
In April 1893, Gandhi aged 23, set sail for South Africa to be the lawyer for Abdullah's cousin. He spent 21 years in South Africa, where he developed his political views, ethics and politics.
Immediately upon arriving in South Africa, Gandhi faced discrimination because of his skin colour and heritage, like all people of colour. He was not allowed to sit with European passengers in the stagecoach and told to sit on the floor near the driver, then beaten when he refused; elsewhere he was kicked into a gutter for daring to walk near a house, in another instance thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg after refusing to leave the first-class. He sat in the train station, shivering all night and pondering if he should return to India or protest for his rights. He chose to protest and was allowed to board the train the next day. In another incident, the magistrate of a Durban court ordered Gandhi to remove his turban, which he refused to do. Indians were not allowed to walk on public footpaths in South Africa. Gandhi was kicked by a police officer out of the footpath onto the street without warning.
When Gandhi arrived in South Africa, according to Herman, he thought of himself as "a Briton first, and an Indian second". However, the prejudice against him and his fellow Indians from British people that Gandhi experienced and observed deeply bothered him. He found it humiliating, struggling to understand how some people can feel honour or superiority or pleasure in such inhumane practices. Gandhi began to question his people's standing in the British Empire.
The Abdullah case that had brought him to South Africa concluded in May 1894, and the Indian community organised a farewell party for Gandhi as he prepared to return to India. However, a new Natal government discriminatory proposal led to Gandhi extending his original period of stay in South Africa. He planned to assist Indians in opposing a bill to deny them the right to vote, a right then proposed to be an exclusive European right. He asked Joseph Chamberlain, the British Colonial Secretary, to reconsider his position on this bill. Though unable to halt the bill's passage, his campaign was successful in drawing attention to the grievances of Indians in South Africa. He helped found the Natal Indian Congress in 1894, and through this organisation, he moulded the Indian community of South Africa into a unified political force. In January 1897, when Gandhi landed in Durban, a mob of white settlers attacked him and he escaped only through the efforts of the wife of the police superintendent. However, he refused to press charges against any member of the mob.
During the Boer War, Gandhi volunteered in 1900 to form a group of stretcher-bearers as the Natal Indian Ambulance Corps. According to Arthur Herman, Gandhi wanted to disprove the imperial British stereotype that Hindus were not fit for "manly" activities involving danger and exertion, unlike the Muslim "martial races". Gandhi raised eleven hundred Indian volunteers, to support British combat troops against the Boers. They were trained and medically certified to serve on the front lines. They were auxiliaries at the Battle of Colenso to a White volunteer ambulance corps. At the battle of Spion Kop Gandhi and his bearers moved to the front line and had to carry wounded soldiers for miles to a field hospital because the terrain was too rough for the ambulances. Gandhi and thirty-seven other Indians received the Queen's South Africa Medal.
In 1906, the Transvaal government promulgated a new Act compelling registration of the colony's Indian and Chinese populations. At a mass protest meeting held in Johannesburg on 11 September that year, Gandhi adopted his still evolving methodology of "Satyagraha" (devotion to the truth), or nonviolent protest, for the first time. According to Anthony Parel, Gandhi was also influenced by the Tamil text "Tirukkuṛaḷ" because Leo Tolstoy mentioned it in their correspondence that began with "A Letter to a Hindu". Gandhi urged Indians to defy the new law and to suffer the punishments for doing so. Gandhi's ideas of protests, persuasion skills and public relations had emerged. He took these back to India in 1915.
Gandhi focused his attention on Indians while in South Africa. He initially was not interested in politics. This changed, however, after he was discriminated against and bullied, such as by being thrown out of a train coach because of his skin colour by a white train official. After several such incidents with Whites in South Africa, Gandhi's thinking and focus changed, and he felt he must resist this and fight for rights. He entered politics by forming the Natal Indian Congress. According to Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, Gandhi's views on racism are contentious, and in some cases, distressing to those who admire him. Gandhi suffered persecution from the beginning in South Africa. Like with other coloured people, white officials denied him his rights, and the press and those in the streets bullied and called him a "parasite", "semi-barbarous", "canker", "squalid coolie", "yellow man", and other epithets. People would spit on him as an expression of racial hate.
While in South Africa, Gandhi focused on racial persecution of Indians but ignored those of Africans. In some cases, state Desai and Vahed, his behaviour was one of being a willing part of racial stereotyping and African exploitation. During a speech in September 1896, Gandhi complained that the whites in the British colony of South Africa were degrading Indian Hindus and Muslims to "a level of Kaffir". Scholars cite it as an example of evidence that Gandhi at that time thought of Indians and black South Africans differently. As another example given by Herman, Gandhi, at age 24, prepared a legal brief for the Natal Assembly in 1895, seeking voting rights for Indians. Gandhi cited race history and European Orientalists' opinions that "Anglo-Saxons and Indians are sprung from the same Aryan stock or rather the Indo-European peoples", and argued that Indians should not be grouped with the Africans.
Years later, Gandhi and his colleagues served and helped Africans as nurses and by opposing racism, according to the Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela. The general image of Gandhi, state Desai and Vahed, has been reinvented since his assassination as if he was always a saint, when in reality his life was more complex, contained inconvenient truths and was one that evolved over time. In contrast, other Africa scholars state the evidence points to a rich history of co-operation and efforts by Gandhi and Indian people with nonwhite South Africans against persecution of Africans and the Apartheid.
In 1906, when the British declared war against the Zulu Kingdom in Natal, Gandhi at age 36, sympathised with the Zulus and encouraged the Indian volunteers to help as an ambulance unit. He argued that Indians should participate in the war efforts to change attitudes and perceptions of the British people against the coloured people. Gandhi, a group of 20 Indians and black people of South Africa volunteered as a stretcher-bearer corps to treat wounded British soldiers and the opposite side of the war: Zulu victims.
White soldiers stopped Gandhi and team from treating the injured Zulu, and some African stretcher-bearers with Gandhi were shot dead by the British. The medical team commanded by Gandhi operated for less than two months. Gandhi volunteering to help as a "staunch loyalist" during the Zulu and other wars made no difference in the British attitude, states Herman, and the African experience was a part of his great disillusionment with the West, transforming him into an "uncompromising non-cooperator".
In 1910, Gandhi established, with the help of his friend Hermann Kallenbach, an idealistic community they named Tolstoy Farm near Johannesburg. There he nurtured his policy of peaceful resistance.
In the years after black South Africans gained the right to vote in South Africa (1994), Gandhi was proclaimed a national hero with numerous monuments.
At the request of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, conveyed to him by C. F. Andrews, Gandhi returned to India in 1915. He brought an international reputation as a leading Indian nationalist, theorist and community organiser.
Gandhi joined the Indian National Congress and was introduced to Indian issues, politics and the Indian people primarily by Gokhale. Gokhale was a key leader of the Congress Party best known for his restraint and moderation, and his insistence on working inside the system. Gandhi took Gokhale's liberal approach based on British Whiggish traditions and transformed it to make it look Indian.
Gandhi took leadership of the Congress in 1920 and began escalating demands until on 26 January 1930 the Indian National Congress declared the independence of India. The British did not recognise the declaration but negotiations ensued, with the Congress taking a role in provincial government in the late 1930s. Gandhi and the Congress withdrew their support of the Raj when the Viceroy declared war on Germany in September 1939 without consultation. Tensions escalated until Gandhi demanded immediate independence in 1942 and the British responded by imprisoning him and tens of thousands of Congress leaders. Meanwhile, the Muslim League did co-operate with Britain and moved, against Gandhi's strong opposition, to demands for a totally separate Muslim state of Pakistan. In August 1947 the British partitioned the land with India and Pakistan each achieving independence on terms that Gandhi disapproved.
In April 1918, during the latter part of World War I, the Viceroy invited Gandhi to a War Conference in Delhi. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19379 |
Miyamoto Musashi
, also known as Shinmen Takezō, Miyamoto Bennosuke or, by his Buddhist name, Niten Dōraku, was a Japanese swordsman, philosopher, strategist, writer and rōnin. Musashi, as he was often simply known, became renowned through stories of his unique double-bladed swordsmanship and undefeated record in his 61 duels (next is 33 by Itō Ittōsai). He is considered a "Kensei", a sword-saint of Japan. He was the founder of the Niten Ichi-ryū school or Nito Ichi-ryū style of swordsmanship, and in his final years authored , and "Dokkōdō" ("The Path of Aloneness"). Both documents were given to Terao Magonojō, the most important of Musashi's students, seven days before Musashi's death. "The Book of Five Rings" deals primarily with the character of his Niten Ichi-ryū school in a concrete sense e.g. his own practical martial art and its generic significance; "The Path of Aloneness" on the other hand, deals with the ideas that lie behind it, as well as his life's philosophy in a few short aphoristic sentences. The Musashi Budokan training center - in a remarkable architecture - located in Mimasaka, Okayama prefecture, Japan was erected to honor his name and legend.
The details of Miyamoto Musashi's early life are difficult to verify. Musashi himself simply states in "The Book of Five Rings" that he was born in Harima Province. "Niten Ki" (an early biography of Musashi) supports the theory that Musashi was born in 1584: "[He] was born in Banshū, in Tenshō 12 [1584], the Year of the Monkey." The historian Kamiko Tadashi, commenting on Musashi's text, notes: "Munisai was Musashi's father ... he lived in Miyamoto village, in the Yoshino district [of Mimasaka Province]. Musashi was most probably born here." His childhood name was Bennosuke (弁之助), and his father worked as a farmer. "Bennosuke" often worked the fields there before his restless nature eventually led him to the life of the sword.
Musashi gives his full name and title in "The Book of Five Rings" as Shinmen Musashi-no-Kami Fujiwara no Harunobu (新免武蔵守藤原玄信). His father, Shinmen Munisai (新免無二斎) was an accomplished martial artist and master of the sword and "jutte" (also "jitte"). Munisai, in turn, was the son of Hirata Shōgen (平田将監), a vassal of Shinmen "Iga no Kami", the lord of Takayama Castle in the Yoshino district of Mimasaka Province. Hirata was relied upon by Lord Shinmen and so was allowed to use the Shinmen name. As for "Musashi", "Musashi no Kami" was a court title, making him the nominal governor of Musashi Province. "Fujiwara" was the lineage from which Musashi claimed descent.
Munisai's tomb says he died in 1580, which conflicts with the commonly accepted birth date of 1584 for Musashi. Further confounding his birthdate, the genealogy of the extant Miyamoto family recounts Musashi was born in 1582. Kenji Tokitsu has suggested that the accepted birth date of 1584 for Musashi is wrong, as it is primarily based on a literal reading of the introduction to "The Book of Five Rings" where Musashi states that the years of his life "add up to 60" (yielding the twelfth year of the Tensho era, or 1584, when working backwards from the well-documented date of composition), when it should be taken in a more literary and imprecise sense, indicating not a specific age but merely that Musashi was in his sixties when he wrote it. He may have also written it two years prior to when it was considered a composition.
There is considerable uncertainty surrounding Munisai, such as when he died and whether he was truly Musashi's father, and even less is known about Musashi's mother. The following are a few possibilities:
Regardless of the truth about Musashi's ancestry, when Musashi was seven years old, the boy was raised by his uncle, Dorinbo (or Dorin), in Shoreian temple, three kilometers (~1.8 mi.) from Hirafuku. Both Dorin and Tasumi, Musashi's uncle by marriage, educated him in Buddhism and basic skills such as writing and reading. This education is possibly the basis for Yoshikawa Eiji's fictional education of Musashi by the historical Zen monk Takuan. He was apparently trained by Munisai in the sword, and in the family art of the "jutte". This training did not last for a very long time, as in 1589, Munisai was ordered by Shinmen Sokan to kill Munisai's student, Honiden Gekinosuke. The Honiden family was displeased, and so Munisai was forced to move four kilometers (~2.5 mi.) away to the village of Kawakami.
In 1592, Munisai died, although Tokitsu believes that the person who died at this time was really Hirata Takehito.
Musashi contracted eczema in his infancy, and this adversely affected his appearance. Another story claims that he never took a bath because he did not want to be surprised unarmed. While the former claim may or may not have some basis in reality, the latter seems improbable. An unwashed member of the warrior caste would not have been received as a guest by such houses as Honda, Ogasawara, and Hosokawa. These and many other details are likely embellishments that were added to his legend, or misinterpretations of literature describing him.
His father's fate is uncertain, but it is thought that he died at the hands of one of Musashi's later adversaries, who was punished or even killed for treating Musashi's father badly. However, there are no exact details of Musashi's life, since Musashi's only writings are those related to strategy and technique.
The name "Musashi" was thought to be taken from the name of a warrior monk named Musashibō Benkei who served under Minamoto no Yoshitsune, but this is unconfirmed.
It is said that he may have studied at the Yoshioka-ryū school, which was also said to be the school Musashi defeated single-handedly during his later years, although this is very uncertain. He did have formal training either by his father until he was seven years old or from his uncle beginning at the age of seven.
Ultimately the name was taken from his own original kanji characters, 武蔵, which can be read as Takezō or as Musashi, as stated in Eiji Yoshikawa's book "Musashi".
According to the introduction of "The Book of Five Rings", Musashi states that his first successful duel was at the age of 13, against a samurai named Arima Kihei who fought using the Kashima Shintō-ryū style, founded by Tsukahara Bokuden (b. 1489, d. 1571). The main source of the duel is the "Hyoho senshi denki" ("Anecdotes about the Deceased Master"). Summarized, its account goes as follows:
In 1599, Musashi left his village, apparently at the age of 15 (according to the "Tosakushi", "The Registry of the Sakushu Region", although the "Tanji Hokin Hikki" says he was 16 years old in 1599, which agrees time-wise with the age reported in Musashi's first duel). His family possessions such as furniture, weapons, genealogy, and other records were left with his sister and her husband, Hirao Yoemon.
He spent his time traveling and engaging in duels, such as with an adept called Akiyama from the Tajima Province.
In 1600, when a war began between the Toyotomi and Tokugawa clans, Musashi apparently fought on the side of the Toyotomi's "Army of the West", as the Shinmen clan (to whom his family owed allegiance) had allied with them. Specifically, he participated in the attempt to take Fushimi castle by assault in July 1600, in the defense of the besieged Gifu Castle in August of the same year, and finally in the Battle of Sekigahara. Some doubt has been cast on this final battle, as the "Hyoho senshi denki" has Musashi saying he is "no lord's vassal" and refusing to fight with his father (in Lord Ukita's battalion) in the battle. Omitting the Battle of Sekigahara from the list of Musashi's battles would seem to contradict "The Book of Five Rings"'s statement that Musashi fought in six battles, however. Regardless, as the Toyotomi side lost, it has been suggested that Musashi fled as well and spent some time training on Mount Hiko.
After the battle, Musashi disappears from the records for a while. The next mention of him has him arriving in Kyoto at the age of 20 (or 21), where he began a series of duels against the Yoshioka School. Musashi's father, Munisai, also fought against a master of the Yoshioka school and won 2 out of 3 bouts in front of the "shōgun" at the time, Ashikaga Yoshiaki who granted him the title of "Unrivaled Under Heaven". The Yoshioka School (descended from either the Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū or the Kyo-hachi-ryū) was the foremost of the eight major schools of martial arts in Kyoto, the "Kyo-ryū" / "Schools of Kyoto". Legend has it that these eight schools were founded by eight monks taught by a legendary martial artist resident on the sacred Mount Kurama. At some point, the Yoshioka family also began to make a name for itself not merely in the art of the sword but also in the textile business and for a dye unique to them. They gave up teaching swordsmanship in 1614 when they fought in the Army of the West against Tokugawa Ieyasu in the Battle of Osaka, which they lost. But in 1604, when Musashi began duelling them, they were still preeminent. There are various accounts of the duels—the Yoshioka family documents claim that there was only one, against Yoshioka Kenpō, which Musashi, once again, won.
Musashi challenged Yoshioka Seijūrō, master of the Yoshioka School, to a duel. Seijūrō accepted, and they agreed to a duel outside Rendaiji in Rakuhoku, in the northern part of Kyoto on 8 March 1604. Musashi arrived late, greatly irritating Seijūrō. They faced off, and Musashi struck a single blow, per their agreement. This blow struck Seijūrō on the left shoulder, knocking him out, and crippling his left arm. He apparently passed on the headship of the school to his equally accomplished brother, Yoshioka Denshichirō, who promptly challenged Musashi for revenge. The duel took place in Kyoto outside a temple, Sanjūsangen-dō. Denshichirō wielded a staff reinforced with steel rings (or possibly with a ball-and-chain attached), while Musashi arrived late a second time. Musashi disarmed Denshichirō and defeated him. This second victory outraged the Yoshioka family, whose head was now the 12-year-old Yoshioka Matashichiro. They assembled a force of archers, musketeers and swordsmen, and challenged Musashi to a duel outside Kyoto, near Ichijō-ji Temple. Musashi broke his previous habit of arriving late, and came to the temple hours early. Hidden, Musashi assaulted the force, killing Matashichiro, and escaping while being attacked by dozens of his victim's supporters. To escape and fight off his opponents he was forced to draw his second sword and defend himself with a sword in each hand. This was the beginning of his niten'ichi sword style. With the death of Matashichiro, this branch of the Yoshioka School was destroyed.
After Musashi left Kyoto, some sources recount that he travelled to Hōzōin in Nara, to duel with and learn from the monks there, widely known as experts with lance weapons. There he settled down at Enkoji Temple in Banshū, where he taught the head monk's (one Tada Hanzaburo's) brother. Hanzaburo's grandson would found the Ensu-ryū based on the Enmei-ryū teachings and iaijutsu.
From 1605 to 1612, he travelled extensively all over Japan in "musha shugyō," a warrior pilgrimage during which he honed his skills with duels. He was said to have used bokken or bokuto in actual duels. Participants in most of the engagements from these times did not try to take the opponent's life unless both agreed, but in most duels, it is known that Musashi did not care which weapon his foe used—such was his mastery.
A document dated 5 September 1607, purporting to be a transmission by Miyamoto Munisai of his teachings, suggests Munisai lived at least to this date. In this year, Musashi departed Nara for Edo, during which he fought (and killed) a kusarigama practitioner named Shishido Baiken. In Edo, Musashi defeated Musō Gonnosuke, who would found an influential staff-wielding school known as Shintō Musō-ryū. Records of this first duel can be found in both the Shinto Muso-ryu tradition and the Hyōhō Niten Ichi-ryū (Miyamoto Musashi's school). The Shinto Muso Ryu tradition states that, after being defeated by Musashi, Muso Gonnosuke spent time developing a stick-fighting technique to counter swords and beat Musashi in a rematch. There are no current reliable sources outside the Shinto Muso Ryu tradition to confirm that this second duel took place.
Musashi is said to have fought over 60 duels and was never defeated, although this is a conservative estimate, most likely not accounting for deaths by his hand in major battles.
In 1611, Musashi began practicing zazen at the Myōshin-ji temple, where he met Nagaoka Sado, vassal to Hosokawa Tadaoki; Tadaoki was a powerful lord who had received the Kumamoto Domain in west-central Kyūshū after the Battle of Sekigahara. Munisai had moved to northern Kyūshū and became Tadaoki's teacher, leading to the possibility that Munisai introduced the two. Nagaoka proposed a duel with a certain adept named Sasaki Kojirō. Tokitsu believes that the duel was politically motivated, a matter of consolidating Tadaoki's control over his fief.
On April 13, 1612, Musashi (about age 30) fought his duel with Sasaki Kojirō, who was known as "The Demon of the Western Provinces" and who wielded a "nodachi", the Japanese great sword. Musashi came late and unkempt to the appointed place—the island of Funajima, in the Kanmon Straits separating Honshū and Kyūshū. The duel was short. Musashi killed his opponent with a bokken that legend says he had carved from an oar used on the boat that carried him to the island.
Musashi's late arrival is controversial. Sasaki's outraged supporters thought it was dishonourable and disrespectful, while Musashi's supporters thought it was a fair way to unnerve his opponent. Another theory is that Musashi timed the hour of his arrival to match the turning of the tide. The tide carried him to the island. After his victory, Musashi immediately jumped back in his boat and his flight from Sasaki's vengeful allies was helped by the turning of the tide. Another theory states he waited for the sun to get in the right position. After he dodged a blow, Sasaki was blinded by the sun.
Musashi briefly established a fencing school that same year.
In 1614–1615, Musashi participated in the war between the Toyotomi and the Tokugawa. The war had broken out because Tokugawa Ieyasu saw the Toyotomi family as a threat to his rule of Japan; most scholars believe that, as in the previous war, Musashi fought on the Toyotomi side. Osaka Castle was the central place of battle. The first battle (the Winter Battle of Osaka; Musashi's fourth battle) ended in a truce. The second (the Summer Battle of Osaka; Musashi's fifth battle) resulted in the total defeat of Toyotomi Hideyori's Army of the West by Ieyasu's Army of the East in May 1615. Some reports go so far as to say that Musashi entered a duel with Ieyasu, but was recruited after Ieyasu sensed his defeat was at hand. This may seem unlikely since Ieyasu was in his 70s and was in poor health already, but it remains unknown how Musashi came into Ieyasu's good graces.
Other claims he actually served on the Tokugawa side are unproven, although Musashi had a close relationship with some Tokugawa vassals through his duel with Sasaki Kojirō, and in the succeeding years, he did not drop out of sight as might be expected if he were being persecuted for being on the losing side. In his later years, Ogasawara and Hosokawa supported Musashi greatly—an atypical course of action for these Tokugawa loyalists, if Musashi had indeed fought on behalf of the Toyotomi.
In 1615 he entered the service of Ogasawara Tadanao (小笠原忠直) of Harima Province, at Ogasawara's invitation, as a "Construction Supervisor," after previously gaining skills in craft. He helped construct Akashi Castle and in 1621 to lay out the organisation of the town of Himeji. He also taught martial arts during his stay, specializing in instruction in the art of shuriken(ninja-star)-throwing. During this period of service, he adopted a son.
In 1621, Musashi defeated Miyake Gunbei and three other adepts of the Togun-ryu in front of the lord of Himeji; it was after this victory that he helped plan Himeji. Around this time, Musashi developed a number of disciples for his "Enmei-ryū" although he had developed the school considerably earlier; at the age of 22, Musashi had already written a scroll of Enmei-ryū teachings called "Writings on the Sword Technique of the Enmei-ryū" ("Enmei-ryū kenpō sho"). 円/"En" meant "circle" or "perfection"; 明/"mei" meant "light"/"clarity", and 流/"ryū" meant "school"; the name seems to have been derived from the idea of holding the two swords up in the light so as to form a circle. The school's central idea is given as training to use the twin swords of the samurai as effectively as a combination of sword and jutte.
In 1622, Musashi's adoptive son, Miyamoto Mikinosuke, became a vassal to the Himeji Domain. Possibly this prompted Musashi to leave, embarking on a new series of travels, winding up in Edo in 1623, where he became friends with the Confucian scholar Hayashi Razan, who was one of the Shōgun's advisors. Musashi applied to become a swordmaster to the "shōgun", but as he already had two swordmasters (Ono Jiroemon Tadaaki and Yagyū Munenori—the latter also a political advisor, in addition to his position as the head of the Shogunate's secret police) Musashi's application was denied. He left Edo in the direction of Ōshū, ending up in Yamagata, where he adopted a second son, Miyamoto Iori. The two then travelled, eventually stopping in Osaka.
In 1626, Miyamoto Mikinosuke, following the custom of junshi, performed seppuku because of the death of his lord. In this year, Miyamoto Iori entered Lord Ogasawara's service. Musashi's attempt to become a vassal to the lord of Owari, like other such attempts, failed.
In 1627, Musashi began to travel again. In 1634 he settled in Kokura with Iori, and later entered the service of the "daimyō" Ogasawara Tadazane, taking a major role in the Shimabara Rebellion. Iori served with distinction in putting down the rebellion and gradually rose to the rank of karō – a position equal to a minister. Musashi, however was reputedly injured by a thrown rock while scouting in the front line, and was thus unnoticed.
Six years later, in 1633, Musashi began staying with Hosokawa Tadatoshi, "daimyō" of Kumamoto Castle, who had moved to the Kumamoto fief and Kokura, to train and paint. Ironically, it was at this time that the Hosokawa lords were also the patrons of Musashi's chief rival, Sasaki Kojirō. While he engaged in very few duels; one would occur in 1634 at the arrangement of Lord Ogasawara, in which Musashi defeated a lance specialist by the name of Takada Matabei. Musashi would officially become the retainer of the Hosokowa lords of Kumamoto in 1640. The "Niten Ki" records "[he] received from Lord Tadatoshi: 17 retainers, a stipend of 300 koku, the rank of "ōkumigashira" 大組頭, and Chiba Castle in Kumamoto as his residence."
In the second month of 1641, Musashi wrote a work called the "Hyoho Sanju Go" ("Thirty-five Instructions on Strategy") for Hosokawa Tadatoshi; this work overlapped and formed the basis for the later "The Book of Five Rings". This was the year that his third son, Hirao Yoemon, became Master of Arms for the Owari fief. In 1642, Musashi suffered attacks of neuralgia, foreshadowing his future ill-health. In 1643 he retired to a cave named "Reigandō" as a hermit to write "The Book of Five Rings". He finished it in the second month of 1645. On the twelfth of the fifth month, sensing his impending death, Musashi bequeathed his worldly possessions, after giving his manuscript copy of "The Book of Five Rings" to the younger brother of Terao Magonojo, his closest disciple. He died in Reigandō cave around June 13, 1645 ("Shōhō 2, 19th day of the 5th month"). The "Hyoho senshi denki" described his passing:
Miyamoto Musashi died of what is believed to be thoracic cancer. He died peacefully after finishing the text "Dokkōdō" ("The Way of Walking Alone", or "The Way of Self-Reliance"), 21 precepts on self-discipline to guide future generations.
His body was interred in armour within the village of Yuge, near the main road near Mount Iwato, facing the direction the Hosokawas would travel to Edo; his hair was buried on Mount Iwato itself. (NB - Mount Iwato is part of the Mount Kinpu range in Kumamoto and actually where Musashi wrote "The Book of Five Rings" in the Reigando cave. His grave is not there, but about 45 minutes away, to the east and on the other side of Kumamoto, in the Musashizuka area). Some of his remains were given to Mimasaka so that he could be buried (in part) with his parents. The Mimasaka graves are located in the precincts of Musashi Shrine.
Nine years later, a major source about his life—a monument with a funereal eulogy to Musashi—was erected in Kokura by Miyamoto Iori; this monument was called the Kokura "hibun". An account of Musashi's life, the "Niten-ki" 二天記, was published in Kumamoto in 1776, by Toyota Kagehide, based on the recollections of his grandfather Toyota Masataka, who was a second generation pupil of Musashi.
Musashi created and refined a two-sword "kenjutsu" technique called "niten'ichi" (二天一, "two heavens as one") or "nitōichi" (二刀一, "two swords as one") or 'Niten Ichi-ryū' (A Kongen Buddhist Sutra refers to the two heavens as the two guardians of Buddha). In this technique, the swordsman uses "both" a large sword, and a "companion sword" at the same time, such as a katana with a wakizashi.
The two-handed movements of temple drummers may have inspired him, although it could be that the technique was forged through Musashi's combat experience. "Jutte" techniques were taught to him by his father—the "jutte" was often used in battle paired with a sword; the "jutte" would parry and neutralize the weapon of the enemy while the sword struck or the practitioner grappled with the enemy. Today Musashi's style of swordsmanship is known as Hyōhō Niten Ichi-ryū.
Musashi was also an expert in throwing weapons. He frequently threw his short sword, and Kenji Tokitsu believes that shuriken methods for the wakizashi were the Niten Ichi Ryu's secret techniques.
Musashi spent many years studying Buddhism and swordsmanship. He was an accomplished artist, sculptor, and calligrapher. Records also show that he had architectural skills. Also, he seems to have had a rather straightforward approach to combat, with no additional frills or aesthetic considerations. This was probably due to his real-life combat experience; although in his later life, Musashi followed the more artistic. He made various Zen brush paintings, calligraphy, and sculpted wood and metal. Even in "The Book of Five Rings" he emphasizes that samurai should understand other professions as well. It should be understood that Musashi's writings were very ambiguous, and translating them into English makes them even more so; that is why so many different translations of "The Book of Five Rings" can be found. To gain further insight into Musashi's principles and personality, one could read his other works, such as "Dokkōdō" and "Hyoho Shiji ni Kajo".
The following timeline follows, in chronological order (of which is based on the most accurate and most widely accepted information), the life of Miyamoto Musashi.
In Musashi's last book, , Musashi seems to take a very philosophical approach to looking at the "craft of war": "There are five ways in which men pass through life: as gentlemen, warriors, farmers, artisans and merchants."
Throughout the book, Musashi implies that the way of the Warrior, as well as the meaning of a "true strategist" is that of somebody who has made mastery of many art forms away from that of the sword, such as tea drinking (sadō), laboring, writing, and painting, as Musashi practiced throughout his life. Musashi was hailed as an extraordinary sumi-e artist in the use of ink monochrome as depicted in two such paintings: "Shrike Perched in a Dead Tree" ("Koboku Meigekizu", 枯木鳴鵙図) and "Wild Geese Among Reeds" ("Rozanzu", 魯山図). Going back to the "Book of Five Rings", Musashi talks deeply about the ways of Buddhism.
He makes particular note of artisans and foremen. When he wrote the book, the majority of houses in Japan were made of wood. In the use of building a house, foremen have to employ strategy based upon the skill and ability of their workers.
In comparison to warriors and soldiers, Musashi notes the ways in which the artisans thrive through events; the ruin of houses, the splendor of houses, the style of the house, the tradition and name or origins of a house. These too, are similar to the events which are seen to have warriors and soldiers thrive; the rise and fall of prefectures, countries and other such events are what make uses for warriors, as well as the literal comparisons: "The carpenter uses a master plan of the building, and the way of strategy is similar in that there is a plan of campaign".
Throughout "The Book of Five Rings", Musashi explains the principles of strategy. In the first book (the Ground Book) he compares his concept of strategy to a foreman carpenter. The foreman carpenter knows his tools and men so well that he is able to guide them; delegating who does what based on their abilities, while also being aware of their morale. The foreman carpenter, if he wants the better finished product, will treat his men in such a way as to receive their best work. This illustration begins many more battle-specific lessons in strategy.
Musashi says to learn one-thousand things from one thing; as a builder may build a large structure from a small one, so too must a strategist learn to see on the large scale of things.
Initially, Musashi notes that throughout China and Japan, there are many "sword fencers" who walk around claiming they are strategists, but are, in fact, not, which may be because Musashi had defeated some such strategists, such as Arima Kihei.
The idea is that by reading his writings, one can become a true strategist from ability and tactical skill that Musashi had learned in his lifetime. He argues that strategy and virtue are something that can be earned by knowing the ways of life, the professions around, and perhaps to learn the skills and knowledge of people and the skills of their particular professions.
However, Musashi seems to state that the value of strategy seems to be homogeneous:
As well as noting that strategy is destined to die;
As a form, strategy was said to be one of "Ten Abilities and Seven Arts" that a warrior should have, but Musashi disagrees that one person can gain strategy by being confined to one particular style, which seems particularly fitting as he admits "I practice many arts and abilities—all things with no teacher"—this perhaps being one of the reasons he was so highly regarded a swordsman.
Musashi's metaphor for strategy is that of the bulb and the flower, similar to Western philosophy of "the chicken or the egg", the "bulb" being the student, the "flower" being the technique. He also notes that most places seem to be mostly concerned with their technique and its beauty. Musashi writes, "In this kind of way of strategy, both those teaching and those learning the way are concerned with colouring and showing off their technique, trying to hasten the bloom of the flower" (as opposed to the actual harmony between strategy and skill).
With those who are concerned with becoming masters of strategy, Musashi points out that as a carpenter becomes better with his tools and is able to craft things with more expert measure, so too can a warrior or strategist become more skilled in his technique. However, just as a carpenter needs to be able to use his tools according to plans, so too must a strategist be able to adapt his style or technique to the required strategy of the battle he is currently engaged in.
This description also draws parallels between the weapons of a trooper (or soldier) and the tools of a carpenter; the idea of "the right tool for the right job" seems to be implied a lot throughout "The Book of Five Rings". Musashi also puts into motion the idea that when a carpenter is skilled enough in aspects of his job, and creates them with expert measure, then he can become a foreman.
Although it is not expressly mentioned, it may be seen that Musashi indicated that when one learned the areas in which your craft requires (carpentry, farming, fine art or battle) and is able to apply them to any given situation, one is experienced enough to show others wisdom, as foreman of craftsmen or as a general of an army.
From further reading into the book, the idea of "weapons within strategy" as well as Musashi referring to the power of the writer may seem that the strategy that Musashi refers to does not exclusively reside within the domain of weaponry and duels, but within the realm of war and battles with many men:
Within the book, Musashi mentions that the use of two swords within strategy is mutually beneficial to those who use the skill for individual duels or large engagements. The idea of using two hands for a sword is an idea that Musashi opposes because there is no fluidity in movement with two hands: "If you hold a sword with both hands, it is difficult to wield it freely to left and right, so my method is to carry the sword in one hand." He also disagrees with the idea of using a sword with two hands on a horse and/or riding on unstable terrain, such as muddy swamps, rice fields, or within crowds of people.
To learn the strategy of Ni-Ten Ichi Ryū, Musashi employs that by training with two long swords, one in each hand, one will be able to overcome the cumbersome nature of using a sword in both hands. Although it is difficult, Musashi agrees that there are times in which the long sword must be used with two hands, but one whose skill is good enough should not need it.
After using two long swords proficiently enough, mastery of a long sword, and a "companion sword", most likely a wakizashi, will be much increased: "When you become used to wielding the long sword, you will gain the power of the Way and wield the sword well."
In short, it could be seen, from the excerpts from "The Book of Five Rings", that real strategy behind Ni-Ten No Ichi Ryu, is that there is no real iron-clad method, path, or type of weaponry specific to the style of Ni-Ten No Ichi Ryu:
Before Niten-ichi-ryū were named, Musashi says his kenjutsu "Enmei-ryu (圓明流)" in 1624 Owari-no-Kuni (尾張國) and near the area. (Now passed on Owari-Yagyū kenjutsu group.) It also contains Shuriken-jutsu.
Next, his kenjutsu named "Niten-ryū (二天流).This is handed down to Kokura-han (小倉藩). It tells single sword kenjutsu also.
His Student Aoki Ienao Kyūshin (青木家直休心) started Tetsujin-ryū (鉄人流). Aoki Kaneie Tetsujin (青木金家 鉄人) started Jitte-ryū (實手流). Each ryūha also has same 1st kata "Tougassetsu" (當合切). In some region, Tetsujin-ryū changed the name to "Jichū-ryū" (時中流), "Heishin-ryū" (平信流), "Shinmei-ryū" (神明流). And all the Miyamoto Musashi related ryūha were called "Musashi-ryū" (武蔵流) by other ryūha.
In some ryūha (ex) Shingyo Tōryū (心形刀流)), the variation of the twin sword technique of Musashi-ryū is remaining. And [Tamiya shinken-ryū] (田宮神剣流) has same kata name as Tetsujin-ryū, for example, "Tougassetsu" (刀合切).
In Tottori-han (鳥取藩) Musashi-Enmei-ryū (武蔵円明流) exists. The technique is drawn in old text of Suzuka family letters (鈴鹿家文書) possessed by the All Japan Kendo Federation, and the form is different from other Musashi-ryū.
The father of Miyamoto Musashi is told he was Tori-ryū (當理流) master, Miyamoto Muninosuke Fujiwara Isshin (宮本無二助藤原一真). So some opinions say Miyamoto Musashi arranged Tori-ryū and produced each Musashi-ryū in later years.
The strategy of the long sword is different from other strategies in that it is much more straightforward. In the strategy of the longsword, it seems that Musashi's ideal was that by mastering gripping the sword, it could become a platform used for moving onto the mastery of Ni-Ten Ichi Ryu as well as being able to use a companion sword better.
Musashi often use the term "two fingers" to describe the way to hold the long sword. That does not mean he actually taught the grip with only two fingers. In "The Water Book" he notes:
However, just because the grip is to be light, it does not mean that the attack or slash from the sword will be weak. As with any other technique in the Ni-Ten Ichi Ryu:
As with most disciplines in martial arts, Musashi notes that the movement of the sword after the cut is made must not be superfluous; instead of quickly returning to a stance or position, one should allow the sword to come to the end of its path from the force used. Thus, the technique becomes freely flowing, not abrupt.
Musashi also discouraged the use of only one sword for fighting and the use of overlarge swords like nodachi because they were cumbersome and unwieldy.
Even from an early age, Musashi separated his religion from his involvement in swordsmanship. Excerpts such as the one below, from "The Book of Five Rings", demonstrate a philosophy that is thought to have stayed with him throughout his life:
However, the belief that Musashi disliked Shinto is inaccurate, as he criticises the Shintō-ryū style of swordsmanship, not Shinto, the religion. In Musashi's "Dokkōdō", his stance on religion is further elucidated: "Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help."
In his later years, Musashi said in his "The Book of Five Rings": "When I apply the principle of strategy to the ways of different arts and crafts, I no longer have need for a teacher in any domain." He proved this by creating recognized masterpieces of calligraphy and classic ink painting. His paintings are characterized by skilled use of ink washes and an economy of brush stroke. He especially mastered the "broken ink" school of landscapes, applying it to other subjects, such as his "Kobokumeikakuzu" ("Shrike Perched on a Withered Branch"; part of a triptych whose other two members were "Hotei Walking" and "Sparrow on Bamboo"), his "Hotei Watching a Cockfight", and his "Rozanzu" ("Wild Geese Among Reeds").
Even in Musashi's time there were fictional texts resembling comic books. It is therefore quite difficult to separate fact from fiction when discussing his life. There have been numerous works of fiction made about or featuring Musashi. Eiji Yoshikawa's novelization (originally a 1930s daily newspaper serial) has greatly influenced successive fictional depictions (including the manga "Vagabond" by Takehiko Inoue) and is often mistaken for a factual account of Musashi's life. In 2012, writer Sean Michael Wilson and Japanese artist Chie Kutsuwada published an attempt at a more historically accurate manga entitled "The Book of Five Rings: A Graphic Novel", based on research and translations by William Scott Wilson.
The 2008 video game "Yakuza Kenzan" was based around his life and personality.
He also appeared in the manga "Baki-Dou" as a revived clone of himself with his real soul intact as one of the strongest fighters in the series, and used his two-sword style in almost every combat in which he was shown. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19381 |
Multivariate statistics
Multivariate statistics is a subdivision of statistics encompassing the simultaneous observation and analysis of more than one outcome variable. The application of multivariate statistics is multivariate analysis.
Multivariate statistics concerns understanding the different aims and background of each of the different forms of multivariate analysis, and how they relate to each other. The practical application of multivariate statistics to a particular problem may involve several types of univariate and multivariate analyses in order to understand the relationships between variables and their relevance to the problem being studied.
In addition, multivariate statistics is concerned with multivariate probability distributions, in terms of both
Certain types of problems involving multivariate data, for example simple linear regression and multiple regression, are "not" usually considered to be special cases of multivariate statistics because the analysis is dealt with by considering the (univariate) conditional distribution of a single outcome variable given the other variables.
There are many different models, each with its own type of analysis:
There is a set of probability distributions used in multivariate analyses that play a similar role to the corresponding set of distributions that are used in univariate analysis when the normal distribution is appropriate to a dataset. These multivariate distributions are:
The Inverse-Wishart distribution is important in Bayesian inference, for example in Bayesian multivariate linear regression. Additionally, Hotelling's T-squared distribution is a multivariate distribution, generalising Student's t-distribution, that is used in multivariate hypothesis testing.
Anderson's 1958 textbook," An Introduction to Multivariate Analysis", educated a generation of theorists and applied statisticians; Anderson's book emphasizes hypothesis testing via likelihood ratio tests and the properties of power functions: admissibility, unbiasedness and monotonicity.
There are an enormous number of software packages and other tools for multivariate analysis, including: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19384 |
Money laundering
Money laundering is the illegal process of concealing the origins of money obtained illegally by passing it through a complex sequence of banking transfers or commercial transactions. The overall scheme of this process returns the "clean" money to the launderer in an obscure and indirect way.
One problem of criminal activities is accounting for the proceeds without raising the suspicion of law enforcement agencies. Considerable time and effort may be put into strategies that enable the safe use of those proceeds without raising unwanted suspicion. Implementing such strategies is generally called money laundering. After money has been laundered, it can be used for legitimate purposes.
Many jurisdictions have set up sophisticated financial and other monitoring systems to enable law enforcement agencies to detect suspicious transactions or activities, and many have set up international cooperative arrangements to assist each other in these endeavors. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that the amount of money laundered globally in one year is "2–5% of global GDP, or $800bn – $2tn in current US dollars."
In a number of legal and regulatory systems, the term "money laundering" has become conflated with other forms of financial and business crime, and is sometimes used more generally to include misuse of the financial system (involving things such as securities, digital currencies, credit cards, and traditional currency), including terrorism financing and evasion of international sanctions. Most anti-money laundering laws openly conflate money laundering (which is concerned with the "source" of funds) with terrorism financing (which is concerned with the "destination" of funds) when regulating the financial system.
Some countries render obfuscation of money sources as constituting money laundering, whether intentional or by merely using financial systems or services that do not identify or track sources or destinations. Other countries define money laundering in such a way as to include money from activity that "would have been" a crime in that country, even if the activity was legal where the conduct occurred.
Laws against money laundering were created to use against organized crime during the period of Prohibition in the United States during the 1930s. Organized crime received a major boost from Prohibition and a large source of new funds that were obtained from illegal sales of alcohol. The successful prosecution of Al Capone on tax evasion brought in a new emphasis by the state and law enforcement agencies to track and confiscate money, but existing laws against tax evasion could not be used once gangsters started paying their taxes.
In the 1980s, the war on drugs led governments again to turn to money laundering rules in an attempt to track and seize the proceeds of drug crimes in order to catch the organizers and individuals running drug empires. It also had the benefit, from a law enforcement point of view, of turning rules of evidence "upside down". Law enforcers normally have to prove an individual is guilty to seize their property, but with money laundering laws money can be confiscated and it is up to the individual to prove that the source of funds is legitimate to get the money back. This makes it much easier for law enforcement agencies and provides for much lower burdens of proof. However, this process has been abused by some law enforcement agencies to take and keep money without strong evidence of related criminal activity, to be used to supplement their own budgets.
The September 11 attacks in 2001, which led to the Patriot Act in the U.S. and similar legislation worldwide, led to a new emphasis on money laundering laws to combat terrorism financing. The Group of Seven (G7) nations used the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering to put pressure on governments around the world to increase surveillance and monitoring of financial transactions and share this information between countries. Starting in 2002, governments around the world upgraded money laundering laws and surveillance and monitoring systems of financial transactions. Anti-money laundering regulations have become a much larger burden for financial institutions and enforcement has stepped up significantly. During 2011–2015 a number of major banks faced ever-increasing fines for breaches of money laundering regulations. This included HSBC, which was fined $1.9 billion in December 2012, and BNP Paribas, which was fined $8.9 billion in July 2014 by the U.S. government. Many countries introduced or strengthened border controls on the amount of cash that can be carried and introduced central transaction reporting systems where all financial institutions have to report all financial transactions electronically. For example, in 2006, Australia set up the AUSTRAC system and required the reporting of all financial transactions.
Money laundering is the conversion or transfer of property; the concealment or disguising of the nature of the proceeds; the acquisition, possession or use of property, knowing that these are derived from criminal activity; or participating in or assisting the movement of funds to make the proceeds appear legitimate.
Money obtained from certain crimes, such as extortion, insider trading, drug trafficking, and illegal gambling is "dirty" and needs to be "cleaned" to appear to have been derived from legal activities, so that banks and other financial institutions will deal with it without suspicion. Money can be laundered by many methods that vary in complexity and sophistication.
Money laundering involves three steps: The first involves introducing cash into the financial system by some means ("placement"); the second involves carrying out complex financial transactions to camouflage the illegal source of the cash ("layering"); and finally, acquiring wealth generated from the transactions of the illicit funds ("integration"). Some of these steps may be omitted, depending upon the circumstances. For example, non-cash proceeds that are already in the financial system would not need to be placed.
According to the United States Treasury Department:
Money laundering can take several forms, although most methodology can be categorized into one of a few types. These include "bank methods, smurfing [also known as structuring], currency exchanges, and double-invoicing".
In theory, electronic money should provide as easy a method of transferring value without revealing identity as untracked banknotes, especially wire transfers involving anonymity-protecting numbered bank accounts. In practice, however, the record-keeping capabilities of Internet service providers and other network resource maintainers tend to frustrate that intention. While some cryptocurrencies under recent development have aimed to provide for more possibilities of transaction anonymity for various reasons, the degree to which they succeed—and, in consequence, the degree to which they offer benefits for money laundering efforts—is controversial. Solutions such as ZCash and Monero are examples of cryptocurrencies that provide unlinkable anonymity via proofs and/or obfuscation of information (ring signatures). Such currencies could find use in online illicit services.
In 2013, Jean-Loup Richet, a research fellow at ESSEC ISIS, surveyed new techniques that cybercriminals were using in a report written for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. A common approach was to use a digital currency exchanger service which converted dollars into a digital currency called Liberty Reserve, and could be sent and received anonymously. The receiver could convert the Liberty Reserve currency back into cash for a small fee. In May 2013, the US authorities shut down Liberty Reserve charging its founder and various others with money laundering.
Another increasingly common way of laundering money is to use online gaming. In a growing number of online games, such as "Second Life" and "World of Warcraft," it is possible to convert money into virtual goods, services, or virtual cash that can later be converted back into money.
To avoid the usage of decentralized digital money such as Bitcoin for the profit of crime and corruption, Australia is planning to strengthen the nation's anti-money laundering laws.
The characteristics of Bitcoin—it is completely deterministic, protocol based and cannot be censored—make it possible to circumvent national laws using services like Tor to obfuscate transaction origins. Bitcoin relies completely on cryptography, not on a central entity running under a KYC framework. There are several cases in which criminals have cashed out a significant amount of Bitcoin after ransomware attacks, drug dealings, cyber fraud and gunrunning.
Reverse money laundering is a process that disguises a legitimate source of funds that are to be used for illegal purposes. It is usually perpetrated for the purpose of financing terrorism but can be also used by criminal organizations that have invested in legal businesses and would like to withdraw legitimate funds from official circulation. Unaccounted cash received via disguising financial transactions is not included in official financial reporting and could be used to evade taxes, hand in bribes and pay "under-the-table" salaries. For example, in an affidavit filed on 24 March 2014 in United States District Court, Northern California, San Francisco Division, FBI special agent Emmanuel V. Pascau alleged that several people associated with the Chee Kung Tong organization, and California State Senator Leland Yee, engaged in reverse money laundering activities.
The problem of such fraudulent encashment practices ("obnalichka" in Russian) has become acute in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. The Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism (EAG) reported that the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Turkey, Serbia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Kazakhstan have encountered a substantial shrinkage of tax base and shifting money supply balance in favor of cash. These processes have complicated planning and management of the economy and contributed to the growth of the shadow economy.
Many regulatory and governmental authorities issue estimates each year for the amount of money laundered, either worldwide or within their national economy. In 1996, a spokesperson for the IMF estimated that 2–5% of the worldwide global economy involved laundered money. The Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF), an intergovernmental body set up to combat money laundering, stated, "Due to the illegal nature of the transactions, precise statistics are not available and it is therefore impossible to produce a definitive estimate of the amount of money that is globally laundered every year. The FATF therefore does not publish any figures in this regard." Academic commentators have likewise been unable to estimate the volume of money with any degree of assurance. Various estimates of the scale of global money laundering are sometimes repeated often enough to make some people regard them as factual—but no researcher has overcome the inherent difficulty of measuring an actively concealed practice.
Regardless of the difficulty in measurement, the amount of money laundered each year is in the billions of US dollars and poses a significant policy concern for governments. As a result, governments and international bodies have undertaken efforts to deter, prevent, and apprehend money launderers. Financial institutions have likewise undertaken efforts to prevent and detect transactions involving dirty money, both as a result of government requirements and to avoid the reputational risk involved. Issues relating to money laundering have existed as long as there have been large scale criminal enterprises. Modern anti-money laundering laws have developed along with the modern War on Drugs. In more recent times anti-money laundering legislation is seen as adjunct to the financial crime of terrorist financing in that both crimes usually involve the transmission of funds through the financial system (although money laundering relates to where the money has come "from", and terrorist financing relating to where the money is going "to").
Transaction laundering is a massive and growing problem. Finextra estimated that transaction laundering accounted for over $200 billion in the US in 2017 alone, with over $6 billion of these sales involving illicit goods or services, sold by nearly 335,000 unregistered merchants.
Anti-money laundering (AML) is a term mainly used in the financial and legal industries to describe the legal controls that require financial institutions and other regulated entities to prevent, detect, and report money laundering activities. Anti-money laundering guidelines came into prominence globally as a result of the formation of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the promulgation of an international framework of anti-money laundering standards. These standards began to have more relevance in 2000 and 2001, after FATF began a process to publicly identify countries that were deficient in their anti-money laundering laws and international cooperation, a process colloquially known as "name and shame".
An effective AML program requires a jurisdiction to criminalise money laundering, giving the relevant regulators and police the powers and tools to investigate; be able to share information with other countries as appropriate; and require financial institutions to identify their customers, establish risk-based controls, keep records, and report suspicious activities.
Strict background checks are necessary to combat as many money launderers escape by investing through complex ownership and company structures. Banks can do that but proper surveillance is required but on the government side to reduce this.
Over recent years, the rise in anti-money laundering mechanisms has been attributed to the use of big data and artificial intelligence. Traditional anti-money laundering systems are falling behind against evolving threats and new technologies are helping AML compliance officers to deal with: poor implementation, expanding regulation, administrative complexity, false positives.
The elements of the crime of money laundering are set forth in the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances and Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. It is defined as knowingly engaging in a financial transaction with the proceeds of a crime for the purpose of concealing or disguising the illicit origin of the property from governments.
While banks operating in the same country generally have to follow the same anti-money laundering laws and regulations, financial institutions all structure their anti-money laundering efforts slightly differently. Today, most financial institutions globally, and many non-financial institutions, are required to identify and report transactions of a suspicious nature to the financial intelligence unit in the respective country. For example, a bank must verify a customer's identity and, if necessary, monitor transactions for suspicious activity. This process comes under "know your customer" measures, which means knowing the identity of the customer and understanding the kinds of transactions in which the customer is likely to engage. By knowing one's customers, financial institutions can often identify unusual or suspicious behaviour, termed anomalies, which may be an indication of money laundering.
Bank employees, such as tellers and customer account representatives, are trained in anti-money laundering and are instructed to report activities that they deem suspicious. Additionally, anti-money laundering software filters customer data, classifies it according to level of suspicion, and inspects it for anomalies. Such anomalies include any sudden and substantial increase in funds, a large withdrawal, or moving money to a bank secrecy jurisdiction. Smaller transactions that meet certain criteria may also be flagged as suspicious. For example, structuring can lead to flagged transactions. The software also flags names on government "blacklists" and transactions that involve countries hostile to the host nation. Once the software has mined data and flagged suspect transactions, it alerts bank management, who must then determine whether to file a report with the government.
The financial services industry has become more vocal about the rising costs of anti-money laundering regulation and the limited benefits that they claim it brings. One commentator wrote that "[w]ithout facts, [anti-money laundering] legislation has been driven on rhetoric, driving by ill-guided activism responding to the need to be "seen to be doing something" rather than by an objective understanding of its effects on predicate crime. The social panic approach is justified by the language used—we talk of the battle against terrorism or the war on drugs". "The Economist" magazine has become increasingly vocal in its criticism of such regulation, particularly with reference to countering terrorist financing, referring to it as a "costly failure", although it concedes that other efforts (like reducing identity and credit card fraud) may still be effective at combating money laundering.
There is no precise measurement of the costs of regulation balanced against the harms associated with money laundering, and given the evaluation problems involved in assessing such an issue, it is unlikely that the effectiveness of terror finance and money laundering laws could be determined with any degree of accuracy. "The Economist" estimated the annual costs of anti-money laundering efforts in Europe and North America at US$5 billion in 2003, an increase from US$700 million in 2000. Government-linked economists have noted the significant negative effects of money laundering on economic development, including undermining domestic capital formation, depressing growth, and diverting capital away from development. Because of the intrinsic uncertainties of the amount of money laundered, changes in the amount of money laundered, and the cost of anti-money laundering systems, it is almost impossible to tell which anti-money laundering systems work and which are more or less cost effective.
Besides economic costs to implement anti-money-laundering laws, improper attention to data protection practices may entail disproportionate costs to individual privacy rights. In June 2011, the data-protection advisory committee to the European Union issued a report on data protection issues related to the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, which identified numerous transgressions against the established legal framework on privacy and data protection. The report made recommendations on how to address money laundering and terrorist financing in ways that safeguard personal privacy rights and data protection laws. In the United States, groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have expressed concern that money laundering rules require banks to report on their own customers, essentially conscripting private businesses "into agents of the surveillance state".
Many countries are obligated by various international instruments and standards, such as the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, the 2000 Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, the 2003 United Nations Convention against Corruption, and the recommendations of the 1989 Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) to enact and enforce money laundering laws in an effort to stop narcotics trafficking, international organized crime, and corruption. Mexico, which has faced a significant increase in violent crime, established anti-money laundering controls in 2013 to curb the underlying crime issue.
Formed in 1989 by the G7 countries, the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) is an intergovernmental body whose purpose is to develop and promote an international response to combat money laundering. The FATF Secretariat is housed at the headquarters of the OECD in Paris. In October 2001, FATF expanded its mission to include combating the financing of terrorism. FATF is a policy-making body that brings together legal, financial, and law enforcement experts to achieve national legislation and regulatory AML and CFT reforms. its membership consists of 36 countries and territories and two regional organizations. FATF works in collaboration with a number of international bodies and organizations. These entities have observer status with FATF, which does not entitle them to vote, but permits them full participation in plenary sessions and working groups.
FATF has developed 40 recommendations on money laundering and 9 special recommendations regarding terrorist financing. FATF assesses each member country against these recommendations in published reports. Countries seen as not being sufficiently compliant with such recommendations are subjected to financial sanctions.
FATF's three primary functions with regard to money laundering are:
The FATF currently comprises 34 member jurisdictions and 2 regional organisations, representing most major financial centres in all parts of the globe.
To comply with FATF regulations, member states and their financial institutions should implement Know Your Customer (KYC) ID verification measures, perform FATF recommended due diligence measures, maintain suitable records of high-risk clients, regularly monitor accounts for suspicious financial activity and report that activity to the appropriate national authority, enforce effective sanctions against legal persons and obliged entities that fail to comply with FATF regulations.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime maintains the "International Money Laundering Information Network", a website that provides information and software for anti-money laundering data collection and analysis. The World Bank has a website that provides policy advice and best practices to governments and the private sector on anti-money laundering issues. The Basel AML Index is an independent annual ranking that assesses the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing around the world.
Many jurisdictions adopt a list of specific predicate crimes for money laundering prosecutions, while others criminalize the proceeds of any serious crimes.
The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Afghanistan (FinTRACA) was established as a Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) under the Anti Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Law passed by decree late in 2004. The main purpose of this law is to protect the integrity of the Afghan financial system and to gain compliance with international treaties and conventions. The Financial Intelligence Unit is a semi-independent body that is administratively housed within the Central Bank of Afghanistan (Da Afghanistan Bank). The main objective of FinTRACA is to deny the use of the Afghan financial system to those who obtained funds as the result of illegal activity, and to those who would use it to support terrorist activities.
To meet its objectives, the FinTRACA collects and analyzes information from a variety of sources. These sources include entities with legal obligations to submit reports to the FinTRACA when a suspicious activity is detected, as well as reports of cash transactions above a threshold amount specified by regulation. Also, FinTRACA has access to all related Afghan government information and databases. When the analysis of this information supports the supposition of illegal use of the financial system, the FinTRACA works closely with law enforcement to investigate and prosecute the illegal activity. FinTRACA also cooperates internationally in support of its own analyses and investigations and to support the analyses and investigations of foreign counterparts, to the extent allowed by law. Other functions include training of those entities with legal obligations to report information, development of laws and regulations to support national-level AML objectives, and international and regional cooperation in the development of AML typologies and countermeasures.
Australia has adopted a number of strategies to combat money laundering, which mirror those of a majority of western countries. The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) is Australia's financial intelligence unit to combat money laundering and terrorism financing, which requires every provider of designated services in Australia to report to it suspicious cash or other transactions and other specific information. The Attorney-General's Department maintains a list of outlawed terror organisations. It is an offense to materially support or be supported by such organisations. It is an offence to open a bank account in Australia in a false name, and rigorous procedures must be followed when new bank accounts are opened.
The "Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006" (Cth) (AML/CTF Act) is the principal legislative instrument, although there are also offence provisions contained in Division 400 of the "Criminal Code Act 1995" (Cth). Upon its introduction, it was intended that the AML/CTF Act would be further amended by a second tranche of reforms extending to designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBPs) including, inter alia, lawyers, accountants, jewellers and real estate agents; however, those further reforms have yet to be progressed.
The "Proceeds of Crime Act 1987" (Cth) imposes criminal penalties on a person who engages in money laundering, and allows for confiscation of property. The principal objects of the Act are set out in s.3(1):
The first anti-money laundering legislation in Bangladesh was the "Money Laundering Prevention Act, 2002". It was replaced by the "Money Laundering Prevention Ordinance 2008". Subsequently, the ordinance was repealed by the "Money Laundering Prevention Act, 2009". In 2012, government again replace it with the "Money Laundering Prevention Act, 2012"
In terms of section 2, "Money Laundering means – (i) knowingly moving, converting, or transferring proceeds of crime or property involved in an offence for the following purposes:- (1) concealing or disguising the illicit nature, source, location, ownership or control of the proceeds of crime; or (2) assisting any person involved in the commission of the predicate offence to evade the legal consequences of such offence; (ii) smuggling money or property earned through legal or illegal means to a foreign country; (iii) knowingly transferring or remitting the proceeds of crime to a foreign country or remitting or bringing them into Bangladesh from a foreign country with the intention of hiding or disguising its illegal source; or (iv) concluding or attempting to conclude financial transactions in such a manner so as to reporting requirement under this Act may be avoided;(v) converting or moving or transferring property with the intention to instigate or assist for committing a predicate offence; (vi) acquiring, possessing or using any property, knowing that such property is the proceeds of a predicate offence; (vii) performing such activities so as to the illegal source of the proceeds of crime may be concealed or disguised; (viii) participating in, associating with, conspiring, attempting, abetting, instigate or counsel to commit any offences mentioned above."
To prevent these Illegal uses of money, the Bangladesh government has introduced the Money Laundering Prevention Act. The Act was last amended in the year 2009 and all the financial institutes are following this act. Till today there are 26 circulars issued by Bangladesh Bank under this act. To prevent money laundering, a banker must do the following:
In 1991, the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act was brought into force in Canada to give legal effect to the former FATF Forty Recommendations by establishing record keeping and client identification requirements in the financial sector to facilitate the investigation and prosecution of money laundering offences under the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
In 2000, the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act was amended to expand the scope of its application and to establish a financial intelligence unit with national control over money laundering, namely FINTRAC.
In December 2001, the scope of the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act was again expanded by amendments enacted under the Anti-Terrorism Act with the objective of deterring terrorist activity by cutting off sources and channels of funding used by terrorists in response to 9/11. The Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act was renamed the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act.
In December 2006, the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act was further amended, in part, in response to pressure from the FATF for Canada to tighten its money laundering and financing of terrorism legislation. The amendments expanded the client identification, record-keeping and reporting requirements for certain organizations and included new obligations to report attempted suspicious transactions and outgoing and incoming international electronic fund transfers, undertake risk assessments and implement written compliance procedures in respect of those risks.
The amendments also enabled greater money laundering and terrorist financing intelligence-sharing among enforcement agencies.
In Canada, casinos, money service businesses, notaries, accountants, banks, securities brokers, life insurance agencies, real estate salespeople and dealers in precious metals and stones are subject to the reporting and record keeping obligations under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act. However, in recent years, casinos and realtors have been embroiled in scandal for aiding and abetting money launderers, especially in Vancouver. Some have speculated that approximately $1 Billion is laundered in Vancouver per year.
The fourth iteration of the EU's anti-money laundering directive (AMLD IV) was published on 5 June 2015, after clearing its last legislative stop at the European Parliament. This directive brought the EU's money laundering laws more in line with the US's, which is advantageous for financial institutions operating in both jurisdictions. The Fifth Money Laundering Directive (5MLD) comes into force on 10 January 2020, addressing a number of weaknesses in the European Union's AML/CFT regime that came to light after the enactment of the Fourth Money Laundering Directive AMLD IV).. The AMLD5 increased the scope of the EU's AML regulations. It decreased the threshold of customer identity verification for the prepaid card industry from EUR 250 to EUR 150. The customers who deposit or transfer funds more than EUR150 will be identified by the prepaid card issuing company.
Lack of harmonization in AML requirements between the US and EU has complicated the compliance efforts of global institutions that are looking to standardize the Know Your Customer (KYC) component of their AML programs across key jurisdictions. AMLD IV promises to better align the AML regimes by adopting a more risk-based approach compared to its predecessor, AMLD III.
Certain components of the directive, however, go beyond current requirements in both the EU and US, imposing new implementation challenges on banks. For instance, more public officials are brought within the scope of the directive, and EU member states are required to establish new registries of "beneficial owners" (i.e., those who ultimately own or control each company) which will impact banks. AMLD IV became effective 25 June 2015.
On 24 January 2019, the European Commission sent official warnings to ten member states as part of a crackdown on lax application of money laundering regulations. The Commission sent Germany a letter of formal notice, the first step of the EU legal procedure against states. Belgium, Finland, France, Lithuania, and Portugal were sent reasoned opinions, the second step of the procedure which could lead to fines. A second round of reasoned opinions was sent to Bulgaria, Cyprus, Poland, and Slovakia. The ten countries have two months to respond or face court action. The Commission had set a 26 June 2017 deadline for EU countries to apply new rules against money laundering and terrorist financing.
On 13 February 2019, the Commission added Saudi Arabia, Panama, Nigeria and other jurisdictions to a blacklist of nations that pose a threat because of lax controls on terrorism financing and money laundering. This is a more expansive list than that of FATF.
In 2002, the Parliament of India passed an act called the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002. The main objectives of this act are to prevent money-laundering as well as to provide for confiscation of property either derived from or involved in, money-laundering.
Section 12 (1) describes the obligations that banks, other financial institutions, and intermediaries have to
Section 12 (2) prescribes that the records referred to in sub-section (1) as mentioned above, must be maintained for ten years after the transactions finished. It is handled by the Indian Income Tax Department.
The provisions of the Act are frequently reviewed and various amendments have been passed from time to time.
Most money laundering activities in India are through political parties, corporate companies and the shares market. These are investigated by the Enforcement Directorate and Indian Income Tax Department. According to Government of India, out of the total tax arrears of about pertain to money laundering and securities scam cases.
Bank accountants must record all transactions over Rs. 1 million and maintain such records for 10 years. Banks must also make cash transaction reports (CTRs) and suspicious transaction reports over Rs. 1 million within 7 days of initial suspicion. They must submit their reports to the Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax Department.
In Latin America, money laundering is mainly linked to drug trafficking activities and to having connections with criminal activity, such as crimes that have to do with arms trafficking, human trafficking, extortion, blackmail, smuggling, and acts of corruption of people linked to governments, such as bribery, which are more common in Latin American countries. There is a relationship between corruption and money laundering in developing countries. The economic power of Latin America increases rapidly and without support, these fortunes being of illicit origin having the appearance of legally acquired profits. With regard to money laundering, the ultimate goal of the process is to integrate illicit capital into the general economy and transform it into licit goods and services.
The money laundering practice uses various channels to legalize everything achieved through illegal practices. As such, it has different techniques depending on the country where this illegal operation is going to be carried out:
Casinos continue to attract organizations that deal with money laundering. Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles, the Cayman Islands, Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela are considered high priority countries in the region, due to the strategies used by the washers.
The practice of money laundering, among other economic and financial crimes seeps into the economic and political structures of most developing countries therefore resulting to political instability and economic digression.
Money laundering is still a great concern for the financial services industry. About 50% of the money laundering incidents in Latin America were reported by organizations in the financial sector. According to PwC's 2014 global economic crime survey, in Latin America only 2.8% of respondents in Latin America claimed suffering Antitrust/Competition Law incidents, compared to 5.2% of respondents globally.
It has been shown that money laundering has an impact on the financial behavior and macroeconomic performance of the industrialized countries. In these countries the macroeconomic consequences of money laundering are transmitted through several channels. Thus, money laundering complicates the formulation of economic policies. It is assumed that the proceeds of criminal activities are laundered by means of the notes and coins in circulation of the monetary substitutes.
The laundering causes disproportionate changes in the relative prices of assets which implies that resources are allocated inefficiently; and, therefore may have negative implications for economic growth, apparently money laundering is associated with a lower economic growth.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy of the United States estimates that only in that country, sales of narcotic drugs represent about 57,000 million dollars annually and most of these transactions are made in cash.
Money laundering has been increasing. A key factor behind the growing money laundering is ineffective enforcement of money laundering laws locally. Perhaps because of the lack of importance that has been given to the subject, since the 21st century started, there was not jurisprudence regarding the laundering of money or assets, or the conversion or transfer of goods. Which is even worse, the laws of the Latin American countries have really not dealt with their study in a profound way, as it is an issue that concerns the whole world and is the subject of seminars, conferences and academic analysis in different regions of the planet. Now a new figure that is being called the Economic Criminal Law is being implemented, which should be implemented in modern societies, which has been inflicted enormous damage to the point of affecting the general economy of the states. Even though, developing countries have responded and continue to respond, through legislative measures, to the problem of money laundering, at national level, however, money launderers, have taken advantage of the lax regulatory environment, vulnerable financial systems along with the continued civil and political unrest of most the developing countries.
Singapore’s legal framework for combating money laundering is contained in a patchwork of legal instruments, the main elements of which are:
The term ‘money laundering’ is not used as such within the CDSA. Part VI of the CDSA criminalises the laundering of proceeds generated by criminal conduct and drug tracking via the following offences:
Money laundering and terrorist funding legislation in the UK is governed by five Acts of primary legislation:-
Money Laundering Regulations are designed to protect the UK financial system, as well as preventing and detecting crime. If a business is covered by these regulations then controls are put in place to prevent it being used for money laundering.
The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 contains the primary UK anti-money laundering legislation, including provisions requiring businesses within the "regulated sector" (banking, investment, money transmission, certain professions, etc.) to report to the authorities suspicions of money laundering by customers or others.
Money laundering is broadly defined in the UK. In effect any handling or involvement with any proceeds of any crime (or monies or assets representing the proceeds of crime) can be a money laundering offence. An offender's possession of the proceeds of his own crime falls within the UK definition of money laundering. The definition also covers activities within the traditional definition of money laundering, as a process that conceals or disguises the proceeds of crime to make them appear legitimate.
Unlike certain other jurisdictions (notably the US and much of Europe), UK money laundering offences are not limited to the proceeds of serious crimes, nor are there any monetary limits. Financial transactions need no money laundering design or purpose for UK laws to consider them a money laundering offence. A money laundering offence under UK legislation need not even involve money, since the money laundering legislation covers assets of any description. In consequence, any person who commits an acquisitive crime (i.e., one that produces some benefit in the form of money or an asset of any description) in the UK inevitably also commits a money laundering offence under UK legislation.
This applies also to a person who, by criminal conduct, evades a liability (such as a taxation liability)—which lawyers call "obtaining a pecuniary advantage"—as he is deemed thereby to obtain a sum of money equal in value to the liability evaded.
The principal money laundering offences carry a maximum penalty of 14 years' imprisonment.
Secondary regulation is provided by the Money Laundering Regulations 2003, which was replaced by the Money Laundering Regulations 2007. They are directly based on the EU directives 91/308/EEC, 2001/97/EC and 2005/60/EC.
One consequence of the Act is that solicitors, accountants, tax advisers, and insolvency practitioners who suspect (as a consequence of information received in the course of their work) that their clients (or others) have engaged in tax evasion or other criminal conduct that produced a benefit, now must report their suspicions to the authorities (since these entail suspicions of money laundering). In most circumstances it would be an offence, "tipping-off", for the reporter to inform the subject of his report that a report has been made. These provisions do not however require disclosure to the authorities of information received by certain professionals in privileged circumstances or where the information is subject to legal professional privilege. Others that are subject to these regulations include financial institutions, credit institutions, estate agents (which includes chartered surveyors), trust and company service providers, high value dealers (who accept cash equivalent to €15,000 or more for goods sold), and casinos.
Professional guidance (which is submitted to and approved by the UK Treasury) is provided by industry groups including the Joint Money Laundering Steering Group, the Law Society. and the Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies (CCAB).
However, there is no obligation on banking institutions to routinely report monetary deposits or transfers above a specified value. Instead reports must be made of all suspicious deposits or transfers, irrespective of their value.
The reporting obligations include reporting suspicious gains from conduct in other countries that would be criminal if it took place in the UK. Exceptions were later added for certain activities legal where they took place, such as bullfighting in Spain.
More than 200,000 reports of suspected money laundering are submitted annually to authorities in the UK (there were 240,582 reports in the year ended 30 September 2010. This was an increase from the 228,834 reports submitted in the previous year). Most of these reports are submitted by banks and similar financial institutions (there were 186,897 reports from the banking sector in the year ended 30 September 2010).
Although 5,108 different organisations submitted suspicious activity reports to the authorities in the year ended 30 September 2010, just four organisations submitted approximately half of all reports, and the top 20 reporting organisations accounted for three-quarters of all reports.
The offence of failing to report a suspicion of money laundering by another person carries a maximum penalty of 5 years' imprisonment.
On 1 May 2018, the UK House of Commons, without opposition, passed the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill, which will set out the UK government's intended approach to exceptions and licenses when the nation becomes responsible for implementing its own sanctions and will also require notorious overseas British territory tax havens such as the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands to establish public registers of the beneficial ownership of firms in their jurisdictions by the end of 2020. The legislation was passed by the House of Lords on 21 May and received Royal Asset on 23 May. However, the Act's public register provision is facing legal challenges from local governments in the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands, who argue that it violates their Constitutional sovereignty.
Under the Proceeds of Crime Act goods that criminals cannot legally account for are seized and sold at auction to raise funds. This is usually carried out by authorised auction houses and often within the geographical areas of the criminals.
All UK "Bureaux de change" are registered with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, which issues a trading licence for each location. Bureaux de change and money transmitters, such as Western Union outlets, in the UK fall within the "regulated sector" and are required to comply with the Money Laundering Regulations 2007. Checks can be carried out by HMRC on all Money Service Businesses.
In South Africa, the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (2001) and subsequent amendments have added responsibilities to the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) to combat money laundering.
The approach in the United States to stopping money laundering is usually broken into two areas: preventive (regulatory) measures and criminal measures.
In an attempt to prevent dirty money from entering the U.S. financial system in the first place, the United States Congress passed a series of laws, starting in 1970, collectively known as the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). These laws, contained in sections 5311 through 5332 of Title 31 of the United States Code, require financial institutions, which under the current definition include a broad array of entities, including banks, credit card companies, life insurers, money service businesses and broker-dealers in securities, to report certain transactions to the United States Department of the Treasury. Cash transactions in excess of a certain amount must be reported on a currency transaction report (CTR), identifying the individual making the transaction as well as the source of the cash. The law originally required all transactions of US$5,000 or more to be reported, but due to excessively high levels of reporting the threshold was raised to US$10,000. The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world to require reporting of all cash transactions over a certain limit, although certain businesses can be exempt from the requirement. Additionally, financial institutions must report transaction on a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) that they deem "suspicious", defined as a knowing or suspecting that the funds come from illegal activity or disguise funds from illegal activity, that it is structured to evade BSA requirements or appears to serve no known business or apparent lawful purpose; or that the institution is being used to facilitate criminal activity. Attempts by customers to circumvent the BSA, generally by structuring cash deposits to amounts lower than US$10,000 by breaking them up and depositing them on different days or at different locations also violates the law.
The financial database created by these reports is administered by the U.S.'s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), called the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), located in Vienna, Virginia. The reports are made available to U.S. criminal investigators, as well as other FIU's around the globe, and FinCEN conducts computer assisted analyses of these reports to determine trends and refer investigations.
The BSA requires financial institutions to engage in customer due diligence, or KYC, which is sometimes known in the parlance as know your customer. This includes obtaining satisfactory identification to give assurance that the account is in the customer's true name, and having an understanding of the expected nature and source of the money that flows through the customer's accounts. Other classes of customers, such as those with private banking accounts and those of foreign government officials, are subjected to enhanced due diligence because the law deems that those types of accounts are a higher risk for money laundering. All accounts are subject to ongoing monitoring, in which internal bank software scrutinizes transactions and flags for manual inspection those that fall outside certain parameters. If a manual inspection reveals that the transaction is suspicious, the institution should file a Suspicious Activity Report.
The regulators of the industries involved are responsible to ensure that the financial institutions comply with the BSA. For example, the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency regularly inspect banks, and may impose civil fines or refer matters for criminal prosecution for non-compliance. A number of banks have been fined and prosecuted for failure to comply with the BSA. Most famously, Riggs Bank, in Washington D.C., was prosecuted and functionally driven out of business as a result of its failure to apply proper money laundering controls, particularly as it related to foreign political figures.
In addition to the BSA, the U.S. imposes controls on the movement of currency across its borders, requiring individuals to report the transportation of cash in excess of US$10,000 on a form called Report of International Transportation of Currency or Monetary Instruments (known as a CMIR). Likewise, businesses, such as automobile dealerships, that receive cash in excess of US$10,000 must file a Form 8300 with the Internal Revenue Service, identifying the source of the cash.
On 1 September 2010, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an advisory on "informal value transfer systems" referencing "United States v. Banki".
In the United States, there are perceived consequences of anti-money laundering (AML) regulations. These unintended consequences include FinCEN's publishing of a list of "risky businesses," which many believe unfairly targeted money service businesses. The publishing of this list and the subsequent fall-out, banks indiscriminately de-risking MSBs, is referred to as Operation Choke Point. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a Geographic Targeting Order to combat against illegal money laundering in the United States. This means that title insurance companies in the U.S. are required to identify the natural persons behind companies that pay all cash in residential real estate purchases over a particular amount in certain U.S. cities.
Money laundering has been criminalized in the United States since the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986. The law, contained at section 1956 of Title 18 of the United States Code, prohibits individuals from engaging in a financial transaction with proceeds that were generated from certain specific crimes, known as "specified unlawful activities" (SUAs). The law requires that an individual specifically intend in making the transaction to conceal the source, ownership or control of the funds. There is no minimum threshold of money, and no requirement that the transaction succeeded in actually disguising the money. A "financial transaction" has been broadly defined, and need not involve a financial institution, or even a business. Merely passing money from one person to another, with the intent to disguise the source, ownership, location or control of the money, has been deemed a financial transaction under the law. The possession of money without either a financial transaction or an intent to conceal is not a crime in the United States. Besides money laundering, the law contained in section 1957 of Title 18 of the United States Code, prohibits spending more than US$10,000 derived from an SUA, regardless of whether the individual wishes to disguise it. It carries a lesser penalty than money laundering, and unlike the money laundering statute, requires that the money pass through a financial institution.
According to the records compiled by the United States Sentencing Commission, in 2009, the United States Department of Justice typically convicted a little over 81,000 people; of this, approximately 800 are convicted of money laundering as the primary or most serious charge.
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 expanded the definition of financial institution to include businesses such as car dealers and real estate closing personnel and required them to file reports on large currency transaction. It required verification of identity of those who purchase monetary instruments over $3,000. The Annunzio-Wylie Anti-Money Laundering Act of 1992 strengthened sanctions for BSA violations, required so called "Suspicious Activity Reports" and eliminated previously used "Criminal Referral Forms", required verification and recordkeeping for wire transfers and established the Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group (BSAAG). The Money Laundering Suppression Act from 1994 required banking agencies to review and enhance training, develop anti-money laundering examination procedures, review and enhance procedures for referring cases to law enforcement agencies, streamlined the Currency transaction report exemption process, required each Money services business (MSB) to be registered by an owner or controlling person, required every MSB to maintain a list of businesses authorized to act as agents in connection with the financial services offered by the MSB, made operating an unregistered MSB a federal crime, and recommended that states adopt uniform laws applicable to MSBs. The Money Laundering and Financial Crimes Strategy Act of 1998 required banking agencies to develop anti-money laundering training for examiners, required the Department of the Treasury and other agencies to develop a "National Money Laundering Strategy", created the "High Intensity Money Laundering and Related Financial Crime Area" (HIFCA) Task Forces to concentrate law enforcement efforts at the federal, state and local levels in zones where money laundering is prevalent. HIFCA zones may be defined geographically or can be created to address money laundering in an industry sector, a financial institution, or group of financial institutions.
The Intelligence Reform & Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 amended the Bank Secrecy Act to require the Secretary of the Treasury to prescribe regulations requiring certain financial institutions to report cross-border electronic transmittals of funds, if the Secretary determines that reporting is "reasonably necessary" in "anti-money laundering /combatting financing of terrorists (Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism AML/CFT)." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19390 |
Midwifery
Midwifery is the health science and health profession that deals with pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period (including care of the newborn), in addition to the sexual and reproductive health of women throughout their lives. In many countries, midwifery is a medical profession (special for its independent and direct specialized education; should not be confused with the medical specialty, which depends on a previous general training). A professional in midwifery is known as a midwife.
A 2013 Cochrane review concluded that "most women should be offered midwifery-led continuity models of care and women should be encouraged to ask for this option although caution should be exercised in applying this advice to women with substantial medical or obstetric complications." The review found that midwifery-led care was associated with a reduction in the use of epidurals, with fewer episiotomies or instrumental births, and a decreased risk of losing the baby before 24 weeks' gestation. However, midwifery-led care was also associated with a longer mean length of labor as measured in hours.
Trimester means "3 months." A normal pregnancy lasts about 9 months and has 3 trimesters.
First trimester screening varies by country. Women are typically offered a Pap smear and urine analysis (UA), and blood tests including a complete blood count (CBC), blood typing (including Rh screen), syphilis, hepatitis, HIV, and rubella testing. Additionally, women may have chlamydia testing via a urine sample, and women considered at high risk are screened for Sickle Cell disease and Thalassemia. Women must consent to all tests before they are carried out. The woman's blood pressure, height and weight are measured. Her past pregnancies and family, social, and medical history are discussed. Women may have an ultrasound scan during the first trimester which may be used to help find the estimated due date. Some women may have genetic testing, such as screening for Down syndrome. Diet, exercise, and discomforts such as morning sickness are discussed.
The mother visits the midwife monthly or more often during the second trimester. The mother's partner and/or the labor coach may accompany her. The midwife will discuss pregnancy issues such as fatigue, heartburn, varicose veins, and other common problems such as back pain.
Blood pressure and weight are monitored and the midwife measures the mother's abdomen to see if the baby is growing as expected. Lab tests such as a UA, CBC, and glucose tolerance test are done if the midwife feels they are necessary.
In the third trimester the midwife will see the mother every two weeks until week 36 and every week after that. Weight, blood pressure, and abdominal measurements will continue to be done. Lab tests such as a CDC and UA may be done with additional testing done for at-risk pregnancies. The midwife palpates the woman's abdomen to establish the lie, presentation and position of the fetus and later, the engagement. A pelvic exam may be done to see if the mother's cervix is dilating. The midwife and the mother discuss birthing options and write a birth care plan.
Midwives are qualified to assist with a normal vaginal delivery while more complicated deliveries are handled by a health care provider who has had further training. Childbirth is divided into four stages.
Following the birth, if the mother had an episiotomy or a tearing of the perineum, it is stitched. The midwife does regular assessments for uterine contraction, fundal height, and vaginal bleeding. Throughout labor and delivery the mother's vital signs (temperature, blood pressure, and pulse) are closely monitored and her fluid intake and output are measured. The midwife also monitors the baby's pulse rate, palpates the mother's abdomen to monitor the baby's position, and does vaginal checks as needed. If the birth deviates from the norm at any stage, the midwife requests assist from a more highly trained health care provider.
Until the last century most women have used both the upright position and alternative positions to give birth. The lithotomy position was not used until the advent of forceps in the seventeenth century and since then childbirth has progressively moved from a woman supported experience in the home to a medical intervention within the hospital.
There are significant advantages to assuming an upright position in labor and birth, such as stronger and more efficient uterine contractions aiding cervical dilatation, increased pelvic inlet and outlet diameters and improved uterine contractility. Upright positions in the second stage include sitting, squatting, kneeling, and being on hands and knees.
For women who have a hospital birth, the minimum hospital stay is six hours. Women who leave before this do so against medical advice. Women may choose when to leave the hospital. Full postnatal assessments are conducted daily whilst inpatient, or more frequently if needed. A postnatal assessment includes the woman's observations, general well being, breasts (either a discussion and assistance with breastfeeding or a discussion about lactation suppression), abdominal palpation (if she has not had a caesarean section) to check for involution of the uterus, or a check of her caesarean wound (the dressing doesn't need to be removed for this), a check of her perineum, particularly if she tore or had stitches, reviewing her lochia, ensuring she has passed urine and had her bowels open and checking for signs and symptoms of a DVT. The baby is also checked for jaundice, signs of adequate feeding, or other concerns. The baby has a nursery exam between six and seventy two hours of birth to check for conditions such as heart defects, hip problems, or eye problems.
In the community, the community midwife sees the woman at least until day ten. This does not mean she sees the woman and baby daily, but she cannot discharge them from her care until day ten at the earliest. Postnatal checks include neonatal screening test (NST, or heel prick test) around day five. The baby is weighed and the midwife plans visits according to the health and needs of mother and baby. They are discharged to the care of the health visitor.
At birth, the baby receives an Apgar score at, at the least, one minute and five minutes of age. This is a score out of 10 that assesses the baby on five different areas—each worth between 0 and 2 points. These areas are: colour, respiratory effort, tone, heart rate, and response to stimuli. The midwife checks the baby for any obvious problems, weighs the baby, and measure head circumference. The midwife ensures the cord has been clamped securely and the baby has the appropriate name tags on (if in hospital). Babies lengths are not routinely measured. The midwife performs these checks as close to the mother as possible and returns the baby to the mother quickly. Skin-to-skin is encouraged, as this regulates the baby's heart rate, breathing, oxygen saturation, and temperature—and promotes bonding and breastfeeding.
In some countries, such as Chile, the midwife is the professional who can direct neonatal intensive care units. This is an advantage for these professionals, because this professionals can use the knowledge in perinatology to bring a high quality care of the newborn, with medical or surgical conditions.
Midwifery-led continuity of care is where one or more midwives have the primary responsibility for the continuity of care for childbearing women, with a multidisciplinary network of consultation and referral with other health care providers. This is different from "medical-led care" where an obstetrician or family physician is primarily responsible. In "shared-care" models, responsibility may be shared between a midwife, an obstetrician and/or a family physician. The midwife is part of very intimate situations with the mother. For this reason, many say that the most important thing to look for in a midwife is comfortability with them, as one will go to them with every question or problem.
According to a Cochrane review of public health systems in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, "most women should be offered midwifery-led continuity models of care and women should be encouraged to ask for this option although caution should be exercised in applying this advice to women with substantial medical or obstetric complications." Midwifery-led care has effects including the following:
There was no difference in the number of Caesarean sections. All trials in the Cochrane review included licensed midwives, and none included lay or traditional midwives. Also, no trial included out of hospital birth.
In ancient Egypt, midwifery was a recognized female occupation, as attested by the Ebers Papyrus which dates from 1900 to 1550 BCE. Five columns of this papyrus deal with obstetrics and gynecology, especially concerning the acceleration of parturition (the action or process of giving birth to offspring) and the birth prognosis of the newborn. The Westcar papyrus, dated to 1700 BCE, includes instructions for calculating the expected date of confinement and describes different styles of birth chairs. Bas reliefs in the royal birth rooms at Luxor and other temples also attest to the heavy presence of midwifery in this culture.
Midwifery in Greco-Roman antiquity covered a wide range of women, including old women who continued folk medical traditions in the villages of the Roman Empire, trained midwives who garnered their knowledge from a variety of sources, and highly trained women who were considered physicians. However, there were certain characteristics desired in a “good” midwife, as described by the physician Soranus of Ephesus in the 2nd century. He states in his work, "Gynecology", that “a suitable person will be literate, with her wits about her, possessed of a good memory, loving work, respectable and generally not unduly handicapped as regards her senses [i.e., sight, smell, hearing], sound of limb, robust, and, according to some people, endowed with long slim fingers and short nails at her fingertips.” Soranus also recommends that the midwife be of sympathetic disposition (although she need not have borne a child herself) and that she keep her hands soft for the comfort of both mother and child. Pliny, another physician from this time, valued nobility and a quiet and inconspicuous disposition in a midwife. There appears to have been three “grades” of midwives present: The first was technically proficient; the second may have read some of the texts on obstetrics and gynecology; but the third was highly trained and reasonably considered a medical specialist with a concentration in midwifery.
Agnodice or Agnodike (Gr. Ἀγνοδίκη) was the earliest historical, and likely apocryphal, midwife mentioned among the ancient Greeks.
Midwives were known by many different titles in antiquity, ranging from "iatrinē" (Gr. nurse), "maia" (Gr., midwife), "obstetrix" (Lat., obstetrician), and "medica" (Lat., doctor). It appears as though midwifery was treated differently in the Eastern end of the Mediterranean basin as opposed to the West. In the East, some women advanced beyond the profession of midwife ("maia") to that of gynaecologist ("iatros gynaikeios", translated as "women's doctor"), for which formal training was required. Also, there were some gynecological tracts circulating in the medical and educated circles of the East that were written by women with Greek names, although these women were few in number. Based on these facts, it would appear that midwifery in the East was a respectable profession in which respectable women could earn their livelihoods and enough esteem to publish works read and cited by male physicians. In fact, a number of Roman legal provisions strongly suggest that midwives enjoyed status and remuneration comparable to that of male doctors. One example of such a midwife is Salpe of Lemnos, who wrote on women's diseases and was mentioned several times in the works of Pliny.
However, in the Roman West, information about practicing midwives comes mainly from funerary epitaphs. Two hypotheses are suggested by looking at a small sample of these epitaphs. The first is the midwifery was not a profession to which freeborn women of families that had enjoyed free status of several generations were attracted; therefore it seems that most midwives were of servile origin. Second, since most of these funeral epitaphs describe the women as freed, it can be proposed that midwives were generally valued enough, and earned enough income, to be able to gain their freedom. It is not known from these epitaphs how certain slave women were selected for training as midwives. Slave girls may have been apprenticed, and it is most likely that mothers taught their daughters.
The actual duties of the midwife in antiquity consisted mainly of assisting in the birthing process, although they may also have helped with other medical problems relating to women when needed. Often, the midwife would call for the assistance of a physician when a more difficult birth was anticipated. In many cases the midwife brought along two or three assistants. In antiquity, it was believed by both midwives and physicians that a normal delivery was made easier when a woman sat upright. Therefore, during parturition, midwives brought a stool to the home where the delivery was to take place. In the seat of the birthstool was a crescent-shaped hole through which the baby would be delivered. The birthstool or chair often had armrests for the mother to grasp during the delivery. Most birthstools or chairs had backs which the patient could press against, but Soranus suggests that in some cases the chairs were backless and an assistant would stand behind the mother to support her. The midwife sat facing the mother, encouraging and supporting her through the birth, perhaps offering instruction on breathing and pushing, sometimes massaging her vaginal opening, and supporting her perineum during the delivery of the baby. The assistants may have helped by pushing downwards on the top of the mother's abdomen.
Finally, the midwife received the infant, placed it in pieces of cloth, cut the umbilical cord, and cleansed the baby. The child was sprinkled with “fine and powdery salt, or natron or aphronitre” to soak up the birth residue, rinsed, and then powdered and rinsed again. Next, the midwives cleared away any and all mucus present from the nose, mouth, ears, or anus. Midwives were encouraged by Soranus to put olive oil in the baby's eyes to cleanse away any birth residue, and to place a piece of wool soaked in olive oil over the umbilical cord. After the delivery, the midwife made the initial call on whether or not an infant was healthy and fit to rear. She inspected the newborn for congenital deformities and testing its cry to hear whether or not it was robust and hearty. Ultimately, midwives made a determination about the chances for an infant's survival and likely recommended that a newborn with any severe deformities be exposed.
A 2nd-century terracotta relief from the Ostian tomb of Scribonia Attice, wife of physician-surgeon M. Ulpius Amerimnus, details a childbirth scene. Scribonia was a midwife and the relief shows her in the midst of a delivery. A patient sits in the birth chair, gripping the handles and the midwife’s assistant stands behind her providing support. Scribonia sits on a low stool in front of the woman, modestly looking away while also assisting the delivery by dilating and massaging the vagina, as encouraged by Soranus.
The services of a midwife were not inexpensive; this fact that suggests poorer women who could not afford the services of a professional midwife often had to make do with female relatives. Many wealthier families had their own midwives. However, the vast majority of women in the Greco-Roman world very likely received their maternity care from hired midwives. They may have been highly trained or possessed only a rudimentary knowledge of obstetrics. Also, many families had a choice of whether or not they wanted to employ a midwife who practiced the traditional folk medicine or the newer methods of professional parturition. Like a lot of other factors in antiquity, quality gynecological care often depended heavily on the socioeconomic status of the patient.
From the 18th century, a conflict between surgeons and midwives arose, as medical men began to assert that their modern scientific techniques were better for mothers and infants than the folk medicine practiced by midwives.
As doctors and medical associations pushed for a legal monopoly on obstetrical care, midwifery became outlawed or heavily regulated throughout the United States and Canada. In Northern Europe and Russia, the situation for midwives was a little easier - in the Duchy of Estonia in Imperial Russia, Professor Christian Friedrich Deutsch established a midwifery school for women at the University of Dorpat in 1811, which existed until World War I. It was the predecessor for the Tartu Health Care College. Training lasted for 7 months and in the end a certificate for practice was issued to the female students. Despite accusations that midwives were "incompetent and ignorant", some argued that poorly trained surgeons were far more of a danger to pregnant women. In 1846, the physician Ignaz Semmelweiss observed that more women died in maternity wards staffed by male surgeons than by female midwives, and traced these outbreaks of puerperal fever back to (then all-male) medical students not washing their hands properly after dissecting cadavers, but his sanitary recommendations were ignored until acceptance of germ theory became widespread. The argument that surgeons were more dangerous than midwives lasted until the study of bacteriology became popular in the early 1900s and hospital hygiene was improved. Women began to feel safer in the setting of the hospitals with the amount of aid and the ease of birth that they experienced with doctors. “Physicians trained in the new century found a great contrast between their hospital and obstetrics practice in women’s homes where they could not maintain sterile conditions or have trained help.” German social scientists Gunnar Heinsohn and Otto Steiger theorize that midwifery became a target of persecution and repression by public authorities because midwives possessed highly specialized knowledge and skills regarding not only assisting birth, but also contraception and abortion.
At late 20th century, midwives were already recognized as highly trained and specialized professionals in obstetrics. However, at the beginning of the 21st century, the medical perception of pregnancy and childbirth as potentially pathological and dangerous still dominates Western culture. Midwives who work in hospital settings also have been influenced by this view, although by and large they are trained to view birth as a normal and healthy process. While midwives play a much larger role in the care of pregnant mothers in Europe than in America, the medicalized model of birth still has influence in those countries, even though the World Health Organization recommends a natural, normal and humanized birth.
The midwifery model of pregnancy and childbirth as a normal and healthy process plays a much larger role in Sweden and the Netherlands than the rest of Europe, however. Swedish midwives stand out, since they administer 80 percent of prenatal care and more than 80 percent of family planning services in Sweden. Midwives in Sweden attend all normal births in public hospitals and Swedish women tend to have fewer interventions in hospitals than American women. The Dutch infant mortality rate in 1992 was the tenth-lowest rate in the world, at 6.3 deaths per thousand births, while the United States ranked twenty-second. Midwives in the Netherlands and Sweden owe a great deal of their success to supportive government policies.
Notes
Bibliography | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19391 |
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (; 29 September 1547 (assumed)22 April 1616 NS) was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language, and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his novel "Don Quixote", a work often cited as both the first modern novel, and one of the pinnacles of literature.
Much of his life was spent in poverty and obscurity, many of its details are disputed or unknown, and the bulk of his surviving work was produced in the three years preceding his death. Despite this, his influence and literary contribution are reflected by the fact Spanish is often referred to as "the language of Cervantes".
In 1569, Cervantes was forced to leave Spain and moved to Rome, where he worked in the household of a cardinal. In 1570, he enlisted in a Spanish Navy infantry regiment, and was badly wounded at the Battle of Lepanto in October 1571. He served as a soldier until 1575, when he was captured by Barbary pirates; after five years in captivity, he was ransomed, and returned to Madrid.
His first significant novel, titled "La Galatea", was published in 1585, but he continued to work as a purchasing agent, then later a government tax collector. Part One of "Don Quixote" was published in 1605, Part Two in 1615. Other works include the 12 "Novelas ejemplares" ("Exemplary Novels"); a long poem, the "Viaje del Parnaso" ("Journey to Parnassus"); and "Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses" ("Eight Plays and Eight Entr'actes"). "Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda" ("The Travails of Persiles and Sigismunda"), was published posthumously in 1616.
Despite his subsequent fame, much of Cervantes' life is uncertain, including his name, background and what he looked like. Although he signed himself "Cerbantes", his printers used "Cervantes", which became the common form. In later life, Cervantes used "Saavedra", the name of a distant relative, rather than the more usual "Cortinas", after his mother.
Another area of dispute are his ethnic origins. In the 16th century, many Spaniards were descended either from Moriscos, Muslims who remained after the conquest of Granada in 1492, or Conversos, Jews who converted to Catholicism after expulsion from Spain in 1492. An estimated 20% of the Spanish population in the south fell into one of these categories, and it has been suggested Cervantes' mother may have been one of these New Christians. However, others refute this theory.
No confirmed portrait of the author is known to exist. The one most often associated with Cervantes is attributed to Juan de Jáuregui, but both names were added at a later date. The El Greco painting in the Museo del Prado, known as "Retrato de un caballero desconocido", or "Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman", is cited as 'possibly' depicting Cervantes, but there is no evidence for this. The portrait by Luis de Madrazo, at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, was painted in 1859, based on his imagination. The image that appears on Spanish euro coins of €0.10, €0.20, and €0.50 is based on a bust, created in 1905.
It is generally accepted Miguel de Cervantes was born around 29 September 1547, in Alcalá de Henares. He was the second son of barber-surgeon Rodrigo de Cervantes and his wife, Leonor de Cortinas (). Rodrigo came from Córdoba, Andalusia, where his father Juan de Cervantes was an influential lawyer.
Rodrigo was frequently in debt, or searching for work, and moved constantly. Leonor came from Arganda del Rey, and died in October 1593, at the age of 73; surviving legal documents indicate she had seven children, could read and write, and was a resourceful individual with an eye for business. When Rodrigo was imprisoned for debt from October 1553 to April 1554, she supported the family on her own.
Cervantes' siblings were Andrés (born 1543), Andrea (born 1544), Luisa (born 1546), Rodrigo (born 1550), Magdalena (born 1554) and Juan. They lived in Córdoba until 1556, when his grandfather died. For reasons that are unclear, Rodrigo did not benefit from his will and the family disappears until 1564 when he filed a lawsuit in Seville.
Seville was then in the midst of an economic boom, and Rodrigo managed rented accommodation for his elder brother Andres, who was a junior magistrate. It is assumed Cervantes attended the Jesuit college in Seville, where one of the teachers was Jesuit playwright Pedro Pablo Acevedo, who moved there in 1561 from Córdoba. However, legal records show his father got into debt once more, and in 1566, the family moved to Madrid.
In the 19th century, a biographer discovered an arrest warrant for a Miguel de Cervantes, dated 15 September 1569, who was charged with wounding Antonio de Sigura in a duel. Although disputed at the time, largely on the grounds such behaviour was unworthy of so great an author, it is now accepted as the most likely reason for Cervantes leaving Madrid.
He eventually made his way to Rome, where he found a position in the household of Giulio Acquaviva, an Italian bishop who spent 1568 to 1569 in Madrid, and was appointed Cardinal in 1570. When the 1570 to 1573 Ottoman–Venetian War began, Spain formed part of the Holy League, a coalition formed to support the Venetian Republic. Possibly seeing an opportunity to have his arrest warrant rescinded, Cervantes went to Naples, then part of the Crown of Aragon.
The military commander in Naples was Alvaro de Sande, a friend of the family, who gave Cervantes a commission under the Marquis de Santa Cruz. At some point, he was joined in Naples by his younger brother Rodrigo. In September 1571, Cervantes sailed on board the "Marquesa", part of the Holy League fleet under Don John of Austria, illegitimate half brother of Phillip II of Spain; on 7 October, they defeated the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto.
According to his own account, although suffering from malaria, Cervantes was given command of a 12-man skiff, small boats used for assaulting enemy galleys. The "Marquesa" lost 40 dead, and 120 wounded, including Cervantes, who received three separate wounds, two in the chest, and another that rendered his left arm useless. His actions at Lepanto were a source of pride to the end of his life, while Don John approved no less than four separate pay increases for him.
In "Journey to Parnassus", published two years before his death in 1616, Cervantes claimed to have "lost the movement of the left hand for the glory of the right". As with much else, the extent of his disability is unclear, the only source being Cervantes himself, while commentators cite his habitual tendency to praise himself. However, they were serious enough to earn him six months in hospital at Messina, Sicily.
Although he returned to service in July 1572, records show his chest wounds were still not completely healed in February 1573. Based mainly in Naples, he joined expeditions to Corfu and Navarino, and took part in the 1573 occupation of Tunis and La Goulette, which were recaptured by the Ottomans in 1574. Despite Lepanto, the war overall was an Ottoman victory, and the loss of Tunis a military disaster for Spain. Cervantes returned to Palermo, where he was paid off by the Duke of Sessa, who gave him letters of commendation.
In early September 1575, Cervantes and Rodrigo left Naples on the galley "Sol"; as they approached Barcelona on 26 September, their ship was captured by Ottoman pirates, and the brothers taken to Algiers, to be sold as slaves, or–as was the case of Cervantes and his brother–held for ransom, if this would be more lucrative than their sale as slaves. Rodrigo was ransomed in 1577, but his family could not afford the fee for Cervantes, who was forced to remain. Turkish historian Rasih Nuri İleri found evidence suggesting Cervantes worked on the construction of the Kılıç Ali Pasha Complex, which means he spent at least part of his captivity in Istanbul.
By 1580, Spain was occupied integrating Portugal, and suppressing the Dutch Revolt, while the Ottomans were at war with Persia; the two sides agreed a truce, leading to an improvement of relations. After almost five years, and four escape attempts, in 1580 Cervantes was set free by the Trinitarians, a religious charity that specialised in ransoming Christian captives, and returned to Madrid.
While Cervantes was in captivity, both Don John and the Duke of Sessa died, depriving him of two potential patrons, while the Spanish economy was in dire straits. This made finding employment difficult; other than a period in 1581 to 1582, when he was employed as an intelligence agent in North Africa, little is known of his movements prior to 1584.
In April of that year, Cervantes visited Esquivias, to help arrange the affairs of his recently deceased friend and minor poet, Pedro Lainez. Here he met Catalina de Salazar y Palacios (), eldest daughter of the widowed Catalina de Palacios; her husband died leaving only debts, but the elder Catalina owned some land of her own. This may be why in December 1584, Cervantes married her daughter, then between 15 and 18 years old. The first use of the name "Cervantes Saavedra" appears in 1586, on documents related to his marriage.
Shortly before this, his illegitimate daughter Isabel was born in November. Her mother, Ana Franca, was the wife of a Madrid inn keeper; they apparently concealed it from her husband, but Cervantes acknowledged paternity. When Ana Franca died in 1598, he asked his sister Magdalena to take care of her.
In 1587, Cervantes was appointed as a government purchasing agent, then became a tax collector in 1592. They were also subject to price fluctuations, which could go either way; he was briefly jailed several times for 'irregularities', but quickly released. Several applications for positions in Spanish America were rejected, although modern critics note images of the colonies appear in his work.
From 1596 to 1600, he lived primarily in Seville, then returned to Madrid in 1606, where he remained for the rest of his life. In later years, he received some financial support from the Count of Lemos, although he was excluded from the retinue Lemos took to Naples when appointed Viceroy in 1608. In July 1613, he joined the Third Order Franciscan, then a common way for Catholics to gain spiritual merit. It is generally accepted Cervantes died on 16 April 1616; the symptoms described, including intense thirst, correspond to diabetes, then untreatable.
In accordance with his will, Cervantes was buried in the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians, in central Madrid. His remains went missing when moved during rebuilding work at the convent in 1673, and in 2014, historian Fernando de Prado launched a project to rediscover them.
In January 2015, Francisco Etxeberria, the forensic anthropologist leading the search, reported the discovery of caskets containing bone fragments, and part of a board, with the letters 'M.C.'. Based on evidence of injuries suffered at Lepanto, on 17 March 2015 they were confirmed as belonging to Cervantes along with his wife and others. They were formally reburied at a public ceremony in June 2015.
Cervantes claims to have written over 20 plays, of which only two survive, "El trato de Argel", based on his experiences in captivity, and "El cerco de Numancia". Such works were extremely short-lived, and even Lope de Vega, the best-known playwright of the day, could not live on their proceeds. In 1585, he published "La Galatea", a conventional Pastoral romance that received little contemporary notice; despite promising to write a sequel, he never did so.
Aside from these, and some poems, by 1605, Cervantes had not been published for 20 years. In "Don Quixote", he challenged a form of literature that had been a favourite for more than a century, explicitly stating his purpose was to undermine 'vain and empty' chivalric romances. His portrayal of real life, and use of everyday speech in a literary context was considered innovative, and proved instantly popular. First published in January 1605, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza featured in masquerades held to celebrate the birth of Philip IV on 8 April.
He finally achieved a degree of financial security, while its popularity led to demands for a sequel. In the foreword to his 1613 work, "Novelas ejemplares", dedicated to his patron, the Count of Lemos, Cervantes promises to produce one, but was pre-empted by an unauthorised version published in 1614, published under the name Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. It is possible this delay was deliberate, to ensure support from his publisher and reading public; Cervantes finally produced the second part of "Don Quixote" in 1615.
The two parts of "Don Quixote" are different in focus, but similar in their clarity of prose, and realism; the first was more comic, and had greater popular appeal. The second part is often considered more sophisticated and complex, with a greater depth of characterisation and philosophical insight.
In addition to this, he produced a series of works between 1613 and his death in 1616. They include a collection of tales titled "Exemplary Novels", similar in style to picaresque novels written by Lazarillo de Tormes. This was followed by "Viaje del Parnaso", or "Eight Comedies and Eight New Interludes", and "Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda", completed just before his death, and published posthumously in January 1617.
He was rediscovered by English writers in the mid-18th century; literary editor John Bowle argued Cervantes was as significant as any of the Greek and Roman authors then popular, and published an annotated edition in 1781. Now viewed as a significant work, at the time it proved a failure. However, "Don Quixote" has been translated into all major languages, in 700 editions. Mexican author Carlos Fuentes suggested Cervantes and his contemporary William Shakespeare form part of a narrative tradition, which includes Homer, Dante, Defoe, Dickens, Balzac, and Joyce.
Sigmund Freud claimed he learnt Spanish to read Cervantes in the original; he particularly admired "The Dialogue of the Dogs" ("El coloquio de los perros"), from "Exemplary Tales". Two dogs, Cipión and Berganza, share their stories; as one talks, the other listens, occasionally making comments. From 1871 to 1881, Freud and his close friend, Eduard Silberstein, wrote letters to each other, using the pennames Cipión and Berganza.
The tricentennial of "Don Quixote" publication in 1905 was marked with celebrations in Spain; the 400th anniversary of his death in 2016, saw the production of "Cervantina", a celebration of his plays by the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico in Madrid. The Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library, the largest digital archive of Spanish-language historical and literary works in the world, is named after the author.
As listed in "Complete Works of Miguel de Cervantes":
Generally considered a mediocre poet, few survive; some appear in "La Galatea", while he also wrote "Dos Canciones à la Armada Invencible".
His sonnets are considered his best work, particularly "Al Túmulo del Rey Felipe en Sevilla", "Canto de Calíope" and "Epístola a Mateo Vázquez". "Viaje del Parnaso", or "Journey to Parnassus", is his most ambitious verse work, an allegory that consists largely of reviews of contemporary poets.
He published 16 dramatic works including eight full-length plays (Spanish links to plays included), only two of which survive;
He also wrote 8 short farces ("entremeses"):
These plays and entremeses made up "Ocho Comedias y ocho entreméses nuevos, nunca representados" ("Eight Comedies and Eight New Interludes, Never Before Performed"), which appeared in 1615. The dates and order of composition of Cervantes' entremeses are unknown. Faithful to the spirit of Lope de Rueda, Cervantes endowed them with novelistic elements, such as simplified plot, the type of descriptions normally associated with a novel, and character development. Cervantes included some of his dramas among the works he was most satisfied with.
"Don Quixote" is the subject of a multitude of works in other fields of art, including ballet, films, television, music and opera. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19444 |
Maimonides
Moses ben Maimon, commonly known as Maimonides ( ) and also referred to by the acronym Rambam (Hebrew: רמב״ם), was a medieval Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages. In his time, he was also a preeminent astronomer and physician. Born in Córdoba, Almoravid empire (present-day Spain) on Passover Eve, 1138, he worked as a rabbi, physician, and philosopher in Morocco and Egypt. He died in Egypt on December 12, 1204, whence his body was taken to the lower Galilee and buried in Tiberias.
During his lifetime, most Jews greeted Maimonides' writings on Jewish law and ethics with acclaim and gratitude, even as far away as Iraq and Yemen. Yet, while Maimonides rose to become the revered head of the Jewish community in Egypt, his writings also had vociferous critics, particularly in Spain. Nonetheless, he was posthumously acknowledged as among the foremost rabbinical decisors and philosophers in Jewish history, and his copious work comprises a cornerstone of Jewish scholarship. His fourteen-volume "Mishneh Torah" still carries significant canonical authority as a codification of Talmudic law. He is sometimes known as "ha'Nesher ha'Gadol" (the great eagle) in recognition of his outstanding status as a "bona fide" exponent of the Oral Torah.
Aside from being revered by Jewish historians, Maimonides also figures very prominently in the history of Islamic and Arab sciences and is mentioned extensively in studies. Influenced by Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and his contemporary Averroes, he became a prominent philosopher and polymath in both the Jewish and Islamic worlds.
His full Hebrew name is Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (), whose acronym forms "Rambam" (). His full Arabic name is (), or () for short. The portion "bin ʿUbaidallāh" should not imply that Maimon's father was named Obadiah, instead "bin ʿUbaidallāh" is treated as Maimonides' surname, as Obadiah was the name of his earliest direct ancestor. In Latin, the Hebrew "ben" (son of) becomes the Greek-style patronymic suffix "-ides", forming "Moses Maimonides".
Maimonides was born 1138 in Córdoba, Andalusia in the Berber Muslim-ruled Almoravid Empire during what some scholars consider to be the end of the golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula, after the first centuries of the Moorish rule. His father Maimon ben Joseph, was a spanish dayyan (Jewish judge), whose family claimed direct paternal descent from Simeon ben Judah ha-Nasi, and thus from the Davidic line. Maimonides later stated that there are 38 generations between him and Judah ha-Nasi. At an early age, Maimonides developed an interest in sciences and philosophy. He read those Greek philosophers accessible in Arabic translations, and was deeply immersed in the sciences and learning of Islamic culture.
Maimonides was not known as a supporter of Kabbalah, although a strong intellectual type of mysticism has been discerned in his philosophy. He expressed disapproval of poetry, the best of which he declared to be false, since it was founded on pure invention. This sage, who was revered for his personality as well as for his writings, led a busy life, and wrote many of his works while travelling or in temporary accommodation. Maimonides studied Torah under his father, who had in turn studied under Rabbi Joseph ibn Migash, a student of Isaac Alfasi.
Another Berber dynasty, the Almohads, conquered Córdoba in 1148 and abolished "dhimmi" status (i.e., state protection of non-Muslims ensured through payment of a tax, the "jizya") in some of their territories. The loss of this status left the Jewish and Christian communities with conversion to Islam, death, or exile. Many Jews were forced to convert, but due to suspicion by the authorities of fake conversions, the new converts had to wear identifying clothing that set them apart and made them subject to public scrutiny.
Maimonides's family, along with most other Jews, chose exile. Some say, though, that it is likely that Maimonides feigned a conversion to Islam before escaping. This forced conversion was ruled legally invalid under Islamic law when brought up by a rival in Egypt. For the next ten years, Maimonides moved about in southern Spain, eventually settling in Fez in Morocco. During this time, he composed his acclaimed commentary on the Mishnah, during the years 1166–1168.
Following this sojourn in Morocco, together with two sons, he sojourned in the Land of Israel before settling in Fustat in Fatimid Caliphate-controlled Egypt around 1168. While in Cairo, he studied in a yeshiva attached to a small synagogue, which now bears his name. In the Land of Israel, he prayed at the Temple Mount. He wrote that this day of visiting the Temple Mount was a day of holiness for him and his descendants.
Maimonides shortly thereafter was instrumental in helping rescue Jews taken captive during the Christian Amalric of Jerusalem's siege of the southeastern Nile Delta town of Bilbeis. He sent five letters to the Jewish communities of Lower Egypt asking them to pool money together to pay the ransom. The money was collected and then given to two judges sent to Palestine to negotiate with the Crusaders. The captives were eventually released.
Following this triumph, the Maimonides family, hoping to increase their wealth, gave their savings to his brother, the youngest son David ben Maimon, a merchant. Maimonides directed his brother to procure goods only at the Sudanese port of ‘Aydhab. After a long arduous trip through the desert, however, David was unimpressed by the goods on offer there. Against his brother's wishes, David boarded a ship for India, since great wealth was to be found in the East. Before he could reach his destination, David drowned at sea sometime between 1169 and 1177. The death of his brother caused Maimonides to become sick with grief.
In a letter (discovered later in the Cairo Geniza), he wrote:
Around 1171, Maimonides was appointed the "Nagid" of the Egyptian Jewish community. Arabist Shelomo Dov Goitein believes the leadership he displayed during the ransoming of the Crusader captives led to this appointment. However he was replaced by Sar Shalom ben Moses in 1173. Over the controversial course of Sar Shalom's appointment, during which Sar Shalom was accused of tax farming, Maimonides excommunicated and fought with him for several years until Maimonides was appointed Nagid in 1195. A work known as "Megillat Zutta" was written by Abraham ben Hillel, who writes a scathing description of Sar Shalom while praising Maimonides as ""the light of east and west and unique master and marvel of the generation"." With the loss of the family funds tied up in David's business venture, Maimonides assumed the vocation of physician, for which he was to become famous. He had trained in medicine in both Córdoba and in Fez. Gaining widespread recognition, he was appointed court physician to the Grand Vizier al-Qadi al Fadil, then to Sultan Saladin, after whose death he remained a physician to the Ayyubid dynasty.
In his medical writings, Maimonides described many conditions, including asthma, diabetes, hepatitis, and pneumonia, and he emphasized moderation and a healthy lifestyle. His treatises became influential for generations of physicians. He was knowledgeable about Greek and Arabic medicine, and followed the principles of humorism in the tradition of Galen. He did not blindly accept authority but used his own observation and experience. Julia Bess Frank indicates that Maimonides in his medical writings sought to interpret works of authorities so that they could become acceptable. Maimonides displayed in his interactions with patients attributes that today would be called intercultural awareness and respect for the patient's autonomy. Although he frequently wrote of his longing for solitude in order to come closer to God and to extend his reflections – elements considered essential in his philosophy to the prophetic experience -he gave over most of his time to caring for others. In a famous letter, Maimonides describes his daily routine. After visiting the Sultan's palace, he would arrive home exhausted and hungry, where "I would find the antechambers filled with gentiles and Jews … I would go to heal them, and write prescriptions for their illnesses … until the evening … and I would be extremely weak."
As he goes on to say in this letter, even on Shabbat he would receive members of the community. It is remarkable that he managed to write extended treatises, including not only medical and other scientific studies but some of the most systematically thought-through and influential treatises on halakha (rabbinic law) and Jewish philosophy of the Middle Ages.
Joseph Karo later praised Maimonides, writing of him, "Maimonides is the greatest of the decisors [of Jewish law], and all communities of the Land of Israel and of Arabia and of the Maghreb base their practices after him, and have taken him upon themselves as their rabbi."
In 1173/4, Maimonides wrote his famous "Epistle to Yemen". It has been suggested that his "incessant travail" undermined his own health and brought about his death at 69 (although this is a normal lifespan).
Maimonides died on December 12, 1204 (20th of Tevet 4965) in Fustat. It is widely believed that he was briefly buried in the beth midrash of the synagogue courtyard, and that, soon after, in accordance with his wishes, his remains were exhumed and taken to Tiberias, where he was reinterred. The Tomb of Maimonides on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee in Israel marks his grave. This location for his final resting-place has been debated, for in the Jewish Cairene community, a tradition holds that he remained buried in Egypt.
Maimonides and his wife, the daughter of Mishael ben Yeshayahu Halevi, had one child who survived into adulthood, Abraham Maimonides, who became recognized as a great scholar. He succeeded Maimonides as Nagid and as court physician at the age of eighteen. Throughout his career, he defended his father's writings against all critics. The office of Nagid was held by the Maimonides family for four successive generations until the end of the 14th century.
Maimonides is widely respected in Spain, and a statue of him was erected near the Córdoba Synagogue.
Maimonides is sometimes said to be a descendant of King David, although he never made such a claim.
In his commentary on the Mishnah (tractate Sanhedrin, chapter 10), Maimonides formulates his "13 principles of faith". They summarized what he viewed as the required beliefs of Judaism:
Maimonides compiled the principles from various Talmudic sources. These principles were controversial when first proposed, evoking criticism by Rabbis Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo, and were effectively ignored by much of the Jewish community for the next few centuries. However, these principles have become widely held and are considered to be the cardinal principals of faith for Orthodox Jews. Two poetic restatements of these principles ("Ani Ma'amin" and "Yigdal") eventually became canonized in many editions of the "Siddur" (Jewish prayer book). Maimonides famously omitted any mention of these "Principles of Faith" from his later works, the Mishneh Torah and The Guide for the Perplexed, leading some to suggest that either he retracted his earlier position, or that these principles are descriptive rather than prescriptive.
With "Mishneh Torah", Maimonides composed a code of Jewish law with the widest-possible scope and depth. The work gathers all the binding laws from the Talmud, and incorporates the positions of the Geonim (post-Talmudic early Medieval scholars, mainly from Mesopotamia).
Later codes of Jewish law, e.g. Arba'ah Turim by Rabbi Jacob ben Asher and Shulchan Aruch by Rabbi Yosef Karo, draw heavily on "Mishneh Torah": both often quote whole sections verbatim. However, it met initially with much opposition. There were two main reasons for this opposition. First, Maimonides had refrained from adding references to his work for the sake of brevity; second, in the introduction, he gave the impression of wanting to "cut out" study of the Talmud, to arrive at a conclusion in Jewish law, although Maimonides later wrote that this was not his intent. His most forceful opponents were the rabbis of Provence (Southern France), and a running critique by Rabbi Abraham ben David (Raavad III) is printed in virtually all editions of "Mishneh Torah". It was still recognized as a monumental contribution to the systemized writing of halakha. Throughout the centuries, it has been widely studied and its halakhic decisions have weighed heavily in later rulings.
In response to those who would attempt to force followers of Maimonides and his "Mishneh Torah" to abide by the rulings of his own Shulchan Aruch or other later works, Rabbi Yosef Karo wrote: "Who would dare force communities who follow the Rambam to follow any other decisor, early or late? … The Rambam is the greatest of the decisors, and all the communities of the Land of Israel and the Arabistan and the Maghreb practice according to his word, and accepted him as their rabbi."
An oft-cited legal maxim from his pen is: "It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death." He argued that executing a defendant on anything less than absolute certainty would lead to a slippery slope of decreasing burdens of proof, until we would be convicting merely according to the judge's caprice.
Scholars specializing in the study of the history and subculture of Judaism in premodern China (Sino-Judaica) have noted surprising similarities between this work and the liturgy of the Kaifeng Jews, descendants of Persian merchants who settled in the Middle Kingdom during the early Song dynasty. Beyond scriptural similarities, Michael Pollak comments the Jews' Pentateuch was divided into 53 sections according to the Persian style. He also points out:
One of the most widely referred to sections of the "Mishneh Torah" is the section dealing with tzedakah. In Hilkhot Matanot Aniyim (Laws about Giving to Poor People), Chapter 10:7–14, Maimonides lists his famous Eight Levels of Giving (where the first level is most preferable, and the eighth the least):
Through "The Guide for the Perplexed" (which was initially written in Arabic as "Dalālat al-ḥāʾirīn") and the philosophical introductions to sections of his commentaries on the Mishna, Maimonides exerted an important influence on the Scholastic philosophers, especially on Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. He was a Jewish Scholastic. Educated more by reading the works of Arab Muslim philosophers than by personal contact with Arabian teachers, he acquired an intimate acquaintance not only with Arab Muslim philosophy, but with the doctrines of Aristotle. Maimonides strove to reconcile Aristotelianism and science with the teachings of the Torah. In his "Guide for the Perplexed", he often explains the function and purpose of the statutory provisions contained in the Torah against the backdrop of the historical conditions. Maimonides is said to have been influenced by Asaph the Jew, who was the first Hebrew medical writer.
Maimonides equated the God of Abraham to what philosophers refer to as the Necessary Being. God is unique in the universe, and the Torah commands that one love and fear God (Deut 10:12) on account of that uniqueness. To Maimonides, this meant that one ought to contemplate God's works and to marvel at the order and wisdom that went into their creation. When one does this, one inevitably comes to love God and to sense how insignificant one is in comparison to God. This is the basis of the Torah.
The principle that inspired his philosophical activity was identical to a fundamental tenet of scholasticism: there can be no contradiction between the truths which God has revealed and the findings of the human mind in science and philosophy. Maimonides primarily relied upon the science of Aristotle and the teachings of the Talmud, commonly finding basis in the former for the latter.
Maimonides' admiration for the Neoplatonic commentators led him to doctrines which the later Scholastics did not accept. For instance, Maimonides was an adherent of apophatic theology. In this theology, one attempts to describe God through negative attributes. For instance, one should not say that God exists in the usual sense of the term; it can be said that God is not non-existent. We should not say that "God is wise"; but we can say that "God is not ignorant," i.e., in some way, God has some properties of knowledge. We should not say that "God is One," but we can state that "there is no multiplicity in God's being." In brief, the attempt is to gain and express knowledge of God by describing what God is not, rather than by describing what God "is."
Maimonides argued adamantly that God is not corporeal. This was central to his thinking about the sin of idolatry. Maimonides insisted that all of the anthropomorphic phrases pertaining to God in sacred texts are to be interpreted metaphorically.
Maimonides taught about the developing of one's moral character. Although his life predated the modern concept of a personality, Maimonides believed that each person has an innate disposition along an ethical and emotional spectrum. Although one's disposition is often determined by factors outside of one's control, human beings have free will to choose to behave in ways that build character. He wrote, "One is obligated to conduct his affairs with others in a gentle and pleasing manner." Maimonides advised those with anti-social character traits ought to identify those traits and then make a conscious effort to behave in the opposite way. For example, an arrogant person should practice humility. If the circumstances of one's environment are such that it is impossible to behave ethically, one must move to a new location.
He agrees with "the Philosopher" (Aristotle) in teaching that the use of logic is the "right" way of thinking. In order to build an inner understanding of how to know God, every human being must, by study, meditation and uncompromising strong will, attain the degree of complete logical, spiritual and physical perfection required in the prophetic state. Here he rejects previous ideas (especially portrayed by Rabbi Yehuda Halevi in "Hakuzari") that in order to become a prophet, God must intervene. Maimonides claims that any man or woman has the potential to become a prophet (not just Jews) and that in fact it is the purpose of the human race.
Maimonides wrote on theodicy (the philosophical attempt to reconcile the existence of a God with the existence of evil). He took the premise that an omnipotent and good God exists. In "The Guide for the Perplexed", Maimonides writes that all the evil that exists within human beings stems from their individual attributes, while all good comes from a universally shared humanity (Guide 3:8). He says that there are people who are guided by higher purpose, and there are those who are guided by physicality and must strive to find the higher purpose with which to guide their actions.
To justify the existence of evil, assuming God is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent, Maimonides postulates that one who created something by causing its opposite not to exist is not the same as creating something that exists; so evil is merely the absence of good. God did not create evil, rather God created good, and evil exists where good is absent (Guide 3:10). Therefore, all good is divine invention, and evil both is not and comes secondarily.
Maimonides contests the common view that evil outweighs good in the world. He says that if one were to examine existence only in terms of humanity, then that person may observe evil to dominate good, but if one looks at the whole of the universe, then he sees good is significantly more common than evil (Guide 3:12). Man, he reasons, is too insignificant a figure in God's myriad works to be their primary characterizing force, and so when people see mostly evil in their lives, they are not taking into account the extent of positive Creation outside of themselves.
Maimonides believes that there are three types of evil in the world: evil caused by nature, evil that people bring upon others, and evil man brings upon himself (Guide 3:12). The first type of evil Maimonides states is the rarest form, but arguably of the most necessary—the balance of life and death in both the human and animal worlds itself, he recognizes, is essential to God's plan. Maimonides writes that the second type of evil is relatively rare, and that humanity brings it upon itself. The third type of evil humans bring upon themselves and is the source of most of the ills of the world. These are the result of people falling victim to their physical desires. To prevent the majority of evil which stems from harm we do to ourselves, we must learn how to ignore our bodily urges.
Maimonides answered an inquiry concerning astrology, addressed to him from Marseille. He responded that man should believe only what can be supported either by rational proof, by the evidence of the senses, or by trustworthy authority. He affirms that he had studied astrology, and that it does not deserve to be described as a science. He ridicules the concept that the fate of a man could be dependent upon the constellations; he argues that such a theory would rob life of purpose, and would make man a slave of destiny.
In "The Guide for the Perplexed" Book III, Chapter 28, Maimonides draws a distinction between "true beliefs," which were beliefs about God that produced intellectual perfection, and "necessary beliefs," which were conducive to improving social order. Maimonides places anthropomorphic personification statements about God in the latter class. He uses as an example the notion that God becomes "angry" with people who do wrong. In the view of Maimonides (taken from Avicenna), God does not become angry with people, as God has no human passions; but it is important for them to believe God does, so that they desist from doing wrong.
Maimonides distinguishes two kinds of intelligence in man, the one material in the sense of being dependent on, and influenced by, the body, and the other immaterial, that is, independent of the bodily organism. The latter is a direct emanation from the universal active intellect; this is his interpretation of the "noûs poietikós" of Aristotelian philosophy. It is acquired as the result of the efforts of the soul to attain a correct knowledge of the absolute, pure intelligence of God.
The knowledge of God is a form of knowledge which develops in us the immaterial intelligence, and thus confers on man an immaterial, spiritual nature. This confers on the soul that perfection in which human happiness consists, and endows the soul with immortality. One who has attained a correct knowledge of God has reached a condition of existence, which renders him immune from all the accidents of fortune, from all the allurements of sin, and from death itself. Man is in a position to work out his own salvation and his immortality.
Spinoza's doctrine of immortality was strikingly similar. But Spinoza teaches that the way to attain the knowledge which confers immortality is the progress from sense-knowledge through scientific knowledge to philosophical intuition of all things "sub specie æternitatis", while Maimonides holds that the road to perfection and immortality is the path of duty as described in the Torah and the rabbinic understanding of the oral law.
Perhaps one of Maimonides's most highly acclaimed and renowned writings is his treatise on the Messianic era, written originally in Judeo-Arabic and which he elaborates on in great detail in his Commentary on the Mishnah (Introduction to the 10th chapter of tractate Sanhedrin, also known as "Pereḳ Ḥeleḳ"). (Open window for text)
Religious Jews believed in immortality in a spiritual sense, and most believed that the future would include a messianic era and a resurrection of the dead. This is the subject of Jewish eschatology. Maimonides wrote much on this topic, but in most cases he wrote about the immortality of the soul for people of perfected intellect; his writings were usually "not" about the resurrection of dead bodies. Rabbis of his day were critical of this aspect of this thought, and there was controversy over his true views.
Eventually, Maimonides felt pressured to write a treatise on the subject, known as "The Treatise on Resurrection." In it, he wrote that those who claimed that he believed the verses of the Hebrew Bible referring to the resurrection were only allegorical were spreading falsehoods. Maimonides asserts that belief in resurrection is a fundamental truth of Judaism about which there is no disagreement.
While his position on the World to Come (non-corporeal eternal life as described above) may be seen as being in contradiction with his position on bodily resurrection, Maimonides resolved them with a then unique solution: Maimonides believed that the resurrection was not permanent or general. In his view, God never violates the laws of nature. Rather, divine interaction is by way of angels, whom Maimonides often regards to be metaphors for the laws of nature, the principles by which the physical universe operates, or Platonic eternal forms. [This is not always the case. In Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah Chaps. 2–4, Maimonides describes angels that are actually created beings.] Thus, if a unique event actually occurs, even if it is perceived as a miracle, it is not a violation of the world's order.
In this view, any dead who are resurrected must eventually die again. In his discussion of the 13 principles of faith, the first five deal with knowledge of God, the next four deal with prophecy and the Torah, while the last four deal with reward, punishment and the ultimate redemption. In this discussion Maimonides says nothing of a universal resurrection. All he says it is that whatever resurrection does take place, it will occur at an indeterminate time before the world to come, which he repeatedly states will be purely spiritual.
In "The Guide for the Perplexed", Maimonides declares his intention to conceal from the average reader his explanations of "Sod" esoteric meanings of Torah. The nature of these "secrets" is debated. Religious Jewish rationalists, and the mainstream academic view, read Maimonides' Aristotelianism as a mutually-exclusive alternative metaphysics to Kabbalah. Some academics hold that Maimonides' project fought against the Proto-Kabbalah of his time. However, many Kabbalists and their heirs read Maimonides according to Kabbalah or as an actual covert subscriber to Kabbalah, due to the similarities between the Kabbalistic approach and Maimonides' approach toward interpreting the Bible with metaphor, Maimonides' understanding of God through attributes of action, thought and negative attributes, Maimonides' description of the roles of the imagination and intellect in life, sin, and prophesy, Maimonides' assertion that the commandments have a function that can be understood, Maimonides' description of a 3-tiered cosmic order whereby God's will is implemented through a system of angels. According to this, he employed rationalism to defend Judaism rather than limit inquiry of "Sod" only to rationalism. His rationalism, if not taken as an opposition, also assisted the Kabbalists, purifying their transmitted teaching from mistaken corporeal interpretations that could have been made from Hekhalot literature, though Kabbalists held that their theosophy alone allowed human access to Divine mysteries.
The "Oath of Maimonides" is a document about the medical calling and recited as a substitute for the "Hippocratic Oath". It is not to be confused with a more lengthy "Prayer of Maimonides". These documents may not have been written by Maimonides, but later. The "Prayer" appeared first in print in 1793 and has been attributed to Markus Herz, a German physician, pupil of Immanuel Kant.
In "The Guide for the Perplexed", Maimonides proposes that two important purposes of circumcision ("brit milah") are to temper sexual desire and to join in an affirmation of faith and the covenant of Abraham:
Maimonides' "Mishneh Torah" is considered by Jews even today as one of the chief authoritative codifications of Jewish law and ethics. It is exceptional for its logical construction, concise and clear expression and extraordinary learning, so that it became a standard against which other later codifications were often measured. It is still closely studied in rabbinic yeshivot (academies). A popular medieval saying that also served as his epitaph states, "From Mosheh (of the Torah) to Mosheh (Maimonides) there was none like Mosheh." It chiefly referred to his rabbinic writings.
But Maimonides was also one of the most influential figures in medieval Jewish philosophy. His brilliant adaptation of Aristotelian thought to Biblical faith deeply impressed later Jewish thinkers, and had an unexpected immediate historical impact. Some more acculturated Jews in the century that followed his death, particularly in Spain, sought to apply Maimonides's Aristotelianism in ways that undercut traditionalist belief and observance, giving rise to an intellectual controversy in Spanish and southern French Jewish circles. The intensity of debate spurred Catholic Church interventions against "heresy" and a general confiscation of rabbinic texts. In reaction, the more radical interpretations of Maimonides were defeated. At least amongst Ashkenazi Jews, there was a tendency to ignore his specifically philosophical writings and to stress instead the rabbinic and halakhic writings. These writings often included considerable philosophical chapters or discussions in support of halakhic observance; David Hartman observes that Maimonides clearly expressed "the traditional support for a philosophical understanding of God both in the Aggadah of Talmud and in the behavior of the hasid [the pious Jew]." Maimonidean thought continues to influence traditionally observant Jews.
The most rigorous medieval critique of Maimonides is Hasdai Crescas's "Or Adonai". Crescas bucked the eclectic trend, by demolishing the certainty of the Aristotelian world-view, not only in religious matters but also in the most basic areas of medieval science (such as physics and geometry). Crescas's critique provoked a number of 15th-century scholars to write defenses of Maimonides. A partial translation of Crescas was produced by Harry Austryn Wolfson of Harvard University in 1929.
Because of his path-finding synthesis of Aristotle and Biblical faith, Maimonides had a fundamental influence on the great Christian theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas refers specifically to Maimonides in several of his works, including the "Commentary on the Sentences".
Maimonides's combined abilities in the fields of theology, philosophy and medicine make his work attractive today as a source during discussions of evolving norms in these fields, particularly medicine. An example is the modern citation of his method of determining death of the body in the controversy regarding declaration of death to permit organ donation for transplantation.
Maimonides remains one of the most widely debated Jewish thinkers among modern scholars. He has been adopted as a symbol and an intellectual hero by almost all major movements in modern Judaism, and has proven important to philosophers such as Leo Strauss; and his views on the importance of humility have been taken up by modern humanist philosophers.
In academia, particularly within the area of Jewish Studies, the teaching of Maimonides has been dominated by traditional scholars, generally Orthodox, who place a very strong emphasis on Maimonides as a rationalist; one result is that certain sides of Maimonides's thought, including his opposition to anthropocentrism, have been obviated. There are movements in some postmodern circles to claim Maimonides for other purposes, as within the discourse of ecotheology. Maimonides's reconciliation of the philosophical and the traditional has given his legacy an extremely diverse and dynamic quality.
Maimonides has been memorialized in numerous ways. For example, one of the Learning Communities at the Tufts University School of Medicine bears his name. There is also Maimonides School in Brookline, Massachusetts, Maimonides Academy School in Los Angeles, California, Lycée Maïmonide in Casablanca, the Brauser Maimonides Academy in Hollywood, Florida, and Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York.
In 2004, conferences were held at Yale, Florida International University, Penn State, and the Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Israel, which is named after him. To commemorate the 800th anniversary of his death, Harvard University issued a memorial volume. In 1953, the Israel Postal Authority issued a postage stamp of Maimonides, pictured.
In March 2008, during the Euromed Conference of Ministers of Tourism, The Tourism Ministries of Israel, Morocco and Spain agreed to work together on a joint project that will trace the footsteps of the Rambam and thus boost religious tourism in the cities of Córdoba, Fes and Tiberias.
Between December 2018 and January 2019 the Israel Museum held a special exhibit dedicated to the writings of Maimonides.
Maimonides composed works of Jewish scholarship, rabbinic law, philosophy, and medical texts. Most of Maimonides's works were written in Judeo-Arabic. However, the "Mishneh Torah" was written in Hebrew. His Jewish texts were:
Maimonides wrote ten known medical works in Arabic that have been translated by the Jewish medical ethicist Fred Rosner into contemporary English.
The "Treatise on Logic" (Arabic: "Maqala Fi-Sinat Al-Mantiq") has been printed 17 times, including editions in Latin (1527), German (1805, 1822, 1833, 1828), French (1935), and English (1938), and in an abridged Hebrew form. The work illustrates the essentials of Aristotelian logic to be found in the teachings of the great Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna and, above all, Al-Farabi, "the Second Master," the "First Master" being Aristotle. In his work devoted to the Treatise, Rémi Brague stresses the fact that Al-Farabi is the only philosopher mentioned therein. This indicates a line of conduct for the reader, who must read the text keeping in mind Al-Farabi's works on logic. In the Hebrew versions, the Treatise is called "The words of Logic" which describes the bulk of the work. The author explains the technical meaning of the words used by logicians. The Treatise duly inventories the terms used by the logician and indicates what they refer to. The work proceeds rationally through a lexicon of philosophical terms to a summary of higher philosophical topics, in 14 chapters corresponding to Maimonides's birthdate of 14 Nissan. The number 14 recurs in many of Maimonides's works. Each chapter offers a cluster of associated notions. The meaning of the words is explained and illustrated with examples. At the end of each chapter, the author carefully draws up the list of words studied.
Until very recently, it was accepted that Maimonides wrote the "Treatise on logic" in his twenties or even in his teen years. Herbert Davidson has raised questions about Maimonides's authorship of this short work (and of other short works traditionally attributed to Maimonides). He maintains that Maimonides was not the author at all, based on a report of two Arabic-language manuscripts, unavailable to Western investigators in Asia Minor. Rabbi Yosef Kafih maintained that it is by Maimonides and newly translated it to Hebrew (as "Beiur M'lekhet HaHiggayon") from the Judeo-Arabic. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19445 |
Magnetic resonance imaging
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to form pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes of the body. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and radio waves to generate images of the organs in the body. MRI does not involve X-rays or the use of ionizing radiation, which distinguishes it from CT and PET scans. MRI is a medical application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). NMR can also be used for "imaging" in other NMR applications, such as NMR spectroscopy.
While the hazards of ionizing radiation are now well controlled in most medical contexts, an MRI may still be seen as a better choice than a CT scan. MRI is widely used in hospitals and clinics for medical diagnosis and staging and follow-up of disease without exposing the body to radiation. An MRI may yield different information compared with CT. Risks and discomfort may be associated with MRI scans. Compared with CT scans, MRI scans typically take longer and are louder, and they usually need the subject to enter a narrow, confining tube. In addition, people with some medical implants or other non-removable metal inside the body may be unable to undergo an MRI examination safely.
MRI was originally called NMRI (nuclear magnetic resonance imaging), but "nuclear" was dropped to avoid negative associations. Certain atomic nuclei are able to absorb radio frequency energy when placed in an external magnetic field; the resultant evolving spin polarization can induce an RF signal in a radio frequency coil and thereby be detected. In clinical and research MRI, hydrogen atoms are most often used to generate a macroscopic polarization that is detected by antennas close to the subject being examined. Hydrogen atoms are naturally abundant in humans and other biological organisms, particularly in water and fat. For this reason, most MRI scans essentially map the location of water and fat in the body. Pulses of radio waves excite the nuclear spin energy transition, and magnetic field gradients localize the polarization in space. By varying the parameters of the pulse sequence, different contrasts may be generated between tissues based on the relaxation properties of the hydrogen atoms therein.
Since its development in the 1970s and 1980s, MRI has proven to be a versatile imaging technique. While MRI is most prominently used in diagnostic medicine and biomedical research, it also may be used to form images of non-living objects. MRI scans are capable of producing a variety of chemical and physical data, in addition to detailed spatial images. The sustained increase in demand for MRI within health systems has led to concerns about cost effectiveness and overdiagnosis.
In most medical applications, hydrogen nuclei, which consist solely of a proton, that are in tissues create a signal that is processed to form an image of the body in terms of the density of those nuclei in a specific region. Given that the protons are affected by fields from other atoms to which they are bonded, it is possible to separate responses from hydrogen in specific compounds.
To perform a study, the person is positioned within an MRI scanner that forms a strong magnetic field around the area to be imaged. First, energy from an oscillating magnetic field is temporarily applied to the patient at the appropriate resonance frequency. Scanning with X and Y gradient coils cause a selected region of the patient to experience the exact magnetic field required for the energy to be absorbed. The excited atoms emit a radio frequency (RF) signal, which is measured by a receiving coil. The RF signal may be processed to deduce position information by looking at the changes in RF level and phase caused by varying the local magnetic field using gradient coils. As these coils are rapidly switched during the excitation and response to perform a moving line scan, they create the characteristic repetitive noise of an MRI scan as the windings move slightly due to magnetostriction. The contrast between different tissues is determined by the rate at which excited atoms return to the equilibrium state. Exogenous contrast agents may be given to the person to make the image clearer.
The major components of an MRI scanner are the main magnet, which polarizes the sample, the shim coils for correcting shifts in the homogeneity of the main magnetic field, the gradient system which is used to localize the region to be scanned and the RF system, which excites the sample and detects the resulting NMR signal. The whole system is controlled by one or more computers.
MRI requires a magnetic field that is both strong and uniform to a few parts per million across the scan volume. The field strength of the magnet is measured in teslas – and while the majority of systems operate at 1.5 T, commercial systems are available between 0.2 and 7 T. Most clinical magnets are superconducting magnets, which require liquid helium to keep them very cold. Lower field strengths can be achieved with permanent magnets, which are often used in "open" MRI scanners for claustrophobic patients. Lower field strengths are also used in a portable MRI scanner approved by the FDA in 2020. Recently, MRI has been demonstrated also at ultra-low fields, i.e., in the microtesla-to-millitesla range, where sufficient signal quality is made possible by prepolarization (on the order of 10–100 mT) and by measuring the Larmor precession fields at about 100 microtesla with highly sensitive superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs).
Each tissue returns to its equilibrium state after excitation by the independent relaxation processes of T1 (spin-lattice; that is, magnetization in the same direction as the static magnetic field) and T2 (spin-spin; transverse to the static magnetic field).
To create a T1-weighted image, magnetization is allowed to recover before measuring the MR signal by changing the repetition time (TR). This image weighting is useful for assessing the cerebral cortex, identifying fatty tissue, characterizing focal liver lesions, and in general, obtaining morphological information, as well as for post-contrast imaging.
To create a T2-weighted image, magnetization is allowed to decay before measuring the MR signal by changing the echo time (TE). This image weighting is useful for detecting edema and inflammation, revealing white matter lesions, and assessing zonal anatomy in the prostate and uterus.
The standard display of MRI images is to represent fluid characteristics in black and white images, where different tissues turn out as follows:
MRI has a wide range of applications in medical diagnosis and more than 25,000 scanners are estimated to be in use worldwide. MRI affects diagnosis and treatment in many specialties although the effect on improved health outcomes is disputed in certain cases.
MRI is the investigation of choice in the preoperative staging of rectal and prostate cancer and has a role in the diagnosis, staging, and follow-up of other tumors, as well as for determining areas of tissue for sampling in biobanking.
MRI is the investigative tool of choice for neurological cancers over CT, as it offers better visualization of the posterior cranial fossa, containing the brainstem and the cerebellum. The contrast provided between grey and white matter makes MRI the best choice for many conditions of the central nervous system, including demyelinating diseases, dementia, cerebrovascular disease, infectious diseases, Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy. Since many images are taken milliseconds apart, it shows how the brain responds to different stimuli, enabling researchers to study both the functional and structural brain abnormalities in psychological disorders. MRI also is used in guided stereotactic surgery and radiosurgery for treatment of intracranial tumors, arteriovenous malformations, and other surgically treatable conditions using a device known as the N-localizer.
Cardiac MRI is complementary to other imaging techniques, such as echocardiography, cardiac CT, and nuclear medicine. It can be used to assess the structure and the function of the heart. Its applications include assessment of myocardial ischemia and viability, cardiomyopathies, myocarditis, iron overload, vascular diseases, and congenital heart disease.
Applications in the musculoskeletal system include spinal imaging, assessment of joint disease, and soft tissue tumors. Also, MRI techniques can be used for diagnostic imaging of
systemic muscle diseases.
Hepatobiliary MR is used to detect and characterize lesions of the liver, pancreas, and bile ducts. Focal or diffuse disorders of the liver may be evaluated using diffusion-weighted, opposed-phase imaging and dynamic contrast enhancement sequences. Extracellular contrast agents are used widely in liver MRI, and newer hepatobiliary contrast agents also provide the opportunity to perform functional biliary imaging. Anatomical imaging of the bile ducts is achieved by using a heavily T2-weighted sequence in magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP). Functional imaging of the pancreas is performed following administration of secretin. MR enterography provides non-invasive assessment of inflammatory bowel disease and small bowel tumors. MR-colonography may play a role in the detection of large polyps in patients at increased risk of colorectal cancer.
Magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) generates pictures of the arteries to evaluate them for stenosis (abnormal narrowing) or aneurysms (vessel wall dilatations, at risk of rupture). MRA is often used to evaluate the arteries of the neck and brain, the thoracic and abdominal aorta, the renal arteries, and the legs (called a "run-off"). A variety of techniques can be used to generate the pictures, such as administration of a paramagnetic contrast agent (gadolinium) or using a technique known as "flow-related enhancement" (e.g., 2D and 3D time-of-flight sequences), where most of the signal on an image is due to blood that recently moved into that plane (see also FLASH MRI).
Techniques involving phase accumulation (known as phase contrast angiography) can also be used to generate flow velocity maps easily and accurately. Magnetic resonance venography (MRV) is a similar procedure that is used to image veins. In this method, the tissue is now excited inferiorly, while the signal is gathered in the plane immediately superior to the excitation plane—thus imaging the venous blood that recently moved from the excited plane.
MRI for imaging anatomical structures or blood flow do not require contrast agents since the varying properties of the tissues or blood provide natural contrasts. However, for more specific types of imaging, exogenous contrast agents may be given intravenously, orally, or intra-articularly. The most commonly used intravenous contrast agents are based on chelates of gadolinium. In general, these agents have proved safer than the iodinated contrast agents used in X-ray radiography or CT. Anaphylactoid reactions are rare, occurring in approx. 0.03–0.1%. Of particular interest is the lower incidence of nephrotoxicity, compared with iodinated agents, when given at usual doses—this has made contrast-enhanced MRI scanning an option for patients with renal impairment, who would otherwise not be able to undergo contrast-enhanced CT.
In December 2017, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States announced in a drug safety communication that new warnings were to be included on all gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs). The FDA also called for increased patient education and requiring gadolinium contrast vendors to conduct additional animal and clinical studies to assess the safety of these agents.
Although gadolinium agents have proved useful for patients with kidney impairment, in patients with severe kidney failure requiring dialysis there is a risk of a rare but serious illness, nephrogenic systemic fibrosis, which may be linked to the use of certain gadolinium-containing agents. The most frequently linked is gadodiamide, but other agents have been linked too. Although a causal link has not been definitively established, current guidelines in the United States are that dialysis patients should only receive gadolinium agents where essential and that dialysis should be performed as soon as possible after the scan to remove the agent from the body promptly.
In Europe, where more gadolinium-containing agents are available, a classification of agents according to potential risks has been released. In 2008, a new contrast agent named gadoxetate, brand name Eovist (US) or Primovist (EU), was approved for diagnostic use: This has the theoretical benefit of a dual excretion path.
An MRI sequence is a particular setting of radiofrequency pulses and gradients, resulting in a particular image appearance. The T1 and T2 weighting can also be described as MRI sequences.
Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) is used to measure the levels of different metabolites in body tissues, which can be achieved through a variety of single voxel or imaging-based techniques. The MR signal produces a spectrum of resonances that corresponds to different molecular arrangements of the isotope being "excited". This signature is used to diagnose certain metabolic disorders, especially those affecting the brain, and to provide information on tumor metabolism.
Magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) combines both spectroscopic and imaging methods to produce spatially localized spectra from within the sample or patient. The spatial resolution is much lower (limited by the available SNR), but the spectra in each voxel contains information about many metabolites. Because the available signal is used to encode spatial and spectral information, MRSI requires high SNR achievable only at higher field strengths (3 T and above). The high procurement and maintenance costs of MRI with extremely high field strengths inhibit their popularity. However, recent compressed sensing-based software algorithms ("e.g.", SAMV) have been proposed to achieve super-resolution without requiring such high field strengths.
Real-time MRI refers to the continuous imaging of moving objects (such as the heart) in real time. One of the many different strategies developed since the early 2000s is based on radial FLASH MRI, and iterative reconstruction. This gives a temporal resolution of 20–30 ms for images with an in-plane resolution of 1.5–2.0 mm. Balanced steady-state free precession (bSSFP) imaging has a better image contrast between the blood pool and myocardium than the FLASH MRI, yet it will produce severe banding artifact when the B0 inhomogeneity is strong. Real-time MRI is likely to add important information on diseases of the heart and the joints, and in many cases may make MRI examinations easier and more comfortable for patients, especially for the patients who cannot hold their breathings or who have arrhythmia.
The lack of harmful effects on the patient and the operator make MRI well-suited for interventional radiology, where the images produced by an MRI scanner guide minimally invasive procedures. Such procedures use no ferromagnetic instruments.
A specialized growing subset of interventional MRI is intraoperative MRI, in which an MRI is used in surgery. Some specialized MRI systems allow imaging concurrent with the surgical procedure. More typically, the surgical procedure is temporarily interrupted so that MRI can assess the success of the procedure or guide subsequent surgical work.
In guided therapy, high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) beams are focused on a tissue, that are controlled using MR thermal imaging. Due to the high energy at the focus, the temperature rises to above 65 °C (150 °F) which completely destroys the tissue. This technology can achieve precise ablation of diseased tissue. MR imaging provides a three-dimensional view of the target tissue, allowing for the precise focusing of ultrasound energy. The MR imaging provides quantitative, real-time, thermal images of the treated area. This allows the physician to ensure that the temperature generated during each cycle of ultrasound energy is sufficient to cause thermal ablation within the desired tissue and if not, to adapt the parameters to ensure effective treatment.
Hydrogen has the most frequently imaged nucleus in MRI because it is present in biological tissues in great abundance, and because its high gyromagnetic ratio gives a strong signal. However, any nucleus with a net nuclear spin could potentially be imaged with MRI. Such nuclei include helium-3, lithium-7, carbon-13, fluorine-19, oxygen-17, sodium-23, phosphorus-31 and xenon-129. 23Na and 31P are naturally abundant in the body, so they can be imaged directly. Gaseous isotopes such as 3He or 129Xe must be hyperpolarized and then inhaled as their nuclear density is too low to yield a useful signal under normal conditions. 17O and 19F can be administered in sufficient quantities in liquid form (e.g. 17O-water) that hyperpolarization is not a necessity. Using helium or xenon has the advantage of reduced background noise, and therefore increased contrast for the image itself, because these elements are not normally present in biological tissues.
Moreover, the nucleus of any atom that has a net nuclear spin and that is bonded to a hydrogen atom could potentially be imaged via heteronuclear magnetization transfer MRI that would image the high-gyromagnetic-ratio hydrogen nucleus instead of the low-gyromagnetic-ratio nucleus that is bonded to the hydrogen atom. In principle, hetereonuclear magnetization transfer MRI could be used to detect the presence or absence of specific chemical bonds.
Multinuclear imaging is primarily a research technique at present. However, potential applications include functional imaging and imaging of organs poorly seen on 1H MRI (e.g., lungs and bones) or as alternative contrast agents. Inhaled hyperpolarized 3He can be used to image the distribution of air spaces within the lungs. Injectable solutions containing 13C or stabilized bubbles of hyperpolarized 129Xe have been studied as contrast agents for angiography and perfusion imaging. 31P can potentially provide information on bone density and structure, as well as functional imaging of the brain. Multinuclear imaging holds the potential to chart the distribution of lithium in the human brain, this element finding use as an important drug for those with conditions such as bipolar disorder.
MRI has the advantages of having very high spatial resolution and is very adept at morphological imaging and functional imaging. MRI does have several disadvantages though. First, MRI has a sensitivity of around 10−3 mol/L to 10−5 mol/L, which, compared to other types of imaging, can be very limiting. This problem stems from the fact that the population difference between the nuclear spin states is very small at room temperature. For example, at 1.5 teslas, a typical field strength for clinical MRI, the difference between high and low energy states is approximately 9 molecules per 2 million. Improvements to increase MR sensitivity include increasing magnetic field strength and hyperpolarization via optical pumping or dynamic nuclear polarization. There are also a variety of signal amplification schemes based on chemical exchange that increase sensitivity.
To achieve molecular imaging of disease biomarkers using MRI, targeted MRI contrast agents with high specificity and high relaxivity (sensitivity) are required. To date, many studies have been devoted to developing targeted-MRI contrast agents to achieve molecular imaging by MRI. Commonly, peptides, antibodies, or small ligands, and small protein domains, such as HER-2 affibodies, have been applied to achieve targeting. To enhance the sensitivity of the contrast agents, these targeting moieties are usually linked to high payload MRI contrast agents or MRI contrast agents with high relaxivities. A new class of gene targeting MR contrast agents (CA) has been introduced to show gene action of unique mRNA and gene transcription factor proteins. This new CA can trace cells with unique mRNA, microRNA and virus; tissue response to inflammation in living brains. The MR reports change in gene expression with positive correlation to TaqMan analysis, optical and electron microscopy.
MRI is in general a safe technique, although injuries may occur as a result of failed safety procedures or human error. Contraindications to MRI include most cochlear implants and cardiac pacemakers, shrapnel, and metallic foreign bodies in the eyes. Magnetic resonance imaging in pregnancy appears to be safe at least during the second and third trimesters if done without contrast agents. Since MRI does not use any ionizing radiation, its use is generally favored in preference to CT when either modality could yield the same information. Some patients experience claustrophobia and may require sedation
MRI uses powerful magnets and can therefore cause magnetic materials to move at great speeds posing a projectile risk. Deaths have occurred. However, as millions of MRIs are performed globally each year, fatalities are extremely rare.
Medical societies issue guidelines for when physicians should use MRI on patients and recommend against overuse. MRI can detect health problems or confirm a diagnosis, but medical societies often recommend that MRI not be the first procedure for creating a plan to diagnose or manage a patient's complaint. A common case is to use MRI to seek a cause of low back pain; the American College of Physicians, for example, recommends against this procedure as unlikely to result in a positive outcome for the patient.
An MRI artifact is a visual artifact, that is, an anomaly during visual representation. Many different artifacts can occur during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), some affecting the diagnostic quality, while others may be confused with pathology. Artifacts can be classified as patient-related, signal processing-dependent and hardware (machine)-related.
MRI is used industrially mainly for routine analysis of chemicals. The nuclear magnetic resonance technique is also used, for example, to measure the ratio between water and fat in foods, monitoring of flow of corrosive fluids in pipes, or to study molecular structures such as catalysts.
Being non-invasive and non-damaging, MRI can be used to study the anatomy of plants, their water transportation processes and water balance. It is also applied to veterinary radiology for diagnostic purposes. Outside this, its use in zoology is limited due to the high cost; but it can be used on many species.
In palaeontology it is used to examine the structure of fossils by getting their three-dimensional geometry.
In 1971 at Stony Brook University, Paul Lauterbur applied magnetic field gradients in all three dimensions and a back-projection technique to create NMR images. He published the first images of two tubes of water in 1973 in the journal "Nature", followed by the picture of a living animal, a clam, and in 1974 by the image of the thoracic cavity of a mouse. Lauterbur called his imaging method zeugmatography, a term which was later replaced by (N)MR imaging. In the late 1970s, physicists Peter Mansfield and Paul Lauterbur, developed MRI-related techniques, like the echo-planar imaging (EPI) technique.
Advances in semiconductor technology were crucial to the development of practical MRI, which requires a large amount of computational power. This was made possible by the rapidly increasing number of transistors on a single integrated circuit chip. Mansfield and Lauterbur were awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their "discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19446 |
Group (mathematics)
In mathematics, a group is a set equipped with a binary operation that combines any two elements to form a third element in such a way that four conditions called group axioms are satisfied, namely closure, associativity, identity and invertibility. One of the most familiar examples of a group is the set of integers together with the addition operation, but groups are encountered in numerous areas within and outside mathematics, and help focusing on essential structural aspects, by detaching them from the concrete nature of the subject of the study.
Groups share a fundamental kinship with the notion of symmetry. For example, a symmetry group encodes symmetry features of a geometrical object: the group consists of the set of transformations that leave the object unchanged and the operation of combining two such transformations by performing one after the other. Lie groups are the symmetry groups used in the Standard Model of particle physics; Poincaré groups, which are also Lie groups, can express the physical symmetry underlying special relativity; and point groups are used to help understand symmetry phenomena in molecular chemistry.
The concept of a group arose from the study of polynomial equations, starting with Évariste Galois in the 1830s, who introduced the term of "group" ("groupe", in French) for the symmetry group of the roots of an equation, now called a Galois group. After contributions from other fields such as number theory and geometry, the group notion was generalized and firmly established around 1870. Modern group theory—an active mathematical discipline—studies groups in their own right. To explore groups, mathematicians have devised various notions to break groups into smaller, better-understandable pieces, such as subgroups, quotient groups and simple groups. In addition to their abstract properties, group theorists also study the different ways in which a group can be expressed concretely, both from a point of view of representation theory (that is, through the representations of the group) and of computational group theory. A theory has been developed for finite groups, which culminated with the classification of finite simple groups, completed in 2004. Since the mid-1980s, geometric group theory, which studies finitely generated groups as geometric objects, has become an active area in group theory.
One of the most familiar groups is the set of integers formula_1 which consists of the numbers
The following properties of integer addition serve as a model for the group axioms given in the definition below.
The integers, together with the operation +, form a mathematical object belonging to a broad class sharing similar structural aspects. To appropriately understand these structures as a collective, the following definition is developed.
A group is a set, "G", together with an operation ⋅ (called the "group law" of "G") that combines any two elements "a" and "b" to form another element, denoted or "ab". To qualify as a group, the set and operation, , must satisfy four requirements known as the "group axioms":
The result of the group operation may depend on the order of the operands. In other words, the result of combining element "a" with element "b" need not yield the same result as combining element "b" with element "a"; the equation
may not be true for every two elements "a" and "b". This equation always holds in the group of integers under addition, because for any two integers (commutativity of addition). Groups for which the commutativity equation always holds are called "abelian groups" (in honor of Niels Henrik Abel). The symmetry group described in the following section is an example of a group that is not abelian.
The identity element of a group "G" is often written as 1 or 1"G", a notation inherited from the multiplicative identity. If a group is abelian, then one may choose to denote the group operation by + and the identity element by 0; in that case, the group is called an additive group. The identity element can also be written as "id".
The set "G" is called the "underlying set" of the group . Often the group's underlying set "G" is used as a short name for the group . Along the same lines, shorthand expressions such as "a subset of the group "G"" or "an element of group "G"" are used when what is actually meant is "a subset of the underlying set "G" of the group " or "an element of the underlying set "G" of the group ". Usually, it is clear from the context whether a symbol like "G" refers to a group or to an underlying set.
An alternate (but equivalent) definition is to expand the structure of a group to define a group as a set equipped with three operations satisfying the same axioms as above, with the "there exists" part removed in the two last axioms, these operations being
the group law, as above, which is a binary operation,
the "inverse operation", which is a unary operation and maps to formula_2
and the identity element, which is viewed as a 0-ary operation.
As this formulation of the definition avoids existential quantifiers, it is generally preferred for computing with groups and for computer-aided proofs. This formulation exhibits groups as a variety of universal algebra. It is also useful for talking of properties of the inverse operation, as needed for defining topological groups and group objects.
Two figures in the plane are congruent if one can be changed into the other using a combination of rotations, reflections, and translations. Any figure is congruent to itself. However, some figures are congruent to themselves in more than one way, and these extra congruences are called symmetries. A square has eight symmetries. These are:
These symmetries are functions. Each sends a point in the square to the corresponding point under the symmetry. For example, r1 sends a point to its rotation 90° clockwise around the square's center, and fh sends a point to its reflection across the square's vertical middle line. Composing two of these symmetries gives another symmetry. These symmetries determine a group called the dihedral group of degree 4, denoted . The underlying set of the group is the above set of symmetries, and the group operation is function composition. Two symmetries are combined by composing them as functions, that is, applying the first one to the square, and the second one to the result of the first application. The result of performing first "a" and then "b" is written symbolically "from right to left" as ("apply the symmetry "b" after performing the symmetry "a""). (This is the usual notation for composition of functions.)
The group table on the right lists the results of all such compositions possible. For example, rotating by 270° clockwise (r3) and then reflecting horizontally (fh) is the same as performing a reflection along the diagonal (fd). Using the above symbols, highlighted in blue in the group table:
Given this set of symmetries and the described operation, the group axioms can be understood as follows:
In contrast to the group of integers above, where the order of the operation is irrelevant, it does matter in D4, as, for example, but In other words, D4 is not abelian, which makes the group structure more difficult than the integers introduced first.
The modern concept of an abstract group developed out of several fields of mathematics. The original motivation for group theory was the quest for solutions of polynomial equations of degree higher than 4. The 19th-century French mathematician Évariste Galois, extending prior work of Paolo Ruffini and Joseph-Louis Lagrange, gave a criterion for the solvability of a particular polynomial equation in terms of the symmetry group of its roots (solutions). The elements of such a Galois group correspond to certain permutations of the roots. At first, Galois' ideas were rejected by his contemporaries, and published only posthumously. More general permutation groups were investigated in particular by Augustin Louis Cauchy. Arthur Cayley's "On the theory of groups, as depending on the symbolic equation θn = 1" (1854) gives the first abstract definition of a finite group.
Geometry was a second field in which groups were used systematically, especially symmetry groups as part of Felix Klein's 1872 Erlangen program. After novel geometries such as hyperbolic and projective geometry had emerged, Klein used group theory to organize them in a more coherent way. Further advancing these ideas, Sophus Lie founded the study of Lie groups in 1884.
The third field contributing to group theory was number theory. Certain abelian group structures had been used implicitly in Carl Friedrich Gauss' number-theoretical work "Disquisitiones Arithmeticae" (1798), and more explicitly by Leopold Kronecker. In 1847, Ernst Kummer made early attempts to prove Fermat's Last Theorem by developing groups describing factorization into prime numbers.
The convergence of these various sources into a uniform theory of groups started with Camille Jordan's "Traité des substitutions et des équations algébriques" (1870). Walther von Dyck (1882) introduced the idea of specifying a group by means of generators and relations, and was also the first to give an axiomatic definition of an "abstract group", in the terminology of the time. As of the 20th century, groups gained wide recognition by the pioneering work of Ferdinand Georg Frobenius and William Burnside, who worked on representation theory of finite groups, Richard Brauer's modular representation theory and Issai Schur's papers. The theory of Lie groups, and more generally locally compact groups was studied by Hermann Weyl, Élie Cartan and many others. Its algebraic counterpart, the theory of algebraic groups, was first shaped by Claude Chevalley (from the late 1930s) and later by the work of Armand Borel and Jacques Tits.
The University of Chicago's 1960–61 Group Theory Year brought together group theorists such as Daniel Gorenstein, John G. Thompson and Walter Feit, laying the foundation of a collaboration that, with input from numerous other mathematicians, led to the classification of finite simple groups, with the final step taken by Aschbacher and Smith in 2004. This project exceeded previous mathematical endeavours by its sheer size, in both length of proof and number of researchers. Research is ongoing to simplify the proof of this classification. These days, group theory is still a highly active mathematical branch, impacting many other fields.
Basic facts about all groups that can be obtained directly from the group axioms are commonly subsumed under "elementary group theory". For example, repeated applications of the associativity axiom show that the unambiguity of
generalizes to more than three factors. Because this implies that parentheses can be inserted anywhere within such a series of terms, parentheses are usually omitted.
The axioms may be weakened to assert only the existence of a left identity and left inverses. Both can be shown to be actually two-sided, so the resulting definition is equivalent to the one given above.
Two important consequences of the group axioms are the uniqueness of the identity element and the uniqueness of inverse elements. There can be only one identity element in a group, and each element in a group has exactly one inverse element. Thus, it is customary to speak of "the" identity, and "the" inverse of an element.
To prove the uniqueness of an inverse element of "a", suppose that "a" has two inverses, denoted "b" and "c", in a group ("G", ⋅). Then
The term "b" on the first line above and the "c" on the last are equal, since they are connected by a chain of equalities. In other words, there is only one inverse element of "a". Similarly, to prove that the identity element of a group is unique, assume "G" is a group with two identity elements "e" and "f". Then "e" = "e" ⋅ "f" = "f", hence "e" and "f" are equal.
In groups, the existence of inverse elements implies that division is possible: given elements "a" and "b" of the group "G", there is exactly one solution "x" in "G" to the equation , namely . In fact, we have
Uniqueness results by multiplying the two sides of the equation by . The element , often denoted , is called the "right quotient" of "b" by "a", or the result of the "right division" of "b" by "a".
Similarly there is exactly one solution "y" in "G" to the equation , namely . This solution is the "left quotient" of "b" by "a", and is sometimes denoted .
In general and may be different, but, if the group operation is commutative (that is, if the group is abelian), they are equal. In this case, the group operation is often denoted as an addition, and one talks of "subtraction" and "difference" instead of division and quotient.
A consequence of this is that multiplication by a group element "g" is a bijection. Specifically, if "g" is an element of the group "G", the function from "G" to itself that maps to is a bijection. This function is called the "left translation" by "g" . Similarly, the "right translation" by "g" is the bijection from "G" to itself, that maps "h" to . If "G" is abelian, the left and the right translation by a group element are the same.
To understand groups beyond the level of mere symbolic manipulations as above, more structural concepts have to be employed. There is a conceptual principle underlying all of the following notions: to take advantage of the structure offered by groups (which sets, being "structureless", do not have), constructions related to groups have to be "compatible" with the group operation. This compatibility manifests itself in the following notions in various ways. For example, groups can be related to each other via functions called group homomorphisms. By the mentioned principle, they are required to respect the group structures in a precise sense. The structure of groups can also be understood by breaking them into pieces called subgroups and quotient groups. The principle of "preserving structures"—a recurring topic in mathematics throughout—is an instance of working in a category, in this case the category of groups.
"Group homomorphisms" are functions that preserve group structure. A function between two groups and is called a "homomorphism" if the equation
holds for all elements "g", "k" in "G". In other words, the result is the same when performing the group operation after or before applying the map "a". This requirement ensures that , and also for all "g" in "G". Thus a group homomorphism respects all the structure of "G" provided by the group axioms.
Two groups "G" and "H" are called "isomorphic" if there exist group homomorphisms and , such that applying the two functions one after another in each of the two possible orders gives the identity functions of "G" and "H". That is, and for any "g" in "G" and "h" in "H". From an abstract point of view, isomorphic groups carry the same information. For example, proving that for some element "g" of "G" is equivalent to proving that , because applying "a" to the first equality yields the second, and applying "b" to the second gives back the first.
Informally, a "subgroup" is a group "H" contained within a bigger one, "G". Concretely, the identity element of "G" is contained in "H", and whenever "h"1 and "h"2 are in "H", then so are and "h"1−1, so the elements of "H", equipped with the group operation on "G" restricted to "H", indeed form a group.
In the example above, the identity and the rotations constitute a subgroup highlighted in red in the group table above: any two rotations composed are still a rotation, and a rotation can be undone by (i.e., is inverse to) the complementary rotations 270° for 90°, 180° for 180°, and 90° for 270° (note that rotation in the opposite direction is not defined). The subgroup test is a necessary and sufficient condition for a nonempty subset "H" of a group "G" to be a subgroup: it is sufficient to check that for all elements . Knowing the subgroups is important in understanding the group as a whole.
Given any subset "S" of a group "G", the subgroup generated by "S" consists of products of elements of "S" and their inverses. It is the smallest subgroup of "G" containing "S". In the introductory example above, the subgroup generated by r2 and fv consists of these two elements, the identity element id and . Again, this is a subgroup, because combining any two of these four elements or their inverses (which are, in this particular case, these same elements) yields an element of this subgroup.
In many situations it is desirable to consider two group elements the same if they differ by an element of a given subgroup. For example, in D4 above, once a reflection is performed, the square never gets back to the r2 configuration by just applying the rotation operations (and no further reflections), i.e., the rotation operations are irrelevant to the question whether a reflection has been performed. Cosets are used to formalize this insight: a subgroup "H" defines left and right cosets, which can be thought of as translations of "H" by arbitrary group elements "g". In symbolic terms, the "left" and "right" cosets of "H" containing "g" are
The left cosets of any subgroup "H" form a partition of "G"; that is, the union of all left cosets is equal to "G" and two left cosets are either equal or have an empty intersection. The first case happens precisely when , i.e., if the two elements differ by an element of "H". Similar considerations apply to the right cosets of "H". The left and right cosets of "H" may or may not be equal. If they are, i.e., for all "g" in "G", , then "H" is said to be a "normal subgroup".
In D4, the introductory symmetry group, the left cosets "gR" of the subgroup "R" consisting of the rotations are either equal to "R", if "g" is an element of "R" itself, or otherwise equal to (highlighted in green). The subgroup "R" is also normal, because and similarly for any element other than fc. (In fact, in the case of D4, observe that all such cosets are equal, such that .)
In some situations the set of cosets of a subgroup can be endowed with a group law, giving a "quotient group" or "factor group". For this to be possible, the subgroup has to be normal. Given any normal subgroup "N", the quotient group is defined by
This set inherits a group operation (sometimes called coset multiplication, or coset addition) from the original group "G": for all "g" and "h" in "G". This definition is motivated by the idea (itself an instance of general structural considerations outlined above) that the map that associates to any element "g" its coset "gN" be a group homomorphism, or by general abstract considerations called universal properties. The coset serves as the identity in this group, and the inverse of "gN" in the quotient group is .
The elements of the quotient group are "R" itself, which represents the identity, and . The group operation on the quotient is shown at the right. For example, . Both the subgroup as well as the corresponding quotient are abelian, whereas D4 is not abelian. Building bigger groups by smaller ones, such as D4 from its subgroup "R" and the quotient is abstracted by a notion called semidirect product.
Quotient groups and subgroups together form a way of describing every group by its "presentation": any group is the quotient of the free group over the "generators" of the group, quotiented by the subgroup of "relations". The dihedral group D4, for example, can be generated by two elements "r" and "f" (for example, "r" = r1, the right rotation and "f" = fv the vertical (or any other) reflection), which means that every symmetry of the square is a finite composition of these two symmetries or their inverses. Together with the relations
the group is completely described. A presentation of a group can also be used to construct the Cayley graph, a device used to graphically capture discrete groups.
Sub- and quotient groups are related in the following way: a subset "H" of "G" can be seen as an injective map , i.e., any element of the target has at most one element that maps to it. The counterpart to injective maps are surjective maps (every element of the target is mapped onto), such as the canonical map . Interpreting subgroup and quotients in light of these homomorphisms emphasizes the structural concept inherent to these definitions alluded to in the introduction. In general, homomorphisms are neither injective nor surjective. Kernel and image of group homomorphisms and the first isomorphism theorem address this phenomenon.
Examples and applications of groups abound. A starting point is the group Z of integers with addition as group operation, introduced above. If instead of addition multiplication is considered, one obtains multiplicative groups. These groups are predecessors of important constructions in abstract algebra.
Groups are also applied in many other mathematical areas. Mathematical objects are often examined by associating groups to them and studying the properties of the corresponding groups. For example, Henri Poincaré founded what is now called algebraic topology by introducing the fundamental group. By means of this connection, topological properties such as proximity and continuity translate into properties of groups. For example, elements of the fundamental group are represented by loops. The second image at the right shows some loops in a plane minus a point. The blue loop is considered null-homotopic (and thus irrelevant), because it can be continuously shrunk to a point. The presence of the hole prevents the orange loop from being shrunk to a point. The fundamental group of the plane with a point deleted turns out to be infinite cyclic, generated by the orange loop (or any other loop winding once around the hole). This way, the fundamental group detects the hole.
In more recent applications, the influence has also been reversed to motivate geometric constructions by a group-theoretical background. In a similar vein, geometric group theory employs geometric concepts, for example in the study of hyperbolic groups. Further branches crucially applying groups include algebraic geometry and number theory.
In addition to the above theoretical applications, many practical applications of groups exist. Cryptography relies on the combination of the abstract group theory approach together with algorithmical knowledge obtained in computational group theory, in particular when implemented for finite groups. Applications of group theory are not restricted to mathematics; sciences such as physics, chemistry and computer science benefit from the concept.
Many number systems, such as the integers and the rationals enjoy a naturally given group structure. In some cases, such as with the rationals, both addition and multiplication operations give rise to group structures. Such number systems are predecessors to more general algebraic structures known as rings and fields. Further abstract algebraic concepts such as modules, vector spaces and algebras also form groups.
The group of integers formula_1 under addition, denoted formula_4, has been described above. The integers, with the operation of multiplication instead of addition, formula_5 do "not" form a group. The closure, associativity and identity axioms are satisfied, but inverses do not exist: for example, is an integer, but the only solution to the equation in this case is , which is a rational number, but not an integer. Hence not every element of formula_1 has a (multiplicative) inverse.
The desire for the existence of multiplicative inverses suggests considering fractions
Fractions of integers (with "b" nonzero) are known as rational numbers. The set of all such irreducible fractions is commonly denoted formula_8. There is still a minor obstacle for formula_9, the rationals with multiplication, being a group: because the rational number 0 does not have a multiplicative inverse (i.e., there is no "x" such that ), formula_9 is still not a group.
However, the set of all "nonzero" rational numbers formula_11 does form an abelian group under multiplication, generally denoted formula_12. Associativity and identity element axioms follow from the properties of integers. The closure requirement still holds true after removing zero, because the product of two nonzero rationals is never zero. Finally, the inverse of "a"/"b" is "b"/"a", therefore the axiom of the inverse element is satisfied.
The rational numbers (including 0) also form a group under addition. Intertwining addition and multiplication operations yields more complicated structures called rings and—if division is possible, such as in formula_8—fields, which occupy a central position in abstract algebra. Group theoretic arguments therefore underlie parts of the theory of those entities.
In modular arithmetic, two integers are added and then the sum is divided by a positive integer called the "modulus." The result of modular addition is the remainder of that division. For any modulus, "n", the set of integers from 0 to forms a group under modular addition: the inverse of any element "a" is , and 0 is the identity element. This is familiar from the addition of hours on the face of a clock: if the hour hand is on 9 and is advanced 4 hours, it ends up on 1, as shown at the right. This is expressed by saying that 9 + 4 equals 1 "modulo 12" or, in symbols,
The group of integers modulo "n" is written formula_14 or formula_15.
For any prime number "p", there is also the multiplicative group of integers modulo "p". Its elements are the integers 1 to . The group operation is multiplication modulo "p". That is, the usual product is divided by "p" and the remainder of this division is the result of modular multiplication. For example, if , there are four group elements 1, 2, 3, 4. In this group, , because the usual product 16 is equivalent to 1, which divided by 5 yields a remainder of 1. for 5 divides , denoted
The primality of "p" ensures that the product of two integers neither of which is divisible by "p" is not divisible by "p" either, hence the indicated set of classes is closed under multiplication. The identity element is 1, as usual for a multiplicative group, and the associativity follows from the corresponding property of integers. Finally, the inverse element axiom requires that given an integer "a" not divisible by "p", there exists an integer "b" such that
The inverse "b" can be found by using Bézout's identity and the fact that the greatest common divisor equals 1. In the case above, the inverse of 4 is 4, and the inverse of 3 is 2, as . Hence all group axioms are fulfilled. Actually, this example is similar to formula_16 above: it consists of exactly those elements in formula_17 that have a multiplicative inverse. These groups are denoted F"p"×. They are crucial to public-key cryptography.
A "cyclic group" is a group all of whose elements are powers of a particular element "a". In multiplicative notation, the elements of the group are:
where "a"2 means "a" ⋅ "a", and "a−3" stands for "a"−1 ⋅ "a"−1 ⋅ "a"−1 = ("a" ⋅ "a" ⋅ "a")−1 etc. Such an element "a" is called a generator or a primitive element of the group. In additive notation, the requirement for an element to be primitive is that each element of the group can be written as
In the groups Z/"n"Z introduced above, the element 1 is primitive, so these groups are cyclic. Indeed, each element is expressible as a sum all of whose terms are 1. Any cyclic group with "n" elements is isomorphic to this group. A second example for cyclic groups is the group of "n"-th complex roots of unity, given by complex numbers "z" satisfying . These numbers can be visualized as the vertices on a regular "n"-gon, as shown in blue at the right for . The group operation is multiplication of complex numbers. In the picture, multiplying with "z" corresponds to a counter-clockwise rotation by 60°. Using some field theory, the group F"p"× can be shown to be cyclic: for example, if , 3 is a generator since , , , and .
Some cyclic groups have an infinite number of elements. In these groups, for every non-zero element "a", all the powers of "a" are distinct; despite the name "cyclic group", the powers of the elements do not cycle. An infinite cyclic group is isomorphic to , the group of integers under addition introduced above. As these two prototypes are both abelian, so is any cyclic group.
The study of finitely generated abelian groups is quite mature, including the fundamental theorem of finitely generated abelian groups; and reflecting this state of affairs, many group-related notions, such as center and commutator, describe the extent to which a given group is not abelian.
"Symmetry groups" are groups consisting of symmetries of given mathematical objects—be they of geometric nature, such as the introductory symmetry group of the square, or of algebraic nature, such as polynomial equations and their solutions. Conceptually, group theory can be thought of as the study of symmetry. Symmetries in mathematics greatly simplify the study of geometrical or analytical objects. A group is said to act on another mathematical object "X" if every group element performs some operation on "X" compatibly to the group law. In the rightmost example below, an element of order 7 of the (2,3,7) triangle group acts on the tiling by permuting the highlighted warped triangles (and the other ones, too). By a group action, the group pattern is connected to the structure of the object being acted on.
In chemical fields, such as crystallography, space groups and point groups describe molecular symmetries and crystal symmetries. These symmetries underlie the chemical and physical behavior of these systems, and group theory enables simplification of quantum mechanical analysis of these properties. For example, group theory is used to show that optical transitions between certain quantum levels cannot occur simply because of the symmetry of the states involved.
Not only are groups useful to assess the implications of symmetries in molecules, but surprisingly they also predict that molecules sometimes can change symmetry. The Jahn-Teller effect is a distortion of a molecule of high symmetry when it adopts a particular ground state of lower symmetry from a set of possible ground states that are related to each other by the symmetry operations of the molecule.
Likewise, group theory helps predict the changes in physical properties that occur when a material undergoes a phase transition, for example, from a cubic to a tetrahedral crystalline form. An example is ferroelectric materials, where the change from a paraelectric to a ferroelectric state occurs at the Curie temperature and is related to a change from the high-symmetry paraelectric state to the lower symmetry ferroelectric state, accompanied by a so-called soft phonon mode, a vibrational lattice mode that goes to zero frequency at the transition.
Such spontaneous symmetry breaking has found further application in elementary particle physics, where its occurrence is related to the appearance of Goldstone bosons.
Finite symmetry groups such as the Mathieu groups are used in coding theory, which is in turn applied in error correction of transmitted data, and in CD players. Another application is differential Galois theory, which characterizes functions having antiderivatives of a prescribed form, giving group-theoretic criteria for when solutions of certain differential equations are well-behaved. Geometric properties that remain stable under group actions are investigated in (geometric) invariant theory.
Matrix groups consist of matrices together with matrix multiplication. The "general linear group" consists of all invertible "n"-by-"n" matrices with real entries. Its subgroups are referred to as "matrix groups" or "linear groups". The dihedral group example mentioned above can be viewed as a (very small) matrix group. Another important matrix group is the special orthogonal group SO("n"). It describes all possible rotations in "n" dimensions. Via Euler angles, rotation matrices are used in computer graphics.
"Representation theory" is both an application of the group concept and important for a deeper understanding of groups. It studies the group by its group actions on other spaces. A broad class of group representations are linear representations, i.e., the group is acting on a vector space, such as the three-dimensional Euclidean space R3. A representation of "G" on an "n"-dimensional real vector space is simply a group homomorphism
from the group to the general linear group. This way, the group operation, which may be abstractly given, translates to the multiplication of matrices making it accessible to explicit computations.
Given a group action, this gives further means to study the object being acted on. On the other hand, it also yields information about the group. Group representations are an organizing principle in the theory of finite groups, Lie groups, algebraic groups and topological groups, especially (locally) compact groups.
"Galois groups" were developed to help solve polynomial equations by capturing their symmetry features. For example, the solutions of the quadratic equation are given by
Exchanging "+" and "−" in the expression, i.e., permuting the two solutions of the equation can be viewed as a (very simple) group operation. Similar formulae are known for cubic and quartic equations, but do "not" exist in general for degree 5 and higher. Abstract properties of Galois groups associated with polynomials (in particular their solvability) give a criterion for polynomials that have all their solutions expressible by radicals, i.e., solutions expressible using solely addition, multiplication, and roots similar to the formula above.
The problem can be dealt with by shifting to field theory and considering the splitting field of a polynomial. Modern Galois theory generalizes the above type of Galois groups to field extensions and establishes—via the fundamental theorem of Galois theory—a precise relationship between fields and groups, underlining once again the ubiquity of groups in mathematics.
A group is called "finite" if it has a finite number of elements. The number of elements is called the order of the group. An important class is the "symmetric groups" S"N", the groups of permutations of "N" letters. For example, the symmetric group on 3 letters S3 is the group consisting of all possible orderings of the three letters "ABC", i.e., contains the elements "ABC", "ACB", "BAC", "BCA", "CAB", "CBA", in total 6 (factorial of 3) elements. This class is fundamental insofar as any finite group can be expressed as a subgroup of a symmetric group S"N" for a suitable integer "N", according to Cayley's theorem. Parallel to the group of symmetries of the square above, S3 can also be interpreted as the group of symmetries of an equilateral triangle.
The order of an element "a" in a group "G" is the least positive integer "n" such that "a""n" = "e", where "a""n" represents
i.e., application of the operation ⋅ to "n" copies of "a". (If ⋅ represents multiplication, then "a""n" corresponds to the "n"th power of "a".) In infinite groups, such an "n" may not exist, in which case the order of "a" is said to be infinity. The order of an element equals the order of the cyclic subgroup generated by this element.
More sophisticated counting techniques, for example counting cosets, yield more precise statements about finite groups: Lagrange's Theorem states that for a finite group "G" the order of any finite subgroup "H" divides the order of "G". The Sylow theorems give a partial converse.
The dihedral group (discussed above) is a finite group of order 8. The order of r1 is 4, as is the order of the subgroup "R" it generates (see above). The order of the reflection elements fv etc. is 2. Both orders divide 8, as predicted by Lagrange's theorem. The groups F"p"× above have order .
Mathematicians often strive for a complete classification (or list) of a mathematical notion. In the context of finite groups, this aim leads to difficult mathematics. According to Lagrange's theorem, finite groups of order "p", a prime number, are necessarily cyclic (abelian) groups Z"p". Groups of order "p"2 can also be shown to be abelian, a statement which does not generalize to order "p"3, as the non-abelian group D4 of order 8 = 23 above shows. Computer algebra systems can be used to list small groups, but there is no classification of all finite groups. An intermediate step is the classification of finite simple groups. A nontrivial group is called "simple" if its only normal subgroups are the trivial group and the group itself. The Jordan–Hölder theorem exhibits finite simple groups as the building blocks for all finite groups. Listing all finite simple groups was a major achievement in contemporary group theory. 1998 Fields Medal winner Richard Borcherds succeeded in proving the monstrous moonshine conjectures, a surprising and deep relation between the largest finite simple sporadic group—the "monster group"—and certain modular functions, a piece of classical complex analysis, and string theory, a theory supposed to unify the description of many physical phenomena.
Many groups are simultaneously groups and examples of other mathematical structures. In the language of category theory, they are group objects in a category, meaning that they are objects (that is, examples of another mathematical structure) which come with transformations (called morphisms) that mimic the group axioms. For example, every group (as defined above) is also a set, so a group is a group object in the category of sets.
Some topological spaces may be endowed with a group law. In order for the group law and the topology to interweave well, the group operations must be continuous functions, that is, , and "g"−1 must not vary wildly if "g" and "h" vary only little. Such groups are called "topological groups," and they are the group objects in the category of topological spaces. The most basic examples are the reals R under addition, , and similarly with any other topological field such as the complex numbers or "p"-adic numbers. All of these groups are locally compact, so they have Haar measures and can be studied via harmonic analysis. The former offer an abstract formalism of invariant integrals. Invariance means, in the case of real numbers for example:
for any constant "c". Matrix groups over these fields fall under this regime, as do adele rings and adelic algebraic groups, which are basic to number theory. Galois groups of infinite field extensions such as the absolute Galois group can also be equipped with a topology, the so-called Krull topology, which in turn is central to generalize the above sketched connection of fields and groups to infinite field extensions. An advanced generalization of this idea, adapted to the needs of algebraic geometry, is the étale fundamental group.
"Lie groups" (in honor of Sophus Lie) are groups which also have a manifold structure, i.e., they are spaces looking locally like some Euclidean space of the appropriate dimension. Again, the additional structure, here the manifold structure, has to be compatible, i.e., the maps corresponding to multiplication and the inverse have to be smooth.
A standard example is the general linear group introduced above: it is an open subset of the space of all "n"-by-"n" matrices, because it is given by the inequality
where "A" denotes an "n"-by-"n" matrix.
Lie groups are of fundamental importance in modern physics: Noether's theorem links continuous symmetries to conserved quantities. Rotation, as well as translations in space and time are basic symmetries of the laws of mechanics. They can, for instance, be used to construct simple models—imposing, say, axial symmetry on a situation will typically lead to significant simplification in the equations one needs to solve to provide a physical description. Another example are the Lorentz transformations, which relate measurements of time and velocity of two observers in motion relative to each other. They can be deduced in a purely group-theoretical way, by expressing the transformations as a rotational symmetry of Minkowski space. The latter serves—in the absence of significant gravitation—as a model of space time in special relativity. The full symmetry group of Minkowski space, i.e., including translations, is known as the Poincaré group. By the above, it plays a pivotal role in special relativity and, by implication, for quantum field theories. Symmetries that vary with location are central to the modern description of physical interactions with the help of gauge theory.
In abstract algebra, more general structures are defined by relaxing some of the axioms defining a group. For example, if the requirement that every element has an inverse is eliminated, the resulting algebraic structure is called a monoid. The natural numbers N (including 0) under addition form a monoid, as do the nonzero integers under multiplication , see above. There is a general method to formally add inverses to elements to any (abelian) monoid, much the same way as is derived from , known as the Grothendieck group.
Groupoids are similar to groups except that the composition need not be defined for all "a" and "b". They arise in the study of more complicated forms of symmetry, often in topological and analytical structures, such as the fundamental groupoid or stacks. Finally, it is possible to generalize any of these concepts by replacing the binary operation with an arbitrary "n"-ary one (i.e., an operation taking "n" arguments). With the proper generalization of the group axioms this gives rise to an "n"-ary group. The table gives a list of several structures generalizing groups. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19447 |
Marilyn Manson (band)
Marilyn Manson is an American industrial metal band formed by namesake lead singer Marilyn Manson and guitarist Daisy Berkowitz in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1989. Originally named Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids, they gained a local cult following in South Florida in the early 1990s with their theatrical live performances. In 1993, they were the first act signed to Trent Reznor's Nothing Records label. Until 1996, the name of each member was created by combining the first name of a female sex symbol and the last name of a serial killer, for example Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson. Their lineup has changed between many of their album releases; the eponymous lead singer is the only remaining original member.
In the past, band members dressed in outlandish makeup and costumes, and engaged in intentionally shocking behavior both onstage and off. Their lyrics often received criticism for their anti-religious sentiment and references to sex, violence and drugs, while their live performances were frequently called offensive and obscene. On several occasions, protests and petitions led to the group being blocked from performing, with at least three US states passing legislation banning the group from performing at state-owned venues. They released a number of platinum-selling albums, including "Antichrist Superstar" (1996) and "Mechanical Animals" (1998). These albums, along with their highly stylized music videos and worldwide touring, brought public recognition to Marilyn Manson. In 1999, news media falsely blamed the band for influencing the Columbine High School massacre.
As this controversy began to wane throughout the 2000s, so did the band's mainstream popularity. Despite this, Jon Wiederhorn of MTV, in June 2003, referred to Marilyn Manson as "the only true artist today". Marilyn Manson is widely regarded as being one of the most iconic and controversial figures in rock music, with the band and its lead singer influencing numerous other groups and musicians, both in metal-associated acts and also in wider popular culture. VH1 ranked Marilyn Manson as the seventy-eighth best rock band on their "100 Great Artists of Hard Rock". They were inducted into the "Kerrang!" Hall of Fame in 2000, and have been nominated for four Grammy Awards. In the U.S., the band has seen eight of its releases debut in the top ten, including two number-one albums. Marilyn Manson have sold in excess of 50 million records worldwide.
In 1989, Brian Warner was a college student working towards a degree in journalism at Broward College, gaining experience by writing music articles for the South Florida lifestyle magazine "25th Parallel". It was in this capacity that he met several of the musicians to whom his own band would later be compared, including My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. That December, he met Scott Putesky, who proposed that the two form a band together after reading some lyrics and poems written by Putesky, who wanted to be the vocalist of the proposed band. Warner, guitarist Putesky and bassist Brian Tutunick recorded their first demo tape as Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids in 1990, taking on the stage names of Marilyn Manson, Daisy Berkowitz and Olivia Newton Bundy, respectively. Bundy left the band soon after, and was replaced by Gidget Gein, born Brad Stewart. They were later joined on keyboard by Stephen Bier, who called himself Madonna Wayne Gacy. In 1991, drummer Fred Streithorst joined the band under the name Sara Lee Lucas.
The stage names adopted by each member were representative of a concept the band considered central: the dichotomy of good and evil, and the existence of both, together, in every whole. "Marilyn Monroe had a dark side", explained Manson in his autobiography, "just as Charles Manson has a good, intelligent side." Over the next six years, all of the band's members would adopt names that combined the first name of a female sex symbol and the surname of a serial killer. Images of both Monroe and Manson, as well as of other famous and infamous figures, were common in the band's early promotional materials.
The Spooky Kids' popularity in the area grew quickly and because of the band's highly visual concerts, which drew from performance art and used many shock techniques such as "naked women nailed to a cross, a child in a cage, or bloody animal body parts." Band members variously performed in women's clothing or bizarre costumes; and, for lack of a professional pyrotechnician, would set their own stage props on fire. The band would contrast these theatrics with elements drawn from their youth: characters from 1970s and '80s children's television made regular, often grotesquely altered, appearances on band flyers and newsletters, and were frequently sampled in their music. They continued to perform and release cassettes – shortening their name to Marilyn Manson in 1992 – until the summer of 1993, when they drew the attention of Reznor, who had just founded his own label, Nothing Records.
Reznor offered the band a contract with the label, as well as an opening slot supporting Nine Inch Nails on their upcoming "Self Destruct Tour". After accepting both offers, recording sessions for their debut studio album began in July 1993 with Swans producer Roli Mosimann at Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida. Recording a selection of new songs along with material from their Spooky Kids repertoire, the first version of their debut, titled "The Manson Family Album", was completed by the end of the month. However, it was not well received. The band's members, along with Reznor, criticized Mosimann's production as being flat, lifeless and poorly representative of the band's live performances. At the same time, Gidget Gein had begun to lose control of his addiction to heroin. Before reworking the album, the band played two shows in Florida under the name Mrs. Scabtree. This band featured Manson on drums, Gacy on keyboard, Berkowitz on guitar, and Jessicka from Jack Off Jill sharing vocal duties with Jeordie White of Miami thrash band Amboog-a-Lard. Four other local musicians, bassists Mark Dubin of Sister Venus and Patrick Joyce from The Itch, guitarist Miles Hie and violinist Mary Karlzen were also involved.
Reznor agreed to rework production of "The Manson Family Album" in October 1993 at Record Plant Studios in Los Angeles. Gein, who had been hospitalized after his fourth heroin overdose, was not invited to participate, and was fired from the band soon after, replaced by White, of Amboog-a-Lard, who undertook the alias Twiggy Ramirez. After seven weeks of mixing, re-recording and remixing, the album – now titled "Portrait of an American Family" – was presented to Nothing's parent label Interscope. The album was released on July 19, 1994 and peaked at number thirty-five on "Billboard"s Top Heatseekers album chart. The band began its first national headlining tour in December 1994, with Jack Off Jill opening. During the band's stint as opening act on the Nine Inch Nails tour, Manson met Church of Satan founder Dr. Anton LaVey. LaVey bestowed the title of "Reverend" on Manson– meaning a person who is revered by the church, and not necessarily one who dedicates their life to preaching the religion to others, as with a priest or minister. Manson would use this title in the liner notes of the band's following album, citing himself as "Reverend Marilyn Manson".
In March 1995, the band began a two-month tour, this time with Monster Voodoo Machine as support. This would be drummer Sara Lee Lucas's last tour with the band. Kenneth Wilson, better known by his stage name Ginger Fish, then joined the group before they embarked on a tour with rock band Danzig and metal band Korn. The band then relocated to the new home of Nothing Studios in New Orleans to begin work on remixes and b-sides for "Portrait"s third single, "Dope Hat", releasing a music video inspired by the boat ride scene from the 1971 movie "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory". The proposed single eventually developed into an hour-long EP, titled "Smells Like Children". The EP's fifteen tracks of covers, remixes, and sonic experiments also included the band's version of the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", which would prove to be their first hit. The song's music video was placed in heavy rotation on MTV, in stark contrast with the "Dope Hat" video, which the same channel had banished to late-night airplay only a few months prior.
The band's second studio album, "Antichrist Superstar", was released on October 8, 1996. It was recorded at Nothing Studios with Reznor, Manson, Sean Beavan and former Skinny Puppy member and longtime producer Dave Ogilvie sharing co-production duties; members of both Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails took part in its recording. The process of making the album was a long and difficult one, highlighted by experiments involving sleep deprivation and near-constant drug use, in an effort to create a violent and hostile environment suited to the album's content. During this time, antagonism between band members was high. Daisy Berkowitz, the band's founding guitarist, departed the band partway through the album's recording process, with Twiggy performing much of the album's guitar work. Timothy Linton responded to an advert seeking Berkowitz's replacement. He would form a close relationship with Madonna Wayne Gacy, who was responsible for the inclusion of one of the major sources of inspiration for the album: Kabbalah. Breaking with the six-year tradition of naming band members after female icons and serial killers, Zim Zum was chosen as Linton's stage name. It was derived from the Lurianic Kabbalah concept of Tzimtzum. "The Beautiful People" was released as the album's lead single. It created enough anticipation for "Antichrist Superstar" that the album debuted at number three on the "Billboard" 200 with first-week sales of 132,000 copies. Manson also appeared on the cover of "Rolling Stone", who awarded the band their 'Best New Artist' accolade in 1997. The year-long "Dead to the World Tour" followed, which was the band's longest and widest-ranging tour yet. In the US, however, the band was receiving more attention than ever before, and not all of it was positive. As the tour was getting underway, the band found itself the target of bipartisan congressional hearings, led by conservative violent entertainment watchdog group Empower America (now known as FreedomWorks) co-directors Republican Secretary of Education William Bennett and Democratic U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman, to determine the effects, if any, of violent lyrics on young listeners. In addition, nearly every performance of the tour was picketed by religious organizations.
In July 1997, Manson collaborated with British trip hop group Sneaker Pimps for the single "Long Hard Road Out of Hell" from the soundtrack to the 1997 film "Spawn". The band released their second EP, "Remix & Repent", on November 25, 1997. It featured new versions of "Antichrist Superstar"'s four singles: "The Beautiful People", "Tourniquet", "Antichrist Superstar" and "Man That You Fear". In February 1998, Manson released his autobiography, "The Long Hard Road Out of Hell", as well as a live video entitled "Dead to the World". It was also confirmed that "Antichrist Superstar" would be the first installment in a concept album trilogy which the band called their triptych.
The band released the second part of their triptych, "Mechanical Animals", on September 15, 1998. Co-produced by the band's lead singer with Sean Beavan and Michael Beinhorn, the album moved away from the industrial rock production of its predecessor and was strongly influenced by 1970s glam rock, particularly David Bowie's 1974 album "Diamond Dogs". Billy Corgan served as an unofficial consultant to the band during the early development of the album. After playing a few songs for him, Corgan advised them that "This is definitely the right direction" but to "go all the way with it. Don't just hint at it", referring to its inclusion of glam influences. To suit their new musical style, the band also recast itself as a glam rock outfit, setting aside the "rotting-corpse chic" of the previous era in favor of attire more suited to the genre, incorporating leather, platform boots and brightly dyed hair. The band also relocated from New Orleans to Los Angeles, while Zim Zum was replaced by guitarist John Lowery of 2wo, who’s stage name, John 5, was given to him by Manson during their first lunch meeting.
Interscope's promotion of the album was massive, with the label erecting enormous billboards of the lead singer as an androgynous extraterrestrial in both Times Square and Sunset Strip. Repeated appearances on MTV and other networks helped propel the album's lead single, "The Dope Show", to number twelve on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart, becoming the band's highest-charting single yet. The song's music video was critically acclaimed, winning two awards at the 1998 "Billboard" Music Video Awards as well as the Best Cinematography award at the 1999 MTV VMA's; while the song was also nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 41st Annual Grammy Awards. The album would go on to debut at number one on the "Billboard" 200, with first week sales of over 223,000.
After a brief promotional campaign, the band set out on the "Beautiful Monsters Tour" with Hole. The tour would be a problematic one, and was marred by frequent on–and–off stage exchanges between Manson and Hole vocalist Courtney Love. Private disputes also arose over the tour's financial arrangements, with Hole unwittingly financing most of Manson's production costs, which were disproportionately high relative to Hole's. The tour was to include thirty-seven shows spanning over a two-month period, although Hole left after taking part in just nine of the scheduled dates. A broken ankle from Manson also forced the postponement of the next two shows, with the remainder of the tour being renamed "Rock Is Dead" and Jack Off Jill and Nashville Pussy taking over select opening slots.
The final four dates of the tour were canceled out of respect for the victims of the Columbine High School massacre. The latter half of 1999 and much of 2000 was a period of relative silence for the band, who refused to take part in interviews and retreated from public life. They shelved plans for a proposed single and music video for their cover of AC/DC's "Highway to Hell", which appeared on the soundtrack to "Detroit Rock City". They spent this period writing and recording in a secluded studio in Death Valley, with only the live album "The Last Tour on Earth" appearing during this time. A studio outtake from "Antichrist Superstar", titled "Astonishing Panorama of the Endtimes", served as its only single.
"Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)" was released on November 14, 2000. Produced by the band's lead singer with Dave Sardy, the album also features programming and pre-production editing by Bon Harris of Nitzer Ebb. The band wrote over 100 songs for the album, which was a return to the darker, more abrasive sound of "Antichrist Superstar". Much of its content was written in response to the Columbine massacre, with the album's third single, "The Nobodies", directly referring to the shootings. Described by the band's frontman as the third part of a trilogy which began with "Antichrist Superstar" and continued in "Mechanical Animals", its overarching theme is an exploration of the relationship between death and fame in American culture, and its lyrics and artwork contain many references to John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald, John Lennon and Mark David Chapman, and Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth. The "Guns, God and Government Tour" elaborated on "Holy Wood"'s central theme, and with its logo – a rifle and handguns arranged to resemble the Christian cross – Manson made no attempt to conceal what he saw as the source of that fascination.
The band also revealed that within their concept album trilogy, "Holy Wood" serves as prequel to "Mechanical Animals" and "Antichrist Superstar" despite the latter two preceding "Holy Wood" in release date. Each album contains its own distinct storyline, which can be linked together to create a larger overarching storyline encompassing all three. Manson has offered this much in the way of an interpretation: "["Holy Wood" is about] wanting to fit into a world that didn't want me, and fighting really hard to get there. [The album's deepest elements] are idealism and the desire to start a revolution. If you begin with "Holy Wood", then "Mechanical Animals" really talks about how that revolution gets taken away from you and turned into a product, and then "Antichrist Superstar" is where you're given a choice to decide if you're going to be controlled by the power that you created or if you want to destroy yourself and then start over. It just becomes a cycle."
The band initially declined to join the 2001 line-up of Ozzy Osbourne's Ozzfest, as its June 21 date in Denver would mark their first appearance in Colorado since the Columbine massacre. After the band announced on their website that they would perform in Denver, they were protested by religious groups. The band planned to "balance out" their "violent lyrics" by quoting biblical texts, "so we can examine the virtues of wonderful Christian stories of disease, murder, adultery, suicide and child sacrifice." The tour was documented by a DVD of the same name, which was released on October 29, 2002. In addition to a compilation style concert [songs from multiple individual shows edited together to appear as a single performance], it includes a thirty-minute short film titled "The Death Parade". This was followed by "Guns, God and Government – Live in LA" in 2009, which depicts their performance of January 13, 2001 at Los Angeles's Grand Olympic Auditorium in its entirety.
Earlier in 2001, the band released a cover of Gloria Jones's "Tainted Love" on the soundtrack to "Not Another Teen Movie". The song became the band's biggest international hit yet, peaking at number one in numerous European territories. In 2002, Jonathan Davis of Korn invited Marilyn Manson to record vocals on a track titled "Redeemer", which was released on his to "Queen of the Damned". Manson also appeared in Michael Moore's 2002 documentary, "Bowling for Columbine"; his appearance was filmed on the same day as their Denver Ozzfest performance. When Moore asked what Manson would have said to the students at Columbine, he replied, "I wouldn't say a single word to them. I would listen to what they have to say, and that's what no one did."
With the "triptych" of previous albums complete, the band was free to begin a fresh project. In 2002, Manson created an for the "Resident Evil" film with former KMFDM multi-instrumentalist Tim Sköld. Soon after, Sköld became an official band member when Twiggy Ramirez amicably left the group, citing creative differences. After finding inspiration through Manson's girlfriend Dita Von Teese in the swing and burlesque movements of 1920s Berlin, the band recorded "The Golden Age of Grotesque", which was released on May 13, 2003 and debuted atop the "Billboard" 200 album chart, selling over 118,000 copies on its first week. It was also an international success, particularly in Europe, where it sold over 400,000 copies on its first week, and topping various national record charts, as well as "Billboard"'s European Albums Chart. The album also appeared on several critics' year-end lists, and won a 2003 Metal Edge Readers' Choice Award for "Album of the Year".
Eschewing the lyrical depth and symbolism found on "Holy Wood", the album was relatively straightforward: in an extended metaphor, Manson compares his own often-criticized work to the "Entartete Kunst" banned by the Nazi regime. Lyrically, Manson utilizes the narrative mode of stream of consciousness throughout the album to examine the human psyche in times of crisis, specifically focusing on the mindset of lunatics and children, as, according to Manson, "they don't follow the rules [of society]." Several songs incorporate elements commonly found in playground chants and nursery rhymes, which Manson would "pervert into something ugly and lurid." The work of Kurt Weill was also noted as an influence, along with the lucid dreams the singer was having during its production, with Manson explaining that he would "wake up and say, 'I want to write a song that sounds like a stampeding elephant,' or 'I want to write a song that sounds like a burning piano.'"
Manson began his long-term collaboration with Austrian-Irish artist Gottfried Helnwein, working together on several multi-media projects associated with the album, including the exhibitions and installation art projects featured at the album's launch party at The Key Club in Los Angeles, the album artwork, the music video to lead single "mOBSCENE", as well as the artwork which accompanied Manson's essay for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Limited edition copies of the album included a DVD titled "Doppelherz" (Double-heart), a 25-minute surrealist short film directed by Manson which featured art direction by Helnwein. Another world tour followed, "Grotesk Burlesk", which furthered the album's Weimar Republic-inspired theme by adding Helnwein-created stage dressing and elements of German "Kabarett" to the group's performances. Manson and the band members began appearing both on-and off-stage in designer suits created by Jean-Paul Gaultier.
"" was released on September 28, 2004 and was referred to by Manson as a "farewell" compilation. It was the last album released under Nothing Records, as the label was dissolved following a lawsuit filed by Reznor against his former manager and business partner, John Malm. The compilation was supported by the "Against All Gods Tour", as well as a single–a cover of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus". It was the first and only tour to feature Mark Chaussee of Rob Halford's Fight on lead guitar, replacing John 5, whose relationship with Manson had soured over the previous year. Former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna also replaced Ginger Fish, who fractured his wrist, skull and cheekbone after falling several feet off his drum riser during a performance at a German awards ceremony.
By late 2005, the band had composed 18 new songs, but work on their sixth studio album was halted when Manson focused his attention on various film and art projects, including the development of his screenplay, "", as well as a minor role in the Lucy Liu movie "". He also launched a self-proclaimed art movement, the Celebritarian Corporation, which included artist Gottfried Helnwein, fashion designer Steven Klein and director Anthony Silva, as well as announcing plans to open an art gallery and publish a book of his paintings. It was after opening the Celebritarian Corporation Gallery Of Fine Art on Melrose Avenue in 2006 that work started on new material, with Manson writing lyrics over Sköld's already existing compositions.
The resulting material was composed and recorded entirely by Sköld, and does not feature writing or performance contributions from any other member of the band. Its content is largely inspired by personal troubles relating to Manson's failed marriage to Von Teese, and his burgeoning relationship with then-19-year old actress Evan Rachel Wood. The band made their debut appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" on October 31, 2006, performing their cover of "This Is Halloween" from a deluxe edition re-release of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" soundtrack. This would be their last performance featuring longtime keyboardist Madonna Wayne Gacy, who would go on to file a $20m lawsuit against the band the following year for unpaid "partnership proceeds".
The album was preceded by the release of a single, "Heart-Shaped Glasses (When the Heart Guides the Hand)", whose music video was shot using director James Cameron's 3D Fusion Camera System technology. The video caused controversy upon release, with several sources claiming that it featured genuine footage of Manson and Wood engaged in sexual intercourse. Wood was reportedly paid "the highest [music] video salary in history" to appear in the video. "Eat Me, Drink Me" was released on June 5, 2007, and entered the "Billboard" 200 at number eight with first week sales of 88,000 copies. It also peaked in the top ten of most major international album charts, as well as at number two on "Billboard"'s European Albums Chart. "Putting Holes In Happiness" was released as the album's second single.
To promote the album, the band embarked on the nine-month "Rape of the World Tour", which featured Sköld on lead guitar, former The Prodigy bassist Rob Holliday and longtime drummer Ginger Fish; while Vrenna rejoined the band as their live keyboardist. The first leg of the tour was a co-headlining set with American thrash metal band Slayer, with support coming from Bleeding Through. In November 2007, Manson confirmed that he and Sköld had begun work on the band's next studio album, with Slayer's Kerry King, former The Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha and Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs set to feature. By the beginning of 2008, however, Twiggy Ramirez had rejoined the band as bassist, resulting in the exit of Sköld, with Holliday moving from bass to lead guitar for the remaining duration of the tour. Future collaborations with Sköld were not ruled out.
In 2008, former Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland joined the band for their headlining show at the 2008 ETP Fest in South Korea. However, Borland left the group to reunite with Limp Bizkit, later saying that he was reluctant to be a "hired gun", citing the band's refusal to record any of the nine songs he submitted for their upcoming album. R&B singer Ne-Yo claimed in early December that he would hold writing sessions with the band's frontman on new material, although Manson denied it, saying that he had "never even met Ne-Yo. I can assure him that he would not want to be associated with something this godless."
"The High End of Low" was recorded throughout 2008, with Manson recording vocals at his Hollywood Hills home studio between November and January 5, 2009. Produced by Manson, Twiggy and Vrenna with "Antichrist Superstar" and "Mechanical Animals" co-producer Sean Beavan, Manson described the album as containing "extreme" autobiographical content relating to the dissolution of his engagement to Wood, and as being "very ruthless, heavy and violent". Its fifteen songs appear on the album in the order they were written. The penultimate track, "Into the Fire", portrays the vocalist's mental state on Christmas Day, wherein he attempted to contact Wood 158 times, cutting himself with a razorblade on the face or hands for each corresponding attempt. The album's final song, "15", was completed on Manson's January 5 birthday – hence the name. Manson utilized his entire home as a canvas to document the disintegration of the relationship, writing its lyrics on walls and coupling them with paintings and drawings relating to Wood, as well as used condoms, bags of cocaine and other drug paraphernalia.
"We're from America" was released as a free download on the band's website on March 27, 2009, while a Hot Topic-exclusive CD single followed two weeks later. After playing an instrumental version of "Arma-goddamn-motherfuckin-geddon" to Interscope's A&R department, it was chosen as the album's official lead single, with an employee telling Manson, "This is gonna be a hit!". Manson then quipped to the employee, "Well, I'm glad that you have no consideration for what I [might] put on top of it." A heavily censored version of the profanity-laced track – re-titled to "Arma ... geddon" – was serviced to radio from April 13, and peaked at number thirty-seven on "Billboard"'s Mainstream Rock chart, becoming their lowest-peaking single in the process. The album was released on May 26, 2009 and debuted at number four on the "Billboard" 200 with sales of over 49,000 copies, their lowest opening week figure since "The Last Tour on Earth" debuted with 26,000 copies in 1999.
Prior to "The High End of Low"'s release, Manson made a series of disparaging comments regarding Interscope and its artistic censorship; as well as its then-CEO Jimmy Iovine, who Manson said "wasn't smart enough to understand what [we] do", and publicly claiming that the label "cares more about Vitamin Water [the private equity venture of Interscope-signed 50 Cent] than music." Reznor – who, as of 2015, remains friends with Iovine – responded by calling Manson a "dopey clown" and claiming that "He is a malicious guy and will step on anybody's face to succeed and cross any line of decency." While promoting the album in the UK, Manson appeared inebriated in a series of interviews. An interview for "" recorded during this time remains unaired, due to graphic language and content. A music video for "Running to the Edge of the World" – in which Manson beats a Wood lookalike to death – was released on November 4 and was condemned as a perceived glorification of violence against women. The band parted ways with Interscope on December 3. They settled the lawsuit filed by former keyboardist Stephen Bier (aka M.W. Gacy), with Manson's insurance company paying Bier's attorney's fees and Bier receiving no monetary value.
Upon parting with Interscope, Manson said "a lot of the creative control on which my hands were tied [has been regained]", while stating that the band had been writing new material while touring their previous album. Manson attested that its lyrical content would be "more romantic" yet "self-abusive", and described its sonic elements as being "suicide death metal". Fred Sablan joined the band in July 2010. By October, Twiggy described the album as being "almost done", and opined that "It's our best record yet. I mean, everyone always says that, but I think this is our best work so far. It's kind of like a little more of a punk rock "Mechanical Animals", without sounding too pretentious." The following month, it was announced that the band had signed a joint-venture deal with London-based indie label Cooking Vinyl. As part of the deal, the band would retain creative control over their artistic direction, with the band and label sharing profits equally after the label recoups costs associated with marketing, promotion and distribution.
For much of 2011, Manson removed himself from the public spotlight and ceased almost all communication with fans, only taking a break from his self-imposed sequestration to appear in the music video for "Tempat Ku" by Brunei rock band D'Hask. On February 24, longtime drummer Ginger Fish announced his resignation from the group. On May 22, their website underwent a complete overhaul. A 26-second clip of an unreleased song, tentatively titled "I am among no one", was uploaded to their Vimeo account, along with a new logo.
After being impressed by his directorial work on one of Kid Cudi's music videos, Manson employed actor Shia LaBeouf to direct a short film entitled "Born Villain". Contrary to media reports that the project would be a "making-of" video documenting the album's recording, "Born Villain" was a surrealist short featuring a previously unreleased track, "Overneath the Path of Misery". Containing numerous references to "Macbeth", it was inspired by Jodorowsky's "The Holy Mountain" and Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's 1929 silent film "Un Chien Andalou". To promote the project, LaBeouf and his girlfriend, photographer Karolyn Pho, graffitied areas of LA with its artwork. LaBeouf and Pho later photographed their work, and released it as a limited edition book titled "Campaign", which was bundled with a DVD of the film. In November, Vrenna departed the band to focus on other production work, whilst indicating that production of their eighth studio album was "largely completed".
The album was preceded by the release of "No Reflection", which Manson leaked to KROQ-FM on March 7, 2012. Cooking Vinyl CEO Martin Goldschmidt called the leak a "masterstroke", saying "we had all these exclusives lined up around the world, and then Manson blew them all. We're already getting more radio play than the whole of the last record." The song went on to peak at number twenty-six on the Mainstream Rock chart, spending fourteen weeks on the chart, and was their best-performing single there since "Personal Jesus" in 2004. "Born Villain" was released worldwide from April 30, debuting at number ten on the "Billboard" 200 and atop both the Independent Albums and Top Hard Rock Albums charts. The album spent two weeks at number one on the UK Rock Albums Chart. A remix EP for "Slo-Mo-Tion" followed on November 5. The band embarked on the seventeen-month "Hey Cruel World... Tour" from the end of April, which was interspersed by co-headlining tours with Rob Zombie ("Twins of Evil") and Alice Cooper ("Masters of Madness").
In August 2012, it was announced that Manson would play a fictionalized version of himself in a four-episode arc of the sixth season of TV series "Californication". While filming its season finale at the Greek Theatre in LA, Manson met the series' score composer, Tyler Bates, and the two discussed a potential collaboration. Manson confirmed that production started on new material by May 2013. Four months later, Sablan announced that he had left the group.
One track from the album, "Cupid Carries a Gun" was used as the opening theme to "Salem" from its second episode onwards, which premiered on US television on April 27. In October, a large portion of the album track "Killing Strangers" was predominantly featured in the Keanu Reeves movie "John Wick". "Third Day of a Seven Day Binge" was released for free download on the band's website on October 26, and served as the album's first official single. The band performed several new songs live for the first time as they played a handful of concerts around southern California in October and early November. "Deep Six" was released on December 16, with a music video following three days later. It went on to peak at number eight on "Billboard"'s Mainstream Rock chart, making it the band's highest-ever peaking single on "Billboard". "Cupid Carries a Gun" was released as the album's third official single on January 8, 2015.
"The Pale Emperor" was released on January 20 in the US. It is dedicated to Manson's mother, who died in May 2014 after an eight-year battle with Alzheimer's disease and dementia. It was both a critical and commercial success, debuting at number eight on the "Billboard" 200 with sales of over 51,000 copies, their largest opening-week figure since "Eat Me, Drink Me" in 2007. Numerous publications referred to it as the band's best album in over a decade. It would go on to appear on several 'best of 2015' lists, with "Rolling Stone" dubbing it the 'best metal album' of 2015. Music videos for both "The Mephistopheles of Los Angeles" and "Third Day of a Seven Day Binge" were released in May and July, respectively.
The band embarked on the nearly-two year-long The Hell Not Hallelujah Tour in support of the album, which was interspersed by a co-headlining tour with The Smashing Pumpkins titled The End Times. In February 2016, Manson contributed vocals to a version of David Bowie's "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" on "Countach (For Giorgio)", a tribute album to Giorgio Moroder curated by Shooter Jennings. A 16-bit music video for the song was released five months later. Also in February, details were announced of another co-headlining tour, this time with Slipknot. The tour was scheduled to begin on June 9 in Salt Lake City and consist of thirty-four dates in Amphitheatres throughout North America, with support from Of Mice & Men. However, the first twelve dates of the tour were postponed after an examination revealed that Corey Taylor had broken two vertebrae in his neck. The tour began on June 28 in Nashville, Tennessee, with the postponed shows rescheduled for August.
While touring with The Smashing Pumpkins, Manson indicated a "strong possibility" of working with Corgan on new material, and also revealed plans to collaborate with Korn frontman Jonathan Davis on a "Southern-sounding, acoustic" project. Manson announced in an interview with KEGL in November that work had begun on the band's tenth studio album, while also confirming that Twiggy, Bates and Sharone would all be involved in its recording. "Antichrist Superstar" was reissued on cassette exclusively in Europe as part of Record Store Day 2016. To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the album's release, Manson indicated that a special edition of "Antichrist Superstar" would be issued on October 20, although this failed to materialize. Among its bonus content would have been a previously unreleased film, created during the "Dead to the World Tour".
On July 19, Manson announced that the band's tenth studio album had the working title "SAY10", and predicted a release date of Valentine's Day 2017. In September, Manson confirmed that the band were "putting the finishing touches" on the album, and said: "It's not very much in any way like "The Pale Emperor". It's pretty violent in its nature for some reason, and it's not emotional in the same way. It's got a chip on its shoulder. I can't wait for people to hear it. I think they're going to be quite surprised." On November 8 – the day of the 2016 US presidential election – Manson released a teaser clip of a new music video created alongside "Final Girl" director Tyler Shields. It featured scenes of Manson brandishing a knife while standing over a decapitated corpse. According to "The Daily Beast"s Marlow Stern, the decapitated figure is dressed to resemble Donald Trump. Manson would later say that the figure in the video "wasn't anyone except if you wanted it to be them."
The album was not released in February 2017, and instead a long series of cryptic videos were posted to Marilyn Manson's personal Instagram account over the course of just under 2 months, before Manson revealed on May 9 that the album had been named "Heaven Upside Down". The band began their Heaven Upside Down Tour on July 20, 2017 in Budapest. The first single from the album, "We Know Where You Fucking Live", was released on September 11, with the album due to follow on October 6. A second single, "Kill4Me", was released on September 20. On October 24, Manson announced that Ramirez had been fired from the band following rape allegations from Jack Off Jill vocalist Jessicka; for the rest of the tour, Juan Alderete (formerly of Racer X and The Mars Volta) joined.
In July 2018, Manson embarked on the in the USA with co-headliner Rob Zombie and special guest Deadly Apples.
In March 2019, Manson announced that he was nearly finished recording his next studio album and that country musician Shooter Jennings was involved. Later that year, drummer Gil Sharone announced he was leaving the band to pursue "other current and future projects", with former Black Flag drummer Brandon Pertzborn hired as his replacement. Manson also revealed that Bates is no longer involved with the group, and that the album would be produced by Jennings and feature contributions from his drummer Jamie Douglass. In July, Manson embarked on the in the USA and Canada with co-headliner Rob Zombie, followed by festivals and headline dates with support from Deadly Apples. The band released their cover of The Doors' "The End" on streaming music services in November, with a limited edition vinyl scheduled to be issued on March 6, 2020. The song was recorded for the soundtrack to the upcoming miniseries "The Stand", based on Stephen King's novel of the same name. Manson is set to appear in the miniseries. The band are set to appear as the opening act for Ozzy Osbourne during his No More Tours II series, a North American tour beginning in May 2020. However the tour was eventually cancelled along with Manson's performances after Ozzy Osbourne was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
On January 13, 2020, live bassist Juan Alderete was involved in a bicycle accident which left him with a diffuse axonal injury, a type of traumatic brain injury. A GoFundMe page has been created to help cover the cost of his medical expenses. On April 29, 2020, Manson and Jennings confirmed they had finished work on the band's eleventh studio album, with both calling it a "masterpiece".
Although the band's music has often been labeled as shock rock by mainstream media, Manson disputes the use of the label, preferring instead to identify his band's music as rock and roll. Marilyn Manson's music has been classified under many genres, including industrial metal, industrial rock, industrial dance, post-industrial, alternative metal, progressive metal, hard rock, nu metal, electronic music, glam rock, gothic metal, death metal, blues rock and pop. Although Marilyn Manson's music has often been labelled gothic rock, AllMusic contends that the band merely borrows from gothic rock's imagery.
From 1996 to his departure in 2002, Twiggy was their chief musical contributor, co-writing many of the band's biggest hits with Manson during this period. Despite never receiving a writing credit, drummer Ginger Fish provided substantial pre-production assistance to both Manson and Twiggy while composing demos for "Antichrist Superstar". His drums loops and sound effects would go on to be predominantly featured on several tracks, most notably "The Beautiful People". John 5 and Tim Sköld were also prevalent composers, while "The Pale Emperor" and "Heaven Upside Down" were composed entirely by Tyler Bates.
All of the band's lyrics are written by Manson, whose songwriting style varies between albums. Utilizing aesthetics often found within spoken-word poetry, his writing features comedy, puns, and double entendres, and he makes frequent use of alliteration. The band's witticisms often take the form of neologisms, delivered several at a time in rapid-fire succession. Lyrical content has emerged from a wide range of subjects, including love, sex and sexuality, sexual abuse, consumerism, politics, revenge, suicide, capitalism, violence and mortality, as well as the Bible and Greek mythology.
Manson predominantly delivers lyrics in a melodic fashion, although he invariably enhances his vocal register by utilizing several extended vocal techniques, such as vocal fry, screaming, growling and crooning. His voice can emit five different tones simultaneously, which mixing engineer Robert Carranza discovered can form a pentagram when imported into a phrasal analyzer. He possesses a baritone vocal type. His lowest bass note of A1 can be heard in "Arma-goddamn-motherfuckin-geddon", while his highest note, an E6 – the first note of the whistle register – can be heard on the "Born Villain" song "Hey, Cruel World ...".
Manson's earliest musical memory was listening to Kiss during a family road trip; he has since cited the band as a major influence. As a child, he would imitate Kiss's "kabuki"-like makeup and draw pictures of Gene Simmons and Peter Criss. The earliest incarnation of the band was conceived by Manson at a Fort Lauderdale nightclub called The Reunion Room in December 1989, where he was introduced to Big Black's "Songs About Fucking" by his future keyboardist, Stephen Bier. Daisy Berkowitz played in several punk rock outfits before co-founding the Spooky Kids, and was influenced by acts such as the New York Dolls and the Jim Carroll Band, whose "People Who Died" was covered regularly at live shows.
As its only permanent member, Manson heads the direction of the band's sound; he has been influenced by the shock rock of artists such as Arthur Brown, Alice Cooper, The Doors, Black Sabbath/Ozzy Osbourne and Iggy Pop. His biggest influence, however, was David Bowie, whom he credited with "changing [his] life forever". The two have often been compared by mainstream media, particularly in relation to their ability to shift genre and style – replete with a new look and musical philosophy – with each studio release. Manson's two favorite songs are Bowie's "Quicksand" and "Ashes to Ashes". For several years, Manson sang Bowie's "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" as a vocal warm up exercise before live performances; he later covered the song with outlaw country musician Shooter Jennings.
During their period at Nothing Records, the band's sound gathered sonic elements from other outfits on that label's roster, particularly Nine Inch Nails, with Reznor co-producing their first two studio albums. Manson has cited Queen as an influence on the band's more melodic work, while new wave and synthpop acts such as Depeche Mode and Gary Numan have been noted as influencing their electronic material. Manson said of the latter, "I was always into his apocalyptic fiction lyrics. He pioneered electronic dance music." The work of gothic rock acts such as The Cure and Bauhaus has also been cited, with Twiggy saying that "as far as guitar and bass combinations go", Bauhaus's Daniel Ash and David J were "a really big influence". Manson's other influences include the Beatles, Rihanna, White Zombie, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, N.W.A, The Smashing Pumpkins, Justin Timberlake, Led Zeppelin, the occult, horror comics, and the King James Bible.
Marilyn Manson have been credited with creating some of the most recognizable and visually defining music videos of the MTV Generation, with some commentators suggesting that their music videos played a significant role in the band's commercial success. Their work frequently incorporates surrealist iconography and purposefully grotesque imagery, and their style has been emulated by other performers. Joseph Schafer of "Stereogum" said in 2015 that "perhaps no single artist has mastered the music video as a medium so well [as Marilyn Manson]." They have received numerous awards and accolades for their work. Three of their videos – "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", "The Beautiful People" and "The Dope Show" – received a total of five MTV Video Music Award nominations, with the latter winning the Award for Best Cinematography at the 1999 ceremony. The clip for "The Dope Show" also won two awards at the 1998 "Billboard" Music Video Awards. "The Beautiful People" appeared at number fifty-four on MTV's list of the '100 Greatest Music Videos Ever Made'. as well as at number one-hundred on MuchMusic's 100 Greatest Videos Ever. Their 2003 video for "(s)AINT" was referred to by "NME" as "one of the most explicit music videos ever made", and was included in lists of the 'Most Controversial Music Videos' by both "Time" and "SF Weekly".
The band have received several Kerrang! Awards throughout their career, and were inducted into the "Kerrang!" Hall of Fame in 2000. Manson also received their Icon Award in 2005, as well as their Lifetime Achievement Award ten years later. The publication has ranked "Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)" as the eleventh greatest rock album of the 2000s, and in 2015 they listed Manson as the twenty-eighth greatest rockstar in the world. VH1 included Marilyn Manson at seventy-eight on their list of the '100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock', and also included "The Beautiful People" at number eighty-six on their list of the "100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs". Similarly, Gigwise included Manson at number thirty-six in their list of the '60 Greatest Solo Artists of All Time'. In 2016, Manson was presented with an Icon Award at the Alternative Press Music Awards. The band has also received four Grammy Award nominations, including two for Best Metal Performance, along with nominations for Best Hard Rock Performance and Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance. Marilyn Manson have sold over 50 million records worldwide.
Several commentators have referred to the band's lead singer as being one of the most iconic and controversial figures in heavy metal music, with some going so far as to call him a "pop culture icon". "Paste" magazine said there were "few artists in the 90s as shocking as Marilyn Manson, the most famous of the shock-rockers." "Rolling Stone" editor Lorraine Ali credited "Antichrist Superstar" with marking the end of the reign of grunge within popular music, writing that Marilyn Manson "[offered] total escapism as a true alternative", elaborating that the album was "a volatile reaction to five years of earnest, post-Nirvana rock." In 2003, Jon Wiederhorn of MTV called Manson "the only major performer today who can justifiably call himself an artist." Graham Hartmann of "Loudwire" said that the band's best songs document "a career that is unlike any other that came before", highlighting their mix of a "rock 'n' roll mentality with profound lyrics narrating the progression of society in real time, Manson has developed a polarizing identity as both a beloved hero and a reviled villain." Hannah Ewers of "The Guardian" wrote in 2016 that the band's music has "never been more relevant [than] at this time of cultural and political turbulence. Whether [his lyrics are addressing] America's gun crime problem, sexual abuse, religious hypocrisy or consumerism, Manson remains a relevant cultural figure rather than a 90s one, because he continues to address the times without lapsing into a parody", and opined: "As long as young people are angry (which they are), he will have listeners."
The band has been noted as influencing numerous groups within metal-associated genres, such as American Head Charge, Babymetal, Black Veil Brides, Combichrist, Kittie, Korn, Motionless in White, Murderdolls, Mushroomhead, New Years Day, September Mourning, Slipknot, and Vanna. Outside of heavy metal, both the band and its lead singer have inspired a diverse group of acts, including the Astroid Boys, Avril Lavigne, Charli XCX, Creeper, Die Antwoord, Eminem, Grimes, Halsey, Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey, Lil Uzi Vert, Lisa Marie Presley, Muse, My Chemical Romance, Mykki Blanco, Natalia Kills, Porcelain Black, Salem, Skrillex, Skylar Grey and Years & Years. Garbage vocalist Shirley Manson has called Manson an "amazing figure and provocateur and agitator" and said that he was "always challenging you to think about the church, to think about sexuality and to think about society in different ways. We just don't have singers like that anymore." Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins has commended Manson's manipulation of the culture of celebrity, saying: "He's very savvy, in that he lets people think things about him or plays into things to see what will happen, almost like a performance artist. He's a visionary in a way, because he identified a culture that was coming and now that culture is everywhere."
In December 1996, Secretary of Education William Bennett, along with U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman and former Pennsylvania Secretary of State C. DeLores Tucker, held a press conference wherein they questioned MCA – the owner of Interscope – president Edgar Bronfman Jr.'s ability to head the label competently whilst profiting from "profanity-laced" albums by artists such as Tupac Shakur, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Marilyn Manson. The following November, Representative Sam Brownback chaired a hearing of the Committee on Government Affairs. At this subcommittee, Lieberman once again criticized the band's music, calling it "vile, hateful, nihilistic and damaging", and repeated his request that Seagram – then-owner of MCA – "start ... disassociating itself from Marilyn Manson." The subcommittee also heard from Raymond Kuntz, of Burlington, North Dakota, who blamed his son Richard's suicide on "Antichrist Superstar—"specifically the song "The Reflecting God".
The band's live performances have also come under fire—the Dead to the World Tour, in particular, was followed by protesters at nearly every North American venue it visited. Several states, including Utah, South Carolina and Virginia, passed legislation specifically targeting the group, which banned them from performing in state-operated venues. These laws would later be repealed, following separate lawsuits from fans, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Ozzy Osbourne, who sued the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority after they forced the cancellation of the New Jersey date of the 1997 Ozzfest at Giants Stadium.
On June 30, 2003, the mutilated body of fourteen-year old schoolgirl Jodi Jones was discovered in woodland near her home in Easthouses, Scotland. The injuries sustained by Jones closely resembled those of actress Elizabeth Short, who was murdered in 1947 and was popularly referred to by media as the Black Dahlia. Jones's boyfriend, then-fifteen year old Luke Mitchell, was arrested on suspicion of her murder ten months later. During a search of his home, detectives confiscated a copy of "The Golden Age of Grotesque" containing the short film "Doppelherz". It was purchased two days after Jones's death. A ten-minute excerpt from the film, as well as several paintings by Manson depicting the Black Dahlia's mutilated body, were presented as evidence during the trial. Mitchell was found guilty of murder and sentenced to serve a minimum of twenty years in prison.
The band's scheduled appearance at the Park Live Festival in Moscow on June 27, 2014 was canceled moments before they were due to arrive on stage, after authorities received numerous bomb threats, while hundreds of activists affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church protested outside the venue. The incident culminated in the assault of several members of the band and crew near their hotel. Two days later, a performance in Novosibirsk was also canceled when authorities refused to grant permission for the show to go ahead, accusing Manson of insulting the beliefs of the Orthodox church and of "promoting sadomasochism". Later that year, Manson garnered significant media attention when a video depicting the simulated rape of Lana Del Rey was posted onto YouTube by production company Sturmgruppe. The video, titled "Sturmgruppe 2013 Reel", showed simulated footage of film director Eli Roth attacking Del Rey, which was interspersed by unrelated images from two of the band's previous music videos—"No Reflection" and "Slo-Mo-Tion". Manson's representatives released a statement to "Billboard" denying any involvement in the production of the rape scenes.
In October 2017, Twiggy Ramirez was accused of sexually assault by ex-girlfriend Jessicka Addams during their relationship in the mid-90s. Soon after, Manson announced that he had "decided to part ways" with his longterm bassist. Several days later, Ramirez released a statement which said: "I have only recently been made aware of these allegations from over 20 years ago. I do not condone non-consensual sex of any kind. I will be taking some time to spend with my family and focus on maintaining my several years of sobriety. If I have caused anyone pain, I apologize and truly regret it."
On April 20, 1999, Columbine High School students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve students and a teacher, and wounded twenty-one others before committing suicide. In the days following the massacre, media reports surfaced alleging that they were influenced by violence in entertainment, specifically movies, video games and music. The pair were widely reported as being fans of German bands KMFDM and Rammstein, but the majority of blame was directed at Marilyn Manson.
Five days after the incident, longtime music industry critics Republican former Secretary of Education William Bennett and Democratic U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman cited the band as a contributing factor to the massacre during an appearance on "Meet the Press". Soon after, sensationalist headlines such as "Killers Worshipped Rock Freak Manson" and "Devil-Worshipping Maniac Told Kids To Kill" began appearing in media coverage of the tragedy (such as Fox News). The Mayor of Denver, Wellington Webb, successfully petitioned promoters to cancel KBPI-FM's annual 'Birthday Bash', at which the band was scheduled to appear. Coloradoan politicians such as Governor Bill Owens and Republican Representative Tom Tancredo accused Manson of promoting "hate, violence, death, suicide, drug use and the attitudes and actions of the Columbine High School killers." Later reports stated that neither Harris or Klebold were fans of Marilyn Manson. The band canceled the remaining four dates of the Rock Is Dead Tour out of respect for the victims, while maintaining that music, movies, books or video games were not to blame.
Eleven days after the massacre, Manson wrote an op-ed piece for "Rolling Stone", titled "Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?", where he rebuked the ensuing hysteria and "witch hunt", and castigated America's gun culture, the political influence of the National Rifle Association, and the media's culpability in similarly violent events in the future – through their irresponsible coverage – in facilitating the placement of blame on a scapegoat, instead of informing the populace of genuine societal issues.
The controversy connecting the band and school shootings continued on October 10, 2007, when 14-year-old SuccessTech Academy student Asa Coon shot four people before committing suicide. After being punched in the face by another student while exiting a bathroom, he shot his attacker – Michael Peek – in the abdomen. Armed with two revolvers, he then proceeded down a hallway, where he wounded another student and two teachers by firing into two occupied classrooms, before entering a nearby bathroom and committing suicide. Coon was wearing a black Marilyn Manson T-shirt during the incident.
On May 18, 2009, 15-year-old Justin Doucet, a student at Larose Middle School in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, entered the school armed with a .25-caliber Automatic Colt Pistol. When seventh-grade teacher Jessica Plaisance refused to comply with Doucet's demand to say "Hail Marilyn Manson", he fired two shots, narrowly missing her head, before turning the gun on himself. He died from his injuries a week later.
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Mortimer J. Adler
Mortimer Jerome Adler (December 28, 1902 – June 28, 2001) was an American philosopher, educator, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for long stretches in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and San Mateo, California. He worked for Columbia University, the University of Chicago, "Encyclopædia Britannica", and Adler's own Institute for Philosophical Research.
Adler was born in New York City on December 28, 1902, to Jewish immigrants from Germany, Clarissa (Manheim), a schoolteacher, and Ignatz Adler, a jewelry salesman. He dropped out of school at age 14 to become a copy boy for the "New York Sun", with the ultimate aspiration to become a journalist. Adler soon returned to school to take writing classes at night where he discovered the works of men he would come to call heroes: Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, John Stuart Mill and others. He went on to study at Columbia University and contributed to the student literary magazine, "The Morningside" (a poem "Choice" in 1922 when Charles A. Wagner was editor-in-chief and Whittaker Chambers an associate editor). Though he refused to take the required swimming test for a bachelor's degree (a matter that was rectified when Columbia gave him an honorary degree in 1983), he stayed at the university and eventually received an instructorship and finally a doctorate in psychology. While at Columbia University, Adler wrote his first book: "Dialectic", published in 1927.
Adler worked with Scott Buchanan at the People's Institute and then for many years on their respective Great Books efforts (Buchanan as founder of the Great Books program at St. John's College).
In 1930 Robert Hutchins, the newly appointed president of the University of Chicago, whom Adler had befriended some years earlier, arranged for Chicago's law school to hire him as a professor of the philosophy of law; the philosophers at Chicago (who included James H. Tufts, E.A. Burtt, and George H. Mead) had "entertained grave doubts as to Dr. Adler's competence in the field [of philosophy]" and resisted Adler's appointment to the University's Department of Philosophy. Adler was the first "non-lawyer" to join the law school faculty. Adler also taught philosophy to business executives at the Aspen Institute.
Adler and Hutchins went on to found the Great Books of the Western World program and the Great Books Foundation. He founded and served as director of the Institute for Philosophical Research in 1952. He also served on the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, and succeeded Hutchins as its chairman from 1974. As the director of editorial planning for the fifteenth edition of "Britannica" from 1965, he was instrumental in the major reorganization of knowledge embodied in that edition. He introduced the Paideia Proposal which resulted in his founding the Paideia Program, a grade-school curriculum centered around guided reading and discussion of difficult works (as judged for each grade). With Max Weismann, he founded the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas in 1990 in Chicago.
Adler long strove to bring philosophy to the masses, and some of his works (such as "How to Read a Book") became popular bestsellers. He was also an advocate of economic democracy and wrote an influential preface to Louis O. Kelso's "The Capitalist Manifesto". Adler was often aided in his thinking and writing by Arthur Rubin, an old friend from his Columbia undergraduate days. In his own words:
Dwight MacDonald once criticized Adler's popular style by saying "Mr. Adler once wrote a book called "How to Read a Book". He should now read a book called "How to Write a Book"."
Adler was born into a nonobservant Jewish family. In his early twenties, he discovered St. Thomas Aquinas, and in particular the "Summa Theologica". Many years later, he wrote that its "intellectual austerity, integrity, precision and brilliance ... put the study of theology highest among all of my philosophical interests". An enthusiastic Thomist, he was a frequent contributor to Catholic philosophical and educational journals, as well as a frequent speaker at Catholic institutions, so much so that some assumed he was a convert to Catholicism. But that was reserved for later.
In 1940, James T. Farrell called Adler "the leading American fellow-traveller of the Roman Catholic Church". What was true for Adler, Farrell said, was what was "postulated in the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church", and he "sang the same tune" as avowed Catholic philosophers like Étienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain and Martin D'Arcy. Farrell attributed Adler's delay in joining the Church to his being among those Christians who "wanted their cake and ... wanted to eat it too", and compared him to the Emperor Constantine, who waited until he was on his deathbed to formally become a Catholic.
Adler took a long time to make up his mind about theological issues. When he wrote "How to Think About God: A Guide for the Twentieth-Century Pagan" in 1980, he claimed to consider himself the pagan of the book's subtitle. In volume 51 of the "Mars Hill Audio Journal" (2001), Ken Myers includes his 1980 interview with Adler, conducted after "How to Think About God" was published. Myers reminisces, "During that interview, I asked him why he had never embraced the Christian faith himself. He explained that while he had been profoundly influenced by a number of Christian thinkers during his life, ... there were moral – not intellectual – obstacles to his conversion. He didn't explain any further."
Myers notes that Adler finally "surrendered to the Hound of Heaven" and "made a confession of faith and was baptized" as an Episcopalian in 1984, only a few years after that interview. Offering insight into Adler's conversion, Myers quotes him from a subsequent 1990 article in "Christianity" magazine: "My chief reason for choosing Christianity was because the mysteries were incomprehensible. What's the point of revelation if we could figure it out ourselves? If it were wholly comprehensible, then it would just be another philosophy."
According to his friend Deal Hudson, Adler "had been attracted to Catholicism for many years" and "wanted to be a Roman Catholic, but issues like abortion and the resistance of his family and friends" kept him away. Many thought he was baptized as an Episcopalian rather than a Catholic solely because of his "wonderful – and ardently Episcopal – wife" Caroline. Hudson suggests it is no coincidence that it was only after her death in 1998 that he took the final step. In December 1999, in San Mateo, where he had moved to spend his last years, Adler was formally received into the Catholic Church by a long-time friend and admirer, Bishop Pierre DuMaine. "Finally," wrote another friend, Ralph McInerny, "he became the Roman Catholic he had been training to be all his life".
Despite not being a Catholic for most of his life, Adler can be considered a Catholic philosopher on account of his lifelong participation in the Neo-Thomist movement and his almost equally long membership of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.
Adler referred to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as the "ethics of common sense" and also as "the only moral philosophy that is sound, practical, and undogmatic". Thus, it is the only ethical doctrine that answers all the questions that moral philosophy should and can attempt to answer, neither more nor less, and that has answers that are true by the standard of truth that is appropriate and applicable to normative judgments. In contrast, he believed that other theories or doctrines try to answer more questions than they can or fewer than they should, and their answers are mixtures of truth and error, particularly the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
Adler was a self-proclaimed "moderate dualist", and viewed the positions of psychophysical dualism and materialistic monism to be opposite sides of two extremes. Regarding dualism, he dismissed the extreme form of dualism that stemmed from such philosophers as Plato (body and soul) and Descartes (mind and matter), as well as the theory of extreme monism and the mind–brain identity theory. After eliminating the extremes, Adler subscribed to a more moderate form of dualism. He believed that the brain is only a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for conceptual thought; that an "immaterial intellect" is also requisite as a condition; and that the difference between human and animal behavior is a radical difference in kind. Adler defended this position against many challenges to dualistic theories.
The meanings of "freedom" and "free will" have been and are under debate, and the debate is confused because there is no generally accepted definition of either "freedom" or "free will". Adler's "Institute for Philosophical Research" spent ten years studying the "idea of freedom" as the word was used by hundreds of authors who have discussed and disputed freedom. The study was published in 1958 as Volume One of "The Idea of Freedom", sub-titled "A Dialectical Examination of the Idea of Freedom" with subsequent comments in "Adler's Philosophical Dictionary". Adler's study concluded that a delineation of three kinds of freedom – circumstantial, natural, and acquired – is necessary for clarity on the subject.
As Adler's interest in religion and theology increased, he made references to the Bible and the need to test its articles of faith for compatibility with certainties from fields of natural knowledge such as science and philosophy. In his 1981 book "How to Think About God", Adler attempts to demonstrate God as the exnihilator (the creator of something from nothing). Adler stressed that even with this conclusion, God's existence cannot be proven or demonstrated, but only established as true beyond a reasonable doubt. However, in a recent re-review of the argument, John Cramer concluded that recent developments in cosmology appear to converge with and support Adler's argument, and that in light of such theories as the multiverse, the argument is no worse for wear and may, indeed, now be judged somewhat more probable than it was originally.
Adler believed that, if theology and religion are living things, there is nothing intrinsically wrong about efforts to modernize them. They must be open to change and growth like everything else. Further, there is no reason to be surprised when discussions such as those about the "death of God" – a concept drawn from Friedrich Nietzsche – stir popular excitement as they did in the recent past and could do so again today. According to Adler, of all the great ideas, the idea of God has always been and continues to be the one that evokes the greatest concern among the widest group of men and women. However, he was opposed to the idea of converting atheism into a new form of religion or theology.
Mortimer Adler was married twice and had four children. He and Helen Boynton, with whom he had two children, Mark and Michael, were married in 1927 and later divorced in 1960. He and Carolyn Pring, his second wife, married in 1963 and they had two children, Douglas and Philip.
How to read a book | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19451 |
Max Weber
Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist, philosopher, jurist, and political economist, who is regarded today as one of the most important theorists on the development of modern Western society. As his ideas would profoundly influence social theory and social research, Weber is often cited as among the three founders of sociology, alongside Émile Durkheim, and Karl Marx.
Unlike Durkheim, Weber did not believe in monocausal explanations, proposing instead that for any outcome there can be multiple causes. As such, he would be a key proponent of methodological anti-positivism, arguing for the study of social action through interpretive (rather than purely empiricist) methods, based on understanding the purpose and meanings that individuals attach to their own actions. Weber's main intellectual concern was in understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularisation, and "disenchantment", which he took to be the result of a new way of thinking about the world, associating such processes with the rise of capitalism and modernity.
Weber is best known for his thesis of combining economic sociology and the sociology of religion, emphasising the importance of cultural influences embedded in religion as a means for understanding the genesis of capitalism (contrasting Marx's historical materialism). Weber would first elaborate his theory in his seminal work, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1905), in which he attributes ascetic Protestantism as one of the major "elective affinities" involved in the rise of market-driven capitalism and the rational-legal nation-state in the Western world. Arguing the boosting of capitalism as a basic tenet of Protestantism, Weber would suggest that the spirit of capitalism is inherent to Protestant religious values. "Protestant Ethic" would form the earliest part in Weber's broader investigations into world religion, as he would go on to examine the religions of China and India, as well as ancient Judaism, with particular regard to their differing economic consequences and conditions of social stratification.
Through another major work, "Politics as a Vocation", Weber would define "the state" as an entity that successfully claims a "monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." He would also be the first to categorise social authority into distinct forms: charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal. Among these categories, Weber's analysis of bureaucracy would emphasize that modern state institutions are increasingly based on the latter (rational-legal authority).
Weber also made a variety of other contributions in economic history, theory, and methodology. His analysis of modernity and rationalisation would significantly influence the critical theory associated with the Frankfurt School. After the First World War, he was among the founders of the liberal German Democratic Party. He also ran unsuccessfully for a seat in parliament and served as advisor to the committee that drafted the ill-fated democratic Weimar Constitution of 1919. After contracting Spanish flu, he died of pneumonia in 1920, aged 56.
Maximilian Karl Emil Weber was born in 1864 in Erfurt, Province of Saxony, Prussia. He would be the oldest of seven children to Max Weber Sr., a wealthy and prominent civil servant and National Liberal Party member, and his wife Helene Fallenstein, who partly descended from French Huguenot immigrants and held strong moral absolutist ideas.
Weber Sr.'s involvement in public life immersed his home in both politics and academia, as his salon welcomed many prominent scholars and public figures. The young Weber and his brother Alfred, who also became a sociologist and economist, thrived in this intellectual atmosphere. For Christmas in 1876 Weber, at thirteen years old, would gift his parents two historical essays, entitled "About the course of German history, with special reference to the positions of the Emperor and the Pope", and "About the Roman Imperial period from Constantine to the migration of nations".
In class, bored and unimpressed with teachers—who, in turn, resented what they perceived as a disrespectful attitude—Weber secretly read all forty volumes of Goethe, and it has been recently argued that this was an important influence on his thought and methodology. Before entering university, he would read many other classical works. Over time, Weber would also be significantly affected by the marital tension between his father, "a man who enjoyed earthly pleasures," and his mother, a devout Calvinist "who sought to lead an ascetic life."
In 1882, Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student, transferring to the University of Berlin after a year of military service. After his first few years as a student, during which he spent much time "drinking beer and fencing," Weber would increasingly take his mother's side in family arguments and grew estranged from his father. Simultaneously with his studies, he worked as a junior lawyer. In 1886, Weber passed the examination for Referendar, comparable to the bar association examination in the British and U.S. legal systems. Throughout the late 1880s, Weber continued his study of law and history, earning his law doctorate in 1889 by writing a dissertation on legal history titled "The history of commercial partnerships in the Middle Ages". This work would be used as part of a longer work, "On the History of Trading Companies in the Middle Ages, based on South-European Sources", published in the same year. Two years later, working with August Meitzen, Weber completed his habilitation, "Roman Agrarian History and its Significance for Public and Private Law". Having thus become a "privatdozent", Weber joined the University of Berlin's faculty, lecturing and consulting for the government.
In 1893, Weber married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger, later a feminist activist and author in her own right, who was instrumental in collecting and publishing Weber's journal articles as books after his death, while her biography of him is an important source for understanding Weber's life. They would have no children. The marriage granted long-awaited financial independence to Weber, allowing him to finally leave his parents' household.
In the years between the completion of his dissertation and habilitation, Weber took an interest in contemporary social policy. In 1888, he joined the "Verein für Socialpolitik", a new professional association of German economists affiliated with the historical school, who saw the role of economics primarily as finding solutions to the social problems of the age and who pioneered large scale statistical studies of economic issues. He also involved himself in politics, joining the left-leaning Evangelical Social Congress. In 1890, the Verein established a research program to examine "the Polish question", or "ostflucht": the influx of Polish farm workers into eastern Germany as local labourers migrated to Germany's rapidly industrialising cities. Weber was put in charge of the study and wrote a large part of the final report, which generated considerable attention and controversy, marking the beginning of Weber's renown as a social scientist.
From 1893 to 1899, Weber was a member of the "Alldeutscher Verband" (Pan-German League), an organization that campaigned against the influx of the Polish workers; the degree of Weber's support for the Germanisation of Poles and similar nationalist policies is still debated by modern scholars. In some of his work, in particular his provocative lecture on "The Nation State and Economic Policy" delivered in 1895, Weber criticises the immigration of Poles and blames the Junker class for perpetuating Slavic immigration to serve their selfish interests.
Weber and his wife, Marianne, moved to Freiburg in 1894, where Weber was appointed professor of economics at the Albert-Ludwigs University, before accepting the same position at the University of Heidelberg in 1896. There, Weber became a central figure in the so-called "Weber Circle", composed of other intellectuals, including his wife Marianne, as well as Georg Jellinek, Ernst Troeltsch, Werner Sombart and Robert Michels. Weber also remained active in the Verein and the Evangelical Social Congress. His research in that period was focused on economics and legal history.
In 1897, Weber Sr. died two months after a severe quarrel with his son that was never resolved. After this, Weber became increasingly prone to depression, nervousness and insomnia, making it difficult for him to fulfill his duties as a professor. His condition forced him to reduce his teaching and eventually leave his course unfinished in the autumn of 1899. After spending the summer and fall months of 1900 in a sanatorium, Weber and his wife travelled to Italy at the end of the year, not returning to Heidelberg until April 1902. He would again withdraw from teaching in 1903 and would not return until 1919. Weber's ordeal with mental illness was carefully described in a personal chronology that was destroyed by his wife. This chronicle was supposedly destroyed because Marianne feared that Weber's work would be discredited by the Nazis if his experience with mental illness were widely known.
After Weber's immense productivity in the early 1890s, he did not publish any papers between early 1898 and late 1902, finally resigning his professorship in late 1903. Freed from those obligations, in that year he accepted a position as associate editor of the "Archives for Social Science and Social Welfare", where he worked with his colleagues and Werner Sombart. His new interests would lie in more fundamental issues of social sciences; his works from this latter period are of primary interest to modern scholars. In 1904, Weber began to publish some of his most seminal papers in this journal, notably his essay "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," which became his most famous work and laid the foundations for his later research on the impact of cultures and religions on the development of economic systems. This essay was the only one of his works from that period that was published as a book during his lifetime. Some other of his works written in the first one and a half decades of the 20th century—published posthumously and dedicated primarily from the fields of sociology of religion, economic and legal sociology—are also recognised as among his most important intellectual contributions.
Also in 1904, Weber visited the United States, participating in the Congress of Arts and Sciences held in connection with the World's Fair (Louisiana Purchase Exposition) in St. Louis. A monument to his visit was placed at the home of relatives whom Weber visited in Mt. Airy, North Carolina.
Despite his partial recovery evident in America, Weber felt that he was unable to resume regular teaching at that time and continued on as a private scholar, helped by an inheritance in 1907. In 1909, disappointed with the Verein, he co-founded the German Sociological Association (, or "DGS") and served as its first treasurer, though resigning in 1912.
Later in 1912, Weber tried to organise a left-wing political party to combine social-democrats and liberals. This attempt was unsuccessful, in part because many liberals feared social-democratic revolutionary ideals.
At the outbreak of World War I, Weber, aged 50, volunteered for service and was appointed as a reserve officer in charge of organizing the army hospitals in Heidelberg, a role he fulfilled until the end of 1915. Weber's views on the war and the expansion of the German empire changed during the course of the conflict. Early on, he supported nationalist rhetoric and the war effort, though with some hesitation, viewing the war as a necessity to fulfill German duty as a leading state power. In time, however, Weber became one of the most prominent critics of German expansionism and of the Kaiser's war policies. Weber publicly attacked the Belgian annexation policy and unrestricted submarine warfare, later supporting calls for constitutional reform, democratisation, and universal suffrage.
Weber joined the worker and soldier council of Heidelberg in 1918. He then served in the German delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and as advisor to the Confidential Committee for Constitutional Reform, which drafted the Weimar Constitution. Motivated by his understanding of the American model, he advocated a strong, popularly elected presidency as a constitutional counterbalance to the power of the professional bureaucracy. More controversially, he also defended the provisions for emergency presidential powers that became Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. These provisions were later used by Adolf Hitler to subvert the rest of the constitution and institute rule by decree, allowing his regime to suppress opposition and gain dictatorial powers.
Weber would also run, though unsuccessfully, for a parliamentary seat, as a member of the liberal German Democratic Party, which he had co-founded. He opposed both the leftist German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, principled positions that defied the political alignments in Germany at that time, and which may have prevented Friedrich Ebert, the new social-democratic President of Germany, from appointing Weber as minister or ambassador. Weber commanded widespread respect but relatively little influence. Weber's role in German politics remains controversial to this day.
In Weber's critique of the left, he complained of the leaders of the leftist Spartacus League, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, that controlled the city government of Berlin while Weber was campaigning for his party:We have this [German] revolution to thank for the fact that we cannot send a single division against the Poles. All we see is dirt, muck, dung, and horse-play—nothing else. Liebknecht belongs in the madhouse and Rosa Luxemburg in the zoological gardens. Weber was, at the same time, critical of the Versailles Treaty, which he believed unjustly assigned "war guilt" to Germany when it came to the war, as Weber believed that many countries were guilty of starting it, not just Germany. In making this case, Weber argued:In the case of this war there is one, and only one power that desired it under all circumstances through its own will and, according to their political goals required: Russia.… It never crossed [my] mind that a German invasion of Belgium [in 1914] was nothing but an innocent act on the part of the Germans.Later that same month, in January 1919, after Weber and his party were defeated for election, Weber delivered one of his greatest academic lectures, "Politics as a Vocation", which reflected on the inherent violence and dishonesty he saw among politicians—a profession in which only recently Weber was so personally active. About the nature of politicians, he concluded that, "in nine out of ten cases they are windbags puffed up with hot air about themselves. They are not in touch with reality, and they do not feel the burden they need to shoulder; they just intoxicate themselves with romantic sensations."
Frustrated with politics, Weber resumed teaching during this time, first at the University of Vienna, then, after 1919, at the University of Munich. His lectures from that period were collected into major works, such as the "General Economic History", "Science as a Vocation," and "Politics as a Vocation". In Munich, he headed the first German university institute of sociology, but never held a professorial position in the discipline. Many colleagues and students in Munich attacked his response to the German Revolution, while some right-wing students held protests in front of his home.
On 14 June 1920, Max Weber contracted the Spanish flu and died of pneumonia in Munich. At the time of his death, Weber had not finished writing his on sociological theory: "Economy and Society". His widow, Marianne, helped prepare it for its publication in 1921–1922.
Sociology, for Max Weber, is "a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects."
Made clear in his methodology, Weber distinguished himself from Durkheim, Marx, and other classical figures, in that (a) his primary focus would be on individuals and culture; and (b) unlike theorists such as Comte and Durkheim, he did not (consciously) attempt to create any specific set of rules governing sociology or the social sciences in general. Whereas Durkheim focused on the society, Weber concentrated on the individual and their actions (i.e. structure and action. Compared to Marx, who argued for the primacy of the material world over the world of ideas, Weber valued ideas as motivating actions of individuals, at least in the big picture.
Weber would primarily be concerned with the question of objectivity and subjectivity, going on to distinguish social action from social behavior, noting that social action must be understood through how individuals "subjectively" relate to one another. Study of social action through interpretive means or ("to understand") must be based upon understanding the subjective meaning and purpose that individuals attach to their actions. Social actions may have easily identifiable and objective means, but much more subjective ends and the understanding of those ends by a scientist is subject to yet another layer of subjective understanding (that of the scientist). Weber noted that the importance of subjectivity in social sciences makes creation of fool-proof, universal laws much more difficult than in natural sciences and that the amount of objective knowledge that social sciences may achieve is precariously limited.
Overall, Weber supported the goal of objective science as one definitely worth striving for, though he noted that it is ultimately an unreachable goal:
The principle of "methodological individualism", which holds that social scientists should seek to understand collectivities (e.g. nations, cultures, governments, churches, corporations, etc.) solely as the result and the context of the actions of individual persons, can be traced to Weber, particularly to the first chapter of "Economy and Society", in which he argues that only individuals "can be treated as agents in a course of subjectively understandable action." In other words, Weber contended that social phenomena can be understood scientifically only to the extent that they are captured by models of the behaviour of purposeful individuals—models that Weber called "ideal types"—from which actual historical events necessarily deviate due to accidental and irrational factors. The analytical constructs of an ideal type never exist in reality, but provide objective benchmarks against which real-life constructs can be measured:
Weber's methodology was developed in the context of a wider debate about methodology of social sciences, the "Methodenstreit" ("method dispute"). Weber's position was close to historicism, as he understood social actions as being heavily tied to particular historical contexts and its analysis required the understanding of subjective motivations of individuals (social actors). Thus Weber's methodology emphasises the use of comparative historical analysis. As such, Weber was more interested in explaining how a certain outcome was the result of various historical processes rather than predicting an outcome of those processes in the future.
Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy, also known as the "rational-legal" model, attempts to explain bureaucracy from a rational point of view. Firstly, Weber argued that bureaucracy is "based on the general principle of precisely defined and organized across-the-board competencies of the various offices" which are "are underpinned by rules, laws, or administrative regulations."
In particular, Weber notes three aspects that "constitute the essence of bureaucratic administration" in the public sector, and "the essence of a bureaucratic management of a private company" in the private sector:
In this sense, Weber would explain bureaucracy through nine main characteristics/principles:
As Weber noted, real bureaucracy is less optimal and effective than his ideal-type model. Each of Weber's principles can degenerate, especially when used to analyze individual levels in an organization. However, when implemented in a group setting in an organization, some form of efficiency and effectiveness can be achieved, especially with regard to better output. This is especially true when the Bureaucratic Model emphasizes qualification (merits), specialization of job-scope (labour), hierarchy of power, rules, and discipline.
Competencies, efficiency and effectiveness can be unclear and contradictory, especially when dealing with oversimplified matters. In a dehumanized bureaucracy—inflexible in distributing the job-scope, with every worker having to specialize from day one without rotating tasks for fear of decreasing output—tasks are often routine and can contribute to boredom. Thus, employees can sometimes feel that they are not part of the organization's work vision and mission. Consequently, they do not have any sense of belonging in the long term. Furthermore, this type of organization tends to invite exploitation and underestimate the potential of the employees, as creativity of the workers is brushed aside in favour of strict adherence to rules, regulations and procedures.
Many scholars have described "rationalisation" and the question of individual freedom in an increasingly rational society, as the main theme of Weber's work. This theme was situated in the larger context of the relationship between psychological motivations, cultural values and beliefs (primarily religion), and the structure of the society (usually determined by the economy).
Weber understood rationalisation, first, as the individual cost-benefit calculation; second, as the wider bureaucratic organisation of the organisations; and finally, in the more general sense, as the opposite of understanding the reality through mystery and magic (i.e. "disenchantment").The fate of our times is characterised by rationalisation and intellectualisation and, above all, by the "disenchantment of the world".Weber began his studies of the subject in "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", in which he argued that the redefinition of the connection between work and piety in Protestantism and especially in ascetic Protestant denominations, particularly Calvinism, shifted human effort towards rational efforts aimed at achieving economic gain. In Protestant religion, Christian piety towards God was expressed through one's secular vocation (secularisation of "calling"). The rational roots of this doctrine, he argued, soon grew incompatible with and larger than the religious and so the latter were eventually discarded.
Weber continued his investigation into this matter in later works, notably in his studies on bureaucracy and on the classification of legitimate authority into three types—rational-legal, traditional and charismatic—of which the rational-legal (through bureaucracy) is the dominant one in the modern world. In these works Weber described what he saw as society's movement towards rationalisation. Similarly, rationalisation could be seen in the economy, with the development of highly rational and calculating capitalism. Weber also saw rationalisation as one of the main factors setting the European West apart from the rest of the world. Rationalisation relied on deep changes in ethics, religion, psychology and culture; changes that first took place in the Western civilisation:
Features of rationalisation include increasing knowledge, growing impersonality and enhanced control of social and material life. Weber was ambivalent towards rationalisation; while admitting it was responsible for many advances, in particular, freeing humans from traditional, restrictive and illogical social guidelines, he also criticised it for dehumanising individuals as "cogs in the machine" and curtailing their freedom, trapping them in the bureaucratic iron cage of rationality and bureaucracy. Related to rationalisation is the process of disenchantment, in which the world is becoming more explained and less mystical, moving from polytheistic religions to monotheistic ones and finally to the Godless science of modernity. However, another interpretation of Weber's theory of disenchantment, advanced by historian of religion Jason Josephson-Storm, claims that Weber does not envision a binary between rationisation and magical thinking, and that Weber actually referred to the sequestering and professionalisation of magic when he described disenchantment, not to the disappearances of magic. Regardless, for Weber the processes of rationalisation affect all of society, removing "sublime values…from public life" and making art less creative.
In a dystopian critique of rationalisation, Weber notes that modern society is a product of an individualistic drive of the Reformation, yet at the same time, the society created in this process is less and less welcoming of individualism: "How is it at all possible to salvage any remnants of 'individual' freedom of movement in any sense given this all-powerful trend?"
Weber's work in the field of sociology of religion began with the essay "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" and continued with his analyses in "The Religion of China", "The Religion of India", and "Ancient Judaism". His work on other religions, however, would be interrupted by his sudden death in 1920, which prevented him from following "Ancient Judaism" with studies of early Christianity and Islam. The three main themes within the essays were: the effect of religious ideas on economic activities; the relation between social stratification and religious ideas; and the distinguishable characteristics of Western civilisation.
Weber saw religion as one of the core forces in society. His goal was to find reasons for the different development paths of the cultures of the Occident and the Orient, although without judging or valuing them, like some of the contemporary thinkers who followed the social Darwinist paradigm; Weber wanted primarily to explain the distinctive elements of the Western civilisation. He maintained that Calvinist (and more widely, Protestant) religious ideas had a major impact on the social innovation and development of the economic system of the West, but noted that they were not the only factors in this development. Other notable factors mentioned by Weber included the rationalism of scientific pursuit, merging observation with mathematics, science of scholarship and jurisprudence, rational systematisation and bureaucratisation of government administration and economic enterprise. In the end, the study of the sociology of religion, according to Weber, focused on one distinguishing part of the Western culture, the decline of beliefs in magic, or what he referred to as "disenchantment of the world".
Weber also proposed a socio-evolutionary model of religious change, showing that in general, societies have moved from magic to polytheism, then to pantheism, monotheism and finally, ethical monotheism. According to Weber, this evolution occurred as the growing economic stability allowed professionalisation and the evolution of ever more sophisticated priesthood. As societies grew more complex and encompassed different groups, a hierarchy of gods developed and as power in the society became more centralised, the concept of a single, universal God became more popular and desirable.
"The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" is Weber's most famous work. It has been argued that this work should not be viewed as a detailed study of Protestantism, but rather as an introduction into Weber's later works, especially his studies of interaction between various religious ideas and economic behaviour as part of the rationalisation of the economic sphere. In the essay, Weber puts forward the thesis that Calvinist ethic and ideas influenced the development of capitalism. He notes the post-Reformation shift of Europe's economic centre away from Catholic countries such as France, Spain and Italy, and toward Protestant countries such as the Netherlands, England, Scotland and Germany. Weber also notes that societies having more Protestants were those with a more highly developed capitalist economy. Similarly, in societies with different religions, most successful business leaders were Protestant. Weber thus argued that Roman Catholicism impeded the development of the capitalist economy in the West, as did other religions such as Confucianism and Buddhism elsewhere in the world:
Christian religious devotion had historically been accompanied by rejection of mundane affairs, including economic pursuit. Weber showed that certain types of Protestantism—notably Calvinism—were supportive of rational pursuit of economic gain and worldly activities dedicated to it, seeing them as endowed with moral and spiritual significance. Weber argued that there were many reasons to look for the origins of modern capitalism in the religious ideas of the Reformation. In particular, the Protestant ethic (or more specifically, Calvinist ethic) motivated the believers to work hard, be successful in business and reinvest their profits in further development rather than frivolous pleasures. The notion of calling meant that each individual had to take action as an indication of their salvation; just being a member of the Church was not enough. Predestination also reduced agonising over economic inequality and further, it meant that a material wealth could be taken as a sign of salvation in the afterlife. The believers therefore justified pursuit of profit with religion, as instead of being fuelled by morally suspect greed or ambition, their actions were motivated by a highly moral and respected philosophy. Weber would call this the "spirit of capitalism": it was the Protestant religious ideology that was behind—and inevitably led to—the capitalist economic system. This theory is often viewed as a reversal of Marx's thesis that the economic "base" of society determines all other aspects of it.
Weber abandoned research into Protestantism as his colleague Ernst Troeltsch, a professional theologian, had begun work on the book "Social Teachings of the Christian Churches and Sects". Another reason for Weber's decision was that Troeltsch's work already achieved what he desired in that area: laying the groundwork for a comparative analysis of religion and society.
The phrase "work ethic" used in modern commentary is a derivative of the "Protestant ethic" discussed by Weber. It was adopted when the idea of the Protestant ethic was generalised to apply to the Japanese people, Jews and other non-Christians and thus lost its religious connotations.
"The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism" was Weber's second major work on the sociology of religion. Hans H. Gerth edited and translated this text into English, with an introduction by C. K. Wang. Weber focused on those aspects of Chinese society that were different from those of Western Europe, especially those aspects that contrasted with Puritanism. His work also questioned why capitalism did not develop in China. He focused on the issues of Chinese urban development, Chinese patrimonialism and officialdom and Chinese religion and philosophy (primarily, Confucianism and Taoism), as the areas in which Chinese development differed most distinctively from the European route.
According to Weber, Confucianism and Puritanism are mutually exclusive types of rational thought, each attempting to prescribe a way of life based on religious dogma. Notably, they both valued self-control and restraint and did not oppose accumulation of wealth. However, to both those qualities were just means to the final goal and here they were divided by a key difference. Confucianism's goal was "a cultured status position", while Puritanism's goal was to create individuals who are "tools of God". The intensity of belief and enthusiasm for action were rare in Confucianism, but common in Protestantism. Actively working for wealth was unbecoming a proper Confucian. Therefore, Weber states that it was this difference in social attitudes and mentality, shaped by the respective, dominant religions, that contributed to the development of capitalism in the West and the absence of it in China.
"The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism" was Weber's third major work on the sociology of religion. In this work he deals with the structure of Indian society, with the orthodox doctrines of Hinduism and the heterodox doctrines of Buddhism, with modifications brought by the influence of popular religiosity and finally with the impact of religious beliefs on the secular ethic of Indian society. In Weber's view, Hinduism in India, like Confucianism in China, was a barrier for capitalism. The Indian caste system made it very difficult for individuals to advance in the society beyond their caste. Activity, including economic activity, was seen as unimportant in the context of the advancement of the soul.
Weber ended his research of society and religion in India by bringing in insights from his previous work on China to discuss similarities of the Asian belief systems. He notes that the beliefs saw the meaning of life as otherworldly mystical experience. The social world is fundamentally divided between the educated elite, following the guidance of a prophet or wise man and the uneducated masses whose beliefs are centered on magic. In Asia, there was no Messianic prophecy to give "plan and meaning to the everyday life of educated and uneducated alike". Weber juxtaposed such Messianic prophecies (aka ethical prophecies), notably from the Near East region to the exemplary prophecies found on the Asiatic mainland, focused more on reaching to the educated elites and enlightening them on the proper ways to live one's life, usually with little emphasis on hard work and the material world. It was those differences that prevented the countries of the Occident from following the paths of the earlier Chinese and Indian civilisations. His next work, Ancient Judaism was an attempt to prove this theory.
In "Ancient Judaism", his fourth major work on the sociology of religion, Weber attempted to explain the factors that resulted in the early differences between Oriental and Occidental religiosity. He contrasted the innerworldly asceticism developed by Western Christianity with mystical contemplation of the kind developed in India. Weber noted that some aspects of Christianity sought to conquer and change the world, rather than withdraw from its imperfections. This fundamental characteristic of Christianity (when compared to Far Eastern religions) stems originally from ancient Jewish prophecy.
Weber claimed that Judaism not only fathered Christianity and Islam, but was crucial to the rise of the modern Occidental state; Judaism's influence was as important as Hellenistic and Roman cultures.
Weber's death in 1920 prevented him from following his planned analysis of Psalms, the Book of Job, Talmudic Jewry, early Christianity and Islam.
The 'theodicy of fortune and misfortune' within sociology is the theory, as Weber suggested, of how "members of different social classes adopt different belief systems, or theodices, to explain their social situation."
The concept of "theodicy" was expanded mainly with the thought of Weber and his addition of ethical considerations to the subject of religion. There is an ethical part of religion, that includes:
There is a separation of different theodicies with regard to class: "theodicies of misfortune tend to the belief that wealth and other manifestations of privilege are indications or signs of evil.… In contrast, theodicies of fortune emphasise the notion that privileges are a blessing and are deserved."
Weber also distinguishes that, "the affluent embrace good fortune theodicies, which emphasise that prosperity is a blessing of God…[while] theodices of misfortune emphasise that affluence is a sign of evil and that suffering in this world will be rewarded in the next." Therefore, these two distinctions can be applied not only to class structure within society but denomination and racial segregation within religion.
Weber defines the importance of societal class within religion by examining the difference between the two theodicies and to what class structures they apply. The concept of "work ethic" is attached to the theodicy of fortune; thus, because of the Protestant "work ethic", there was a contribution of higher class outcomes and more education among Protestants. Those without the work ethic clung to the theodicy of misfortune, believing wealth and happiness were granted in the afterlife. Another example of how this belief of religious theodicy influences class, is that those of lower status, the poor, cling to deep religiousness and faith as a way to comfort themselves and provide hope for a more prosperous future, while those of higher status cling to the sacraments or actions that prove their right of possessing greater wealth.
These two theodicies can be found in the denominational segregation within the religious community. The main division can be seen between the mainline Protestant and evangelical denominations and their relation to the class into which their particular theodicy pertains. For example, mainline churches, with their upper class congregations "promote[d] order, stability, and conservatism, and in so doing proved to be a powerful source of legitimation of the status quo and of existing disparities in the distribution of wealth and power," because much of the wealth of the church comes from the congregation. In contrast, Pentecostal churches adopted the theodicy of misfortune. They instead "advocated change intended to advance the cause of justice and fairness". Thus the learned and upper class religious churches who preach the theodicy of fortune, ultimately support capitalism and corporation, while the churches who adopted the theodicy of misfortune, instead preached equality and fairness.
In political sociology, one of Weber's most influential contributions is his essay ""Politik als Beruf"" ("Politics as a Vocation"), in which he defines "the state" as an entity that possesses a monopoly on "the legitimate use of physical force".
Accordingly, Weber proposed that politics is the sharing of state power between various groups, whereas political leaders are those who wield this power. As such, a politician, in Weber's view, must not be a man of the "true Christian ethic" (i.e. the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount), in that one cannot have the injunction to 'turn the other cheek'. An adherent of such an ethic ought rather to be understood as a saint, for it is only saints, according to Weber, that can appropriately follow it. The political realm is no realm for saints; a politician ought to marry the and the ("ethic of "attitude"" and the "ethic of "responsibility"") and must possess both a passion for his vocation and the capacity to distance himself from the subject of his exertions (the governed).
Weber distinguished three ideal types of political leadership (aka three types of domination, legitimisation or authority):
In his view, every historical relation between rulers and ruled contained such elements, which can be analysed on the basis of this tripartite distinction. Weber notes that the instability of charismatic authority forces it to "routinise" into a more structured form of authority. In a pure type of traditional rule, sufficient resistance to a ruler can lead to a "traditional revolution". The move towards a rational-legal structure of authority, utilising a bureaucratic structure, is inevitable in the end. Thus this theory can be sometimes viewed as part of the social evolutionism theory. This ties to his broader concept of rationalisation by suggesting the inevitability of a move in this direction.
Weber described many ideal types of public administration and government in his masterpiece "Economy and Society" (1922). His critical study of the bureaucratisation of society became one of the most enduring parts of his work. It was Weber who began the studies of bureaucracy and whose works led to the popularisation of this term. Many aspects of modern public administration go back to him and a classic, hierarchically organised civil service of the Continental type is called "Weberian civil service". As the most efficient and rational way of organising, bureaucratisation for Weber was the key part of the rational-legal authority and furthermore, he saw it as the key process in the ongoing rationalisation of the Western society.
Weber listed several preconditions for the emergence of the bureaucracy, which resulted in a need for a more efficient administrative system, including:
Development of communication and transportation technologies made more efficient administration possible (and popularly requested) and democratisation and rationalisation of culture resulted in demands that the new system treat everybody equally.
Weber's ideal bureaucracy is characterised by hierarchical organisation, by delineated lines of authority in a fixed area of activity, by action taken (and recorded) on the basis of written rules, by bureaucratic officials needing expert training, by rules being implemented neutrally and by career advancement depending on technical qualifications judged by organisations, not by individuals.
While recognising bureaucracy as the most efficient form of organisation and even indispensable for the modern state, Weber also saw it as a threat to individual freedoms and the ongoing bureaucratisation as leading to a "polar night of icy darkness", in which increasing rationalisation of human life traps individuals in the aforementioned "iron cage" of bureaucratic, rule-based, rational control. To counteract bureaucrats, the system needs entrepreneurs and politicians.
Weber also formulated a three-component theory of stratification, with social class, social status and political party as conceptually distinct elements. The three-component theory of stratification is in contrast to Karl Marx simpler theory of social class that ties all social stratification to what people own. In Weber's theory, issues of honour and prestige are important. This distinction is most clearly described in Weber's essay "Classes, Staende, Parties", which was first published in his book Economy and Society. The three components of Weber's theory are:
All three dimensions have consequences for what Weber called "life chances" (opportunities to improve one's life). Weber scholars maintain a sharp distinction between the terms "status" and "class," even though, in casual use, people tend to use them interchangeably.
As part of his overarching effort to understand the unique development of the Western world, Weber produced a detailed general study of the city as the characteristic locus of the social and economic relations, political arrangements, and ideas that eventually came to define the West. This resulted in a monograph, "The City", which he probably compiled from research conducted in 1911–1913. It was published posthumously in 1921, and, in 1924, was incorporated into the second part of his "Economy and Society", as the sixteenth chapter, "The City (Non-legitimate Domination)".
According to Weber, the city as a politically autonomous organisation of people living in close proximity, employed in a variety of specialised trades, and physically separated from the surrounding countryside, only fully developed in the West and to a great extent shaped its cultural evolution:
Weber argued that Judaism, early Christianity, theology, and later the political party and modern science, were only possible in the urban context that reached a full development in the West alone. He also saw in the history of medieval European cities the rise of a unique form of "non-legitimate domination" that successfully challenged the existing forms of legitimate domination (traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal) that had prevailed until then in the Medieval world. This new domination was based on the great economic and military power wielded by the organised community of city-dwellers ("citizens").
Weber regarded himself primarily as a "political economist", and all of his professorial appointments were in economics, though today his contributions in that field are largely overshadowed by his role as a founder of modern sociology. As an economist, Weber belonged to the "youngest" German historical school of economics. The great differences between that school's interests and methods on the one hand and those of the neoclassical school (from which modern mainstream economics largely derives) on the other, explain why Weber's influence on economics today is hard to discern.
Weber's magnum opus "Economy and Society" is a collection of his essays that he was working on at the time of his death in 1920. After his death, the final organization and editing of the book fell to his widow Marianne. The final German form published in 1921 reflected very much Marianne's work and intellectual commitment. The composition includes a wide range of essays dealing with Weber's views regarding sociology, social philosophy, politics, social stratification, world religion, diplomacy, and other subjects.
Beginning in 1956, the German jurist Johannes Winckelmann began editing and organizing the German edition of "Economy and Society" based on his study of the papers that Weber left at his death. English versions of the work were published as a collected volume in 1968, as edited by Gunther Roth and Claus Wittich. As a result of the various editions in German and English, there are differences between the organization of the different volumes. The book is typically published in a two volume set in both German and English, and is more than 1000 pages long.
Though his research interests were always in line with those of the German historicists, with a strong emphasis on interpreting economic history, Weber's defence of "methodological individualism" in the social sciences represented an important break with that school and an embracing of many of the arguments that had been made against the historicists by Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School of economics, in the context of the academic "Methodenstreit" ("debate over methods") of the late 19th century. The phrase "methodological individualism", which has come into common usage in modern debates about the connection between microeconomics and macroeconomics, was coined by the Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1908 as a way of referring to the views of Weber. According to Weber's theses, social research cannot be fully inductive or descriptive, because "understanding" some phenomenon implies that the researcher must go beyond mere description and "interpret" it; interpretation requires classification according to abstract "ideal (pure) types". This, together with his antipositivistic argumentation (see "Verstehen"), can be taken as a methodological justification for the model of the "rational economic man" ("homo economicus"), which is at the heart of modern mainstream economics.
Unlike other historicists, Weber also accepted the marginal theory of value (aka "marginalism") and taught it to his students. In 1908, Weber published an article in which he drew a sharp methodological distinction between psychology and economics and attacked the claims that the marginal theory of value in economics reflected the form of the psychological response to stimuli as described by the Weber-Fechner law. Max Weber's article has been cited as a definitive refutation of the dependence of the economic theory of value on the laws of psychophysics by Lionel Robbins, George Stigler, and Friedrich Hayek, though the broader issue of the relation between economics and psychology has come back into the academic debate with the development of "behavioral economics".
Weber's best known work in economics concerned the preconditions for capitalist development, particularly the relations between religion and capitalism, which he explored in "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" as well as in his other works on the sociology of religion. He argued that bureaucratic political and economic systems emerging in the Middle Ages were essential in the rise of modern capitalism (including rational book-keeping and organisation of formally free labour), while they were a hindrance in the case of ancient capitalism, which had a different social and political structure based on conquest, slavery, and the coastal city-state. Other contributions include his early work on the economic history of Roman agrarian society (1891) and on the labour relations in Eastern Germany (1892), his analysis of the history of commercial partnerships in the Middle Ages (1889), his critique of Marxism, the discussion of the roles of idealism and materialism in the history of capitalism in his "Economy and Society" (1922) and his "General Economic History" (1923), a notable example of the kind of empirical work associated with the German Historical School.
Although today Weber is primarily read by sociologists and social philosophers, Weber's work did have a significant influence on Frank Knight, one of the founders of the neoclassical Chicago school of economics, who translated Weber's "General Economic History" into English in 1927. Knight also wrote in 1956 that Max Weber was the only economist who dealt with the problem of understanding the emergence of modern capitalism "...from the angle which alone can yield an answer to such questions, that is, the angle of comparative history in the broad sense."
Weber, like his colleague Werner Sombart, regarded economic calculation and especially the double-entry bookkeeping method of business accounting, as one of the most important forms of rationalisation associated with the development of modern capitalism. Weber's preoccupation with the importance of economic calculation led him to critique socialism as a system that lacked a mechanism for allocating resources efficiently to satisfy human needs. Socialist intellectuals like Otto Neurath had realised that in a completely socialised economy, prices would not exist and central planners would have to resort to in-kind (rather than monetary) economic calculation. According to Weber, this type of coordination would be inefficient, especially because it would be incapable of solving the problem of imputation (i.e. of accurately determining the relative values of capital goods). Weber wrote that, under full socialism:
This argument against socialism was made independently, at about the same time, by Ludwig von Mises. Weber himself had a significant influence on Mises, whom he had befriended when they were both at the University of Vienna in the spring of 1918, and, through Mises, on several other economists associated with the Austrian School in the 20th century. Friedrich Hayek in particular elaborated the arguments of Weber and Mises about economic calculation into a central part of free market economics's intellectual assault on socialism, as well as into a model for the spontaneous coordination of "dispersed knowledge" in markets.
Weber's thinking was strongly influenced by German idealism, particularly by neo-Kantianism, which he had been exposed to through Heinrich Rickert, his professorial colleague at the University of Freiburg. Especially important to Weber's work is the neo-Kantian belief that reality is essentially chaotic and incomprehensible, with all rational order deriving from the way the human mind focuses attention on certain aspects of reality and organises the resulting perceptions. Weber's opinions regarding the methodology of the social sciences show parallels with the work of contemporary neo-Kantian philosopher and pioneering sociologist Georg Simmel.
Weber was also influenced by Kantian ethics, which he nonetheless came to think of as obsolete in a modern age lacking in religious certainties. In this last respect, the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy is evident. According to the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy", the "deep tension between the Kantian moral imperatives and a Nietzschean diagnosis of the modern cultural world is apparently what gives such a darkly tragic and agnostic shade to Weber's ethical worldview."
Another major influence in Weber's life was the writings of Karl Marx and the workings of socialist thought in academia and active politics. While Weber shares some of Marx's consternation with bureaucratic systems and maligns them as being capable of advancing their own logic to the detriment of human freedom and autonomy, Weber views conflict as perpetual and inevitable and does not host the spirit of a materially available utopia.
Though the influence of his mother's Calvinist religiosity is evident throughout Weber's life and work, and though he maintained a deep, lifelong interest in the study of religions, Weber was open about the fact that he was personally irreligious.
As a political economist and economic historian, Weber belonged to the "youngest" German historical school of economics, represented by academics such as Gustav von Schmoller and his student Werner Sombart. However, even though Weber's research interests were very much in line with this school, his views on methodology and the theory of value diverged significantly from those of other German historicists and were closer, in fact, to those of Carl Menger and the Austrian School, the traditional rivals of the historical school.
New research suggests that some of Weber's theories, including his interest in the sociology of Far Eastern religion and elements of his theory of disenchantment, were actually shaped by Weber's interaction with contemporary German occult figures. He is known to have visited the Ordo Templi Orientis at Monte Verità shortly before articulating his idea of disenchantment. He is known to have met the German poet and occultist Stefan George and developed some elements of his theory of charisma after observing George. However, Weber disagreed with many of George's views and never formally joined George's occult circle. Weber may have also had his first exposure to Taoism, albeit in a Westernized form, through Gustav Gräser at Monte Verità. Research on Weber's engagement with the occult has led some German and American scholars to re-interpret his theories of disenchantment.
Weber's most influential work was on economic sociology, political sociology, and the sociology of religion. Along with Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim, he is commonly regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology. But whereas Durkheim, following Comte, worked in the positivist tradition, Weber was instrumental in developing an antipositivist, hermeneutic, tradition in the social sciences. In this regard he belongs to a similar tradition as his German colleagues Werner Sombart, Georg Simmel, and Wilhelm Dilthey, who stressed the differences between the methodologies appropriate to the social and the natural sciences.
Weber presented sociology as the science of human social action; action that he separated into traditional, affectional, value-rational and instrumental. To Weber, sociology was:
In his own time, however, Weber was viewed primarily as a historian and an economist. The breadth of Weber's topical interests is apparent in the depth of his social theory, Joachim Radkau (2009) writing:
Many of Weber's works famous today were collected, revised and published posthumously. Significant interpretations of his writings were produced by such sociological luminaries as Talcott Parsons and C. Wright Mills. Parsons in particular imparted to Weber's works a functionalist, teleological perspective; this personal interpretation has been criticised for a latent conservatism.
Weber influenced many later social theorists, such as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, György Lukács and Jürgen Habermas. Different elements of his thought were emphasised by Carl Schmitt, Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig Lachmann, Leo Strauss, Hans Morgenthau, and Raymond Aron. According to the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, who had met Weber during his time at the University of Vienna, "The early death of this genius was a great disaster for Germany. Had Weber lived longer, the German people of today would be able to look to this example of an 'Aryan' who would not be broken by National Socialism."
Weber's friend, the psychiatrist and existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers, described him as "the greatest German of our era." Weber's untimely death felt to Jaspers "as if the German world had lost its heart." Harvard professor Paul Tillich (1968) observed about Weber that he was "perhaps the greatest scholar in Germany of the nineteenth century."
Weber's explanations are highly specific to the historical periods he analysed. Some academics disagree, pointing out that, despite the fact that Weber did write in the early twentieth century, his ideas remain alive and relevant for understanding issues like politics, bureaucracy, and social stratification today.
Many scholars, however, disagree with specific claims in Weber's historical analysis. For example, the economist Joseph Schumpeter (1954) argued that capitalism did not begin with the Industrial Revolution but in 14th century Italy. In Milan, Venice and Florence, the small city-state governments led to the development of the earliest forms of capitalism. In the 16th century, Antwerp was a commercial centre of Europe. Also, the predominantly Calvinist country of Scotland did not enjoy the same economic growth as the Netherlands, England and New England. It has been pointed out that the Netherlands, which had a Calvinist majority, industrialised much later in the 19th century than predominantly Catholic Belgium, which was one of the centres of the Industrial Revolution on the European mainland. Emil Kauder (1953) expanded Schumpeter's argument, by arguing the hypothesis that Calvinism hurt the development of capitalism by leading to the development of the labour theory of value.
For an extensive list of Max Weber's works, see Max Weber bibliography.
Weber wrote in German. Original titles printed after his death (1920) are most likely compilations of his unfinished works (of the "Collected Essays... "form). Many translations are made of parts or sections of various German originals and the names of the translations often do not reveal what part of German work they contain. Weber's work is generally quoted according to the critical "Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe" (Collected Works edition), which is published by Mohr Siebeck in Tübingen. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19455 |
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer (; ; February 14, 1895 – July 7, 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist who was famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the 'Frankfurt School' of social research. Horkheimer addressed authoritarianism, militarism, economic disruption, environmental crisis, and the poverty of mass culture using the philosophy of history as a framework. This became the foundation of critical theory. His most important works include "Eclipse of Reason" (1947), "Between Philosophy and Social Science" (1930–1938) and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, "Dialectic of Enlightenment" (1947). Through the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer planned, supported and made other significant works possible.
On February 14, 1895, Horkheimer was born the only son of Moritz and Babetta Horkheimer. Horkheimer was born into a conservative, wealthy Orthodox Jewish family. His father was a successful businessman who owned several textile factories in the Zuffenhausen district of Stuttgart, where Max was born. Moritz expected his son to follow in his footsteps and own the family business. Max was taken out of school in 1910 to work in the family business, where he eventually became a junior manager. During this period he would begin two relationships that would last for the rest of his life. First, he met Friedrich Pollock, who would later become a close academic colleague, and who would remain Max's closest friend. He also met Rose Riekher, who was his father's personal secretary. Eight years Max's senior, a gentile, and of an economically lower class, Riekher (whom Max called "Maidon") was not considered a suitable match by Moritz Horkheimer. Despite this, Max and Maidon would marry in 1926 and remain together until her death in 1969. In 1917, his manufacturing career ended and his chances of taking over his family business were interrupted when he was drafted into World War I. However, Horkheimer was denied service on medical grounds.
In the spring of 1919, after failing an army physical, Horkheimer enrolled at Munich University. While living in Munich, he was mistaken for the revolutionary playwright Ernst Toller and arrested and imprisoned. After being released, Horkheimer moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he studied philosophy and psychology under the respectable Hans Cornelius. There, he met Theodor Adorno, several years his junior, with whom he would strike a lasting friendship and a collaborative relationship. After an abortive attempt at writing a dissertation on gestalt psychology, Horkheimer, with Cornelius's direction, completed his doctorate in philosophy with a 78-page dissertation titled "The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment" ("Zur Antinomie der teleologischen Urteilskraft"). In 1925, Horkheimer was habilitated with a dissertation entitled "Kant's Critique of Judgement as Mediation between Practical and Theoretical Philosophy" ("Über Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft als Bindeglied zwischen theoretischer und praktischer Philosophie"). Here, he met Friedrich Pollock who would be his colleague at the Institute of Social Research. The following year, Max was appointed "Privatdozent." Shortly after, in 1926, Horkheimer married Rose Riekher.
In 1926 Horkheimer was an "unsalaried lecturer in Frankfurt." Shortly after, in 1930, he was promoted to professor of philosophy at Frankfurt University. In the same year, when the Institute for Social Research's (now known as Frankfurt School of Critical Theory) directorship became vacant, after the departure of Carl Grünberg, Horkheimer was elected to the position "by means of an endowment from a wealthy businessman". The Institute had had its beginnings in a Marxist study group started by Felix Weil, a one-time student of political science at Frankfurt who used his inheritance to fund the group as a way to support his leftist academic aims. Pollock and Horkheimer were partners with Weil in the early activities of the Institute.
Horkheimer worked to make the Institute a purely academic enterprise. As director, he changed Frankfurt from an orthodox Marxist school to a heterodox school for critical social research . The following year publication of the Institute's "Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung" began, with Horkheimer as its editor. Horkheimer intellectually reoriented the Institute, proposing a programme of collective research aimed at specific social groups (specifically the working class) that would highlight the problem of the relationship of history and reason. The Institute focused on integrating the views of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. The Frankfurt School attempted this by systematically hitching together the different conceptual structures of historical materialism and psychoanalysis.
During the time between Horkheimer's being named Professor of Social Philosophy and director of the Institute in 1930, the Nazis became the second largest party in the Reichstag. In the midst of the violence surrounding the Nazis' rise, Horkheimer and his associates began to prepare for the possibility of moving the Institute out of Germany. Horkheimer's "venia legendi" was revoked by the new Nazi government because of the Marxian nature of the Institute's ideas as well as its prominent Jewish association. When Hitler was named the Chancellor in 1933, the Institute was thus forced to close its location in Germany. He emigrated to Geneva, Switzerland and then to New York City the following year, where Horkheimer met with the president of Columbia University to discuss hosting the Institute. To Horkheimer's surprise, the president agreed to host the Institute in exile as well as offer Horkheimer a building for the Institute. In July 1934 Horkheimer accepted an offer from Columbia to relocate the Institute to one of their buildings.
In 1940, Horkheimer received American citizenship and moved to the Pacific Palisades district of Los Angeles, California, where his collaboration with Adorno would yield the "Dialectic of Enlightenment." In 1942, Horkheimer assumed the directorship of the Scientific Division of the American Jewish Committee. In this capacity, he helped launch and organize a series of five Studies in Prejudice, which were published in 1949 and 1950. The most important of these was the pioneering study in social psychology entitled The Authoritarian Personality, itself a methodologically advanced reworking of some of the themes treated in a collective project produced by the Institute in its first years of exile, Studies in Authority and Family. In the years that followed, Horkheimer did not publish much, although he continued to edit "Studies in Philosophy and Social Science" as a continuation of the "Zeitschrift." In 1949, he returned to Frankfurt where the Institute for Social Research reopened in 1950. Between 1951 and 1953 Horkheimer was rector of the University of Frankfurt. In 1953, Horkheimer stepped down from director of the Institute and took on a smaller role in the Institute, while Adorno became director. Horkheimer and Adorno were seen as the fathers of the Institute.
Horkheimer continued to teach at the University until his retirement in the mid-1960s. In 1953, he was awarded the Goethe Plaque of the City of Frankfurt, and was later named honorary citizen of Frankfurt for life. He returned to America in 1954 and 1959 to lecture as a frequent visiting professor at the University of Chicago.
He remained an important figure until his death in Nuremberg in 1973. Max Horkheimer with the help of Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Leo Lowenthal, Otto Kirchheimer, Frederick Pollock and Neumann developed "Critical Theory". According to Larry Ray "Critical Theory" has "become one of the most influential social theories of the twentieth century".
Horkheimer's work is marked by a concern to show the relation between affect (especially suffering) and concepts (understood as action-guiding expressions of reason). In that, he responded critically to what he saw as the one-sidedness of both neo-Kantianism (with its focus on concepts) and "Lebensphilosophie" (with its focus on expression and world-disclosure). Horkheimer did not think that either was wrong, but he insisted that the insights of each school on its own could not adequately contribute to the repair of social problems. Horkheimer focused on the connections between social structures, networks/subcultures and individual realities and concluded that we are affected and shaped by the proliferation of products on the marketplace. It is also important to note that Horkheimer collaborated with Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin.
Through critical theory (a social theory focusing on critiquing and changing society), Horkheimer "attempted to revitalize radical social, and cultural criticism" and discussed authoritarianism, militarism, economic disruption, environmental crisis and the poverty of mass culture. Horkheimer helped to create Critical Theory through a mix of radical and conservative lenses that stem from radical Marxism and end up in "pessimistic Jewish transcendentalism". Horkheimer developed his critical theory by examining his own wealth while witnessing the juxtaposition of the bourgeois and the impoverished. This critical theory embraced the future possibilities of society and was preoccupied with forces which moved society toward rational institutions that would ensure a true, free, and just life. He was convinced of the need to "examine the entire material and spiritual culture of mankind" in order to transform society as a whole. Horkheimer sought to enable the working class to reclaim their power in order to resist the lure of fascism. Horkheimer stated himself that "the rationally organized society that regulates its own existence" was necessary along with a society that could "satisfy common needs". To satisfy these needs, it would need to engage with the social conditions within which people lived and in which their concepts and actions were formed. It reached out for a total understanding of history and knowledge. Through this, critical theory develops a "critique of bourgeois society through which 'ideology critique' attempted to locate the 'utopian content' of dominant systems of thought". Above all, critical theory sought to develop a critical perspective in the discussion of all social practices.
"Between Philosophy and Social Science" appeared between 1930 and 1938, during the time the Frankfurt school moved from Frankfurt to Geneva to Columbia University. It included: "Materialism and Morality", "The Present Situation of Moral Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research", "On the Problem of Truth", "Egoism and the Freedom Movement", "History and Psychology", "A New Concept of Ideology", "Remarks on Philosophical Anthropology", and "The Rationalism Debate in Contemporary Philosophy". It also included "The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks for an Institute of Social Research", "Egoism and Freedom Movements" and "Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History". The essays within "Between Philosophy and Social Science" were Horkheimer's attempts to "remove the individual from mass culture, a function for philosophy from the commodification of everything". Horkheimer was extremely invested in the individual. In one of his writings, he states, "When we speak of an individual as a historical entity, we mean not merely the space-time and the sense existence of a particular member of the human race, but in addition, his awareness of his own individuality as a conscious human being, including recognition of his own identity.". Horkheimer was a strong believer in individuals becoming aware of themselves and their conscious as human beings. This is important to Horkheimer because for workers, he is aware of individuals losing their identity in products, which affects the power an individual may have of him/herself.
"The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks for an Institute of Social Research" was not only included in this volume, but it was also used as Horkheimer's inaugural speech as director of the Frankfurt School. In this speech he related economic groups to the struggles and challenges of real life. Horkheimer often referenced human struggle and used this example in his speech because it was a topic he understood well.
"Egoism and Freedom Movements" and "Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History" are the longest of the essays. The first is an evaluation of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Vico; the latter discusses the bourgeois control. In Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History, Horkheimer explained "what he learned from the bourgeois rise to power and what of the bourgeois he thought was worth preserving.
The volume also looks at the individual as the "troubled center of philosophy." Horkheimer expressed that "there is no formula that defines the relationship among individuals, society and nature for all time". To understand the problem of the individual further, Horkheimer included two case studies on the individual: one on Montaigne and one on himself.
Horkheimer's book, "Eclipse of Reason", started in 1941 and published in 1947, is broken into five sections: Means and Ends, Conflicting Panaceas, The Revolt of Nature, The Rise and Decline of the Individual, and On the Concept of Philosophy. The "Eclipse of Reason" focuses on the concept of reason within the history of Western philosophy, which can only be fostered in an environment of free, critical thinking while also linking positivist and instrumental reason with the rise of fascism. He distinguishes between objective, subjective and instrumental reason, and states that we have moved from the former through the center and into the latter (though subjective and instrumental reason are closely connected). Objective reason deals with universal truths that dictate that an action is either right or wrong. It is a concrete concept and a force in the world that requires specific modes of behavior. The focus in the objective faculty of reason is on the ends, rather than the means. Subjective reason is an abstract concept of reason, and focuses primarily on means. Specifically, the reasonable nature of the purpose of action is irrelevant – the ends only serve the purpose of the subject (generally self-advancement or preservation). To be "reasonable" in this context is to be suited to a particular purpose, to be "good for something else". This aspect of reason is universally conforming, and easily furnishes ideology. In instrumental reason, the sole criterion of reason is its operational value or purposefulness, and with this, the idea of truth becomes contingent on mere subjective preference (hence the relation with subjective reason). Because subjective/instrumental reason rules, the ideals of a society, for example democratic ideals, become dependent on the "interests" of the people instead of being dependent on objective truths. In his writing Horkheimer states, "Social power is today more than ever mediated by power over things. The more intense an individual's concern with power over things, the more will things dominate him, the more will he lack any genuine individual traits, and the more will his mind be transformed into an automation of formalized reason." Nevertheless, Horkheimer admits that objective reason has its roots in Reason ("Logos" in Greek) of the subject. He concludes, "If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate – in short, the emancipation from fear – then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service we can render."
In 1941, Horkheimer outlined how the Nazis had been able to make their agenda appear "reasonable", but also issued a warning about the possibility of a similar occurrence happening again. Horkheimer believed that the illnesses of modern society are caused by misunderstanding reason: if people use true reason to critique their societies, they will be able to solve problems they may have.
Despite the explicit common referrals to "subjective" reason in the book, his frequent connecting of it with relativism could be an indication that by "subjective reason" Horkheimer also means "relativist reason".
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno collaborated to publish "Dialectic of Enlightenment", which was originally published in 1944. The inspiration for this piece came from when Horkheimer and Adorno had to flee Germany, because of Hitler, and go to New York. They went to America and "absorbed the popular culture"; thinking that it was a form of totalitarianism. Nonetheless, Dialectic of Enlightenment's main argument was to serve as a wide-ranging critique of the "self-destruction of enlightenment". The work criticized popular culture as "the product of a culture industry whose goal was to stupefy the masses with endless mass produced copies of the same thing" (Lembert). Along with that, Horkheimer and Adorno had a few arguments; one being that these mass-produced products only appear to change over time. Horkheimer and Adorno stated that these products were so standardized in order to help consumers comprehend and appreciate the products with little attention given to them. They expressed, "the result is a constant reproduction of the same thing" (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1993 [1944]). However, they also explain how pseudo-individuality is encouraged among these products in order to keep the consumers coming back for more. They argue that small differences in products within the same area are acceptable.
The similar patterns found in the content of popular culture (films, popular songs and radio) have the same central message; "it's all linked to "the necessity of obedience of the masses to the social hierarchy in place in advanced capitalist societies". These products appeal to the masses and encourage conformity to the consumers. In return, capitalism remains in power while buyers continue to consume from the industry. This is dangerous because the consumers' belief that the powers of technology are liberating, starts to increase. To support their claim, Horkheimer and Adorno, "proposed an antidote: not just thinking the relations of "things", but also, as an immediate second step, thinking "through" that thinking, self-reflexively." In other words, technology lacks self-reflexivity. Nonetheless, Horkheimer and Adorno believed that art was an exception, because it "is an open-ended system with no fixed rules"; thus, it could not be an object of the industry.
Perry Anderson sees Horkheimer's attempt to make the Institute purely academic as "symptomatic of a more universal process, the emergence of a 'Western Marxism' divorced from the working-class movement and dominated by academic philosophers and the 'product of defeat'" because of the isolation of the Russian Revolution. Rolf Wiggershaus, author of "The Frankfurt School" believed Horkheimer lacked the audacious theoretical construction produced by those like Marx and Lukács and that his main argument was that those living in misery had the right to material egoism. In his book, "Social Theory", Alex Callinicos claims that "Dialectic of Enlightenment" offers no systematic account of conception of rationality, but rather professes objective reason intransigently to an extent. Charles Lemert discusses in his book "Social Theory" that in writing "Dialectic of Enlightenment", Horkheimer and Adorno lack sufficient sympathy for the cultural plight of the average working person, unfair to criticize the tastes of ordinary people, and that popular culture does not really buttress social conformity and stabilize capitalism as much as the Frankfurt school thinks.
Ingar Solty, in a February 2020 "Jacobin" magazine article, notes that the work of Horkheimer, Adorno, and the Frankfurt School as a whole is marked by "the vast historical defeats suffered by the interwar socialist movement." He notes, "Horkheimer and Adorno thus became increasingly pessimistic with regards to the working class's ability to overthrow capitalism ... Horkheimer did not conduct empirical research on capitalism and its crises ... the hierarchical nature of the international division of labor, the organization of internationalizing capitalism in a system of nation-states, the origins of imperialism and inter-imperial rivalries, or such ... For Horkheimer, the working class had been a revolutionary subject only in the abstract ... [it] was essentially an empty placeholder for the subject which would overthrow an economic and social system which they considered wrong. If it failed to live up to its expectations, then it could easily be replaced by another subject of revolution — or the conclusion that there was no way out (of capitalism)."
Solty contextualizes Horkheimer's (and, by implication, the Frankfurt School's) "return from 'revolutionary optimism' to 'revolutionary pessimism'" by noting, "[m]any postwar radical leftists and anti-capitalists, especially those not organized in real workers’ parties, were disappointed revolutionaries. The German writer Alfred Andersch, who had been close to the KPD before 1933 and then withdrawn into “inner emigration,” called the West German postwar left a “homeless left.” The working classes’ betrayals seemed to continue after 1945. After the short-lived socialist revival, the Cold War and the internationalization of the New Deal as the Keynesian welfare state seemed to have completely absorbed what was left of revolutionary working-class spirit. This led many disappointed leftists to culture and ideology as levels of analyses which could explain this failure of the working class." Solty identifies Horkheimer's (and, implicitly, the Frankfurt School's) work as an important influence on that of Michel Foucault: "Ultimately, both Horkheimer and Foucault only considered the defense of remaining elements of freedom and the identification of “micro-powers” of domination a possibility, but changes in the macro-power structures were out of reach. In other words, a Left was born that was no longer oriented toward “counter-hegemony” (as per Antonio Gramsci), as a way of building toward power, but rather “anti-hegemony” (Horkheimer, Foucault, etc.), as John Sanbonmatsu put it in his critique of postmodernism." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19456 |
Myanmar
Myanmar (; , ) or Burma (see §Etymology), officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, is a country in Southeast Asia. Myanmar is bordered by Bangladesh and India to its northwest, China to its northeast, Laos and Thailand to its east and southeast, and the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal to its south and southwest. With a size of , Myanmar is the largest of the Mainland Southeast Asian states by area. As of 2017, the population is about 54 million. Its capital city is Naypyidaw, and its largest city is Yangon (Rangoon). Myanmar has been a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) since 1997.
Early civilisations in Myanmar included the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Pyu city-states in Upper Burma and the Mon kingdoms in Lower Burma. In the 9th century, the Bamar people entered the upper Irrawaddy valley and, following the establishment of the Pagan Kingdom in the 1050s, the Burmese language, culture and Theravada Buddhism slowly became dominant in the country. The Pagan Kingdom fell due to the Mongol invasions and several warring states emerged. In the 16th century, reunified by the Taungoo dynasty, the country was for a brief period the largest empire in the history of Mainland Southeast Asia. The early 19th-century Konbaung dynasty ruled over an area that included modern Myanmar and briefly controlled Manipur and Assam as well. The British East India Company seized control of the administration of Myanmar after three Anglo-Burmese Wars in the 19th century and the country became a British colony. Myanmar was granted independence in 1948, as a democratic nation. Following a coup d'état in 1962, it became a military dictatorship under the Burma Socialist Programme Party.
For most of its independent years, the country has been engrossed in rampant ethnic strife and its myriad ethnic groups have been involved in one of the world's longest-running ongoing civil wars. During this time, the United Nations and several other organisations have reported consistent and systematic human rights violations in the country. In 2011, the military junta was officially dissolved following a 2010 general election, and a nominally civilian government was installed. This, along with the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and political prisoners, has improved the country's human rights record and foreign relations, and has led to the easing of trade and other economic sanctions. There is, however, continuing criticism of the government's treatment of ethnic minorities, its response to the ethnic insurgency, and religious clashes. In the landmark 2015 election, Aung San Suu Kyi's party won a majority in both houses. However, the Burmese military remains a powerful force in politics.
Myanmar is a member of the East Asia Summit, Non-Aligned Movement, ASEAN and BIMSTEC, but not a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. It is a country rich in jade and gems, oil, natural gas and other mineral resources. Myanmar is also endowed with renewable energy; it has the highest solar power potential compared to other countries of the Great Mekong Subregion. In 2013, its GDP (nominal) stood at US$56.7 billion and its GDP (PPP) at US$221.5 billion. The income gap in Myanmar is among the widest in the world, as a large proportion of the economy is controlled by supporters of the former military government. , Myanmar ranks 145 out of 188 countries in human development, according to the Human Development Index.
The name of the country has been a matter of dispute and disagreement, particularly in recent decades, focusing mainly on the political legitimacy of those using "Myanmar" vs. "Burma". Both names derive from the earlier Burmese "Myanma" or "Myamma", an ethnonym for the majority Bamar ethnic group, of uncertain etymology. The terms are also popularly thought to derive from "Brahma Desha" after Brahma.
In 1989, the military government officially changed the English translations of many names dating back to Burma's colonial period or earlier, including that of the country itself: "Burma" became "Myanmar". The renaming remains a contested issue. Many political and ethnic opposition groups and countries continue to use "Burma" because they do not recognise the legitimacy of the ruling military government or its authority to rename the country.
In April 2016, soon after taking office, Aung San Suu Kyi said concerning the question of which name should be used that, "it is up to you, because there is nothing in the constitution of our country that says that you must use any term in particular". She continued, "I use Burma very often because I am used to using it. But it does not mean that I require other people to do that as well. And I’ll make an effort to say Myanmar from time to time so you all feel comfortable".
The country's official full name is the "Republic of the Union of Myanmar" (, "", ). Countries that do not officially recognise that name use the long form "Union of Burma" instead.
In English, the country is popularly known as either "Burma" or "Myanmar". Both these names are derived from the name of the majority Burmese Bamar ethnic group. "Myanmar" is considered to be the literary form of the name of the group, while "Burma" is derived from "Bamar", the colloquial form of the group's name. Depending on the register used, the pronunciation would be ' () or ' (). The name "Burma" has been in use in English since the 18th century.
Official United States policy retains "Burma" as the country's name, although the State Department's website lists the country as "Burma (Myanmar)" and Barack Obama has referred to the country by both names. The CIA's "World Factbook" lists the country as "Burma" . The government of Canada has in the past used "Burma", such as in its 2007 legislation imposing sanctions, but as of the mid-2010s generally uses "Myanmar". The Czech Republic officially uses "Myanmar", although its Ministry of Foreign Affairs uses both "Myanmar" and "Burma" on its website. The United Nations uses "Myanmar", as do the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Australia, Russia, Germany, China, India, Bangladesh, Norway, Japan and Switzerland.
Most English-speaking international news media refer to the country by the name "Myanmar", including the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Reuters, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)/Radio Australia.
Myanmar is known with a name deriving from "Burma" as opposed to "Myanmar" in Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Greek – "Birmania" being the local version of "Burma" in the Spanish language, for example. Myanmar used to be known as "Birmânia" in Portuguese, and as "Birmanie" in French. As in the past, French-language media today consistently use "Birmanie".
There is no established pronunciation of the name "Myanmar" in English. It is approximated at least nine different ways: , , , , , , , , .
Archaeological evidence shows that "Homo erectus" lived in the region now known as Myanmar as early as 750,000 years ago, with no more "erectus" finds after 75,000 years ago. The first evidence of "Homo sapiens" is dated to about 25,000 BP with discoveries of stone tools in central Myanmar. Evidence of Neolithic age domestication of plants and animals and the use of polished stone tools dating to sometime between 10,000 and 6,000 BCE has been discovered in the form of cave paintings in Padah-Lin Caves.
The Bronze Age arrived when people in the region were turning copper into bronze, growing rice and domesticating poultry and pigs; they were among the first people in the world to do so. Human remains and artefacts from this era were discovered in Monywa District in the Sagaing Division. The Iron Age began around 500 BCE with the emergence of iron-working settlements in an area south of present-day Mandalay. Evidence also shows the presence of rice-growing settlements of large villages and small towns that traded with their surroundings as far as China between 500 BCE and 200 CE. Iron Age Burmese cultures also had influences from outside sources such as India and Thailand, as seen in their funerary practices concerning child burials. This indicates some form of communication between groups in Myanmar and other places, possibly through trade.
Around the second century BCE the first-known city-states emerged in central Myanmar. The city-states were founded as part of the southward migration by the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Pyu people, the earliest inhabitants of Myanmar of whom records are extant, from present-day Yunnan. The Pyu culture was heavily influenced by trade with India, importing Buddhism as well as other cultural, architectural and political concepts, which would have an enduring influence on later Burmese culture and political organisation.
By the 9th century, several city-states had sprouted across the land: the Pyu in the central dry zone, Mon along the southern coastline and Arakanese along the western littoral. The balance was upset when the Pyu came under repeated attacks from Nanzhao between the 750s and the 830s. In the mid-to-late 9th century the Bamar people founded a small settlement at Bagan. It was one of several competing city-states until the late 10th century when it grew in authority and grandeur.
Pagan gradually grew to absorb its surrounding states until the 1050s–1060s when Anawrahta founded the Pagan Kingdom, the first ever unification of the Irrawaddy valley and its periphery. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Pagan Empire and the Khmer Empire were two main powers in mainland Southeast Asia. The Burmese language and culture gradually became dominant in the upper Irrawaddy valley, eclipsing the Pyu, Mon and Pali norms by the late 12th century.
Theravada Buddhism slowly began to spread to the village level, although Tantric, Mahayana, Hinduism, and folk religion remained heavily entrenched. Pagan's rulers and wealthy built over 10,000 Buddhist temples in the Pagan capital zone alone. Repeated Mongol invasions (1277–1301) toppled the four-century-old kingdom in 1287.
Pagan's collapse was followed by 250 years of political fragmentation that lasted well into the 16th century. Like the Burmans four centuries earlier, Shan migrants who arrived with the Mongol invasions stayed behind. Several competing Shan States came to dominate the entire northwestern to eastern arc surrounding the Irrawaddy valley. The valley too was beset with petty states until the late 14th century when two sizeable powers, Ava Kingdom and Hanthawaddy Kingdom, emerged. In the west, a politically fragmented Arakan was under competing influences of its stronger neighbours until the Kingdom of Mrauk U unified the Arakan coastline for the first time in 1437. The kingdom was a protectorate of the Bengal Sultanate at different time periods.
Early on, Ava fought wars of unification (1385–1424) but could never quite reassemble the lost empire. Having held off Ava, the Mon-speaking Hanthawaddy entered its golden age, and Arakan went on to become a power in its own right for the next 350 years. In contrast, constant warfare left Ava greatly weakened, and it slowly disintegrated from 1481 onward. In 1527, the Confederation of Shan States conquered Ava itself, and ruled Upper Myanmar until 1555.
Like the Pagan Empire, Ava, Hanthawaddy and the Shan states were all multi-ethnic polities. Despite the wars, cultural synchronisation continued. This period is considered a golden age for Burmese culture. Burmese literature "grew more confident, popular, and stylistically diverse", and the second generation of Burmese law codes as well as the earliest pan-Burma chronicles emerged. Hanthawaddy monarchs introduced religious reforms that later spread to the rest of the country. Many splendid temples of Mrauk U were built during this period.
Political unification returned in the mid-16th century, due to the efforts of Taungoo, a former vassal state of Ava. Taungoo's young, ambitious king Tabinshwehti defeated the more powerful Hanthawaddy in the Toungoo–Hanthawaddy War (1534–41). His successor Bayinnaung went on to conquer a vast swath of mainland Southeast Asia including the Shan states, Lan Na, Manipur, Mong Mao, the Ayutthaya Kingdom, Lan Xang and southern Arakan. However, the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia unravelled soon after Bayinnaung's death in 1581, completely collapsing by 1599. Ayutthaya seized Tenasserim and Lan Na, and Portuguese mercenaries established Portuguese rule at Thanlyin (Syriam).
The dynasty regrouped and defeated the Portuguese in 1613 and Siam in 1614. It restored a smaller, more manageable kingdom, encompassing Lower Myanmar, Upper Myanmar, Shan states, Lan Na and upper Tenasserim. The Restored Toungoo kings created a legal and political framework whose basic features would continue well into the 19th century. The crown completely replaced the hereditary chieftainships with appointed governorships in the entire Irrawaddy valley, and greatly reduced the hereditary rights of Shan chiefs. Its trade and secular administrative reforms built a prosperous economy for more than 80 years. From the 1720s onward, the kingdom was beset with repeated Meithei raids into Upper Myanmar and a nagging rebellion in Lan Na. In 1740, the Mon of Lower Myanmar founded the Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom. Hanthawaddy forces sacked Ava in 1752, ending the 266-year-old Toungoo Dynasty.
After the fall of Ava, the Konbaung–Hanthawaddy War involved one resistance group under Alaungpaya defeating the Restored Hanthawaddy, and by 1759, he had reunited all of Myanmar and Manipur, and driven out the French and the British, who had provided arms to Hanthawaddy. By 1770, Alaungpaya's heirs had subdued much of Laos (1765) and fought and won the Burmese–Siamese War (1765–67) against Ayutthaya and the Sino-Burmese War (1765–69) against Qing China (1765–1769).
With Burma preoccupied by the Chinese threat, Ayutthaya recovered its territories by 1770, and went on to capture Lan Na by 1776. Burma and Siam went to war until 1855, but all resulted in a stalemate, exchanging Tenasserim (to Burma) and Lan Na (to Ayutthaya). Faced with a powerful China and a resurgent Ayutthaya in the east, King Bodawpaya turned west, acquiring Arakan (1785), Manipur (1814) and Assam (1817). It was the second-largest empire in Burmese history but also one with a long ill-defined border with British India.
The breadth of this empire was short lived. Burma lost Arakan, Manipur, Assam and Tenasserim to the British in the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826). In 1852, the British easily seized Lower Burma in the Second Anglo-Burmese War. King Mindon Min tried to modernise the kingdom, and in 1875 narrowly avoided annexation by ceding the Karenni States. The British, alarmed by the consolidation of French Indochina, annexed the remainder of the country in the Third Anglo-Burmese War in 1885.
Konbaung kings extended Restored Toungoo's administrative reforms, and achieved unprecedented levels of internal control and external expansion. For the first time in history, the Burmese language and culture came to predominate the entire Irrawaddy valley. The evolution and growth of Burmese literature and theatre continued, aided by an extremely high adult male literacy rate for the era (half of all males and 5% of females). Nonetheless, the extent and pace of reforms were uneven and ultimately proved insufficient to stem the advance of British colonialism.
The eighteenth century saw Burmese rulers, whose country had not previously been of particular interest to European traders, seek to maintain their traditional influence in the western areas of Assam, Manipur and Arakan. Pressing them, however, was the British East India Company, which was expanding its interests eastwards over the same territory. Over the next sixty years, diplomacy, raids, treaties and compromises continued until, after three Anglo-Burmese Wars (1824–1885), Britain proclaimed control over most of Burma. British rule brought social, economic, cultural and administrative changes.
With the fall of Mandalay, all of Burma came under British rule, being annexed on 1 January 1886. Throughout the colonial era, many Indians arrived as soldiers, civil servants, construction workers and traders and, along with the Anglo-Burmese community, dominated commercial and civil life in Burma. Rangoon became the capital of British Burma and an important port between Calcutta and Singapore.
Burmese resentment was strong and was vented in violent riots that paralysed Yangon (Rangoon) on occasion all the way until the 1930s. Some of the discontent was caused by a disrespect for Burmese culture and traditions such as the British refusal to remove shoes when they entered pagodas. Buddhist monks became the vanguards of the independence movement. U Wisara, an activist monk, died in prison after a 166-day hunger strike to protest against a rule that forbade him to wear his Buddhist robes while imprisoned.
On 1 April 1937, Burma became a separately administered colony of Great Britain and Ba Maw became the first Prime Minister and Premier of Burma. Ba Maw was an outspoken advocate for Burmese self-rule and he opposed the participation of Great Britain, and by extension Burma, in World War II. He resigned from the Legislative Assembly and was arrested for sedition. In 1940, before Japan formally entered the Second World War, Aung San formed the Burma Independence Army in Japan.
A major battleground, Burma was devastated during World War II by March 1942. Within months after they entered the war, Japanese troops had advanced on Rangoon and the British administration had collapsed. A Burmese Executive Administration headed by Ba Maw was established by the Japanese in August 1942. Wingate's British Chindits were formed into long-range penetration groups trained to operate deep behind Japanese lines. A similar American unit, Merrill's Marauders, followed the Chindits into the Burmese jungle in 1943. Beginning in late 1944, allied troops launched a series of offensives that led to the end of Japanese rule in July 1945. The battles were intense with much of Burma laid waste by the fighting. Overall, the Japanese lost some 150,000 men in Burma with only 1,700 prisoners taken.
Although many Burmese fought initially for the Japanese as part of the Burma Independence Army, many Burmese, mostly from the ethnic minorities, served in the British Burma Army. The Burma National Army and the Arakan National Army fought with the Japanese from 1942 to 1944 but switched allegiance to the Allied side in 1945. Under Japanese occupation, 170,000 to 250,000 civilians died.
Following World War II, Aung San negotiated the Panglong Agreement with ethnic leaders that guaranteed the independence of Myanmar as a unified state. Aung Zan Wai, Pe Khin, Bo Hmu Aung, Sir Maung Gyi, Dr. Sein Mya Maung, Myoma U Than Kywe were among the negotiators of the historical Panglong Conference negotiated with Bamar leader General Aung San and other ethnic leaders in 1947. In 1947, Aung San became Deputy Chairman of the Executive Council of Myanmar, a transitional government. But in July 1947, political rivals assassinated Aung San and several cabinet members.
On 4 January 1948, the nation became an independent republic, under the terms of the Burma Independence Act 1947. The new country was named the "Union of Burma", with Sao Shwe Thaik as its first President and U Nu as its first Prime Minister. Unlike most other former British colonies and overseas territories, Burma did not become a member of the Commonwealth. A bicameral parliament was formed, consisting of a Chamber of Deputies and a Chamber of Nationalities, and multi-party elections were held in 1951–1952, 1956 and 1960.
The geographical area Burma encompasses today can be traced to the Panglong Agreement, which combined Burma Proper, which consisted of Lower Burma and Upper Burma, and the Frontier Areas, which had been administered separately by the British.
In 1961, U Thant, then the Union of Burma's Permanent Representative to the United Nations and former Secretary to the Prime Minister, was elected Secretary-General of the United Nations, a position he held for ten years. Among the Burmese to work at the UN when he was Secretary-General was a young Aung San Suu Kyi (daughter of Aung San), who went on to become winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
When the non-Burman ethnic groups pushed for autonomy or federalism, alongside having a weak civilian government at the centre, the military leadership staged a coup d’état in 1962. Though incorporated in the 1947 Constitution, successive military governments construed the use of the term ‘federalism’ as being anti-national, anti-unity and pro-disintegration.
On 2 March 1962, the military led by General Ne Win took control of Burma through a coup d'état, and the government has been under direct or indirect control by the military since then. Between 1962 and 1974, Myanmar was ruled by a revolutionary council headed by the general. Almost all aspects of society (business, media, production) were nationalised or brought under government control under the Burmese Way to Socialism, which combined Soviet-style nationalisation and central planning.
A new constitution of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma was adopted in 1974. Until 1988, the country was ruled as a one-party system, with the General and other military officers resigning and ruling through the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP). During this period, Myanmar became one of the world's most impoverished countries.
There were sporadic protests against military rule during the Ne Win years and these were almost always violently suppressed. On 7 July 1962, the government broke up demonstrations at Rangoon University, killing 15 students. In 1974, the military violently suppressed anti-government protests at the funeral of U Thant. Student protests in 1975, 1976, and 1977 were quickly suppressed by overwhelming force.
In 1988, unrest over economic mismanagement and political oppression by the government led to widespread pro-democracy demonstrations throughout the country known as the 8888 Uprising. Security forces killed thousands of demonstrators, and General Saw Maung staged a coup d'état and formed the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). In 1989, SLORC declared martial law after widespread protests. The military government finalised plans for People's Assembly elections on 31 May 1989. SLORC changed the country's official English name from the "Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma" to the "Union of Myanmar" in 18 June 1989 by enacting the adaptation of the expression law.
In May 1990, the government held free elections for the first time in almost 30 years and the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, won 392 out of a total 492 seats (i.e., 80% of the seats). However, the military junta refused to cede power and continued to rule the nation as SLORC until 1997, and then as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) until its dissolution in March 2011.
On 23 June 1997, Myanmar was admitted into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). On 27 March 2006, the military junta, which had moved the national capital from Yangon to a site near Pyinmana in November 2005, officially named the new capital Naypyidaw, meaning "city of the kings".
In August 2007, an increase in the price of fuel led to the Saffron Revolution led by Buddhist monks that were dealt with harshly by the government. The government cracked down on them on 26 September 2007. The crackdown was harsh, with reports of barricades at the Shwedagon Pagoda and monks killed. There were also rumours of disagreement within the Burmese armed forces, but none was confirmed. The military crackdown against unarmed protesters was widely condemned as part of the international reactions to the Saffron Revolution and led to an increase in economic sanctions against the Burmese Government.
In May 2008, Cyclone Nargis caused extensive damage in the densely populated, rice-farming delta of the Irrawaddy Division. It was the worst natural disaster in Burmese history with reports of an estimated 200,000 people dead or missing, damage totalled to 10 billion US dollars, and as many as 1 million left homeless. In the critical days following this disaster, Myanmar's isolationist government was accused of hindering United Nations recovery efforts. Humanitarian aid was requested but concerns about foreign military or intelligence presence in the country delayed the entry of United States military planes delivering medicine, food, and other supplies.
In early August 2009, a conflict known as the Kokang incident broke out in Shan State in northern Myanmar. For several weeks, junta troops fought against ethnic minorities including the Han Chinese, Wa, and Kachin. During 8–12 August, the first days of the conflict, as many as 10,000 Burmese civilians fled to Yunnan in neighbouring China.
Civil wars have been a constant feature of Myanmar's socio-political landscape since the attainment of independence in 1948. These wars are predominantly struggles for ethnic and sub-national autonomy, with the areas surrounding the ethnically Bamar central districts of the country serving as the primary geographical setting of conflict. Foreign journalists and visitors require a special travel permit to visit the areas in which Myanmar's civil wars continue.
In October 2012, the ongoing conflicts in Myanmar included the Kachin conflict, between the Pro-Christian Kachin Independence Army and the government; a civil war between the Rohingya Muslims, and the government and non-government groups in Rakhine State; and a conflict between the Shan, Lahu, and Karen minority groups, and the government in the eastern half of the country. In addition, al-Qaeda signalled an intention to become involved in Myanmar. In a video released on 3 September 2014, mainly addressed to India, the militant group's leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said al-Qaeda had not forgotten the Muslims of Myanmar and that the group was doing "what they can to rescue you". In response, the military raised its level of alertness, while the Burmese Muslim Association issued a statement saying Muslims would not tolerate any threat to their motherland.
Armed conflict between ethnic Chinese rebels and the Myanmar Armed Forces have resulted in the Kokang offensive in February 2015. The conflict had forced 40,000 to 50,000 civilians to flee their homes and seek shelter on the Chinese side of the border. During the incident, the government of China was accused of giving military assistance to the ethnic Chinese rebels. Burmese officials have been historically "manipulated" and pressured by the Chinese government throughout Burmese modern history to create closer and binding ties with China, creating a Chinese satellite state in Southeast Asia. However, uncertainties exist as clashes between Burmese troops and local insurgent groups continue.
The goal of the Burmese constitutional referendum of 2008, held on 10 May 2008, is the creation of a "discipline-flourishing democracy". As part of the referendum process, the name of the country was changed from the "Union of Myanmar" to the "Republic of the Union of Myanmar", and general elections were held under the new constitution in 2010. Observer accounts of the 2010 election describe the event as mostly peaceful; however, allegations of polling station irregularities were raised, and the United Nations (UN) and a number of Western countries condemned the elections as fraudulent.
The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party declared victory in the 2010 elections, stating that it had been favoured by 80 per cent of the votes; however, the claim was disputed by numerous pro-democracy opposition groups who asserted that the military regime had engaged in rampant fraud. One report documented 77 per cent as the official turnout rate of the election. The military junta was dissolved on 30 March 2011.
Opinions differ whether the transition to liberal democracy is underway. According to some reports, the military's presence continues as the label "disciplined democracy" suggests. This label asserts that the Burmese military is allowing certain civil liberties while clandestinely institutionalising itself further into Burmese politics. Such an assertion assumes that reforms only occurred when the military was able to safeguard its own interests through the transition—here, "transition" does not refer to a transition to a liberal democracy, but transition to a quasi-military rule.
Since the 2010 election, the government has embarked on a series of reforms to direct the country towards liberal democracy, a mixed economy, and reconciliation, although doubts persist about the motives that underpin such reforms. The series of reforms includes the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest, the establishment of the National Human Rights Commission, the granting of general amnesties for more than 200 political prisoners, new labour laws that permit labour unions and strikes, a relaxation of press censorship, and the regulation of currency practices.
The impact of the post-election reforms has been observed in numerous areas, including ASEAN's approval of Myanmar's bid for the position of ASEAN chair in 2014; the visit by United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in December 2011 for the encouragement of further progress, which was the first visit by a Secretary of State in more than fifty years, during which Clinton met with the Burmese president and former military commander Thein Sein, as well as opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi; and the participation of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party in the 2012 by-elections, facilitated by the government's abolition of the laws that previously barred the NLD. As of July 2013, about 100 political prisoners remain imprisoned, while conflict between the Burmese Army and local insurgent groups continues.
In 1 April 2012 by-elections, the NLD won 43 of the 45 available seats; previously an illegal organisation, the NLD had not won a single seat under new constitution. The 2012 by-elections were also the first time that international representatives were allowed to monitor the voting process in Myanmar.
General elections were held on 8 November 2015. These were the first openly contested elections held in Myanmar since 1990. The results gave the National League for Democracy an absolute majority of seats in both chambers of the national parliament, enough to ensure that its candidate would become president, while NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi is constitutionally barred from the presidency.
The new parliament convened on 1 February 2016 and, on 15 March 2016, Htin Kyaw was elected as the first non-military president since the military coup of 1962. On 6 April 2016, Aung San Suu Kyi assumed the newly created role of State Counsellor, a role akin to a Prime Minister.
Myanmar has a total area of . It lies between latitudes 9° and 29°N, and longitudes 92° and 102°E. As of February 2011, Myanmar consisted of 14 states and regions, 67 districts, 330 townships, 64 sub-townships, 377 towns, 2,914 Wards, 14,220 village tracts and 68,290 villages.
Myanmar is bordered in the northwest by the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh and the Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh states of India. Its north and northeast border is with the Tibet Autonomous Region and Yunnan for a Sino-Myanmar border total of . It is bounded by Laos and Thailand to the southeast. Myanmar has of contiguous coastline along the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea to the southwest and the south, which forms one quarter of its total perimeter.
In the north, the Hengduan Mountains form the border with China. Hkakabo Razi, located in Kachin State, at an elevation of , is the highest point in Myanmar. Many mountain ranges, such as the Rakhine Yoma, the Bago Yoma, the Shan Hills and the Tenasserim Hills exist within Myanmar, all of which run north-to-south from the Himalayas.
The mountain chains divide Myanmar's three river systems, which are the Irrawaddy, Salween (Thanlwin), and the Sittaung rivers. The Irrawaddy River, Myanmar's longest river, nearly long, flows into the Gulf of Martaban. Fertile plains exist in the valleys between the mountain chains. The majority of Myanmar's population lives in the Irrawaddy valley, which is situated between the Rakhine Yoma and the Shan Plateau.
Myanmar is divided into seven states () and seven regions (), formerly called divisions. Regions are predominantly Bamar (that is, mainly inhabited by the dominant ethnic group). States, in essence, are regions that are home to particular ethnic minorities. The administrative divisions are further subdivided into districts, which are further subdivided into townships, wards, and villages.
Below are the number of districts, townships, cities/towns, wards, village groups and villages in each divisions and states of Myanmar as of 31 December 2001:
Much of the country lies between the Tropic of Cancer and the Equator. It lies in the monsoon region of Asia, with its coastal regions receiving over of rain annually. Annual rainfall in the delta region is approximately , while average annual rainfall in the Dry Zone in central Myanmar is less than . The Northern regions of Myanmar are the coolest, with average temperatures of . Coastal and delta regions have an average maximum temperature of .
Myanmar continues to perform badly in the global Environmental Performance Index (EPI) with an overall ranking of 153 out of 180 countries in 2016; among the worst in the South Asian region, only ahead of Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The EPI was established in 2001 by the World Economic Forum as a global gauge to measure how well individual countries perform in implementing the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. The environmental areas where Myanmar performs worst (ie. highest ranking) are air quality (174), health impacts of environmental issues (143) and biodiversity and habitat (142). Myanmar performs best (ie. lowest ranking) in environmental impacts of fisheries (21), but with declining fish stocks. Despite several issues, Myanmar also ranks 64 and scores very good (ie. a high percentage of 93.73%) in environmental effects of the agricultural industry because of an excellent management of the nitrogen cycle. Myanmar is one of the most highly vulnerable countries to climate change; this poses a number of social, political, economic and foreign policy challenges to the country.
Myanmar's slow economic growth has contributed to the preservation of much of its environment and ecosystems. Forests, including dense tropical growth and valuable teak in lower Myanmar, cover over 49% of the country, including areas of acacia, bamboo, ironwood and "Magnolia champaca". Coconut and betel palm and rubber have been introduced. In the highlands of the north, oak, pine and various rhododendrons cover much of the land.
Heavy logging since the new 1995 forestry law went into effect has seriously reduced forest acreage and wildlife habitat. The lands along the coast support all varieties of tropical fruits and once had large areas of mangroves although much of the protective mangroves have disappeared. In much of central Myanmar (the Dry Zone), vegetation is sparse and stunted.
Typical jungle animals, particularly tigers, occur sparsely in Myanmar. In upper Myanmar, there are rhinoceros, wild water buffalo, clouded leopard, wild boars, deer, antelope, and elephants, which are also tamed or bred in captivity for use as work animals, particularly in the lumber industry. Smaller mammals are also numerous, ranging from gibbons and monkeys to flying foxes. The abundance of birds is notable with over 800 species, including parrots, myna, peafowl, red junglefowl, weaverbirds, crows, herons, and barn owl. Among reptile species there are crocodiles, geckos, cobras, Burmese pythons, and turtles. Hundreds of species of freshwater fish are wide-ranging, plentiful and are very important food sources. For a list of protected areas, see List of protected areas of Myanmar.
The constitution of Myanmar, its third since independence, was drafted by its military rulers and published in September 2008. The country is governed as a parliamentary system with a bicameral legislature (with an executive President accountable to the legislature), with 25% of the legislators appointed by the military and the rest elected in general elections.
The legislature, called the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, is bicameral and made up of two houses: the 224-seat upper house Amyotha Hluttaw (House of Nationalities) and the 440-seat lower house Pyithu Hluttaw (House of Representatives). The upper house consists of 224 members, of whom 168 are directly elected and 56 are appointed by the Burmese Armed Forces. The lower house consists of 440 members, of whom 330 are directly elected and 110 are appointed by the armed forces.
The major political parties are the National League for Democracy and the Union Solidarity and Development Party.
Myanmar's army-drafted constitution was approved in a referendum in May 2008. The results, 92.4% of the 22 million voters with an official turnout of 99%, are considered suspect by many international observers and by the National League of Democracy with reports of widespread fraud, ballot stuffing, and voter intimidation.
The elections of 2010 resulted in a victory for the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. Various foreign observers questioned the fairness of the elections. One criticism of the election was that only government-sanctioned political parties were allowed to contest in it and the popular National League for Democracy was declared illegal. However, immediately following the elections, the government ended the house arrest of the democracy advocate and leader of the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, and her ability to move freely around the country is considered an important test of the military's movement toward more openness. After unexpected reforms in 2011, NLD senior leaders have decided to register as a political party and to field candidates in future by-elections.
Myanmar's recent political history is underlined by its struggle to establish democratic structures amidst conflicting factions. This political transition from a closely held military rule to a free democratic system is widely believed to be determining the future of Myanmar. The resounding victory of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in 2015 general elections has raised hope for a successful culmination of this transition.
Myanmar rates as a corrupt nation on the Corruption Perceptions Index with a rank of 136th out of 176 countries worldwide, with 1st being least corrupt, .
Though the country's foreign relations, particularly with Western nations, have historically been strained, the situation has markedly improved since the reforms following the 2010 elections. After years of diplomatic isolation and economic and military sanctions, the United States relaxed curbs on foreign aid to Myanmar in November 2011 and announced the resumption of diplomatic relations on 13 January 2012 The European Union has placed sanctions on Myanmar, including an arms embargo, cessation of trade preferences, and suspension of all aid with the exception of humanitarian aid.
Sanctions imposed by the United States and European countries against the former military government, coupled with boycotts and other direct pressure on corporations by supporters of the democracy movement, have resulted in the withdrawal from the country of most US and many European companies.
On 13 April 2012 British Prime Minister David Cameron called for the economic sanctions on Myanmar to be suspended in the wake of the pro-democracy party gaining 43 seats out of a possible 45 in the 2012 by-elections with the party leader, Aung San Suu Kyi becoming a member of the Burmese parliament.
Despite Western isolation, Asian corporations have generally remained willing to continue investing in the country and to initiate new investments, particularly in natural resource extraction. The country has close relations with neighbouring India and China with several Indian and Chinese companies operating in the country. Under India's Look East policy, fields of co-operation between India and Myanmar include remote sensing, oil and gas exploration, information technology, hydro power and construction of ports and buildings.
In 2008, India suspended military aid to Myanmar over the issue of human rights abuses by the ruling junta, although it has preserved extensive commercial ties, which provide the regime with much-needed revenue. The thaw in relations began on 28 November 2011, when Belarusian Prime Minister Mikhail Myasnikovich and his wife Ludmila arrived in the capital, Naypyidaw, the same day as the country received a visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who also met with pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. International relations progress indicators continued in September 2012 when Aung San Suu Kyi visited the United States followed by Myanmar's reformist president visit to the United Nations.
In May 2013, Thein Sein became the first Myanmar president to visit the White House in 47 years; the last Burmese leader to visit the White House was Ne Win in September 1966. President Barack Obama praised the former general for political and economic reforms, and the cessation of tensions between Myanmar and the United States. Political activists objected to the visit due to concerns over human rights abuses in Myanmar but Obama assured Thein Sein that Myanmar will receive US support. The two leaders discussed to release more political prisoners, the institutionalisation of political reform and rule of law, and ending ethnic conflict in Myanmar—the two governments agreed to sign a bilateral trade and investment framework agreement on 21 May 2013.
In June 2013, Myanmar held its first ever summit, the World Economic Forum on East Asia 2013. A regional spinoff of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the summit was held on 5–7 June and attended by 1,200 participants, including 10 heads of state, 12 ministers and 40 senior directors from around the world.
In July 2019, UN ambassadors of 37 countries, including Myanmar, have signed a joint letter to the UNHRC defending China's treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang region.
Myanmar has received extensive military aid from China in the past.
Myanmar has been a member of ASEAN since 1997. Though it gave up its turn to hold the ASEAN chair and host the ASEAN Summit in 2006, it chaired the forum and hosted the summit in 2014. In November 2008, Myanmar's political situation with neighbouring Bangladesh became tense as they began searching for natural gas in a disputed block of the Bay of Bengal. Controversy surrounding the Rohingya population also remains an issue between Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Myanmar's armed forces are known as the Tatmadaw, which numbers 488,000. The Tatmadaw comprises the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force. The country ranked twelfth in the world for its number of active troops in service. The military is very influential in Myanmar, with all top cabinet and ministry posts usually held by military officials. Official figures for military spending are not available. Estimates vary widely because of uncertain exchange rates, but Myanmar's military forces' expenses are high. Myanmar imports most of its weapons from Russia, Ukraine, China and India.
Myanmar is building a research nuclear reactor near Pyin Oo Lwin with help from Russia. It is one of the signatories of the nuclear non-proliferation pact since 1992 and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since 1957. The military junta had informed the IAEA in September 2000 of its intention to construct the reactor. The research reactor outbuilding frame was built by ELE steel industries limited of Yangon/Rangoon and water from Anisakhan/BE water fall will be used for the reactor cavity cooling system.
In 2010 as part of the Wikileaks leaked cables, Myanmar was suspected of using North Korean construction teams to build a fortified Surface-to-Air Missile facility.
Until 2005, the United Nations General Assembly annually adopted a detailed resolution about the situation in Myanmar by consensus. But in 2006 a divided United Nations General Assembly voted through a resolution that strongly called upon the government of Myanmar to end its systematic violations of human rights. In January 2007, Russia and China vetoed a draft resolution before the United Nations Security Council calling on the government of Myanmar to respect human rights and begin a democratic transition. South Africa also voted against the resolution.
There is consensus that the former military regime in Myanmar (1962–2010) was one of the world's most repressive and abusive regimes. In November 2012, Samantha Power, Barack Obama's Special Assistant to the President on Human Rights, wrote on the White House blog in advance of the president's visit that "Serious human rights abuses against civilians in several regions continue, including against women and children." Members of the United Nations and major international human rights organisations have issued repeated and consistent reports of widespread and systematic human rights violations in Myanmar. The United Nations General Assembly has repeatedly called on the Burmese Military Junta to respect human rights and in November 2009 the General Assembly adopted a resolution "strongly condemning the ongoing systematic violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms" and calling on the Burmese Military Regime "to take urgent measures to put an end to violations of international human rights and humanitarian law."
International human rights organisations including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have repeatedly documented and condemned widespread human rights violations in Myanmar. The "Freedom in the World 2011" report by Freedom House notes, "The military junta has ... suppressed nearly all basic rights; and committed human rights abuses with impunity." In July 2013, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners indicated that there were approximately 100 political prisoners being held in Burmese prisons.
Evidence gathered by a British researcher was published in 2005 regarding the extermination or 'Burmisation' of certain ethnic minorities, such as the Karen, Karenni and Shan.
Child soldiers had played a major part in the Burmese Army until around 2012. "The Independent" reported in June 2012 that "Children are being sold as conscripts into the Burmese military for as little as $40 and a bag of rice or a can of petrol." The UN's Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, who stepped down from her position a week later, met representatives of the Government of Myanmar on 5 July 2012 and stated that she hoped the government's signing of an action plan would "signal a transformation." In September 2012, the Myanmar Armed Forces released 42 child soldiers and the International Labour Organization met with representatives of the government as well as the Kachin Independence Army to secure the release of more child soldiers. According to Samantha Power, a US delegation raised the issue of child soldiers with the government in October 2012. However, she did not comment on the government's progress towards reform in this area.
A "Bangkok Post" article on 23 December 2012 reported that the Myanmar Armed Forces continued to use child soldiers including during the army's large offensive against the KIA in December 2012.
Forced labour, human trafficking, and child labour are common in Myanmar. The military is also notorious for rampant use of sexual violence, a practice continuing . In 2007 the international movement to defend women's human rights issues in Myanmar was said to be gaining speed. Human trafficking happens to most women who are unemployed and have low incomes. They are mainly targeted or deceived by brokers into making them believe that better opportunities and wages exist for them abroad. In 2017, the government reported investigating 185 trafficking cases. The government of Burma makes little effort to eliminate human trafficking. Burmese armed forces (Tatmadaw) compel troops to acquire labour and supplies from local communities. The U.S. State Department reported that both the government and Tatmadaw were complicit in sex and labour trafficking.
A number of women and girls from all ethnic groups and foreigners have been victims of sex trafficking in Myanmar. They are forced into prostitution, marriages, and or pregnancies.
The Rohingya people have consistently faced human rights abuses by the Burmese regime that has refused to acknowledge them as Burmese citizens (despite some of them having lived in Burma for over three generations)—the Rohingya have been denied Burmese citizenship since the enactment of a 1982 citizenship law. The law created three categories of citizenship: citizenship, associate citizenship, and naturalised citizenship. Citizenship is given to those who belong to one of the national races such as Kachin, Kayah (Karenni), Karen, Chin, Burman, Mon, Rakhine, Shan, Kaman, or Zerbadee. Associate citizenship is given to those who cannot prove their ancestors settled in Myanmar before 1823, but can prove they have one grandparent, or pre-1823 ancestor, who was a citizen of another country, as well as people who applied for citizenship in 1948 and qualified then by those laws. Naturalised citizenship is only given to those who have at least one parent with one of these types of Burmese citizenship or can provide "conclusive evidence" that their parents entered and resided in Burma prior to independence in 1948. The Burmese regime has attempted to forcibly expel Rohingya and bring in non-Rohingyas to replace them—this policy has resulted in the expulsion of approximately half of the 800,000 Rohingya from Burma, while the Rohingya people have been described as "among the world's least wanted" and "one of the world's most persecuted minorities." But the origin of 'most persecuted minority' statement is unclear.
Rohingya are also not allowed to travel without official permission, are banned from owning land and are required to sign a commitment to have no more than two children. As of July 2012, the Myanmar Government does not include the Rohingya minority group—classified as stateless Bengali Muslims from Bangladesh since 1982—on the government's list of more than 130 ethnic races and, therefore, the government states that they have no claim to Myanmar citizenship.
In 2007 the German professor Bassam Tibi suggested that the Rohingya conflict may be driven by an Islamist political agenda to impose religious laws, while non-religious causes have also been raised, such as a lingering resentment over the violence that occurred during the Japanese occupation of Burma in World War II—during this time period the British allied themselves with the Rohingya and fought against the puppet government of Burma (composed mostly of Bamar Japanese) that helped to establish the Tatmadaw military organisation that remains in power as of March 2013.
Since the democratic transition began in 2011, there has been continuous violence as 280 people have been killed and 140,000 forced to flee from their homes in the Rakhine state. A UN envoy reported in March 2013 that unrest had re-emerged between Myanmar's Buddhist and Muslim communities, with violence spreading to towns that are located closer to Yangon.
The Rohingya have been leaving the Rakhine State by boat in search for jobs in Malaysia these recent years. Often, the boats are very small and dangerous on the open seas. An estimated 100,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar in the last two years in fear of persecution and violence. They have been fleeing to Thailand, Malaysia, or even Australia for refuge. Over 200 have died in recent years and over 7,000 have been held in detention centres even after surviving the boat trip.
Starting in late 2016, Myanmar's military and police started large-scale persecutions of Rohingya peoples in Rakhine state. This has driven over 742,000 Rohingya to cross the border to overloaded refugee camps in Bangladesh. Widespread violence, including evidence of indiscriminate killings and ethnic cleansing has been reported. The International Criminal Court has authorised a criminal prosecution of Myanmar under the Rome Statute.
A widely publicised Burmese conflict was the 2012 Rakhine State riots, a series of conflicts that primarily involved the ethnic Rakhine Buddhist people and the Rohingya Muslim people in the northern Rakhine State—an estimated 90,000 people were displaced as a result of the riots.
The immediate cause of the riots is unclear, with many commentators citing the killing of ten Burmese Muslims by ethnic Rakhine after the rape and murder of a Rakhine woman as the main cause. Whole villages have been "decimated". Over 300 houses and a number of public buildings have been razed. According to Tun Khin, the president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK), as of 28 June 2012, 650 Rohingyas have been killed, 1,200 are missing, and more than 80,000 have been displaced. According to the Myanmar authorities, the violence, between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, left 78 people dead, 87 injured, and thousands of homes destroyed. It displaced more than 52,000 people.
The government has responded by imposing curfews and by deploying troops in the regions. On 10 June 2012, a state of emergency was declared in Rakhine, allowing the military to participate in administration of the region. The Burmese army and police have been accused of targeting Rohingya Muslims through mass arrests and arbitrary violence. A number of monks' organisations that played a vital role in Myanmar's struggle for democracy have taken measures to block any humanitarian assistance to the Rohingya community.
Media censorship was significantly eased in August 2012 following demonstrations by hundreds of protesters who wore shirts demanding that the government "Stop Killing the Press." The most significant change has come in the form that media organisations will no longer have to submit their content to a censorship board before publication. However, as explained by one editorial in the exiled press "The Irrawaddy", this new "freedom" has caused some Burmese journalists to simply see the new law as an attempt to create an environment of self-censorship as journalists "are required to follow 16 guidelines towards protecting the three national causes:
and "journalistic ethics" to ensure their stories are accurate and do not jeopardise national security."
In July 2014 five journalists were sentenced to 10 years in jail after publishing a report saying the country was planning to build a new chemical weapons plant. Journalists described the jailings as a blow to the recently-won news media freedoms that had followed five decades of censorship and persecution. Two Reuters journalists were charged and imprisoned on 12 December 2017, for violating state secrets law when they were covering the mass exodus of the Rohingya Muslim minority.
According to the Crisis Group, since Myanmar transitioned to a new government in August 2011, the country's human rights record has been improving. Previously giving Myanmar its lowest rating of 7, the 2012 "Freedom in the World" report also notes improvement, giving Myanmar a 6 for improvements in civil liberties and political rights, the release of political prisoners, and a loosening of restrictions. In 2013, Myanmar improved yet again, receiving a score of five in civil liberties and a six in political freedoms.
The government has assembled a National Human Rights Commission that consists of 15 members from various backgrounds. Several activists in exile, including Thee Lay Thee Anyeint members, have returned to Myanmar after President Thein Sein's invitation to expatriates to return home to work for national development. In an address to the United Nations Security Council on 22 September 2011, Myanmar's Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin confirmed the government's intention to release prisoners in the near future.
The government has also relaxed reporting laws, but these remain highly restrictive. In September 2011, several banned websites, including YouTube, Democratic Voice of Burma and Voice of America, were unblocked. A 2011 report by the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations found that, while contact with the Myanmar government was constrained by donor restrictions, international humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) see opportunities for effective advocacy with government officials, especially at the local level. At the same time, international NGOs are mindful of the ethical quandary of how to work with the government without bolstering or appeasing it.
Following Thein Sein's first ever visit to the UK and a meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron, the Myanmar president declared that all of his nation's political prisoners will be released by the end of 2013, in addition to a statement of support for the well-being of the Rohingya Muslim community. In a speech at Chatham House, he revealed that "We [Myanmar government] are reviewing all cases. I guarantee to you that by the end of this year, there will be no prisoners of conscience in Myanmar.", in addition to expressing a desire to strengthen links between the UK and Myanmar's military forces.
Homosexual acts are illegal in Myanmar and can be punishable by life imprisonment.
In 2016, Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi was accused of failing to protect Myanmar's Muslim minority. Since August 2017 Doctors Without Borders have treated 113 Rohingya refugee females for sexual assault with all but one describing military assailants. The 2017 persecution against the Rohingya Muslims has been termed as ethnic cleansing and genocide by various UN agencies, International Criminal Court officials, and governments. More than 700,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh since August 2017.
There has been speculation that Myanmar is interested in developing nuclear weapons, and that North Korea was planning to export nuclear technology to Myanmar. These reports are based on evidence gathered from anti-government Burmese. Myanmar is a signatory to a special ASEAN treaty that bans all types of nuclear weapons in signatory states in Southeast Asia. As of 2019, the United States Bureau of Arms Control assessed that Myanmar is not in violation of its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty but that the Myanmar government had a history of non-transparency on its nuclear programs and aims.
Previously and currently analysed data, as well as future projections on changes caused by climate change predict serious consequences to development for all economic, productive, social, and environmental sectors in Myanmar. In order to combat the hardships ahead and do its part to help combat climate change Myanmar has displayed interest in expanding its use of renewable energy and lowering its level of carbon emissions. Groups involved in helping Myanmar with the transition and move forward include the UN Environment Programme, Myanmar Climate Change Alliance, and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation which directed in producing the final draft of the Myanmar national climate change policy that was presented to various sectors of the Myanmar government for review.
In April 2015, it was announced that the World Bank and Myanmar would enter a full partnership framework aimed to better access to electricity and other basic services for about six million people and expected to benefit three million pregnant woman and children through improved health services. Acquired funding and proper planning has allowed Myanmar to better prepare for the impacts of climate change by enacting programs which teach its people new farming methods, rebuild its infrastructure with materials resilient to natural disasters, and transition various sectors towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Myanmar is one of the poorest nations in Southeast Asia, suffering from decades of stagnation, mismanagement and isolation. The lack of an educated workforce skilled in modern technology hinders Myanmar's economy, although recent reforms and developments carried out by the new government, in collaboration with foreign countries and organisations, aim to make this a thing of the past. The informal economy's share in Myanmar is one of the biggest in the world and is closely linked to corruption, smuggling and illegal trade activities.
Myanmar lacks adequate infrastructure. Goods travel primarily across the Thai border (where most illegal drugs are exported) and along the Irrawaddy River. Railways are old and rudimentary, with few repairs since their construction in the late 19th century. Highways are normally unpaved, except in the major cities.
In 2010–2011, Bangladesh exported products worth $9.65 million to Myanmar against its import of $179 million. The annual import of medicine and medical equipment to Myanmar during the 2000s was 160 million USD.
In recent years, both China and India have attempted to strengthen ties with the government for economic benefit. Many nations, including the United States and Canada, and the European Union, have imposed investment and trade sanctions on Myanmar. The United States and European Union eased most of their sanctions in 2012. Foreign investment comes primarily from China, Singapore, the Philippines, South Korea, India, and Thailand.
Under British administration, Myanmar was the second-wealthiest country in South-East Asia. It had been the world's largest exporter of rice. Myanmar also had a wealth of natural and labour resources. British Burma began exporting crude oil in 1853, making it one of the earliest petroleum producers in the world. It produced 75% of the world's teak and had a highly literate population. The wealth was however, mainly concentrated in the hands of Europeans. In the 1930s, agricultural production fell dramatically as international rice prices declined, and did not recover for several decades. Plans to broaden the new prosperity and extend the reach of modern civilisation were halted by the outbreak of the Second World War.
During the Japanese invasion of the area in World War II, the British followed a scorched earth policy. They destroyed the major government buildings, oil wells and mines for tungsten, tin, lead and silver to keep them from the Japanese. Myanmar was bombed extensively by both sides. After independence, the country was in ruins with its major infrastructure completely destroyed. The British then granted independence to the colony, and handed over their plans to rebuild to the new government. After a parliamentary government was formed in 1948, Prime Minister U Nu embarked upon a policy of nationalisation and the state was declared the owner of all land. The government also tried to implement a poorly considered Eight-Year plan. By the 1950s, rice exports had fallen by two-thirds and mineral exports by over 96% (as compared to the pre-World War II period). Plans were partly financed by printing money, which led to inflation.
The 1962 coup d'état was followed by an economic scheme called the Burmese Way to Socialism, a plan to nationalise all industries, with the exception of agriculture. The catastrophic programme turned Myanmar into one of the world's most impoverished countries. Myanmar's admittance to least developed country status by the UN in 1987 highlighted its economic bankruptcy.
In Myanmar, political and economic ideological struggles have affected living standards. Decades of civil war and unrest have contributed to Myanmar's current levels of poverty and lack of economic progress. Improving basic human, social and economic infrastructure required to advance individual living standards have not received focused government efforts.
The major agricultural product is rice, which covers about 60% of the country's total cultivated land area. Rice accounts for 97% of total food grain production by weight. Through collaboration with the International Rice Research Institute 52 modern rice varieties were released in the country between 1966 and 1997, helping increase national rice production to 14 million tons in 1987 and to 19 million tons in 1996. By 1988, modern varieties were planted on half of the country's ricelands, including 98 per cent of the irrigated areas. In 2008 rice production was estimated at 50 million tons.
Myanmar is also the world's second largest producer of opium, accounting for 25% of entire world production and is a major source of illegal drugs, including amphetamines.
Opium bans implemented since 2002 after international pressure have left ex-poppy farmers without sustainable sources of income in the Kokang and Wa regions. They depend on casual labour for income.
Myanmar produces precious stones such as rubies, sapphires, pearls, and jade. Rubies are the biggest earner; 90% of the world's rubies come from the country, whose red stones are prized for their purity and hue. Thailand buys the majority of the country's gems. Myanmar's "Valley of Rubies", the mountainous Mogok area, north of Mandalay, is noted for its rare pigeon's blood rubies and blue sapphires.
Many US and European jewellery companies, including Bulgari, Tiffany and Cartier, refuse to import these stones based on reports of deplorable working conditions in the mines. Human Rights Watch has encouraged a complete ban on the purchase of Burmese gems based on these reports and because nearly all profits go to the ruling junta, as the majority of mining activity in the country is government-run. The government of Myanmar controls the gem trade by direct ownership or by joint ventures with private owners of mines.
Other industries include agricultural goods, textiles, wood products, construction materials, gems, metals, oil and natural gas.
Myanmar Engineering Society has identified at least 39 locations capable of geothermal power production and some of these hydrothermal reservoirs lie quite close to Yangon which is a significant underutilised resource for electrical production.
Since 1992, the government has encouraged tourism in the country; however, fewer than 270,000 tourists entered the country in 2006 according to the Myanmar Tourism Promotion Board. Myanmar's Minister of Hotels and Tourism Saw Lwin has stated that the government receives a significant percentage of the income of private sector tourism services.
The most popular available tourist destinations in Myanmar include big cities such as Yangon and Mandalay; religious sites in Mon State, Pindaya, Bago and Hpa-An; nature trails in Inle Lake, Kengtung, Putao, Pyin Oo Lwin; ancient cities such as Bagan and Mrauk-U; as well as beaches in Nabule, Ngapali, Ngwe-Saung, Mergui. Nevertheless, much of the country is off-limits to tourists, and interactions between foreigners and the people of Myanmar, particularly in the border regions, are subject to police scrutiny. They are not to discuss politics with foreigners, under penalty of imprisonment and, in 2001, the Myanmar Tourism Promotion Board issued an order for local officials to protect tourists and limit "unnecessary contact" between foreigners and ordinary Burmese people.
The most common way for travellers to enter the country seems to be by air. According to the website "Lonely Planet", getting into Myanmar is problematic: "No bus or train service connects Myanmar with another country, nor can you travel by car or motorcycle across the border – you must walk across." They further state that "It is not possible for foreigners to go to/from Myanmar by sea or river." There are a small number of border crossings that allow the passage of private vehicles, such as the border between Ruili (China) to Mu-se, the border between Htee Kee (Myanmar) and Phu Nam Ron (Thailand)—the most direct border between Dawei and Kanchanaburi, and the border between Myawaddy (Myanmar) and Mae Sot (Thailand). At least one tourist company has successfully run commercial overland routes through these borders since 2013. "From Mae Sai (Thailand) you can cross to Tachileik, but can only go as far as Kengtung. Those in Thailand on a visa run can cross to Kawthaung but cannot venture farther into Myanmar."
Flights are available from most countries, though direct flights are limited to mainly Thai and other ASEAN airlines. According to "Eleven" magazine, "In the past, there were only 15 international airlines and increasing numbers of airlines have begun launching direct flights from Japan, Qatar, Taiwan, South Korea, Germany and Singapore." Expansions were expected in September 2013, but yet again are mainly Thai and other Asian-based airlines according to Eleven Media Group's "Eleven", "Thailand-based Nok Air and Business Airlines and Singapore-based Tiger Airline".
The Government of Myanmar was under economic sanctions by the US Treasury Department (31 CFR Part 537, 16 August 2005) and by Executive orders 13047 (1997), 13310 (2003), 13448 (2007), 13464 (2008), and the most recent, 13619 (2012). There exists debate as to the extent to which the American-led sanctions have had more adverse effects on the civilian population than on the military rulers.
From May 2012 to February 2013, the United States began to lift its economic sanctions on Myanmar "in response to the historic reforms that have been taking place in that country." Sanctions remain in place for blocked banks and for any business entities that are more than 50% owned by persons on "OFAC's Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list (SDN list)".
During her first official visit to Washington, D.C., in September 2016, Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi met with US President Barack Obama, who announced that long-standing trade sanctions against Myanmar are to be lifted, adding, "It is the right thing to do to ensure the people of Burma see rewards from a new way of doing business, and a new government."
The military has the majority stakeholder position in all of the major industrial corporations of the country (from oil production and consumer goods to transportation and tourism).
In March 2012, a draft foreign investment law emerged, the first in more than 2 decades. Foreigners will no longer need a local partner to start a business in the country, and will be able to legally lease but not own property. The draft law also stipulates that Burmese citizens must constitute at least 25% of the firm's skilled workforce, and with subsequent training, up to 50–75%.
In 2012, the Asian Development Bank formally began re-engaging with the country, to finance infrastructure and development projects in the country. The United States, Japan, and the European Union countries have also begun to reduce or eliminate economic sanctions to allow foreign direct investment which will provide the Burmese government with additional tax revenue.
In December 2014, Myanmar signed an agreement to set up its first stock exchange. The Yangon Stock Exchange Joint Venture Co. Ltd will be set up with Myanma Economic Bank sharing 51%, Japan's Daiwa Institute of Research Ltd 30.25% and Japan Exchange Group 18.75%. The Yangon Stock Exchange (YSX) officially opened for business on Friday, 25 March 2016. First Myanmar Investment Co., Ltd. (FMI) became the first stock to be traded after receiving approval for an opening price of 26,000 kyats ($22).
According to "The World Factbook", Myanmar is one of three countries along with Liberia and the United States that has not adopted the International System of Units (SI) metric system as their official system of weights and measures. The common units of measure are unique to Myanmar, but the government web pages generally use both imperial units and metric units.
In June 2011, the Burmese government's Ministry of Commerce began discussing proposals to reform the measurement system and adopt the International System of Units used by most of its trading partners. In October 2013 it was reported that Dr. Pwint San, Deputy Minister for Commerce, had announced that the country was preparing to adopt the International System of Units.
The provisional results of the 2014 Myanmar Census show that the total population is 51,419,420. This figure includes an estimated 1,206,353 persons in parts of northern Rakhine State, Kachin State and Kayin State who were not counted. People who were out of the country at the time of the census are not included in these figures. There are over 600,000 registered migrant workers from Myanmar in Thailand, and millions more work illegally. Burmese citizens account for 80% of all migrant workers in Thailand. The national population density is , among the lowest in Southeast Asia.
Myanmar's fertility rate is 2.23, which is slightly above replacement level and is low compared to Southeast Asian countries of similar economic standing, such as Cambodia (3.18) and Laos (4.41). There has been a significant decline in fertility in recent years, from a rate of 4.7 children per woman in 1983, down to 2.4 in 2001, despite the absence of any national population policy. The fertility rate is much lower in urban areas.
The relatively rapid decline in fertility is attributed to several factors, including extreme delays in marriage (almost unparalleled among developing countries in the region), the prevalence of illegal abortions, and the high proportion of single, unmarried women of reproductive age, with 25.9% of women aged 30–34 and 33.1% of men and women aged 25–34 being single.
These patterns stem from economic dynamics, including high income inequality, which results in residents of reproductive age opting for delay of marriage and family-building in favour of attempting to find employment and establish some form of wealth; the average age of marriage in Myanmar is 27.5 for men, 26.4 for women.
Myanmar is ethnically diverse. The government recognises 135 distinct ethnic groups. There are at least 108 different ethnolinguistic groups in Myanmar, consisting mainly of distinct Tibeto-Burman peoples, but with sizeable populations of Tai–Kadai, Hmong–Mien, and Austroasiatic (Mon–Khmer) peoples.
The Bamar form an estimated 68% of the population. 10% of the population are Shan. The Kayin make up 7% of the population. The Rakhine people constitute 4% of the population. Overseas Chinese form approximately 3% of the population. Myanmar's ethnic minority groups prefer the term "ethnic nationality" over "ethnic minority" as the term "minority" furthers their sense of insecurity in the face of what is often described as "Burmanisation"—the proliferation and domination of the dominant Bamar culture over minority cultures.
Mon, who form 2% of the population, are ethno-linguistically related to the Khmer. Overseas Indians are 2%. The remainder are Kachin, Chin, Rohingya, Anglo-Indians, Gurkha, Nepali and other ethnic minorities. Included in this group are the Anglo-Burmese. Once forming a large and influential community, the Anglo-Burmese left the country in steady streams from 1958 onwards, principally to Australia and the UK. It is estimated that 52,000 Anglo-Burmese remain in Myanmar. , 110,000 Burmese refugees were living in refugee camps in Thailand.
Refugee camps exist along Indian, Bangladeshi and Thai borders while several thousand are in Malaysia. Conservative estimates state that there are over 295,800 minority refugees from Myanmar, with the majority being Rohingya, Karen, and Karenni are principally located along the Thai-Myanmar border. There are nine permanent refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border, most of which were established in the mid-1980s. The refugee camps are under the care of the Thai-Burma Border Consortium (TBBC). Since 2006, over 55,000 Burmese refugees have been resettled in the United States.
The persecution of Burmese Indians, Burmese Chinese and other ethnic groups after the military coup headed by General Ne Win in 1962 led to the expulsion or emigration of 300,000 people. They migrated to escape racial discrimination and the wholesale nationalisation of private enterprise that took place in 1964. The Anglo-Burmese at this time either fled the country or changed their names and blended in with the broader Burmese society.
Many Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar. Many refugees headed to neighbouring Bangladesh, including 200,000 in 1978 as a result of the King Dragon operation in Arakan. 250,000 more left in 1991.
Myanmar is home to four major language families: Sino-Tibetan, Tai–Kadai, Austro-Asiatic, and Indo-European. Sino-Tibetan languages are most widely spoken. They include Burmese, Karen, Kachin, Chin, and Chinese (mainly Hokkien). The primary Tai–Kadai language is Shan. Mon, Palaung, and Wa are the major Austroasiatic languages spoken in Myanmar. The two major Indo-European languages are Pali, the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism, and English. More than a hundred languages are spoken in total. Since many of them are known only within small tribes around the country, they may have been lost (many if not all) after a few generations.
Burmese, the mother tongue of the Bamar and official language of Myanmar, is related to Tibetan and Chinese. It is written in a script consisting of circular and semi-circular letters, which were adapted from the Mon script, which in turn was developed from a southern Indian script in the 5th century. The earliest known inscriptions in the Burmese script date from the 11th century. It is also used to write Pali, the sacred language of Theravada Buddhism, as well as several ethnic minority languages, including Shan, several Karen dialects, and Kayah (Karenni), with the addition of specialised characters and diacritics for each language.
The Burmese language incorporates widespread usage of honorifics and is age-oriented. Burmese society has traditionally stressed the importance of education. In villages, secular schooling often takes place in monasteries. Secondary and tertiary education take place at government schools.
Many religions are practised in Myanmar. Religious edifices and orders have been in existence for many years. The Christian and Muslim populations do, however, face religious persecution and it is hard, if not impossible, for non-Buddhists to join the army or get government jobs, the main route to success in the country. Such persecution and targeting of civilians is particularly notable in Eastern Myanmar, where over 3000 villages have been destroyed in the past ten years. More than 200,000 Muslims have fled to Bangladesh over the last 20 years to escape persecution.
A large majority of the population practices Buddhism; estimates range from 80% to 89%. According to 2014 Myanmar Census, 87.9% of the population identifies as Buddhists. Theravāda Buddhism is the most widespread. There are some 500,000 Buddhist monks and 75,000 nuns in this country of 54 million. Other religions are practised largely without obstruction, with the notable exception of some religious minorities such as the Rohingya people, who have continued to have their citizenship status denied and treated as illegal immigrants instead, and Christians in Chin State.
According to 2014 census, 6.2% of the population identifies as Christian; 4.3% as Muslim; 0.8% as followers of tribal religions; 0.5% as Hindus; 0.2% as followers of other religions; and 0.1% follow no religion. According to the 2010 estimates of the Pew Research Center, 7% of the population is Christian; 4% is Muslim; 1% follows traditional animistic beliefs; and 2% follow other religions, including Mahayana Buddhism, Hinduism, and East Asian religions. Jehovah's Witnesses have been present since 1914 and have about 80 congregations around the country and a branch office in Yangon publishing in 16 languages.
A tiny Jewish community in Yangon had a synagogue but no resident rabbi to conduct services.
Although Hinduism is practised by 0.5% of the population, it was a major religion in Myanmar's past. Several strains of Hinduism existed alongside both Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism in the Mon and Pyu period in the first millennium, and down to the Pagan period (9th to 13th centuries) when "Saivite and Vaishana elements enjoyed greater elite influence than they would later do." Burmese folk religion is practised by many Bamars alongside Buddhism.
The general state of health care in Myanmar is poor. The government spends anywhere from 0.5% to 3% of the country's GDP on health care, consistently ranking among the lowest in the world. Although health care is nominally free, in reality, patients have to pay for medicine and treatment, even in public clinics and hospitals. Public hospitals lack many of the basic facilities and equipment.
The 2010 maternal mortality rate per 100,000 births for Myanmar is 240. This is compared with 219.3 in 2008 and 662 in 1990. The under 5 mortality rate, per 1,000 births is 73 and the neonatal mortality as a percentage of under 5's mortality is 47.
Myanmar's government spends the least percentage of its GDP on health care of any country in the world, and international donor organisations give less to Myanmar, per capita, than any other country except India. According to the report named "Preventable Fate", published by Doctors without Borders, 25,000 Burmese AIDS patients died in 2007, deaths that could largely have been prevented by antiretroviral therapy drugs and proper treatment.
HIV/AIDS, recognised as a disease of concern by the Burmese Ministry of Health, is most prevalent among sex workers and intravenous drug users. In 2005, the estimated adult HIV prevalence rate in Myanmar was 1.3% (200,000–570,000 people), according to UNAIDS, and early indicators of any progress against the HIV epidemic are inconsistent. However, the National AIDS Programme Myanmar found that 32% of sex workers and 43% of intravenous drug users in Myanmar have HIV.
According to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, Myanmar's official literacy rate as of 2000 was 90%. Historically, Myanmar has had high literacy rates. To qualify for least developed country status by the UN to receive debt relief, Myanmar lowered its official literacy rate from 79% to 19% in 1987.
The educational system of Myanmar is operated by the government agency, the Ministry of Education. The education system is based on the United Kingdom's system due to nearly a century of British and Christian presences in Myanmar. Nearly all schools are government-operated, but there has been a recent increase in privately funded English language schools. Schooling is compulsory until the end of elementary school, approximately about 9 years old, while the compulsory schooling age is 15 or 16 at international level.
There are 101 universities, 12 institutes, 9-degree colleges and 24 colleges in Myanmar, a total of 146 higher education institutions. There are 10 Technical Training Schools, 23 nursing training schools, 1 sport academy and 20 midwifery schools. There are 2047 Basic Education High Schools, 2605 Basic Education Middle Schools, 29944 Basic Education Primary Schools and 5952 Post Primary Schools. 1692 multimedia classrooms exist within this system.
There are four international schools acknowledged by WASC and College Board—The International School Yangon (ISY), Myanmar International School (MIS), Yangon International School (YIS) and International School of Myanmar (ISM) in Yangon.
Myanmar had a murder rate of 15.2 per 100,000 population with a total of 8,044 murders in 2012. Factors influencing Myanmar's high murder rate include communal violence and armed conflict. Myanmar is one of the world's most corrupt nations. The 2012 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index ranked the country at number 171, out of 176 countries in total.
Myanmar is the world's second largest producer of opium after Afghanistan, producing some 25% of the world's opium, and forms part of the Golden Triangle. The opium industry was a monopoly during colonial times and has since been illegally operated by corrupt officials in the Burmese military and rebel fighters, primarily as the basis for heroin manufacture.
Myanmar is the largest producer of methamphetamines in the world, with the majority of "Ya ba" found in Thailand produced in Myanmar, particularly in the Golden Triangle and Northeastern Shan State, which borders Thailand, Laos and China. Burmese-produced "ya ba" is typically trafficked to Thailand via Laos, before being transported through the northeastern Thai region of Isan.
A diverse range of indigenous cultures exist in Myanmar, with majority culture primarily Buddhist and Bamar. Bamar culture has been influenced by the cultures of neighbouring countries, manifested in its language, cuisine, music, dance and theatre. The arts, particularly literature, have historically been influenced by the local form of Theravada Buddhism. Considered the national epic of Myanmar, the "Yama Zatdaw", an adaptation of India's "Ramayana", has been influenced greatly by Thai, Mon, and Indian versions of the play. Buddhism is practised along with nat worship, which involves elaborate rituals to propitiate one from a pantheon of 37 nats.
In a traditional village, the monastery is the centre of cultural life. Monks are venerated and supported by the lay people. A novitiation ceremony called shinbyu is the most important coming of age events for a boy, during which he enters the monastery for a short time. All male children in Buddhist families are encouraged to be a novice (beginner for Buddhism) before the age of twenty and to be a monk after the age of twenty. Girls have ear-piercing ceremonies () at the same time. Burmese culture is most evident in villages where local festivals are held throughout the year, the most important being the pagoda festival. Many villages have a guardian nat, and superstition and taboos are commonplace.
British colonial rule introduced Western elements of culture to Myanmar. Myanmar's education system is modelled after that of the United Kingdom. Colonial architectural influences are most evident in major cities such as Yangon. Many ethnic minorities, particularly the Karen in the southeast and the Kachin and Chin who populate the north and northeast, practice Christianity. According to "The World Factbook", the Burman population is 68% and the ethnic groups constitute 32%. However, the exiled leaders and organisations claims that ethnic population is 40%, which is implicitly contrasted with CIA report (official US report).
Burmese cuisine is characterised by extensive use of fish products such as fish sauce, ngapi (fermented seafood) and dried prawn.
Mohinga is the traditional breakfast dish and is Myanmar's national dish. Seafood is a common ingredient in coastal cities such as Sittwe, Kyaukpyu, Mawlamyaing (formerly Moulmein), Mergui (Myeik) and Dawei, while meat and poultry are more commonly used in landlocked cities like Mandalay. Freshwater fish and shrimp have been incorporated into inland cooking as a primary source of protein and are used in a variety of ways, fresh, salted whole or filleted, salted and dried, made into a salty paste, or fermented sour and pressed.
Burmese cuisine also includes a variety of salads ("a thoke"), centred on one major ingredient, ranging from starches like rice, wheat and rice noodles, glass noodles and vermicelli, to potato, ginger, tomato, kaffir lime, long bean, lahpet (pickled tea leaves), and ngapi (fish paste).
The Lethwei, Bando, Banshay, and Pongyi thaing martial arts and chinlone are traditional sports in Myanmar. Football is played all over the country, even in villages, and its national team is ruled by the Myanmar Football Federation.
The 2013 Southeast Asian Games took place in Naypyidaw, Yangon, Mandalay and Ngwesaung Beach in December representing the third occasion that the event has been staged in Myanmar. Myanmar previously hosted the Games in 1961 and 1969.
Burmese traditional art concepts is popular and respected by the Burmese people and people from abroad.
Burmese contemporary art has developed quite rapidly on its own terms. Artists born after the 1980s have had greater chances of art practice outside the country.
One of the first to study western art was Ba Nyan. Together with Ngwe Gaing and a handful of other artists, they were the pioneers of western painting style. Later on most young children learned the concepts from them. Some well known contemporary artists are Lun Gywe, Aung Kyaw Htet, MPP Yei Myint, Myint Swe, Min Wai Aung, Aung Myint, Kin Maung Yin, Po Po and Zaw Zaw Aung.
Due to Myanmar's political climate, there are not many media companies in relation to the country's population, although a certain number exists. Some are privately owned. All programming must meet with the approval of the censorship board.
The Burmese government announced on 20 August 2012 that it would stop censoring media before publication. Following the announcement, newspapers and other outlets no longer required approved by state censors; however, journalists in the country can still face consequences for what they write and say.
In April 2013, international media reports were published to relay the enactment of the media liberalisation reforms that we announced in August 2012. For the first time in numerous decades, the publication of privately owned newspapers commenced in the country.
Internet use is estimated to be relatively low compared to other countries. Myanmar's internet used to be subject to censorship, and authorities viewed e-mails and posts on Internet blogs until 2012 when the government removed media censorship. During the strict censorship days, activity at internet cafes was regulated, and one blogger named Zarganar was sentenced to prison for publishing a video of destruction caused by Cyclone Nargis in 2008; Zarganar was released in October 2011.
In regards to communications infrastructure, Myanmar is the last ranked Asian country in the World Economic Forum's Network Readiness Index (NRI) – an indicator for determining the development level of a country's information and communication technologies. With 139 countries reported on, Myanmar ranked number 133 overall in the 2016 NRI ranking.
Myanmar's first film was a documentary of the funeral of Tun Shein—a leading politician of the 1910s, who campaigned for Burmese independence in London. The first Burmese silent film "Myitta Ne Thuya" ("Love and Liquor") in 1920 which proved a major success, despite its poor quality due to a fixed camera position and inadequate film accessories. During the 1920s and 1930s, many Burmese-owned film companies made and produced several films. The first Burmese sound film was produced in 1932 in Bombay, India with the title Ngwe Pay Lo Ma Ya (Money Can't Buy It). After World War II, Burmese cinema continued to address political themes. Many of the films produced in the early Cold War era had a strong propaganda element to them.
In the era that followed the political events of 1988, the film industry has been increasingly controlled by the government. Film stars who had been involved in the political activities were banned from appearing in films. The government issues strict rules on censorship and largely determines who produces films, as well as who gets academy awards.
Over the years, the movie industry has also shifted to producing many lower-budget direct-to-video films.
Most of the movies produced nowadays are comedies. In 2008, only 12 films worthy of being considered for an Academy Award were made, although at least 800 VCDs were produced.
Myanmar is the primary subject of a 2007 graphic novel titled "Chroniques Birmanes" by Québécois author and animator, Guy Delisle. The graphic novel was translated into English under the title "Burma Chronicles" in 2008. In 2009, a documentary about Burmese videojournalists called "Burma VJ" was released. This film was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 2010 Academy Awards. "The Lady" had its world premiere on 12 September 2011 at the 36th Toronto International Film Festival.
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Poland Is Not Yet Lost
"Mazurek Dąbrowskiego" (, ), in English officially known by its incipit "Poland Is Not Yet Lost", is the national anthem of Poland.
The lyrics were written by Józef Wybicki in Reggio Emilia, Cisalpine Republic in Northern Italy, between 16 and 19 July 1797, two years after the Third Partition of Poland erased the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from the map. It was originally meant to boost the morale of Polish soldiers serving under General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski's Polish Legions that served with Napoleon's French Revolutionary Army in the Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars. "Dąbrowski's Mazurka", expressing the idea that the nation of Poland, despite lacking an independent state of their own, had not disappeared as long as the Polish people were still alive and fighting in its name, soon became one of the most popular patriotic songs in Poland.
The music is an unattributed mazurka and considered a "folk tune" that Polish composer Edward Pałłasz categorizes as "functional art" which was "fashionable among the gentry and rich bourgeoisie". Pałłasz wrote, "Wybicki probably made use of melodic motifs he had heard and combined them in one formal structure to suit the text".
It is "one of the most important songs of the Slavic nations." The text of the hymn was modified to suit new occasions and socio-political contexts" throughout the song's history. When Poland re-emerged as an independent state in 1918, "Dąbrowski's Mazurka" became its "de facto" national anthem. It was officially adopted as the national anthem of Poland in 1926. It also inspired similar songs by other peoples struggling for independence during the 19th century, such as the Ukrainian national anthem "Shche ne vmerla Ukrayina" and the Pan-Slavic song "Hej, Sloveni" which was used as the national anthem of Yugoslavia during that state's existence.
It is also known by its original title, "" (, "Song of the Polish Legions in Italy"). English translations of its Polish incipit ("" ) include: "Poland has not yet perished", "Poland has not perished yet", "Poland is not lost", "Poland is not lost yet", and "Poland is not yet lost".
The original lyrics, authored by Wybicki, were a poem consisting of six stanzas and a chorus repeated after all but last stanzas, all following an ABAB rhyme scheme. The official lyrics, based on a variant from 1806,
show a certain departure from the original text. It misses two of the original stanzas and reverses the order of other two. Notably, the initial verse, "Poland has not yet died" was replaced with "Poland has not yet perished", suggesting a more violent cause of the nation's possible death. Wybicki's original manuscript was in the hands of his descendants until February 1944, when it was lost in Wybicki's great-great-grandson, Johann von Roznowski's home in Charlottenburg during the Allied bombing of Berlin. The manuscript is known today only from facsimile copies, twenty four of which were made in 1886 by Edward Rożnowski, Wybicki's grandson, who donated them to Polish libraries.
The main theme of the poem is the idea that was novel in the times of early nationalisms based on centralized nation-statesthat the lack of political sovereignty does not preclude the existence of a nation. As Adam Mickiewicz explained in 1842 to students of Slavic Literature in Paris, the song "The famous song of the Polish legions begins with lines that express the new history: Poland has not perished yet as long as we live. These words mean that people who have in them what constitutes the essence of a nation can prolong the existence of their country regardless of its political circumstances and may even strive to make it real again..." The song also includes a call to arms and expresses the hope that, under General Dąbrowski's command, the legionaries would rejoin their nation and retrieve "what the alien force has seized" through armed struggle.
The chorus and subsequent stanzas include heart-lifting examples of military heroes, set as role models for Polish soldiers: Jan Henryk Dąbrowski, Napoleon, Stefan Czarniecki and Tadeusz Kościuszko. Dąbrowski, for whom the anthem is named, was a commander in the failed 1794 Kościuszko Uprising against Russia. After the Third Partition in 1795, he came to Paris to seek French aid in re-establishing Polish independence and, in 1796, he started the formation of the Polish Legions, a Polish unit of the French Revolutionary Army. Bonaparte was, at the time when the song was written, a commander of the Italian campaign of French Revolutionary Wars and Dąbrowski's superior. Having already proven his skills as a military leader, he is described in the lyrics as the one "who has shown us ways to victory." Bonaparte is the only non-Polish person mentioned by name in the Polish anthem.
Stefan Czarniecki was a 17th-century hetman (military commander), famous for his role in driving the Swedish army out of Poland after an occupation that had left the country in ruins and is remembered by Poles as the Deluge. With the outbreak of a Dano-Swedish War, he continued his fight against Sweden in Denmark, from where he "returned across the sea" to fight the invaders alongside the king who was then at the Royal Castle in Poznań. In the same castle, Józef Wybicki, started his career as a lawyer (in 1765). Kościuszko, mentioned in a stanza now missing from the anthem, became a hero of the American Revolutionary War before coming back to Poland to defend his native country from Russia in the war of 1792 and a national uprising he led in 1794. One of his major victories during the uprising was the Battle of Racławice where the result was partly due to Polish peasants armed with scythes. Alongside the scythes, the song mentioned other types of weaponry, traditionally used by the Polish "szlachta", or nobility: the sabre, known in Polish as "szabla", and the backsword.
Basia (a female name, diminutive of Barbara) and her father are fictional characters. They are used to represent the women and elderly men who waited for the Polish soldiers to return home and liberate their fatherland. The route that Dąbrowski and his legions hoped to follow upon leaving Italy is hinted at by the words "we'll cross the Vistula, we'll cross the Warta", two major rivers flowing through the parts of Poland that were in Austrian and Prussian hands at the time.
The melody of the Polish anthem is a lively and rhythmical mazurka. Mazurka as a musical form derives from the stylization of traditional melodies for the folk dances of Mazovia, a region in central Poland. It is characterized by a triple meter and strong accents placed irregularly on the second or third beat. Considered one of Poland's national dances in pre-partition times, it owes its popularity in 19th-century West European ballrooms to the mazurkas of Frédéric Chopin.
The composer of "Mazurek Dąbrowskiego" is unknown. The melody is most probably Wybicki's adaptation of a folk tune that had already been popular during the second half of the 18th century. The composition used to be erroneously attributed to Michał Kleofas Ogiński who was known to have written a march for Dąbrowski's legions. Several historians confused Ogiński's "" ("March for the Polish Legions") with Wybicki's mazurka, possibly due to the mazurka's chorus "March, march, Dąbrowski", until Ogiński's sheet music for the march was discovered in 1938 and proven to be a different piece of music than Poland's national anthem.
The first composer to use the anthem for an artistical music piece is always stated to be Karol Kurpiński. In 1821 he composed his piano/organ Fugue on "Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła" (it was published in 1821 in Warsaw; the first modern edition by Rostislaw Wygranienko was printed only in 2009). However, Karol Lipiński used it in an overture for his opera "Kłótnia przez zakład" composed and staged in Lviv ca.1812.
The current official musical score of the national anthem was arranged by Kazimierz Sikorski and published by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Sikorski's harmonization allows for each vocal version to be performed either "a cappella" or together with any of the instrumental versions. Some orchestra parts, marked in the score as "ad libitum", may be left out or replaced by other instruments of equivalent musical scale.
In 1908, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, later to become the first Prime Minister of independent Poland, quoted the anthem in a disguised way in his Symphony in B minor "Polonia". He scored it in duple meter rather than its standard triple meter.
The anthem was quoted by Edward Elgar in his symphonic prelude Polonia, composed in 1915.
The national anthem is, along with the national coat of arms and the national colors, one of three national symbols defined by the Polish constitution.
As such, it is protected by law which declares that treating the national symbols "with reverence and respect" is the "right and obligation" of every Polish citizen and all state organs, institutions and organizations. The anthem should be performed or reproduced especially at celebrations of national holidays and anniversaries. Civilians should pay respect to the anthem by standing in a dignified manner; additionally, men should uncover their heads. Members of uniformed services should stand at attention; if their uniform includes headgear and they are not standing in an organized group, they should also perform the two-finger salute. The song is required to be played in the key of F-major if played for a public purpose. Color guards pay respect to the anthem by dipping their banners.
In 1795, after a prolonged decline and despite last-minute attempts at constitutional reforms and armed resistance, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was ultimately partitioned by its three neighbors: Russia, Prussia and Austria. A once vast and powerful empire was effectively erased from the map while monarchs of the partitioning powers pledged never to use the name "Poland" in their official titles. For many, including even leading representatives of the Polish Enlightenment, this new political situation meant an end of the Polish nation. In the words of Hugo Kołłątaj, a notable Polish political thinker of the time, "Poland no longer belonged to currently extant nations," while historian Tadeusz Czacki declared that Poland "was now effaced from the number of nations."
Meanwhile, Polish patriots and revolutionaries turned for help to France, Poland's traditional ally, which was at war with Austria (member of the First Coalition) at the time. Józef Wybicki was among the leading moderate émigré politicians seeking French aid in re-establishing Polish independence. In 1796, he came up with the idea of creating Polish Legions within the French Revolutionary Army. To this end, he convinced General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski, a hero of the Greater Poland campaign of the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising, to come to Paris and present the plan to the French Directory. Dąbrowski was sent by the Directory to Napoleon who was then spreading the French Revolution in northern Italy. In January 1797, the newly created French-controlled Cisalpine Republic accepted Dąbrowski's offer and a Polish legion was formed. Dąbrowski and his soldiers hoped to fight against Austria under Napoleon and, subsequently, march across the Austrian territory, "from Italy to Poland", where they would ignite a national uprising.
In early July 1797, Wybicki arrived in Reggio Emilia where the Polish Legions were then quartered and where he wrote the "Song of the Polish Legions" soon afterwards. He first sung it at a private meeting of Polish officers in the Legions' headquarters at the episcopal palace in Reggio. The first public performance most probably took place on 16 July 1797 during a military parade in Reggio's Piazza del Duomo (Cathedral Square). On 20 July, it was played again as the Legions were marching off from Reggio to Milan, the Cisalpine capital.
With its heart-lifting lyrics and folk melody, the song soon became a popular tune among Polish legionaries. On 29 August 1797, Dąbrowski already wrote to Wybicki from Bologna: "soldiers gain more and more taste for your song." It appealed to both officers, usually émigré noblemen, and simple soldiers, most of whom were Galician peasants who had been drafted into the Austrian army and captured as POWs by the French. The last stanza, referring to Kościuszko, who famously fought for freedom of the entire nation rather than the nobility alone, and the "scythes of Racławice", seems to be directed particularly at the latter. Wybicki may have even hoped for Kościuszko to arrive in Italy and personally lead the Legions which might explain why the chorus "March, march, Dąbrowski" is not repeated after the last stanza. At that time Wybicki was not yet aware that Kościuszko had already returned to Philadelphia.
The song became popular in Poland as soon as late 1797 and quickly became an object of variations and modifications. A variant from 1798 introduced some stylistic changes, which have since become standard, such as replacing ' ("not dead") with ' ("not perished") or ' ("to Poland from the Italian land") with ' ("from the Italian land to Poland"). It also added four new stanzas, now forgotten, written from the viewpoint of Polish patriots waiting for General Dąbrowski to bring freedom and human rights to Poland.
The ultimate fate of the Polish Legions in Italy was different from that promised by Wybicki's song. Rather than coming back to Poland, they were exploited by the French government to quell uprisings in Italy, Germany and, later, in Haiti where they were decimated by war and disease. Polish national hopes were revived with the outbreak of a Franco-Prussian war (part of the War of the Fourth Coalition) in 1806. Napoleon called Dąbrowski and Wybicki to come back from Italy and help gather support for the French army in Polish-populated parts of Prussia. On 6 November 1806, both generals arrived in Poznań, enthusiastically greeted by locals singing "Poland Is Not Yet Lost". The ensuing Greater Poland Uprising and Napoleon's victory over Russian forces at Friedland led to the creation of a French-controlled Polish puppet state known as the Duchy of Warsaw.
"Poland Is Not Yet Lost" was one of the most popular patriotic songs in the duchy, stopping short of becoming that entity's national anthem. Among other occasions, it was sung in Warsaw on 16 June 1807 to celebrate the battle of Friedland, in Kraków as it was liberated by Prince Józef Poniatowski on 19 July 1809, and at a ball in Warsaw on 23 December 1809, the birthday of Frederick Augustus, King of Saxony and Duke of Warsaw. On the occasion of Dąbrowski's name day on 25 December 1810 in Poznań, Dąbrowski and Wybicki led the mazurka to the tune of "Poland Is Not Yet Lost". Although the melody of Wybicki's song remained unchanged and widely known, the lyrics kept changing. With the signing of a Franco-Russian alliance at Tilsit in 1807, the fourth stanza, specifically mentioning Russians as Poland's enemies, was removed. The last stanza, referring to Kościuszko, who had grown suspicious of Napoleon and refused to lend his support to the emperor's war in Poland, met the same fate.
The anthem is mentioned twice in "Pan Tadeusz", the Polish national epic written by Adam Mickiewicz in 1834, but set in the years 1811–1812. The author makes the first reference to the song when Tadeusz, the main protagonist, returns home and, recalling childhood memories, pulls the string of a chiming clock to hear the "old Dąbrowski's Mazurka" once again. Musical boxes and musical clocks playing the melody of "Poland Is Not Yet Lost" belonged to popular patriotic paraphernalia of that time. The song appears in the epic poem again when Jankiel, a Jewish dulcimerist and ardent Polish patriot, plays the mazurka in the presence of General Dąbrowski himself.
With Napoleon's defeat and the Congress of Vienna in 1815 came a century of foreign domination over Poland interspersed with occasional bursts of armed rebellion. "Poland Is Not Yet Lost" continued to be sung throughout that period, especially during national uprisings. During the November Uprising against Russia in 1830–1831, the song was chanted in the battlefields of Stoczek, Olszynka Grochowska and Iganie. In peacetime, Polish patriots performed it at homes, official functions and political demonstrations. New variants of the song, of various artistic value and length of life, abounded. At least 16 alternative versions were penned during the November Uprising alone. At times, Dąbrowski's name was replaced by other national heroes: from Józef Chłopicki during the November Uprising to Józef Piłsudski during the First World War to Władysław Sikorski during the Second World War. New lyrics were also written in regional dialects of Polish, from Silesia to Ermland and Masuria. A variant known as "Marsz Polonii" ("March Polonia") spread among Polish immigrants in the Americas.
Mass political emigration following the defeat of the November Uprising, known as the Great Emigration, brought "Poland Is Not Yet Lost" to Western Europe. It soon found favor from Britain to France to Germany where it was performed as a token of sympathy with the Polish cause. It was also highly esteemed in Central Europe where various, mostly Slavic, peoples struggling for their own independence, looked to the Polish anthem for inspiration. Back in Poland, however, especially in the parts under Russian and Prussian rule, it was becoming increasingly risky to sing the anthem in public. Polish patriotic songs were banned in Prussia in 1850; between 1873 and 1911, German courts passed 44 sentences for singing such songs, 20 of which were specifically for singing "Poland Is Not Yet Lost". In Russian Poland, public performance of the song often ended with a police intervention.
When Poland re-emerged as an independent state after World War I in 1918, it had to make a decision about its national symbols. While the coat of arms and the flag were officially adopted as soon as 1919, the question of a national anthem had to wait. Apart from "Poland Is Not Yet Lost", there were other popular patriotic songs which could compete for the status of an official national anthem.
In the Middle Ages, the role of a national anthem was played by hymns. Among them were "Bogurodzica" (), one of the oldest (11th–12th century) known literary texts in Polish, and the Latin "Gaude Mater Polonia" ("Rejoice, Mother Poland"), written in the 13th century to celebrate the canonization of Bishop Stanislaus of Szczepanów, the patron saint of Poland. Both were chanted on special occasions and on battlefields. The latter is sung nowadays at university ceremonies. During the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, several songs, both religious and secular, were written with the specific purpose of creating a new national anthem. Examples include the 16th-century Latin prayer "" ("Prayer for the Commonwealth and the King") by a Calvinist poet, Andrzej Trzeciński, and "" ("Hymn to the Love of the Fatherland") written in 1744 by Prince-Bishop Ignacy Krasicki. They failed, however, to win substantial favor with the populace. Another candidate was "" ("God is Born"), whose melody was originally a 16th-century coronation polonaise (dance) for Polish kings.
The official anthem of the Russian-controlled Congress Kingdom of Poland was "" ("National Song to the King's Well-being") written in 1816 by Alojzy Feliński and Jan Kaszewski. Initially unpopular, it evolved in the early 1860s into an important religious and patriotic hymn. The final verse, which originally begged "Save, Oh Lord, our King", was substituted with "Return us, Oh Lord, our free Fatherland" while the melody was replaced with that of a Marian hymn. The result, known today as "" ("God Save Poland"), has been sung in Polish churches ever since, with the final verse alternating between "Return..." and "Bless, Oh Lord, our free Fatherland", depending on Poland's political situation.
A national song that was particularly popular during the November Uprising was "Warszawianka", originally written in French as "" by Casimir Delavigne, with melody by Karol Kurpiński. The song praised Polish insurgents taking their ideals from the French July Revolution of 1830. A peasant rebellion against Polish nobles, which took place in western Galicia in 1846 and was encouraged by Austrian authorities who wished to thwart a new uprising attempt, moved Kornel Ujejski to write a mournful chorale entitled "" ("With the Smoke of Fires"). With the music composed by , it became one of the most popular national songs of the time, although it declined into obscurity during the 20th century. In 1908, Maria Konopnicka and Feliks Nowowiejski created "Rota" ("The Oath"), a song protesting against the oppression of the Polish population of the German Empire, who were subject to eviction from their land and forced assimilation. First publicly performed in 1910, during a quincentennial celebration of the Polish–Lithuanian victory over the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald, it too became one of the most treasured national Polish songs.
At the inauguration of the UN in 1945, no delegation from Poland had been invited. The Polish pianist Artur Rubinstein, who was to perform the opening concert at the inauguration, began the concert by stating his deep disappointment that the conference did not have a delegation from Poland. Rubinstein later described becoming overwhelmed by a blind fury and angrily pointing out to the public the absence of the Polish flag. He then sat down to the piano and played "Poland Is Not Yet Lost" loudly and slowly, repeating the final part in a great thunderous "forte". When he had finished, the public rose to their feet and gave him a great ovation.
Over 60 years later, on 2005-09-22, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, President of Poland, said:
During the European Revolutions of 1848, "Poland Is Not Yet Lost" won favor throughout Europe as a revolutionary anthem. This led the Slovak poet Samo Tomášik to write the ethnic anthem, "Hej, Sloveni", based on the melody of the Polish national anthem. It was later adopted by the First Congress of the Pan-Slavic Movement in Prague as the Pan-Slavic Anthem. During the Second World War, a translation of this anthem became the national anthem of Yugoslavia, and later, Serbia and Montenegro. The similarity of the anthems sometimes caused confusion during these countries' football or volleyball matches. However, after the 2006 split between the two, neither Serbia nor Montenegro kept the song as its national anthem, instead choosing "Bože pravde" and "Oj, svijetla majska zoro" respectively. The Polish national anthem is also notable for influencing the lyrics of the Ukrainian anthem, "Shche ne vmerla Ukrayina" ("Ukraine's glory has not yet perished").
The line "Poland is not lost yet" has become proverbial in some languages. For example, in German, "noch ist Polen nicht verloren" is a common saying meaning "all is not lost". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19495 |
Mahjong
Mahjong (English pronunciation: , Mandarin Chinese: ) is a tile-based game that was developed in China during the Qing dynasty and has spread throughout the world since the early 20th century. It is commonly played by four players (with some three-player variations found in Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia). The game and its regional variants are widely played throughout Eastern and South Eastern Asia and have also become popular in Western countries. The game has also been adapted into a widespread online entertainment. Similar to the Western card game rummy, Mahjong is a game of skill, strategy, and calculation, and it involves a degree of chance.
The game is played with a set of 144 tiles based on Chinese characters and symbols, although some regional variations may omit some tiles or add unique ones. In most variations, each player begins by receiving 13 tiles. In turn players draw and discard tiles until they complete a legal hand using the 14th drawn tile to form four melds (or sets) and a pair (eye). A player can also win with a small class of special hands. There are fairly standard rules about how a piece is drawn, how a piece is robbed from another player, the use of simples (numbered tiles) and Honors (winds and dragons), the kinds of melds allowed, how to deal the tiles and the order of play. Despite these similarities, there are many regional variations to the rules including rather different scoring systems, criteria for legal winning hands, and even private table rules which distinguish some variations as notably different styles of mahjong.
In Chinese, the game was originally called ()meaning sparrowwhich is still used in some southern dialects. It is said that the clacking of tiles during shuffling resembles the chattering of sparrows. It has also been suggested that the name came from an evolution of an earlier card game called Madiao which mahjong tiles were adapted from. Most Mandarin-speaking Chinese now call the game ("májiàng"). Its name is similar in other languages, except in Thai, where it is called ไพ่นกกระจอก ("phai nok krachok"), a calque meaning "sparrow cards."
There are many highly varied versions of mahjong both in rules and tiles used. "Old Hong Kong Mahjong" uses the same basic features and rules as the majority of the different variations of the game. This form of Mahjong uses all of the tiles of the most commonly available sets, includes no exotic complex rules, and has a relatively small set of scoring sets/hands with a simple scoring system. For these reasons Hong Kong mahjong is a suitable variation for the introduction of game rules and play and is the focus of this article.
Old Hong Kong Mahjong is played with a standard set of 144 Mahjong tiles (though cards may be used). Sets often include counters (to keep score), dice (to decide how to deal), and a marker to show who the dealer is and which round is being played. Some sets include racks to hold the tiles, especially if they are larger or smaller than standard tiles or have an odd shape. Mahjong sets originating from the United States, Japan or Southeast Asia will likely have extra tiles or specialized markings.
The tiles are split into three categories: simples, honors, and bonus tiles.
There are 3 suits of simples and in each suit the tiles are numbered from 1 to 9. The suits are bamboos, dots, and characters. There are 4 identical copies of each simples tile totaling 108 simples tiles.
The bamboo suit is also known as "sticks" or "bams" suit; the first tile usually has a bird (traditionally, a peacock or sparrow) instead of a single bamboo. The dots suit is also known as the "wheels", "circles", "balls", "stones", '"marbles" or "coins" suit. The characters suit is also known as the "cracks" or "numbers" suit since the top characters are numbers in the Chinese orthography, and the bottom characters (in traditional Chinese characters) are the Chinese orthography of "ten thousand".
There are two different sets of Honors tiles: Winds and Dragons. The Winds are East, South, West, and North. In Mahjong, East (not North) is the beginning. The Dragons are Red, Green, and White. The white dragon has a blue or black frame on the face of the piece or in some sets is entirely blank and are typically known as 白板 (báibăn) "whiteboard". These tiles have no numerical sequence like the simples (for example the bamboo pieces number 1 to 9). Like the simples, there are four identical copies of each Honors tile, for a total of 28 Honors tiles.
There are two sets of Bonus tiles: Flowers and Seasons. The flower and season tiles play a unique role in the mechanics of the game. When drawn, the Bonus tile is not added into a player's hand but are instead set aside and kept near the player's other tiles for scoring purposes should they win the hand, and an extra tile is drawn in replacement of the Bonus tile.
In addition, unlike the Simple and Honors tiles, there is only a single tile of each Bonus tile, so there are a total of four flower and four season tiles in the set. The tiles have a different artistic rendering of a specific type of flower or season.
It is not necessary to know the names or the Chinese characters of each bonus tile, only the number, as this is associated with a specific direction, and the player receives bonus points when the Bonus tile matches the seat direction. There is no relation between the bonus tile "bamboo" flower and the bamboo suit of simple tiles (ex. 2 bamboo). In traditional Chinese culture, the Four Gentlemen are the plum (winter), orchid (spring), bamboo (summer), and chrysanthemum (autumn) which are regarded as the representative plants of those seasons, but people regard it as plum blossom (spring), orchid (summer), chrysanthemum (autumn) and bamboo (winter) now.
The dealer is chosen by various means. For example, each player throws dice with the highest count taking the dealer position, second-highest taking south etc. Or one player may place one tile of each wind face down and shuffle them. Each player randomly select one of these tiles and these tiles dictate their wind position. Each player sits down at their respective position (called the wind position) at the table in positions of an inverted compass: East is dealer, the right of the dealer is South, across is West, and the left is North. The order of play is traditionally counter-clockwise.
A match consists of four rounds, each representing a "prevailing wind," starting with East. Once the first round is completed, a second round begins with South as the prevailing wind, and so on. Wind position is significant in that it affects the scoring of the game. A Mahjong set with Winds in play will usually include a separate prevailing wind marker (typically a die marked with the Wind characters in a holder).
In each round at least four hands are played, with each player taking the position of dealer. In the first hand of each round, Player 1 (winner of the dice toss) is East and therefore dealer. In the second hand, Player 2 takes the East position, shifting the seat winds amongst the players counterclockwise (though players do not physically move their chairs). This continues until all four players have been East (dealer). A marker is used to mark which player is East and often the round number. (In sets with racks, a rack may be marked differently to denote the dealer.)
Whenever a player in the East position (dealer) wins a hand, or if there is no winner (a draw or "goulash hand"), an extra hand is played with the same seating positions and prevailing wind as in the previous hand. This means that a match may potentially have no limit to the number of hands played (though some players will set a limit of three consecutive hands allowed with the same seat positions and prevailing wind).
Example of games:
All tiles are placed face down on the table and are shuffled. By convention all players should participate in shuffling using both hands moving the pieces around the table rigorously and loudly for a lengthy period. Tiles may get flipped up during this process and players should flip them facing down as soon as possible to avoid identifying the location of the revealed tiles.
Each player then stacks a row of 18 tiles, two tiles high in front of them (for a total of 36 tiles). Players then push each side of their stack together to form a square wall.
Regular players usually place their stacks in a slightly diagonal position (about 20 to 30 degrees anti-clockwise); the right end of their stack is pushed slightly further in to the centre of the table to meet almost the middle of the stack of the player on the right. This creates a smaller square wall the length of about half of each stack, with walls extended away from each corner of the square. The diagonally positioned stacks and a smaller square creates a bigger space for players' tiles and also makes an ergonomic position for drawing tiles from the stack.
The dealer throws three dice in the square wall and sums up the total. Counting anti-clockwise so that the dealer is 1 (or 5, 9, 13, 17), so that south (player to the right) is 2 (or 6, 10, 14, 18), etc., a player's quarter of the wall is chosen. Some house rules may use only two dice but have double throws to increase randomness. In the case of double throws, the player of the chosen wall makes the second throw.
Using the same total on the dice (or the total of the two throws), the player whose wall is chosen then counts the stacks of tiles from right to left. (For double throws, the count may extend to the left side player's stack.) This determines the location where the 'deck' of tiles is cut. Starting from the left of the stacks counted, the dealer draws four tiles for himself, and players in anti-clockwise order draw blocks of four tiles until all players have 12 tiles, so that the stacks decrease clockwise. Each player then draws one last tile to make a 13-tile hand.
Dealing does not have to be strictly this way and may be done quite differently based on house rules. Tiles may flip over when being dealt and players should agree in advance on how to deal with the problem. Solutions include having the dealer penalised points, shuffling the turned over piece back into the wall somehow, allowing the player who the tiles were dealt to take the piece or not (meaning the dealer must take it as his/her 14th piece) or other house rules.
Each player now sets aside any Flowers or Seasons they may have drawn and takes turns to draw replacement piece(s) from the wall in the anti-clockwise direction. If a player gets any Flowers or Seasons tiles in the replacement draw, the players must wait for the next turn to draw replacement tiles.
The dealer draws a piece from the wall in clockwise direction, adding it to their hand. Typically, this draw is performed during the initial deal to speed up play. If this does not complete a legal hand, the dealer then discards a piece (throwing it into the middle of the wall with no particular order in mind).
Each player in turn, in counterclockwise direction, draws a tile from the wall; as long as the tile drawn is not one of the Bonus tiles, the player proceeds to discard a tile (either the tile just drawn, or a tile in the hand) to maintain a hand of 13. The discarded tile is thrown into the centre and, if desired, the player announces out loud what the piece is. The other players have an opportunity to seize the discarded tile; if no one takes it, the turn continues to the next player. Play continues this way until one player has a legal winning hand and calls out "Mahjong" while revealing their hand.
There are four different ways that regular order of play can be interrupted:
During play, each player's hand should always be 13 tiles (meaning in each turn a tile must be picked up and another discarded). The count of 13 tiles do not include any Bonus tiles (Flowers and Seasons), which are set to the side, nor does it include the fourth added piece of a Kong. If a player is seen to have fewer or more than 13 tiles in their hand outside of their turn they are penalised.
A winning hand consists of 14 tiles. Since players always have 13 tiles in their hand during play, they must win by either drawing a piece from the wall that completes a 14-tile hand ("winning from the wall") or claiming a discard from another player which completes a 14-tile hand ("winning by discard"). The winning hand is made of four "melds" (a specific pattern of three pieces) and the "eyes" (a pair of identical pieces). The exceptions to this rule are the special hands listed below.
Most players play with a table minimum, meaning a winning hand must score a minimum number of points (which can be seen in the scoring section). In Hong Kong Mahjong the most common point set is three but can be higher or lower depending on house rules.
Melds are groups of tiles within the player's hand, consisting of either a "Pong" (three identical tiles), a "Kong" (four identical tiles), a "Chow" (three Simple tiles all of the same suit, in numerical sequence), or "Eyes" (two identical tiles needed in a winning hand). Melds may be formed by drawing a tile from the wall, or by seizing another player's discard. There are rules governing which player has priority for a discard, and whether the meld should be exposed (displayed to all players) or remain concealed, depending on the manner in which the meld is formed.
You may form a Pong with any Simple or Honors tile. Bonus tiles (Flowers or Seasons) cannot be used to form a Pong because they are set aside and there are not three identical bonus tiles in the set. The tiles must be identical (you cannot mix suits). A Pong may either be concealed (formed by drawing tiles) or exposed (formed by seizing another player's discard).
Consider a Kong the same as a Pong with an additional tile to make a complete set of four. There are three ways to form a Kong.
Whenever a Kong is formed, that player must draw an extra tile from the end of the wall and then discard a tile. The fourth piece of a Kong is not considered as one of the 13 tiles a player must always have in their hand. A Kong may not be formed from Bonus tiles (Flowers/Seasons), since the set does not include four identical tiles. Kongs are worth collecting to score more points and deprive opponents of the opportunity to obtain specific tiles.
The meld must be in absolute numerical sequence and all in the same suit. Players cannot skip numbers or meld from the 8 or 9 to 1 or 2. Honors tiles cannot be used to make Chows because they have no numerical value, and Bonus tiles (Flowers and Seasons) also cannot be used to make a Chow.
A player can steal a discard to form a Chow only from the player whose turn was immediately before theirs; however, a player forming a Chow from a seized piece has the lowest priority for that tile. Any other player who needs that tile to make a Pong, make a Kong, or to win may seize that piece instead. Like the Pong, the Chow is either concealed (formed by drawing tiles) or exposed (formed by seizing the prior player's discard).
For example:
The regular anti-clockwise order of turns may be interrupted for four events:
Whenever a player draws a flower or season, it is announced and then placed to the side (it is not considered a part of the 13-tile hand, but in the event that player wins, he may earn bonus points for them) and the last tile of the wall is drawn as a replacement tile so that the player has the 14 pieces needed before their discard. This may happen successively in a player's turn.
When a player discards a tile, other players may steal the tile to complete a meld. Stealing tiles has both advantages (quickly forming a winning hand and scoring extra points) and disadvantages (being forced to reveal part of one's hand to other players and not being able to change the meld once declared).
When a meld ("Pong", "Kong," or "Chow") is declared through a discard, the player must state the type of meld to be declared and expose the meld by placing the three (or four) tiles face up. The player must then discard a tile, and play continues to the right. If the player who melds a discard is not directly after the discarder (in order of play), one or two players will essentially miss their turn as play continues anti-clockwise from the player who declared the meld.
If multiple players call for a discarded tile, priority for the discard depends on the declared action of the player stealing the discard.
The act of winning a hand interrupts play to assess the validity of the hand won. Upon confirmation, the player is awarded the hand's value per the specific game's rule.
If at any point in the game a player can use another player's discard to complete a legal hand (and with the agreed minimum points), they declare a win and reveal their winning hand. This ends the hand, and scoring commences. If more than one player can use a discard to win the hand, multiple ways can handle the situation based on agreed table rules: Either the players count the points they would win with the discard and the winner is the one with the higher score, the winner is simply the player closest to the discarder in order of turn, or multiple players may be granted the win simultaneously.
Alternatively, a player may also win by drawing a tile that completes a legal hand. This is called "winning from the wall". In Hong Kong mahjong, winning from the wall doubles the number of base points each loser must pay.
Technically, the declaration for winning a hand may be done at anytime. However, the player must have a complete and legal hand. Otherwise, the win declaration is penalized. The penalty depends on table rules. The player may forfeit points to the other players. Another potential penalty is the player who called out the false mahjong must play the rest of the hand with their tiles face up on the table so other players can see them (open hand). Some methods apply the penalty at the end of the entire game. Again, the table rules dictate the enforcement of the penalty.
A rarely occurring and high-scoring feature of Hong Kong Mahjong is a move called robbing the Kong. If a player declares a Kong (either by melding it or adding a fourth piece to a Pong to form a Kong or declaring a concealed Kong) but another player can use that piece to complete a hand, the completing player takes priority to go Mahjong (win the hand) and may steal that piece from the player who intended to declare the Kong.
Below are two examples of winning hands. A winning hand must consist of four melds (Pongs, Kongs, or Chows) and a pair (eyes) and must also score the agreed table minimum.
"Hand formed with four Pongs and the eyes (pair) of East wind. Only bamboo is used (no other simples), scoring extra points (clean hand). No chows are used (an all Pong/Kong hand scores extra points)."
"A high-scoring hand formed using only circles, known as a pure hand. Hand is made of Chows, Pongs and the eyes of circles."
Most players include table variations in their games, of which some non-standard are included. The hands of "seven different pairs" and "13 orphans" are examples which do not have four melds and the eyes. They are described in more detail below.
If the dealer wins the hand, he will remain the dealer and an extra hand is played in addition to the minimum 16 hands in a match.
An extra hand is also played if there is no winner by the time all the tiles in the wall have been drawn. When there is no winner it is known as a "goulash hand". Depending on table rules, the winner of the next game may take an agreed number of points from each player, carrying over the points from the non-winning hand to the winning one. If there are two or three goulash hands in a row then the winner would collect a considerable number of points from each player on top of their scoring hand. Because extra hands may be played every time a dealer wins or if there is a goulash hand, a match of 16 hands can easily become a match of 20 or even much more.
As table rules add a large amount of flexibility for players, they can choose to disregard the rule of extra hands and pass on the dealership regardless of who wins or if it results in a goulash hand. This puts a maximum estimated limit on the game duration and provides some amount of predictability.
Players may agree on table rules if the pace of the game is brisk or leisurely. For brisk games players may agree that a couple seconds after a discard are allowed for a "window of opportunity" before the next player picks up from the wall. Usually it is agreed once the next player has waited the duration of the "window of opportunity" and draws a tile from the wall, the previous discard is lost and cannot be claimed.
Old Hong Kong scoring is relatively simple. There is only one winner (or if there is a draw the hand is replayed). The winner must have a legal hand that meets the minimum faan points agreed to in advance (not including any bonus points). Only the winner scores, the other players pay the winner various sums. After each hand ends, the winner counts all of his or her faan points.
A concealed meld is one that contains no tiles stolen from another players discard. A concealed hand is one made up of only concealed melds. Many variations distinguish between a concealed hand (winning from the wall) and a semi concealed hand (the last tile is a stolen discard). In most mahjong variations having a concealed hand can be valuable in scoring. Hong Kong mahjong doesn't award concealed melds/hands as generously as others. Concealed hands only the case with a few limit hands or half-limit hands (thirteen orphans, heavenly gates, four concealed pongs) as well as a complete hand (seven pairs) and over several melds (three concealed pongs).
A winning hand must include an agreed minimum amount of faan value (often 3). Some examples of scoring include:
A player only scores a bonus faan for Flowers or Seasons if it is their own flower or season (East=1, South=2, West=3 and North=4) or if the player has all four Flowers or all four Seasons (scoring 5 faan in total).
The losers pay the winning player points based on several criteria and depending on whether the game is for fun or for money. How points are reckoned is agreed by players beforehand. For example, they can keep a tally, exchange chips or pay one another with money. The faan value of a hand is converted into base points which are then used to calculate the points the losers pay the winner. The table is progressive, doubling the number of base points when reaching a certain faan point target. The following is the Old Hong Kong simplified table, for other tables see Hong Kong Mahjong scoring rules.
This table is based on play where 3 faan is the minimum needed in order to win with a legal hand. If a player has 3 faan then his hand is worth one base point. A winning hand with 9 faan is worth four base points. Losing players must give the winning player the value of these base points. The following special cases result in doubled base points:
If two of these criteria apply to any player, he must double and then redouble the points owed to the winner.
Hong Kong Mahjong is essentially a payment system of doubling and redoubling where winning from the wall adds great value to the final payment and where the dealer is highly rewarded or penalised if they win or lose.
In Hong Kong Mahjong there are a series of "limit hands". These are exceptional hands, difficult to obtain and are very valuable in point scoring. As many table rules put a limit on the number of points a winners hand can score, full limit hands score that maximum. Table rules dictate if these rare and special hands are allowed, which ones, and the limit for scoring. A common scoring limit is 64 points, which is the highest base points doubled twice. A winner receives the scoring limit from each player without any doubling.
Some limit hands by necessity must be completely concealed (not discards used) or semi-concealed (the only discard used is the one needed to go mahjong). This includes the 13 orphans, 4 concealed pongs, heavenly hand and earthly hand. It is usually expected that the heavenly gates hand be concealed or semi-concealed. As for the dragon limit hands and the great winds, table rules dictate if the hand must be concealed or not. Some table rules claim that a semi-concealed hand (winning from a discard) scores a half-limit.
Some groups also play with the "great Flowers" rule. If a player picks up all four Flowers and all four Seasons during their hand, they instantly win the hand and receive the maximum points from all of the players. This is exceptionally rare.
In all the hands that require pongs, each pong can be replaced by the corresponding kong.
Variations may have far more complicated scoring systems, add or remove tiles, and include far more scoring elements and limit hands.
In many places, players often observe one version and are either unaware of other variations or claim that different versions are incorrect. In mainland China alone, there are over thirty variants. Many variations today differ only by scoring:
Three-player Mahjong (or 3-"ka") is a simplified three-person Mahjong that involves hands of 13 tiles (with a total of 84 tiles on the table) and may use jokers depending on the variation. Any rule set can be adapted for three players; however, this is far more common and accepted in Japan, Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines. It usually eliminates one suit entirely, or tiles 2–8 in one suit leaving only the terminals. It needs fewer people to start a game and the turnaround time of a game is short—hence, it is considered a fast game. In some versions there is a jackpot for winning in which whoever accumulates a point of 10 is considered to hit the jackpot or whoever scores three hidden hands first. The Malaysian and Korean versions drop one wind and may include a seat dragon.
Mahjong tables are square and small enough to be within arm's length of all equipment. The edges are raised to prevent tiles from sliding off and the surface is covered in felt to limit wear on the tiles. Automatic dealing tables, often used for high stakes playing and tournaments, are able to shuffle tiles, build walls, and randomize dice. It is an elaborate device built into a table which uses two alternating sets of tiles. It prepares one wall while the players play one hand. After the hand is finished the tiles are dropped into the table and a new wall raises upwards. In theory the table should avoid cheating (by stacking the deck and or using loaded dice).
The following chart shows the most generic set of tiles
There are variations that feature specific use of tiles. Some three-player versions remove the North Wind and one Chinese provincial version has no Honors. Korean Mahjong removes the bamboo suit or at least its numbers 2–8 so that terminals can be used. Japanese Mahjong rarely uses Flowers or Seasons. The Seasons are removed in Korean Mahjong, while many Southeast Asian sets have more flower series.
Some mahjong variants accept wildcard tiles. The wildcard tiles are decided at the beginning of the game by choosing one random tile. The wild card could be the immediately following tile on the wall, after distributing tiles to all players, or it could also be separately decided by a dice throw. Wildcard tiles can't be discarded and can only replace tiles in Chows. Wildcard tiles cannot replace tiles in Pongs and Kongs. For example, if a character 4 is chosen, then character 4 and the next sequential tile, character 5, can be used as wild cards in this round. (When the wildcard indicator is chosen and exposed, only 3 tiles remain of the same denomination, so the next tile in the suit will also be used as a wildcard, adding to 7 wildcard tiles for 4 players.) Also, if a tile numbered 9 is the indicator, the suits circle back to 1, after 9. Thus, the number 9 and 1 are wild cards.
Also, if the chosen tile is not in the suited tiles, the wild cards are decided in rules:
The bonus tiles are not available for wild cards.
A feature of several variations of Mahjong, most notably in American mahjong, is the notion of some number of Joker tiles. They may be used as a wild card: a substitute for any tile in a hand, or, in some variations, only tiles in melds. Another variation is that the Joker tile may "not" be used for melding. Depending on the variation, a player may replace a Joker tile that is part of an exposed meld belonging to any player with the tile it represents.
Rules governing discarding Joker tiles also exist; some variations permit the Joker tile to take on the identity of any tile, and others only permit the Joker tile to take on the identity of the previously discarded tile (or the absence of a tile, if it is the first discard).
Joker tiles may or may not affect scoring, depending on the variation. Some special hands may require the use of Joker tiles (for example, to represent a "fifth tile" of a certain suited or honor tile).
In American Mahjong, it is illegal to pass Jokers during the Charleston.
Japanese rule sets discourage the use of Flowers and Seasons. Korean rules and three-player Mahjong in the Korean/Japanese tradition use only Flowers. In Singapore and Malaysia an extra set of bonus tiles of four animals are used. The rule set includes a unique function in that players who get two specific animals get a one-time immediate payout from all players. In Taiwanese Mahjong, getting all eight Flowers and Seasons constitutes an automatic win of the hand and specific payout from all players.
Four of the flower tiles represent the four noble plants of Confucian reckoning:
The other 4 flower tiles (or season tiles) represent Seasons:
These animal tiles are used in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and local variations. They represent the cat, mouse, rooster and centipede. Like flower tiles, they also function as bonus tiles. However, as they have no corresponding seat position, any player who draws one of these gets a bonus point.
All tiles are placed face down and shuffled. Each player then stacks a row of tiles two tiles high in front of him, the length of the row depending on the number of tiles in use:
Depending on the variation, two or three dice are usually used to decide what part of the wall to start dealing from. They are six-sided dice, traditionally but not necessarily Chinese dice with red one and four pips.
The dealer marker is a round or square object that the dealer places to the side to remind players who the dealer is. The wind marker may be used which indicates the current prevailing wind. In some cases the dealer marker and the wind marker are represented by one large marker, usually a small wheel where one can swivel the outer circle to indicate the prevailing wind (which the dealer holds onto), a cube with the four winds placed onto four of the sides which can be placed in a hollow square (the dealer holds onto it), or a cylinder locked into frame which can be rolled to expose the wind on the top. Japanese mahjong, especially in a gambling environment, may optionally use four yakitori markers to indicate which players have not won a hand yet and has to pay a penalty.
There are a variety of counting pieces used in different countries. They range from Chinese or Japanese counting sticks (thin sticks with various dots on them to represent various points), jetons, play money, paper and pencil, or various apps on touchscreen devices used to calculate and keep scores.
Japanese and Korean Mahjong have some special rules. A player cannot win by a discard if that player had already discarded that piece, where players' discards are kept in neat rows in front of them. Players may declare ready, meaning that they need one tile to win, cannot change their hand and win extra points if they win. Some rules may replace some of the number 5 tiles with red tiles, as they can earn more points. Korean Mahjong does not allow melded (stolen) chows.
Taiwanese Mahjong adds three tiles to a hand requiring a 5th set to be formed, making a clean hand or all Pong hand very difficult to procure.
American Mahjong has distinctive game mechanics and the article on American Mahjong details these. Some differences include many special patterns, a different scoring system and the use of jokers and five-of-a-kind.
In the American variations it is required that, before each hand begins, a Charleston be enacted. In the first exchange, three tiles are passed to the player on one's right; in the next exchange, the tiles are passed to the player opposite, followed by three tiles passed to the left. If all players are in agreement, a second Charleston is performed; however, any player may decide to stop passing after the first Charleston is complete. The Charleston is followed by an optional pass to the player across of one, two, or three tiles. The Charleston, a distinctive feature of American Mahjong, may have been borrowed from card games such as Hearts.
Many variations have specific hands, some of which are common while some are optional depending on regions and players. One example is the Pure Green hand made of chows or Pongs using 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 of bamboo and green dragon.
When a hand is one tile short of winning (for example: , waiting for: , , or , as can be the eyes), the hand is said to be a ready hand, or more figuratively, "on the pot". The player holding a ready hand is said to be "waiting" for certain tiles. It is common to be waiting for two or three tiles, and some variations award points for a hand that is waiting for one tile. In 13-tile Mahjong, the largest number of tiles for which a player can wait is 13 (the "thirteen wonders", or "13 orphans", a nonstandard special hand). Ready hands must be declared in some variations of Mahjong, while other variations prohibit the same.
Some variations of Mahjong, most notably Japanese and Korean ones, allow a player to declare . A declaration of "rīchi" is a promise that any tile drawn by the player is immediately discarded unless it constitutes a win. Standard requirements for "rīchi" are that the hand be "closed" or have no melds declared (other than a concealed Kong) and that players already have points for declaration of "rīchi". A player who declares "rīchi" and wins usually receives a point bonus for their hand directly, and a player who won with "rīchi" also has the advantage to open the inner which leads to higher possibilities to match such a card, thus has more chance to grant additional bonus. However, a player who declares "rīchi" and loses is usually penalised in some fashion. Declaring a nonexistent "rīchi" is also penalised in some way.
In some variations, a situation in which all four players declare a "rīchi" is an automatic drawn game, as it reduces the game down to pure luck, i.e., who gets their needed tile first.
If only the dead wall remains (or if no dead wall exists and the wall is depleted) and no one has won, the hand is drawn (流局 "liú jú", 黃莊 "huáng zhuāng", Japanese 流局 "ryūkyoku"), or "goulashed". A new hand begins, and depending on the variant, the Game Wind may change. For example, in most playing circles in Singapore, if there is at least one Kong when the hand is a draw, the following player of the dealer becomes the next dealer; otherwise, the dealer remains dealer.
Japanese Mahjong has a special rule called , which is, if three players claim the same discard in order to win, the hand is drawn. One reason for this is that there are cases in which bars of 1,000 points for declaring "rīchi" cannot be divided by three. The rule is treated the same as "abortive draws".
In Japanese Mahjong, rules allow abortive draws to be declared while tiles are still available. They can be declared under the following conditions:
Scoring in Mahjong involves points, with a monetary value for points agreed upon by players. Although in many variations scoreless hands are possible, many require that hands be of some point value in order to win the hand.
While the basic rules are more or less the same throughout Mahjong, the greatest divergence between variations lies in the scoring systems. Like the rules, there is a generalized system of scoring, based on the method of winning and the winning hand, from which Chinese and Japanese base their roots. American Mahjong generally has greatly divergent scoring rules, as well as greatly divergent general rules.
Because of the large differences between the various systems of scoring (especially for Chinese variants), groups of players will often agree on particular scoring rules before a game.
Points (terminology of which differs from variation to variation) are obtained by matching the winning hand with different criteria scoring different values. The points obtained may be modified into scores for each player using some (typically exponential) functions. Some criteria may be also in terms of both points and score.
In many variations the dealer receives no scoring bonus and does not maintain his turn by winning or a dead hand.
In classical Mahjong all players score points. Points are given for sets and hand composition and winning bonuses, doubled and redoubled for basic patterns. Sometimes a loser may score more points than a winner. Japanese Mahjong has a complex scoring system with several stages of scoring, rules and exceptions, evening out scores and bonus points at the end of a match. Korean Mahjong has a simple scoring system where only winner scores without any form of doubling.
Some variations give points for concealed hands, in which case no melds are made except by winning on a discard.
In Old Hong Kong Mahjong:
A single player game employs the tiles of mahjong, usually played on computers or devices. Gameplay is entirely unrelated to mahjong or its variations and is a recent invention. A two-player version was published by Nintendo. The game involves stacking tiles face up in various elaborate patterns and removing uncovered matching tiles at the end of rows.
In 1998, in the interest of dissociating illegal gambling from Mahjong, the China State Sports Commission published a new set of rules, now generally referred to as Chinese Official rules or International Tournament rules (see Guobiao Majiang). The principles of the new, wholesome Mahjong are no gambling, no drinking, and no smoking. In international tournaments, players are often grouped in teams to emphasize that Mahjong from now on is considered a sport.
The new rules are highly pattern-based. The rulebook contains 81 combinations, based on patterns and scoring elements popular in classic and modern regional Chinese variants; some table practices of Japan have also been adopted. Points for flower tiles (each flower is worth one point) may not be added until the player has scored eight points. The winner of a game receives the score from the player who discards the winning tile, plus eight basic points from each player; in the case of "zimo" (self-drawn win), he receives the value of this round plus eight points from all players.
The new rules were first used in an international tournament in Tokyo, where, in 2002, the first global tournament in Mahjong was organized by the Mahjong Museum, the Japan Mahjong Organizing Committee, and the city council of Ningbo, China. One hundred players participated, mainly from Japan and China, but also from Europe and the United States. Mai Hatsune, from Japan, became the first world champion. The following year saw the first annual China Mahjong Championship, held in Hainan; the next two annual tournaments were held in Hong Kong and Beijing. Most players were Chinese; players from other nations attended as well.
In 2005, the first Open European Mahjong Championship was held in the Netherlands, with 108 players. The competition was won by Masato Chiba from Japan. The second European championship in Copenhagen(2007) was attended by 136 players and won by Danish player Martin Wedel Jacobsen. The first Online European Mahjong Championship was held on the Mahjong Time server in 2007, with 64 players, and the winner was Juliani Leo, from the U.S., and the Best European Player was Gerda van Oorschot, from the Netherlands. The Third Open European Mahjong Championship 2009 at Baden/Vienna, Austria, was won by Japanese player Koji Idota, while runner-up Bo Lang from Switzerland became European Champion. There were 152 participants.
In 2006, the World Mahjong Organization (WMO) was founded in Beijing, China, with the cooperation of, amongst others, the Japan Mahjong Organizing Committee (JMOC) and the European Mahjong Association (EMA). This organization held its first World Mahjong Championship in November 2007 in the Chinese town of Chengdu, attended by 144 participants from all over the world. It was won by Li Li, a Chinese student at Tsinghua University. The next World Championship took place in Utrecht, the Netherlands, 27 to 29 August 2010.
Other major international tournaments include the Mahjong International League's World Mahjong Sports Games and the privately sponsored World Series Of Mahjong.
American mahjong tournaments are held in virtually every state—the largest is in Las Vegas, Nevada twice a year, and in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by Mah Jongg Madness; and the annual cruise hosted by the National Mah Jongg League and Mah Jongg Madness (MJM). MJM tournaments host between 150 and 500 participants at these larger events; and there are several smaller scale, but equally successful tournaments held annually by other hosts. Prize pools are based on the number participating. Rules are based on the National Mah Jongg League standard rules.
Mahjong is based on draw-and-discard card games that were popular in 18th and 19th century China, some of which are still popular today. They were played with a stripped deck of money-suited cards. Each deck is divided into three suits of Cash or coins, Strings of cash, and Myriads of strings. There are nine ranks in each suit. In addition, there are three wild cards: Red flower, White flower, and Old thousand. Depending on the game, there are multiple copies of each card.
Games scholar David Parlett has written that the Western card games Conquian and Rummy share a common origin with Mahjong. All these games involve players drawing and discarding tiles or cards to make melds. Khanhoo is an early example of such a game. The most likely ancestor to Mahjong was "pènghú" () which was played with 120 or 150 cards. During the late 19th century, "pènghú" was used interchangeably with "máquè" in both card and tile form.
It is not known when the conversion from cards to tiles took place precisely but it most likely occurred in the middle of the 19th century. The earliest surviving tile sets date to around 1870 and were acquired in Fuzhou, Shanghai, and Ningbo. These sets differ from modern ones in several ways. In the Glover sets, there were no "flower" and "fā" ("green dragon") tiles. In their place were "king" tiles for heaven, earth, man, and harmony and also for each of the 4 "winds" which may have acted as bonus tiles. In the contemporaneous Himly set, there were no "zhōng" ("red dragon") tiles either. Instead there were the wild cards known as Cash Flower, String Flower, and Myriad Flower plus an additional tile, the king of everything. These early jokers are still found in the Vietnamese and Thai sets. They may have been removed as the tiles share the same titles as the leaders of the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864). For example, Hong Xiuquan was the self-styled "Heavenly King of Great Peace" and his top subordinates were called east king, south king, west king, and north king.
The ban on gambling after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 led to a decline in playing. The game itself was banned during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Today, it is a favorite pastime in China and other Chinese-speaking communities.
In 1895, British sinologist William Henry Wilkinson wrote a paper which mentioned a set of cards known in central China by the name of "ma chioh", literally, hemp sparrow, which he maintained was the origin of the term Mahjong. He did not explain the dialect of the originator or region specific etymology of this information. By 1910, there were written accounts in many languages, including French and Japanese.
The game was imported to the United States in the 1920s. The first Mahjong sets sold in the U.S. were sold by Abercrombie & Fitch starting in 1920. It became a success in Washington, D.C., and the co-owner of the company, Ezra Fitch, sent emissaries to Chinese villages to buy every Mahjong set they could find. Abercrombie & Fitch sold a total of 12,000 Mahjong sets.
Also in 1920, Joseph Park Babcock published his book "Rules of Mah-Jongg", also known as the "red book". This was the earliest version of Mahjong known in America. Babcock had learned Mahjong while living in China. His rules simplified the game to make it easier for Americans to take up, and his version was common through the Mahjong fad of the 1920s. Later, when the 1920s fad died out, many of Babcock's simplifications were abandoned.
The game has taken on a number of trademarked names, such as "Pung Chow" and the "Game of Thousand Intelligences". Mahjong nights in America often involved dressing and decorating rooms in Chinese style. Several hit songs were recorded during the Mahjong fad, most notably "Since Ma Is Playing Mah Jong" by Eddie Cantor.
Many variants of Mahjong developed during this period. By the 1930s, many revisions of the rules developed that were substantially different from Babcock's classical version (including some that were considered fundamentals in other variants, such as the notion of a standard hand). The most common form, which eventually became "American Mahjong", was most popular among Jewish women. Standardization came with the formation of the National Mah Jongg League (NMJL) in 1937, along with the first American Mahjong rulebook, "Maajh: The American Version of the Ancient Chinese Game", written by NMJL's first president and co-founder, Viola L. Cecil.
Many consider the modern American version a Jewish remake, as many American Mahjong players are of Jewish descent. The NMJL was founded by Jewish players and is considered a Jewish organization. In 1986, the National Mah Jongg League conducted their first Mah Jongg Cruise Tournament, in conjunction with Mah Jongg Madness. In 2010, this large scale seagoing event hosted its 25th Silver Anniversary Cruise, with players from all over the States and Canada participating.
In 1999, a second organization was formed, the American Mah Jongg Association. The AMJA currently hosts tournaments all across North America, with their signature event being at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey prior to the casino’s closure on October 10, 2016.
In the United Kingdom, British author Alan D. Millington revived the Chinese classical game of the 1920s with his book "The Complete Book of Mah-jongg" (1977). This handbook includes a formal rules set for the game.
There are many governing bodies which often host exhibition games and tournaments for modern and traditional Mahjong gaming.
Mahjong, as of 2010, is the most popular table game in Japan. As of 2008, there were approximately 7.6 million Mahjong players in Japan and an estimated 8,900 Mahjong parlors did ¥300 billion (converting to US$2.8 billion according to exchange rates for April 30, 2020) in sales. Many devotees there believe the game is losing popularity and have taken efforts to revive it. There are several manga and anime (e.g. Saki and Akagi) devoted to dramatic and comic situations involving Mahjong. Since the 1980s, hundreds of different Mahjong arcade machines in Japanese video arcades have been created, including strip versions. Newer units can connect with other arcade machines across the Internet.
Mahjong culture is still deeply ingrained in the Chinese community. Sam Hui wrote Cantopop songs using Mahjong as their themes, and Hong Kong movies have often included scenes of Mahjong games. Many gambling movies have been filmed in Hong Kong, and a recent subgenre is the Mahjong movie.
Although the popularity of the game in China is still broad, since 1949, mahjong was frowned upon by the government because it is seen as a means of gambling addiction, an issue that the government always sought to tackle.
Prolonged playing of Mahjong may trigger epileptic seizures according to a 2007 study. To date there are 23 reported cases of Mahjong-induced seizures in the English medical literature. Some doctors speculate that this may be due to stress and complex manual movement correlated with intense brain function similar to playing chess or card games such as poker.
Studies by doctors have also shown in Hong Kong that the game is beneficial for individuals suffering from dementia or cognitive memory difficulties, leading to the development of Mahjong therapy.
Mahjong was also adapted into several puzzle video games such as "Mahjong Trails", listed as one of the top-grossing games on Facebook.
Even though both skill and chance play a fundamental role in the game, there is no shortage of superstitions in which players believe where they sit, how they hold their pieces or objects they have on their person will somehow affect the outcome. For example, players will try to find seats with the best Feng Shui or wear their lucky clothing or trinkets. Some believe that specific pieces (one dot for example) bode bad luck if received in their opening hand.
More elaborate superstitions in Mahjong range from those found in the game poker, like not counting one's wins and losses, to the comical, like changing one's undergarments after a loss. As with all superstitions in gaming, none of them have been properly demonstrated as effective, though, for some, the rituals have become an integral part of the game experience and its aesthetics.
Mahjong tiles were added to the Unicode Standard in April, 2008 with the release of version 5.1.
The Unicode block for Mahjong tiles is U+1F000–U+1F02F: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=19496 |
Norway
Norway (Norwegian: (Bokmål) or (Nynorsk); ; ; ), officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe whose mainland territory comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula; Mainland Norway and the remote island of Jan Mayen as well as the archipelago of Svalbard form Metropolitan Norway. The subantarctic Bouvet Island is a dependent territory of the Kingdom of Norway. Norway also lays claim to the Antarctic territories of Queen Maud Land and Peter I Island.
Norway has a total area of and a population of 5,312,300 (as of August 2018). The country shares a long eastern border with Sweden (1,619 km or 1,006 mi long). Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, and the Skagerrak strait to the south, with Denmark on the other side. Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. The maritime influence also dominates Norway's climate with mild lowland temperatures on the sea coasts, whereas the interior, while colder, is also a lot milder than areas elsewhere in the world on such northerly latitudes. Even during polar night in the north, temperatures above freezing are commonplace on the coastline. The maritime influence brings high rainfall and snowfall to some areas of the country.
Harald V of the House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway. Erna Solberg has been prime minister since 2013 when she replaced Jens Stoltenberg. As a unitary sovereign state with a constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the parliament, the cabinet and the supreme court, as determined by the 1814 constitution. The kingdom was established in 872 as a merger of many petty kingdoms and has existed continuously for 1, years. From 1537 to 1814, Norway was a part of the Kingdom of Denmark–Norway, and from 1814 to 1905, it was in a personal union with the Kingdom of Sweden. Norway was neutral during the First World War. Norway remained neutral until April 1940 when the country was invaded and occupied by Germany until the end of Second World War.
Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels: counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have a certain amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament and the Finnmark Act. Norway maintains close ties with both the European Union and the United States. Norway is also a founding member of the United Nations, NATO, the European Free Trade Association, the Council of Europe, the Antarctic Treaty, and the Nordic Council; a member of the European Economic Area, the WTO, and the OECD; and a part of the Schengen Area. In addition, the Norwegian languages share mutual intelligibility with Danish and Swedish.
Norway maintains the Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system, and its values are rooted in egalitarian ideals. The Norwegian state has large ownership positions in key industrial sectors, having extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, and fresh water. The petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). On a per-capita basis, Norway is the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas outside of the Middle East.
The country has the fourth-highest per-capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIA's GDP (PPP) per capita list (2015 estimate) which includes autonomous territories and regions, Norway ranks as number eleven. It has the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, with a value of US$1 trillion. Norway has had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world since 2009, a position also held previously between 2001 and 2006; it also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking per 2018. Norway ranked first on the World Happiness Report for 2017 and currently ranks first on the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity, and the Democracy Index. Norway also has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.
Norway has two official names: "Norge" in Bokmål and "Noreg" in Nynorsk. The English name Norway comes from the Old English word "Norþweg" mentioned in 880, meaning "northern way" or "way leading to the north", which is how the Anglo-Saxons referred to the coastline of Atlantic Norway similar to scientific consensus about the origin of the Norwegian language name. The Anglo-Saxons of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as "Norðmanna land".
There is some disagreement about whether the native name of Norway originally had the same etymology as the English form. According to the traditional dominant view, the first component was originally "norðr", a cognate of English "north", so the full name was "Norðr vegr", "the way northwards", referring to the sailing route along the Norwegian coast, and contrasting with "suðrvegar" "southern way" (from Old Norse suðr) for (Germany), and "austrvegr" "eastern way" (from austr) for the Baltic. In the translation of Orosius for Alfred, the name is "Norðweg", while in younger Old English sources the ð is gone. In the 10th century many Norsemen settled in Northern France, according to the sagas, in the area that was later called Normandy from "norðmann" (Norseman or Scandinavian), although not a Norwegian possession. In France "normanni" or "northmanni" referred to people of Norway, Sweden or Denmark. Until around 1800 inhabitants of Western Norway were referred to as "nordmenn" (northmen) while inhabitants of Eastern Norway were referred to as "austmenn" (eastmen).
According to another theory, the first component was a word "nór", meaning "narrow" (Old English "nearu") or "northern", referring to the inner-archipelago sailing route through the land ("narrow way"). The interpretation as "northern", as reflected in the English and Latin forms of the name, would then have been due to later folk etymology. This latter view originated with philologist Niels Halvorsen Trønnes in 1847; since 2016 it as also advocated by language student and activist Klaus Johan Myrvoll and was adopted by philology professor Michael Schulte. The form "Nore" is still used in placenames such as the village of Nore and lake Norefjorden in Buskerud county, and still has the same meaning. Among other arguments in favour of the theory, it is pointed out that the word has a long vowel in Skaldic poetry and is not attested with in any native Norse texts or inscriptions (the earliest runic attestations have the spellings "nuruiak" and "nuriki"). This resurrected theory has received some pushback by other scholars on various grounds, e. g. the uncontroversial presence of the element "norðr" in the ethnonym "norðrmaðr" "Norseman, Norwegian person" (modern Norwegian "nordmann"), and the adjective "norrǿnn" "northern, Norse, Norwegian", as well as the very early attestations of the Latin and Anglo-Saxon forms with
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In a Latin manuscript of 849, the name "Northuagia" is mentioned, while a French chronicle of c. 900 uses the names "Northwegia" and "Norwegia". When Ohthere of Hålogaland visited King Alfred the Great in England in the end of the ninth century, the land was called "Norðwegr" (lit. "Northway") and "norðmanna land" (lit. "Northmen's land"). According to Ohthere, "Norðmanna" lived along the Atlantic coast, the Danes around Skagerrak og Kattegat, while the Sámi people (the "Fins") had a nomadic lifestyle in the wide interior. Ohthere told Alfred that he was "the most northern of all Norwegians", presumably at Senja island or closer to Tromsø. He also said that beyond the wide wilderness in Norway's southern part was the land of the Swedes, "Svealand".
The adjective "Norwegian", recorded from c. 1600, is derived from the latinisation of the name as "Norwegia"; in the adjective "Norwegian", the Old English spelling '-weg' has survived.
After Norway had become Christian, "Noregr" and "Noregi" had become the most common forms, but during the 15th century, the newer forms "Noreg(h)" and "Norg(h)e", found in medieval Icelandic manuscripts, took over and have survived until the modern day.
The first inhabitants were the Ahrensburg culture (11th to 10th millennia BC), which was a late Upper Paleolithic culture during the Younger Dryas, the last period of cold at the end of the Weichselian glaciation. The culture is named after the village of Ahrensburg, north-east of Hamburg in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, where wooden arrow shafts and clubs have been excavated. The earliest traces of human occupation in Norway are found along the coast, where the huge ice shelf of the last ice age first melted between 11,000 and 8,000 BC. The oldest finds are stone tools dating from 9,500 to 6,000 BC, discovered in Finnmark (Komsa culture) in the north and Rogaland (Fosna culture) in the south-west. However, theories about two altogether different cultures (the Komsa culture north of the Arctic Circle being one and the Fosna culture from Trøndelag to Oslofjord being the other) were rendered obsolete in the 1970s.
More recent finds along the entire coast revealed to archaeologists that the difference between the two can simply be ascribed to different types of tools and not to different cultures. Coastal fauna provided a means of livelihood for fishermen and hunters, who may have made their way along the southern coast about 10,000 BC when the interior was still covered with ice. It is now thought that these so-called "Arctic" peoples came from the south and followed the coast northward considerably later.
In the southern part of the country are dwelling sites dating from about 5,000 BC. Finds from these sites give a clearer idea of the life of the hunting and fishing peoples. The implements vary in shape and mostly are made of different kinds of stone; those of later periods are more skilfully made. Rock carvings (i.e. petroglyphs) have been found, usually near hunting and fishing grounds. They represent game such as deer, reindeer, elk, bears, birds, seals, whales, and fish (especially salmon and halibut), all of which were vital to the way of life of the coastal peoples. The rock carvings at Alta in Finnmark, the largest in Scandinavia, were made at sea level from 4,200 to 500 BC and mark the progression of the land as the sea rose after the last ice age ended.
Between 3000 and 2500 BC, new settlers (Corded Ware culture) arrived in eastern Norway. They were Indo-European farmers who grew grain and kept cows and sheep. The hunting-fishing population of the west coast was also gradually replaced by farmers, though hunting and fishing remained useful secondary means of livelihood.
From about 1500 BC, bronze was gradually introduced, but the use of stone implements continued; Norway had few riches to barter for bronze goods, and the few finds consist mostly of elaborate weapons and brooches that only chieftains could afford. Huge burial cairns built close to the sea as far north as Harstad and also inland in the south are characteristic of this period. The motifs of the rock carvings differ slightly from those typical of the Stone Age. Representations of the Sun, animals, trees, weapons, ships, and people are all strongly stylised.
Thousands of rock carvings from this period depict ships, and the large stone burial monuments known as stone ships, suggest that ships and seafaring played an important role in the culture at large. The depicted ships most likely represent sewn plank built canoes used for warfare, fishing and trade. These ship types may have their origin as far back as the neolithic period and they continue into the Pre-Roman Iron Age, as exemplified by the Hjortspring boat.
Little has been found dating from the early Iron Age (the last 500 years BC). The dead were cremated, and their graves contain few burial goods. During the first four centuries AD, the people of Norway were in contact with Roman-occupied Gaul. About 70 Roman bronze cauldrons, often used as burial urns, have been found. Contact with the civilised countries farther south brought a knowledge of runes; the oldest known Norwegian runic inscription dates from the 3rd century. At this time, the amount of settled area in the country increased, a development that can be traced by coordinated studies of topography, archaeology, and place-names. The oldest root names, such as nes, vik, and bø ("cape," "bay," and "farm"), are of great antiquity, dating perhaps from the Bronze Age, whereas the earliest of the groups of compound names with the suffixes vin ("meadow") or heim ("settlement"), as in Bjǫrgvin (Bergen) or Sǿheim (Seim), usually date from the 1st century AD.
Archaeologists first made the decision to divide the Iron Age of Northern Europe into distinct pre-Roman and Roman Iron Ages after Emil Vedel unearthed a number of Iron Age artefacts in 1866 on the island of Bornholm. They did not exhibit the same permeating Roman influence seen in most other artefacts from the early centuries AD, indicating that parts of northern Europe had not yet come into contact with the Romans at the beginning of the Iron Age.
The destruction of the Western Roman Empire by the Germanic peoples in the 5th century is characterised by rich finds, including tribal chiefs' graves containing magnificent weapons and gold objects. Hill forts were built on precipitous rocks for defence. Excavation has revealed stone foundations of farmhouses long—one even long—the roofs of which were supported on wooden posts. These houses were family homesteads where several generations lived together, with people and cattle under one roof.
These states were based on either clans or tribes (e.g., the Horder of Hordaland in western Norway). By the 9th century, each of these small states had "things" (local or regional assemblies) for negotiating and settling disputes. The "thing" meeting places, each eventually with a hörgr (open-air sanctuary) or a heathen hof (temple; literally "hill"), were usually situated on the oldest and best farms, which belonged to the chieftains and wealthiest farmers. The regional "things" united to form even larger units: assemblies of deputy yeomen from several regions. In this way, the "lagting" (assemblies for negotiations and lawmaking) developed. The Gulating had its meeting place by Sognefjord and may have been the centre of an aristocratic confederation along the western fjords and islands called the Gulatingslag. The Frostating was the assembly for the leaders in the Trondheimsfjord area; the Earls of Lade, near Trondheim, seem to have enlarged the Frostatingslag by adding the coastland from Romsdalsfjord to Lofoten.
From the 8th to the 10th century, the wider Scandinavian region was the source of Vikings. The looting of the monastery at Lindisfarne in Northeast England in 793 by Norse people has long been regarded as the event which marked the beginning of the Viking Age. This age was characterised by expansion and emigration by Viking seafarers. They colonised, raided, and traded in all parts of Europe. Norwegian Viking explorers discovered Iceland by accident in the 9th century when heading for the Faroe Islands, and eventually came across Vinland, known today as Newfoundland, in Canada. The Vikings from Norway were most active in the northern and western British Isles and eastern North America isles.
According to tradition, Harald Fairhair unified them into one in 872 after the Battle of Hafrsfjord in Stavanger, thus becoming the first king of a united Norway. Harald's realm was mainly a South Norwegian coastal state. Fairhair ruled with a strong hand and according to the sagas, many Norwegians left the country to live in Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and parts of Britain and Ireland. The modern-day Irish cities of Dublin, Limerick and Waterford were founded by Norwegian settlers.
Norse traditions were replaced slowly by Christian ones in the late 10th and early 11th centuries. One of the most important sources for the history of the 11th century Vikings is the treaty between the Icelanders and Olaf Haraldsson, king of Norway circa 1015 to 1028. This is largely attributed to the missionary kings Olav Tryggvasson and St. Olav. Haakon the Good was Norway's first Christian king, in the mid-10th century, though his attempt to introduce the religion was rejected. Born sometime in between 963–969, Olav Tryggvasson set off raiding in England with 390 ships. He attacked London during this raiding. Arriving back in Norway in 995, Olav landed in Moster. There he built a church which became the first Christian church ever built in Norway. From Moster, Olav sailed north to Trondheim where he was proclaimed King of Norway by the Eyrathing in 995.
Feudalism never really developed in Norway or Sweden, as it did in the rest of Europe. However, the administration of government took on a very conservative feudal character. The Hanseatic League forced the royalty to cede to them greater and greater concessions over foreign trade and the economy. The League had this hold over the royalty because of the loans the Hansa had made to the royalty and the large debt the kings were carrying. The League's monopolistic control over the economy of Norway put pressure on all classes, especially the peasantry, to the degree that no real burgher class existed in Norway.
From the 1040s to 1130, the country was at peace. In 1130, the civil war era broke out on the basis of unclear succession laws, which allowed all the king's sons to rule jointly. For periods there could be peace, before a lesser son allied himself with a chieftain and started a new conflict. The Archdiocese of Nidaros was created in 1152 and attempted to control the appointment of kings. The church inevitably had to take sides in the conflicts, with the civil wars also becoming an issue regarding the church's influence of the king. The wars ended in 1217 with the appointment of Håkon Håkonsson, who introduced clear law of succession.
From 1000 to 1300, the population increased from 150,000 to 400,000, resulting both in more land being cleared and the subdivision of farms. While in the Viking Age all farmers owned their own land, by 1300, seventy percent of the land was owned by the king, the church, or the aristocracy. This was a gradual process which took place because of farmers borrowing money in poor times and not being able to repay. However, tenants always remained free men and the large distances and often scattered ownership meant that they enjoyed much more freedom than continental serfs. In the 13th century, about twenty percent of a farmer's yield went to the king, church and landowners.
The 14th century is described as Norway's Golden Age, with peace and increase in trade, especially with the British Islands, although Germany became increasingly important towards the end of the century. Throughout the High Middle Ages, the king established Norway as a sovereign state with a central administration and local representatives.
In 1349, the Black Death spread to Norway and had within a year killed a third of the population. Later plagues reduced the population to half the starting point by 1400. Many communities were entirely wiped out, resulting in an abundance of land, allowing farmers to switch to more animal husbandry. The reduction in taxes weakened the king's position, and many aristocrats lost the basis for their surplus, reducing some to mere farmers. High tithes to church made it increasingly powerful and the archbishop became a member of the Council of State.
The Hanseatic League took control over Norwegian trade during the 14th century and established a trading center in Bergen. In 1380, Olaf Haakonsson inherited both the Norwegian and Danish thrones, creating a union between the two countries. In 1397, under Margaret I, the Kalmar Union was created between the three Scandinavian countries. She waged war against the Germans, resulting in a trade blockade and higher taxation on Norwegian goods, which resulted in a rebellion. However, the Norwegian Council of State was too weak to pull out of the union.
Margaret pursued a centralising policy which inevitably favoured Denmark, because it had a greater population than Norway and Sweden combined. Margaret also granted trade privileges to the Hanseatic merchants of Lübeck in Bergen in return for recognition of her right to rule, and these hurt the Norwegian economy. The Hanseatic merchants formed a state within a state in Bergen for generations. Even worse were the pirates, the "Victual Brothers", who launched three devastating raids on the port (the last in 1427).
Norway slipped ever more to the background under the Oldenburg dynasty (established 1448). There was one revolt under Knut Alvsson in 1502. Norwegians had some affection for King Christian II, who resided in the country for several years. Norway took no part in the events which led to Swedish independence from Denmark in the 1520s.
Upon the death of Haakon V (King of Norway) in 1319, Magnus Erikson, at just three years old, inherited the throne as King Magnus VII of Norway. At the same time, a movement to make Magnus King of Sweden proved successful, and both the kings of Sweden and of Denmark were elected to the throne by their respective nobles, Thus, with his election to the throne of Sweden, both Sweden and Norway were united under King Magnus VII.
In 1349, the Black Death radically altered Norway, killing between 50% and 60% of its population and leaving it in a period of social and economic decline. The plague left Norway very poor. Although the death rate was comparable with the rest of Europe, economic recovery took much longer because of the small, scattered population. Even before the plague, the population was only about 500,000. After the plague, many farms lay idle while the population slowly increased. However, the few surviving farms' tenants found their bargaining positions with their landlords greatly strengthened.
King Magnus VII ruled Norway until 1350, when his son, Haakon, was placed on the throne as Haakon VI. In 1363, Haakon VI married Margaret, the daughter of King Valdemar IV of Denmark. Upon the death of Haakon VI, in 1379, his son, Olaf IV, was only 10 years old. Olaf had already been elected to the throne of Denmark on 3 May 1376. Thus, upon Olaf's accession to the throne of Norway, Denmark and Norway entered personal union. Olaf's mother and Haakon's widow, Queen Margaret, managed the foreign affairs of Denmark and Norway during the minority of Olaf IV.
Margaret was working toward a union of Sweden with Denmark and Norway by having Olaf elected to the Swedish throne. She was on the verge of achieving this goal when Olaf IV suddenly died. However, Denmark made Margaret temporary ruler upon the death of Olaf. On 2 February 1388, Norway followed suit and crowned Margaret. Queen Margaret knew that her power would be more secure if she were able to find a king to rule in her place. She settled on Eric of Pomerania, grandson of her sister. Thus at an all-Scandinavian meeting held at Kalmar, Erik of Pomerania was crowned king of all three Scandinavian countries. Thus, royal politics resulted in personal unions between the Nordic countries, eventually bringing the thrones of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden under the control of Queen Margaret when the country entered into the Kalmar Union.
After Sweden broke out of the Kalmar Union in 1521, Norway tried to follow suit, but the subsequent rebellion was defeated, and Norway remained in a union with Denmark until 1814, a total of 434 years. During the national romanticism of the 19th century, this period was by some referred to as the "400-Year Night", since all of the kingdom's royal, intellectual, and administrative power was centred in Copenhagen in Denmark. In fact, it was a period of great prosperity and progress for Norway, especially in terms of shipping and foreign trade, and it also secured the country's revival from the demographic catastrophe it suffered in the Black Death. Based on the respective natural resources, Denmark–Norway was in fact a very good match since Denmark supported Norway's needs for grain and food supplies, and Norway supplied Denmark with timber, metal, and fish.
With the introduction of Protestantism in 1536, the archbishopric in Trondheim was dissolved, and Norway lost its independence, and effectually became a colony of Denmark. The Church's incomes and possessions were instead redirected to the court in Copenhagen. Norway lost the steady stream of pilgrims to the relics of St. Olav at the Nidaros shrine, and with them, much of the contact with cultural and economic life in the rest of Europe.
Eventually restored as a kingdom (albeit in legislative union with Denmark) in 1661, Norway saw its land area decrease in the 17th century with the loss of the provinces Båhuslen, Jemtland, and Herjedalen to Sweden, as the result of a number of disastrous wars with Sweden. In the north, however, its territory was increased by the acquisition of the northern provinces of Troms and Finnmark, at the expense of Sweden and Russia.
The famine of 1695–1696 killed roughly 10% of Norway's population. The harvest failed in Scandinavia at least nine times between 1740 and 1800, with great loss of life.
After Denmark–Norway was attacked by the United Kingdom at the 1807 Battle of Copenhagen, it entered into an alliance with Napoleon, with the war leading to dire conditions and mass starvation in 1812. As the Danish kingdom found itself on the losing side in 1814, it was forced, under terms of the Treaty of Kiel, to cede Norway to the king of Sweden, while the old Norwegian provinces of Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands remained with the Danish crown. Norway took this opportunity to declare independence, adopted a constitution based on American and French models, and elected the Crown Prince of Denmark and Norway, Christian Frederick, as king on 17 May 1814. This is the famous Syttende Mai (Seventeenth of May) holiday celebrated by Norwegians and Norwegian-Americans alike. "Syttende Mai" is also called "Norwegian Constitution Day".
Norwegian opposition to the great powers' decision to link Norway with Sweden caused the Norwegian–Swedish War to break out as Sweden tried to subdue Norway by military means. As Sweden's military was not strong enough to defeat the Norwegian forces outright, and Norway's treasury was not large enough to support a protracted war, and as British and Russian navies blockaded the Norwegian coast, the belligerents were forced to negotiate the Convention of Moss. According to the terms of the convention, Christian Frederik abdicated the Norwegian throne and authorised the Parliament of Norway to make the necessary constitutional amendments to allow for the personal union that Norway was forced to accept. On 4 November 1814, the Parliament (Storting) elected Charles XIII of Sweden as king of Norway, thereby establishing the union with Sweden. Under this arrangement, Norway kept its liberal constitution and its own independent institutions, though it shared a common monarch and common foreign policy with Sweden. Following the recession caused by the Napoleonic Wars, economic development of Norway remained slow until economic growth began around 1830.
This period also saw the rise of the Norwegian romantic nationalism, as Norwegians sought to define and express a distinct national character. The movement covered all branches of culture, including literature (Henrik Wergeland [1808–1845], Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson [1832–1910], Peter Christen Asbjørnsen [1812–1845], Jørgen Moe [1813–1882]), painting (Hans Gude [1825–1903], Adolph Tidemand [1814–1876]), music (Edvard Grieg [1843–1907]), and even language policy, where attempts to define a native written language for Norway led to today's two official written forms for Norwegian: Bokmål and Nynorsk.
King Charles III John, who came to the throne of Norway and Sweden in 1818, was the second king following Norway's break from Denmark and the union with Sweden. Charles John was a complex man whose long reign extended to 1844. He protected the constitution and liberties of Norway and Sweden during the age of Metternich. As such, he was regarded as a liberal monarch for that age. However, he was ruthless in his use of paid informers, the secret police and restrictions on the freedom of the press to put down public movements for reform—especially the Norwegian national independence movement.
The Romantic Era that followed the reign of King Charles III John brought some significant social and political reforms. In 1854, women won the right to inherit property in their own right, just like men. In 1863, the last trace of keeping unmarried women in the status of minors was removed. Furthermore, women were then eligible for different occupations, particularly the common school teacher. By mid-century, Norway's democracy was limited by modern standards: Voting was limited to officials, property owners, leaseholders and burghers of incorporated towns.
Still, Norway remained a conservative society. Life in Norway (especially economic life) was "dominated by the aristocracy of professional men who filled most of the important posts in the central government". There was no strong bourgeosie class in Norway to demand a breakdown of this aristocratic control of the economy. Thus, even while revolution swept over most of the countries of Europe in 1848, Norway was largely unaffected by revolts that year.
Marcus Thrane was a Utopian socialist. He made his appeal to the labouring classes urging a change of social structure "from below upwards." In 1848, he organised a labour society in Drammen. In just a few months, this society had a membership of 500 and was publishing its own newspaper. Within two years, 300 societies had been organised all over Norway, with a total membership of 20,000 persons. The membership was drawn from the lower classes of both urban and rural areas; for the first time these two groups felt they had a common cause. In the end, the revolt was easily crushed; Thrane was captured and in 1855, after four years in jail, was sentenced to three additional years for crimes against the safety of the state. Upon his release, Marcus Thrane attempted unsuccessfully to revitalise his movement, but after the death of his wife, he migrated to the United States.
In 1898, all men were granted universal suffrage, followed by all women in 1913.
Christian Michelsen, a shipping magnate and statesman, and Prime Minister of Norway from 1905 to 1907, played a central role in the peaceful separation of Norway from Sweden on 7 June 1905. A national referendum confirmed the people's preference for a monarchy over a republic. However, no Norwegian could legitimately claim the throne, since none of Norway's noble families could claim descent from medieval royalty. In European tradition, royal or "blue" blood is a precondition for laying claim to the throne.
The government then offered the throne of Norway to Prince Carl of Denmark, a prince of the Dano-German royal house of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg and a distant relative of several of Norway's medieval kings. After centuries of close ties between Norway and Denmark, a prince from the latter was the obvious choice for a European prince who could best relate to the Norwegian people. Following the plebiscite, he was unanimously elected king by the Norwegian Parliament, the first king of a fully independent Norway in 508 years (1397: Kalmar Union); he took the name Haakon VII. In 1905, the country welcomed the prince from neighbouring Denmark, his wife Maud of Wales and their young son to re-establish Norway's royal house.
Throughout the First World War, Norway was in principle a neutral country. In reality, however, Norway had been pressured by the British to hand over increasingly large parts of its large merchant fleet to the British at low rates, as well as to join the trade blockade against Germany. Norwegian merchant marine ships, often with Norwegian sailors still on board, were then sailing under the British flag and at risk of being sunk by German submarines. Thus, many Norwegian sailors and ships were lost. Thereafter, the world ranking of the Norwegian merchant navy fell from fourth place to sixth in the world.
Norway also proclaimed its neutrality during the Second World War, but despite this, it was invaded by German forces on 9 April 1940. Although Norway was unprepared for the German surprise attack (see: Battle of Drøbak Sound, Norwegian Campaign, and Invasion of Norway), military and naval resistance lasted for two months. Norwegian armed forces in the north launched an offensive against the German forces in the Battles of Narvik, until they were forced to surrender on 10 June after losing British support which had been diverted to France during the German invasion of France.
King Haakon and the Norwegian government escaped to Rotherhithe in London. Throughout the war they sent inspirational radio speeches and supported clandestine military actions in Norway against the Germans. On the day of the invasion, the leader of the small National-Socialist party Nasjonal Samling, Vidkun Quisling, tried to seize power, but was forced by the German occupiers to step aside. Real power was wielded by the leader of the German occupation authority, Reichskommissar Josef Terboven. Quisling, as "minister president", later formed a collaborationist government under German control. Up to 15,000 Norwegians volunteered to fight in German units, including the Waffen-SS.
The fraction of the Norwegian population that supported Germany was traditionally smaller than in Sweden, but greater than is generally appreciated today. It included a number of prominent personalities such as the Nobel-prize winning novelist Knut Hamsun. The concept of a "Germanic Union" of member states fit well into their thoroughly nationalist-patriotic ideology.
Many Norwegians and persons of Norwegian descent joined the Allied forces as well as the Free Norwegian Forces. In June 1940, a small group had left Norway following their king to Britain. This group included 13 ships, five aircraft, and 500 men from the Royal Norwegian Navy. By the end of the war, the force had grown to 58 ships and 7,500 men in service in the Royal Norwegian Navy, 5 squadrons of aircraft (including Spitfires, Sunderland flying boats and Mosquitos) in the newly formed Norwegian Air Force, and land forces including the Norwegian Independent Company 1 and 5 Troop as well as No. 10 Commandos.
During the five years of German occupation, Norwegians built a resistance movement which fought the German occupation forces with both civil disobedience and armed resistance including the destruction of Norsk Hydro's heavy water plant and stockpile of heavy water at Vemork, which crippled the German nuclear programme (see: "Norwegian heavy water sabotage"). More important to the Allied war effort, however, was the role of the Norwegian Merchant Marine. At the time of the invasion, Norway had the fourth-largest merchant marine fleet in the world. It was led by the Norwegian shipping company Nortraship under the Allies throughout the war and took part in every war operation from the evacuation of Dunkirk to the Normandy landings. Every December Norway gives a Christmas tree to the United Kingdom as thanks for the British assistance during the Second World War. A ceremony takes place to erect the tree in London's Trafalgar Square. Svalbard was not occupied by German troops. Germany secretly established a meteorological station in 1944. The crew was stuck after the general capitulation in May 1945 and were rescued by a Norwegian seal hunter on 4 September. They surrendered to the seal hunter as the last German soldiers to surrender in WW2.
From 1945 to 1962, the Labour Party held an absolute majority in the parliament. The government, led by prime minister Einar Gerhardsen, embarked on a program inspired by Keynesian economics, emphasising state financed industrialisation and co-operation between trade unions and employers' organisations. Many measures of state control of the economy imposed during the war were continued, although the rationing of dairy products was lifted in 1949, while price control and rationing of housing and cars continued until 1960.
The wartime alliance with the United Kingdom and the United States was continued in the post-war years. Although pursuing the goal of a socialist economy, the Labour Party distanced itself from the Communists (especially after the Communists' seizure of power in Czechoslovakia in 1948), and strengthened its foreign policy and defence policy ties with the US. Norway received Marshall Plan aid from the United States starting in 1947, joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) one year later, and became a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949.
The first oil was discovered at the small Balder field in 1967, production only began in 1999. In 1969, the Phillips Petroleum Company discovered petroleum resources at the Ekofisk field west of Norway. In 1973, the Norwegian government founded the State oil company, Statoil. Oil production did not provide net income until the early 1980s because of the large capital investment that was required to establish the country's petroleum industry. Around 1975, both the proportion and absolute number of workers in industry peaked. Since then labour-intensive industries and services like factory mass production and shipping have largely been outsourced.
Norway was a founding member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Norway was twice invited to join the European Union, but ultimately declined to join after referendums that failed by narrow margins in 1972 and 1994.
In 1981, a Conservative government led by Kåre Willoch replaced the Labour Party with a policy of stimulating the stagflated economy with tax cuts, economic liberalisation, deregulation of markets, and measures to curb record-high inflation (13.6% in 1981).
Norway's first female prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland of the Labour party, continued many of the reforms of her conservative predecessor, while backing traditional Labour concerns such as social security, high taxes, the industrialisation of nature, and feminism. By the late 1990s, Norway had paid off its foreign debt and had started accumulating a sovereign wealth fund. Since the 1990s, a divisive question in politics has been how much of the income from petroleum production the government should spend, and how much it should save.
In 2011, Norway suffered two terrorist attacks on the same day conducted by Anders Behring Breivik which struck the government quarter in Oslo and a summer camp of the Labour party's youth movement at Utøya island, resulting in 77 deaths and 319 wounded.
The 2013 Norwegian parliamentary election brought a more conservative government to power, with the Conservative Party and the Progress Party winning 43% of the electorate's votes.
Norway's core territory comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula; the remote island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard are also part of the Kingdom of Norway. The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land. From the Middle Ages to 1814 Norway was part of the Danish kingdom. Norwegian possessions in the North Atlantic, Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland, remained Danish when Norway was passed to Sweden at the Treaty of Kiel. Norway also comprised Bohuslän until 1658, Jämtland and Härjedalen until 1645, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, and the Hebrides and Isle of Man until the Treaty of Perth in 1266.
Norway comprises the western and northernmost part of Scandinavia in Northern Europe. Norway lies between latitudes 57° and 81° N, and longitudes 4° and 32° E. Norway is the northernmost of the Nordic countries and if Svalbard is included also the easternmost. Vardø at 31° 10' 07" east of Greenwich lies further east than St. Petersburg and Istanbul. Norway includes the northernmost point on the European mainland. The rugged coastline is broken by huge fjords and thousands of islands. The coastal baseline is . The coastline of the mainland including fjords stretches , when islands are included the coastline has been estimated to . Norway shares a land border with Sweden, with Finland, and with Russia to the east. To the north, west and south, Norway is bordered by the Barents Sea, the Norwegian Sea, the North Sea, and Skagerrak. The Scandinavian Mountains form much of the border with Sweden.
At (including Svalbard and Jan Mayen) (and without), much of the country is dominated by mountainous or high terrain, with a great variety of natural features caused by prehistoric glaciers and varied topography. The most noticeable of these are the fjords: deep grooves cut into the land flooded by the sea following the end of the Ice Age. Sognefjorden is the world's second deepest fjord, and the world's longest at . Hornindalsvatnet is the deepest lake in all Europe. Norway has about 400,000 lakes. There are 239,057 registered islands. Permafrost can be found all year in the higher mountain areas and in the interior of Finnmark county. Numerous glaciers are found in Norway.
The land is mostly made of hard granite and gneiss rock, but slate, sandstone, and limestone are also common, and the lowest elevations contain marine deposits. Because of the Gulf Stream and prevailing westerlies, Norway experiences higher temperatures and more precipitation than expected at such northern latitudes, especially along the coast. The mainland experiences four distinct seasons, with colder winters and less precipitation inland. The northernmost part has a mostly maritime Subarctic climate, while Svalbard has an Arctic tundra climate.
Because of the large latitudinal range of the country and the varied topography and climate, Norway has a larger number of different habitats than almost any other European country. There are approximately 60,000 species in Norway and adjacent waters (excluding bacteria and viruses). The Norwegian Shelf large marine ecosystem is considered highly productive.
The southern and western parts of Norway, fully exposed to Atlantic storm fronts, experience more precipitation and have milder winters than the eastern and far northern parts. Areas to the east of the coastal mountains are in a rain shadow, and have lower rain and snow totals than the west. The lowlands around Oslo have the warmest and sunniest summers, but also cold weather and snow in wintertime.
Because of Norway's high latitude, there are large seasonal variations in daylight. From late May to late July, the sun never completely descends beneath the horizon in areas north of the Arctic Circle (hence Norway's description as the "Land of the Midnight sun"), and the rest of the country experiences up to 20 hours of daylight per day. Conversely, from late November to late January, the sun never rises above the horizon in the north, and daylight hours are very short in the rest of the country.
The coastal climate of Norway is exceptionally mild compared with areas on similar latitudes elsewhere in the world, with the Gulf Stream passing directly offshore the northern areas of the Atlantic coast, continuously warming the region in the winter. Temperature anomalies found in coastal locations are exceptional, with Røst and Værøy lacking a meteorological winter in spite of being north of the Arctic Circle. The Gulf Stream has this effect only on the northern parts of Norway, not in the south, despite what is commonly believed. The northern coast of Norway would thus be ice-covered if not for the Gulf Stream. As a side-effect, the Scandinavian Mountains prevent continental winds from reaching the coastline, causing very cool summers throughout Atlantic Norway. Oslo has more of a continental climate, similar to Sweden's. The mountain ranges have subarctic and tundra climates. There is also very high rainfall in areas exposed to the Atlantic, such as Bergen. Oslo, in comparison, is dry, being in a rain shadow. Skjåk in Oppland county is also in the rain shadow and is one of the driest places with precipitation annually. Finnmarksvidda and the interior valleys of Troms and Nordland also receive less than annually. Longyearbyen is the driest place in Norway with .
Parts of southeastern Norway including parts of Mjøsa have warm-summer humid continental climates (Köppen Dfb), while the more southern and western coasts are mostly of the oceanic climate (Cfb). Further inland in southeastern and northern Norway, the subarctic climate (Dfc) dominates; this is especially true for areas in the rain shadow of the Scandinavian Mountains. Some of the inner valleys of Oppland get so little precipitation annually, thanks to the rain shadow effect, that they meet the requirements for dry-summer subarctic climates (Dsc). In higher altitudes, close to the coasts of southern and western Norway, one can find the rare subpolar oceanic climate (Cfc). This climate is also common in Northern Norway, usually in lower altitudes, all the way down to sea level. A small part of the northernmost coast of Norway has the tundra/alpine/polar climate (ET). Large parts of Norway are covered by mountains and high altitude plateaus, many of which also exhibit the tundra/alpine/polar climate (ET).
The total number of species include 16,000 species of insects (probably 4,000 more species yet to be described), 20,000 species of algae, 1,800 species of lichen, 1,050 species of mosses, 2,800 species of vascular plants, up to 7,000 species of fungi, 450 species of birds (250 species nesting in Norway), 90 species of mammals, 45 fresh-water species of fish, 150 salt-water species of fish, 1,000 species of fresh-water invertebrates, and 3,500 species of salt-water invertebrates. About 40,000 of these species have been described by science. The red list of 2010 encompasses 4,599 species.
Seventeen species are listed mainly because they are endangered on a global scale, such as the European beaver, even if the population in Norway is not seen as endangered. The number of threatened and near-threatened species equals to 3,682; it includes 418 fungi species, many of which are closely associated with the small remaining areas of old-growth forests, 36 bird species, and 16 species of mammals. In 2010, 2,398 species were listed as endangered or vulnerable; of these were 1250 listed as vulnerable (VU), 871 as endangered (EN), and 276 species as critically endangered (CR), among which were the grey wolf, the Arctic fox (healthy population on Svalbard) and the pool frog.
The largest predator in Norwegian waters is the sperm whale, and the largest fish is the basking shark. The largest predator on land is the polar bear, while the brown bear is the largest predator on the Norwegian mainland. The largest land animal on the mainland is the elk (American English: moose). The elk in Norway is known for its size and strength and is often called "skogens konge", "king of the forest".
Attractive and dramatic scenery and landscape are found throughout Norway. The west coast of southern Norway and the coast of northern Norway present some of the most visually impressive coastal sceneries in the world. National Geographic has listed the Norwegian fjords as the world's top tourist attraction. The country is also home to the natural phenomena of the Midnight sun (during summer), as well as the Aurora borealis known also as the Northern lights.
The 2016 Environmental Performance Index from Yale University, Columbia University and the World Economic Forum put Norway in seventeenth place, immediately below Croatia and Switzerland. The index is based on environmental risks to human health, habitat loss, and changes in CO2 emissions. The index notes over-exploitation of fisheries, but not Norway's whaling or oil exports.
Norway is considered to be one of the most developed democracies and states of justice in the world. From 1814, c. 45% of men (25 years and older) had the right to vote, whereas the United Kingdom had c. 20% (1832), Sweden c. 5% (1866), and Belgium c. 1.15% (1840). Since 2010, Norway has been classified as the world's most democratic country by the Democracy Index.
According to the Constitution of Norway, which was adopted on 17 May 1814 and inspired by the United States Declaration of Independence and French Revolution of 1776 and 1789, respectively, Norway is a unitary constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of government, wherein the King of Norway is the head of state and the prime minister is the head of government. Power is separated among the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, as defined by the Constitution, which serves as the country's supreme legal document.
The monarch officially retains executive power. But following the introduction of a parliamentary system of government, the duties of the monarch have since become strictly representative and ceremonial, such as the formal appointment and dismissal of the Prime Minister and other ministers in the executive government. Accordingly, the Monarch is commander-in-chief of the Norwegian Armed Forces, and serves as chief diplomatic official abroad and as a symbol of unity. Harald V of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg was crowned King of Norway in 1991, the first since the 14th century who has been born in the country. Haakon, Crown Prince of Norway, is the legal and rightful heir to the throne and the Kingdom.
In practice, the Prime Minister exercises the executive powers. Constitutionally, legislative power is vested with both the government and the Parliament of Norway, but the latter is the supreme legislature and a unicameral body. Norway is fundamentally structured as a representative democracy. The Parliament can pass a law by simple majority of the 169 representatives, who are elected on the basis of proportional representation from 19 constituencies for four-year terms.
150 are elected directly from the 19 constituencies, and an additional 19 seats ("levelling seats") are allocated on a nationwide basis to make the representation in parliament correspond better with the popular vote for the political parties. A 4% election threshold is required for a party to gain levelling seats in Parliament. There are a total of 169 members of parliament.
The Parliament of Norway, called the "Stortinget" (meaning Grand Assembly), ratifies national treaties developed by the executive branch. It can impeach members of the government if their acts are declared unconstitutional. If an indicted suspect is impeached, Parliament has the power to remove the person from office.
The position of prime minister, Norway's head of government, is allocated to the member of Parliament who can obtain the confidence of a majority in Parliament, usually the current leader of the largest political party or, more effectively, through a coalition of parties. A single party generally does not have sufficient political power in terms of the number of seats to form a government on its own. Norway has often been ruled by minority governments.
The prime minister nominates the cabinet, traditionally drawn from members of the same political party or parties in the Storting, making up the government. The PM organises the executive government and exercises its power as vested by the Constitution. Norway has a state church, the Lutheran Church of Norway, which has in recent years gradually been granted more internal autonomy in day-to-day affairs, but which still has a special constitutional status. Formerly, the PM had to have more than half the members of cabinet be members of the Church of Norway, meaning at least ten out of the 19 ministries. This rule was however removed in 2012. The issue of separation of church and state in Norway has been increasingly controversial, as many people believe it is time to change this, to reflect the growing diversity in the population. A part of this is the evolution of the public school subject Christianity, a required subject since 1739. Even the state's loss in a battle at the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg in 2007 did not settle the matter. As of 1 January 2017, the Church of Norway is a separate legal entity, and no longer a branch of the civil service.
Through the Council of State, a privy council presided over by the monarch, the prime minister and the cabinet meet at the Royal Palace and formally consult the Monarch. All government bills need the formal approval by the monarch before and after introduction to Parliament. The Council reviews and approves all of the monarch's actions as head of state. Although all government and parliamentary acts are decided beforehand, the privy council is an example of symbolic gesture the king retains.
Members of the Storting are directly elected from party-lists proportional representation in nineteen plural-member constituencies in a national multi-party system. Historically, both the Norwegian Labour Party and Conservative Party have played leading political roles. In the early 21st century, the Labour Party has been in power since the 2005 election, in a Red–Green Coalition with the Socialist Left Party and the Centre Party.
Since 2005, both the Conservative Party and the Progress Party have won numerous seats in the Parliament, but not sufficient in the 2009 general election to overthrow the coalition. Commentators have pointed to the poor co-operation between the opposition parties, including the Liberals and the Christian Democrats. Jens Stoltenberg, the leader of the Labour Party, continued to have the necessary majority through his multi-party alliance to continue as PM until 2013.
In national elections in September 2013, voters ended eight years of Labor rule. Two political parties, Høyre and Fremskrittspartiet, elected on promises of tax cuts, more spending on infrastructure and education, better services and stricter rules on immigration, formed a government. Coming at a time when Norway's economy is in good condition with low unemployment, the rise of the right appeared to be based on other issues. Erna Solberg became prime minister, the second female prime minister after Brundtland and the first conservative prime minister since Syse. Solberg said her win was "a historic election victory for the right-wing parties".
Norway, a unitary state, is divided into eleven first-level administrative counties ("fylke"). The counties are administered through directly elected county assemblies who elect the County Governor. Additionally, the King and government are represented in every county by a fylkesmann, who effectively acts as a Governor. As such, the Government is directly represented at a local level through the County Governors' offices. The counties are then sub-divided into 356 second-level municipalities ("kommuner"), which in turn are administered by directly elected municipal council, headed by a mayor and a small executive cabinet. The capital of Oslo is considered both a county and a municipality.
Norway has two integral overseas territories: Jan Mayen and Svalbard, the only developed island in the archipelago of the same name, located miles away to the north. There are three Antarctic and Subantarctic dependencies: Bouvet Island, Peter I Island, and Queen Maud Land. On most maps, there had been an unclaimed area between Queen Maud Land and the South Pole until 12 June 2015 when Norway formally annexed that area.
96 settlements have city status in Norway. In most cases, the city borders are coterminous with the borders of their respective municipalities. Often, Norwegian city municipalities include large areas that are not developed; for example, Oslo municipality contains large forests, located north and south-east of the city, and over half of Bergen municipality consists of mountainous areas.
The counties of Norway are:
Norway uses a civil law system where laws are created and amended in Parliament and the system regulated through the Courts of justice of Norway. It consists of the Supreme Court of 20 permanent judges and a Chief Justice, appellate courts, city and district courts, and conciliation councils. The judiciary is independent of executive and legislative branches. While the Prime Minister nominates Supreme Court Justices for office, their nomination must be approved by Parliament and formally confirmed by the Monarch in the Council of State. Usually, judges attached to regular courts are formally appointed by the Monarch on the advice of the Prime Minister.
The Courts' strict and formal mission is to regulate the Norwegian judicial system, interpret the Constitution, and as such implement the legislation adopted by Parliament. In its judicial reviews, it monitors the legislative and executive branches to ensure that they comply with provisions of enacted legislation.
The law is enforced in Norway by the Norwegian Police Service. It is a Unified National Police Service made up of 27 Police Districts and several specialist agencies, such as Norwegian National Authority for the Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime, known as "Økokrim"; and the National Criminal Investigation Service, known as "Kripos", each headed by a chief of police. The Police Service is headed by the National Police Directorate, which reports to the Ministry of Justice and the Police. The Police Directorate is headed by a National Police Commissioner. The only exception is the Norwegian Police Security Agency, whose head answers directly to the Ministry of Justice and the Police.
Norway abolished the death penalty for regular criminal acts in 1902. The legislature abolished the death penalty for high treason in war and war-crimes in 1979. Reporters Without Borders, in its 2007 Worldwide Press Freedom Index, ranked Norway at a shared first place (along with Iceland) out of 169 countries.
In general, the legal and institutional framework in Norway is characterised by a high degree of transparency, accountability and integrity, and the perception and the occurrence of corruption are very low. Norway has ratified all relevant international anti-corruption conventions, and its standards of implementation and enforcement of anti-corruption legislation are considered very high by many international anti-corruption working groups such as the OECD Anti-Bribery Working Group. However, there are some isolated cases showing that some municipalities have abused their position in public procurement processes.
Norwegian prisons are humane, rather than tough, with emphasis on rehabilitation. At 20%, Norway's re-conviction rate is among the lowest in the world.
Norway maintains embassies in 82 countries. 60 countries maintain an embassy in Norway, all of them in the capital, Oslo.
Norway is a founding member of the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Council of Europe and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Norway issued applications for accession to the European Union (EU) and its predecessors in 1962, 1967 and 1992, respectively. While Denmark, Sweden and Finland obtained membership, the Norwegian electorate rejected the treaties of accession in referenda in 1972 and 1994.
After the 1994 referendum, Norway maintained its membership in the European Economic Area (EEA), an arrangement granting the country access to the internal market of the Union, on the condition that Norway implements the Union's pieces of legislation which are deemed relevant (of which there were approximately seven thousand by 2010) Successive Norwegian governments have, since 1994, requested participation in parts of the EU's co-operation that go beyond the provisions of the EEA agreement. Non-voting participation by Norway has been granted in, for instance, the Union's Common Security and Defence Policy, the Schengen Agreement, and the European Defence Agency, as well as 19 separate programmes.
Norway participated in the 1990s brokering of the Oslo Accords, an unsuccessful attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
The Norwegian Armed Forces numbers about 25,000 personnel, including civilian employees. According to 2009 mobilisation plans, full mobilisation produces approximately 83,000 combatant personnel. Norway has conscription (including 6–12 months of training); in 2013, the country became the first in Europe and NATO to draft women as well as men. However, due to less need for conscripts after the Cold War ended with the break-up of the Soviet Union, few people have to serve if they are not motivated. The Armed Forces are subordinate to the Norwegian Ministry of Defence. The Commander-in-Chief is King Harald V. The military of Norway is divided into the following branches: the Norwegian Army, the Royal Norwegian Navy, the Royal Norwegian Air Force, the Norwegian Cyber Defence Force and the Home Guard.
In response to its being overrun by Germany in 1940, the country was one of the founding nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on 4 April 1949. At present, Norway contributes in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Additionally, Norway has contributed in several missions in contexts of the United Nations, NATO, and the Common Security and Defence Policy of the European Union.
Norwegians enjoy the second-highest GDP per-capita among European countries (after Luxembourg), and the sixth-highest GDP (PPP) per-capita in the world. Today, Norway ranks as the second-wealthiest country in the world in monetary value, with the largest capital reserve per capita of any nation. According to the CIA World Factbook, Norway is a net external creditor of debt. Norway maintained first place in the world in the UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) for six consecutive years (2001–2006), and then reclaimed this position in 2009. The standard of living in Norway is among the highest in the world. "Foreign Policy" magazine ranks Norway last in its Failed States Index for 2009, judging Norway to be the world's most well-functioning and stable country. The OECD ranks Norway fourth in the 2013 equalised Better Life Index and third in intergenerational earnings elasticity.
The Norwegian economy is an example of a mixed economy; a prosperous capitalist welfare state it features a combination of free market activity and large state ownership in certain key sectors, influenced by both liberal governments from the late 19th century and later by social democratic governments in the postwar era. Public health care in Norway is free (after an annual charge of around 2000 kroner for those over 16), and parents have 46 weeks paid parental leave. The state income derived from natural resources includes a significant contribution from petroleum production. Norway has an unemployment rate of 4.8%, with 68% of the population aged 15–74 employed. People in the labour force are either employed or looking for work. 9.5% of the population aged 18–66 receive a disability pension and 30% of the labour force are employed by the government, the highest in the OECD. The hourly productivity levels, as well as average hourly wages in Norway, are among the highest in the world.
The egalitarian values of Norwegian society have kept the wage difference between the lowest paid worker and the CEO of most companies as much less than in comparable western economies. This is also evident in Norway's low Gini coefficient.
The state has large ownership positions in key industrial sectors, such as the strategic petroleum sector (Statoil), hydroelectric energy production (Statkraft), aluminium production (Norsk Hydro), the largest Norwegian bank (DNB), and telecommunication provider (Telenor). Through these big companies, the government controls approximately 30% of the stock values at the Oslo Stock Exchange. When non-listed companies are included, the state has even higher share in ownership (mainly from direct oil licence ownership). Norway is a major shipping nation and has the world's 6th largest merchant fleet, with 1,412 Norwegian-owned merchant vessels.
By referendums in 1972 and 1994, Norwegians rejected proposals to join the European Union (EU). However, Norway, together with Iceland and Liechtenstein, participates in the European Union's single market through the European Economic Area (EEA) agreement. The EEA Treaty between the European Union countries and the EFTA countries—transposed into Norwegian law via "EØS-loven"—describes the procedures for implementing European Union rules in Norway and the other EFTA countries. Norway is a highly integrated member of most sectors of the EU internal market. Some sectors, such as agriculture, oil and fish, are not wholly covered by the EEA Treaty. Norway has also acceded to the Schengen Agreement and several other intergovernmental agreements among the EU member states.
The country is richly endowed with natural resources including petroleum, hydropower, fish, forests, and minerals. Large reserves of petroleum and natural gas were discovered in the 1960s, which led to a boom in the economy. Norway has obtained one of the highest standards of living in the world in part by having a large amount of natural resources compared to the size of the population. In 2011, 28% of state revenues were generated from the petroleum industry.
Norway is the first country which banned cutting of trees (deforestation), in order to prevent rain forests from vanishing. The country declared its intention at the UN Climate Summit in 2014, alongside Great Britain and Germany. Crops, that are typically linked to forests' destruction are timber, soy, palm oil and beef. Now Norway has to find a new way to provide these essential products without exerting negative influence on its environment.
Export revenues from oil and gas have risen to over 40% of total exports and constitute almost 20% of the GDP. Norway is the fifth-largest oil exporter and third-largest gas exporter in the world, but it is not a member of OPEC. In 1995, the Norwegian government established the sovereign wealth fund ("Government Pension Fund – Global"), which would be funded with oil revenues, including taxes, dividends, sales revenues and licensing fees. This was intended to reduce overheating in the economy from oil revenues, minimise uncertainty from volatility in oil price, and provide a cushion to compensate for expenses associated with the ageing of the population.
The government controls its petroleum resources through a combination of state ownership in major operators in the oil fields (with approximately 62% ownership in Statoil in 2007) and the fully state-owned Petoro, which has a market value of about twice Statoil, and SDFI. Finally, the government controls licensing of exploration and production of fields. The fund invests in developed financial markets outside Norway. Spending from the fund is constrained by the budgetary rule ("Handlingsregelen"), which limits spending over time to no more than the real value yield of the fund, originally assumed to be 4% a year, but lowered in 2017 to 3% of the fund's total value.
Between 1966 and 2013, Norwegian companies drilled 5085 oil wells, mostly in the North Sea. Of these 3672 are "utviklingsbrønner" (regular production); 1413 are "letebrønner" (exploration); and 1405 have been terminated ("avsluttet").
Oil fields not yet in production phase include: Wisting Central—calculated size in 2013, 65–156 million barrels of oil and , ("utvinnbar") of gas. and the Castberg Oil Field ("Castberg-feltet")—calculated size 540 million barrels of oil, and ("utvinnbar") of gas. Both oil fields are located in the Barents Sea.
Norway is also the world's second-largest exporter of fish (in value, after China). Fish from fish farms and catch constitutes the second largest (behind oil/natural gas) export product measured in value.
Hydroelectric plants generate roughly 98–99% of Norway's electric power, more than any other country in the world.
Norway contains significant mineral resources, and in 2013, its mineral production was valued at US$1.5 billion (Norwegian Geological Survey data). The most valuable minerals are calcium carbonate (limestone), building stone, nepheline syenite, olivine, iron, titanium, and nickel.
In 2017, the Government Pension Fund controlled assets surpassed a value of US$1 trillion (equal to US$190,000 per capita), about 250% of Norway's 2017 GDP. It is the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. The fund controls about 1.3% of all listed shares in Europe, and more than 1% of all the publicly traded shares in the world. The Norwegian Central Bank operates investment offices in London, New York, and Shanghai. Guidelines implemented in 2007 allow the fund to invest up to 60% of the capital in shares (maximum of 40% prior), while the rest may be placed in bonds and real-estate. As the stock markets tumbled in September 2008, the fund was able to buy more shares at low prices. In this way, the losses incurred by the market turmoil was recuperated by November 2009.
Other nations with economies based on natural resources, such as Russia, are trying to learn from Norway by establishing similar funds. The investment choices of the Norwegian fund are directed by ethical guidelines; for example, the fund is not allowed to invest in companies that produce parts for nuclear weapons. Norway's highly transparent investment scheme is lauded by the international community. The future size of the fund is closely linked to the price of oil and to developments in international financial markets.
In 2000, the government sold one-third of the state-owned oil company Statoil in an IPO. The next year, the main telecom supplier, Telenor, was listed on Oslo Stock Exchange. The state also owns significant shares of Norway's largest bank, DnB NOR and the airline SAS. Since 2000, economic growth has been rapid, pushing unemployment down to levels not seen since the early 1980s (unemployment in 2007: 1.3%). The international financial crisis has primarily affected the industrial sector, but unemployment has remained low, and was at 3.3% (86,000 people) in August 2011. In contrast to Norway, Sweden had substantially higher actual and projected unemployment numbers as a result of the recession. Thousands of mainly young Swedes migrated to Norway for work during these years, which is easy, as the labour market and social security systems overlap in the Nordic Countries. In the first quarter of 2009, the GNP of Norway surpassed Sweden's for the first time in history, although its population is half the size.
Due to the low population density, narrow shape and long coastlines of Norway, its public transport is less developed than in many European countries, especially outside the major cities. The country has long-standing water transport traditions, but the Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications has in recent years implemented rail, road, and air transport through numerous subsidiaries to develop the country's infrastructure. Under discussion is development of a new high-speed rail system between the nation's largest cities.
Norway's main railway network consists of of standard gauge lines, of which is double track and high-speed rail (210 km/h) while 62% is electrified at . The railways transported 56,827,000 passengers 2,956 million passenger-kilometres and 24,783,000 tonnes of cargo 3,414 million tonne-kilometres. The entire network is owned by the Norwegian National Rail Administration. All domestic passenger trains except the Airport Express Train are operated by Norges Statsbaner (NSB). Several companies operate freight trains.
Investment in new infrastructure and maintenance is financed through the state budget, and subsidies are provided for passenger train operations. NSB operates long-haul trains, including night trains, regional services and four commuter train systems, around Oslo, Trondheim, Bergen and Stavanger.
Norway has approximately of road network, of which are paved and are motorway. The four tiers of road routes are national, county, municipal and private, with national and primary county roads numbered en route. The most important national routes are part of the European route scheme. The two most prominent are the European route E6 going north–south through the entire country, and the E39, which follows the West Coast. National and county roads are managed by the Norwegian Public Roads Administration.
Norway has the world's largest registered stock of plug-in electric vehicles per capita. In March 2014, Norway became the first country where over 1 in every 100 passenger cars on the roads is a plug-in electric. The plug-in electric segment market share of new car sales is also the highest in the world. According to a report by Dagens Næringsliv in June 2016, the country would like to ban sales of gasoline and diesel powered vehicles as early as 2025. In June 2017, 42% of new cars registered were electric.
Of the 98 airports in Norway, 52 are public, and 46 are operated by the state-owned Avinor. Seven airports have more than one million passengers annually. A total of 41,089,675 passengers passed through Norwegian airports in 2007, of whom 13,397,458 were international.
The central gateway to Norway by air is Oslo Airport, Gardermoen. Located about northeast of Oslo, it is hub for the two major Norwegian airlines: Scandinavian Airlines and Norwegian Air Shuttle, and for regional aircraft from Western Norway. There are departures to most European countries and some intercontinental destinations. A direct high-speed train connects to Oslo Central Station every 10 minutes for a 20 min ride.
Norway's population was 5,096,300 people in October 2013. Norwegians are an ethnic North Germanic people. Since the late 20th century, Norway has attracted immigrants from southern and central Europe, the Mideast, Africa, Asia and beyond.
The total fertility rate (TFR) in 2018 was estimated at 1.56 children born per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1, it remains considerably below the high of 4.69 children born per woman in 1877. In 2018 the median age of the Norwegian population was 39.3 years.
In 2012, an official study showed that 86% of the total population have at least one parent who was born in Norway. More than 710,000 individuals (13%) are immigrants and their descendants; there are 117,000 children of immigrants, born in Norway.
Of these 710,000 immigrants and their descendants:
In 2013, the Norwegian government said that 14% of the Norwegian population were immigrants or children of two immigrant parents. About 6% of the immigrant population come from EU, North America and Australia, and about 8.1% come from Asia, Africa and Latin America.
In 2012, of the total 660,000 with immigrant background, 407,262 had Norwegian citizenship (62.2%).
Immigrants have settled in all Norwegian municipalities. The cities or municipalities with the highest share of immigrants in 2012 were Oslo (32%) and Drammen (27%). The share in Stavanger was 16%. According to Reuters, Oslo is the "fastest growing city in Europe because of increased immigration". In recent years, immigration has accounted for most of Norway's population growth. In 2011, 16% of newborn children were of immigrant background.
The Sámi people are indigenous to the Far North and have traditionally inhabited central and northern parts of Norway and Sweden, as well as areas in northern Finland and in Russia on the Kola Peninsula. Another national minority are the Kven people, descendants of Finnish-speaking people who migrated to northern Norway from the 18th up to the 20th century. From the 19th century up to the 1970s, the Norwegian government tried to assimilate both the Sámi and the Kven, encouraging them to adopt the majority language, culture and religion. Because of this "Norwegianization process", many families of Sámi or Kven ancestry now identify as ethnic Norwegian.
Particularly in the 19th century, when economic conditions were difficult in Norway, tens of thousands of people migrated to the United States and Canada, where they could work and buy land in frontier areas. Many went to the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. In 2006, according to the US Census Bureau, almost 4.7 million persons identified as Norwegian Americans, which was larger than the population of ethnic Norwegians in Norway itself. In the 2011 Canadian census, 452,705 Canadian citizens identified as having Norwegian ancestry.
, the number of immigrants or children of two immigrants residing in Norway was 710,465, or 14.1% of the total population, up from 183,000 in 1992. Yearly immigration has increased since 2005. While yearly net immigration in 2001–2005 was on average 13,613, it increased to 37,541 between 2006 and 2010, and in 2011 net immigration reached 47,032. This is mostly because of increased immigration by residents of the EU, in particular from Poland.
In 2012, the immigrant community (which includes immigrants and children born in Norway of immigrant parents) grew by 55,300, a record high. Net immigration from abroad reached 47,300 (300 higher than in 2011), while immigration accounted for 72% of Norway's population growth. 17% of newborn children were born to immigrant parents. Children of Pakistani, Somali and Vietnamese parents made up the largest groups of all Norwegians born to immigrant parents.
Pakistani Norwegians are the largest non-European minority group in Norway. Most of their 32,700 members live in and around Oslo. The Iraqi and Somali immigrant populations have increased significantly in recent years. After the enlargement of the EU in 2004, a wave of immigrants arrived from Central and Northern Europe, particularly Poland, Sweden and Lithuania. The fastest growing immigrant groups in 2011 in absolute numbers were from Poland, Lithuania and Sweden. The policies of immigration and integration have been the subject of much debate in Norway.
Separation of church and state happened significantly later in Norway than in most of Europe, and remains incomplete. In 2012, the Norwegian parliament voted to grant the Church of Norway greater autonomy, a decision which was confirmed in a constitutional amendment on 21 May 2012.
Until 2012 parliamentary officials were required to be members of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Norway, and at least half of all government ministers had to be a member of the state church. As state church, the Church of Norway's clergy were viewed as state employees, and the central and regional church administrations were part of the state administration. Members of the Royal family are required to be members of the Lutheran church. On 1 January 2017, Norway made the church independent of the state, but retained the Church's status as the "people's church".
Most Norwegians are registered at baptism as members of the Church of Norway, which has been Norway's state church since its establishment. In recent years the church has been granted increasing internal autonomy, but it retains its special constitutional status and other special ties to the state, and the constitution requires that the reigning monarch must be a member and states that the country's values are based on its Christian and humanist heritage. Many remain in the church to participate in the community and practices such as baptism, confirmation, marriage and burial rites. About 70.6% of Norwegians were members of the Church of Norway in 2017. In 2017, about 53.6% of all newborns were baptised and about 57.9% of all 15-year-old persons were confirmed in the church.
In the early 1990s, studies estimated that between 4.7% and 5.3% of Norwegians attended church on a weekly basis. This figure has dropped to about 2%.
In 2010, 10% of the population was religiously unaffiliated, while another 9% were members of religious communities outside the Church of Norway. Other Christian denominations total about 4.9% of the population, the largest of which is the Roman Catholic Church, with 83,000 members, according to 2009 government statistics. The "Aftenposten" (Norwegian, The Evening Post) in October 2012 reported there were about 115,234 registered Roman Catholics in Norway; the reporter estimated that the total number of people with a Roman Catholic background may be 170,000–200,000 or higher.
Others include Pentecostals (39,600), the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church of Norway (19,600), Methodists (11,000), Baptists (9,900), Eastern Orthodox (9,900), Brunstad Christian Church (6,800), Seventh-day Adventists (5,100), Assyrians and Chaldeans, and others. The Swedish, Finnish and Icelandic Lutheran congregations in Norway have about 27,500 members in total. Other Christian denominations comprise less than 1% each, including 4,000 members in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and 12,000 Jehovah's Witnesses.
Among non-Christian religions, Islam is the largest, with 166,861 registered members (2018), and probably fewer than 200,000 in total. It is practised mainly by Somali, Arab, Bosniak, Kurdish and Turkish immigrants, as well as Norwegians of Pakistani descent.
Other religions comprise less than 1% each, including 819 adherents of Judaism. Indian immigrants introduced Hinduism to Norway, which in 2011 has slightly more than 5,900 adherents, or 1% of non-Lutheran Norwegians. Sikhism has approximately 3,000 adherents, with most living in Oslo, which has two gurdwaras. Sikhs first came to Norway in the early 1970s. The troubles in Punjab after Operation Blue Star and riots committed against Sikhs in India after the assassination of Indira Gandhi led to an increase in Sikh refugees moving to Norway. Drammen also has a sizeable population of Sikhs; the largest gurdwara in north Europe was built in Lier. There are eleven Buddhist organisations, grouped under the Buddhistforbundet organisation, with slightly over 14,000 members, which make up 0.2% of the population. The Baha'i religion has slightly more than 1,000 adherents. Around 1.7% (84,500) of Norwegians belong to the secular Norwegian Humanist Association.
From 2006 to 2011, the fastest-growing religious communities in Norway were Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Oriental Orthodox Christianity, which grew in membership by 80%; however, their share of the total population remains small, at 0.2%. It is associated with the huge immigration from Eritrea and Ethiopia, and to a lesser extent from Central and Eastern European and Middle Eastern countries. Other fast-growing religions were Roman Catholicism (78.7%), Hinduism (59.6%), Islam (48.1%), and Buddhism (46.7%).
As in other Scandinavian countries, the ancient Norse followed a form of native Germanic paganism known as Norse paganism. By the end of the 11th century, when Norway had been Christianised, the indigenous Norse religion and practices were prohibited. Remnants of the native religion and beliefs of Norway survive today in the form of names, referential names of cities and locations, the days of the week, and other parts of everyday language. Modern interest in the old ways has led to a revival of pagan religious practices in the form of "Åsatru." The Norwegian "Åsatrufellesskapet Bifrost" formed in 1996; in 2011, the fellowship had about 300 members. "Foreningen Forn Sed" was formed in 1999 and has been recognised by the Norwegian government.
The Sámi minority retained their shamanistic religion well into the 18th century, when most converted to Christianity under the influence of Dano-Norwegian Lutheran missionaries. Although some insist that "indigenous Sámi religion had effectively been eradicated,' athropologist Gutorm Gjessing's "Changing Lapps" (1954) argues that the Sámi's "were outwardly and to all practical purposes converted to Christianity, but at the subconscious and unconscious level, the shamistic frenzy survived, more or less latent, only awaiting the necessary stimulus to break out into the open." Today there is a renewed appreciation for the Sámi traditional way of life, which has led to a revival of "Noaidevuohta". Some Norwegian and Sámi celebrities are reported to visit shamans for guidance.
According to the 2010 Eurobarometer Poll, 22% of Norwegian citizens responded that "they believe there is a God", 44% responded that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force" and 29% responded that "they don't believe there is any sort of spirit, God or life force". Five percent gave no response.
Norway was awarded first place according to the UN's Human Development Index (HDI) for 2013. In the 1800s, by contrast, poverty and communicable diseases dominated in Norway together with famines and epidemics. From the 1900s, improvements in public health occurred as a result of development in several areas such as social and living conditions, changes in disease and medical outbreaks, establishment of the health care system, and emphasis on public health matters. Vaccination and increased treatment opportunities with antibiotics resulted in great improvements within the Norwegian population. Improved hygiene and better nutrition were factors that contributed to improved health.
The disease pattern in Norway changed from communicable diseases to non-communicable diseases and chronic diseases as cardiovascular disease. Inequalities and social differences are still present in public health in Norway today.
In 2013 the infant mortality rate was 2.5 per 1,000 live births among children under the age of one. For girls it was 2.7 and for boys 2.3, which is the lowest infant mortality rate for boys ever recorded in Norway.
Higher education in Norway is offered by a range of seven universities, five specialised colleges, 25 university colleges as well as a range of private colleges. Education follows the Bologna Process involving Bachelor (3 years), Master (2 years) and PhD (3 years) degrees. Acceptance is offered after finishing upper secondary school with general study competence.
Public education is virtually free, regardless of nationality. The academic year has two semesters, from August to December and from January to June. The ultimate responsibility for the education lies with the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research.
Norwegian and Sámi are the two official languages of Norway.
The North Germanic Norwegian language has two official written forms, "Bokmål" and "Nynorsk". Both are used in public administration, schools, churches, and media. Bokmål is the written language used by a large majority of about 80–85%. Around 95% of the population speak Norwegian as their first or native language, although many speak dialects that may differ significantly from the written languages. All Norwegian dialects are mutually intelligible, although listeners with limited exposure to dialects other than their own may struggle to understand certain phrases and pronunciations in some other dialects.
Several Uralic Sámi languages are spoken and written throughout the country, especially in the north, by some members of the Sámi people. (Estimates suggest that about one third of the Norwegian Sámi speak a Sámi language.) Speakers have a right to be educated and to receive communication from the government in their own language in a special "forvaltningsområde" (administrative area) for Sámi languages. The Kven minority historically spoke the Uralic Kven language (considered a separate language in Norway, but generally perceived as a Finnish dialect in Finland). Today the majority of ethnic Kven have little or no knowledge of the language. According to the Kainun institutti, "The typical modern Kven is a Norwegian-speaking Norwegian who knows his genealogy." As Norway has ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) the Kven language together with Romani and Scandoromani language has become officially recognised minority languages.
Some supporters have also advocated making Norwegian Sign Language an official language of the country.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Norwegian language was subject to strong political and cultural controversies. This led to the development of Nynorsk in the 19th century and to the formation of alternative spelling standards in the 20th century.
Norwegian is similar to its neighbour Scandinavian languages; Swedish and Danish. All three languages are to a degree mutually intelligible and can be, and commonly are, employed in communication among inhabitants of the Scandinavian countries. As a result of the co-operation within the Nordic Council, inhabitants of all Nordic countries, including Iceland and Finland, have the right to communicate with Norwegian authorities in their own language.
Students who are children of immigrant parents are encouraged to learn the Norwegian language. The Norwegian government offers language instructional courses for immigrants wishing to obtain Norwegian citizenship. With increasing concern about assimilating immigrants, since 1 September 2008, the government has required that an applicant for Norwegian citizenship give evidence of proficiency in either Norwegian or in one of the Sámi languages, or give proof of having attended classes in Norwegian for 300 hours, or meet the language requirements for university studies in Norway (that is, by being proficient in one of the Scandinavian languages).
The primary foreign language taught in Norwegian schools is English, considered an international language since the post-WWII era. The majority of the population is fairly fluent in English, especially those born after World War II. German, French and Spanish are also commonly taught as second or, more often, third languages. Russian, Japanese, Italian, Latin, and rarely Chinese (Mandarin) are offered in some schools, mostly in the cities. Traditionally, English, German and French were considered the main foreign languages in Norway. These languages, for instance, were used on Norwegian passports until the 1990s, and university students have a general right to use these languages when submitting their theses.
The Norwegian farm culture continues to play a role in contemporary Norwegian culture. In the 19th century, it inspired a strong romantic nationalistic movement, which is still visible in the Norwegian language and . Norwegian culture blossomed with nationalist efforts to achieve an independent identity in the areas of literature, art and music. This continues today in the performing arts and as a result of government support for exhibitions, cultural projects and artwork.
Norway has been considered a progressive country, which has adopted legislation and policies to support women's rights, minority rights, and LGBT rights. As early as 1884, 171 of the leading figures, among them five Prime Ministers for the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, co-founded the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights. They successfully campaigned for women's right to education, women's suffrage, the right to work, and other gender equality policies. From the 1970s, gender equality also came high on the state agenda, with the establishment of a public body to promote gender equality, which evolved into the Gender Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud. Civil society organisations also continue to play an important role, and the women's rights organisations are today organised in the Norwegian Women's Lobby umbrella organisation.
In 1990, the Norwegian constitution was amended to grant absolute primogeniture to the Norwegian throne, meaning that the eldest child, regardless of gender, takes precedence in the line of succession. As it was not retroactive, the current successor to the throne is the eldest son of the King, rather than his eldest child. The Norwegian constitution Article 6 states that "For those born before the year 1990 it shall...be the case that a male shall take precedence over a female."
The Sámi people have for centuries been the subject of discrimination and abuse by the dominant cultures in Scandinavia and Russia, those countries claiming possession of Sámi lands. The Sámi people have never been a single community in a single region of Sápmi. Norway has been greatly criticised by the international community for the politics of Norwegianization of and discrimination against the indigenous population of the country. Nevertheless, Norway was, in 1990, the first country to recognise ILO-convention 169 on indigenous people recommended by the UN.
In regard to LGBT rights, Norway was the first country in the world to enact an anti-discrimination law protecting the rights of gays and lesbians. In 1993, Norway became the second country to legalise civil union partnerships for same-sex couples, and on 1 January 2009 Norway became the sixth country to grant full marriage equality to same-sex couples. As a promoter of human rights, Norway has held the annual Oslo Freedom Forum conference, a gathering described by "The Economist" as "on its way to becoming a human-rights equivalent of the Davos economic forum."
The Norwegian cinema has received international recognition. The documentary film "Kon-Tiki" (1950) won an Academy Award. In 1959, Arne Skouen's "Nine Lives" was nominated, but failed to win. Another notable film is "Flåklypa Grand Prix" (English: "Pinchcliffe Grand Prix"), an animated feature film directed by Ivo Caprino. The film was released in 1975 and is based on characters from Norwegian cartoonist Kjell Aukrust. It is the most widely seen Norwegian film of all time.
Nils Gaup's "Pathfinder" (1987), the story of the Sámi, was nominated for an Oscar. Berit Nesheim's "The Other Side of Sunday" was nominated for an Oscar in 1997.
Since the 1990s, the film industry has thrived, producing up to 20 feature films each year. Particular successes were "Kristin Lavransdatter", based on a novel by a Nobel Prize winner; "The Telegraphist" and "Gurin with the Foxtail". Knut Erik Jensen was among the more successful new directors, together with Erik Skjoldbjærg, who is remembered for "Insomnia".
The country has also been used as filming location for several Hollywood and other international productions, including "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980), for which the producers used Hardangerjøkulen glacier as a filming location for scenes of the ice planet Hoth. It included a memorable battle in the snow. The films "Die Another Day", "The Golden Compass", "Spies Like Us" and "Heroes of Telemark," as well as the TV series "Lilyhammer" and "Vikings" also had scenes set in Norway. A short film, "The Spirit of Norway" was featured at Maelstrom at Norway Pavilion at Epcot located within Walt Disney World Resort in Florida in the United States. The attraction and the film ceased their operations on 5 October 2014.
The classical music of the romantic composers Edvard Grieg, Rikard Nordraak and Johan Svendsen is internationally known, as is the modern music of Arne Nordheim. Norway's classical performers include Leif Ove Andsnes, one of the world's more famous pianists; Truls Mørk, an outstanding cellist; and the great Wagnerian soprano Kirsten Flagstad.
Norwegian black metal, a form of rock music in Norway, has been an influence in world music since the late 20th century. Since the 1990s, Norway's export of black metal, a lo-fi, dark and raw form of heavy metal, has been developed by such bands as Emperor, Darkthrone, Gorgoroth, Mayhem, Burzum and Immortal. More recently, bands such as Enslaved, Kvelertak, Dimmu Borgir and Satyricon have evolved the genre into the present day while still garnering worldwide fans. Controversial events associated with the black metal movement in the early 1990s included several church burnings and two prominent murder cases.
The jazz scene in Norway is thriving. Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, Mari Boine, Arild Andersen and Bugge Wesseltoft are internationally recognised while Paal Nilssen-Love, Supersilent, Jaga Jazzist and Wibutee are becoming world-class artists of the younger generation.
Other internationally recognised bands are A-ha, Röyksopp and Ylvis. A-ha initially rose to global fame during the mid-1980s. In the 1990s and 2000s, the group maintained its popularity domestically, and has remained successful outside Norway, especially in Germany, Switzerland, France, and Brazil.
Some of the most memorable female solo artists from Norway are Susanne Sundfør, Sigrid, Astrid S, Adelén, Julie Bergan, Maria Mena, Tone Damli, Margaret Berger, Lene Marlin, Christel Alsos, Maria Arredondo, Marion Raven and Marit Larsen (both former members of the defunct pop-rock group M2M), Lene Nystrøm (vocalist of the Danish eurodance group Aqua) and Anni-Frid Lyngstad (vocalist of the Swedish pop group ABBA).
In recent years, various Norwegian songwriters and production teams have contributed to the music of other international artists. The Norwegian production team Stargate has produced songs for Rihanna, Beyoncé, Shakira, Jennifer Lopez and Lionel Richie, among others. Espen Lind has written and produced songs for Beyoncé, Lionel Richie and Leona Lewis, among others. Lene Marlin has written songs for Rihanna and Lovebugs. Ina Wroldsen has written songs for artists such as Demi Lovato, Shakira, Inna, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, One Direction and The Saturdays, among others.
Norway enjoys many music festivals throughout the year, all over the country. Norway is the host of one of the world's biggest extreme sport festivals with music, Ekstremsportveko—a festival held annually in Voss. Oslo is the host of many festivals, such as Øyafestivalen and . Oslo used to have a summer parade similar to the German Love Parade. In 1992, the city of Oslo wanted to adopt the French music festival "Fête de la Musique". Fredrik Carl Størmer established the festival. Even in its first year, "Musikkens Dag" gathered thousands of people and artists in the streets of Oslo. "Musikkens Dag" is now renamed "Musikkfest Oslo".
The history of Norwegian literature starts with the pagan Eddaic poems and skaldic verse of the 9th and 10th centuries, with poets such as Bragi Boddason and Eyvindr skáldaspillir. The arrival of Christianity around the year 1000 brought Norway into contact with European medieval learning, hagiography and history writing. Merged with native oral tradition and Icelandic influence, this influenced the literature written in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Major works of that period include "Historia Norwegiæ", "Þiðrekssaga" and "Konungs skuggsjá".
Little Norwegian literature came out of the period of the Scandinavian Union and the subsequent Dano-Norwegian union (1387–1814), with some notable exceptions such as Petter Dass and Ludvig Holberg. In his play "Peer Gynt", Ibsen characterised this period as "Twice two hundred years of darkness/brooded o'er the race of monkeys." The first line of this couplet is frequently quoted. During the union with Denmark, the government imposed using only written Danish, which decreased the writing of Norwegian literature.
Two major events precipitated a major resurgence in Norwegian literature: in 1811 a Norwegian university was established in Christiania. Secondly, seized by the spirit of revolution following the American and French revolutions, the Norwegians created their first Constitution in 1814. Strong authors were inspired who became recognised first in Scandinavia, and then worldwide; among them were Henrik Wergeland, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, Jørgen Moe and Camilla Collett.
By the late 19th century, in the Golden Age of Norwegian literature, the so-called "Great Four" emerged: Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Alexander Kielland, and Jonas Lie. Bjørnson's "peasant novels", such as "Ein glad gut" (A Happy Boy) and "Synnøve Solbakken", are typical of the Norwegian romantic nationalism of their day. Kielland's novels and short stories are mostly naturalistic. Although an important contributor to early romantic nationalism, (especially "Peer Gynt"), Henrik Ibsen is better known for his pioneering realistic dramas such as "The Wild Duck" and "A Doll's House." They caused an uproar because of his candid portrayals of the middle classes, complete with infidelity, unhappy marriages, and corrupt businessmen.
In the 20th century, three Norwegian novelists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson in 1903, Knut Hamsun for the book "Markens grøde" ("Growth of the Soil") in 1920, and Sigrid Undset (known for "Kristinlavransdatter") in 1928. Writers such as the following also made important contributions: Dag Solstad, Jon Fosse, Cora Sandel, Olav Duun, Olav H. Hauge, Gunvor Hofmo, Stein Mehren, Kjell Askildsen, Hans Herbjørnsrud, Aksel Sandemose, Bergljot Hobæk Haff, Jostein Gaarder, Erik Fosnes Hansen, Jens Bjørneboe, Kjartan Fløgstad, Lars Saabye Christensen, Johan Borgen, Herbjørg Wassmo, Jan Erik Vold, Rolf Jacobsen, Olaf Bull, Jan Kjærstad, Georg Johannesen, Tarjei Vesaas, Sigurd Hoel, Arnulf Øverland, Karl Ove Knausgård and Johan Falkberget.
Internationally recognised Norwegian scientists include the mathematicians Niels Henrik Abel, Sophus Lie and Atle Selberg, physical chemist Lars Onsager, physicist Ivar Giaever, chemists Odd Hassel, Peter Waage, and Cato Maximilian Guldberg.
In the 20th century, Norwegian academics have been pioneering in many social sciences, including criminology, sociology and peace and conflict studies. Prominent academics include Arne Næss, a philosopher and founder of deep ecology; Johan Galtung, the founder of peace studies; Nils Christie and Thomas Mathiesen, criminologists; Fredrik Barth, a social anthropologist; Vilhelm Aubert, Harriet Holter and Erik Grønseth, sociologists; Tove Stang Dahl, a pioneer of women's law; Stein Rokkan, a political scientist; and economists Ragnar Frisch, Trygve Haavelmo, and Finn E. Kydland.
In 2014, the two Norwegian scientists May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with John O'Keefe. They won the prize for their groundbreaking work identifying the cells that make up a positioning system in the human brain, our "in-built GPS".
With expansive forests, Norway has long had a tradition of building in wood. Many of today's most interesting new buildings are made of wood, reflecting the strong appeal that this material continues to hold for Norwegian designers and builders.
With Norway's conversion to Christianity some 1,000 years ago, churches were built. Stonework architecture was introduced from Europe for the most important structures, beginning with the construction of Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. In the early Middle Ages, wooden stave churches were constructed throughout Norway. Some of them have survived; they represent Norway's most unusual contribution to architectural history. A fine example, Urnes Stave Church in inner Sognefjord, is on UNESCO's World Heritage List. Another notable example of wooden architecture is the buildings at Bryggen Wharf in Bergen, also on the list for World Cultural Heritage sites, consisting of a row of tall, narrow wooden structures along the quayside.
In the 17th century, under the Danish monarchy, cities and villages such as Kongsberg and Røros were established. The city Kongsberg had a church built in the Baroque style. Traditional wooden buildings that were constructed in Røros have survived.
After Norway's union with Denmark was dissolved in 1814, Oslo became the capital. The architect Christian H. Grosch designed the earliest parts of the University of Oslo, the Oslo Stock Exchange, and many other buildings and churches constructed in that early national period.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the city of Ålesund was rebuilt in the Art Nouveau style, influenced by styles of France. The 1930s, when functionalism dominated, became a strong period for Norwegian architecture. It is only since the late 20th century that Norwegian architects have achieved international renown. One of the most striking modern buildings in Norway is the Sámi Parliament in Kárášjohka, designed by Stein Halvorson and Christian Sundby. Its debating chamber, in timber, is an abstract version of a "lavvo," the traditional tent used by the nomadic Sámi people.
For an extended period, the Norwegian art scene was dominated by artwork from Germany and Holland as well as by the influence of Copenhagen. It was in the 19th century that a truly Norwegian era began, first with portraits, later with impressive landscapes. Johan Christian Dahl (1788–1857), originally from the Dresden school, eventually returned to paint the landscapes of western Norway, defining Norwegian painting for the first time."
Norway's newly found independence from Denmark encouraged painters to develop their Norwegian identity, especially with landscape painting by artists such as Kitty Kielland, a female painter who studied under Hans Gude, and Harriet Backer, another pioneer among female artists, influenced by impressionism. Frits Thaulow, an impressionist, was influenced by the art scene in Paris as was Christian Krohg, a realist painter, famous for his paintings of prostitutes.
Of particular note is Edvard Munch, a symbolist/expressionist painter who became world-famous for "The Scream" which is said to represent the anxiety of modern man.
Other artists of note include Harald Sohlberg, a neo-romantic painter remembered for his paintings of Røros, and Odd Nerdrum, a figurative painter who maintains that his work is not art, but kitsch.
show the influence of long seafaring and farming traditions, with salmon (fresh and cured), herring (pickled or marinated), trout, codfish, and other seafood, balanced by cheeses (such as brunost), dairy products, and breads (predominantly dark/darker).
Lefse is a Norwegian potato flatbread, usually topped with large amounts of butter and sugar, most common around Christmas. Some traditional Norwegian dishes include lutefisk, smalahove, pinnekjøtt, raspeball, and fårikål. Some quirky Norwegian speciality is rakefisk, which is a fermented trout, consumed with thin flatbread (flatbrød, not lefse) and sour cream. And the most popular pastry among all population is vaffel. It is different from Belgian in taste and consistency and is served with sour cream, brown cheese, butter and sugar, or strawberry or raspberry jam, which can all be mixed or eaten separately.
Sports are a central part of Norwegian culture, and popular sports include association football, handball, biathlon, cross-country skiing, ski jumping, speed skating, and, to a lesser degree, ice hockey.
Association football is the most popular sport in Norway in terms of active membership. In 2014–2015 polling, football ranked far behind biathlon and cross-country skiing in terms of popularity as spectator sports. Ice hockey is the biggest indoor sport. The women's handball national team has won several titles, including two Summer Olympics championships (2008, 2012), three World Championships (1999, 2011, 2015), and six European Championship (1998, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2014).
In association football, the women's national team has won the FIFA Women's World Cup in 1995 and the Olympic Football Tournament in 2000. The women's team also has two UEFA European Women's Championship titles (1987, 1993). The men's national football team has participated three times in the FIFA World Cup (1938, 1994, and 1998), and once in the European Championship (2000). The highest FIFA ranking Norway has achieved is 2nd, a position it has held twice, in 1993 and in 1995.
Chess is also gaining popularity in Norway. Magnus Carlsen is the current world champion. There are about 10 Grandmasters and 29 International Masters in Norway.
Norwegian players in the National Football League (NFL) include Halvor Hagen, Bill Irgens, Leif Olve Dolonen Larsen, Mike Mock, and Jan Stenerud.
Bandy is a traditional sport in Norway and the country is one of the four founders of Federation of International Bandy. In terms of licensed athletes, it is the second biggest winter sport in the world. As of January 2018, the men's national team has captured one silver and one bronze, while the women's national team has managed five bronzes at the World Championships.
Norway first participated at the Olympic Games in 1900, and has sent athletes to compete in every Games since then, except for the sparsely attended 1904 Games and the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow when they participated in the American-led boycott. Norway leads the overall medal tables at the Winter Olympic Games by a considerable margin. Famous Norwegian winter sport athletes includes biathlete Ole Einar Bjørndalen, speed skaters Johan Olav Koss and Hjalmar Andersen, figure skater Sonja Henie and cross-country skiers Marit Bjørgen and Bjørn Dæhlie.
Norway has hosted the Games on two occasions:
It also hosted the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics in Lillehammer, making Norway the first country to host both Winter regular and Youth Olympics.
As of 2008, Norway ranks 17th in the World Economic Forum's Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report. Tourism in Norway contributed to 4.2% of the gross domestic product as reported in 2016. Every one in fifteen people throughout the country work in the tourism industry. Tourism is seasonal in Norway, with more than half of total tourists visiting between the months of May and August.
The main attractions of Norway are the varied landscapes that extend across the Arctic Circle. It is famous for its fjord-indented coastline and its mountains, ski resorts, lakes and woods. Popular tourist destinations in Norway include Oslo, Ålesund, Bergen, Stavanger, Trondheim and Tromsø. Much of the nature of Norway remains unspoiled, and thus attracts numerous hikers and skiers. The fjords, mountains and waterfalls in Western and Northern Norway attract several hundred thousand foreign tourists each year. In the cities, cultural idiosyncrasies such as the Holmenkollen ski jump attract many visitors, as do landmarks such as Bergen's Bryggen and Oslo's Vigeland Sculpture Park. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21241 |
Nokia
Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia; , , ) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics company, founded in 1865. Nokia's headquarters are in Espoo, in the greater Helsinki metropolitan area. In 2018, Nokia employed approximately 103,000 people across over 100 countries, did business in more than 130 countries, and reported annual revenues of around €23 billion. Nokia is a public limited company listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange. It is the world's 415th-largest company measured by 2016 revenues according to the "Fortune Global 500," having peaked at 85th place in 2009. It is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index.
The company has operated in various industries over the past 150 years. It was founded as a pulp mill and had long been associated with rubber and cables, but since the 1990s has focused on large-scale telecommunications infrastructures, technology development, and licensing. Nokia is a major contributor to the mobile telephony industry, having assisted in the development of the GSM, 3G and LTE standards (and currently in 5G), and was once the largest worldwide vendor of mobile phones and smartphones. After a partnership with Microsoft and subsequent market struggles, its mobile phone business was bought by Microsoft, creating Microsoft Mobile as its successor in 2014. After the sale, Nokia began to focus more extensively on its telecommunications infrastructure business and on Internet of things technologies, marked by the divestiture of its Here mapping division and the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent, including its Bell Labs research organization. The company then also experimented with virtual reality and digital health, the latter through the purchase of Withings. The Nokia brand has since returned to the mobile and smartphone market through a licensing arrangement with HMD Global. Nokia continues to be a major patent licensor for most large mobile phone vendors. As of 2018, Nokia is the world's third-largest network equipment manufacturer.
The company was viewed with national pride by Finns, as its mobile phone business made it by far the largest worldwide company and brand from Finland. At its peak in 2000, during the telecoms bubble, Nokia alone accounted for 4% of the country's GDP, 21% of total exports, and 70% of the Helsinki Stock Exchange market capital.
Nokia's history dates to 1865, when Finnish-Swede mining engineer Fredrik Idestam established a pulp mill near the town of Tampere, Finland (then in the Russian Empire). A second pulp mill was opened in 1868 near the neighboring town of Nokia, offering better hydropower resources. In 1871, Idestam, together with friend Leo Mechelin, formed a shared company from it and called it "Nokia Ab" (in Swedish, "Nokia Company" being the English equivalent), after the site of the second pulp mill.
Idestam retired in 1896, making Mechelin the company's chairman. Mechelin expanded into electricity generation by 1902 which Idestam had opposed. In 1904 Suomen Gummitehdas ("Finnish Rubber Works"), a rubber business founded by Eduard Polón, established a factory near the town of Nokia and used its name.
In 1922, Nokia Ab entered into a partnership with Finnish Rubber Works and Kaapelitehdas ("the Cable Factory"), all now jointly under the leadership of Polón. Finnish Rubber Works company grew rapidly when it moved to the Nokia region in the 1930s to take advantage of the electrical power supply, and the cable company soon did too.
Nokia at the time also made respirators for both civilian and military use, from the 1930s well into the early 1990s.
In 1967, the three companies – Nokia, Kaapelitehdas and Finnish Rubber Works – merged and created a new Nokia Corporation, restructured into four major businesses: forestry, cable, rubber and electronics. In the early 1970s, it entered the networking and radio industry. Nokia also started making military equipment for Finland's defence forces ("Puolustusvoimat"), such as the Sanomalaite M/90 communicator in 1983, and the M61 gas mask first developed in the 1960s. Nokia was now also making professional mobile radios, telephone switches, capacitors and chemicals.
After Finland's trade agreement with the Soviet Union in the 1960s, Nokia expanded into the Soviet market. It soon widened trade, ranging from automatic telephone exchanges to robotics among others; by the late 1970s the Soviet Union became a major market for Nokia, helping to yield high profits. Nokia also co-operated on scientific technology with the Soviet Union. The U.S. government became increasingly suspicious of that co-operation after the end of the Cold War détente in the early 1980s. Nokia imported many US-made components and used them for the Soviets, and according to U.S. Deputy Minister of Defence, Richard Perle, Nokia had a secret co-operation with The Pentagon that allowed the U.S. to keep track of technology developments in the Soviet Union through trading with Nokia. This was a demonstration of Finland trading with both sides, as it was neutral during the Cold War.
In 1977, Kari Kairamo became CEO and he transformed the company's businesses. By this time, Finland was becoming what has been called "Nordic Japan". Under his leadership Nokia acquired many companies including television maker Salora in 1984, followed by Swedish electronics and computer maker Luxor AB in 1985, and French television maker Oceanic in 1987. This made Nokia the third-largest television manufacturer of Europe (behind Philips and Thomson). The existing brands continued to be used until the end of the television business in 1996.
In 1987, Nokia acquired Schaub-Lorenz, the consumer operations of Germany's Standard Elektrik Lorenz (SEL), which included its "Schaub-Lorenz" and "Graetz" brands. It was originally part of American conglomerate International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT), and after the acquisition products were sold under the "ITT Nokia" brand, despite SEL's sale to Compagnie Générale d'Electricité (CGE), the predecessor of Alcatel, in 1986.
On 1 April 1988, Nokia bought the computer division of Ericsson's Information Systems, which originated as a computer division of Swedish aircraft and car manufacturer Saab called Datasaab. Ericsson Information Systems made Alfaskop terminals, typewriters, minicomputers and Ericsson-branded IBM compatible PCs. The merger with Nokia's Information Systems division—which since 1981 had a line of personal computers called MikroMikko—resulted in the name Nokia Data.
Nokia also acquired Mobira, a mobile telephony company, which was the foundation of its future mobile phones business. In 1981, Mobira launched the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) service, the world's first international cellular network and the first to allow international roaming. In 1982, Mobira launched the Mobira Senator car phone, Nokia's first mobile phone. At that time, the company had no interest in producing mobile phones, which the executive board regarded as akin to James Bond's gadgets: improbably futuristic and niche devices. After all these acquisitions, Nokia's revenue base became US$2.7 billion. CEO Kairamo committed suicide on 11 December 1988.
In 1987, Kaapelitehdas discontinued production of cables at its Helsinki factory after 44 years, effectively shutting down the sub-company.
Following Simo Vuorilehto's appointment as CEO, a major restructuring was planned. With 11 groups within the company, Vuorilehto divested industrial units he deemed as un-strategic. Nokian Tyres ("Nokian Renkaat"), a tyre producer originally formed as a division of Finnish Rubber Works in 1932, split away from Nokia Corporation in 1988. Two years later, in 1990, Finnish Rubber Works followed suit. In 1991 Nokia sold its computer division, Nokia Data, to UK-based International Computers Limited (ICL), the precursor of Fujitsu Siemens. Investors thought of this as financial trouble and Nokia's stock price sank as a result. Finland was now also experiencing its worst recession in living memory, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, a major customer, made matters worse.
Vuorilehto quit in January 1992 and was replaced by Jorma Ollila, who had been the head of the mobile phone business from 1990 and advised against selling that division. Ollila decided to turn Nokia into a 'telecom-oriented' company, and he eventually got rid of divisions like the power business. This strategy proved to be very successful and the company grew rapidly in the following years. Nokia's operating profit went from negative in 1991 to $1 billion in 1995 and almost $4 billion by 1999.
Nokia's first fully portable mobile phone after the Mobira Senator was the Mobira Cityman 900 in 1987. Nokia assisted in the development of the GSM mobile standard in the 1980s, and developed the first GSM network with Siemens, the predecessor to Nokia Siemens Network. The world's first GSM call was made by Finnish prime minister Harri Holkeri on 1 July 1991, using Nokia equipment on the 900 MHz band network built by Nokia and operated by Radiolinja. In November 1992, the Nokia 1011 launched, making it the first commercially available GSM mobile phone.
Salora Oy as a Nokia subsidiary ended in 1989 when the division was merged into Nokia-Mobira Oy. The brand continued to be used for televisions until 1995.
On 12 June 1996, Nokia announced the sale of its television business to Canada/Hong Kong-based Semi-Tech Corporation. The television manufacturing plant in Germany closed down in September 1996. The sale included a factory in Turku, and the rights to use the Nokia, Finlux, Luxor, Salora, Schaub-Lorenz and Oceanic brands until the end of 1999. Some of these brands were later sold to other companies.
Nokia was the first to launch digital satellite receivers in the UK, announced in March 1997. In August 1997 Nokia introduced the first digital satellite receiver with Common Interface (CI) support. In 1998 Nokia became the chosen supplier to produce the world's first digital terrestrial television set-top boxes by British Digital Broadcasting (BDB), which was eventually launched as ONdigital.
In October 1998, Nokia overtook Motorola to become the best-selling mobile phone brand, and in December manufactured its 100 millionth mobile phone. A major reason why Nokia grew against its main competitors Motorola and Ericsson was that it managed to cater to the consumer youth market and fashion-oriented consumers, most significantly with the Nokia 5110 and 3210 handsets which featured a large range of colourful and replaceable back-covers called Xpress-on. One of the earliest fashion phones in 1992, from Swiss watchmaker Swatch, was based on Nokia's 101 handset. The company would also form the Vertu division, creating luxury mobile handsets.
Nokia claimed in April 1996 its 447Xav and 447K monitors to be the first with stereo speakers and a sub-woofer. In May 1999 Nokia introduced their first wireless LAN products. In January 2000 ViewSonic acquired Nokia Display Products, the division making displays for personal computers. On 26 April 2001 Nokia partnered with Telefonica to supply DSL modems and routers in Spain.
In 1998, Nokia co-founded Symbian Ltd. led by Psion to create a new operating system for PDAs and smart mobile phones as a successor of EPOC32. They released the Nokia 9210 Communicator running Symbian OS in 2001 and later that year created the Symbian Series 60 platform, later introducing it with their first camera phone, the Nokia 7650. Both Nokia and Symbian eventually became the largest smartphone hardware and software maker respectively, and in February 2004 Nokia became the largest shareholder of Symbian Ltd. Nokia acquired the entire company in June 2008 and then formed the Symbian Foundation as its successor.
In 1998 alone, the company had sales revenue of $20 billion making $2.6 billion profit. By 2000 Nokia employed over 55,000 people, and had a market share of 30% in the mobile phone market, almost twice as large as its nearest competitor, Motorola. The company was operating in 140 countries as of 1999. It was reported at the time that some people believed Nokia to be a Japanese company. Between 1996 and 2001, Nokia's turnover increased fivefold, from €6.5 billion to €31 billion.
The company would then be known as a successful and innovative maker of camera phones. The Nokia 3600/3650 was the first camera phone on sale in North America in 2003. In April 2005 Nokia partnered with German camera optics maker Carl Zeiss AG. That same month Nokia introduced the Nseries, which would become its flagship line of smart phones for the next six years. The Nokia N95 introduced in September 2006 became highly successful and was also awarded as "best mobile imaging device" in Europe in 2007. Its successor the N82 featured a xenon flash, which helped it win the award of "best mobile imaging" device in Europe in 2008. The N93 in 2006 was known for its specialized camcorder and the twistable design that switches between clamshell and a camcorder-like position. They were also well known for the N8 with a high resolution 12-megapixel sensor in 2010; the 808 PureView in 2012 with a 41-megapixel sensor; and the Lumia 920 flagship in 2012 which implemented advanced PureView technologies.
Nokia was one of the pioneers of mobile gaming due to the popularity of "Snake", which came pre-loaded on many products. In 2002, Nokia attempted to break into the handheld gaming market with the N-Gage. Nokia's head of entertainment and media, Ilkka Raiskinen, once quoted "Game Boy is for 10-year-olds", stating that N-Gage is more suited to a mature audience. However, the device was a failure, unable to challenge the dominant market leader Nintendo. Nokia attempted to revive N-Gage as a platform for their S60 smartphones, which eventually launched in 2008.
In Q1 2004, Nokia's mobile phone handset market share steeply dropped to 28.9%, down from 34.6% a year earlier. However, by 2006 the company was steadily gaining again and in Q4 2007 reached its all-time high figure of 40.4%. Its smartphone market share in that quarter was 51%. Nokia was the largest vendor at the time in all regions bar North America.
Nokia launched mobile TV trials in 2005 in Finland with content provided by public broadcaster Yle. The services are based on the DVB-H standard. It could be viewed with the widescreen Nokia 7710 smartphone with a special accessory enabling it to receive DVB-H signals. Nokia partnered with Arqiva and O2 to launch trials in the UK in September 2005.
In 2005 Nokia developed a Linux-based operating system called Maemo, which shipped that year on the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.
On 1 June 2006, Jorma Ollila became the company's chairman and retired as CEO, replaced by Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.
In August 2007, Nokia introduced Ovi, an umbrella name for the company's new Internet services which included the N-Gage platform and the Nokia Music Store. The Ovi Store faced stiff competition against Apple's App Store when it was introduced in 2008.
In October 2008 Nokia announced the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the first device to ship with the new touch-centric S60 5th Edition, also known as Symbian^1, the first iteration of the platform since the creation of the Symbian Foundation. In November 2008 Nokia announced it would end mobile phone sales in Japan because of low market share. Nokia's global mobile phone market share peaked in 2008 at 38.6 percent. The same year, Nokia announced the acquisition of Trolltech and its Qt software development. Qt was a central part of Nokia's strategy until 2011, and it was eventually sold in 2012.
Nokia briefly returned to the computer market with the Booklet 3G netbook in August 2009.
In late 2009 and in 2010, the music-focused Xseries and consumer-focused Cseries were introduced respectively. In April 2010 Nokia introduced its next flagship mobile device, the Nokia N8, which would be the first to run on Symbian^3. However it was delayed for many months which tarnished the company's image, especially after the failure of its previous flagship N97 and tougher competition from Apple and the rising Google. On 10 September 2010, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo was fired as CEO and it was announced that Stephen Elop from Microsoft would take Nokia's CEO position, becoming the first non-Finnish director in Nokia's history. It was claimed that investors pressed Nokia's board to recruit an outsider to shake up management and break from the traditional "Nokia way". Ollila had also announced that he would step down as Nokia chairman by 2012. On 11 March 2011 Nokia announced that it had paid Elop a $6 million signing bonus as "compensation for lost income from his prior employer", on top of his $1.4 million annual salary.
The old Symbian OS became completely open source in February 2010. However, in November 2010 it was announced that the Symbian Foundation was closing and that Nokia would take back control of the Symbian operating system under closed licensing. By now Nokia was the only remaining company using the platform, along with carrier NTT DoCoMo in Japan, after both Samsung and Sony Ericsson moved to Android. Meanwhile, in 2010 for Nokia's Linux ambitions, Nokia collaborated with Intel to form the MeeGo project, after the merger of Nokia's own Maemo and Intel's Moblin.
Nokia's Symbian platform that had been the leading smartphone platform in Europe and Asia for many years was quickly becoming outdated and difficult for developers after the advent of iOS and Android. To counter this, Nokia planned to make their MeeGo Linux operating system, under development, the company's flagship on smartphones. Shortly after Elop's CEO tenure began, the Nokia board green-lit him the ability to change the company's mobile phones strategy, including changing operating systems. Veteran Anssi Vanjoki, head of the smartphones division, left the company around this time. His final appearance was at Nokia World 2010 when the Nokia E7 and other Symbian^3 devices were introduced.
On 11 February 2011, Nokia announced a "strategic partnership" with Microsoft, under which it would adopt Windows Phone 7 as its primary operating system on smartphones, and integrate its services and platforms with its own, including Bing as search engine, and integration of Nokia Maps data into Bing Maps. Elop stated that Nokia chose not to use Android because of an apparent inability to "differentiate" its offerings, with critics also noting that his past ties to Microsoft may have also influenced the decision. Although the MeeGo "Harmattan"-based N9 was met with a highly positive reception in 2011, Nokia had already decided to end development on MeeGo and solely focus on its Microsoft partnership, although the CEO said that the N9's "innovations" will live on in the future, which eventually made their way on the Asha platform in 2013. After the announcement of the Microsoft partnership, Nokia's market share deteriorated; this was due to demand for Symbian dropping when consumers realized Nokia's focus and attention would be elsewhere.
The company posted a large loss for the second quarter of 2011 – only their second quarterly loss in 19 years. Nokia's first Windows Phone flagship was the Lumia 800, which arrived in November 2011. Falling sales in 2011, which were not being improved significantly with the Lumia line in 2012, led to consecutive quarters of huge losses. By mid-2012 the company's stock price fell below $2. CEO Elop announced cost-cutting measures in June by shedding 10,000 employees by the end of the year and the closure of the Salo manufacturing plant. The Finnish prime minister also announced that the government won't save the company from an emergency state fund. Around this time Nokia started a new project codenamed "Meltemi", a platform for low-end smartphones. With the Microsoft alliance and under Elop's management, Nokia also had a renewed focus on the North American market where Nokia phones were, in stark contrast to the rest of the world, almost irrelevant for many years. This strategy began in January 2012 with the introduction of the Nokia Lumia 900 smartphone in partnership with U.S. carrier AT&T.
In March 2011, Nokia introduced a new corporate typeface called "Pure". On 1 August 2011, Nokia announced that it would adopt a new three-digit naming system for mobile phone products and stop using letters, effectively ending the Nseries, Eseries, and short-lived Cseries. That same day the Nokia 500 was introduced with the new system. Nokia last used three-digit names on analogue phones in the 1990s.
When the Lumia 920 was announced in September 2012, it was seen by the press as the first high-end Windows Phone that could challenge rivals due to its advanced feature set. Elop said that the positive reaction to it had created a sense of hope and optimism in the company. The company was also making gains in developing countries with its Asha series, which were selling strongly. Although Nokia's smartphone sales and market share greatly increased throughout 2013, including in the North American market, it was still not enough to avoid financial losses. Ollila stepped down as chairman on 4 May 2012 and was replaced by Risto Siilasmaa.
In September 2013 Nokia announced the sale of its mobile and devices division to Microsoft. The sale was positive for Nokia to avoid further negative financial figures, as well as for Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer, who wanted Microsoft to produce more hardware and turn it into a devices and services company. The Nokia chairman, Risto Siilasmaa, described the deal as rationally correct (in the best interests of Nokia shareholders), but emotionally difficult – experts agree that Nokia would have been in a cash crisis had it not sold the division to Microsoft. Analysts believe that Ballmer pushed for the buyout because of fears that Nokia was close to adopting Android and abandoning their alliance with Microsoft. Indeed, in January 2014 the Nokia X was introduced which ran on a customised version of Android. It was a surprising and somewhat odd launch coming just weeks away from the finalisation of the Microsoft buyout. Others, including Ballmer's successor Satya Nadella, felt that Microsoft thought merging their software teams with Nokia's hardware engineering and designs would "accelerate" growth of Windows Phone. The sale was completed in April 2014, with Microsoft Mobile becoming the successor to Nokia's mobile devices division. Nokia also moved from its headquarters to another building complex located at Karaportti. At the time, Ballmer himself was retiring as Microsoft CEO and was replaced by Satya Nadella, who opposed the Nokia mobile phones purchase, along with chairman Bill Gates. The purchased assets from Nokia were eventually written-off by Microsoft in 2015.
By 2014, Nokia's global brand value according to Interbrand fell to 98th place, a sharp slide from the 5th place it was in 2009. Nokia's downfall in the mobile phone market has had different explanations from analysts, with many split about the CEO's decision to abandon its in-house operating system and adopting Windows Phone in 2011. Many researchers have concluded that Nokia suffered from deep internal rivalries within the management. Former employees claimed that the management became so swollen by the early success that they grew complacent over time. Some from the Symbian developing team have claimed that the company's upper management rejected hundreds of potential innovations during the 2000s that they proposed, including entirely rewriting Symbian's code. One former Nokia employee claimed that the company was run as a "Soviet-style bureaucracy".
In July 2013, Nokia bought Siemens' stake in the Nokia Siemens Networks joint venture for $2.2 billion, turning it into a wholly owned subsidiary called Nokia Solutions and Networks, until being rebranded as Nokia Networks soon after. During Nokia's financial struggles, its profitable networking division with Siemens provided much of its income; thus, the purchase proved to be positive, particularly after the sale of its mobile devices unit.
After the sale of its mobile devices division, Nokia focused on network equipment through Nokia Networks.
In October 2014, Nokia and China Mobile signed a US$970 million framework deal for delivery between 2014 and 2015.
On 17 November 2014, Nokia Technologies head Ramzi Haidamus disclosed that the company planned to re-enter the consumer electronics business as an original design manufacturer, licensing in-house hardware designs and technologies to third-party manufacturers. Haidamus stated that the Nokia brand was "valuable" but "is diminishing in value, and that's why it is important that we reverse that trend very quickly, imminently". The next day, Nokia unveiled the N1, an Android tablet manufactured by Foxconn, as its first product following the Microsoft sale. Haidamus emphasized that devices released under these licensing agreements would be held to high standards in production quality, and would "look and feel just like Nokia built it". Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri stated that the company planned to re-enter the mobile phone business in this manner in 2016, following the expiration of its non-compete clause with Microsoft.
According to Robert Morlino, the spokesman of Nokia Technologies, Nokia planned to follow the brand-licensing model rather than direct marketing of mobile devices due to the sale of its mobile devices division to Microsoft. The company took aggressive steps to revitalize itself, evident through its hiring of software experts, testing of new products and seeking of sales partners. On 14 July 2015, CEO Rajeev Suri confirmed that the company would make a return to the mobile phones market in 2016.
On 28 July 2015, Nokia announced OZO, a 360-degrees virtual reality camera, with eight 2K optical image sensors. The division behind the product, Nokia Technologies, claimed that OZO would be the most advanced VR film-making platform. Nokia's press release stated that OZO would be "the first in a planned portfolio of digital media solutions," with more technologic products expected in the future. OZO was fully unveiled on 30 November in Los Angeles. The OZO, designed for professional use, was intended for retail for US$60,000; however, its price was decreased by $15,000 prior to release, and is listed on its official website as $40,000.
On 14 April 2015, Nokia confirmed that it was in talks with the French telecommunications equipment company Alcatel-Lucent regarding a potential merger. The next day, Nokia announced that it had agreed to purchase Alcatel-Lucent for €15.6 billion in an all-stock deal. CEO Rajeev Suri felt that the purchase would give Nokia a strategic advantage in the development of 5G wireless technologies. The acquisition created a stronger competitor to the rival firms Ericsson and Huawei, whom Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent had surpassed in terms of total combined revenue in 2014. Nokia shareholders hold 66.5% of the new combined company, while Alcatel-Lucent shareholders hold 33.5%. The Bell Labs division was to be maintained, but the Alcatel-Lucent brand would be replaced by Nokia. In October 2015, following approval of the deal by China's Ministry of Commerce, the merger awaited approval by French regulators. Despite the initial intent of selling the submarine cable division separately, Alcatel-Lucent later declared that it would not. The merger closed on 14 January 2016, but was not complete until 3 November 2016. From the acquisition Nokia is now also the owner of the Alcatel mobile phone brand, which continues to be licensed to TCL Corporation.
On 3 August 2015, Nokia announced that it had reached a deal to sell its Here digital maps division to a consortium of BMW, Daimler AG and Volkswagen Group for €2.8 billion. The deal closed on 3 December 2015.
On 26 April 2016, Nokia announced its intent to acquire French connected health device maker Withings for US$191 million. The company was integrated into a new Digital Health unit of Nokia Technologies. Nokia later wrote off the cost of the acquisition and in May 2018 the health unit was sold back to Éric Carreel, a Withings co-founder and former CEO.
On 18 May 2016, Microsoft Mobile sold its Nokia-branded feature phone business to HMD Global, a new company founded by former Nokia executive Jean-Francois Baril, and an associated factory in Vietnam to Foxconn's FIH Mobile subsidiary. Nokia subsequently entered into a long-term licensing deal to make HMD the exclusive manufacturer of Nokia-branded phones and tablets outside Japan, operating in conjunction with Foxconn. The deal also granted HMD the right to essential patents and featurephone software. HMD subsequently announced the Android-based Nokia 6 smartphone in January 2017. At Mobile World Congress, HMD additionally unveiled the Nokia 3 and Nokia 5 smartphones, as well as a re-imagining of Nokia's classic 3310 feature phone. While Nokia has no investment in the company, they do have some input in the new devices.
On 28 June 2016 Nokia demonstrated for the first time a 5G-ready network. In February 2017 Nokia carried out a 5G connection in Oulu, Finland using the 5GTF standard, backed by Verizon, on Intel architecture-based equipment.
On 5 July 2017, Nokia and Xiaomi announced that they have signed a business collaboration agreement and a multi-year patent agreement, including a cross license to each company's cellular standard essential patents.
In 2017, Nokia's brand value jumped 147 places to 188th place compared to 2016 in the Brand Finance ranking. Its rise was attributed to its health portfolio and new mobile phones developed by HMD Global.
On 19 January 2018, Nokia signed a deal with NTT Docomo, Japan's largest mobile operator, to provide 5G wireless radio base stations in the country by 2020.
On 29 January 2018, Nokia introduced the ReefShark line of 5G chipsets, claiming that it triples bandwidth to 84 Gbit/s. It will be released by Q3 2018. It also incorporates artificial intelligence technologies from Bell Labs.
On 13 March 2018, Solidium, the investment arm of the Finnish government, purchased a 3.3% stake in Nokia valued at €844 million.
On 7 May 2018, Nokia announced that it has acquired a California-based IoT startup, SpaceTime Insight.
In January 2019, the Canadian government announced that it will provide C$40 million to support Nokia's research on 5G technology.
A 2019 study revealed that Nokia phones performed far better than rivals Samsung, LG, Xiaomi, and Huawei in updating to the latest version of Android. The study, made by Counterpoint Research, found that 96 percent of Nokia phones were either sent with or updated to the latest Android version since Pie was released in 2018. Nokia's competitors were found to be all around roughly the 80 percent range.
On March 2, 2020, Nokia announced Pekka Lundmark as its new CEO.
On March 25, 2020, Nokia completed the acquisition of Elenion Technologies, a U.S.-based company focusing on silicon photonics technology to improve economics of advanced optical connectivity solutions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21242 |
Nortel
Nortel Networks Corporation (Nortel), formerly commonly known as Northern Electric and Northern Telecom, was a multinational telecommunications and data networking equipment manufacturer headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in Montreal, Quebec, in 1895 as the Northern Electric and Manufacturing Company. Until an antitrust settlement in 1949, Northern Electric was owned principally by Bell Canada and the Western Electric Company of the Bell System, producing large volumes of telecommunication equipment based on licensed Western Electric designs.
At its height, Nortel accounted for more than a third of the total valuation of all companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), employing 94,500 people worldwide.
In 2009, Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada and the United States, triggering a 79% decline of its corporate stock. The bankruptcy case was the largest in Canadian history, and left pensioners, shareholders and former employees with enormous losses. By 2016 Nortel had sold billions of dollars' worth of assets. Courts in the U.S. and Canada approved a negotiated settlement of bankruptcy proceedings in 2017.
Alexander Graham Bell conceived the technical aspects of the telephone and invented it in July 1874, while residing with his parents at their farm in Tutela Heights, on the outskirts of Brantford, Ontario. He later refined its design at Brantford after producing his first working prototype in Boston. Canada's first telephone factory, created by James Cowherd of Brantford, was a three-story brick building that soon started manufacturing telephones for the Bell System, leading to the city's style as "The Telephone City". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21243 |
Nile
The Nile (, , Bohairic , Nobiin: Áman Dawū) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa, and is the longest river in Africa and the disputed longest river in the world, as the Brazilian government says that the Amazon River is longer than the Nile. The Nile is about long and its drainage basin covers eleven countries: Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Republic of the Sudan, and Egypt. In particular, the Nile is the primary water source of Egypt and Sudan.
The Nile has two major tributaries – the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The White Nile is considered to be the headwaters and primary stream of the Nile itself. The Blue Nile, however, is the source of most of the water, containing 80% of the water and silt. The White Nile is longer and rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa, with the most distant source still undetermined but located in either Rwanda or Burundi. It flows north through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and South Sudan. The Blue Nile begins at Lake Tana in Ethiopia and flows into Sudan from the southeast. The two rivers meet just north of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.
The northern section of the river flows north almost entirely through the Sudanese desert to Egypt, then ends in a large delta and flows into the Mediterranean Sea. Egyptian civilization and Sudanese kingdoms have depended on the river since ancient times. Most of the population and cities of Egypt lie along those parts of the Nile valley north of Aswan, and nearly all the cultural and historical sites of Ancient Egypt are found along river banks.
The standard English names "White Nile" and "Blue Nile", to refer to the river's source, derive from Arabic names formerly applied only to the Sudanese stretches which meet at Khartoum.
In the ancient Egyptian language, the Nile is called "Ḥ'pī" (Hapy) or "Iteru", meaning "river". In Coptic, the word ⲫⲓⲁⲣⲟ, pronounced "piaro" (Sahidic) or "phiaro" (Bohairic), means "the river" (lit. p(h).iar-o "the.canal-great"), and comes from the same ancient name.
In Nobiin the river is called Áman Dawū, meaning "the great water".
In Egyptian Arabic, the Nile is called "en-Nīl" while in Standard Arabic it is called "an-Nīl". In Biblical Hebrew: , "Ha-Ye'or" or , "Ha-Shiḥor".
The English name "Nile" and the Arabic names "en-Nîl" and "an-Nîl" both derive from the Latin ' and the Ancient Greek . Beyond that, however, the etymology is disputed. Hesiod at his "Theogony" refers that Nilus (Νεῖλος) was one of the Potamoi (river gods), son of Oceanus and Tethys. Another derivation of "Nile" might be related to the term "Nil" (; ), which refers to "Indigofera tinctoria", one of the original sources of indigo dye; or "Nymphaea caerulea", known as "The Sacred Blue Lily of the Nile", which was found scattered over Tutankhamen's corpse when it was located in 1922.
Another possible etymology derives it from a Semitic "Nahal", meaning "river".
With a total length of about between the region of Lake Victoria and the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile is the longest river on Earth. The drainage basin of the Nile covers , about 10% of the area of Africa. Compared to other major rivers, though, the Nile carries little water (5% of the Congo's river, for example). The Nile basin is complex, and because of this, the discharge at any given point along the mainstem depends on many factors including weather, diversions, evaporation and evapotranspiration, and groundwater flow.
Above Khartoum, the Nile is also known as the White Nile, a term also used in a limited sense to describe the section between Lake No and Khartoum. At Khartoum the river is joined by the Blue Nile. The White Nile starts in equatorial East Africa, and the Blue Nile begins in Ethiopia. Both branches are on the western flanks of the East African Rift.
The source of the Nile is sometimes considered to be Lake Victoria, but the lake has feeder rivers of considerable size. The Kagera River, which flows into Lake Victoria near the Tanzanian town of Bukoba, is the longest feeder, although sources do not agree on which is the longest tributary of the Kagera and hence the most distant source of the Nile itself. It is either the Ruvyironza, which emerges in Bururi Province, Burundi, or the Nyabarongo, which flows from Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda. The two feeder rivers meet near Rusumo Falls on the Rwanda-Tanzania border.
In 2010, an exploration party went to a place described as the source of the Rukarara tributary, and by hacking a path up steep jungle-choked mountain slopes in the Nyungwe forest found (in the dry season) an appreciable incoming surface flow for many kilometres upstream, and found a new source, giving the Nile a length of .
Gish Abay is reportedly the place where the "holy water" of the first drops of the Blue Nile develop.
The Nile leaves Lake Nalubaale (Victoria) at Ripon Falls near Jinja, Uganda, as the Victoria Nile. It flows north for some , to Lake Kyoga. The last part of the approximately river section starts from the western shores of the lake and flows at first to the west until just south of Masindi Port, where the river turns north, then makes a great half circle to the east and north until Karuma Falls. For the remaining part it flows merely westerly through the Murchison Falls until it reaches the very northern shores of Lake Albert where it forms a significant river delta. The lake itself is on the border of DR Congo, but the Nile is not a border river at this point. After leaving Lake Albert, the river continues north through Uganda and is known as the Albert Nile.
The Nile river flows into South Sudan just south of Nimule, where it is known as the Bahr al Jabal ("Mountain River"). Just south of the town it has the confluence with the Achwa River. The Bahr al Ghazal, itself long, joins the Bahr al Jabal at a small lagoon called Lake No, after which the Nile becomes known as the "Bahr al Abyad", or the White Nile, from the whitish clay suspended in its waters. When the Nile floods it leaves a rich silty deposit which fertilizes the soil. The Nile no longer floods in Egypt since the completion of the Aswan Dam in 1970. An anabranch river, the Bahr el Zeraf, flows out of the Nile's Bahr al Jabal section and rejoins the White Nile.
The flow rate of the Bahr al Jabal at Mongalla, South Sudan is almost constant throughout the year and averages . After Mongalla, the Bahr Al Jabal enters the enormous swamps of the Sudd region of South Sudan. More than half of the Nile's water is lost in this swamp to evaporation and transpiration. The average flow rate of the White Nile at the tails of the swamps is about . From here it soon meets with the Sobat River at Malakal. On an annual basis, the White Nile upstream of Malakal contributes about fifteen percent of the total outflow of the Nile.
The average flow of the White Nile at Lake Kawaki Malakal, just below the Sobat River, is ; the peak flow is approximately in October and minimum flow is about in April. This fluctuation is due to the substantial variation in the flow of the Sobat, which has a minimum flow of about in March and a peak flow of over in October. During the dry season (January to June) the White Nile contributes between 70 percent and 90 percent of the total discharge from the Nile.
Below Renk the White Nile enters Sudan, it flows north to Khartoum and meets the Blue Nile.
The course of the Nile in Sudan is distinctive. It flows over six groups of cataracts, from the sixth at Sabaloka just north of Khartoum northward to Abu Hamed. Due to the tectonic uplift of the Nubian Swell, the river is then diverted to flow for over 300 km south-west following the structure of the Central African Shear Zone embracing the Bayuda Desert. At Al Dabbah it resumes its northward course towards the first Cataract at Aswan forming the 'S'-shaped Great Bend of the Nile already mentioned by Eratosthenes.
In the north of Sudan the river enters Lake Nasser (known in Sudan as Lake Nubia), the larger part of which is in Egypt.
Below the Aswan High Dam, at the northern limit of Lake Nasser, the Nile resumes its historic course.
North of Cairo, the Nile splits into two branches (or distributaries) that feed the Mediterranean: the Rosetta Branch to the west and the Damietta to the east, forming the Nile Delta.
The annual sediment transport by the Nile in Egypt has been quantified.
Below the confluence with the Blue Nile the only major tributary is the Atbara River, roughly halfway to the sea, which originates in Ethiopia north of Lake Tana, and is around long. The Atbara flows only while there is rain in Ethiopia and dries very rapidly. During the dry period of January to June, it typically dries up north of Khartoum.
The Blue Nile (, "ʿĀbay") springs from Lake Tana in the Ethiopian Highlands. The Blue Nile flows about 1,400 kilometres to Khartoum, where the Blue Nile and White Nile join to form the Nile. Ninety percent of the water and ninety-six percent of the transported sediment carried by the Nile originates in Ethiopia, with fifty-nine percent of the water from the Blue Nile (the rest being from the Tekezé, Atbarah, Sobat, and small tributaries). The erosion and transportation of silt only occurs during the Ethiopian rainy season in the summer, however, when rainfall is especially high on the Ethiopian Plateau; the rest of the year, the great rivers draining Ethiopia into the Nile (Sobat, Blue Nile, Tekezé, and Atbarah) have a weaker flow. In harsh and arid seasons and droughts the Blue Nile dries out completely.
The flow of the Blue Nile varies considerably over its yearly cycle and is the main contribution to the large natural variation of the Nile flow. During the dry season the natural discharge of the Blue Nile can be as low as , although upstream dams regulate the flow of the river. During the wet season the peak flow of the Blue Nile often exceeds in late August (a difference of a factor of 50).
Before the placement of dams on the river the yearly discharge varied by a factor of 15 at Aswan. Peak flows of over occurred during late August and early September, and minimum flows of about occurred during late April and early May.
The Bahr al Ghazal and the Sobat River are the two most important tributaries of the White Nile in terms of discharge.
The Bahr al Ghazal's drainage basin is the largest of any of the Nile's sub-basins, measuring in size, but it contributes a relatively small amount of water, about annually, due to tremendous volumes of water being lost in the Sudd wetlands.
The Sobat River, which joins the Nile a short distance below Lake No, drains about half as much land, , but contributes annually to the Nile. When in flood the Sobat carries a large amount of sediment, adding greatly to the White Nile's color.
The Yellow Nile is a former tributary that connected the Ouaddaï Highlands of eastern Chad to the Nile River Valley c. 8000 to c. 1000 BCE. Its remains are known as the Wadi Howar. The wadi passes through Gharb Darfur near the northern border with Chad and meets up with the Nile near the southern point of the Great Bend.
The Nile ("iteru" in Ancient Egyptian) has been the lifeline of civilization in Egypt since the Stone Age, with most of the population and all of the cities of Egypt resting along those parts of the Nile valley lying north of Aswan. However, the Nile used to run much more westerly through what is now Wadi Hamim and Wadi al Maqar in Libya and flow into the Gulf of Sidra. As sea level rose at the end of the most recent ice age, the stream which is now the northern Nile pirated the ancestral Nile near Asyut, this change in climate also led to the creation of the current Sahara desert, around 3400 BC.
The present Nile is at least the fifth river that has flowed north from the Ethiopian Highlands. Satellite imagery was used to identify dry watercourses in the desert to the west of the Nile. A canyon, now filled by surface drift, represents an ancestral Nile called the Eonile that flowed during the later Miocene (23–5.3 million years before present). The Eonile transported clastic sediments to the Mediterranean; several natural gas fields have been discovered within these sediments.
During the late-Miocene Messinian salinity crisis, when the Mediterranean Sea was a closed basin and evaporated to the point of being empty or nearly so, the Nile cut its course down to the new base level until it was several hundred metres below world ocean level at Aswan and below Cairo. This created a very long and deep canyon which was filled with sediment when the Mediterranean was recreated. At some point the sediments raised the riverbed sufficiently for the river to overflow westward into a depression to create Lake Moeris.
Lake Tanganyika drained northwards into the Nile until the Virunga Volcanoes blocked its course in Rwanda. The Nile was much longer at that time, with its furthest headwaters in northern Zambia.
There are two theories about the age of the integrated Nile. One is that the integrated drainage of the Nile is of young age and that the Nile basin was formerly broken into series of separate basins, only the most northerly of which fed a river following the present course of the Nile in Egypt and Sudan. Rushdi Said postulated that Egypt itself supplied most of the waters of the Nile during the early part of its history.
The other theory is that the drainage from Ethiopia via rivers equivalent to the Blue Nile, the Atbara and the Takazze flowed to the Mediterranean via the Egyptian Nile since well back into Tertiary times.
Salama suggested that during the Paleogene and Neogene Periods (66 million to 2.588 million years ago) a series of separate closed continental basins each occupied one of the major parts of the Sudanese Rift System: Mellut rift, White Nile rift, Blue Nile rift, Atbara rift and Sag El Naam rift.
The Mellut Rift Basin is nearly deep at its central part. This rift is possibly still active, with reported tectonic activity in its northern and southern boundaries. The Sudd swamps which form the central part of the basin may still be subsiding. The White Nile Rift System, although shallower than the Bahr el Arab rift, is about deep. Geophysical exploration of the Blue Nile Rift System estimated the depth of the sediments to be . These basins were not interconnected until their subsidence ceased, and the rate of sediment deposition was enough to fill and connect them. The Egyptian Nile connected to the Sudanese Nile, which captures the Ethiopian and Equatorial headwaters during the current stages of tectonic activity in the Eastern, Central and Sudanese Rift Systems. The connection of the different Niles occurred during cyclic wet periods. The River Atbara overflowed its closed basin during the wet periods that occurred about 100,000 to 120,000 years ago. The Blue Nile connected to the main Nile during the 70,000–80,000 years B.P. wet period. The White Nile system in Bahr El Arab and White Nile Rifts remained a closed lake until the connection of the Victoria Nile to the main system some 12,500 years ago during the African humid period.
The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that "Egypt was the gift of the Nile". An unending source of sustenance, it played a crucial role in the development of Egyptian civilization. Because the river overflowed its banks annually and deposited new layers of silt, the surrounding land was very fertile. The Ancient Egyptians cultivated and traded wheat, flax, papyrus and other crops around the Nile. Wheat was a crucial crop in the famine-plagued Middle East. This trading system secured Egypt's diplomatic relationships with other countries, and contributed to economic stability. Far-reaching trade has been carried on along the Nile since ancient times. A tune, Hymn to the Nile, was created and sung by the ancient Egyptian peoples about the flooding of the Nile River and all of the miracles it brought to Ancient Egyptian civilization.
Water buffalo were introduced from Asia and the Assyrians introduced camels in the 7th century BC. These animals were killed for meat, and were domesticated and used for ploughing—or in the camels' case, carriage. Water was vital to both people and livestock. The Nile was also a convenient and efficient means of transportation for people and goods.
The Nile was also an important part of ancient Egyptian spiritual life. Hapi was the god of the annual floods, and both he and the pharaoh were thought to control the flooding. The Nile was considered to be a causeway from life to death and the afterlife. The east was thought of as a place of birth and growth, and the west was considered the place of death, as the god Ra, the Sun, underwent birth, death, and resurrection each day as he crossed the sky. Thus, all tombs were west of the Nile, because the Egyptians believed that in order to enter the afterlife, they had to be buried on the side that symbolized death.
As the Nile was such an important factor in Egyptian life, the ancient calendar was even based on the three cycles of the Nile. These seasons, each consisting of four months of thirty days each, were called Akhet, Peret, and Shemu. Akhet, which means inundation, was the time of the year when the Nile flooded, leaving several layers of fertile soil behind, aiding in agricultural growth. Peret was the growing season, and Shemu, the last season, was the harvest season when there were no rains.
Owing to their failure to penetrate the sudd wetlands of South Sudan, the upper reaches of the White Nile remained largely unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Various expeditions failed to determine the river's source. Agatharcides records that in the time of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, a military expedition had penetrated far enough along the course of the Blue Nile to determine that the summer floods were caused by heavy seasonal rainstorms in the Ethiopian Highlands, but no European of antiquity is known to have reached Lake Tana.
The Tabula Rogeriana depicted the source as three lakes in 1154.
Europeans began to learn about the origins of the Nile in the fourteenth century when the Pope sent monks as emissaries to Mongolia who passed India, the Middle East and Africa, and described being told of the source of the Nile in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) Later in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, travelers to Ethiopia visited Lake Tana and the source of the Blue Nile in the mountains south of the lake. Although James Bruce claimed to be the first European to have visited the headwaters, modern writers give the credit to the Jesuit Pedro Páez. Páez's account of the source of the Nile is a long and vivid account of Ethiopia. It was published in full only in the early twentieth century, although it was featured in works of Páez's contemporaries, including Baltazar Téllez, Athanasius Kircher and by Johann Michael Vansleb.
Europeans had been resident in Ethiopia since the late fifteenth century, and one of them may have visited the headwaters even earlier without leaving a written trace. The Portuguese João Bermudes published the first description of the Tis Issat Falls in his 1565 memoirs, compared them to the Nile Falls alluded to in Cicero's "De Republica". Jerónimo Lobo describes the source of the Blue Nile, visiting shortly after Pedro Páez. Telles also used his account.
The White Nile was even less understood. The ancients mistakenly believed that the Niger River represented the upper reaches of the White Nile. For example, Pliny the Elder wrote that the Nile had its origins "in a mountain of lower Mauretania", flowed above ground for "many days" distance, then went underground, reappeared as a large lake in the territories of the Masaesyli, then sank again below the desert to flow underground "for a distance of 20 days' journey till it reaches the nearest Ethiopians." A merchant named Diogenes reported that the Nile's water attracted game such as buffalo.
Lake Victoria was first sighted by Europeans in 1858 when British explorer John Hanning Speke reached its southern shore while traveling with Richard Francis Burton to explore central Africa and locate the great lakes. Believing he had found the source of the Nile on seeing this "vast expanse of open water" for the first time, Speke named the lake after the then Queen of the United Kingdom. Burton, recovering from illness and resting further south on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, was outraged that Speke claimed to have proved his discovery to be the true source of the Nile when Burton regarded this as still unsettled. A very public quarrel ensued, which sparked a great deal of intense debate within the scientific community and interest by other explorers keen to either confirm or refute Speke's discovery. British explorer and missionary David Livingstone pushed too far west and entered the Congo River system instead. It was ultimately Welsh-American explorer Henry Morton Stanley who confirmed Speke's discovery, circumnavigating Lake Victoria and reporting the great outflow at Ripon Falls on the lake's northern shore.
European involvement in Egypt goes back to the time of Napoleon. Laird Shipyard of Liverpool sent an iron steamer to the Nile in the 1830s. With the completion of the Suez Canal and the British takeover of Egypt in the 1882, more British river steamers followed.
The Nile is the area's natural navigation channel, giving access to Khartoum and Sudan by steamer. The Siege of Khartoum was broken with purpose-built sternwheelers shipped from England and steamed up the river to retake the city. After this came regular steam navigation of the river. With British Forces in Egypt in the First World War and the inter-war years, river steamers provided both security and sightseeing to the Pyramids and Thebes. Steam navigation remained integral to the two countries as late as 1962. Sudan steamer traffic was a lifeline as few railways or roads were built in that country. Most paddle steamers have been retired to shorefront service, but modern diesel tourist boats remain on the river.
The Nile has long been used to transport goods along its length. Winter winds blow south, up river, so ships could sail up river, and down river using the flow of the river.
While most Egyptians still live in the Nile valley, the 1970 completion of the Aswan High Dam ended the summer floods and their renewal of the fertile soil, fundamentally changing farming practices. The Nile supports much of the population living along its banks, enabling Egyptians to live in otherwise inhospitable regions of the Sahara. The rivers's flow is disturbed at several points by the Cataracts of the Nile, which are sections of faster-flowing water with many small islands, shallow water, and rocks, which form an obstacle to navigation by boats. The Sudd wetlands in Sudan also forms a formidable navigation obstacle and impede water flow, to the extent that Sudan had once attempted to canalize (the Jonglei Canal) to bypass the swamps.
Nile cities include Khartoum, Aswan, Luxor (Thebes), and the GizaCairo conurbation. The first cataract, the closest to the mouth of the river, is at Aswan, north of the Aswan Dam. This part of the river is a regular tourist route, with cruise ships and traditional wooden sailing boats known as feluccas. Many cruise ships ply the route between Luxor and Aswan, stopping at Edfu and Kom Ombo along the way. Security concerns have limited cruising on the northernmost portion for many years.
A computer simulation study to plan the economic development of the Nile was directed by H.A.W. Morrice and W.N. Allan, for the Ministry of Hydro-power of the Republic of the Sudan, during 1955–1957 Morrice was their Hydrological Adviser, and Allan his predecessor. M.P. Barnett directed the software development and computer operations. The calculations were enabled by accurate monthly inflow data collected for 50 years. The underlying principle was the use of over-year storage, to conserve water from rainy years for use in dry years. Irrigation, navigation and other needs were considered. Each computer run postulated a set of reservoirs and operating equations for the release of water as a function of the month and the levels upstream. The behavior that would have resulted given the inflow data was modeled. Over 600 models were run. Recommendations were made to the Sudanese authorities. The calculations were run on an IBM 650 computer. Simulation studies to design water resources are discussed further in the article on hydrology transport models, that have been used since the 1980s to analyze water quality.
Despite the development of many reservoirs, drought during the 1980s led to widespread starvation in Ethiopia and Sudan, but Egypt was nourished by water impounded in Lake Nasser. Drought has proven to be a major cause of fatality in the Nile river basin. According to a report by the Strategic Foresight Group around 170 million people have been affected by droughts in the last century with half a million lives lost. From the 70 incidents of drought which took place between 1900 and 2012, 55 incidents took place in Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya and Tanzania.
The Nile's water has affected the politics of East Africa and the Horn of Africa for many decades. The dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the $4.5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam — Africa's largest, with a reservoir about the size of London – has become a national preoccupation in both countries, stoking patriotism, deep-seated fears and even murmurs of war. Countries including Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya have complained about Egyptian domination of its water resources. The Nile Basin Initiative promotes a peaceful cooperation among those states.
Several attempts have been made to establish agreements between the countries sharing the Nile waters. On 14 May 2010 at Entebbe, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda signed a new agreement on sharing the Nile water even though this agreement raised strong opposition from Egypt and Sudan. Ideally, such international agreements should promote equitable and efficient usage of the Nile basin's water resources. Without a better understanding about the availability of the future water resources of the Nile, it is possible that conflicts could arise between these countries relying on the Nile for their water supply, economic and social developments.
In 1951, the American John Goddard together with two French explorers became the first to successfully navigate the entire Nile river from its source in Burundi at the potential headsprings of the Kagera River in Burundi to its mouth on the Mediterranean Sea, a journey of approximately . Their 9-month journey is described in the book "Kayaks down the Nile".
The White Nile Expedition, led by South African national Hendrik Coetzee, navigated the White Nile's entire length of approximately . The expedition began at the White Nile's beginning at Lake Victoria in Uganda, on 17 January 2004 and arrived safely at the Mediterranean in Rosetta, four and a half months later.
The Blue Nile Expedition, led by geologist Pasquale Scaturro and his partner, kayaker and documentary filmmaker Gordon Brown became the first known people to descend the entire Blue Nile, from Lake Tana in Ethiopia to the beaches of Alexandria on the Mediterranean. Their approximately journey took 114 days, from 25 December 2003 to 28 April 2004. Though their expedition included others, Brown and Scaturro were the only ones to complete the entire journey. Although they descended whitewater manually the team used outboard motors for much of their journey.
On 29 January 2005 Canadian Les Jickling and New Zealander Mark Tanner completed the first human powered transit of Ethiopia's Blue Nile. Their journey of over took five months. They recount that they paddled through two war zones, regions notorious for bandits, and were arrested at gunpoint.
The following bridges cross the Blue Nile and connect Khartoum to Khartoum North:
The following bridges cross the White Nile and connect Khartoum to Omdurman:
the following bridges cross from Omdurman: to Khartoum North:
The following bridges cross to Tuti from Khartoum states three cities
Other bridges
The following is an annotated bibliography of key written documents for the Western exploration of the Nile.
17th century
18th century
1800–1850
1850–1900 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21244 |
Neuroscience
Neuroscience (or neurobiology) is the scientific study of the nervous system. It combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, mathematical modeling, and psychology to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons and neural circuits. The understanding of the biological basis of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness has been described by Eric Kandel as the "ultimate challenge" of the biological sciences.
The scope of neuroscience has broadened over time to include different approaches used to study the nervous system at different scales and the techniques used by neuroscientists have expanded enormously, from molecular and cellular studies of individual neurons to imaging of sensory, motor and cognitive tasks in the brain.
The earliest study of the nervous system dates to ancient Egypt. Trepanation, the surgical practice of either drilling or scraping a hole into the skull for the purpose of curing head injuries or mental disorders, or relieving cranial pressure, was first recorded during the Neolithic period. Manuscripts dating to 1700 BC indicate that the Egyptians had some knowledge about symptoms of brain damage.
Early views on the function of the brain regarded it to be a "cranial stuffing" of sorts. In Egypt, from the late Middle Kingdom onwards, the brain was regularly removed in preparation for mummification. It was believed at the time that the heart was the seat of intelligence. According to Herodotus, the first step of mummification was to "take a crooked piece of iron, and with it draw out the brain through the nostrils, thus getting rid of a portion, while the skull is cleared of the rest by rinsing with drugs."
The view that the heart was the source of consciousness was not challenged until the time of the Greek physician Hippocrates. He believed that the brain was not only involved with sensation—since most specialized organs (e.g., eyes, ears, tongue) are located in the head near the brain—but was also the seat of intelligence. Plato also speculated that the brain was the seat of the rational part of the soul. Aristotle, however, believed the heart was the center of intelligence and that the brain regulated the amount of heat from the heart. This view was generally accepted until the Roman physician Galen, a follower of Hippocrates and physician to Roman gladiators, observed that his patients lost their mental faculties when they had sustained damage to their brains.
Abulcasis, Averroes, Avicenna, Avenzoar, and Maimonides, active in the Medieval Muslim world, described a number of medical problems related to the brain. In Renaissance Europe, Vesalius (1514–1564), René Descartes (1596–1650), Thomas Willis (1621–1675) and Jan Swammerdam (1637–1680) also made several contributions to neuroscience.
Luigi Galvani's pioneering work in the late 1700s set the stage for studying the electrical excitability of muscles and neurons. In the first half of the 19th century, Jean Pierre Flourens pioneered the experimental method of carrying out localized lesions of the brain in living animals describing their effects on motricity, sensibility and behavior. In 1843 Emil du Bois-Reymond demonstrated the electrical nature of the nerve signal, whose speed Hermann von Helmholtz proceeded to measure, and in 1875 Richard Caton found electrical phenomena in the cerebral hemispheres of rabbits and monkeys. Adolf Beck published in 1890 similar observations of spontaneous electrical activity of the brain of rabbits and dogs. Studies of the brain became more sophisticated after the invention of the microscope and the development of a staining procedure by Camillo Golgi during the late 1890s. The procedure used a silver chromate salt to reveal the intricate structures of individual neurons. His technique was used by Santiago Ramón y Cajal and led to the formation of the neuron doctrine, the hypothesis that the functional unit of the brain is the neuron. Golgi and Ramón y Cajal shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1906 for their extensive observations, descriptions, and categorizations of neurons throughout the brain.
In parallel with this research, work with brain-damaged patients by Paul Broca suggested that certain regions of the brain were responsible for certain functions. At the time, Broca's findings were seen as a confirmation of Franz Joseph Gall's theory that language was localized and that certain psychological functions were localized in specific areas of the cerebral cortex. The localization of function hypothesis was supported by observations of epileptic patients conducted by John Hughlings Jackson, who correctly inferred the organization of the motor cortex by watching the progression of seizures through the body. Carl Wernicke further developed the theory of the specialization of specific brain structures in language comprehension and production. Modern research through neuroimaging techniques, still uses the Brodmann cerebral cytoarchitectonic map (referring to study of cell structure) anatomical definitions from this era in continuing to show that distinct areas of the cortex are activated in the execution of specific tasks.
During the 20th century, neuroscience began to be recognized as a distinct academic discipline in its own right, rather than as studies of the nervous system within other disciplines. Eric Kandel and collaborators have cited David Rioch, Francis O. Schmitt, and Stephen Kuffler as having played critical roles in establishing the field. Rioch originated the integration of basic anatomical and physiological research with clinical psychiatry at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, starting in the 1950s. During the same period, Schmitt established a neuroscience research program within the Biology Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, bringing together biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. The first freestanding neuroscience department (then called Psychobiology) was founded in 1964 at the University of California, Irvine by James L. McGaugh. This was followed by the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, which was founded in 1966 by Stephen Kuffler.
The understanding of neurons and of nervous system function became increasingly precise and molecular during the 20th century. For example, in 1952, Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley presented a mathematical model for transmission of electrical signals in neurons of the giant axon of a squid, which they called "action potentials", and how they are initiated and propagated, known as the Hodgkin–Huxley model. In 1961–1962, Richard FitzHugh and J. Nagumo simplified Hodgkin–Huxley, in what is called the FitzHugh–Nagumo model. In 1962, Bernard Katz modeled neurotransmission across the space between neurons known as synapses. Beginning in 1966, Eric Kandel and collaborators examined biochemical changes in neurons associated with learning and memory storage in "Aplysia". In 1981 Catherine Morris and Harold Lecar combined these models in the Morris–Lecar model. Such increasingly quantitative work gave rise to numerous biological neuron models and models of neural computation.
As a result of the increasing interest about the nervous system, several prominent neuroscience organizations have been formed to provide a forum to all neuroscientist during the 20th century. For example, the International Brain Research Organization was founded in 1961, the International Society for Neurochemistry in 1963, the European Brain and Behaviour Society in 1968, and the Society for Neuroscience in 1969. Recently, the application of neuroscience research results has also given rise to applied disciplines as neuroeconomics, neuroeducation, neuroethics, and neurolaw.
Over time, brain research has gone through philosophical, experimental, and theoretical phases, with work on brain simulation predicted to be important in the future.
The scientific study of the nervous system increased significantly during the second half of the twentieth century, principally due to advances in molecular biology, electrophysiology, and computational neuroscience. This has allowed neuroscientists to study the nervous system in all its aspects: how it is structured, how it works, how it develops, how it malfunctions, and how it can be changed.
For example, it has become possible to understand, in much detail, the complex processes occurring within a single neuron. Neurons are cells specialized for communication. They are able to communicate with neurons and other cell types through specialized junctions called synapses, at which electrical or electrochemical signals can be transmitted from one cell to another. Many neurons extrude a long thin filament of axoplasm called an axon, which may extend to distant parts of the body and are capable of rapidly carrying electrical signals, influencing the activity of other neurons, muscles, or glands at their termination points. A nervous "system" emerges from the assemblage of neurons that are connected to each other.
The vertebrate nervous system can be split into two parts: the central nervous system (defined as the brain and spinal cord), and the peripheral nervous system. In many species — including all vertebrates — the nervous system is the most complex organ system in the body, with most of the complexity residing in the brain. The human brain alone contains around one hundred billion neurons and one hundred trillion synapses; it consists of thousands of distinguishable substructures, connected to each other in synaptic networks whose intricacies have only begun to be unraveled. At least one out of three of the approximately 20,000 genes belonging to the human genome is expressed mainly in the brain.
Due to the high degree of plasticity of the human brain, the structure of its synapses and their resulting functions change throughout life.
Making sense of the nervous system's dynamic complexity is a formidable research challenge. Ultimately, neuroscientists would like to understand every aspect of the nervous system, including how it works, how it develops, how it malfunctions, and how it can be altered or repaired. Analysis of the nervous system is therefore performed at multiple levels, ranging from the molecular and cellular levels to the systems and cognitive levels. The specific topics that form the main foci of research change over time, driven by an ever-expanding base of knowledge and the availability of increasingly sophisticated technical methods. Improvements in technology have been the primary drivers of progress. Developments in electron microscopy, computer science, electronics, functional neuroimaging, and genetics and genomics have all been major drivers of progress.
Basic questions addressed in molecular neuroscience include the mechanisms by which neurons express and respond to molecular signals and how axons form complex connectivity patterns. At this level, tools from molecular biology and genetics are used to understand how neurons develop and how genetic changes affect biological functions. The morphology, molecular identity, and physiological characteristics of neurons and how they relate to different types of behavior are also of considerable interest.
Questions addressed in cellular neuroscience include the mechanisms of how neurons process signals physiologically and electrochemically. These questions include how signals are processed by neurites and somas and how neurotransmitters and electrical signals are used to process information in a neuron. Neurites are thin extensions from a neuronal cell body, consisting of dendrites (specialized to receive synaptic inputs from other neurons) and axons (specialized to conduct nerve impulses called action potentials). Somas are the cell bodies of the neurons and contain the nucleus.
Another major area of cellular neuroscience is the investigation of the development of the nervous system. Questions include the patterning and regionalization of the nervous system, neural stem cells, differentiation of neurons and glia (neurogenesis and gliogenesis), neuronal migration, axonal and dendritic development, trophic interactions, and synapse formation.
Computational neurogenetic modeling is concerned with the development of dynamic neuronal models for modeling brain functions with respect to genes and dynamic interactions between genes.
Questions in systems neuroscience include how neural circuits are formed and used anatomically and physiologically to produce functions such as reflexes, multisensory integration, motor coordination, circadian rhythms, emotional responses, learning, and memory. In other words, they address how these neural circuits function in large-scale brain networks, and the mechanisms through which behaviors are generated. For example, systems level analysis addresses questions concerning specific sensory and motor modalities: how does vision work? How do songbirds learn new songs and bats localize with ultrasound? How does the somatosensory system process tactile information? The related fields of neuroethology and neuropsychology address the question of how neural substrates underlie specific animal and human behaviors. Neuroendocrinology and psychoneuroimmunology examine interactions between the nervous system and the endocrine and immune systems, respectively. Despite many advancements, the way that networks of neurons perform complex cognitive processes and behaviors is still poorly understood.
Cognitive neuroscience addresses the questions of how psychological functions are produced by neural circuitry. The emergence of powerful new measurement techniques such as neuroimaging (e.g., fMRI, PET, SPECT), EEG, MEG, electrophysiology, optogenetics and human genetic analysis combined with sophisticated experimental techniques from cognitive psychology allows neuroscientists and psychologists to address abstract questions such as how cognition and emotion are mapped to specific neural substrates. Although many studies still hold a reductionist stance looking for the neurobiological basis of cognitive phenomena, recent research shows that there is an interesting interplay between neuroscientific findings and conceptual research, soliciting and integrating both perspectives. For example, the neuroscience research on empathy solicited an interesting interdisciplinary debate involving philosophy, psychology and psychopathology. Moreover, the neuroscientific identification of multiple memory systems related to different brain areas has challenged the idea of memory as a literal reproduction of the past, supporting a view of memory as a generative, constructive and dynamic process.
Neuroscience is also allied with the social and behavioral sciences as well as nascent interdisciplinary fields such as neuroeconomics, decision theory, social neuroscience, and neuromarketing to address complex questions about interactions of the brain with its environment. A study into consumer responses for example uses EEG to investigate neural correlates associated with narrative transportation into stories about energy efficiency.
Questions in computational neuroscience can span a wide range of levels of traditional analysis, such as development, structure, and cognitive functions of the brain. Research in this field utilizes mathematical models, theoretical analysis, and computer simulation to describe and verify biologically plausible neurons and nervous systems. For example, biological neuron models are mathematical descriptions of spiking neurons which can be used to describe both the behavior of single neurons as well as the dynamics of neural networks. Computational neuroscience is often referred to as theoretical neuroscience.
Nanoparticles in medicine are versatile in treating neurological disorders showing promising results in mediating drug transport across the blood brain barrier. Implementing nanoparticles in antiepileptic drugs enhances their medical efficacy by increasing bioavailability in the bloodstream, as well as offering a measure of control in release time concentration. Although nanoparticles can assist therapeutic drugs by adjusting physical properties to achieve desirable effects, inadvertent increases in toxicity often occur in preliminary drug trials. Furthermore, production of nanomedicine for drug trials is economically consuming, hindering progress in their implementation. Computational models in nanoneuroscience provide alternatives to study the efficacy of nanotechnology based medicines in neurological disorders while mitigating potential side effects and development costs.
Nanomaterials often operate at length scales between classical and quantum regimes. Due to the associated uncertainties at the length scales that nanomaterials operate, it is difficult to predict their behavior prior to in vivo studies. Classically, the physical processes which occur throughout neurons are analogous to electrical circuits. Designers focus on such analogies and model brain activity as a neural circuit. Success in computational modeling of neurons have led to the development of stereochemical models that accurately predict acetylcholine receptor-based synapses operating at microsecond time scales.
Ultrafine nanoneedles for cellular manipulations are thinner than the smallest single walled carbon nanotubes. Computational quantum chemistry is used to design ultrafine nanomaterials with highly-symmetrical structures to optimize geometry, reactivity and stability.
Behavior of nanomaterials are dominated by long ranged non-bonding interactions. Electrochemical processes that occur throughout the brain generate an electric field which can inadvertently affect the behavior of some nanomaterials. Molecular dynamics simulations can mitigate the development phase of nanomaterials as well as prevent neural toxicity of nanomaterials following in vivo clinical trials. Testing nanomaterials using molecular dynamics optimizes nano characteristics for therapeutic purposes by testing different environment conditions, nanomaterial shape fabrications, nanomaterial surface properties, etc without the need for in vivo experimentation. Flexibility in molecular dynamic simulations allows medical practitioners to personalize treatment. Nanoparticle related data from translational nanoinformatics links neurological patient specific data to predict treatment response.
The visualization of neuronal activity is of key importance in the study of neurology. Nano-imaging tools with nanoscale resolution help in these areas. These optical imaging tools are PALM and STORM which helps visualize nanoscale objects within cells. Pampaloni states that, so far, these imaging tools revealed the dynamic behavior and organization of the actin cytoskeleton inside the cells, which will assist in understanding how neurons probe their involvement during neuronal outgrowth and in response to injury, and how they differentiate axonal processes and characterization of receptor clustering and stoichiometry at the plasma inside the synapses, which are critical for understanding how synapses respond to changes in neuronal activity. These past works focused on devices for stimulation or inhibition of neural activity, but the crucial aspect is the ability for the device to simultaneously monitor neural activity. The major aspect that is to be improved in the nano imaging tools is the effective collection of the light as a major problem is that biological tissue are dispersive media that do not allow a straightforward propagation and control of light. These devices use nanoneedle and nanowire (NWs) for probing and stimulation.
NWs are artificial nano- or micro-sized “needles” that can provide high-fidelity electrophysiological recordings if used as microscopic electrodes for neuronal recordings. NWs are an attractive as they are highly functional structures that offer unique electronic properties that are affected by biological/chemical species adsorbed on their surface; mostly the conductivity. This conductivity variance depending on chemical species present allows enhanced sensing performances. NWs are also able to act as non-invasive and highly local probes. These versatility of NWs makes it optimal for interfacing with neurons due to the fact that the contact length along the axon (or the dendrite projection crossing a NW) is just about 20 nm.
Neurology, psychiatry, neurosurgery, psychosurgery, anesthesiology and pain medicine, neuropathology, neuroradiology, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, clinical neurophysiology, addiction medicine, and sleep medicine are some medical specialties that specifically address the diseases of the nervous system. These terms also refer to clinical disciplines involving diagnosis and treatment of these diseases.
Neurology works with diseases of the central and peripheral nervous systems, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and stroke, and their medical treatment. Psychiatry focuses on affective, behavioral, cognitive, and perceptual disorders. Anesthesiology focuses on perception of pain, and pharmacologic alteration of consciousness. Neuropathology focuses upon the classification and underlying pathogenic mechanisms of central and peripheral nervous system and muscle diseases, with an emphasis on morphologic, microscopic, and chemically observable alterations. Neurosurgery and psychosurgery work primarily with surgical treatment of diseases of the central and peripheral nervous systems.
Recently, the boundaries between various specialties have blurred, as they are all influenced by basic research in neuroscience. For example, brain imaging enables objective biological insight into mental illnesses, which can lead to faster diagnosis, more accurate prognosis, and improved monitoring of patient progress over time.
Integrative neuroscience describes the effort to combine models and information from multiple levels of research to develop a coherent model of the nervous system. For example, brain imaging coupled with physiological numerical models and theories of fundamental mechanisms may shed light on psychiatric disorders.
One of the main goals of nanoneuroscience is to gain a detailed understanding of how the nervous system operates and, thus, how neurons organize themselves in the brain. Consequently, creating drugs and devices that are able to cross the blood brain barrier (BBB) are essential to allow for detailed imaging and diagnoses. The blood brain barrier functions as a highly specialized semipermeable membrane surrounding the brain, preventing harmful molecules that may be dissolved in the circulation blood from entering the central nervous system.
The main two hurdles for drug-delivering molecules to access the brain are size (must have a molecular weight < 400 Da) and lipid solubility. Physicians hope to circumvent difficulties in accessing the central nervous system through viral gene therapy. This often involves direct injection into the patient’s brain or cerebral spinal fluid. The drawback of this therapy is that it is invasive and carries a high risk factor due to the necessity of surgery for the treatment to be administered. Because of this, only 3.6% of clinical trials in this field have progressed to stage III since the concept of gene therapy was developed in the 1980s.
Another proposed way to cross the BBB is through temporary intentional disruption of the barrier. This method was first inspired by certain pathological conditions that were discovered to break down this barrier by themselves, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, and seizure conditions.
Nanoparticles are unique from macromolecules because their surface properties are dependent on their size, allowing for strategic manipulation of these properties (or, “programming”) by scientists that would not be possible otherwise. Likewise, nanoparticle shape can also be varied to give a different set of characteristics based on the surface area to volume ratio of the particle.
Nanoparticles have promising therapeutic effects when treating neurodegenerative diseases. Oxygen reactive polymer (ORP) is a nano-platform programmed to react with oxygen and has been shown to detect and reduce the presence of reactive oxygen species (ROS) formed immediately after traumatic brain injuries. Nanoparticles have also been employed as a “neuroprotective” measure, as is the case with Alzheimer’s disease and stroke models. Alzheimer’s disease results in toxic aggregates of the amyloid beta protein formed in the brain. In one study, gold nanoparticles were programmed to attach themselves to these aggregates and were successful in breaking them up. Likewise, with ischemic stroke models, cells in the affected region of the brain undergo apoptosis, dramatically reducing blood flow to important parts of the brain and often resulting in death or severe mental and physical changes. Platinum nanoparticles have been shown to act as ROS, serving as “biological antioxidants” and significantly reducing oxidation in the brain as a result of stroke. Nanoparticles can also lead to neurotoxicity and cause permanent BBB damage either from brain oedema or from unrelated molecules crossing the BBB and causing brain damage. This proves further long term in vivo studies are needed to gain enough understanding to allow for successful clinical trials.
One of the most common nano-based drug delivery platforms is liposome-based delivery. They are both lipid-soluble and nano-scale and thus are permitted through a fully-functioning BBB. Additionally, lipids themselves are biological molecules, making them highly biocompatible, which in turn lowers the risk of cell toxicity. The bilayer that is formed allows the molecule to fully encapsulate any drug, protecting it while it is travelling through the body. One drawback to shielding the drug from the outside cells is that it no longer has specificity, and requires coupling to extra antibodies to be able to target a biological site. Due to their low stability, liposome based nanoparticles for drug delivery have a short shelf life.
Targeted therapy using magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) is also a popular topic of research and has led to several stage III clinical trials. Invasiveness is not an issue here because a magnetic force can be applied from the outside of a patient’s body to interact and direct the MNPs. This strategy has been proven successful in delivering Brain-derived neurotropic factor, a naturally occurring gene thought to promote neurorehabilitation, across the BBB.
Modern neuroscience education and research activities can be very roughly categorized into the following major branches, based on the subject and scale of the system in examination as well as distinct experimental or curricular approaches. Individual neuroscientists, however, often work on questions that span several distinct subfields.
The largest professional neuroscience organization is the Society for Neuroscience (SFN), which is based in the United States but includes many members from other countries. Since its founding in 1969 the SFN has grown steadily: as of 2010 it recorded 40,290 members from 83 different countries. Annual meetings, held each year in a different American city, draw attendance from researchers, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduates, as well as educational institutions, funding agencies, publishers, and hundreds of businesses that supply products used in research.
Other major organizations devoted to neuroscience include the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO), which holds its meetings in a country from a different part of the world each year, and the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS), which holds a meeting in a different European city every two years. FENS comprises a set of 32 national-level organizations, including the British Neuroscience Association, the German Neuroscience Society ("Neurowissenschaftliche Gesellschaft"), and the French "Société des Neurosciences". The first National Honor Society in Neuroscience, Nu Rho Psi, was founded in 2006.
In 2013, the BRAIN Initiative was announced in the US. An International Brain Initiative was created in 2017, currently integrated by more than seven national-level brain research initiatives (US, Europe, Allen Institute, Japan, China, Australia, Canada, Korea, Israel) spanning four continents.
In addition to conducting traditional research in laboratory settings, neuroscientists have also been involved in the promotion of awareness and knowledge about the nervous system among the general public and government officials. Such promotions have been done by both individual neuroscientists and large organizations. For example, individual neuroscientists have promoted neuroscience education among young students by organizing the International Brain Bee, which is an academic competition for high school or secondary school students worldwide. In the United States, large organizations such as the Society for Neuroscience have promoted neuroscience education by developing a primer called Brain Facts, collaborating with public school teachers to develop Neuroscience Core Concepts for K-12 teachers and students, and cosponsoring a campaign with the Dana Foundation called Brain Awareness Week to increase public awareness about the progress and benefits of brain research. In Canada, the CIHR Canadian National Brain Bee is held annually at McMaster University.
Neuroscience educators formed Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience (FUN) in 1992 to share best practices and provide travel awards for undergraduates presenting at Society for Neuroscience meetings.
Finally, neuroscientists have also collaborated with other education experts to study and refine educational techniques to optimize learning among students, an emerging field called educational neuroscience. Federal agencies in the United States, such as the National Institute of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF), have also funded research that pertains to best practices in teaching and learning of neuroscience concepts. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21245 |
Neil Armstrong
Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer and the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor.
A graduate of Purdue University, Armstrong studied aeronautical engineering; his college tuition was paid for by the U.S. Navy under the Holloway Plan. He became a midshipman in 1949 and a naval aviator the following year. He saw action in the Korean War, flying the Grumman F9F Panther from the aircraft carrier . In September 1951, while making a low bombing run, Armstrong's aircraft was damaged when it collided with an anti-aircraft cable which cut off a large portion of one wing. Armstrong was forced to bail out. After the war, he completed his bachelor's degree at Purdue and became a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base in California. He was the project pilot on Century Series fighters and flew the North American X-15 seven times. He was also a participant in the U.S. Air Force's Man in Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs.
Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in the second group, which was selected in 1962. He made his first spaceflight as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966, becoming NASA's first civilian astronaut to fly in space. During this mission with pilot David Scott, he performed the first docking of two spacecraft; the mission was aborted after Armstrong used some of his re-entry control fuel to stabilize a dangerous roll caused by a stuck thruster. During training for Armstrong's second and last spaceflight as commander of Apollo 11, he had to eject from the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle moments before a crash.
On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Apollo 11 Lunar Module (LM) pilot Buzz Aldrin became the first people to land on the Moon, and the next day they spent two and a half hours outside the spacecraft while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the mission's command module (CM). When Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, he famously said: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon. President Jimmy Carter presented Armstrong with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and Armstrong and his former crewmates received a Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.
After he resigned from NASA in 1971, Armstrong taught in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati until 1979. He served on the Apollo 13 accident investigation and on the Rogers Commission, which investigated the Space Shuttle "Challenger" disaster. He acted as a spokesman for several businesses and appeared in advertising for the automotive brand Chrysler starting in January 1979.
Armstrong was born on August 5, 1930, near Wapakoneta, Ohio to Stephen Koenig Armstrong and Viola Louise Engel. He was of German, Scottish, and Scots-Irish ancestry, and had a younger sister, June, and a younger brother, Dean. His father worked as an auditor for the Ohio state government, and the family moved around the state repeatedly, living in sixteen towns over the next fourteen years. Armstrong's love for flying grew during this time, having started early when his father took his two-year-old son to the Cleveland Air Races. When he was five or six, he experienced his first airplane flight in Warren, Ohio when he and his father took a ride in a Ford Trimotor, also known as the "Tin Goose".
His father's last move was in 1944, back to Wapakoneta. Armstrong attended Blume High School and took flying lessons at the grassy Wapakoneta airfield. He earned a student flight certificate on his sixteenth birthday, then soloed in August, all before he had a driver license. He was active in the Boy Scouts and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. As an adult, he was recognized by the Boy Scouts of America with its Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and Silver Buffalo Award. On July 18, 1969, while flying toward the Moon, Armstrong greeted the Scouts holding their quadrennial National Jamboree in Idaho. Among the few personal items that he carried with him to the Moon and back was a World Scout Badge.
At age 17 in 1947, Armstrong began studying aeronautical engineering at Purdue University. He was the second person in his family to attend college. He was also accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but after watching a football game between the Purdue Boilermakers and the Ohio State Buckeyes at the Ohio Stadium in 1945, in which the Boilermakers, led by quarterback Bob DeMoss, soundly defeated the highly regarded Buckeyes, he resolved to go to Purdue. An uncle who had attended MIT advised him that it was not necessary to go all the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a good education. His college tuition was paid for under the Holloway Plan. Successful applicants committed to two years of study, followed by two years of flight training and one year of service in the U.S. Navy as an aviator, then completion of the final two years of their bachelor's degree. Armstrong did not take courses in naval science, nor did he join the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps.
Armstrong's call-up from the Navy arrived on January 26, 1949, requiring him to report to Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida for flight training with class 5-49. After passing the medical examinations, he became a midshipman on February 24, 1949. Flight training was conducted in a North American SNJ trainer, in which he soloed on September 9, 1949. On March 2, 1950, he made his first aircraft carrier landing on , an achievement he considered comparable to his first solo flight. He was then sent to Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas for training on the Grumman F8F Bearcat, culminating in a carrier landing on . On August 16, 1950, Armstrong was informed by letter that he was a fully qualified naval aviator. His mother and sister attended his graduation ceremony on August 23, 1950.
Armstrong was assigned to Fleet Aircraft Service Squadron7 (FASRON 7) at NAS San Diego (now known as NAS North Island). On November 27, 1950, he was assigned to VF-51, an all-jet squadron, becoming its youngest officer, and made his first flight in a jet, a Grumman F9F Panther, on January 5, 1951. He was promoted to ensign on June 5, 1951, and made his first jet carrier landing on two days later. On June 28, 1951, "Essex" had set sail for Korea, with VF-51 aboard to act as ground-attack aircraft. VF-51 flew ahead to Naval Air Station Barbers Point in Hawaii, where it conducted fighter-bomber training before rejoining the ship at the end of July.
On August 29, 1951, Armstrong saw action in the Korean War as an escort for a photo reconnaissance plane over Songjin. Five days later, on September 3, he flew armed reconnaissance over the primary transportation and storage facilities south of the village of Majon-ni, west of Wonsan. An initial report to the commanding officer of "Essex" said that while attacking a target, Armstrong's F9F Panther was hit by anti-aircraft fire. The report indicated he was trying to regain control and collided with a pole, which sliced off of the Panther's right wing. Further perversions of the story by different authors added that he was only from the ground and that of his wing was sheared off.
According to Armstrong, he was making a low bombing run at when of his wing was torn off after it collided with a cable that was strung across the hills as a booby trap. He was flying above the ground when he hit it. While there was heavy anti-aircraft fire in the area, none hit Armstrong's aircraft.
Armstrong flew the plane back to friendly territory, but due to the loss of the aileron, ejection was his only safe option. He intended to eject over water and await rescue by Navy helicopters, but his parachute was blown back over land. A jeep driven by a roommate from flight school picked him up; it is unknown what happened to the wreckage of his aircraft, F9F-2 BuNo "125122".
In all, Armstrong flew 78missions over Korea for a total of 121hours in the air, a third of them in January 1952, with the final mission on March 5, 1952. Of 492 U.S. Navy personnel killed in the Korean War, 27 of them were from "Essex" on this war cruise. Armstrong received the Air Medal for 20 combat missions, two gold stars for the next 40, the Korean Service Medal and Engagement Star, the National Defense Service Medal, and the United Nations Korea Medal.
Armstrong's regular commission was terminated on February 25, 1952, and he became an ensign in the United States Navy Reserve. On completion of his combat tour with "Essex", he was assigned to a transport squadron, VR-32, in May 1952. He was released from active duty on August 23, 1952, but remained in the reserve, and was promoted to lieutenant (junior grade) on May 9, 1953. As a reservist, he continued to fly, with VF-724 at Naval Air Station Glenview in Illinois, and then, after moving to California, with VF-773 at Naval Air Station Los Alamitos. He remained in the reserve for eight years, before resigning his commission on October 21, 1960.
After his service with the Navy, Armstrong returned to Purdue. His previously earned good but not outstanding grades now improved, lifting his final Grade Point Average (GPA) to a respectable but not outstanding 4.8 out of 6.0. He pledged the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and lived in its fraternity house. He wrote and co-directed two musicals as part of the all-student revue. The first was a version of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves", co-directed with his girlfriend Joanne Alford from the Alpha Chi Omega sorority, with songs from the Walt Disney film, including "Someday My Prince Will Come"; the second was titled "The Land of Egelloc" ("college" spelled backwards), with music from Gilbert and Sullivan but new lyrics. He was chairman of the Purdue Aero Flying Club, and flew the club's aircraft, an Aeronca and a couple of Pipers, which were kept at nearby Aretz Airport in Lafayette, Indiana. Flying the Aeronca to Wapakoneta in 1954, he damaged it in a rough landing in a farmer's field, and it had to be hauled back to Lafayette on a trailer. He was a baritone player in the Purdue All-American Marching Band. Ten years later he was made an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi national band honorary fraternity. Armstrong graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering in January 1955. In 1970, he completed his Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). He would eventually be awarded honorary doctorates by several universities.
Armstrong met Janet Elizabeth Shearon, who was majoring in home economics, at a party hosted by Alpha Chi Omega. According to the couple, there was no real courtship, and neither could remember the exact circumstances of their engagement. They were married on January 28, 1956, at the Congregational Church in Wilmette, Illinois. When he moved to Edwards Air Force Base, he lived in the bachelor quarters of the base, while Janet lived in the Westwood district of Los Angeles. After one semester, they moved into a house in Antelope Valley, near Edwards AFB. Janet did not finish her degree, a fact she regretted later in life. The couple had three children: Eric, Karen, and Mark. In June 1961, Karen was diagnosed with a diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, a malignant tumor of the middle part of her brain stem. X-ray treatment slowed its growth, but her health deteriorated to the point where she could no longer walk or talk. She died of pneumonia, related to her weakened health, on January 28, 1962, aged two.
Following his graduation from Purdue, Armstrong became an experimental research test pilot. He applied at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base. NACA had no open positions, and forwarded his application to the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, where Armstrong made his first test flight on March 1, 1955. Armstrong's stint at Cleveland lasted only a couple of months before a position at the High-Speed Flight Station became available, and he reported for work there on July 11, 1955.
On his first day, Armstrong was tasked with piloting chase planes during releases of experimental aircraft from modified bombers. He also flew the modified bombers, and on one of these missions had his first flight incident at Edwards. On March 22, 1956, he was in a Boeing B-29 Superfortress, which was to air-drop a Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket. He sat in the right-hand pilot seat while the left-hand seat commander, Stan Butchart, flew the B-29.
As they climbed to , the number-four engine stopped and the propeller began windmilling (rotating freely) in the airstream. Hitting the switch that would stop the propeller's spinning, Butchart found it slowed but then started spinning again, this time even faster than the others; if it spun too fast, it would break apart. Their aircraft needed to hold an airspeed of to launch its Skyrocket payload, and the B-29 could not land with the Skyrocket attached to its belly. Armstrong and Butchart brought the aircraft into a nose-down attitude to increase speed, then launched the Skyrocket. At the instant of launch, the number-four engine propeller disintegrated. Pieces of it damaged the number-three engine and hit the number-two engine. Butchart and Armstrong were forced to shut down the damaged number-three engine, along with the number-one engine, due to the torque it created. They made a slow, circling descent from using only the number-two engine, and landed safely.
Armstrong served as project pilot on Century Series fighters, including the North American F-100 Super Sabre A and C variants, the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, the Republic F-105 Thunderchief and the Convair F-106 Delta Dart. He also flew the Douglas DC-3, Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star, North American F-86 Sabre, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, Douglas F5D-1 Skylancer, Boeing B-29 Superfortress, Boeing B-47 Stratojet and Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker, and was one of eight elite pilots involved in the Parasev paraglider research vehicle program. Over his career, he flew more than 200 different models of aircraft. His first flight in a rocket-powered aircraft was on August 15, 1957, in the Bell X-1B, to an altitude of . On landing, the poorly designed nose landing gear failed, as had happened on about a dozen previous flights of the Bell X-1B. He flew the North American X-15 seven times, including the first flight with the Q-ball system, the first flight of the number3 X-15 airframe, and the first flight of the MH-96 adaptive flight control system. He became an employee of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) when it was established on October 1, 1958, absorbing NACA.
Armstrong was involved in several incidents that went down in Edwards folklore or were chronicled in the memoirs of colleagues. During his sixth X-15 flight on April 20, 1962, Armstrong was testing the MH-96 control system when he flew to a height of over (the highest he flew before Gemini 8). He held up the aircraft nose for too long during its descent to demonstrate the MH-96's g-limiting performance, and the X-15 ballooned back up to around . He flew past the landing field at Mach3 at over in altitude, and ended up south of Edwards. After sufficient descent, he turned back toward the landing area, and landed, just missing Joshua trees at the south end. It was the longest X-15 flight in both flight time and length of the ground track.
Many of the test pilots at Edwards praised Armstrong's engineering ability. Milt Thompson said he was "the most technically capable of the early X-15 pilots". Bill Dana said Armstrong "had a mind that absorbed things like a sponge". Those who flew for the Air Force tended to have a different opinion, especially people like Chuck Yeager and Pete Knight, who did not have engineering degrees. Knight said that pilot-engineers flew in a way that was "more mechanical than it is flying", and gave this as the reason why some pilot-engineers got into trouble: their flying skills did not come naturally. Armstrong made seven flights in the X-15 between November 30, 1960, and July 26, 1962. He reached a top speed of Mach 5.74 () in the X-15-1, and left the Flight Research Center with a total of 2,400 flying hours.
On April 24, 1962, Armstrong flew for the only time with Chuck Yeager. Their job, flying a T-33, was to evaluate Smith Ranch Dry Lake in Nevada for use as an emergency landing site for the X-15. In his autobiography, Yeager wrote that he knew the lake bed was unsuitable for landings after recent rains, but Armstrong insisted on flying out anyway. As they attempted a touch-and-go, the wheels became stuck and they had to wait for rescue. As Armstrong told the story, Yeager never tried to talk him out of it and they made a first successful landing on the east side of the lake. Then Yeager told him to try again, this time a bit slower. On the second landing, they became stuck, provoking Yeager to fits of laughter.
On May 21, 1962, Armstrong was involved in the "Nellis Affair". He was sent in an F-104 to inspect Delamar Dry Lake in southern Nevada, again for emergency landings. He misjudged his altitude and did not realize that the landing gear had not fully extended. As he touched down, the landing gear began to retract; Armstrong applied full power to abort the landing, but the ventral fin and landing gear door struck the ground, damaging the radio and releasing hydraulic fluid. Without radio communication, Armstrong flew south to Nellis Air Force Base, past the control tower, and waggled his wings, the signal for a no-radio approach. The loss of hydraulic fluid caused the tailhook to release, and upon landing, he caught the arresting wire attached to an anchor chain, and dragged the chain along the runway.
It took thirty minutes to clear the runway and rig another arresting cable. Armstrong telephoned Edwards and asked for someone to collect him. Milt Thompson was sent in an F-104B, the only two-seater available, but a plane Thompson had never flown. With great difficulty, Thompson made it to Nellis, where a strong crosswind caused a hard landing and the left main tire suffered a blowout. The runway was again closed to clear it, and Bill Dana was sent to Nellis in a T-33, but he almost landed long. The Nellis base operations office then decided that to avoid any further problems, it would be best to find the three NASA pilots ground transport back to Edwards.
In June 1958, Armstrong was selected for the U.S. Air Force's Man In Space Soonest program, but the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) canceled its funding on August 1, 1958, and on November 5, 1958, it was superseded by Project Mercury, a civilian project run by NASA. As a NASA civilian test pilot, Armstrong was ineligible to become one of its astronauts at this time, as selection was restricted to military test pilots. In November 1960, he was chosen as part of the pilot consultant group for the X-20 Dyna-Soar, a military space plane under development by Boeing for the U.S. Air Force, and on March 15, 1962, he was selected by the U.S. Air Force as one of seven pilot-engineers who would fly the X-20 when it got off the design board.
In April 1962, NASA announced that applications were being sought for the second group of NASA astronauts for Project Gemini, a proposed two-man spacecraft. This time, selection was open to qualified civilian test pilots. Armstrong visited the Seattle World's Fair in May 1962, and attended a conference there on space exploration that was co-sponsored by NASA. After he returned from Seattle on June 4, he applied to become an astronaut. His application arrived about a week past the June 1, 1962, deadline, but Dick Day, a flight simulator expert with whom Armstrong had worked closely at Edwards, saw the late arrival of the application and slipped it into the pile before anyone noticed. At Brooks Air Force Base at the end of June, Armstrong underwent a medical exam that many of the applicants described as painful and at times seemingly pointless.
NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations, Deke Slayton, called Armstrong on September 13, 1962, and asked whether he would be interested in joining the NASA Astronaut Corps as part of what the press dubbed "the New Nine"; without hesitation, Armstrong said yes. The selections were kept secret until three days later, although newspaper reports had circulated since earlier that year that he would be selected as the "first civilian astronaut". Armstrong was one of two civilian pilots selected for this group; the other was Elliot See, another former naval aviator. NASA announced the selection of the second group at a press conference on September 17, 1962. Compared with the Mercury Seven astronauts, they were younger, and had more impressive academic credentials.
On February 8, 1965, Armstrong and Elliot See were announced as the backup crew for Gemini 5, with Armstrong as commander, supporting the prime crew of Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad. The mission's purpose was to practice space rendezvous and to develop procedures and equipment for a seven-day flight, all of which would be required for a mission to the Moon. With two other flights (Gemini 3 and Gemini 4) in preparation, six crews were competing for simulator time, so Gemini5 was postponed. It finally lifted off on August 21. Armstrong and See watched the launch at Cape Kennedy, then flew to the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston. The mission was generally successful, despite a problem with the fuel cells that prevented a rendezvous. Cooper and Conrad practiced a "phantom rendezvous", carrying out the maneuver without a target.
The crew assignments for Gemini8 were announced on September 20, 1965. Under the normal rotation system, the backup crew for one mission became the prime crew for the third mission after, but Slayton designated David Scott as the pilot of Gemini8. Scott was the first member of the third group of astronauts, whose selection was announced on October 18, 1963, to receive a prime crew assignment. See was designated to command Gemini 9. Henceforth, each Gemini mission was commanded by a member of Armstrong's group, with a member of Scott's group as the pilot. Conrad would be Armstrong's backup this time, and Richard F. Gordon Jr. his pilot. Armstrong became the first American civilian in space. (Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union had become the first civilian—and first woman—nearly three years earlier aboard Vostok 6 when it launched on June 16, 1963.) Armstrong would also be the last of his group to fly in space, as See died in a T-38 crash on February 28, 1966, that also took the life of crewmate Charles Bassett. They were replaced by the backup crew of Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan, while Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin moved up from the backup crew of Gemini 10 to become the backup for Gemini 9, and would eventually fly Gemini 12.
Gemini 8 launched on March 16, 1966. It was the most complex mission yet, with a rendezvous and docking with an uncrewed Agena target vehicle, and the planned second American space walk (EVA) by Scott. The mission was planned to last 75hours and 55orbits. After the Agena lifted off at 10:00:00 EST, the Titan II rocket carrying Armstrong and Scott ignited at 11:41:02 EST, putting them into an orbit from which they chased the Agena. They achieved the first-ever docking between two spacecraft. Contact with the crew was intermittent due to the lack of tracking stations covering their entire orbits. While out of contact with the ground, the docked spacecraft began to roll, and Armstrong attempted to correct this with the Gemini's Orbit Attitude and Maneuvering System (OAMS). Following the earlier advice of Mission Control, they undocked, but the roll increased dramatically until they were turning about once per second, indicating a problem with Gemini's attitude control. Armstrong engaged the Reentry Control System (RCS) and turned off the OAMS. Mission rules dictated that once this system was turned on, the spacecraft had to reenter at the next possible opportunity. It was later thought that damaged wiring caused one of the thrusters to stick in the on position.
A few people in the Astronaut Office, including Walter Cunningham, felt that Armstrong and Scott "had botched their first mission". There was speculation that Armstrong could have salvaged the mission if he had turned on only one of the two RCS rings, saving the other for mission objectives. These criticisms were unfounded; no malfunction procedures had been written, and it was possible to turn on only both RCS rings, not one or the other. Gene Kranz wrote, "The crew reacted as they were trained, and they reacted wrong because we trained them wrong." The mission planners and controllers had failed to realize that when two spacecraft were docked, they must be considered one spacecraft. Kranz considered this the mission's most important lesson. Armstrong was depressed that the mission was cut short, canceling most mission objectives and robbing Scott of his EVA. The Agena was later reused as a docking target by Gemini 10. Armstrong and Scott received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, and the Air Force awarded Scott the Distinguished Flying Cross as well. Scott was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and Armstrong received a $678 raise in pay to $21,653 a year (), making him NASA's highest-paid astronaut.
In Armstrong's final assignment in the Gemini program, he was the back-up Command Pilot for Gemini 11; this was announced two days after the landing of Gemini 8. Having trained for two flights, Armstrong was quite knowledgeable about the systems and took on a teaching role for the rookie backup Pilot, William Anders. The launch was on September 12, 1966, with Conrad and Gordon on board, who successfully completed the mission objectives, while Armstrong served as a capsule communicator (CAPCOM).
Following the flight, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked Armstrong and his wife to take part in a 24-day goodwill tour of South America. Also on the tour, which took in 11countries and 14major cities, were Dick Gordon, George Low, their wives, and other government officials. In Paraguay, Armstrong greeted dignitaries in their local language, Guarani; in Brazil he talked about the exploits of the Brazilian-born Alberto Santos-Dumont.
On January 27, 1967—the day of the Apollo 1 fire—Armstrong was in Washington, D.C. with Cooper, Gordon, Lovell and Scott Carpenter for the signing of the United Nations Outer Space Treaty. The astronauts chatted with the assembled dignitaries until 18:45, when Carpenter went to the airport, and the others returned to the Georgetown Inn, where they each found messages to phone the MSC. During these calls, they learned of the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee in the fire. Armstrong and the group spent the rest of the night drinking scotch and discussing what had happened.
On April 5, 1967, the same day the Apollo1 investigation released its final report, Armstrong and 17 other astronauts gathered for a meeting with Slayton. The first thing Slayton said was, "The guys who are going to fly the first lunar missions are the guys in this room." According to Cernan, only Armstrong showed no reaction to the statement. To Armstrong it came as no surprise—the room was full of veterans of Project Gemini, the only people who could fly the lunar missions. Slayton talked about the planned missions and named Armstrong to the backup crew for Apollo 9, which at that stage was planned as a medium Earth orbit test of the combined lunar module and command and service module.
The crew assignment was officially announced November 20, 1967. For crewmates, Armstrong was assigned Lovell and Aldrin, from Gemini 12. After design and manufacturing delays of the lunar module (LM), Apollo 8 and9 swapped prime and backup crews. Based on the normal crew rotation, Armstrong would command Apollo 11, with one change: Mike Collins on the Apollo8 crew began experiencing trouble with his legs. Doctors diagnosed the problem as a bony growth between his fifth and sixth vertebrae, requiring surgery. Lovell took his place on the Apollo8 crew, and, when Collins recovered, he joined Armstrong's crew.
To give the astronauts practice piloting the LM on its descent, NASA commissioned Bell Aircraft to build two Lunar Landing Research Vehicles (LLRV), later augmented with three Lunar Landing Training Vehicles (LLTV). Nicknamed the "Flying Bedsteads", they simulated the Moon's one-sixth gravity using a turbofan engine to support five-sixths of the craft's weight. On May 6, 1968, above the ground, Armstrong's controls started to degrade and the LLRV began rolling. He ejected safely before the vehicle struck the ground and burst into flames. Later analysis suggested that if he had ejected half a second later, his parachute would not have opened in time. His only injury was from biting his tongue. The LLRV was completely destroyed. Even though he was nearly killed, Armstrong maintained that without the LLRV and LLTV, the lunar landings would not have been successful, as they gave commanders essential experience in piloting the lunar landing craft.
In addition to the LLRV training, NASA began lunar landing simulator training after Apollo 10 was completed. Aldrin and Armstrong trained for a variety of scenarios that could develop during a real lunar landing. They also received briefings from geologists at NASA.
After Armstrong served as backup commander for Apollo8, Slayton offered him the post of commander of Apollo 11 on December 23, 1968, as Apollo8 orbited the Moon. According to Armstrong's 2005 biography, Slayton told him that although the planned crew was Commander Armstrong, Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin, and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, he was offering Armstrong the chance to replace Aldrin with Jim Lovell. After thinking it over for a day, Armstrong told Slayton he would stick with Aldrin, as he had no difficulty working with him and thought Lovell deserved his own command. Replacing Aldrin with Lovell would have made Lovell the lunar module pilot, unofficially the lowest ranked member, and Armstrong could not justify placing Lovell, the commander of Gemini 12, in the number3 position of the crew. The crew of Apollo 11 was officially announced on January 9, 1969, as Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin, with Lovell, Anders, and Fred Haise as the backup crew.
According to Chris Kraft, a March 1969 meeting among Slayton, George Low, Bob Gilruth, and Kraft determined that Armstrong would be the first person on the Moon, in part because NASA management saw him as a person who did not have a large ego. A press conference on April 14, 1969, gave the design of the LM cabin as the reason for Armstrong's being first; the hatch opened inwards and to the right, making it difficult for the LM pilot, on the right-hand side, to exit first. At the time of their meeting, the four men did not know about the hatch consideration. The first knowledge of the meeting outside the small group came when Kraft wrote his book. Methods of circumventing this difficulty existed, but it is not known if these were considered at the time. Slayton added, "Secondly, just on a pure protocol basis, I figured the commander ought to be the first guy out... I changed it as soon as I found they had the time line that showed that. Bob Gilruth approved my decision."
A Saturn V rocket launched Apollo 11 from Launch Complex 39 site at the Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 1969, at 13:32:00 UTC (09:32:00 EDT local time). Armstrong's wife Janet and two sons watched from a yacht moored on the Banana River. During the launch, Armstrong's heart rate peaked at 110beats per minute. He found the first stage the loudest, much noisier than the Gemini8 Titan II launch. The Apollo command module was relatively roomy compared with the Gemini spacecraft. None of the Apollo 11 crew suffered space sickness, as some members of previous crews had. Armstrong was especially glad about this, as he had been prone to motion sickness as a child and could experience nausea after long periods of aerobatics.
Apollo 11's objective was to land safely on the Moon, rather than to touch down at a precise location. Three minutes into the lunar descent, Armstrong noted that craters were passing about two seconds too early, which meant the LM "Eagle" would probably touch down several miles (kilometres) beyond the planned landing zone. As the "Eagle"s landing radar acquired the surface, several computer error alarms sounded. The first was a code 1202 alarm, and even with their extensive training, neither Armstrong nor Aldrin knew what this code meant. They promptly received word from CAPCOM Charles Duke in Houston that the alarms were not a concern; the 1202 and 1201 alarms were caused by executive overflows in the lunar module computer. In 2007, Aldrin said the overflows were caused by his own counter-checklist choice of leaving the docking radar on during the landing process, causing the computer to process unnecessary radar data. When it did not have enough time to execute all tasks, the computer dropped the lower-priority ones, triggering the alarms. Aldrin said he decided to leave the radar on in case an abort was necessary when re-docking with the Apollo command module; he did not realize it would cause the processing overflows.
When Armstrong noticed they were heading toward a landing area that seemed unsafe, he took manual control of the LM and attempted to find a safer area. This took longer than expected, and longer than most simulations had taken. For this reason, Mission Control was concerned that the LM was running low on fuel. On landing, Aldrin and Armstrong believed they had 40seconds of fuel left, including the 20seconds' worth which had to be saved in the event of an abort. During training, Armstrong had, on several occasions, landed with fewer than 15seconds of fuel; he was also confident the LM could survive a fall of up to . Post-mission analysis showed that at touchdown there were 45 to 50seconds of propellant burn time left.
The landing on the surface of the Moon occurred several seconds after 20:17:40 UTC on July 20, 1969. One of three probes attached to three of the LM's four legs made contact with the surface, a panel light in the LM illuminated, and Aldrin called out, "Contact light." Armstrong shut the engine off and said, "Shutdown." As the LM settled onto the surface, Aldrin said, "Okay, engine stop"; then they both called out some post-landing checklist items. After a 10-second pause, Duke acknowledged the landing with, "We copy you down, "Eagle"." Armstrong announced the landing to Mission Control and the world with the words, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The "Eagle" has landed." Aldrin and Armstrong celebrated with a brisk handshake and pat on the back. They then returned to the checklist of contingency tasks, should an emergency liftoff become necessary. After Armstrong confirmed touch down, Duke re-acknowledged, adding a comment about the flight crew's relief: "Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot." During the landing, Armstrong's heart rate ranged from 100 to 150beats per minute.
The flight plan called for a crew rest period before leaving the module, but Armstrong asked for this be moved to earlier in the evening, Houston time. When he and Aldrin were ready to go outside, "Eagle" was depressurized, the hatch was opened, and Armstrong made his way down the ladder. At the bottom of the ladder Armstrong said, "I'm going to step off the LM [lunar module] now". He turned and set his left boot on the lunar surface at 02:56 UTC July 21, 1969, then said, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." The exact timing of Armstrong's first step on the Moon is unclear.
Armstrong prepared his famous epigram on his own. In a post-flight press conference, he said that he chose the words "just prior to leaving the LM." In a 1983 interview in "Esquire" magazine, he explained to George Plimpton: "I always knew there was a good chance of being able to return to Earth, but I thought the chances of a successful touch down on the moon surface were about even money—fifty–fifty... Most people don't realize how difficult the mission was. So it didn't seem to me there was much point in thinking of something to say if we'd have to abort landing." In 2012, his brother Dean Armstrong said that Neil showed him a draft of the line months before the launch. Historian Andrew Chaikin, who interviewed Armstrong in 1988 for his book "A Man on the Moon", disputed that Armstrong claimed to have conceived the line during the mission.
Recordings of Armstrong's transmission do not provide evidence for the indefinite article "a" before "man", though NASA and Armstrong insisted for years that static obscured it. Armstrong stated he would never make such a mistake, but after repeated listenings to recordings, he eventually conceded he must have dropped the "a". He later said he "would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it was not said—although it might actually have been". There have since been claims and counter-claims about whether acoustic analysis of the recording reveals the presence of the missing "a"; Peter Shann Ford, an Australian computer programmer, conducted a digital audio analysis and claims that Armstrong did say "a man", but the "a" was inaudible due to the limitations of communications technology of the time. Ford and James R. Hansen, Armstrong's authorized biographer, presented these findings to Armstrong and NASA representatives, who conducted their own analysis. Armstrong found Ford's analysis "persuasive." Linguists David Beaver and Mark Liberman wrote of their skepticism of Ford's claims on the blog Language Log. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=21247 |
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