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SameGame
"SameGame" was originally created as "Chain Shot!" in 1985 by Kuniaki Moribe. It was distributed for Fujitsu's FM-8 and FM-7 platforms in a Japanese monthly personal computer magazine called "Gekkan ASCII". In 1992, the game was ported as "SameGame" to Unix platforms by Eiji Fukumoto, and to the NEC PC-9801 series by Wataru Yoshioka. In 1993, it was ported to Windows 3.1 by Ikuo Hirohata. This version was translated into English by Hitoshi Ozawa, and is still available from his software archive.
In 1994, Takahiro Sumiya ported it to Macintosh. This version has some gameplay differences—three, instead of five, colors—and is probably the most widely distributed of the original series. It was the basis for the "Same Gnome" and "KSame" variations created for Linux.
In 2001, Biedl et al. proved that deciding the solvability (whether all blocks can be removed) of 1-column (or 1-row) 2-colour Clickomania can be done in linear time. Deciding the solvability of 2-column, 5-colour Clickomania is NP-Complete. Deciding the solvability of 5-column 3-colour Clickomania is also NP-Complete.
"SameGame" is played on a rectangular field, typically initially filled with four or five kinds of blocks placed at random. By selecting a group of adjoining blocks of the same color, a player may remove them from the screen. Blocks that are no longer supported will fall down, and a column without any blocks will be trimmed away by other columns always sliding to one side (often the left). The goal of the game is to remove as many blocks from the playing field as possible.
In most versions, there are no time constraints during the game. However, some implementations gradually push the rows upward or drop blocks from above. Sometimes the player can control the number and timing of blocks that drop from above in certain ways. For example, on some implementations for the iOS, this can be done by shaking the device. The game ends if a timer runs out or if no more blocks can be removed. Some versions, including some versions for Windows Mobile, include both portrait and landscape orientations.
In one variation, the game starts with no blocks on the field. Blocks fall down to the playing field, and must be removed before they reach the top. If they reach the top and overflow, the game is over. In some variations, such as "Bubble Bang", circles or balls are used instead of blocks—which alters the gameplay, as the balls form different shapes than square blocks.
In three-dimensional variants, the playing field is a cube (containing smaller cubes) instead of a rectangle, and the player has the ability to rotate the cube. "Cubes" for iPhone OS uses this approach.
Some versions allow the player to rotate the playing field 90 degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise, which causes one of two things to happen:
In some variations, blocks can be removed when connected to blocks of the same color diagonally, not just horizontally and vertically. Some versions introduce new types of blocks. The different types of blocks interact in various ways with the play field; for example, one type might remove all the blocks in a row. An example of this is the "Revenge mode" in "PocketPop Revenge" ("PocketFun") for iPhone OS.
Most versions of the game give formula_1 points for removing formula_2 tiles at once, where formula_3 or formula_4, depending on the implementation. For instance, "Insane Game" for Texas Instruments calculators uses formula_5; Ikuo Hirohata's implementation uses the formula formula_6. The "Bubble Breaker" implementation for Windows Mobile uses the formula_7 formula. The 2001 version released by Jeff Reno uses the formula formula_8.
Some versions also offer a large bonus for removing all blocks from the screen, or leaving no more than a certain number of blocks. Others reduce the final score based on the number of blocks remaining at the end of the game. Some game versions award bonus points for clearing the field quickly, encouraging faster play. The faster the player finishes the level, the bigger the bonus. Still others offer combination, or "chain", bonuses for clearing the same color of blocks two or more times in succession.
Another scoring technique awards bonus points for each chain of a certain color that has a certain number of blocks (for example, two red blocks or 11 blue blocks). After receiving the bonus once, sometimes the bonus condition changes. "BPop" uses this scoring variation.
Some versions have a simple scoring system: each block removed is worth one point, and there is no bonus for removing more than two blocks at a time. This is seen in the "Same Pets" and "Same Hearths" variants.
Some versions award scores based on the attainment of goals. This is typically seen in multi-level versions of the game. There are four primary scoring systems for such games.
In one variation, each level has a target score. The player's score starts at zero, and the player must reach the target score. At the beginning of each level, the player's score is reset to zero; the target score increases with each level.
Other versions have a cumulative target score. In these versions, the player's score carries over from level to level. As a result, if the player substantially exceeds the target score on a given level, they may enter the subsequent level having already met that level's target score, as well. "BPop" has a cumulative target score.
Some versions maintain the same target score for each level; such variations can be played indefinitely. In such games, the player typically loses due to poor planning or a lapse in concentration. Examples of such games are "Same Pets" and "Same Hearths".
In games without a goal score, like "Bonkers for iPhone" and SameGameBros for iPhone, the goal is to clear the level completely. The game ends when the player fails to do so.
Blocks typically appear as colored squares, circles, or spheres. Some variations use gradient shading to give the illusion of dimensionality. Other tile themes, or "skins", include animals, hearts, stars, faces, Lego blocks, and jelly bears. Designs may follow a theme, such as Christmas or monochrome. Most games have only one skin, but others allow choosing from multiple skins.
There is a special visual aspect in some versions; instead of separate blocks, games like "iDrops" and "SameGameManiak" feature bordered areas for adjacent blocks of the same color. Some have elaborate tile graphics, featuring pictures or patterns inside the tile, like "KSame" and "Same GNOME". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28762 |
Sather
"For people with the surname, see Sather (surname)."
Sather is an object-oriented programming language. It originated circa 1990 at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) at the University of California, Berkeley, developed by an international team led by Steve Omohundro. It supports garbage collection and generics by subtypes.
Originally, it was based on Eiffel, but it has diverged, and now includes several functional programming features.
The name is inspired by Eiffel; the Sather Tower is a recognizable landmark at Berkeley, named after Jane Krom Sather, the widow of Peder Sather, who donated large sums to the foundation of the university.
Sather also takes inspiration from other programming languages and paradigms: iterators, design by contract, abstract classes, multiple inheritance, anonymous functions, operator overloading, contravariant type system.
The original Berkeley implementation (last stable version 1.1 was released in 1995, no longer maintained) has been adopted by the Free Software Foundation therefore becoming GNU Sather. Last stable GNU version (1.2.3) was released in July 2007 and the software is currently not maintained. There were several other variants: Sather-K from the University of Karlsruhe; Sather-W from the University of Waikato (implementation of Sather version 1.3); Peter Naulls' port of ICSI Sather 1.1 to RISC OS; and pSather, a parallel version of ICSI Sather addressing non-uniform memory access multiprocessor architectures but presenting a shared memory model to the programmer.
The former ICSI Sather compiler (now GNU Sather) is implemented as a compiler to C, i.e., the compiler does not output object or machine code, but takes Sather source code and generates C source code as an intermediate language. Optimizing is left to the C compiler.
The GNU Sather compiler, written in Sather itself, is dual licensed under the GNU GPL & LGPL.
class HELLO_WORLD is
A few remarks:
class MAIN is
This program prints numbers from 1 to 10.
The codice_10 ... codice_11 construct is the preferred means of defining loops (although codice_12 and codice_13-codice_14 are also available). Within the construct, one or more iterators may be used. Iterator names always end with an exclamation mark (this convention is enforced by the compiler). codice_15 is a method of the integer class codice_16 accepting one codice_17 argument, meaning its value will not change as the iterator yields. codice_15 could be implemented in the codice_16 class like this:
Type information for variables is denoted by a postfix syntax codice_20. The type can often be inferred and thus the typing information is optional, like in codice_21. codice_22 is a convenience pseudo-class referring to the current class. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28763 |
Serotonin
Serotonin () or 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) is a monoamine neurotransmitter. It has a popular image as a contributor to feelings of well-being and happiness, though its actual biological function is complex and multifaceted, modulating cognition, reward, learning, memory, and numerous physiological processes such as vomiting and vasoconstriction.
Biochemically, the indoleamine molecule derives from the amino acid tryptophan, via the (rate-limiting) hydroxylation of the 5 position on the ring (forming the intermediate 5-hydroxytryptophan), and then decarboxylation to produce serotonin. Serotonin is primarily found in the enteric nervous system located in the gastrointestinal tract (GI tract). However, it is also produced in the central nervous system (CNS), specifically in the Raphe nuclei located in the brainstem. Additionally, serotonin is stored in blood platelets and is released during agitation and vasoconstriction, where it then acts as an agonist to other platelets.
Approximately 90% of the human body's total serotonin is located in the enterochromaffin cells in the GI tract, where it regulates intestinal movements. The serotonin is secreted luminally and basolaterally, which leads to increased serotonin uptake by circulating platelets and activation after stimulation, which gives increased stimulation of myenteric neurons and gastrointestinal motility. The remainder is synthesized in serotonergic neurons of the CNS, where it has various functions. These include the regulation of mood, appetite, and sleep. Serotonin also has some cognitive functions, including memory and learning.
Several classes of antidepressants, such as the SSRIs and the SNRIs among others, interfere with the normal reabsorption of serotonin after it is done with the transmission of the signal, therefore augmenting the neurotransmitter levels in the synapses.
Serotonin secreted from the enterochromaffin cells eventually finds its way out of tissues into the blood. There, it is actively taken up by blood platelets, which store it. When the platelets bind to a clot, they release serotonin, where it can serve as a vasoconstrictor or a vasodilator while regulating hemostasis and blood clotting. In high concentrations, serotonin acts as a vasoconstrictor by contracting endothelial smooth muscle directly or by potentiating the effects of other vasoconstrictors (e.g. angiotensin II, norepinephrine). The vasoconstrictive property is mostly seen in pathologic states affecting the endothelium – such as atherosclerosis or chronic hypertension. In physiologic states, vasodilation occurs through the serotonin mediated release of nitric oxide from endothelial cells. Additionally, it inhibits the release of norepinephrine from adrenergic nerves. Serotonin is also a growth factor for some types of cells, which may give it a role in wound healing. There are various serotonin receptors.
Serotonin is metabolized mainly to 5-HIAA, chiefly by the liver. Metabolism involves first oxidation by monoamine oxidase to the corresponding aldehyde. There follows oxidation by aldehyde dehydrogenase to 5-HIAA, the indole acetic-acid derivative. The latter is then excreted by the kidneys.
Besides mammals, serotonin is found in all bilateral animals including worms and insects, as well as in fungi and in plants. Serotonin's presence in insect venoms and plant spines serves to cause pain, which is a side-effect of serotonin injection. Serotonin is produced by pathogenic amoebae, and its effect in the human gut is diarrhea. Its widespread presence in many seeds and fruits may serve to stimulate the digestive tract into expelling the seeds.
Serotonin is also present in plants as phytoserotonin.
Serotonin mediates the animal's perceptions of resources; In less complex animals, such as some invertebrates, resources simply mean food availability. In plants serotonin synthesis seems to be associated with stress signals. In more complex animals, such as arthropods and vertebrates, resources also can mean social dominance. In response to the perceived abundance or scarcity of resources, an animal's growth, reproduction or mood may be elevated or lowered. This may somewhat depend on how much serotonin the organism has at its disposal.
In humans, serotonin is a neurotransmitter used throughout the body having action of 14 variants of the serotonin receptor to have diverse effects on mood, anxiety, sleep, appetite, temperature, eating behaviour, sexual behaviour, movements and gastrointestinal motility. Serotonin is not administered clinically as a drug itself as it is not specific enough. However, drugs that selectively target specific serotonin receptor subtypes are used therapeutically for antidepressant effects; these are called selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. They are dependent on serotonin availability in the synapse.
The 5-HT receptors, the receptors for serotonin, are located on the cell membrane of nerve cells and other cell types in animals, and mediate the effects of serotonin as the endogenous ligand and of a broad range of pharmaceutical and psychedelic drugs. Except for the 5-HT3 receptor, a ligand-gated ion channel, all other 5-HT receptors are G-protein-coupled receptors (also called seven-transmembrane, or heptahelical receptors) that activate an intracellular second messenger cascade.
Serotonergic action is terminated primarily via uptake of 5-HT from the synapse. This is accomplished through the specific monoamine transporter for 5-HT, SERT, on the presynaptic neuron. Various agents can inhibit 5-HT reuptake, including cocaine, dextromethorphan (an antitussive), tricyclic antidepressants and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). A 2006 study conducted by the University of Washington suggested that a newly discovered monoamine transporter, known as PMAT, may account for "a significant percentage of 5-HT clearance".
Contrasting with the high-affinity SERT, the PMAT has been identified as a low-affinity transporter, with an apparent Km of 114 micromoles/l for serotonin; approximately 230 times higher than that of SERT. However, the PMAT, despite its relatively low serotonergic affinity, has a considerably higher transport 'capacity' than SERT, "resulting in roughly comparable uptake efficiencies to SERT in heterologous expression systems.” The study also suggests some SSRIs, such as fluoxetine and sertraline anti-depressants, inhibit PMAT but at IC50 values which surpass the therapeutic plasma concentrations by up to four orders of magnitude. Therefore, SSRI monotherapy is "ineffective" in PMAT inhibition. At present, no known pharmaceuticals are known to appreciably inhibit PMAT at normal therapeutic doses. The PMAT also suggestively transports dopamine and norepinephrine, albeit at Km values even higher than that of 5-HT (330–15,000 μmoles/L).
Serotonin can also signal through a nonreceptor mechanism called serotonylation, in which serotonin modifies proteins. This process underlies serotonin's effects upon platelet-forming cells (thrombocytes) in which it links to the modification of signaling enzymes called GTPases that then trigger the release of vesicle contents by exocytosis. A similar process underlies the pancreatic release of insulin.
The effects of serotonin upon vascular smooth muscle tone (this is the biological function from which serotonin originally got its name) depend upon the serotonylation of proteins involved in the contractile apparatus of muscle cells.
The neurons of the raphe nuclei are the principal source of 5-HT release in the brain. There are nine raphe nuclei, designated B1-B9, which contain the majority of serotonin-containing neurons (some scientists chose to group the "nuclei raphes lineares" into one nucleus), all of which are located along the midline of the brainstem, and centered on the reticular formation. Axons from the neurons of the raphe nuclei form a neurotransmitter system reaching almost every part of the central nervous system. Axons of neurons in the lower raphe nuclei terminate in the cerebellum and spinal cord, while the axons of the higher nuclei spread out in the entire brain.
The serotonin nuclei may also be divided into two main groups, the rostral and caudal containing three and four nuclei respectively. The rostral group consists of the caudal linear nuclei (B8), the dorsal raphe nuclei (B6 and B7) and the median raphe nuclei (B5, B8 and B9), that project into multiple cortical and subcortical structures. The caudal group consists of the nucleus raphe magnus (B3), raphe obscurus nucleus (B2), raphe pallidus nucleus (B1), and lateral medullary reticular formation, that project into the brainstem.
The serotonergic pathway is involved in sensorimotor function, with pathways projecting both into cortical (Dorsal and Median Raphe Nuclei), subcortical, and spinal areas involved in motor activity. Pharmacological manipulation suggests that serotonergic activity increases with motor activity while firing rates of serotonergic neurons increase with intense visual stimuli. The descending projections form a pathway that inhibits pain called the "descending inhibitory pathway" that may be relevant to a disorder such as fibromyalgia, migraine and other pain disorders, and the efficacy of antidepressants in them.
Serotonergic projections from the caudal nuclei are involved in regulating mood and emotion, and hypo- or hyper-serotonergic states may be involved in depression and sickness behavior.
Serotonin is released into the synapse, or space between neurons, and diffuses over a relatively wide gap (>20 nm) to activate 5-HT receptors located on the dendrites, cell bodies and presynaptic terminals of adjacent neurons.
When humans smell food, dopamine is released to increase the appetite. But, unlike in worms, serotonin does not increase anticipatory behaviour in humans; instead, the serotonin released while consuming activates 5-HT2C receptors on dopamine-producing cells. This halts their dopamine release, and thereby serotonin decreases appetite. Drugs that block 5-HT2C receptors make the body unable to recognize when it is no longer hungry or otherwise in need of nutrients, and are associated with weight gain, especially in people with a low number of receptors. The expression of 5-HT2C receptors in the hippocampus follows a diurnal rhythm, just as the serotonin release in the ventromedial nucleus, which is characterised by a peak at morning when the motivation to eat is strongest.
In macaques, alpha males have twice the level of serotonin released in the brain than subordinate males and females (as measured by the levels of 5-Hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA) in the cerebro-spinal fluid). Dominance status and cerebro-serotonin levels appear to be positively correlated. When dominant males were removed from such groups, subordinate males begin competing for dominance. Once new dominance hierarchies were established, serotonin levels of the new dominant individuals also increased to double those in subordinate males and females. The reason why serotonin levels are only high in dominant males but not dominant females has not yet been established.
In humans, levels of 5-HT1A receptor activation in the brain show negative correlation with aggression, and a mutation in the gene that codes for the 5-HT2A receptor may double the risk of suicide for those with that genotype. Serotonin in the brain is not usually degraded after use, but is collected by serotonergic neurons by serotonin transporters on their cell surfaces. Studies have revealed nearly 10% of total variance in anxiety-related personality depends on variations in the description of where, when and how many serotonin transporters the neurons should deploy.
Serotonin has been implicated in cognition, mood, anxiety and psychosis, but strong clarity has not been achieved.
In regards to research for neurotransmitters and effects on patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), 5-HT has been studied the most in terms of research efforts and investigations (Eissa et al., 2018). As noted, 5-HT signaling does facilitate many neural processes including that of neurogenesis, cell migration and survival, synaptogenesis, and synaptic plasticity (Eissa et al., 2018). It was noted that 45% of tested ASD subjects contained high levels of 5-HT in their blood (Eissa et al., 2018). In addition, investigations performed on ASD-like animal models reported that hyperserotonemia significantly reduced the motivation for social interest through inhibition of separation distress, which could be related in the ASD patients that have social impairments (Eissa et al., 2018).
Serotonin regulates gastrointestinal function. The gut is surrounded by enterochromaffin cells, which release serotonin in response to food in the lumen. This makes the gut contract around the food. Platelets in the veins draining the gut collect excess serotonin. There are often serotonin abnormalities in gastrointestinal disorders like constipation and irritable bowel syndrome.
If irritants are present in the food, the enterochromaffin cells release more serotonin to make the gut move faster, i.e., to cause diarrhea, so the gut is emptied of the noxious substance. If serotonin is released in the blood faster than the platelets can absorb it, the level of free serotonin in the blood is increased. This activates 5-HT3 receptors in the chemoreceptor trigger zone that stimulate vomiting. Thus, drugs and toxins stimulate serotonin release from enterochromaffin cells in the gut wall. The enterochromaffin cells not only react to bad food but are also very sensitive to irradiation and cancer chemotherapy. Drugs that block 5HT3 are very effective in controlling the nausea and vomiting produced by cancer treatment, and are considered the gold standard for this purpose.
In mice and humans, alterations in serotonin levels and signalling have been shown to regulate bone mass. Mice that lack brain serotonin have osteopenia, while mice that lack gut serotonin have high bone density. In humans, increased blood serotonin levels have been shown to be significant negative predictor of low bone density. Serotonin can also be synthesized, albeit at very low levels, in the bone cells. It mediates its actions on bone cells using three different receptors. Through 5-HT1B receptors, it negatively regulates bone mass, while it does so positively through 5-HT2B receptors and 5-HT2C receptors. There is very delicate balance between physiological role of gut serotonin and its pathology. Increase in the extracellular content of serotonin results in a complex relay of signals in the osteoblasts culminating in FoxO1/ Creb and ATF4 dependent transcriptional events. These studies have opened a new area of research in bone metabolism that can be potentially harnessed to treat bone mass disorders.
Since serotonin signals resource availability it is not surprising that it affects organ development. Many human and animal studies have shown that nutrition in early life can influence, in adulthood, such things as body fatness, blood lipids, blood pressure, atherosclerosis, behavior, learning and longevity. Rodent experiment shows that neonatal exposure to SSRI's makes persistent changes in the serotonergic transmission of the brain resulting in behavioral changes, which are reversed by treatment with antidepressants. By treating normal and knockout mice lacking the serotonin transporter with fluoxetine scientists showed that normal emotional reactions in adulthood, like a short latency to escape foot shocks and inclination to explore new environments were dependent on active serotonin transporters during the neonatal period.
Human serotonin can also act as a growth factor directly. Liver damage increases cellular expression of 5-HT2A and 5-HT2B receptors, mediating liver compensatory regrowth (see ) Serotonin present in the blood then stimulates cellular growth to repair liver damage.
5HT2B receptors also activate osteocytes, which build up bone However, serotonin also inhibits osteoblasts, through 5-HT1B receptors.
Serotonin, in addition, evokes endothelial nitric oxide synthase activation and stimulates, through a 5-HT1B receptor-mediated mechanism, the phosphorylation of p44/p42 mitogen-activated protein kinase activation in bovine aortic endothelial cell cultures. In blood, serotonin is collected from plasma by platelets, which store it. It is thus active wherever platelets bind in damaged tissue, as a vasoconstrictor to stop bleeding, and also as a fibrocyte mitotic (growth factor), to aid healing.
Several classes of drugs target the 5-HT system, including some antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, antiemetics, and antimigraine drugs, as well as the psychedelic drugs and empathogens.
At rest, serotonin is stored within the vesicles of presynaptic neurons. When stimulated by nerve impulses, serotonin is released as a neurotransmitter into the synapse, reversibly binding to the postsynaptic receptor to induce a nerve impulse on the postsynaptic neuron. Serotonin can also bind to auto-receptors on the presynaptic neuron to regulate the synthesis and release of serotonin. Normally serotonin is taken back into the presynaptic neuron to stop its action, then reused or broken down by monoamine oxidase.
The serotonergic psychedelic drugs psilocin/psilocybin, DMT, mescaline, psychedelic mushroom and LSD are agonists, primarily at 5HT2A/2C receptors. The empathogen-entactogen MDMA releases serotonin from synaptic vesicles of neurons.
Drugs that alter serotonin levels are used in treating depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and social phobia. Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) prevent the breakdown of monoamine neurotransmitters (including serotonin), and therefore increase concentrations of the neurotransmitter in the brain. MAOI therapy is associated with many adverse drug reactions, and patients are at risk of hypertensive emergency triggered by foods with high tyramine content, and certain drugs. Some drugs inhibit the re-uptake of serotonin, making it stay in the synaptic cleft longer. The tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) inhibit the reuptake of both serotonin and norepinephrine. The newer selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have fewer side-effects and fewer interactions with other drugs.
Certain SSRI medications have been shown to lower serotonin levels below the baseline after chronic use, despite initial increases. The "5-HTTLPR" gene codes for the number of serotonin transporters in the brain, with more serotonin transporters causing decreased duration and magnitude of serotonergic signaling. The 5-HTTLPR polymorphism (l/l) causing more serotonin transporters to be formed is also found to be more resilient against depression and anxiety.
Extremely high levels of serotonin can cause a condition known as serotonin syndrome, with toxic and potentially fatal effects. In practice, such toxic levels are essentially impossible to reach through an overdose of a single antidepressant drug, but require a combination of serotonergic agents, such as an SSRI with an MAOI. The intensity of the symptoms of serotonin syndrome vary over a wide spectrum, and the milder forms are seen even at nontoxic levels.
Some 5-HT3 antagonists, such as ondansetron, granisetron, and tropisetron, are important antiemetic agents. They are particularly important in treating the nausea and vomiting that occur during anticancer chemotherapy using cytotoxic drugs. Another application is in the treatment of postoperative nausea and vomiting.
Some serotonergic agonist drugs cause fibrosis anywhere in the body, particularly the syndrome of retroperitoneal fibrosis, as well as cardiac valve fibrosis.
In the past, three groups of serotonergic drugs have been epidemiologically linked with these syndromes. These are the serotonergic vasoconstrictive antimigraine drugs (ergotamine and methysergide), the serotonergic appetite suppressant drugs (fenfluramine, chlorphentermine, and aminorex), and certain anti-Parkinsonian dopaminergic agonists, which also stimulate serotonergic 5-HT2B receptors. These include pergolide and cabergoline, but not the more dopamine-specific lisuride.
As with fenfluramine, some of these drugs have been withdrawn from the market after groups taking them showed a statistical increase of one or more of the side effects described. An example is pergolide. The drug was declining in use since it was reported in 2003 to be associated with cardiac fibrosis.
Two independent studies published in "The New England Journal of Medicine" in January 2007 implicated pergolide, along with cabergoline, in causing valvular heart disease. As a result of this, the FDA removed pergolide from the United States market in March 2007. (Since cabergoline is not approved in the United States for Parkinson's Disease, but for hyperprolactinemia, the drug remains on the market. Treatment for hyperprolactinemia requires lower doses than that for Parkinson's Disease, diminishing the risk of valvular heart disease).
Several plants contain serotonin together with a family of related tryptamines that are methylated at the amino (NH2) and (OH) groups, are "N"-oxides, or miss the OH group. These compounds do reach the brain, although some portion of them are metabolized by monoamine oxidase enzymes (mainly MAO-A) in the liver. Examples are plants from the genus "Anadenanthera" that are used in the hallucinogenic yopo snuff. These compounds are widely present in the leaves of many plants, and may serve as deterrents for animal ingestion. Serotonin occurs in several mushrooms of the genus "Panaeolus".
Serotonin is used by a variety of single-cell organisms for various purposes. SSRIs have been found to be toxic to algae. The gastrointestinal parasite "Entamoeba histolytica" secretes serotonin, causing a sustained secretory diarrhea in some people. Patients infected with "E. histolytica" have been found to have highly elevated serum serotonin levels, which returned to normal following resolution of the infection. "E. histolytica" also responds to the presence of serotonin by becoming more virulent. This means serotonin secretion not only serves to increase the spread of enteamoebas by giving the host diarrhea but also serves to coordinate their behaviour according to their population density, a phenomenon known as quorum sensing. Outside the gut of a host, there is nothing that the entoamoebas provoke to release serotonin, hence the serotonin concentration is very low. Low serotonin signals to the entoamoebas they are outside a host and they become less virulent to conserve energy. When they enter a new host, they multiply in the gut, and become more virulent as the enterochromaffine cells get provoked by them and the serotonin concentration increases.
In drying seeds, serotonin production is a way to get rid of the buildup of poisonous ammonia. The ammonia is collected and placed in the indole part of L-tryptophan, which is then decarboxylated by tryptophan decarboxylase to give tryptamine, which is then hydroxylated by a cytochrome P450 monooxygenase, yielding serotonin.
However, since serotonin is a major gastrointestinal tract modulator, it may be produced by plants in fruits as a way of speeding the passage of seeds through the digestive tract, in the same way as many well-known seed and fruit associated laxatives. Serotonin is found in mushrooms, fruits and vegetables. The highest values of 25–400 mg/kg have been found in nuts of the walnut ("Juglans") and hickory ("Carya") genera. Serotonin concentrations of 3–30 mg/kg have been found in plantains, pineapples, banana, kiwifruit, plums, and tomatoes. Moderate levels from 0.1–3 mg/kg have been found in a wide range of tested vegetables.
Serotonin is one compound of the poison contained in stinging nettles ("Urtica dioica"), where it causes pain on injection in the same manner as its presence in insect venoms (see below). It is also naturally found in "Paramuricea clavata", or the Red Sea Fan.
Serotonin and tryptophan have been found in chocolate with varying cocoa contents. The highest serotonin content (2.93 µg/g) was found in chocolate with 85% cocoa, and the highest tryptophan content (13.27–13.34 µg/g) was found in 70–85% cocoa. The intermediate in the synthesis from tryptophan to serotonin, 5-hydroxytryptophan, was not found.
Serotonin functions as a neurotransmitter in the nervous systems of most animals. For example, in the roundworm "Caenorhabditis elegans", which feeds on bacteria, serotonin is released as a signal in response to positive events, such as finding a new source of food or in male animals finding a female with which to mate. When a well-fed worm feels bacteria on its cuticle, dopamine is released, which slows it down; if it is starved, serotonin also is released, which slows the animal down further. This mechanism increases the amount of time animals spend in the presence of food. The released serotonin activates the muscles used for feeding, while octopamine suppresses them. Serotonin diffuses to serotonin-sensitive neurons, which control the animal's perception of nutrient availability.
If lobsters are injected with serotonin, they behave like dominant individuals whereas octopamine causes subordinate behavior. A crayfish that is frightened may flip its tail to flee, and the effect of serotonin on this behavior depends largely on the animal's social status. Serotonin inhibits the fleeing reaction in subordinates, but enhances it in socially dominant or isolated individuals. The reason for this is social experience alters the proportion between serotonin receptors (5-HT receptors) that have opposing effects on the fight-or-flight response. The effect of 5-HT1 receptors predominates in subordinate animals, while 5-HT2 receptors predominates in dominants.
Serotonin is evolutionarily conserved and appears across the animal kingdom. It is seen in insect processes in roles similar to in the human central nervous system, such as memory, appetite, sleep, and behavior. Locust swarming is mediated by serotonin, by transforming social preference from aversion to a gregarious state that enables coherent groups. Learning in flies and honeybees is affected by the presence of serotonin. Insect 5-HT receptors have similar sequences to the vertebrate versions, but pharmacological differences have been seen. Invertebrate drug response has been far less characterized than mammalian pharmacology and the potential for species selective insecticides has been discussed.
Wasps and hornets have serotonin in their venom, which causes pain and inflammation. as do scorpions.
If flies are fed serotonin, they are more aggressive; flies depleted of serotonin still exhibit aggression, but they do so much less frequently.
In the nematode "C. elegans", artificial depletion of serotonin or the increase of octopamine cues behavior typical of a low-food environment: "C. elegans" becomes more active, and mating and egg-laying are suppressed, while the opposite occurs if serotonin is increased or octopamine is decreased in this animal. Serotonin is necessary for normal nematode male mating behavior, and the inclination to leave food to search for a mate. The serotonergic signaling used to adapt the worm's behaviour to fast changes in the environment affects insulin-like signaling and the TGF beta signaling pathway, which control long-term adaption.
In the fruit fly insulin both regulates blood sugar as well as acting as a growth factor. Thus, in the fruit fly, serotonergic neurons regulate the adult body size by affecting insulin secretion. Serotonin has also been identified as the trigger for swarm behavior in locusts. In humans, though insulin regulates blood sugar and IGF regulates growth, serotonin controls the release of both hormones, modulating insulin release from the beta cells in the pancreas through serotonylation of GTPase signaling proteins. Exposure to SSRIs during Pregnancy reduces fetal growth.
Genetically altered "C. elegans" worms that lack serotonin have an increased reproductive lifespan, may become obese, and sometimes present with arrested development at a dormant larval state.
Serotonin is known to regulate aging, learning and memory. The first evidence comes from the study of longevity in "C. elegans". During early phase of aging, the level of serotonin increases, which alters locomotory behaviors and associative memory. The effect is restored by mutations and drugs (including mianserin and methiothepin) that inhibit serotonin receptors. The observation does not contradict with the notion that the serotonin level goes down in mammals and humans, which is typically seen in late but not early phase of aging.
In animals including humans, serotonin is synthesized from the amino acid L-tryptophan by a short metabolic pathway consisting of two enzymes, tryptophan hydroxylase (TPH) and aromatic amino acid decarboxylase (DDC), and the coenzyme pyridoxal phosphate. The TPH-mediated reaction is the rate-limiting step in the pathway.
TPH has been shown to exist in two forms: TPH1, found in several tissues, and TPH2, which is a neuron-specific isoform.
Serotonin can be synthesized from tryptophan in the lab using "Aspergillus niger" and "Psilocybe coprophila" as catalysts. The first phase to 5-hydroxytryptophan would require letting tryptophan sit in ethanol and water for 7 days, then mixing in enough HCl (or other acid) to bring the pH to 3, and then adding NaOH to make a pH of 13 for 1 hour. "Asperigillus niger" would be the catalyst for this first phase. The second phase to synthesizing tryptophan itself from the 5-hydroxytryptophan intermediate would require adding ethanol and water, and letting sit for 30 days this time. The next two steps would be the same as the first phase: adding HCl to make the pH = 3, and then adding NaOH to make the pH very basic at 13 for 1 hour. This phase uses the "Psilocybe coprophila" as the catalyst for the reaction.
Serotonin taken orally does not pass into the serotonergic pathways of the central nervous system, because it does not cross the blood–brain barrier. However, tryptophan and its metabolite 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP), from which serotonin is synthesized, does cross the blood–brain barrier. These agents are available as dietary supplements, and may be effective serotonergic agents.
One product of serotonin breakdown is 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA), which is excreted in the urine. Serotonin and 5-HIAA are sometimes produced in excess amounts by certain tumors or cancers, and levels of these substances may be measured in the urine to test for these tumors.
Consuming purified tryptophan increases brain serotonin whereas eating foods containing tryptophan does not. This is because the transport system which brings tryptophan across the blood-brain barrier is also selective for the other amino acids contained in protein sources. High plasma levels of other large neutral amino acids compete for transport and prevent the elevated plasma tryptophan from increasing serotonin synthesis.
In 1935, Italian Vittorio Erspamer showed an extract from enterochromaffin cells made intestines contract. Some believed it contained adrenaline, but two years later, Erspamer was able to show it was a previously unknown amine, which he named "enteramine". In 1948, Maurice M. Rapport, Arda Green, and Irvine Page of the Cleveland Clinic discovered a vasoconstrictor substance in blood serum, and since it was a serum agent affecting vascular tone, they named it serotonin.
In 1952, enteramine was shown to be the same substance as serotonin, and as the broad range of physiological roles was elucidated, the abbreviation 5-HT of the proper chemical name 5-hydroxytryptamine became the preferred name in the pharmacological field. Synonyms of serotonin include: 5-hydroxytriptamine, thrombotin, enteramin, substance DS, and 3-(β-Aminoethyl)-5-hydroxyindole. In 1953, Betty Twarog and Page discovered serotonin in the central nervous system. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28764 |
Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, (; born Lourens Alma Tadema ; 8 January 1836 – 25 June 1912) was a Dutch painter of special British denizenship. Born in Dronryp, the Netherlands, and trained at the Royal Academy of Antwerp, Belgium, he settled in England in 1870 and spent the rest of his life there. A classical-subject painter, he became famous for his depictions of the luxury and decadence of the Roman Empire, with languorous figures set in fabulous marbled interiors or against a backdrop of dazzling blue Mediterranean Sea and sky. Alma-Tadema was considered one of the most popular Victorian painters. Though admired during his lifetime for his draftsmanship and depictions of Classical antiquity, his work fell into disrepute after his death, and only since the 1960s has it been re-evaluated for its importance within nineteenth-century British art.
Lourens Alma Tadema was born on 8 January 1836 in the village of Dronryp in the province of Friesland in the north of the Netherlands. The surname "Tadema" is an old Frisian patronymic, meaning 'son of Tade', while the names "Lourens" and "Alma" came from his godfather. He was the sixth child of Pieter Jiltes Tadema (1797–1840), the village notary, and the third child of Hinke Dirks Brouwer (–1863). His father had three sons from a previous marriage. His parents' first child died young, and the second was Atje (–1876), Lourens' sister, for whom he had great affection.
The Tadema family moved in 1838 to the nearby city of Leeuwarden, where Pieter's position as a notary would be more lucrative. His father died when Lourens was four, leaving his mother with five children: Lourens, his sister, and three boys from his father's first marriage. His mother had artistic leanings, and decided that drawing lessons should be incorporated into the children's education. He received his first art training with a local drawing master hired to teach his older half-brothers.
It was intended that the boy would become a lawyer; but in 1851 at the age of fifteen he suffered a physical and mental breakdown. Diagnosed as consumptive and given only a short time to live, he was allowed to spend his remaining days at his leisure, drawing and painting. Left to his own devices he regained his health and decided to pursue a career as an artist.
In 1852 he entered the Royal Academy of Antwerp in Belgium where he studied early Dutch and Flemish art, under Gustaf Wappers. During Alma-Tadema's four years as a registered student at the Academy, he won several respectable awards.
Before leaving school, towards the end of 1855, he became assistant to the painter and professor Louis (Lodewijk) Jan de Taeye, whose courses in history and historical costume he had greatly enjoyed at the Academy. Although de Taeye was not an outstanding painter, Alma-Tadema respected him and became his studio assistant, working with him for three years. De Taeye introduced him to books that influenced his desire to portray Merovingian subjects early in his career. He was encouraged to depict historical accuracy in his paintings, a trait for which the artist became known.
Alma-Tadema left Taeye's studio in November 1858 returning to Leeuwarden before settling in Antwerp, where he began working with the painter Baron Jan August Hendrik Leys, whose studio was one of the most highly regarded in Belgium. Under his guidance Alma-Tadema painted his first major work: "The Education of the children of Clovis" (1861). This painting created a sensation among critics and artists when it was exhibited that year at the Artistic Congress in Antwerp. It is said to have laid the foundation of his fame and reputation. Alma-Tadema related that although Leys thought the completed painting better than he had expected, he was critical of the treatment of marble, which he compared to cheese.
Alma-Tadema took this criticism very seriously, and it led him to improve his technique and to become the world's foremost painter of marble and variegated granite. Despite any reproaches from his master, "The Education of the Children of Clovis" was honorably received by critics and artists alike and was eventually purchased and subsequently given to King Leopold of Belgium.
In 1860 he befriended the Anglo-Dutch Dommersen family of artists in Utrecht In 1862 he made pencil drawings of Mrs. Cornelia Dommershuizen and one of her sons Thomas Hendrik, whose brothers were the painters Pieter Cornelis Dommersen and Cornelis Christiaan Dommersen.
Merovingian themes were the painter's favourite subject up to the mid-1860s. It is perhaps in this series that we find the artist moved by the deepest feeling and the strongest spirit of romance. However Merovingian subjects did not have a wide international appeal, so he switched to themes of life in ancient Egypt that were more popular. On these scenes of Frankish and Egyptian life Alma-Tadema spent great energy and much research. In 1862 Alma-Tadema left Leys's studio and started his own career, establishing himself as a significant classical-subject European artist.
1863 was to alter the course of Alma-Tadema's personal and professional life: on 3 January his invalid mother died, and on 24 September he was married, in Antwerp City Hall, to Marie-Pauline Gressin-Dumoulin de Boisgirard, the daughter of Eugène Gressin-Dumoulin, a French journalist living near Brussels. Nothing is known of their meeting and little of Pauline herself, as Alma-Tadema never spoke about her after her death in 1869. Her image appears in a number of oils, though he painted her portrait only three times, the most notable appearing in "My studio" (1867). The couple had three children. Their eldest and only son lived only a few months dying of smallpox. Their two daughters, Laurence (1864–1940) and Anna (1867–1943), both had artistic leanings: the former in literature, the latter in art. Neither would marry.
Alma-Tadema and his wife spent their honeymoon in Florence, Rome, Naples and Pompeii. This, his first visit to Italy, developed his interest in depicting the life of ancient Greece and Rome, especially the latter since he found new inspiration in the ruins of Pompeii, which fascinated him and would inspire much of his work in the coming decades.
During the summer of 1864, Tadema met Ernest Gambart, the most influential print publisher and art dealer of the period. Gambart was highly impressed with the work of Tadema, who was then painting "Egyptian chess players" (1865). The dealer, recognising at once the unusual gifts of the young painter, gave him an order for twenty-four pictures and arranged for three of Tadema's paintings to be shown in London. In 1865, Tadema relocated to Brussels where he was named a knight of the Order of Leopold.
On 28 May 1869, after years of ill health, Pauline died at Schaerbeek, in Belgium, at the age of thirty-two, of smallpox. Her death left Tadema disconsolate and depressed. He ceased painting for nearly four months. His sister Artje, who lived with the family, helped with the two daughters then aged five and two. Artje took over the role of housekeeper and remained with the family until 1873 when she married.
During the summer Tadema himself began to suffer from a medical problem which doctors in Brussels were frustratingly unable to diagnose. Gambart eventually advised him to go to England for another medical opinion. Soon after his arrival in London in December 1869, Alma-Tadema was invited to the home of the painter Ford Madox Brown. There he met Laura Theresa Epps, who was seventeen years old, and fell in love with her at first sight.
The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870 compelled Alma-Tadema to leave the continent and move to London. His infatuation with Laura Epps played a great part in his relocation to England and Gambart felt that the move would be advantageous to the artist's career. In stating his reasons for the move, Tadema simply said "I lost my first wife, a French lady with whom I married in 1863, in 1869. Having always had a great predilection for London, the only place where, up till then my work had met with buyers, I decided to leave the continent and go to settle in England, where I have found a true home."
With his small daughters and sister Atje, Alma-Tadema arrived in London at the beginning of September 1870. The painter wasted no time in contacting Laura, and it was arranged that he would give her painting lessons. During one of these, he proposed marriage. As he was then thirty-four and Laura was now only eighteen, her father was initially opposed to the idea. Dr Epps finally agreed on the condition that they should wait until they knew each other better. They married in July 1871. Laura, under her married name, also won a high reputation as an artist, and appears in numerous of Alma-Tadema's canvases after their marriage ("The Women of Amphissa" (1887) being a notable example). This second marriage was enduring and happy, though childless, and Laura became stepmother to Anna and Laurence. Anna became a painter and Laurence became a novelist.
He would initially adopt the name "Laurence Alma Tadema" instead of "Lourens Alma Tadema" and later adopt the more English "Lawrence" for his forename, and incorporate "Alma" into his surname so that he appeared at the beginning of exhibition catalogues, under "A" rather than under "T". He did not actually hyphenate his last name, but it was done by others and this has since become the convention.
After his arrival in England, where he was to spend the rest of his life, Alma-Tadema's career was one of continued success. He became one of the most famous and highly paid artists of his time, acknowledged and rewarded. By 1871 he had met and befriended most of the major Pre-Raphaelite painters and it was in part due to their influence that the artist brightened his palette, varied his hues, and lightened his brushwork.
In 1872 Alma-Tadema organised his paintings into an identification system by including an opus number under his signature and assigning his earlier pictures numbers as well. "Portrait of my sister, Artje", painted in 1851, is numbered opus I, while two months before his death he completed "Preparations in the Coliseum", opus CCCCVIII. Such a system would make it difficult for fakes to be passed off as originals.
In 1873 Queen Victoria in Council by letters patent made Alma-Tadema and his wife what are now the last British Denizens (the legal process has theoretically not yet been abolished in the United Kingdom), with some limited special rights otherwise only accorded to and enjoyed by British subjects (what would now be called British citizens). The previous year he and his wife made a journey on the Continent that lasted five and a half months and took them through Brussels, Germany, and Italy. In Italy they were able to take in the ancient ruins again; this time he purchased several photographs, mostly of the ruins, which began his immense collection of folios with archival material sufficient for the documentation used in the completion of future paintings. In January 1876, he rented a studio in Rome. The family returned to London in April, visiting the Parisian Salon on their way back. In London he regularly met with fellow-artist Emil Fuchs.
Among the most important of his pictures during this period was "An Audience at Agrippa's" (1876). When an admirer of the painting offered to pay a substantial sum for a painting with a similar theme, Alma-Tadema simply turned the emperor around to show him leaving in "After the Audience".
On 19 June 1879, Alma-Tadema was made a full Academician, his most personally important award. Three years later a major retrospective of his entire oeuvre was organised at the Grosvenor Gallery in London, including 185 of his pictures.
In 1883 he returned to Rome and, most notably, Pompeii, where further excavations had taken place since his last visit. He spent a significant amount of time studying the site, going there daily. These excursions gave him an ample source of subject matter as he began to further his knowledge of daily Roman life. At times, however, he integrated so many objects into his paintings that some said they resembled museum catalogues.
One of his most famous paintings is "The Roses of Heliogabalus" (1888) – based on an episode from the life of the debauched Roman Emperor Elagabalus (Heliogabalus), the painting depicts the Emperor suffocating his guests at an orgy under a cascade of rose petals. The blossoms depicted were sent weekly to the artist's London studio from the Riviera for four months during the winter of 1887–1888.
Among Alma-Tadema's works of this period are: "An Earthly Paradise" (1891), "Unconscious Rivals" (1893) "Spring" (1894), "The Coliseum" (1896) and "The Baths of Caracalla" (1899). Although Alma-Tadema's fame rests on his paintings set in Antiquity, he also painted portraits, landscapes and watercolours, and made some etchings himself (although many more were made of his paintings by others).
For all the quiet charm and erudition of his paintings, Alma-Tadema himself preserved a youthful sense of mischief. He was childlike in his practical jokes and in his sudden bursts of bad temper, which could as suddenly subside into an engaging smile.
In his personal life, Alma-Tadema was an extrovert and had a remarkably warm personality. He had most of the characteristics of a child, coupled with the admirable traits of a consummate professional. A perfectionist, he remained in all respects a diligent, if somewhat obsessive and pedantic worker. He was an excellent businessman, and one of the wealthiest artists of the nineteenth century. Alma-Tadema was as firm in money matters as he was with the quality of his work.
As a man, Lawrence Alma-Tadema was a robust, fun loving and rather portly gentleman. There was not a hint of the delicate artist about him; he was a cheerful lover of wine, women, and parties.
Alma-Tadema's output decreased with time, partly on account of health, but also because of his obsession with decorating his new home, to which he moved in 1883. Nevertheless, he continued to exhibit throughout the 1880s and into the next decade, receiving a plentiful amount of accolades along the way, including the medal of Honour at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889, election to an honorary member of the Oxford University Dramatic Society in 1890, the Great Gold Medal at the International Exposition in Brussels of 1897. In 1899 he was Knighted in England, only the eighth artist from the Continent to receive the honour. Not only did he assist with the organisation of the British section at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, he also exhibited two works that earned him the Grand Prix Diploma. He also assisted with the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904 where he was well represented and received.
During this time, Alma-Tadema was very active with theatre design and production, designing many costumes. He also spread his artistic boundaries and began to design furniture, often modelled after Pompeian or Egyptian motifs, illustrations, textiles, and frame making. His diverse interests highlight his talents. Each of these exploits were used in his paintings, as he often incorporated some of his designed furniture into the composition, and must have used many of his own designs for the clothing of his female subjects. Through his last period of creativity Alma-Tadema continued to produce paintings, which repeat the successful formula of women in marble terraces overlooking the sea such as in "Silver Favourites" (1903). Between 1906 and his death six years later, Alma-Tadema painted less but still produced ambitious paintings like "The Finding of Moses" (1904).
On 15 August 1909 Alma-Tadema's wife, Laura, died at the age of fifty-seven. The grief-stricken widower outlived his second wife by less than three years. His last major composition was "Preparation in the Coliseum" (1912). In the summer of 1912, Alma-Tadema was accompanied by his daughter Anna to Kaiserhof Spa, Wiesbaden, Germany where he was to undergo treatment for ulceration of the stomach. He died there on 28 June 1912 at the age of seventy-six. He was buried in a crypt in St Paul's Cathedral in London.
Alma-Tadema's works are remarkable for the way in which flowers, textures and hard reflecting substances, like metals, pottery, and especially marble, are painted – indeed, his realistic depiction of marble led him to be called the 'marbellous painter'. His work shows much of the fine execution and brilliant colour of the old Dutch masters. By the human interest with which he imbues all his scenes from ancient life he brings them within the scope of modern feeling, and charms us with gentle sentiment and playfulness.
From early in his career, Alma-Tadema was particularly concerned with architectural accuracy, often including objects that he would see at museums – such as the British Museum in London – in his works. He also read many books and took many images from them. He amassed an enormous number of photographs from ancient sites in Italy, which he used for the most precise accuracy in the details of his compositions.
Alma-Tadema was a perfectionist. He worked assiduously to make the most of his paintings, often repeatedly reworking parts of paintings before he found them satisfactory to his own high standards. One humorous story relates that one of his paintings was rejected and instead of keeping it, he gave the canvas to a maid who used it as her table cover. He was sensitive to every detail and architectural line of his paintings, as well as the settings he was depicting. For many of the objects in his paintings, he would depict what was in front of him, using fresh flowers imported from across the continent and even from Africa, rushing to finish the paintings before the flowers died. It was this commitment to veracity that earned him recognition but also caused many of his adversaries to take up arms against his almost encyclopaedic works.
Alma-Tadema's work has been linked with that of European Symbolist painters. As an artist of international reputation, he can be cited as an influence on European figures such as Gustav Klimt and Fernand Khnopff. Both painters incorporate classical motifs into their works and use Alma-Tadema's unconventional compositional devices such as abrupt cut-off at the edge of the canvas. They, like Alma-Tadema, also employ coded imagery to convey meaning to their paintings.
Alma-Tadema was considered one of the most popular Victorian painters. He was among the most financially successful painters of the Victorian era, though never matching Edwin Henry Landseer. For over sixty years he gave his audience exactly what they wanted: distinctive, elaborate paintings of beautiful people in classical settings. His incredibly detailed reconstructions of ancient Rome, with languid men and women posed against white marble in dazzling sunlight provided his audience with a glimpse of a world of the kind they might one day construct for themselves at least in attitude if not in detail. As with other painters, the reproduction rights for prints were often worth more than the canvas, and a painting with its rights still attached may have been sold to Gambart for £10,000 in 1874; without rights it was sold again in 1903, when Alma-Tadema's prices were actually higher, for £2,625. Typical prices were between £2,000 and £3,000 in the 1880s, but at least three works sold for between £5,250 and £6,060 in the 1900s. Prices held well until the general collapse of Victorian prices in the early 1920s, when they fell to the hundreds, where they remained until the 1960s; by 1969 £4,600 had been reached again (the huge effect of inflation must of course be remembered for all these figures).
The last years of Alma-Tadema's life saw the rise of Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism and Futurism, of which he heartily disapproved. As his pupil John Collier wrote, 'it is impossible to reconcile the art of Alma-Tadema with that of Matisse, Gauguin and Picasso.'
His artistic legacy almost vanished. As attitudes of the public in general and the artists in particular became more sceptical of the possibilities of human achievement, his paintings were increasingly denounced. He was declared "the worst painter of the 19th century" by John Ruskin, and one critic even remarked that his paintings were "about worthy enough to adorn bourbon boxes". After this brief period of being actively derided, he was consigned to relative obscurity for many years. Only since the 1960s has Alma-Tadema's work been re-evaluated for its importance within the nineteenth century, and more specifically, within the evolution of English art.
He is now regarded as one of the principal classical-subject painters of the nineteenth century whose works demonstrate the care and exactitude of an era mesmerised by trying to visualise the past, some of which was being recovered through archaeological research.
Alma-Tadema's meticulous archaeological research, including research into Roman architecture (which was so thorough that every building featured in his canvases could have been built using Roman tools and methods) led to his paintings being used as source material by Hollywood directors in their vision of the ancient world for films such as D. W. Griffith's "Intolerance" (1916), "Ben Hur" (1926)," Cleopatra" (1934), and most notably of all, Cecil B. DeMille's epic remake of "The Ten Commandments" (1956). Indeed, Jesse Lasky Jr., the co-writer on "The Ten Commandments", described how the director would customarily spread out prints of Alma-Tadema paintings to indicate to his set designers the look he wanted to achieve. The designers of the Oscar-winning Roman epic "Gladiator" used the paintings of Alma-Tadema as a central source of inspiration. Alma-Tadema's paintings were also the inspiration for the design of the interior of Cair Paravel castle in the 2005 film "".
In 1962, New York art dealer Robert Isaacson mounted the first show of Alma-Tadema's work in fifty years; by the late 1960s, the revival of interest in Victorian painting gained impetus, and a number of well-attended exhibitions were held. Allen Funt, the creator and host of the American version of the television show "Candid Camera", was a collector of Alma-Tadema paintings at a time when the artist's reputation in the 20th century was at its nadir; in a relatively few years he bought 35 works, about ten percent of Alma-Tadema's output. After Funt was robbed by his accountant (who subsequently committed suicide), he was forced to sell his collection at Sotheby's in London in November 1973. From this sale, the interest in Alma-Tadema was re-awakened.
In 1960, the Newman Gallery firstly tried to sell, then give away (without success) one of his most celebrated works, "The Finding of Moses" (1904). The initial purchaser had paid £5,250 for it on its completion, and subsequent sales were for £861 in 1935, £265 in 1942, and it was "bought in" at £252 in 1960 (having failed to meet its reserve), but when the same picture was auctioned at Christies in New York in May 1995, it sold for £1.75 million. On 4 November 2010 it was sold for $35,922,500 to an undisclosed bidder at Sotheby's New York, a new record both for an Alma-Tadema work and for a Victorian painting. On 5 May 2011 his "The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra: 41 BC" was sold at the same auction house for $29.2 million.
Alma-Tadema's "The Tepidarium" (1881) is included in the 2006 book "1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die". Julian Treuherz, Keeper of Art Galleries at National Museums Liverpool, describes it as an "exquisitely painted picture..." which "carries a strong erotic charge, rare for a Victorian painting of the nude".
A blue plaque unveiled in 1975 commemorates Alma-Tadema at 44 Grove End Road, St John's Wood, his home from 1886 until his death in 1912. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28765 |
Surrealism
Surrealism was a cultural movement which developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I and was largely influenced by Dada. The movement is best known for its visual artworks and writings and the juxtaposition of uncommon imagery. Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes, sometimes with photographic precision, creating strange creatures from everyday objects, and developing painting techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself. Its aim was, according to leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or "surreality."
Works of surrealism feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and "non sequitur"; however, many surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works themselves being an artifact. Leader Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement. At the time, the movement was associated with political causes such as communism and anarchism.
The term "Surrealism" is said to have been coined by Guillaume Apollinaire as early as 1917. However, the Surrealist movement was not officially established until October 15, 1924, when the French poet and critic André Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto in Paris. The most important center of the movement was Paris, France. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, impacting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.
The word 'surrealism' was first coined in March 1917 by Guillaume Apollinaire. He wrote in a letter to Paul Dermée: "All things considered, I think in fact it is better to adopt surrealism than supernaturalism, which I first used" ["Tout bien examiné, je crois en effet qu'il vaut mieux adopter surréalisme que surnaturalisme que j'avais d'abord employé"].
Apollinaire used the term in his program notes for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, "Parade", which premiered 18 May 1917. "Parade" had a one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau and was performed with music by Erik Satie. Cocteau described the ballet as "realistic". Apollinaire went further, describing "Parade" as "surrealistic":
This new alliance—I say new, because until now scenery and costumes were linked only by factitious bonds—has given rise, in "Parade", to a kind of surrealism, which I consider to be the point of departure for a whole series of manifestations of the New Spirit that is making itself felt today and that will certainly appeal to our best minds. We may expect it to bring about profound changes in our arts and manners through universal joyfulness, for it is only natural, after all, that they keep pace with scientific and industrial progress. (Apollinaire, 1917)
The term was taken up again by Apollinaire, both as subtitle and in the preface to his play "Les Mamelles de Tirésias: Drame surréaliste", which was written in 1903 and first performed in 1917.
World War I scattered the writers and artists who had been based in Paris, and in the interim many became involved with Dada, believing that excessive rational thought and bourgeois values had brought the conflict of the war upon the world. The Dadaists protested with anti-art gatherings, performances, writings and art works. After the war, when they returned to Paris, the Dada activities continued.
During the war, André Breton, who had trained in medicine and psychiatry, served in a neurological hospital where he used Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic methods with soldiers suffering from shell-shock. Meeting the young writer Jacques Vaché, Breton felt that Vaché was the spiritual son of writer and pataphysics founder Alfred Jarry. He admired the young writer's anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition. Later Breton wrote, "In literature, I was successively taken with Rimbaud, with Jarry, with Apollinaire, with Nouveau, with Lautréamont, but it is Jacques Vaché to whom I owe the most."
Back in Paris, Breton joined in Dada activities and started the literary journal "Littérature" along with Louis Aragon and Philippe Soupault. They began experimenting with automatic writing—spontaneously writing without censoring their thoughts—and published the writings, as well as accounts of dreams, in the magazine. Breton and Soupault continued writing evolving their techniques of automatism and published "The Magnetic Fields" (1920).
By October 1924 two rival Surrealist groups had formed to publish a Surrealist Manifesto. Each claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Appolinaire. One group, led by Yvan Goll consisted of Pierre Albert-Birot, Paul Dermée, Céline Arnauld, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Pierre Reverdy, Marcel Arland, Joseph Delteil, Jean Painlevé and Robert Delaunay, among others The group led by André Breton claimed that automatism was a better tactic for societal change than those of Dada, as led by Tzara, who was now among their rivals. Breton's group grew to include writers and artists from various media such as Paul Éluard, Benjamin Péret, René Crevel, Robert Desnos, Jacques Baron, Max Morise, Pierre Naville, Roger Vitrac, Gala Éluard, Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Man Ray, Hans Arp, Georges Malkine, Michel Leiris, Georges Limbour, Antonin Artaud, Raymond Queneau, André Masson, Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Prévert, and Yves Tanguy.
As they developed their philosophy, they believed that Surrealism would advocate the idea that ordinary and depictive expressions are vital and important, but that the sense of their arrangement must be open to the full range of imagination according to the Hegelian Dialectic. They also looked to the Marxist dialectic and the work of such theorists as Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse.
Freud's work with free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious was of utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. They embraced idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness. As Dalí later proclaimed, "There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad."
Beside the use of dream analysis, they emphasized that "one could combine inside the same frame, elements not normally found together to produce illogical and startling effects." Breton included the idea of the startling juxtapositions in his 1924 manifesto, taking it in turn from a 1918 essay by poet Pierre Reverdy, which said: "a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be−the greater its emotional power and poetic reality."
The group aimed to revolutionize human experience, in its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects. They wanted to free people from false rationality, and restrictive customs and structures. Breton proclaimed that the true aim of Surrealism was "long live the social revolution, and it alone!" To this goal, at various times Surrealists aligned with communism and anarchism.
In 1924 two Surrealist factions declared their philosophy in two separate Surrealist Manifestos. That same year the Bureau of Surrealist Research was established, and began publishing the journal "La Révolution surréaliste".
Leading up to 1924, two rival surrealist groups had formed. Each group claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Apollinaire. One group, led by Yvan Goll, consisted of Pierre Albert-Birot, Paul Dermée, Céline Arnauld, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Pierre Reverdy, Marcel Arland, Joseph Delteil, Jean Painlevé and Robert Delaunay, among others.
The other group, led by Breton, included Aragon, Desnos, Éluard, Baron, Crevel, Malkine, Jacques-André Boiffard and Jean Carrive, among others.
Yvan Goll published the "Manifeste du surréalisme", 1 October 1924, in his first and only issue of "Surréalisme" two weeks prior to the release of Breton's "Manifeste du surréalisme", published by Éditions du Sagittaire, 15 October 1924.
Goll and Breton clashed openly, at one point literally fighting, at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, over the rights to the term Surrealism. In the end, Breton won the battle through tactical and numerical superiority. Though the quarrel over the anteriority of Surrealism concluded with the victory of Breton, the history of surrealism from that moment would remain marked by fractures, resignations, and resounding excommunications, with each surrealist having their own view of the issue and goals, and accepting more or less the definitions laid out by André Breton.
Breton's 1924 "Surrealist Manifesto" defines the purposes of Surrealism. He included citations of the influences on Surrealism, examples of Surrealist works, and discussion of Surrealist automatism. He provided the following definitions:
The movement in the mid-1920s was characterized by meetings in cafes where the Surrealists played collaborative drawing games, discussed the theories of Surrealism, and developed a variety of techniques such as automatic drawing. Breton initially doubted that visual arts could even be useful in the Surrealist movement since they appeared to be less malleable and open to chance and automatism. This caution was overcome by the discovery of such techniques as frottage and decalcomania.
Soon more visual artists became involved, including Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Francis Picabia, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Alberto Giacometti, Valentine Hugo, Méret Oppenheim, Toyen, Kansuke Yamamoto and later after the second war: Enrico Donati. Though Breton admired Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp and courted them to join the movement, they remained peripheral. More writers also joined, including former Dadaist Tristan Tzara, René Char, and Georges Sadoul.
In 1925 an autonomous Surrealist group formed in Brussels. The group included the musician, poet, and artist E. L. T. Mesens, painter and writer René Magritte, Paul Nougé, Marcel Lecomte, and André Souris. In 1927 they were joined by the writer Louis Scutenaire. They corresponded regularly with the Paris group, and in 1927 both Goemans and Magritte moved to Paris and frequented Breton's circle. The artists, with their roots in Dada and Cubism, the abstraction of Wassily Kandinsky, Expressionism, and Post-Impressionism, also reached to older "bloodlines" or proto-surrealists such as Hieronymus Bosch, and the so-called primitive and naive arts.
André Masson's automatic drawings of 1923 are often used as the point of the acceptance of visual arts and the break from Dada, since they reflect the influence of the idea of the unconscious mind. Another example is Giacometti's 1925 "Torso", which marked his movement to simplified forms and inspiration from preclassical sculpture.
However, a striking example of the line used to divide Dada and Surrealism among art experts is the pairing of 1925's "Little Machine Constructed by Minimax Dadamax in Person (Von minimax dadamax selbst konstruiertes maschinchen)" with "The Kiss (Le Baiser)" from 1927 by Max Ernst. The first is generally held to have a distance, and erotic subtext, whereas the second presents an erotic act openly and directly. In the second the influence of Miró and the drawing style of Picasso is visible with the use of fluid curving and intersecting lines and colour, whereas the first takes a directness that would later be influential in movements such as Pop art.
Giorgio de Chirico, and his previous development of metaphysical art, was one of the important joining figures between the philosophical and visual aspects of Surrealism. Between 1911 and 1917, he adopted an unornamented depictional style whose surface would be adopted by others later. "The Red Tower (La tour rouge)" from 1913 shows the stark colour contrasts and illustrative style later adopted by Surrealist painters. His 1914 "The Nostalgia of the Poet (La Nostalgie du poète)" has the figure turned away from the viewer, and the juxtaposition of a bust with glasses and a fish as a relief defies conventional explanation. He was also a writer whose novel "Hebdomeros" presents a series of dreamscapes with an unusual use of punctuation, syntax, and grammar designed to create an atmosphere and frame its images. His images, including set designs for the Ballets Russes, would create a decorative form of Surrealism, and he would be an influence on the two artists who would be even more closely associated with Surrealism in the public mind: Dalí and Magritte. He would, however, leave the Surrealist group in 1928.
In 1924, Miró and Masson applied Surrealism to painting. The first Surrealist exhibition, "La Peinture Surrealiste", was held at Galerie Pierre in Paris in 1925. It displayed works by Masson, Man Ray, Paul Klee, Miró, and others. The show confirmed that Surrealism had a component in the visual arts (though it had been initially debated whether this was possible), and techniques from Dada, such as photomontage, were used. The following year, on March 26, 1926 Galerie Surréaliste opened with an exhibition by Man Ray. Breton published "Surrealism and Painting" in 1928 which summarized the movement to that point, though he continued to update the work until the 1960s.
The first Surrealist work, according to leader Brêton, was Les Chants de Maldoror; and the first work written and published by his group of "Surréalistes" was "Les Champs Magnétiques" (May–June 1919). "Littérature" contained automatist works and accounts of dreams. The magazine and the portfolio both showed their disdain for literal meanings given to objects and focused rather on the undertones, the poetic undercurrents present. Not only did they give emphasis to the poetic undercurrents, but also to the connotations and the overtones which "exist in ambiguous relationships to the visual images"
Because Surrealist writers seldom, if ever, appear to organize their thoughts and the images they present, some people find much of their work difficult to parse. This notion however is a superficial comprehension, prompted no doubt by Breton's initial emphasis on automatic writing as the main route toward a higher reality. But—as in Breton's case—much of what is presented as purely automatic is actually edited and very "thought out". Breton himself later admitted that automatic writing's centrality had been overstated, and other elements were introduced, especially as the growing involvement of visual artists in the movement forced the issue, since automatic painting required a rather more strenuous set of approaches. Thus such elements as collage were introduced, arising partly from an ideal of startling juxtapositions as revealed in Pierre Reverdy's poetry. And—as in Magritte's case (where there is no obvious recourse to either automatic techniques or collage)—the very notion of convulsive joining became a tool for revelation in and of itself. Surrealism was meant to be always in flux—to be more modern than modern—and so it was natural there should be a rapid shuffling of the philosophy as new challenges arose.
Surrealists revived interest in Isidore Ducasse, known by his pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont, and for the line "beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella", and Arthur Rimbaud, two late 19th-century writers believed to be the precursors of Surrealism.
Examples of Surrealist literature are Artaud's "Le Pèse-Nerfs" (1926), Aragon's "Irene's Cunt" (1927), Péret's "Death to the Pigs" (1929), Crevel's "Mr. Knife Miss Fork" (1931), Sadegh Hedayat's "the Blind Owl" (1937), and Breton's "Sur la route de San Romano" (1948).
"La Révolution surréaliste" continued publication into 1929 with most pages densely packed with columns of text, but also included reproductions of art, among them works by de Chirico, Ernst, Masson, and Man Ray. Other works included books, poems, pamphlets, automatic texts and theoretical tracts.
Early films by Surrealists include:
The word "surrealist" was first used by Apollinaire to describe his 1917 play "Les Mamelles de Tirésias" ("The Breasts of Tiresias"), which was later adapted into an opera by Francis Poulenc.
Antonin Artaud, an early Surrealist, rejected the majority of Western theatre as a perversion of its original intent, which he felt should be a mystical, metaphysical experience. He thought that rational discourse comprised "falsehood and illusion". Theorising a new theatrical form that would be immediate and direct, that would link the unconscious minds of performers and spectators in a sort of ritual event, Artaud created the Theatre of Cruelty, in which emotions, feelings, and the metaphysical were expressed not through language but physically, creating a mythological, archetypal, allegorical vision, closely related to the world of dreams.
The other major theatre practitioner to have experimented with surrealism in the theatre is the Spanish playwright and director Federico García Lorca, particularly in his plays "The Public" (1930), "When Five Years Pass" (1931), and "Play Without a Title" (1935). Other surrealist plays include Aragon's "Backs to the Wall" (1925) and Roger Vitrac's "The Mysteries of Love" (1927) and "Victor, or The Children Take Over" (1928). Gertrude Stein's opera "Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights" (1938) has also been described as "American Surrealism", though it is also related to a theatrical form of cubism.
In the 1920s several composers were influenced by Surrealism, or by individuals in the Surrealist movement. Among them were Bohuslav Martinů, André Souris, Erik Satie, and Edgard Varèse, who stated that his work "Arcana" was drawn from a dream sequence. Souris in particular was associated with the movement: he had a long relationship with Magritte, and worked on Paul Nougé's publication "Adieu Marie".
Germaine Tailleferre of the French group Les Six wrote several works which could be considered to be inspired by Surrealism, including the 1948 ballet "Paris-Magie" (scenario by Lise Deharme), the operas "La Petite Sirène" (book by Philippe Soupault) and "Le Maître" (book by Eugène Ionesco). Tailleferre also wrote popular songs to texts by Claude Marci, the wife of Henri Jeanson, whose portrait had been painted by Magritte in the 1930s.
Even though Breton by 1946 responded rather negatively to the subject of music with his essay "Silence is Golden", later Surrealists, such as Paul Garon, have been interested in—and found parallels to—Surrealism in the improvisation of jazz and the blues. Jazz and blues musicians have occasionally reciprocated this interest. For example, the 1976 World Surrealist Exhibition included performances by David "Honeyboy" Edwards.
Surrealism as a political force developed unevenly around the world: in some places more emphasis was on artistic practices, in other places on political practices, and in other places still, Surrealist praxis looked to supersede both the arts and politics. During the 1930s, the Surrealist idea spread from Europe to North America, South America (founding of the "Mandrágora" group in Chile in 1938), Central America, the Caribbean, and throughout Asia, as both an artistic idea and as an ideology of political change.
Politically, Surrealism was Trotskyist, communist, or anarchist. The split from Dada has been characterised as a split between anarchists and communists, with the Surrealists as communist. Breton and his comrades supported Leon Trotsky and his International Left Opposition for a while, though there was an openness to anarchism that manifested more fully after World War II. Some Surrealists, such as Benjamin Péret, Mary Low, and Juan Breá, aligned with forms of left communism. Others fought for complete liberty from political ideologies, like Wolfgang Paalen, who, after Trotsky's assassination in Mexico, prepared a schism between art and politics through his counter-surrealist art-magazine DYN and so prepared the ground for the abstract expressionists. Dalí supported capitalism and the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco but cannot be said to represent a trend in Surrealism in this respect; in fact he was considered, by Breton and his associates, to have betrayed and left Surrealism. Benjamin Péret, Mary Low and Juan Breá joined the POUM during the Spanish Civil War.
Breton's followers, along with the Communist Party, were working for the "liberation of man". However, Breton's group refused to prioritize the proletarian struggle over radical creation such that their struggles with the Party made the late 1920s a turbulent time for both. Many individuals closely associated with Breton, notably Aragon, left his group to work more closely with the Communists.
Surrealists have often sought to link their efforts with political ideals and activities. In the "Declaration of January 27, 1925", for example, members of the Paris-based Bureau of Surrealist Research (including Breton, Aragon and Artaud, as well as some two dozen others) declared their affinity for revolutionary politics. While this was initially a somewhat vague formulation, by the 1930s many Surrealists had strongly identified themselves with communism. The foremost document of this tendency within Surrealism is the "Manifesto for a Free Revolutionary Art", published under the names of Breton and Diego Rivera, but actually co-authored by Breton and Leon Trotsky.
However, in 1933 the Surrealists’ assertion that a 'proletarian literature' within a capitalist society was impossible led to their break with the Association des Ecrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires, and the expulsion of Breton, Éluard and Crevel from the Communist Party.
In 1925, the Paris Surrealist group and the extreme left of the French Communist Party came together to support Abd-el-Krim, leader of the Rif uprising against French colonialism in Morocco. In an open letter to writer and French ambassador to Japan, Paul Claudel, the Paris group announced:
The anticolonial revolutionary and proletarian politics of "Murderous Humanitarianism" (1932) which was drafted mainly by Crevel, signed by Breton, Éluard, Péret, Tanguy, and the Martiniquan Surrealists Pierre Yoyotte and J.M. Monnerot perhaps makes it the original document of what is later called 'black Surrealism', although it is the contact between Aimé Césaire and Breton in the 1940s in Martinique that really lead to the communication of what is known as 'black Surrealism'.
Anticolonial revolutionary writers in the Négritude movement of Martinique, a French colony at the time, took up Surrealism as a revolutionary method - a critique of European culture and a radical subjective. This linked with other Surrealists and was very important for the subsequent development of Surrealism as a revolutionary praxis. The journal "Tropiques", featuring the work of Césaire along with Suzanne Césaire, René Ménil, Lucie Thésée, Aristide Maugée and others, was first published in 1941.
In 1938 André Breton traveled with his wife, the painter Jacqueline Lamba, to Mexico to meet Trotsky (staying as the guest of Diego Rivera's former wife Guadalupe Marin), and there he met Frida Kahlo and saw her paintings for the first time. Breton declared Kahlo to be an "innate" Surrealist painter.
In 1929 the satellite group associated with the journal "Le Grand Jeu", including Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, Maurice Henry and the Czech painter Josef Sima, was ostracized. Also in February, Breton asked Surrealists to assess their "degree of moral competence", and theoretical refinements included in the second "manifeste du surréalisme" excluded anyone reluctant to commit to collective action, a list which included Leiris, Limbour, Morise, Baron, Queneau, Prévert, Desnos, Masson and Boiffard. Excluded members launched a counterattack, sharply criticizing Breton in the pamphlet "Un Cadavre", which featured a picture of Breton wearing a crown of thorns. The pamphlet drew upon an earlier act of subversion by likening Breton to Anatole France, whose unquestioned value Breton had challenged in 1924.n
The disunion of 1929-30 and the effects of "Un Cadavre" had very little negative impact upon Surrealism as Breton saw it, since core figures such as Aragon, Crevel, Dalí and Buñuel remained true the idea of group action, at least for the time being. The success (or the controversy) of Dalí and Buñuel's film L'Age d'Or in December 1930 had a regenerative effect, drawing a number of new recruits, and encouraging countless new artistic works the following year and throughout the 1930s.
Disgruntled surrealists moved to the periodical "Documents", edited by Georges Bataille, whose anti-idealist materialism formed a hybrid Surrealism intending to expose the base instincts of humans. To the dismay of many, "Documents" fizzled out in 1931, just as Surrealism seemed to be gathering more steam.
There were a number of reconciliations after this period of disunion, such as between Breton and Bataille, while Aragon left the group after committing himself to the French Communist Party in 1932. More members were ousted over the years for a variety of infractions, both political and personal, while others left in pursuit of their own style.
By the end of World War II the surrealist group led by André Breton decided to explicitly embrace anarchism. In 1952 Breton wrote "It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself." "Breton was consistent in his support for the francophone Anarchist Federation and he continued to offer his solidarity after the Platformists supporting Fontenis transformed the FA into the Fédération Communiste Libertaire. He was one of the few intellectuals who continued to offer his support to the FCL during the Algerian war when the FCL suffered severe repression and was forced underground. He sheltered Fontenis whilst he was in hiding. He refused to take sides on the splits in the French anarchist movement and both he and Peret expressed solidarity as well with the new Fédération anarchiste set up by the synthesist anarchists and worked in the Antifascist Committees of the 60s alongside the FA."
Throughout the 1930s, Surrealism continued to become more visible to the public at large. A Surrealist group developed in London and, according to Breton, their 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition was a high-water mark of the period and became the model for international exhibitions. Another English Surrealist group developed in Birmingham, meanwhile, and was distinguished by its opposition to the London surrealists and preferences for surrealism's French heartland. The two groups would reconcile later in the decade.
Dalí and Magritte created the most widely recognized images of the movement. Dalí joined the group in 1929, and participated in the rapid establishment of the visual style between 1930 and 1935.
Surrealism as a visual movement had found a method: to expose psychological truth; stripping ordinary objects of their normal significance, to create a compelling image that was beyond ordinary formal organization, in order to evoke empathy from the viewer.
1931 was a year when several Surrealist painters produced works which marked turning points in their stylistic evolution: Magritte's "Voice of Space (La Voix des airs)" is an example of this process, where three large spheres representing bells hang above a landscape. Another Surrealist landscape from this same year is Yves Tanguy's "", with its molten forms and liquid shapes. Liquid shapes became the trademark of Dalí, particularly in his "The Persistence of Memory", which features the image of watches that sag as if they were melting.
The characteristics of this style—a combination of the depictive, the abstract, and the psychological—came to stand for the alienation which many people felt in the modern period, combined with the sense of reaching more deeply into the psyche, to be "made whole with one's individuality".
Between 1930 and 1933, the Surrealist Group in Paris issued the periodical "Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution" as the successor of "La Révolution surréaliste".
From 1936 through 1938 Wolfgang Paalen, Gordon Onslow Ford, and Roberto Matta joined the group. Paalen contributed Fumage and Onslow Ford Coulage as new pictorial automatic techniques.
Long after personal, political and professional tensions fragmented the Surrealist group, Magritte and Dalí continued to define a visual program in the arts. This program reached beyond painting, to encompass photography as well, as can be seen from a Man Ray self-portrait, whose use of assemblage influenced Robert Rauschenberg's collage boxes.
During the 1930s Peggy Guggenheim, an important American art collector, married Max Ernst and began promoting work by other Surrealists such as Yves Tanguy and the British artist John Tunnard.
Major exhibitions in the 1930s
World War II created havoc not only for the general population of Europe but especially for the European artists and writers that opposed Fascism and Nazism. Many important artists fled to North America and relative safety in the United States. The art community in New York City in particular was already grappling with Surrealist ideas and several artists like Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, and Robert Motherwell converged closely with the surrealist artists themselves, albeit with some suspicion and reservations. Ideas concerning the unconscious and dream imagery were quickly embraced. By the Second World War, the taste of the American avant-garde in New York City swung decisively towards Abstract Expressionism with the support of key taste makers, including Peggy Guggenheim, Leo Steinberg and Clement Greenberg. However, it should not be easily forgotten that Abstract Expressionism itself grew directly out of the meeting of American (particularly New York) artists with European Surrealists self-exiled during World War II. In particular, Gorky and Paalen influenced the development of this American art form, which, as Surrealism did, celebrated the instantaneous human act as the well-spring of creativity. The early work of many Abstract Expressionists reveals a tight bond between the more superficial aspects of both movements, and the emergence (at a later date) of aspects of Dadaistic humor in such artists as Rauschenberg sheds an even starker light upon the connection. Up until the emergence of Pop Art, Surrealism can be seen to have been the single most important influence on the sudden growth in American arts, and even in Pop, some of the humor manifested in Surrealism can be found, often turned to a cultural criticism.
The Second World War overshadowed, for a time, almost all intellectual and artistic production. In 1939 Wolfgang Paalen was the first to leave Paris for the New World as exile. After a long trip through the forests of British Columbia, he settled in Mexico and founded his influential art-magazine Dyn. In 1940 Yves Tanguy married American Surrealist painter Kay Sage. In 1941, Breton went to the United States, where he co-founded the short-lived magazine "VVV" with Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and the American artist David Hare. However, it was the American poet, Charles Henri Ford, and his magazine "View" which offered Breton a channel for promoting Surrealism in the United States. The "View" special issue on Duchamp was crucial for the public understanding of Surrealism in America. It stressed his connections to Surrealist methods, offered interpretations of his work by Breton, as well as Breton's view that Duchamp represented the bridge between early modern movements, such as Futurism and Cubism, to Surrealism. Wolfgang Paalen left the group in 1942 due to political/philosophical differences with Breton.
Though the war proved disruptive for Surrealism, the works continued. Many Surrealist artists continued to explore their vocabularies, including Magritte. Many members of the Surrealist movement continued to correspond and meet. While Dalí may have been excommunicated by Breton, he neither abandoned his themes from the 1930s, including references to the "persistence of time" in a later painting, nor did he become a depictive pompier. His classic period did not represent so sharp a break with the past as some descriptions of his work might portray, and some, such as André Thirion, argued that there were works of his after this period that continued to have some relevance for the movement.
During the 1940s Surrealism's influence was also felt in England, America and the Netherlands where Gertrude Pape and her husband Theo van Baaren helped to popularize it in their publication The Clean Handkerchief. Mark Rothko took an interest in biomorphic figures, and in England Henry Moore, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Paul Nash used or experimented with Surrealist techniques. However, Conroy Maddox, one of the first British Surrealists whose work in this genre dated from 1935, remained within the movement, and organized an exhibition of current Surrealist work in 1978 in response to an earlier show which infuriated him because it did not properly represent Surrealism. Maddox's exhibition, titled "Surrealism Unlimited", was held in Paris and attracted international attention. He held his last one-man show in 2002, and died three years later.
Magritte's work became more realistic in its depiction of actual objects, while maintaining the element of juxtaposition, such as in 1951's "Personal Values (Les Valeurs Personnelles)" and 1954's "Empire of Light (L’Empire des lumières)". Magritte continued to produce works which have entered artistic vocabulary, such as "Castle in the Pyrenees (Le Château des Pyrénées)", which refers back to "Voix" from 1931, in its suspension over a landscape.
Other figures from the Surrealist movement were expelled. Several of these artists, like Roberto Matta (by his own description) "remained close to Surrealism".
After the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Endre Rozsda returned to Paris to continue creating his own word that had been transcended the surrealism. The preface to his first exhibition in the Furstenberg Gallery (1957) was written by Breton yet.
Many new artists explicitly took up the Surrealist banner. Dorothea Tanning and Louise Bourgeois continued to work, for example, with Tanning's "Rainy Day Canape" from 1970. Duchamp continued to produce sculpture in secret including an installation with the realistic depiction of a woman viewable only through a peephole.
Breton continued to write and espouse the importance of liberating the human mind, as with the publication "The Tower of Light" in 1952. Breton's return to France after the War, began a new phase of Surrealist activity in Paris, and his critiques of rationalism and dualism found a new audience. Breton insisted that Surrealism was an ongoing revolt against the reduction of humanity to market relationships, religious gestures and misery and to espouse the importance of liberating the human mind.
Major exhibitions of the 1940s, '50s and '60s
In the 1960s, the artists and writers associated with the Situationist International were closely associated with Surrealism. While Guy Debord was critical of and distanced himself from Surrealism, others, such as Asger Jorn, were explicitly using Surrealist techniques and methods. The events of May 1968 in France included a number of Surrealist ideas, and among the slogans the students spray-painted on the walls of the Sorbonne were familiar Surrealist ones. Joan Miró would commemorate this in a painting titled "May 1968." There were also groups who associated with both currents and were more attached to Surrealism, such as the Revolutionary Surrealist Group.
During the 1980s, behind the Iron Curtain, Surrealism again entered into politics with an underground artistic opposition movement known as the Orange Alternative. The Orange Alternative was created in 1981 by Waldemar Fydrych (alias 'Major'), a graduate of history and art history at the University of Wrocław. They used Surrealist symbolism and terminology in their large scale happenings organized in the major Polish cities during the Jaruzelski regime, and painted Surrealist graffiti on spots covering up anti-regime slogans. Major himself was the author of a "Manifesto of Socialist Surrealism". In this manifesto, he stated that the socialist (communist) system had become so Surrealistic that it could be seen as an expression of art itself.
Surrealistic art also remains popular with museum patrons. The Guggenheim Museum in New York City held an exhibit, "Two Private Eyes", in 1999, and in 2001 Tate Modern held an exhibition of Surrealist art that attracted over 170,000 visitors. In 2002 the Met in New York City held a show, "Desire Unbound", and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris a show called "La Révolution surréaliste".
Surrealists groups and literary publications have continued to be active up to the present day, with groups such as the Chicago Surrealist Group, the Leeds Surrealist Group, and the Surrealist Group of Stockholm. Jan Švankmajer of the Czech-Slovak Surrealists continues to make films and experiment with objects.
While Surrealism is typically associated with the arts, it has impacted many other fields. In this sense, Surrealism does not specifically refer only to self-identified "Surrealists", or those sanctioned by Breton, rather, it refers to a range of creative acts of revolt and efforts to liberate imagination. In addition to Surrealist theory being grounded in the ideas of Hegel, Marx and Freud, to its advocates its inherent dynamic is dialectical thought.
Surrealists have also drawn on sources as seemingly diverse as Clark Ashton Smith, Montague Summers, Horace Walpole, Fantômas, The Residents, Bugs Bunny, comic strips, the obscure poet Samuel Greenberg and the hobo writer and humourist T-Bone Slim. One might say that Surrealist strands may be found in movements such as Free Jazz (Don Cherry, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor etc.) and even in the daily lives of people in confrontation with limiting social conditions. Thought of as the effort of humanity to liberate imagination as an act of insurrection against society, Surrealism finds precedents in the alchemists, possibly Dante, Hieronymus Bosch, Marquis de Sade, Charles Fourier, Comte de Lautreamont and Arthur Rimbaud.
Surrealists believe that non-Western cultures also provide a continued source of inspiration for Surrealist activity because some may induce a better balance between instrumental reason and imagination in flight than Western culture. Surrealism has had an identifiable impact on radical and revolutionary politics, both directly — as in some Surrealists joining or allying themselves with radical political groups, movements and parties — and indirectly — through the way in which Surrealists emphasize the intimate link between freeing imagination and the mind, and liberation from repressive and archaic social structures. This was especially visible in the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s and the French revolt of May 1968, whose slogan "All power to the imagination" quoted by The Situationists and Enragés from the originally Marxist “"Rêvé"-lutionary“ theory and praxis of Breton's French Surrealist group.
Many significant literary movements in the later half of the 20th century were directly or indirectly influenced by Surrealism. This period is known as the Postmodern era; though there's no widely agreed upon central definition of Postmodernism, many themes and techniques commonly identified as Postmodern are nearly identical to Surrealism.
Many writers from and associated with the Beat Generation were influenced greatly by Surrealists. Philip Lamantia and Ted Joans are often categorized as both Beat and Surrealist writers. Many other Beat writers show significant evidence of Surrealist influence. A few examples include Bob Kaufman, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Artaud in particular was very influential to many of the Beats, but especially Ginsberg and Carl Solomon. Ginsberg cites Artaud's "Van Gogh -- The Man Suicided by Society" as a direct influence on "Howl", along with Apollinaire's "Zone", García Lorca's "Ode to Walt Whitman", and Schwitters' "Priimiititiii". The structure of Breton's "Free Union" had a significant influence on Ginsberg's "Kaddish". In Paris, Ginsberg and Corso met their heroes Tristan Tzara, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Benjamin Péret, and to show their admiration Ginsberg kissed Duchamp's feet and Corso cut off Duchamp's tie.
William S. Burroughs, a core member of the Beat Generation and a postmodern novelist, developed the cut-up technique with former surrealist Brion Gysin—in which chance is used to dictate the composition of a text from words cut out of other sources—referring to it as the "Surrealist Lark" and recognizing its debt to the techniques of Tristan Tzara.
Postmodern novelist Thomas Pynchon, who was also influenced by Beat fiction, experimented since the 1960s with the surrealist idea of startling juxtapositions; commenting on the "necessity of managing this procedure with some degree of care and skill", he added that "any old combination of details will not do. Spike Jones Jr., whose father's orchestral recordings had a deep and indelible effect on me as a child, said once in an interview, 'One of the things that people don't realize about Dad's kind of music is, when you replace a C-sharp with a gunshot, it has to be a C-sharp gunshot or it sounds awful.'"
Many other postmodern fiction writers have been directly influenced by Surrealism. Paul Auster, for example, has translated Surrealist poetry and said the Surrealists were "a real discovery" for him. Salman Rushdie, when called a Magical Realist, said he saw his work instead "allied to surrealism". David Lynch regarded as a surrealist filmmaker being quoted, "David Lynch has once again risen to the spotlight as a champion of surrealism," in regard to his show Twin Peaks. For the work of other postmodernists, such as Donald Barthelme and Robert Coover, a broad comparison to Surrealism is common.
Magic realism, a popular technique among novelists of the latter half of the 20th century especially among Latin American writers, has some obvious similarities to Surrealism with its juxtaposition of the normal and the dream-like, as in the work of Gabriel García Márquez. Carlos Fuentes was inspired by the revolutionary voice in Surrealist poetry and points to inspiration Breton and Artaud found in Fuentes' homeland, Mexico. Though Surrealism was a direct influence on Magic Realism in its early stages, many Magic Realist writers and critics, such as Amaryll Chanady and S. P. Ganguly, while acknowledging the similarities, cite the many differences obscured by the direct comparison of Magic Realism and Surrealism such as an interest in psychology and the artefacts of European culture they claim is not present in Magic Realism. A prominent example of a Magic Realist writer who points to Surrealism as an early influence is Alejo Carpentier who also later criticized Surrealism's delineation between real and unreal as not representing the true South American experience.
Surrealist individuals and groups have carried on with Surrealism after the death of André Breton in 1966. The original Paris Surrealist Group was disbanded by member Jean Schuster in 1969, but another Parisian surrealist group was later formed. The current Surrealist Group of Paris has recently published the first issue of their new journal, "Alcheringa". The Group of Czech-Slovak Surrealists never disbanded, and continue to publish their journal "Analogon", which now spans 80 volumes.
Surrealist theatre and Artaud's "Theatre of Cruelty" were inspirational to many within the group of playwrights that the critic Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd" (in his 1963 book of the same name). Though not an organized movement, Esslin grouped these playwrights together based on some similarities of theme and technique; Esslin argues that these similarities may be traced to an influence from the Surrealists. Eugène Ionesco in particular was fond of Surrealism, claiming at one point that Breton was one of the most important thinkers in history. Samuel Beckett was also fond of Surrealists, even translating much of the poetry into English. Other notable playwrights whom Esslin groups under the term, for example Arthur Adamov and Fernando Arrabal, were at some point members of the Surrealist group.
Alice Farley is an American-born artist who became active during the 1970s in San Francisco after training in dance at the California Institute of the Arts. Farley uses vivid and elaborate costuming that she describes as "the vehicles of transformation capable of making a character's thoughts visible". Often collaborating with musicians such as Henry Threadgill, Farley explores the role of improvisation in dance, bringing in an automatic aspect to the productions. Farley has performed in a number of surrealist collaborations including the World Surrealist Exhibition in Chicago in 1976.
Various much older artists are sometimes claimed as precursors of Surrealism. Foremost among these are Hieronymus Bosch, and Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who Dali called the "father of Surrealism." Apart from their followers, other artists who may be mentioned in this context include Joos de Momper, for some anthropomorphic landscapes. Many critics feel these works belong to fantastic art rather than having a significant connection with Surrealism.
André Breton
Other sources | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28766 |
Statics
Statics is the branch of mechanics that is concerned with the analysis of loads (force and torque, or "moment") acting on physical systems that do not experience an acceleration ("a"=0), but rather, are in static equilibrium with their environment. The application of Newton's second law to a system gives:
Where bold font indicates a vector that has magnitude and direction. formula_2 is the total of the forces acting on the system, formula_3 is the mass of the system and formula_4 is the acceleration of the system. The summation of forces will give the direction and the magnitude of the acceleration and will be inversely proportional to the mass. The assumption of static equilibrium of formula_4 = 0 leads to:
The summation of forces, one of which might be unknown, allows that unknown to be found. So when in static equilibrium, the acceleration of the system is zero and the system is either at rest, or its center of mass moves at constant velocity. Likewise the application of the assumption of zero acceleration to the summation of moments acting on the system leads to:
Here, formula_8 is the summation of all moments acting on the system, formula_9 is the moment of inertia of the mass and formula_10 = 0 the angular acceleration of the system, which when assumed to be zero leads to:
The summation of moments, one of which might be unknown, allows that unknown to be found.
These two equations together, can be applied to solve for as many as two loads (forces and moments) acting on the system.
From Newton's first law, this implies that the net force and net torque on every part of the system is zero. The net forces equaling zero is known as the "first condition for equilibrium," and the net torque equaling zero is known as the "second condition for equilibrium." See statically indeterminate.
Archimedes (c. 287–c. 212 BC) did pioneering work in statics.
Later developments in the field of statics are found in works of Thebit.
A scalar is a quantity which only has a magnitude, such as mass or temperature. A vector has a magnitude and a direction. There are several notations to identify a vector, including:
Vectors are added using the parallelogram law or the triangle law. Vectors contain components in orthogonal bases. Unit vectors i, j, and k are, by convention, along the x, y, and z axes, respectively.
Force is the action of one body on another. A force is either a push or a pull, and it tends to move a body in the direction of its action. The action of a force is characterized by its magnitude, by the direction of its action, and by its point of application. Thus, force is a vector quantity, because its effect depends on the direction as well as on the magnitude of the action.
Forces are classified as either contact or body forces. A contact force is produced by direct physical contact; an example is the force exerted on a body by a supporting surface. A body force is generated by virtue of the position of a body within a force field such as a gravitational, electric, or magnetic field and is independent of contact with any other body. An example of a body force is the weight of a body in the Earth's gravitational field.
In addition to the tendency to move a body in the direction of its application, a force can also tend to rotate a body about an axis. The axis may be any line which neither intersects nor is parallel to the line of action of the force. This rotational tendency is known as the "moment" (M) of the force. Moment is also referred to as "torque".
The magnitude of the moment of a force at a point "O", is equal to the perpendicular distance from "O" to the line of action of "F", multiplied by the magnitude of the force: , where
The direction of the moment is given by the right hand rule, where counter clockwise (CCW) is out of the page, and clockwise (CW) is into the page. The moment direction may be accounted for by using a stated sign convention, such as a plus sign (+) for counterclockwise moments and a minus sign (−) for clockwise moments, or vice versa. Moments can be added together as vectors.
In vector format, the moment can be defined as the cross product between the radius vector, r (the vector from point O to the line of action), and the force vector, F:
Varignon's theorem states that the moment of a force about any point is equal to the sum of the moments of the components of the force about the same point.
The static equilibrium of a particle is an important concept in statics. A particle is in equilibrium only if the resultant of all forces acting on the particle is equal to zero. In a rectangular coordinate system the equilibrium equations can be represented by three scalar equations, where the sums of forces in all three directions are equal to zero. An engineering application of this concept is determining the tensions of up to three cables under load, for example the forces exerted on each cable of a hoist lifting an object or of guy wires restraining a hot air balloon to the ground.
In classical mechanics, moment of inertia, also called mass moment, rotational inertia, polar moment of inertia of mass, or the angular mass, (SI units kg·m²) is a measure of an object's resistance to changes to its rotation. It is the inertia of a rotating body with respect to its rotation. The moment of inertia plays much the same role in rotational dynamics as mass does in linear dynamics, describing the relationship between angular momentum and angular velocity, torque and angular acceleration, and several other quantities. The symbols I and J are usually used to refer to the moment of inertia or polar moment of inertia.
While a simple scalar treatment of the moment of inertia suffices for many situations, a more advanced tensor treatment allows the analysis of such complicated systems as spinning tops and gyroscopic motion.
The concept was introduced by Leonhard Euler in his 1765 book "Theoria motus corporum solidorum seu rigidorum"; he discussed the moment of inertia and many related concepts, such as the principal axis of inertia.
Statics is used in the analysis of structures, for instance in architectural and structural engineering. Strength of materials is a related field of mechanics that relies heavily on the application of static equilibrium. A key concept is the center of gravity of a body at rest: it represents an imaginary point at which all the mass of a body resides. The position of the point relative to the foundations on which a body lies determines its stability in response to external forces. If the center of gravity exists outside the foundations, then the body is unstable because there is a torque acting: any small disturbance will cause the body to fall or topple. If the center of gravity exists within the foundations, the body is stable since no net torque acts on the body. If the center of gravity coincides with the foundations, then the body is said to be metastable.
Hydrostatics, also known as fluid statics, is the study of fluids at rest (i.e. in static equilibrium). The characteristic of any fluid at rest is that the force exerted on any particle of the fluid is the same at all points at the same depth (or altitude) within the fluid. If the net force is greater than zero the fluid will move in the direction of the resulting force. This concept was first formulated in a slightly extended form by French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal in 1647 and became known as Pascal's Law. It has many important applications in hydraulics. Archimedes, Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, Al-Khazini and Galileo Galilei were also major figures in the development of hydrostatics. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28767 |
Maritime transport
Maritime/Ocean transport, fluvial transport, or more generally waterborne transport is the transport of people (passengers) or goods (cargo) via waterways. Freight transport by sea has been widely used throughout recorded history. The advent of aviation has diminished the importance of sea travel for passengers, though it is still popular for short trips and pleasure cruises. Transport by water is cheaper than transport by air, despite fluctuating exchange rates and a fee placed on top of freighting charges for carrier companies known as the currency adjustment factor (CAF).
Maritime transport can be realized over any distance by boat, ship, sailboat or barge, over oceans and lakes, through canals or along rivers. Shipping may be for commerce, recreation, or for military purposes. While extensive inland shipping is less critical today, the major waterways of the world including many canals are still very important and are integral parts of worldwide economies. Virtually any material can be moved by water; however, water transport becomes impractical when material delivery is time-critical such as various types of perishable produce. Still, water transport is highly cost effective with regular schedulable cargoes, such as trans-oceanic shipping of consumer products – and especially for heavy loads or bulk cargos, such as coal, coke, ores, or grains. Arguably, the industrial revolution took place best where cheap water transport by canal, navigations, or shipping by all types of watercraft on natural waterways supported cost effective bulk transport.
Containerization revolutionized maritime transport starting in the 1970s. "General cargo" includes goods packaged in boxes, cases, pallets, and barrels. When a cargo is carried in more than one mode, it is intermodal or co-modal.
"Merchant shipping:" A nation's shipping fleet (merchant navy, merchant marine, merchant fleet) consists of the ships operated by civilian crews to transport passengers or cargo from one place to another. Merchant shipping also includes water transport over the river and canal systems connecting inland destinations, large and small. For example, during the early modern era, cities in the Hanseatic League began taming Northern Europe's rivers and harbors. And, for instance, the Saint Lawrence Seaway connects the port cities on the Great Lakes in Canada and the United States with the Atlantic Ocean shipping routes; while the various Illinois Canals connect the Great Lakes and Canada with New Orleans. Ores, Coal, and grains can travel along the rivers of the American midwest to Pittsburgh, or Birmingham. Professional mariners are merchant seaman, merchant sailor, and merchant mariner, or simply seaman, sailor, or mariners. The terms "seaman" or "sailor" may refer to a member of a country's navy.
According to the 2005 CIA World Factbook, the total number of merchant ships of at least 1,000 gross register tons in the world was 30,936. In 2010, it was 38,988, an increase of 26%. , a quarter of all merchant mariners were born in the Philippines. Statistics for individual countries are available at the list of merchant navy capacity by country.
A ship may also be categorized as to how it is operated.
Ships and other watercraft are used for maritime transport. Types can be distinguished by propulsion, size or cargo type. Recreational or educational craft still use wind power, while some smaller craft use internal combustion engines to drive one or more propellers, or in the case of jet boats, an inboard water jet. In shallow draft areas, such as the Everglades, some craft, such as the hovercraft, are propelled by large pusher-prop fans.
Most modern merchant ships can be placed in one of a few categories, such as:
A cargo ship sailing from a European port to a US one will typically take 10–12 days depending on water currents and other factors. In order to make container ship transport more economical in the face of declining demand for intercontinental shipping, ship operators sometimes reduce cruising speed, thereby increasing transit time, to reduce fuel consumption, a strategy referred to as "slow steaming". There are researches, that gives overview on the scope of data and it's quality (including timeliness and punctuality) related to vessels that is available on the Web, which can be freely used in the maritime domain.
A ship's complement can be divided into four categories:
Officer positions in the deck department include but not limited to: Master and his Chief, Second, and Third officers. The official classifications for unlicensed members of the deck department are Able Seaman and Ordinary Seaman.
A common deck crew for a ship includes:
A deck cadet is a person who is carrying out mandatory sea time to achieve their officer of the watch certificate. Their time on board is spent learning the operations and tasks of everyday life on a merchant vessel.
A ship's engine department consists of the members of a ship's crew that operate and maintain the propulsion and other systems on board the vessel. Engine staff also deal with the "Hotel" facilities on board, notably the sewage, lighting, air conditioning and water systems. They deal with bulk fuel transfers, and require training in firefighting and first aid, as well as in dealing with the ship's boats and other nautical tasks- especially with cargo loading/discharging gear and safety systems, though the specific cargo discharge function remains the responsibility of deck officers and deck workers. On LPG and LNG tankers however, a cargo engineer works with the deck department during cargo operations, as well as being a watchkeeping engineer.
A common engine crew for a ship includes:
Many American ships also carry a motorman. Other possible positions include machinist, electrician, refrigeration engineer, and tankerman. Engine cadets are engineer trainees who are completing sea time necessary before they can obtain a watchkeeping license.
A typical Steward's department for a cargo ship would be composed of a Chief Steward, a Chief Cook, and a Steward's Assistant. All three positions are typically filled by unlicensed personnel. The chief steward directs, instructs, and assigns personnel performing such functions as preparing and serving meals; cleaning and maintaining officers' quarters and steward department areas; and receiving, issuing, and inventorying stores. On large passenger vessels, the Catering Department is headed by the Chief Purser and managed by Assistant Pursers. Although they enjoy the benefits of having officer rank, they generally progress through the ranks to become pursers. Under the Pursers are the department heads – such as chief cook, head waiter, head barman etc. They are responsible for the administration of their own areas.
The chief steward also plans menus; compiles supply, overtime, and cost control records. They may requisition or purchase stores and equipment. They may bake bread, rolls, cakes, pies, and pastries. A chief steward's duties may overlap with those of the Steward's Assistant, the Chief Cook, and other Steward's Department crewmembers.
In the United States Merchant Marine, a chief steward must have a Merchant Mariner's Document issued by the United States Coast Guard. Because of international law, conventions, and agreements, all chief cooks who sail internationally are similarly documented by their respective countries.
Staff officer positions on a ship, including Junior Assistant Purser, Senior Assistant Purser, Purser, Chief Purser, Medical Doctor, Professional Nurse, Marine Physician Assistant, and Hospital Corpsman, are considered administrative positions and are therefore regulated by Certificates of Registry issued by the United States Coast Guard. Pilots are also merchant marine officers and are licensed by the Coast Guard. Formerly, there was also a radio department, headed by a chief radio officer and supported by a number of radio officers. Since the introduction of GMDSS (Satellite communications) and the subsequent exemptions from carrying radio officers if the vessel is so equipped, this department has fallen away, although many ships do still carry specialist radio officers, particularly passenger vessels. Many radio officers became 'electro-technical officers', and transferred into the engine department.
Mariners spend much of their life beyond the reach of land. They sometimes face dangerous conditions at sea or on Lakes – the fishing port of Gloucester, Massachusetts has a seaside memorial listing over 10,000 fishermen that lost their lives to the sea, and the Great Lakes have seen over 10,000 lost vessels since the 1800s, yet men and women still go to sea. For some, the attraction is a life unencumbered with the restraints of life ashore. Seagoing adventure and a chance to see the world also appeal to many seafarers. Whatever the calling, those who live and work at sea invariably confront social isolation.
Findings by the Seafarer's International Research Center indicate a leading cause of mariners leaving the industry is "almost invariably because they want to be with their families." U.S. merchant ships typically do not allow family members to accompany seafarers on voyages. Industry experts increasingly recognize isolation, stress, and fatigue as occupational hazards. Advocacy groups such as International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency, and the Nautical Institute are seeking improved international standards for mariners. Satellite phones have improved communication and efficiency aboard sea-faring ships. This technology has contributed to crew welfare, although both equipment and fees are expensive.
Ocean voyages are steeped in routine. Maritime tradition dictates that each day be divided into six four-hour periods. Three groups of watch keepers from the engine and deck departments work four hours on then have eight hours off watch keeping. However, there are many overtime jobs to be done daily. This cycle repeats endlessly, 24 hours a day while the ship is at sea. Members of the steward department typically are day workers who put in at least eight-hour shifts. Operations at sea, including repairs, safeguarding against piracy, securing cargo, underway replenishment, and other duties provide opportunities for overtime work. Service aboard ships typically extends for months at a time, followed by protracted shore leave. However, some seamen secure jobs on ships they like and stay aboard for years.
The quick turnaround of many modern ships, spending only a few hours in port, limits a seafarer's free-time ashore. Moreover, some foreign seamen entering U.S. ports from a watch list of 25 countries face restrictions on shore leave due to security concerns. However, shore leave restrictions while in U.S. ports impact American seamen as well. For example, the International Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots notes a trend of U.S. shipping terminal operators restricting seamen from traveling from the ship to the terminal gate. Furthermore, in cases where transit is allowed, special "security fees" are at times assessed.
Such restrictions on shore leave, coupled with reduced time in port, translate into longer periods at sea. Mariners report that extended periods at sea living and working with shipmates, who for the most part are strangers, takes getting used to. At the same time, there is an opportunity to meet people from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Recreational opportunities have improved aboard some U.S. ships, which may feature gyms and day rooms for watching movies, swapping sea stories, and other activities. And in some cases, especially tankers, it is possible for a mariner to be accompanied by members of his family. However, a mariner’s off-duty time is largely a solitary affair, pursuing hobbies, reading, writing letters, and sleeping.
On modern ocean-going vessels, typically registered with a flag of convenience, life has changed immensely in the last 20 years. Most large vessels include a gym and often a swimming pool for use by the crew. Since the "Exxon Valdez" incident, the focus of leisure time activity has shifted from having officer and crew bars, to simply having lounge-style areas where officers or crew can sit to watch movies. With many companies now providing TVs and DVD players in cabins, and enforcing strict smoking policies, it is not surprising that the bar is now a much quieter place on most ships. In some instances games consoles are provided for the officers and crew. The officers enjoy a much higher standard of living on board ocean-going vessels.
Crews are generally poorly paid, poorly qualified and have to complete contracts of approximately 9 months before returning home on leave. They often come from countries where the average industrial wage is still very low, such as the Philippines or India. Officers however, come from all over the world and it is not uncommon to mix the nationality of the officers on board ships. Officers are often the recipients of university degrees and have completed vast amounts of training in order to reach their rank. Officers benefit e.g. by having larger, more comfortable cabins and table service for their meals.
Contracts average at the 4 month mark for officers, with generous leave. Most ocean-going vessels now operate an unmanned engine room system allowing engineers to work days only. The engine room is computer controlled by night, although the duty engineer will make inspections during unmanned operation. Engineers work in a hot, humid, noisy atmosphere. Communication in the engine room is therefore by hand signals and lip-reading, and good teamwork often stands in place of any communication at all.
The environmental impact of shipping includes greenhouse gas emissions, acoustic, and oil pollution. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) estimates that Carbon dioxide emissions from shipping were equal to 2.2% of the global human-made emissions in 2012 and expects them to rise 50 to 250 percent by 2050 if no action is taken.
For a port to efficiently send and receive cargo, it requires infrastructure: docks, bollards, pilings, cranes, bulk cargo handling equipment, and so on – equipment and organization supporting the role of the facilities. From pier to pier these may differ, one dock handling intermodal transport needs (container-ships linked to rail by cranes); another bulk handling capabilities (such as conveyors, elevators, tanks, pumps) for loading and unloading bulk cargoes like grain, coal, or fuels. Others may be outfitted as passenger terminals or for mixed mode operations.
Generally, Harbors, seaports and marinas all host watercraft, and consist of components such as piers, wharfs, docks and roadsteads. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28769 |
St. John's, Antigua and Barbuda
St. John's is the capital and largest city of Antigua and Barbuda, in the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea and with a population of 22,219, St. John's is the commercial centre of the nation and the chief port of the island of Antigua.
The settlement of St. John's has been the administrative centre of Antigua and Barbuda since the islands were first colonised in 1632, and it became the seat of government when the nation achieved independence in 1981.
St. John's is one of the most developed and cosmopolitan municipalities in the Lesser Antilles. The city is famous for its shopping malls as well as boutiques throughout the city, selling designer jewellery and haute-couture clothing.
St. John's attracts tourists from the resorts on the island and from the cruise ships which dock in its harbour at Heritage Quay and Redcliffe Quay several times a week.
The investment banking industry has a strong presence in the city. Major world financial institutions have offices in St. John's.
There is a market on the southwestern edge of the city where fresh produce, meats, and fresh fish are sold daily.
The Antigua Rum Distillery is located at the Citadel and is the only rum distillery on the island. Annual production yields more than 180,000 gallons bottled.
The majority of the population of St. John's reflects that of the rest of Antigua: people of African and mixed European-African ancestry, with a European minority, including British and Portuguese. There is a population of Levantine Christian Arabs.
The Eastern Caribbean Civil Aviation Authority has its headquarters on Factory Road in St. John's.
St John's is twinned with Waltham Forest borough in London, England.
There are several museums, including the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda and the Museum of Marine Art, a small facility containing fossilised bedrock, volcanic stones, petrified wood, a collection of more than 10,000 shells, and artefacts from English shipwrecks.
Just east of St. John's is the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, a multi-use stadium in North Sound, that was created mostly for cricket matches, and has hosted the matches during the 2007 Cricket World Cup. The Antigua Recreation Ground, Antigua and Barbuda's national stadium, is located in St. John's.
Nearby villages and settlements include St. Johnston.
The city's skyline is dominated by the white baroque towers of St. John's Cathedral.
The Botanical Garden is near the intersection of Factory Road and Independence Avenue. This small park's shaded benches and gazebo provide a quiet refuge from the bustle of activity of St. John's.
Sandy Island is a Lighthouse located on a small island about 5 km off the coast leading the way to St. John's harbour ().
Fort James stands at the entrance to St. John's harbour. Other nearby forts include Fort George, Fort Charles, Fort Shirley, Fort Berkeley and Fort Barrington.
Government House is the Governor's residence, originally a 19th-century parsonage building. It is included on the World Monuments Fund's 2018 list of monuments at risk, following exposure to severe weather events.
St. John's is served by the V. C. Bird International Airport.
St. John's is home to two medical schools – the American University of Antigua and University of Health Sciences Antigua. Secondary schools include Christ the King High School, Princess Margaret School and the Antigua Girls High School. Private grade schools include St. John's Lutheran School of the WELS. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28771 |
Sigtuna Municipality
Sigtuna Municipality ("Sigtuna kommun") is a municipality in Stockholm County in east central Sweden. Its seat is located in the town of Märsta, approximately north of the Swedish capital, Stockholm.
The municipality is a part of Metropolitan Stockholm.
The municipality consists of several former local government units and was formed in 1971. It got its name from the small, but very old, "City of Sigtuna", but the seat was placed in the larger modern town of Märsta.
The three towns of the municipality are Märsta (pop. 23,000), Sigtuna (pop. 8,000) and Rosersberg (pop. 1,400), of which Märsta is the municipal seat and Sigtuna with its old and important history is a popular tourist destination.
On 31 December 2017 the number of people with a (persons born outside of Sweden or with two parents born outside of Sweden) was 20 291, or 43.04% of the population (47 146 on 31 December 2017). On 31 December 2002 the number of residents with a foreign background was (per the same definition) 9 426, or 26.35% of the population (35 771 on 31 December 2002). On 31 December 2017 there were 47 146 residents in Sigtuna, of which 15 268 people (32.38%) were born in a country other than Sweden. Divided by country in the table below - the Nordic countries as well as the 12 most common countries of birth outside of Sweden for Swedish residents have been included, with other countries of birth bundled together by continent by Statistics Sweden.
In the municipality lies the largest workplace in Sweden, the Arlanda Airport, with 13,000 employees in 200 companies. As a result, Siguna is travelled through by 18,300,000 visitors yearly, and has the fourth most hotel stays, following to the commercial and regional centres Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö.
Swedavia, the Swedish airport management company, has its head office on the airport property. Scandinavian Airlines previously had its head office on the airport property.
The municipality is twinned with: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28779 |
Self-similarity
In mathematics, a self-similar object is exactly or approximately similar to a part of itself (i.e., the whole has the same shape as one or more of the parts). Many objects in the real world, such as coastlines, are statistically self-similar: parts of them show the same statistical properties at many scales. Self-similarity is a typical property of fractals. Scale invariance is an exact form of self-similarity where at any magnification there is a smaller piece of the object that is similar to the whole. For instance, a side of the Koch snowflake is both symmetrical and scale-invariant; it can be continually magnified 3x without changing shape. The non-trivial similarity evident in fractals is distinguished by their fine structure, or detail on arbitrarily small scales. As a counterexample, whereas any portion of a straight line may resemble the whole, further detail is not revealed.
A time developing phenomenon is said to exhibit self-similarity if the numerical value of certain observable quantity
formula_1 measured at different times are different but the corresponding dimensionless quantity at given value of formula_2 remain invariant. It happens if the quantity formula_1 exhibits dynamic scaling. The idea is just an extension of the idea of similarity of two triangles. Note that two triangles are similar if the numerical values of their sides are different however the corresponding dimensionless quantities, such as their angles, coincide.
Peitgen "et al." explain the concept as such:
Since mathematically, a fractal may show self-similarity under indefinite magnification, it is impossible to recreate this physically. Peitgen "et al." suggest studying self-similarity using approximations:
In mathematics, self-affinity is a feature of a fractal whose pieces are scaled by different amounts in the x- and y-directions. This means that to appreciate the self similarity of these fractal objects, they have to be rescaled using an anisotropic affine transformation.
A compact topological space "X" is self-similar if there exists a finite set "S" indexing a set of non-surjective homeomorphisms formula_4 for which
If formula_6, we call "X" self-similar if it is the only non-empty subset of "Y" such that the equation above holds for formula_7. We call
a "self-similar structure". The homeomorphisms may be iterated, resulting in an iterated function system. The composition of functions creates the algebraic structure of a monoid. When the set "S" has only two elements, the monoid is known as the dyadic monoid. The dyadic monoid can be visualized as an infinite binary tree; more generally, if the set "S" has "p" elements, then the monoid may be represented as a p-adic tree.
The automorphisms of the dyadic monoid is the modular group; the automorphisms can be pictured as hyperbolic rotations of the binary tree.
A more general notion than self-similarity is Self-affinity.
The Mandelbrot set is also self-similar around Misiurewicz points.
Self-similarity has important consequences for the design of computer networks, as typical network traffic has self-similar properties. For example, in teletraffic engineering, packet switched data traffic patterns seem to be statistically self-similar. This property means that simple models using a Poisson distribution are inaccurate, and networks designed without taking self-similarity into account are likely to function in unexpected ways.
Similarly, stock market movements are described as displaying self-affinity, i.e. they appear self-similar when transformed via an appropriate affine transformation for the level of detail being shown. Andrew Lo describes stock market log return self-similarity in econometrics.
Finite subdivision rules are a powerful technique for building self-similar sets, including the Cantor set and the Sierpinski triangle.
The Viable System Model of Stafford Beer is an organizational model with an affine self-similar hierarchy, where a given viable system is one element of the System One of a viable system one recursive level higher up, and for whom the elements of its System One are viable systems one recursive level lower down.
Self-similarity can be found in nature, as well. To the right is a mathematically generated, perfectly self-similar image of a fern, which bears a marked resemblance to natural ferns. Other plants, such as Romanesco broccoli, exhibit strong self-similarity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28782 |
Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the full right and power of a governing body over itself, without any interference from outside sources or bodies. In political theory, sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme legitimate authority over some polity. In international law, sovereignty is the exercise of power by a state. "De jure" sovereignty refers to the legal right to do so; "de facto" sovereignty refers to the factual ability to do so. This can become an issue of special concern upon the failure of the usual expectation that "de jure" and "de facto" sovereignty exist at the place and time of concern, and reside within the same organization.
The term arises from the unattested Vulgar Latin's "*superanus", (itself derived form of Latin "super" - "over") meaning "chief", "ruler". Its spelling, which varied from the word's first appearance in English in the fourteenth century, was influenced by the English reign.
The concepts of sovereignty have been discussed throughout history, and are still actively debated. Its definition, concept, and application has changed throughout, especially during the Age of Enlightenment. The current notion of state sovereignty contains four aspects consisting of territory, population, authority and recognition. According to Stephen D. Krasner, the term could also be understood in four different ways:
Often, these four aspects all appear together, but this is not necessarily the case – they are not affected by one another, and there are historical examples of states that were non-sovereign in one aspect while at the same time being sovereign in another of these aspects. According to Immanuel Wallerstein, another fundamental feature of sovereignty is that it is a claim that must be recognised by others if it is to have any meaning:
The Roman jurist Ulpian observed that:
Ulpian was expressing the idea that the Emperor exercised a rather absolute form of sovereignty, that originated in the people, although he did not use the term expressly.
Ulpian's statements were known in medieval Europe, but sovereignty was an important concept in medieval times. Medieval monarchs were "not" sovereign, at least not strongly so, because they were constrained by, and shared power with, their feudal aristocracy. Furthermore, both were strongly constrained by custom.
Sovereignty existed during the Medieval period as the "de jure" rights of nobility and royalty, and in the "de facto" capability of individuals to make their own choices in life.
Around 1380–1400, the issue of feminine sovereignty was addressed in Geoffrey Chaucer's Middle English collection of "Canterbury Tales", specifically in "The Wife of Bath's Tale."
A later English Arthurian romance, "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell" (c. 1450), uses many of the same elements of the Wife of Bath's tale, yet changes the setting to the court of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The story revolves around the knight Sir Gawain granting to Dame Ragnell, his new bride, what is purported to be wanted most by women: sovereignty.
Sovereignty reemerged as a concept in the late 16th century, a time when civil wars had created a craving for stronger central authority, when monarchs had begun to gather power onto their own hands at the expense of the nobility, and the modern nation state was emerging. Jean Bodin, partly in reaction to the chaos of the French wars of religion, presented theories of sovereignty calling for strong central authority in the form of absolute monarchy. In his 1576 treatise "Les Six Livres de la République" ("Six Books of the Republic") Bodin argued that it is inherent in the nature of the state that sovereignty must be:
Bodin rejected the notion of transference of sovereignty from people to the ruler (also known as "the sovereign"); natural law and divine law confer upon the sovereign the right to rule. And the sovereign is not above divine law or natural law. He is above ("ie." not bound by) only positive law, that is, laws made by humans. He emphasized that a sovereign is bound to observe certain basic rules derived from the divine law, the law of nature or reason, and the law that is common to all nations (jus gentium), as well as the fundamental laws of the state that determine who is the sovereign, who succeeds to sovereignty, and what limits the sovereign power. Thus, Bodin’s sovereign was restricted by the constitutional law of the state and by the higher law that was considered as binding upon every human being. The fact that the sovereign must obey divine and natural law imposes ethical constraints on him. Bodin also held that the "lois royales", the fundamental laws of the French monarchy which regulated matters such as succession, are natural laws and are binding on the French sovereign.
Despite his commitment to absolutism, Bodin held some moderate opinions on how government should in practice be carried out. He held that although the sovereign is not obliged to, it is advisable for him, as a practical expedient, to convene a senate from whom he can obtain advice, to delegate some power to magistrates for the practical administration of the law, and to use the Estates as a means of communicating with the people. Bodin believed that “the most divine, most excellent, and the state form most proper to royalty is governed partly aristocratically and partly democratically”.
With his doctrine that sovereignty is conferred by divine law, Bodin predefined the scope of the divine right of kings.
During the Age of Enlightenment, the idea of sovereignty gained both legal and moral force as the main Western description of the meaning and power of a State. In particular, the "Social contract" as a mechanism for establishing sovereignty was suggested and, by 1800, widely accepted, especially in the new United States and France, though also in Great Britain to a lesser extent.
Thomas Hobbes, in "Leviathan" (1651) put forward a conception of sovereignty similar to Bodin's, which had just achieved legal status in the "Peace of Westphalia", but for different reasons. He created the first modern version of the social contract (or contractarian) theory, arguing that to overcome the "nasty, brutish and short" quality of life without the cooperation of other human beings, people must join in a "commonwealth" and submit to a "Soveraigne Power" that is able to compel them to act in the common good. This expediency argument attracted many of the early proponents of sovereignty. Hobbes strengthened the definition of sovereignty beyond either Westphalian or Bodin's, by saying that it must be:
Hobbes' hypothesis—that the ruler's sovereignty is contracted to him by the people in return for his maintaining their physical safety—led him to conclude that if and when the ruler fails, the people recover their ability to protect themselves by forming a new contract.
Hobbes's theories decisively shape the concept of sovereignty through the medium of social contract theories. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's (1712–1778) definition of popular sovereignty (with early antecedents in Francisco Suárez's theory of the origin of power), provides that the people are the legitimate sovereign. Rousseau considered sovereignty to be inalienable; he condemned the distinction between the origin and the exercise of sovereignty, a distinction upon which constitutional monarchy or representative democracy is founded. John Locke, and Montesquieu are also key figures in the unfolding of the concept of sovereignty; their views differ with Rousseau and with Hobbes on this issue of alienability.
The second book of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Du Contrat Social, ou Principes du droit politique" (1762) deals with sovereignty and its rights. Sovereignty, or the general will, is inalienable, for the will cannot be transmitted; it is indivisible, since it is essentially general; it is infallible and always right, determined and limited in its power by the common interest; it acts through laws. Law is the decision of the general will in regard to some object of common interest, but though the general will is always right and desires only good, its judgment is not always enlightened, and consequently does not always see wherein the common good lies; hence the necessity of the legislator. But the legislator has, of himself, no authority; he is only a guide who drafts and proposes laws, but the people alone (that is, the sovereign or general will) has authority to make and impose them.
Rousseau, in the Social Contract"
argued, "the growth of the State giving the trustees of public authority more and means to abuse their power, the more the Government has to have force to contain the people, the more force the Sovereign should have in turn in order to contain the Government," with the understanding that the Sovereign is "a collective being of wonder" (Book II, Chapter I) resulting from "the general will" of the people, and that "what any man, whoever he may be, orders on his own, is not a law" (Book II, Chapter VI) – and furthermore predicated on the assumption that the people have an unbiased means by which to ascertain the general will. Thus the legal maxim, "there is no law without a sovereign."
An important factor of sovereignty is its degree of absoluteness. A sovereign power has absolute sovereignty when it is not restricted by a constitution, by the laws of its predecessors, or by custom, and no areas of law or policy are reserved as being outside its control. International law; policies and actions of neighboring states; cooperation and respect of the populace; means of enforcement; and resources to enact policy are factors that might limit sovereignty. For example, parents are not guaranteed the right to decide some matters in the upbringing of their children independent of societal regulation, and municipalities do not have unlimited jurisdiction in local matters, thus neither parents nor municipalities have absolute sovereignty. Theorists have diverged over the desirability of increased absoluteness.
A key element of sovereignty in a legalistic sense is that of exclusivity of jurisdiction. Specifically, the degree to which decisions made by a sovereign entity might be contradicted by another authority. Along these lines, the German sociologist Max Weber proposed that sovereignty is a community's monopoly on the legitimate use of force; and thus any group claiming the same right must either be brought under the yoke of the sovereign, proven illegitimate, or otherwise contested and defeated for sovereignty to be genuine. International law, competing branches of government, and authorities reserved for subordinate entities (such as federated states or republics) represent legal infringements on exclusivity. Social institutions such as religious bodies, corporations, and competing political parties might represent "de facto" infringements on exclusivity.
"De jure", or legal, sovereignty concerns the expressed and institutionally recognised right to exercise control over a territory. "De facto", or actual, sovereignty is concerned with whether control in fact exists. Cooperation and respect of the populace; control of resources in, or moved into, an area; means of enforcement and security; and ability to carry out various functions of state all represent measures of "de facto" sovereignty. When control is practiced predominantly by military or police force it is considered "coercive sovereignty".
State sovereignty is sometimes viewed synonymously with independence, however, sovereignty can be transferred as a legal right whereas independence cannot. A state can achieve "de facto" independence long after acquiring sovereignty, such as in the case of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Additionally, independence can also be suspended when an entire region becomes subject to an occupation such as when Iraq had been overrun by the forces to take part in the Iraq War of 2003, Iraq had not been annexed by any country, so its sovereignty during this period was not contested by any state including those present on the territory. Alternatively, independence can be lost completely when sovereignty itself becomes the subject of dispute. The pre-World War II administrations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia maintained an exile existence (and considerable international recognition) whilst their territories were annexed by the Soviet Union and governed locally by their pro-Soviet functionaries. When in 1991 Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia re-enacted independence, it was done so on the basis of continuity directly from the pre-Soviet republics. Another complicated sovereignty scenario can arise when regime itself is the subject of dispute. In the case of Poland, the People's Republic of Poland which governed Poland from 1945 to 1989 is now seen to have been an illegal entity by the modern Polish administration. The post-1989 Polish state claims direct continuity from the Second Polish Republic which ended in 1939. For other reasons however, Poland maintains its communist-era outline as opposed to its pre-World War II shape which included areas now in Belarus, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia and Ukraine but did not include some of its western regions that were then in Germany.
At the opposite end of the scale, there is no dispute regarding the self-governance of certain self-proclaimed states such as the Republic of Kosovo or Somaliland (see List of states with limited recognition, but most of them are puppet states) since their governments neither answer to a bigger state, nor is their governance subjected to supervision. The sovereignty (i.e. legal right to govern) however, is disputed in all three cases as the first entity is claimed by Serbia and the second by Somalia.
Internal sovereignty is the relationship between a sovereign power and the political community. A central concern is legitimacy: by what right does a government exercise authority? Claims of legitimacy might refer to the divine right of kings, or to a social contract (i.e. popular sovereignty). Max Weber offered a first categorization of political authority and legitimacy with the categories of traditional, charismatic and legal-rational.
With Sovereignty meaning holding supreme, independent authority over a region or state, Internal Sovereignty refers to the internal affairs of the state and the location of supreme power within it. A state that has internal sovereignty is one with a government that has been elected by the people and has the popular legitimacy. Internal sovereignty examines the internal affairs of a state and how it operates. It is important to have strong internal sovereignty in relation to keeping order and peace. When you have weak internal sovereignty, organisations such as rebel groups will undermine the authority and disrupt the peace. The presence of a strong authority allows you to keep agreement and enforce sanctions for the violation of laws. The ability for leadership to prevent these violations is a key variable in determining internal sovereignty. The lack of internal sovereignty can cause war in one of two ways: first, undermining the value of agreement by allowing costly violations; and second, requiring such large subsidies for implementation that they render war cheaper than peace. Leadership needs to be able to promise members, especially those like armies, police forces, or paramilitaries will abide by agreements. The presence of strong internal sovereignty allows a state to deter opposition groups in exchange for bargaining. It has been said that a more decentralized authority would be more efficient in keeping peace because the deal must please not only the leadership but also the opposition group. While the operations and affairs within a state are relative to the level of sovereignty within that state, there is still an argument over who should hold the authority in a sovereign state.
This argument between who should hold the authority within a sovereign state is called the traditional doctrine of public sovereignty. This discussion is between an internal sovereign or an authority of public sovereignty. An internal sovereign is a political body that possesses ultimate, final and independent authority; one whose decisions are binding upon all citizens, groups and institutions in society. Early thinkers believe sovereignty should be vested in the hands of a single person, a monarch. They believed the overriding merit of vesting sovereignty in a single individual was that sovereignty would therefore be indivisible; it would be expressed in a single voice that could claim final authority. An example of an internal sovereign or monarch is Louis XIV of France during the seventeenth century; Louis XIV claimed that he was the state. Jean-Jacques Rousseau rejected monarchical rule in favor of the other type of authority within a sovereign state, public sovereignty. Public Sovereignty is the belief that ultimate authority is vested in the people themselves, expressed in the idea of the general will. This means that the power is elected and supported by its members, the authority has a central goal of the good of the people in mind. The idea of public sovereignty has often been the basis for modern democratic theory.
Within the modern governmental system, internal sovereignty is usually found in states that have public sovereignty and rarely found within a state controlled by an internal sovereign. A form of government that is a little different from both is the UK parliament system. John Austin argued that sovereignty in the UK was vested neither in the Crown nor in the people but in the "Queen-in-Parliament". This is the origin of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty and is usually seen as the fundamental principle of the British constitution. With these principles of parliamentary sovereignty majority control can gain access to unlimited constitutional authority, creating what has been called "elective dictatorship" or "modern autocracy". Public sovereignty in modern governments is a lot more common with examples like the USA, Canada, Australia and India where government is divided into different levels.
External sovereignty concerns the relationship between a sovereign power and other states. For example, the United Kingdom uses the following criterion when deciding under what conditions other states recognise a political entity as having sovereignty over some territory;
External sovereignty is connected with questions of international law – such as: when, if ever, is intervention by one country into another's territory permissible?
Following the Thirty Years' War, a European religious conflict that embroiled much of the continent, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 established the notion of territorial sovereignty as a norm of noninterference in the affairs of other states, so-called Westphalian sovereignty, even though the actual treaty itself reaffirmed the multiple levels of sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire. This resulted as a natural extension of the older principle of "cuius regio, eius religio" (Whose realm, his religion), leaving the Roman Catholic Church with little ability to interfere with the internal affairs of many European states. It is a myth, however, that the Treaties of Westphalia created a new European order of equal sovereign states.
In international law, sovereignty means that a government possesses full control over affairs within a territorial or geographical area or limit. Determining whether a specific entity is sovereign is not an exact science, but often a matter of diplomatic dispute. There is usually an expectation that both "de jure" and "de facto" sovereignty rest in the same organisation at the place and time of concern. Foreign governments use varied criteria and political considerations when deciding whether or not to recognise the sovereignty of a state over a territory. Membership in the United Nations requires that "[t]he admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council."
Sovereignty may be recognized even when the sovereign body possesses no territory or its territory is under partial or total occupation by another power. The Holy See was in this position between the annexation in 1870 of the Papal States by Italy and the signing of the Lateran Treaties in 1929, a 59-year period during which it was recognised as sovereign by many (mostly Roman Catholic) states despite possessing no territory – a situation resolved when the Lateran Treaties granted the Holy See sovereignty over the Vatican City. Another case, "sui generis", is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, the third sovereign entity inside Italian territory (after San Marino and the Vatican City State) and the second inside the Italian capital (since in 1869 the Palazzo di Malta and the Villa Malta receive extraterritorial rights, in this way becoming the only "sovereign" territorial possessions of the modern Order), which is the last existing heir to one of several once militarily significant, crusader states of sovereign military orders. In 1607 its Grand masters were also made Reichsfürst (princes of the Holy Roman Empire) by the Holy Roman Emperor, granting them seats in the Reichstag, at the time the closest permanent equivalent to a UN-type general assembly; confirmed 1620). These sovereign rights were never deposed, only the territories were lost. 100 modern states still maintain full diplomatic relations with the order (now "de facto" "the most prestigious service club"), and the UN awarded it observer status.
The governments-in-exile of many European states (for instance, Norway, Netherlands or Czechoslovakia) during the Second World War were regarded as sovereign despite their territories being under foreign occupation; their governance resumed as soon as the occupation had ended. The government of Kuwait was in a similar situation "vis-à-vis" the Iraqi occupation of its country during 1990–1991. The government of Republic of China was recognized as sovereign over China from 1911 to 1971 despite that its mainland China territory became occupied by Communist Chinese forces since 1949. In 1971 it lost UN recognition to Chinese Communist-led People's Republic of China and its sovereign and political status as a state became disputed and it lost its ability to use "China" as its name and therefore became commonly known as Taiwan.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is commonly mistaken to be sovereign. It has been granted various degrees of special privileges and legal immunities in many countries, including Belgium, France, Switzerland and soon in Ireland. Similarly for Australia, Russia, South Korea, South Africa and the US. that in cases like Switzerland are considerable, The Committee is a private organisation governed by Swiss law.
Just as the office of head of state can be vested jointly in several persons within a state, the sovereign jurisdiction over a single political territory can be shared jointly by two or more consenting powers, notably in the form of a condominium.
Likewise the member states of international organizations may voluntarily bind themselves by treaty to a supranational organization, such as a continental union. In the case of the European Union members states this is called "pooled sovereignty".
Another example of shared and pooled sovereignty is the Acts of Union 1707 which created the unitary state now known as the United Kingdom. It was a full economic union, meaning the Scottish and English systems of currency, taxation and laws regulating trade were aligned. Nonetheless, Scotland and England never fully surrendered or pooled all of their governance sovereignty; they retained many of their previous national institutional features and characteristics, particularly relating to their legal, religious and educational systems. In 2012, the Scottish Government, created in 1998 through devolution in the United Kingdom, negotiated terms with the Government of the United Kingdom for the 2014 Scottish independence referendum which resulted in the people of Scotland deciding to continue the pooling of its sovereignty with the rest of the United Kingdom.
A community of people who claim the right of self-determination based on a common ethnicity, history and culture might seek to establish sovereignty over a region, thus creating a nation-state. Such nations are sometimes recognised as autonomous areas rather than as fully sovereign, independent states.
In a federal system of government, "sovereignty" also refers to powers which a constituent state or republic possesses independently of the national government. In a confederation, constituent entities retain the right to withdraw from the national body and the union is often more temporary than a federation.
Different interpretations of state sovereignty in the United States of America, as it related to the expansion of slavery and fugitive slave laws, led to the outbreak of the American Civil War. Depending on the particular issue, sometimes both northern and southern states justified their political positions by appealing to state sovereignty. Fearing that slavery would be threatened by results of the 1860 presidential election, eleven slave states declared their independence from the federal Union and formed a new confederation. The United States government rejected the secessions as rebellion, declaring that secession from the Union by an individual state was unconstitutional, as the states were part of an indissolvable federation.
A number of modes for acquisition of sovereignty are presently or have historically been recognized in international law as lawful methods by which a state may acquire sovereignty over external territory. The classification of these modes originally derived from Roman property law and from the 15th and 16th century with the development of international law. The modes are:
There exist vastly differing views on the moral basis of sovereignty. A fundamental polarity is between theories that assert that sovereignty is vested directly in the sovereigns by divine or natural right and theories that assert it originates from the people. In the latter case there is a further division into those that assert that the people transfer their sovereignty to the sovereign (Hobbes), and those that assert that the people retain their sovereignty (Rousseau).
During the brief period of absolute monarchies in Europe, the divine right of kings was an important competing justification for the exercise of sovereignty. The Mandate of Heaven had some similar implications in China.
A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, retain sovereignty over the government and where offices of state are not granted through heritage. A common modern definition of a republic is a government having a head of state who is not a monarch.
Democracy is based on the concept of "popular sovereignty". In a direct democracy the public plays an active role in shaping and deciding policy. Representative democracy permits a transfer of the exercise of sovereignty from the people to a legislative body or an executive (or to some combination of legislature, executive and Judiciary). Many representative democracies provide limited direct democracy through referendum, initiative, and recall.
Parliamentary sovereignty refers to a representative democracy where the parliament is ultimately sovereign and not the executive power nor the judiciary.
According to Matteo Laruffa "sovereignty resides in every public action and policy as the exercise of executive powers by institutions open to the participation of citizens to the decision-making processes"
Another topic is whether the law is held to be sovereign, that is, whether it is above political or other interference. Sovereign law constitutes a true state of law, meaning the letter of the law (if constitutionally correct) is applicable and enforceable, even when against the political will of the nation, as long as not formally changed following the constitutional procedure. Strictly speaking, any deviation from this principle constitutes a revolution or a coup d'état, regardless of the intentions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28791 |
Democratic Left Alliance
Democratic Left Alliance (since February 2020 officially known as the New Left) (, NL) is a social-democratic political party in Poland. It was formed in 1991 as an electoral alliance of centre-left parties, and became a single party on 15 April 1999. The party is a member of the Party of European Socialists and Progressive Alliance.
The coalition can be classified as left-wing. However, during the 1990s, it managed to attract voters from the pro-market and even right-wing camp. The main support for SLD came from middle-rank state sector employees, retired people, former Polish United Workers Party (PZPR) and All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (OPZZ) members and those who were unlikely to be frequent church-goers. The core of the coalition (Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland) rejected concepts such as lustration and de-communization, supported a parliamentarian regime with only the role of an arbiter for the president and criticized the right-wing camp for introduction of religious education into school. The ex-communists criticized the economic reforms, pointing to the high social costs, without negating the reforms per se.
SdRP, SDU and some other socialist and social-democratic parties had formed the original Democratic Left Alliance as a centre-left coalition just prior to the nation's first free elections in 1991. In 1999 the coalition became a party, but lost some members.
At the time, the coalition's membership drew mostly from the former PZPR. An alliance between the SLD and the Polish People's Party (PSL) ruled Poland in the years 1993–1997. However the coalition lost power to the right-wing Solidarity Electoral Action in the 1997 election as the right-wing opposition was united this time and because of the decline of support for SLD's coalition partner PSL, though the SLD itself actually gained votes.
SLD formed a coalition with Labour Union before the 2001 Polish election and won it overwhelmingly at last by capturing about 5.3 million votes, 42% of the whole and won 200 of 460 seats in the Sejm and 75 of 100 in the Senate. After the elections, the coalition was joined by the Polish People's Party (PSL) in forming a government and Leszek Miller became the Prime Minister. In March 2003, the PSL left the coalition.
By 2004 the support for SLD in the polls had dropped from about 30% to just below 10%, and several high-ranking party members had been accused of taking part in high-profile political scandals by the mainstream press (most notably the Rywin affair: Rywin-gate).
On 6 March 2004, Leszek Miller resigned as party leader and was replaced by Krzysztof Janik. On March 26 the Sejm speaker Marek Borowski, together with other high-ranking SLD officials, announced the creation of a new centre-left party, the Social Democratic Party of Poland. On the next day, Leszek Miller announced he would step down as Prime Minister on 2 May 2004, the day after Poland joined the European Union. Miller proceeded to do so.
In the 2004 European Parliament election, it only received 9% of the votes, giving it 5 of 54 seats reserved for Poland in the European Parliament, as part of the Party of European Socialists.
Wojciech Olejniczak, the former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, was elected the president of SLD on 29 May 2004, succeeded Józef Oleksy, who resigned from the post of Polish Prime Minister due to false accusations of links to the KGB.
The 2004 European elections foreshadowed the SLD's huge defeat in the 2005 parliamentary election, in which it won only 11.3% of the vote. This gave the party 55 seats, barely a quarter of what it had had prior to the election. It also lost all of its Senators. In late 2006 a centre-left political alliance called Left and Democrats was created, comprising SLD and smaller centre-left parties, the Labour Union, the Social Democratic Party of Poland, and the liberal Democratic Party – demokraci.pl. The coalition won a disappointing 13% in the 2007 parliamentary election and was dissolved soon after in April 2008. On 31 May 2008, Olejniczak was replaced by Grzegorz Napieralski as SLD leader.
In the 2009 European election the Democratic Left Alliance-Labor Union joint ticket received 12% of the vote and 7 MEPs were elected as part of the newly retitled Socialists & Democrats group.
In the 2011 parliamentary election, SLD received 8.24% of the vote which gave it 27 seats in the Sejm. After the elections, one of the party members, Sławomir Kopyciński, decided to leave SLD and join Palikot's Movement. On December 10, 2011, Leszek Miller was chosen to return as the party leader.
In the 2014 European elections on 25 May 2014, the SLD received 9.4% of the national vote and returned 4 MEPs.
In July 2015 the SLD formed the United Left electoral alliance along with Your Movement (TR), Labour United (UP) and The Greens (PZ) and minor parties to contest the upcoming election.
In the 2015 parliamentary election held on 25 October 2015, the United Left list received 7.6% of the vote, below the 8% threshold (electoral alliances must win at least 8% of the vote, as opposed to the 5% for individual parties), leaving the SLD without parliamentary representation for the first time. Indeed, for the first time since the end of Communism, no centre-left parties won any seats in this election.
In 2017, the party withdrew from the Socialist International, while maintaining ties with the Progressive Alliance.
For the 2019 parliamentary election SLD formed an alliance with Razem and Wiosna, known as The Left. In the 2019 parliamentary election, the alliance won 12.6% of the vote and 49 seats in the Sejm, with the SLD winning 24.
The SLD is usually seen as the face of the standard Polish left, having achieved notable electoral success during the 90s and benefitting from a strongly organized network of local offices, which span 320 of Poland's 380 administrative counties. For this reason, it was often viewed as the go-to party for left-leaning Poles for the majority of Poland's modern history. The party's monopoly on mainstream left-wing economic ideas in Poland however ended, after the right-wing PiS party adopted many economically interventionist positions, which led a considerable portion of economically left-wing Poles to vote for PiS instead.
Besides self-described left-wingers, the party enjoys the support of many members of the country's police and military, but its largest voting bloc resides among former PZPR members, government officials and civil servants during the PPR period, which are seen as the party's core supporters. The loyal support of this voting bloc enabled the SLD to remain the largest party of the Polish left, even throughout the scandals that rocked the party in the early 2000s.
However, this electoral bloc was seen as unreliable by political observers, as despite the fact that it originally constituted a huge voting bloc, that segment of the population would inevitably shrink as its members steadily age. Following the passage of a "degradation law" by the ruling right-wing PiS party, which cut pensions and disability benefits to thousands of former bureaucrats, however, the party has undergone a revival, as more and more people's primary income came to be threatened by the new government policy. This led many of those affected to support the SLD, thus enlarging and mobilizing the formerly shrinking voting bloc.
The SLD nonetheless made a significant effort to broaden its political appeal by joining forces with two smaller left-wing parties in 2019, creating The Left political alliance, which poses itself as a 'modern' take on leftism. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=28800 |
Steam engine
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force is transformed, by a connecting rod and flywheel, into rotational force for work. The term "steam engine" is generally applied only to reciprocating engines as just described, not to the steam turbine.
Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separated from the combustion products. The ideal thermodynamic cycle used to analyze this process is called the Rankine cycle.
In general usage, the term "steam engine" can refer to either complete steam plants (including boilers etc.) such as railway steam locomotives and portable engines, or may refer to the piston or turbine machinery alone, as in the beam engine and stationary steam engine.
Steam-driven devices were known as early as the aeolipile in the first century AD, with a few other uses recorded in the 16th and 17th century. Thomas Savery's dewatering pump used steam pressure operating directly on the water. The first commercially successful engine that could transmit continuous power to a machine was developed in 1712 by Thomas Newcomen. James Watt made a critical improvement by removing spent steam to a separate vessel for condensation, greatly improving the amount of work obtained per unit of fuel consumed. By the 19th century, stationary steam engines powered the factories of the Industrial Revolution. Steam engines replaced sail for ships, and steam locomotives operated on the railways.
Reciprocating piston type steam engines were the dominant source of power until the early 20th century, when advances in the design of electric motors and internal combustion engines gradually resulted in the replacement of reciprocating (piston) steam engines in commercial usage. Steam turbines replaced reciprocating engines in power generation, due to lower cost, higher operating speed, and higher efficiency.
The first recorded rudimentary steam-powered "engine" was the aeolipile described by Hero of Alexandria, a mathematician and engineer in Roman Egypt in the first century AD. In the following centuries, the few steam-powered "engines" known were, like the aeolipile, essentially experimental devices used by inventors to demonstrate the properties of steam. A rudimentary steam turbine device was described by Taqi al-Din in Ottoman Egypt in 1551 and by Giovanni Branca in Italy in 1629. Jerónimo de Ayanz y Beaumont received patents in 1606 for 50 steam-powered inventions, including a water pump for draining inundated mines. Denis Papin, a Huguenot refugee, did some useful work on the steam digester in 1679, and first used a piston to raise weights in 1690.
The first commercial steam-powered device was a water pump, developed in 1698 by Thomas Savery. It used condensing steam to create a vacuum which raised water from below and then used steam pressure to raise it higher. Small engines were effective though larger models were problematic. They had a limited lift height and were prone to boiler explosions. Savery's engine was used in mines, pumping stations and supplying water to water wheels that powered textile machinery. Savery's engine was of low cost. Bento de Moura Portugal introduced an improvement of Savery's construction "to render it capable of working itself", as described by John Smeaton in the Philosophical Transactions published in 1751. It continued to be manufactured until the late 18th century. One engine was still known to be operating in 1820.
The first commercially successful engine that could transmit continuous power to a machine was the atmospheric engine, invented by Thomas Newcomen around 1712. It improved on Savery's steam pump, using a piston as proposed by Papin. Newcomen's engine was relatively inefficient, and mostly used for pumping water. It worked by creating a partial vacuum by condensing steam under a piston within a cylinder. It was employed for draining mine workings at depths hitherto impossible, and for providing reusable water for driving waterwheels at factories sited away from a suitable "head". Water that passed over the wheel was pumped up into a storage reservoir above the wheel.
In 1780 James Pickard patented the use of a flywheel and crankshaft to provide rotative motion from an improved Newcomen engine.
In 1720 Jacob Leupold described a two-cylinder high-pressure steam engine. The invention was published in his major work "Theatri Machinarum Hydraulicarum". The engine used two heavy pistons to provide motion to a water pump. Each piston was raised by the steam pressure and returned to its original position by gravity. The two pistons shared a common four-way rotary valve connected directly to a steam boiler.
The next major step occurred when James Watt developed (1763–1775) an improved version of Newcomen's engine, with a separate condenser. Boulton and Watt's early engines used half as much coal as John Smeaton's improved version of Newcomen's. Newcomen's and Watt's early engines were "atmospheric". They were powered by air pressure pushing a piston into the partial vacuum generated by condensing steam, instead of the pressure of expanding steam. The engine cylinders had to be large because the only usable force acting on them was atmospheric pressure.
Watt developed his engine further, modifying it to provide a rotary motion suitable for driving machinery. This enabled factories to be sited away from rivers, and accelerated the pace of the Industrial Revolution.
The meaning of high pressure, together with an actual value above ambient, depends on the era in which the term was used. For early use of the term Van Reimsdijk refers to steam being at a sufficiently high pressure that it could be exhausted to atmosphere without reliance on a vacuum to enable it to perform useful work. states that Watt's condensing engines were known, at the time, as low pressure compared to high pressure, non-condensing engines of the same period.
Watt's patent prevented others from making high pressure and compound engines. Shortly after Watt's patent expired in 1800, Richard Trevithick and, separately, Oliver Evans in 1801 introduced engines using high-pressure steam; Trevithick obtained his high-pressure engine patent in 1802, and Evans had made several working models before then. These were much more powerful for a given cylinder size than previous engines and could be made small enough for transport applications. Thereafter, technological developments and improvements in manufacturing techniques (partly brought about by the adoption of the steam engine as a power source) resulted in the design of more efficient engines that could be smaller, faster, or more powerful, depending on the intended application.
The Cornish engine was developed by Trevithick and others in the 1810s. It was a compound cycle engine that used high-pressure steam expansively, then condensed the low-pressure steam, making it relatively efficient. The Cornish engine had irregular motion and torque though the cycle, limiting it mainly to pumping. Cornish engines were used in mines and for water supply until the late 19th century.
Early builders of stationary steam engines considered that horizontal cylinders would be subject to excessive wear. Their engines were therefore arranged with the piston axis vertical. In time the horizontal arrangement became more popular, allowing compact, but powerful engines to be fitted in smaller spaces.
The acme of the horizontal engine was the Corliss steam engine, patented in 1849, which was a four-valve counter flow engine with separate steam admission and exhaust valves and automatic variable steam cutoff. When Corliss was given the Rumford Medal, the committee said that "no one invention since Watt's time has so enhanced the efficiency of the steam engine". In addition to using 30% less steam, it provided more uniform speed due to variable steam cut off, making it well suited to manufacturing, especially cotton spinning.
The first experimental road-going steam-powered vehicles were built in the late 18th century, but it was not until after Richard Trevithick had developed the use of high-pressure steam, around 1800, that mobile steam engines became a practical proposition. The first half of the 19th century saw great progress in steam vehicle design, and by the 1850s it was becoming viable to produce them on a commercial basis. This progress was dampened by legislation which limited or prohibited the use of steam-powered vehicles on roads. Improvements in vehicle technology continued from the 1860s to the 1920s. Steam road vehicles were used for many applications. In the 20th century, the rapid development of internal combustion engine technology led to the demise of the steam engine as a source of propulsion of vehicles on a commercial basis, with relatively few remaining in use beyond the Second World War. Many of these vehicles were acquired by enthusiasts for preservation, and numerous examples are still in existence. In the 1960s, the air pollution problems in California gave rise to a brief period of interest in developing and studying steam-powered vehicles as a possible means of reducing the pollution. Apart from interest by steam enthusiasts, the occasional replica vehicle, and experimental technology, no steam vehicles are in production at present.
Near the end of the 19th century, compound engines came into widespread use. Compound engines exhausted steam into successively larger cylinders to accommodate the higher volumes at reduced pressures, giving improved efficiency. These stages were called expansions, with double- and triple-expansion engines being common, especially in shipping where efficiency was important to reduce the weight of coal carried. Steam engines remained the dominant source of power until the early 20th century, when advances in the design of the steam turbine, electric motors and internal combustion engines gradually resulted in the replacement of reciprocating (piston) steam engines, with shipping in the 20th-century relying upon the steam turbine.
As the development of steam engines progressed through the 18th century, various attempts were made to apply them to road and railway use. In 1784, William Murdoch, a Scottish inventor, built a prototype steam road locomotive. An early working model of a steam rail locomotive was designed and constructed by steamboat pioneer John Fitch in the United States probably during the 1780s or 1790s.
His steam locomotive used interior bladed wheels guided by rails or tracks.
The first full-scale working railway steam locomotive was built by Richard Trevithick in the United Kingdom and, on 21 February 1804, the world's first railway journey took place as Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway from the Pen-y-darren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil to Abercynon in south Wales. The design incorporated a number of important innovations that included using high-pressure steam which reduced the weight of the engine and increased its efficiency. Trevithick visited the Newcastle area later in 1804 and the colliery railways in north-east England became the leading centre for experimentation and development of steam locomotives.
Trevithick continued his own experiments using a trio of locomotives, concluding with the Catch Me Who Can in 1808. Only four years later, the successful twin-cylinder locomotive "Salamanca" by Matthew Murray was used by the edge railed rack and pinion Middleton Railway. In 1825 George Stephenson built the "Locomotion" for the Stockton and Darlington Railway. This was the first public steam railway in the world and then in 1829, he built "The Rocket" which was entered in and won the Rainhill Trials. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened in 1830 making exclusive use of steam power for both passenger and freight trains.
Steam locomotives continued to be manufactured until the late twentieth century in places such as China and the former East Germany (where the DR Class 52.80 was produced).
The final major evolution of the steam engine design was the use of steam turbines starting in the late part of the 19th century. Steam turbines are generally more efficient than reciprocating piston type steam engines (for outputs above several hundred horsepower), have fewer moving parts, and provide rotary power directly instead of through a connecting rod system or similar means. Steam turbines virtually replaced reciprocating engines in electricity generating stations early in the 20th century, where their efficiency, higher speed appropriate to generator service, and smooth rotation were advantages. Today most electric power is provided by steam turbines. In the United States, 90% of the electric power is produced in this way using a variety of heat sources. Steam turbines were extensively applied for propulsion of large ships throughout most of the 20th century.
Although the reciprocating steam engine is no longer in widespread commercial use, various companies are exploring or exploiting the potential of the engine as an alternative to internal combustion engines. The company Energiprojekt AB in Sweden has made progress in using modern materials for harnessing the power of steam. The efficiency of Energiprojekt's steam engine reaches some 27–30% on high-pressure engines. It is a single-step, 5-cylinder engine (no compound) with superheated steam and consumes approx. of steam per kWh.
There are two fundamental components of a steam plant: the boiler or steam generator, and the "motor unit", referred to itself as a "steam engine". Stationary steam engines in fixed buildings may have the boiler and engine in separate buildings some distance apart. For portable or mobile use, such as steam locomotives, the two are mounted together.
The widely used reciprocating engine typically consisted of a cast-iron cylinder, piston, connecting rod and beam or a crank and flywheel, and miscellaneous linkages. Steam was alternately supplied and exhausted by one or more valves. Speed control was either automatic, using a governor, or by a manual valve. The cylinder casting contained steam supply and exhaust ports.
Engines equipped with a condenser are a separate type than those that exhaust to the atmosphere.
Other components are often present; pumps (such as an injector) to supply water to the boiler during operation, condensers to recirculate the water and recover the latent heat of vaporisation, and superheaters to raise the temperature of the steam above its saturated vapour point, and various mechanisms to increase the draft for fireboxes. When coal is used, a chain or screw stoking mechanism and its drive engine or motor may be included to move the fuel from a supply bin (bunker) to the firebox.
The heat required for boiling the water and raising the temperature of the steam can be derived from various sources, most commonly from burning combustible materials with an appropriate supply of air in a closed space (e.g., combustion chamber, firebox, furnace). In the case of model or toy steam engines and a few full scale cases, the heat source can be an electric heating element.
Boilers are pressure vessels that contain water to be boiled, and features that transfer the heat to the water as effectively as possible.
The two most common types are:
Fire-tube boilers were the main type used for early high-pressure steam (typical steam locomotive practice), but they were to a large extent displaced by more economical water tube boilers in the late 19th century for marine propulsion and large stationary applications.
Many boilers raise the temperature of the steam after it has left that part of the boiler where it is in contact with the water. Known as superheating it turns 'wet steam' into 'superheated steam'. It avoids the steam condensing in the engine cylinders, and gives a significantly higher efficiency.
In a steam engine, a piston or steam turbine or any other similar device for doing mechanical work takes a supply of steam at high pressure and temperature and gives out a supply of steam at lower pressure and temperature, using as much of the difference in steam energy as possible to do mechanical work.
These "motor units" are often called 'steam engines' in their own right. Engines using compressed air or other gases differ from steam engines only in details that depend on the nature of the gas although compressed air has been used in steam engines without change.
As with all heat engines, the majority of primary energy must be emitted as waste heat at relatively low temperature.
The simplest cold sink is to vent the steam to the environment. This is often used on steam locomotives to avoid the weight and bulk of condensers. Some of the released steam is vented up the chimney so as to increase the draw on the fire, which greatly increases engine power, but reduces efficiency.
Sometimes the waste heat from the engine is useful itself, and in those cases, very high overall efficiency can be obtained.
Steam engines in stationary power plants use surface condensers as a cold sink. The condensers are cooled by water flow from oceans, rivers, lakes, and often by cooling towers which evaporate water to provide cooling energy removal. The resulting condensed hot water ("condensate"), is then pumped back up to pressure and sent back to the boiler. A dry-type cooling tower is similar to an automobile radiator and is used in locations where water is costly. Waste heat can also be ejected by evaporative (wet) cooling towers, which use a secondary external water circuit that evaporates some of flow to the air.
River boats initially used a jet condenser in which cold water from the river is injected into the exhaust steam from the engine. Cooling water and condensate mix. While this was also applied for sea-going vessels, generally after only a few days of operation the boiler would become coated with deposited salt, reducing performance and increasing the risk of a boiler explosion. Starting about 1834, the use of surface condensers on ships eliminated fouling of the boilers, and improved engine efficiency.
Evaporated water cannot be used for subsequent purposes (other than rain somewhere), whereas river water can be re-used. In all cases, the steam plant boiler feed water, which must be kept pure, is kept separate from the cooling water or air.
The Rankine cycle and most practical steam engines have a water pump to recycle or top up the boiler water, so that they may be run continuously. Utility and industrial boilers commonly use multi-stage centrifugal pumps; however, other types are used. Another means of supplying lower-pressure boiler feed water is an injector, which uses a steam jet usually supplied from the boiler. Injectors became popular in the 1850s but are no longer widely used, except in applications such as steam locomotives. It is the pressurization of the water that circulates through the steam boiler that allows the water to be raised to temperatures well above boiling point of water at one atmospheric pressure, and by that means to increase the efficiency of the steam cycle.
For safety reasons, nearly all steam engines are equipped with mechanisms to monitor the boiler, such as a pressure gauge and a sight glass to monitor the water level.
Many engines, stationary and mobile, are also fitted with a governor to regulate the speed of the engine without the need for human interference.
The most useful instrument for analyzing the performance of steam engines is the steam engine indicator. Early versions were in use by 1851, but the most successful indicator was developed for the high speed engine inventor and manufacturer Charles Porter by Charles Richard and exhibited at London Exhibition in 1862. The steam engine indicator traces on paper the pressure in the cylinder throughout the cycle, which can be used to spot various problems and calculate developed horsepower. It was routinely used by engineers, mechanics and insurance inspectors. The engine indicator can also be used on internal combustion engines. See image of indicator diagram below (in "Types of motor units" section).
The centrifugal governor was adopted by James Watt for use on a steam engine in 1788 after Watt's partner Boulton saw one on the equipment of a flour mill Boulton & Watt were building. The governor could not actually hold a set speed, because it would assume a new constant speed in response to load changes. The governor was able to handle smaller variations such as those caused by fluctuating heat load to the boiler. Also, there was a tendency for oscillation whenever there was a speed change. As a consequence, engines equipped only with this governor were not suitable for operations requiring constant speed, such as cotton spinning. The governor was improved over time and coupled with variable steam cut off, good speed control in response to changes in load was attainable near the end of the 19th century.
In a simple engine, or "single expansion engine" the charge of steam passes through the entire expansion process in an individual cylinder, although a simple engine may have one or more individual cylinders. It is then exhausted directly into the atmosphere or into a condenser. As steam expands in passing through a high-pressure engine, its temperature drops because no heat is being added to the system; this is known as adiabatic expansion and results in steam entering the cylinder at high temperature and leaving at lower temperature. This causes a cycle of heating and cooling of the cylinder with every stroke, which is a source of inefficiency.
The dominant efficiency loss in reciprocating steam engines is cylinder condensation and re-evaporation. The steam cylinder and adjacent metal parts/ports operate at a temperature about halfway between the steam admission saturation temperature and the saturation temperature corresponding to the exhaust pressure. As high-pressure steam is admitted into the working cylinder, much of the high-temperature steam is condensed as water droplets onto the metal surfaces, significantly reducing the steam available for expansive work. When the expanding steam reaches low pressure (especially during the exhaust stroke), the previously deposited water droplets that had just been formed within the cylinder/ports now boil away (re-evaporation) and this steam does no further work in the cylinder.
There are practical limits on the expansion ratio of a steam engine cylinder, as increasing cylinder surface area tends to exacerbate the cylinder condensation and re-evaporation issues. This negates the theoretical advantages associated with a high ratio of expansion in an individual cylinder.
A method to lessen the magnitude of energy loss to a very long cylinder was invented in 1804 by British engineer Arthur Woolf, who patented his "Woolf high-pressure compound engine" in 1805. In the compound engine, high-pressure steam from the boiler expands in a high-pressure (HP) cylinder and then enters one or more subsequent lower-pressure (LP) cylinders. The complete expansion of the steam now occurs across multiple cylinders, with the overall temperature drop within each cylinder reduced considerably. By expanding the steam in steps with smaller temperature range (within each cylinder) the condensation and re-evaporation efficiency issue (described above) is reduced. This reduces the magnitude of cylinder heating and cooling, increasing the efficiency of the engine. By staging the expansion in multiple cylinders, variations of torque can be reduced. To derive equal work from lower-pressure cylinder requires a larger cylinder volume as this steam occupies a greater volume. Therefore, the bore, and in rare cases the stroke, are increased in low-pressure cylinders, resulting in larger cylinders.
Double-expansion (usually known as compound) engines expanded the steam in two stages. The pairs may be duplicated or the work of the large low-pressure cylinder can be split with one high-pressure cylinder exhausting into one or the other, giving a three-cylinder layout where cylinder and piston diameter are about the same, making the reciprocating masses easier to balance.
Two-cylinder compounds can be arranged as:
With two-cylinder compounds used in railway work, the pistons are connected to the cranks as with a two-cylinder simple at 90° out of phase with each other ("quartered"). When the double-expansion group is duplicated, producing a four-cylinder compound, the individual pistons within the group are usually balanced at 180°, the groups being set at 90° to each other. In one case (the first type of Vauclain compound), the pistons worked in the same phase driving a common crosshead and crank, again set at 90° as for a two-cylinder engine. With the three-cylinder compound arrangement, the LP cranks were either set at 90° with the HP one at 135° to the other two, or in some cases, all three cranks were set at 120°.
The adoption of compounding was common for industrial units, for road engines and almost universal for marine engines after 1880; it was not universally popular in railway locomotives where it was often perceived as complicated. This is partly due to the harsh railway operating environment and limited space afforded by the loading gauge (particularly in Britain, where compounding was never common and not employed after 1930). However, although never in the majority, it was popular in many other countries.
It is a logical extension of the compound engine (described above) to split the expansion into yet more stages to increase efficiency. The result is the multiple-expansion engine. Such engines use either three or four expansion stages and are known as "triple-" and "quadruple-expansion engines" respectively. These engines use a series of cylinders of progressively increasing diameter. These cylinders are designed to divide the work into equal shares for each expansion stage. As with the double-expansion engine, if space is at a premium, then two smaller cylinders may be used for the low-pressure stage. Multiple-expansion engines typically had the cylinders arranged inline, but various other formations were used. In the late 19th century, the Yarrow-Schlick-Tweedy balancing "system" was used on some marine triple-expansion engines. Y-S-T engines divided the low-pressure expansion stages between two cylinders, one at each end of the engine. This allowed the crankshaft to be better balanced, resulting in a smoother, faster-responding engine which ran with less vibration. This made the four-cylinder triple-expansion engine popular with large passenger liners (such as the "Olympic" class), but this was ultimately replaced by the virtually vibration-free turbine engine. It is noted, however, that triple-expansion reciprocating steam engines were used to drive the World War II Liberty ships, by far the largest number of identical ships ever built. Over 2700 ships were built, in the United States, from a British original design.
The image in this section shows an animation of a triple-expansion engine. The steam travels through the engine from left to right. The valve chest for each of the cylinders is to the left of the corresponding cylinder.
Land-based steam engines could exhaust their steam to atmosphere, as feed water was usually readily available. Prior to and during World War I, the expansion engine dominated marine applications, where high vessel speed was not essential. It was, however, superseded by the British invention steam turbine where speed was required, for instance in warships, such as the dreadnought battleships, and ocean liners. of 1905 was the first major warship to replace the proven technology of the reciprocating engine with the then-novel steam turbine.
In most reciprocating piston engines, the steam reverses its direction of flow at each stroke (counterflow), entering and exhausting from the same end of the cylinder. The complete engine cycle occupies one rotation of the crank and two piston strokes; the cycle also comprises four "events" – admission, expansion, exhaust, compression. These events are controlled by valves often working inside a "steam chest" adjacent to the cylinder; the valves distribute the steam by opening and closing steam "ports" communicating with the cylinder end(s) and are driven by valve gear, of which there are many types.
The simplest valve gears give events of fixed length during the engine cycle and often make the engine rotate in only one direction. Many however have a reversing mechanism which additionally can provide means for saving steam as speed and momentum are gained by gradually "shortening the cutoff" or rather, shortening the admission event; this in turn proportionately lengthens the expansion period. However, as one and the same valve usually controls both steam flows, a short cutoff at admission adversely affects the exhaust and compression periods which should ideally always be kept fairly constant; if the exhaust event is too brief, the totality of the exhaust steam cannot evacuate the cylinder, choking it and giving excessive compression (""kick back"").
In the 1840s and 1850s, there were attempts to overcome this problem by means of various patent valve gears with a separate, variable cutoff expansion valve riding on the back of the main slide valve; the latter usually had fixed or limited cutoff. The combined setup gave a fair approximation of the ideal events, at the expense of increased friction and wear, and the mechanism tended to be complicated. The usual compromise solution has been to provide "lap" by lengthening rubbing surfaces of the valve in such a way as to overlap the port on the admission side, with the effect that the exhaust side remains open for a longer period after cut-off on the admission side has occurred. This expedient has since been generally considered satisfactory for most purposes and makes possible the use of the simpler Stephenson, Joy and Walschaerts motions. Corliss, and later, poppet valve gears had separate admission and exhaust valves driven by trip mechanisms or cams profiled so as to give ideal events; most of these gears never succeeded outside of the stationary marketplace due to various other issues including leakage and more delicate mechanisms.
Before the exhaust phase is quite complete, the exhaust side of the valve closes, shutting a portion of the exhaust steam inside the cylinder. This determines the compression phase where a cushion of steam is formed against which the piston does work whilst its velocity is rapidly decreasing; it moreover obviates the pressure and temperature shock, which would otherwise be caused by the sudden admission of the high-pressure steam at the beginning of the following cycle.
The above effects are further enhanced by providing "lead": as was later discovered with the internal combustion engine, it has been found advantageous since the late 1830s to advance the admission phase, giving the valve "lead" so that admission occurs a little before the end of the exhaust stroke in order to fill the "clearance volume" comprising the ports and the cylinder ends (not part of the piston-swept volume) before the steam begins to exert effort on the piston.
Uniflow engines attempt to remedy the difficulties arising from the usual counterflow cycle where, during each stroke, the port and the cylinder walls will be cooled by the passing exhaust steam, whilst the hotter incoming admission steam will waste some of its energy in restoring the working temperature. The aim of the uniflow is to remedy this defect and improve efficiency by providing an additional port uncovered by the piston at the end of each stroke making the steam flow only in one direction. By this means, the simple-expansion uniflow engine gives efficiency equivalent to that of classic compound systems with the added advantage of superior part-load performance, and comparable efficiency to turbines for smaller engines below one thousand horsepower. However, the thermal expansion gradient uniflow engines produce along the cylinder wall gives practical difficulties..
A steam turbine consists of one or more "rotors" (rotating discs) mounted on a drive shaft, alternating with a series of "stators" (static discs) fixed to the turbine casing. The rotors have a propeller-like arrangement of blades at the outer edge. Steam acts upon these blades, producing rotary motion. The stator consists of a similar, but fixed, series of blades that serve to redirect the steam flow onto the next rotor stage. A steam turbine often exhausts into a surface condenser that provides a vacuum. The stages of a steam turbine are typically arranged to extract the maximum potential work from a specific velocity and pressure of steam, giving rise to a series of variably sized high- and low-pressure stages. Turbines are only efficient if they rotate at relatively high speed, therefore they are usually connected to reduction gearing to drive lower speed applications, such as a ship's propeller. In the vast majority of large electric generating stations, turbines are directly connected to generators with no reduction gearing. Typical speeds are 3600 revolutions per minute (RPM) in the United States with 60 Hertz power, and 3000 RPM in Europe and other countries with 50 Hertz electric power systems. In nuclear power applications, the turbines typically run at half these speeds, 1800 RPM and 1500 RPM. A turbine rotor is also only capable of providing power when rotating in one direction. Therefore, a reversing stage or gearbox is usually required where power is required in the opposite direction.
Steam turbines provide direct rotational force and therefore do not require a linkage mechanism to convert reciprocating to rotary motion. Thus, they produce smoother rotational forces on the output shaft. This contributes to a lower maintenance requirement and less wear on the machinery they power than a comparable reciprocating engine.
The main use for steam turbines is in electricity generation (in the 1990s about 90% of the world's electric production was by use of steam turbines) however the recent widespread application of large gas turbine units and typical combined cycle power plants has resulted in reduction of this percentage to the 80% regime for steam turbines. In electricity production, the high speed of turbine rotation matches well with the speed of modern electric generators, which are typically direct connected to their driving turbines. In marine service, (pioneered on the "Turbinia"), steam turbines with reduction gearing (although the Turbinia has direct turbines to propellers with no reduction gearbox) dominated large ship propulsion throughout the late 20th century, being more efficient (and requiring far less maintenance) than reciprocating steam engines. In recent decades, reciprocating Diesel engines, and gas turbines, have almost entirely supplanted steam propulsion for marine applications.
Virtually all nuclear power plants generate electricity by heating water to provide steam that drives a turbine connected to an electrical generator. Nuclear-powered ships and submarines either use a steam turbine directly for main propulsion, with generators providing auxiliary power, or else employ turbo-electric transmission, where the steam drives a turbo generator set with propulsion provided by electric motors. A limited number of steam turbine railroad locomotives were manufactured. Some non-condensing direct-drive locomotives did meet with some success for long haul freight operations in Sweden and for express passenger work in Britain, but were not repeated. Elsewhere, notably in the United States, more advanced designs with electric transmission were built experimentally, but not reproduced. It was found that steam turbines were not ideally suited to the railroad environment and these locomotives failed to oust the classic reciprocating steam unit in the way that modern diesel and electric traction has done.
An oscillating cylinder steam engine is a variant of the simple expansion steam engine which does not require valves to direct steam into and out of the cylinder. Instead of valves, the entire cylinder rocks, or oscillates, such that one or more holes in the cylinder line up with holes in a fixed port face or in the pivot mounting (trunnion). These engines are mainly used in toys and models, because of their simplicity, but have also been used in full-size working engines, mainly on ships where their compactness is valued.
It is possible to use a mechanism based on a pistonless rotary engine such as the Wankel engine in place of the cylinders and valve gear of a conventional reciprocating steam engine. Many such engines have been designed, from the time of James Watt to the present day, but relatively few were actually built and even fewer went into quantity production; see link at bottom of article for more details. The major problem is the difficulty of sealing the rotors to make them steam-tight in the face of wear and thermal expansion; the resulting leakage made them very inefficient. Lack of expansive working, or any means of control of the cutoff, is also a serious problem with many such designs.
By the 1840s, it was clear that the concept had inherent problems and rotary engines were treated with some derision in the technical press. However, the arrival of electricity on the scene, and the obvious advantages of driving a dynamo directly from a high-speed engine, led to something of a revival in interest in the 1880s and 1890s, and a few designs had some limited success..
Of the few designs that were manufactured in quantity, those of the Hult Brothers Rotary Steam Engine Company of Stockholm, Sweden, and the spherical engine of Beauchamp Tower are notable. Tower's engines were used by the Great Eastern Railway to drive lighting dynamos on their locomotives, and by the Admiralty for driving dynamos on board the ships of the Royal Navy. They were eventually replaced in these niche applications by steam turbines.
The aeolipile represents the use of steam by the rocket-reaction principle, although not for direct propulsion.
In more modern times there has been limited use of steam for rocketry – particularly for rocket cars. Steam rocketry works by filling a pressure vessel with hot water at high pressure and opening a valve leading to a suitable nozzle. The drop in pressure immediately boils some of the water and the steam leaves through a nozzle, creating a propulsive force.
Steam engines possess boilers and other components that are pressure vessels that contain a great deal of potential energy. Steam escapes and boiler explosions (typically BLEVEs) can and have in the past caused great loss of life. While variations in standards may exist in different countries, stringent legal, testing, training, care with manufacture, operation and certification is applied to ensure safety.
Failure modes may include:
Steam engines frequently possess two independent mechanisms for ensuring that the pressure in the boiler does not go too high; one may be adjusted by the user, the second is typically designed as an ultimate fail-safe. Such safety valves traditionally used a simple lever to restrain a plug valve in the top of a boiler. One end of the lever carried a weight or spring that restrained the valve against steam pressure. Early valves could be adjusted by engine drivers, leading to many accidents when a driver fastened the valve down to allow greater steam pressure and more power from the engine. The more recent type of safety valve uses an adjustable spring-loaded valve, which is locked such that operators may not tamper with its adjustment unless a seal is illegally broken. This arrangement is considerably safer.
Lead fusible plugs may be present in the crown of the boiler's firebox. If the water level drops, such that the temperature of the firebox crown increases significantly, the lead melts and the steam escapes, warning the operators, who may then manually suppress the fire. Except in the smallest of boilers the steam escape has little effect on dampening the fire. The plugs are also too small in area to lower steam pressure significantly, depressurizing the boiler. If they were any larger, the volume of escaping steam would itself endanger the crew.
The Rankine cycle is the fundamental thermodynamic underpinning of the steam engine. The cycle is an arrangement of components as is typically used for simple power production, and utilizes the phase change of water (boiling water producing steam, condensing exhaust steam, producing liquid water)) to provide a practical heat/power conversion system. The heat is supplied externally to a closed loop with some of the heat added being converted to work and the waste heat being removed in a condenser. The Rankine cycle is used in virtually all steam power production applications. In the 1990s, Rankine steam cycles generated about 90% of all electric power used throughout the world, including virtually all solar, biomass, coal and nuclear power plants. It is named after William John Macquorn Rankine, a Scottish polymath.
The Rankine cycle is sometimes referred to as a practical Carnot cycle because, when an efficient turbine is used, the TS diagram begins to resemble the Carnot cycle. The main difference is that heat addition (in the boiler) and rejection (in the condenser) are isobaric (constant pressure) processes in the Rankine cycle and isothermal (constant temperature) processes in the theoretical Carnot cycle. In this cycle, a pump is used to pressurize the working fluid which is received from the condenser as a liquid not as a gas. Pumping the working fluid in liquid form during the cycle requires a small fraction of the energy to transport it compared to the energy needed to compress the working fluid in gaseous form in a compressor (as in the Carnot cycle). The cycle of a reciprocating steam engine differs from that of turbines because of condensation and re-evaporation occurring in the cylinder or in the steam inlet passages.
The working fluid in a Rankine cycle can operate as a closed loop system, where the working fluid is recycled continuously, or may be an "open loop" system, where the exhaust steam is directly released to the atmosphere, and a separate source of water feeding the boiler is supplied. Normally water is the fluid of choice due to its favourable properties, such as non-toxic and unreactive chemistry, abundance, low cost, and its thermodynamic properties. Mercury is the working fluid in the mercury vapor turbine. Low boiling hydrocarbons can be used in a binary cycle.
The steam engine contributed much to the development of thermodynamic theory; however, the only applications of scientific theory that influenced the steam engine were the original concepts of harnessing the power of steam and atmospheric pressure and knowledge of properties of heat and steam. The experimental measurements made by Watt on a model steam engine led to the development of the separate condenser. Watt independently discovered latent heat, which was confirmed by the original discoverer Joseph Black, who also advised Watt on experimental procedures. Watt was also aware of the change in the boiling point of water with pressure. Otherwise, the improvements to the engine itself were more mechanical in nature. The thermodynamic concepts of the Rankine cycle did give engineers the understanding needed to calculate efficiency which aided the development of modern high-pressure and -temperature boilers and the steam turbine.
The efficiency of an engine cycle can be calculated by dividing the energy output of mechanical work that the engine produces by the energy put into the engine by the burning fuel.
The historical measure of a steam engine's energy efficiency was its "duty". The concept of duty was first introduced by Watt in order to illustrate how much more efficient his engines were over the earlier Newcomen designs. Duty is the number of foot-pounds of work delivered by burning one bushel (94 pounds) of coal. The best examples of Newcomen designs had a duty of about 7 million, but most were closer to 5 million. Watt's original low-pressure designs were able to deliver duty as high as 25 million, but averaged about 17. This was a three-fold improvement over the average Newcomen design. Early Watt engines equipped with high-pressure steam improved this to 65 million.
No heat engine can be more efficient than the Carnot cycle, in which heat is moved from a high-temperature reservoir to one at a low temperature, and the efficiency depends on the temperature difference. For the greatest efficiency, steam engines should be operated at the highest steam temperature possible (superheated steam), and release the waste heat at the lowest temperature possible.
The efficiency of a Rankine cycle is usually limited by the working fluid. Without the pressure reaching supercritical levels for the working fluid, the temperature range over which the cycle can operate is small; in steam turbines, turbine entry temperatures are typically 565 °C (the creep limit of stainless steel) and condenser temperatures are around 30 °C. This gives a theoretical Carnot efficiency of about 63% compared with an actual efficiency of 42% for a modern coal-fired power station. This low turbine entry temperature (compared with a gas turbine) is why the Rankine cycle is often used as a bottoming cycle in combined-cycle gas turbine power stations.
One principal advantage the Rankine cycle holds over others is that during the compression stage relatively little work is required to drive the pump, the working fluid being in its liquid phase at this point. By condensing the fluid, the work required by the pump consumes only 1% to 3% of the turbine (or reciprocating engine) power and contributes to a much higher efficiency for a real cycle. The benefit of this is lost somewhat due to the lower heat addition temperature. Gas turbines, for instance, have turbine entry temperatures approaching 1500 °C. Nonetheless, the efficiencies of actual large steam cycles and large modern simple cycle gas turbines are fairly well matched.
In practice, a reciprocating steam engine cycle exhausting the steam to atmosphere will typically have an efficiency (including the boiler) in the range of 1–10%, but with the addition of a condenser, Corliss valves, multiple expansion, and high steam pressure/temperature, it may be greatly improved, historically into the range of 10–20%, and very rarely slightly higher.
A modern, large electrical power station (producing several hundred megawatts of electrical output) with steam reheat, economizer etc. will achieve efficiency in the mid 40% range, with the most efficient units approaching 50% thermal efficiency.
It is also possible to capture the waste heat using cogeneration in which the waste heat is used for heating a lower boiling point working fluid or as a heat source for district heating via saturated low-pressure steam. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27692 |
Satan
Satan, also known as the Devil, is an entity in the Abrahamic religions that seduces humans into sin or falsehood. In Christianity and Islam, he is usually seen as either a fallen angel or a genie, who used to possess great piety and beauty, but rebelled against God, who nevertheless allows him temporary power over the fallen world and a host of demons. In Judaism, Satan is typically regarded as a metaphor for the "yetzer hara", or "evil inclination", or as an agent subservient to God.
A figure known as "the satan" first appears in the Tanakh as a heavenly prosecutor, a member of the sons of God subordinate to Yahweh, who prosecutes the nation of Judah in the heavenly court and tests the loyalty of Yahweh's followers by forcing them to suffer. During the intertestamental period, possibly due to influence from the Zoroastrian figure of Angra Mainyu, the satan developed into a malevolent entity with abhorrent qualities in dualistic opposition to God. In the apocryphal Book of Jubilees, Yahweh grants the satan (referred to as Mastema) authority over a group of fallen angels, or their offspring, to tempt humans to sin and punish them. In the Synoptic Gospels, Satan tempts Jesus in the desert and is identified as the cause of illness and temptation. In the Book of Revelation, Satan appears as a Great Red Dragon, who is defeated by Michael the Archangel and cast down from Heaven. He is later bound for one thousand years, but is briefly set free before being ultimately defeated and cast into the Lake of Fire.
In Christianity, Satan is known as the Devil and is sometimes also called Lucifer. Although the Book of Genesis does not mention him, he is often identified as the serpent in the Garden of Eden. In the Middle Ages, Satan played a minimal role in Christian theology and was used as a comic relief figure in mystery plays. During the early modern period, Satan's significance greatly increased as beliefs such as demonic possession and witchcraft became more prevalent. During the Age of Enlightenment, belief in the existence of Satan became harshly criticized. Nonetheless, belief in Satan has persisted, particularly in the Americas. In the Quran, Shaitan, also known as Iblis, is an entity made of fire who was cast out of Heaven because he refused to bow before the newly-created Adam and incites humans to sin by infecting their minds with "waswās" ("evil suggestions"). Although Satan is generally viewed as evil, some groups have very different beliefs.
In Theistic Satanism, Satan is considered a deity who is either worshipped or revered. In LaVeyan Satanism, Satan is a symbol of virtuous characteristics and liberty. Satan's appearance is never described in the Bible, but, since the ninth century, he has often been shown in Christian art with horns, cloven hooves, unusually hairy legs, and a tail, often naked and holding a pitchfork. These are an amalgam of traits derived from various pagan deities, including Pan, Poseidon, and Bes. Satan appears frequently in Christian literature, most notably in Dante Alighieri's "Inferno", variants of the Faust legend, John Milton's "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained", and the poems of William Blake. He continues to appear in film, television, and music.
The original Hebrew term "sâtan" () is a generic noun meaning "accuser" or "adversary", which is used throughout the Hebrew Bible to refer to ordinary human adversaries, as well as a specific supernatural entity. The word is derived from a verb meaning primarily "to obstruct, oppose". When it is used without the definite article (simply "satan"), the word can refer to any accuser, but when it is used with the definite article ("ha-satan"), it usually refers specifically to the heavenly accuser: the satan.
"Ha-Satan" with the definite article occurs 13 times in the Masoretic Text, in two books of the Hebrew Bible: Job ch. 1–2 (10×) and Zechariah 3:1–2 (3×). "Satan" without the definite article is used in 10 instances, of which two are translated "diabolos" in the Septuagint and "Satan" in the King James Version (KJV):
The word "satan" does not occur in the Book of Genesis, which mentions only a talking serpent and does not identify the serpent with any supernatural entity. The first occurrence of the word "satan" in the Hebrew Bible in reference to a supernatural figure comes from , which describes the Angel of Yahweh confronting Balaam on his donkey: "Balaam's departure aroused the wrath of Elohim, and the Angel of Yahweh stood in the road as a satan against him." In , Yahweh sends the "Angel of Yahweh" to inflict a plague against Israel for three days, killing 70,000 people as punishment for David having taken a census without his approval. repeats this story, but replaces the "Angel of Yahweh" with an entity referred to as "a satan".
Some passages clearly refer to the satan, without using the word itself. describes the sons of Eli as "sons of Belial"; the later usage of this word makes it clearly a synonym for "satan". In Yahweh sends a "troubling spirit" to torment King Saul as a mechanism to ingratiate David with the king. In , the prophet Micaiah describes to King Ahab a vision of Yahweh sitting on his throne surrounded by the Host of Heaven. Yahweh asks the Host which of them will lead Ahab astray. A "spirit", whose name is not specified, but who is analogous to the satan, volunteers to be "a Lying Spirit in the mouth of all his Prophets".
The satan appears in the Book of Job, a poetic dialogue set within a prose framework, which may have been written around the time of the Babylonian captivity. In the text, Job is a righteous man favored by Yahweh. describes the "sons of God" ("bənê hāʼĕlōhîm") presenting themselves before Yahweh. Yahweh asks one of them, "the satan", where he has been, to which he replies that he has been roaming around the earth. Yahweh asks, "Have you considered My servant Job?" The satan replies by urging Yahweh to let him torture Job, promising that Job will abandon his faith at the first tribulation. Yahweh consents; the satan destroys Job's servants and flocks, yet Job refuses to condemn Yahweh. The first scene repeats itself, with the satan presenting himself to Yahweh alongside the other "sons of God". Yahweh points out Job's continued faithfulness, to which the satan insists that more testing is necessary; Yahweh once again gives him permission to test Job. In the end, Job remains faithful and righteous, and it is implied that the satan is shamed in his defeat.
contains a description of a vision dated to the middle of February of 519 BC, in which an angel shows Zechariah a scene of Joshua the High Priest dressed in filthy rags, representing the nation of Judah and its sins, on trial with Yahweh as the judge and the satan standing as the prosecutor. Yahweh rebukes the satan and orders for Joshua to be given clean clothes, representing Yahweh's forgiveness of Judah's sins.
During the Second Temple Period, when Jews were living in the Achaemenid Empire, Judaism was heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Achaemenids. Jewish conceptions of Satan were impacted by Angra Mainyu, the Zoroastrian god of evil, darkness, and ignorance. In the Septuagint, the Hebrew "ha-Satan" in Job and Zechariah is translated by the Greek word "diabolos" (slanderer), the same word in the Greek New Testament from which the English word "devil" is derived. Where "satan" is used to refer to human enemies in the Hebrew Bible, such as Hadad the Edomite and Rezon the Syrian, the word is left untranslated but transliterated in the Greek as "satan", a neologism in Greek.
The idea of Satan as an opponent of God and a purely evil figure seems to have taken root in Jewish pseudepigrapha during the Second Temple Period, particularly in the "apocalypses". The Book of Enoch, which the Dead Sea Scrolls have revealed to have been nearly as popular as the Torah, describes a group of 200 angels known as the "Watchers", who are assigned to supervise the earth, but instead abandon their duties and have sexual intercourse with human women. The leader of the Watchers is Semjâzâ and another member of the group, known as Azazel, spreads sin and corruption among humankind. The Watchers are ultimately sequestered in isolated caves across the earth and are condemned to face judgement at the end of time. The Book of Jubilees, written in around 150 BC, retells the story of the Watchers' defeat, but, in deviation from the Book of Enoch, Mastema, the "Chief of Spirits", intervenes before all of their demon offspring are sealed away, requesting for Yahweh to let him keep some of them to become his workers. Yahweh acquiesces this request and Mastema uses them to tempt humans into committing more sins, so that he may punish them for their wickedness. Later, Mastema induces Yahweh to test Abraham by ordering him to sacrifice Isaac.
The Second Book of Enoch, also called the Slavonic Book of Enoch, contains references to a Watcher called Satanael. It is a pseudepigraphic text of an uncertain date and unknown authorship. The text describes Satanael as being the prince of the Grigori who was cast out of heaven and an evil spirit who knew the difference between what was "righteous" and "sinful". In the Book of Wisdom, the devil is taken to be the being who brought death into the world, but originally the culprit was recognized as Cain. The name Samael, which is used in reference to one of the fallen angels, later became a common name for Satan in Jewish Midrash and Kabbalah.
Most Jews do not believe in the existence of a supernatural omnimalevolent figure. Traditionalists and philosophers in medieval Judaism adhered to rational theology, rejecting any belief in rebel or fallen angels, and viewing evil as abstract. The rabbis usually interpreted the word "satan" as it is used in the Tanakh as referring strictly to "human" adversaries and rejected all of the Enochian writings mentioning Satan as a literal, heavenly figure from the biblical canon, making every attempt to root them out. Nonetheless, the word "satan" has occasionally been metaphorically applied to evil influences, such as the Jewish exegesis of the "yetzer hara" ("evil inclination") mentioned in .
Rabbinical scholarship on the Book of Job generally follows the Talmud and Maimonides in identifying "the satan" from the prologue as a metaphor for the "yetzer hara" and not an actual entity. Satan is rarely mentioned in Tannaitic literature, but is found in Babylonian aggadah. According to a narration, the sound of the shofar, which is primarily intended to remind Jews of the importance of "teshuva", is also intended symbolically to "confuse the accuser" (Satan) and prevent him from rendering any litigation to God against the Jews. Kabbalah presents Satan as an agent of God whose function is to tempt humans into sinning so that he may accuse them in the heavenly court. The Hasidic Jews of the eighteenth century associated ha-Satan with "Baal Davar".
Each modern sect of Judaism has its own interpretation of Satan's identity. Conservative Judaism generally rejects the Talmudic interpretation of Satan as a metaphor for the "yetzer hara", and regard him as a literal agent of God. Orthodox Judaism, on the other hand, outwardly embraces Talmudic teachings on Satan, and involves Satan in religious life far more inclusively than other sects. Satan is mentioned explicitly in some daily prayers, including during Shacharit and certain post-meal benedictions, as described in Talmud and the Jewish Code of Law. In Reform Judaism, Satan is generally seen in his Talmudic role as a metaphor for the "yetzer hara" and the symbolic representation of innate human qualities such as selfishness.
The most common English synonym for "Satan" is "devil", which descends from Middle English "devel", from Old English "dēofol," that in turn represents an early Germanic borrowing of Latin "diabolus" (also the source of "diabolical"). This in turn was borrowed from Greek "diabolos" "slanderer", from "diaballein" "to slander": "dia-" "across, through" + "ballein" "to hurl". In the New Testament, the words "Satan" and "diabolos" are used interchangeably as synonyms. Beelzebub, meaning "Lord of Flies", is the contemptuous name given in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament to a Philistine god whose original name has been reconstructed as most probably "Ba'al Zabul", meaning "Baal the Prince". The Synoptic Gospels identify Satan and Beelzebub as the same. The name Abaddon (meaning "place of destruction") is used six times in the Old Testament, mainly as a name for one the regions of Sheol. describes Abaddon, whose name is translated into Greek as "Apollyon", meaning "the destroyer", as an angel who rules the Abyss. In modern usage, Abaddon is sometimes equated with Satan.
The three Synoptic Gospels all describe the temptation of Christ by Satan in the desert (, , and ). Satan first shows Jesus a stone and tells him to turn it into bread. He also takes him to the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem and commands Jesus to throw himself down so that the angels will catch him. Satan takes Jesus to the top of a tall mountain as well; there, he shows him the kingdoms of the earth and promises to give them all to him if he will bow down and worship him. Each time Jesus rebukes Satan and, after the third temptation, he is administered by the angels. Satan's promise in and to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth implies that all those kingdoms belong to him. The fact that Jesus does not dispute Satan's promise indicates that the authors of those gospels believed this to be true.
Satan plays a role in some of the parables of Jesus, namely the Parable of the Sower, the Parable of the Weeds, Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, and the Parable of the Strong Man. According to the Parable of the Sower, Satan "profoundly influences" those who fail to understand the gospel. The latter two parables say that Satan's followers will be punished on Judgement Day, with the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats stating that the Devil, his angels, and the people who follow him will be consigned to "eternal fire". When the Pharisees accused Jesus of exorcising demons through the power of Beelzebub, Jesus responds by telling the Parable of the Strong Man, saying: "how can someone enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house" (). The strong man in this parable represents Satan.
The Synoptic Gospels identify Satan and his demons as the causes of illness, including fever (), leprosy (), and arthritis (), while the Epistle to the Hebrews describes the Devil as "him who holds the power of death" (). The author of Luke-Acts attributes more power to Satan than both Matthew and Mark. In , Jesus grants Satan the authority to test Peter and the other apostles. states that Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus because "Satan entered" him and, in , Peter describes Satan as "filling" Ananias's heart and causing him to sin. The Gospel of John only uses the name "Satan" three times. In , Jesus says that his Jewish or Judean enemies are the children of the Devil rather than the children of Abraham. The same verse describes the Devil as "a man-killer from the beginning" and "a liar and the father of lying." describes the Devil as inspiring Judas to betray Jesus and identifies Satan as "the Archon of this Cosmos", who is destined to be overthrown through Jesus's death and resurrection. promises that the Holy Spirit will "accuse the World concerning sin, justice, and judgement", a role resembling that of the satan in the Old Testament.
The Book of Revelation represents Satan as the supernatural ruler of the Roman Empire and the ultimate cause of all evil in the world. In , as part of the letter to the church at Smyrna, John of Patmos refers to the Jews of Smyrna as "a synagogue of Satan" and warns that "the Devil is about to cast some of you into prison as a test ["peirasmos"], and for ten days you will have affliction." In , in the letter to the church of Pergamum, John warns that Satan lives among the members of the congregation and declares that "Satan's throne" is in their midst. Pergamum was the capital of the Roman Province of Asia and "Satan's throne" may be referring to the monumental Pergamon Altar in the city, which was dedicated to the Greek god Zeus, or to a temple dedicated to the Roman emperor Augustus.
In , Satan is bound with a chain and hurled into the Abyss, where he is imprisoned for one thousand years. In , he is set free and gathers his armies along with Gog and Magog to wage war against the righteous, but is defeated with fire from Heaven, and cast into the lake of fire. Some Christians associate Satan with the number 666, which describes as the Number of the Beast. However, the beast mentioned in Revelation 13 is not Satan, and the use of 666 in the Book of Revelation has been interpreted as a reference to the Roman Emperor Nero, as 666 is the numeric value of his name in Hebrew.
Despite the fact that the Book of Genesis never mentions Satan, Christians have traditionally interpreted the serpent in the Garden of Eden as Satan due to , which calls Satan "that ancient serpent". This verse, however, is probably intended to identify Satan with the Leviathan, a monstrous sea-serpent whose destruction by Yahweh is prophesied in . The first recorded individual to identify Satan with the serpent from the Garden of Eden was the second-century AD Christian apologist Justin Martyr, in chapters 45 and 79 of his "Dialogue with Trypho". Other early church fathers to mention this identification include Theophilus and Tertullian. The early Christian Church, however, encountered opposition from pagans such as Celsus, who claimed in his treatise "The True Word" that "it is blasphemy... to say that the greatest God... has an adversary who constrains his capacity to do good" and said that Christians "impiously divide the kingdom of God, creating a rebellion in it, as if there were opposing factions within the divine, including one that is hostile to God".
The name "Heylel", meaning "morning star" (or, in Latin, "Lucifer"), was a name for Attar, the god of the planet Venus in Canaanite mythology, who attempted to scale the walls of the heavenly city, but was vanquished by the god of the sun. The name is used in in metaphorical reference to the king of Babylon. uses a description of a cherub in Eden as a polemic against Ithobaal II, the king of Tyre. The Church Father Origen of Alexandria ( 184 – 253), who was only aware of the actual text of these passages and not the original myths to which they refer, concluded in his treatise "On the First Principles", which is preserved in a Latin translation by Tyrannius Rufinus, that neither of these verses could literally refer to a human being and must therefore be alluding to "a certain Angel who had received the office of governing the nation of the Tyrians," but was hurled down to Earth after he was found to be corrupt.
In his apologetic treatise "Contra Celsum", however, Origen changed his interpretations of Isaiah 14:12 and Ezekiel 28:12–15, now interpreting both of them as referring to Satan. According to Henry Ansgar Kelly, Origen seems to have adopted this new interpretation to refute unnamed persons who, perhaps under the influence of Zoroastrian radical dualism, believed "that Satan's original nature was Darkness." The later Church Father Jerome ( 347 – 420), translator of the Latin Vulgate, accepted Origen's theory of Satan as a fallen angel and wrote about it in his commentary on the Book of Isaiah. In Christian tradition ever since, both Isaiah 14:12 and Ezekiel 28:12–15 have been understood as allegorically referring to Satan. For most Christians, Satan has been regarded as an angel who rebelled against God.
According to the ransom theory of atonement, which was popular among early Christian theologians, Satan gained power over humanity through Adam and Eve's sin and Christ's death on the cross was a ransom to Satan in exchange for humanity's liberation. This theory holds that Satan was tricked by God because Christ was not only free of sin, but also the incarnate Deity, whom Satan lacked the ability to enslave. Irenaeus of Lyons described a prototypical form of the ransom theory, but Origen was the first to propose it in its fully developed form. The theory was later expanded by theologians such as Gregory of Nyssa and Rufinus of Aquileia. In the eleventh century, Anselm of Canterbury criticized the ransom theory, along with the associated Christus Victor theory, resulting in the theory's decline in western Europe. The theory has nonetheless retained some of its popularity in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Most early Christians firmly believed that Satan and his demons had the power to possess humans and exorcisms were widely practiced by Jews, Christians, and pagans alike. Belief in demonic possession continued through the Middle Ages into the early modern period. Exorcisms were seen as a display of God's power over Satan. The vast majority of people who thought they were possessed by the Devil did not suffer from hallucinations or other "spectacular symptoms", but "complained of anxiety, religious fears, and evil thoughts."
Satan had minimal role in medieval Christian theology, but he frequently appeared as a recurring comedic stock character in late medieval mystery plays, in which he was portrayed as a comic relief figure who "frolicked, fell, and farted in the background". Jeffrey Burton Russell describes the medieval conception of Satan as "more pathetic and repulsive than terrifying" and he was seen as little more than a nuisance to God's overarching plan. The "Golden Legend", a collection of saints' lives compiled in around 1260 by the Dominican Friar Jacobus da Varagine, contains numerous stories about encounters between saints and Satan, in which Satan is constantly duped by the saints' cleverness and by the power of God. Henry Ansgar Kelly remarks that Satan "comes across as the opposite of fearsome." The "Golden Legend" was the most popular book during the High and Late Middle Ages and more manuscripts of it have survived from the period than for any other book, including even the Bible itself.
The "Canon Episcopi", written in the eleventh century AD, condemns belief in witchcraft as heretical, but also documents that many people at the time apparently believed in it. Witches were believed to fly through the air on broomsticks, consort with demons, perform in "lurid sexual rituals" in the forests, murder human infants and eat them as part of Satanic rites, and engage in conjugal relations with demons. In 1326, Pope John XXII issued the papal bull "Super illius Specula", which condemned folk divination practices as consultation with Satan. By the 1430s, the Catholic Church began to regard witchcraft as part of a vast conspiracy led by Satan himself.
During the Early Modern Period, Christians gradually began to regard Satan as increasingly powerful and the fear of Satan's power became a dominant aspect of the worldview of Christians across Europe. During the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther taught that, rather than trying to argue with Satan, Christians should avoid temptation altogether by seeking out pleasant company; Luther especially recommended music as a safeguard against temptation, since the Devil "cannot endure gaiety." John Calvin repeated a maxim from Saint Augustine that "Man is like a horse, with either God or the devil as rider."
In the late fifteenth century, a series of witchcraft panics erupted in France and Germany. The German Inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger argued in their book "Malleus Maleficarum", published in 1487, that all "maleficia" ("sorcery") was rooted in the work of Satan. In the mid-sixteenth century, the panic spread to England and Switzerland. Both Protestants and Catholics alike firmly believed in witchcraft as a real phenomenon and supported its prosecution. In the late 1500s, the Dutch demonologist Johann Weyer argued in his treatise "De praestigiis daemonum" that witchcraft did not exist, but that Satan promoted belief in it to lead Christians astray. The panic over witchcraft intensified in the 1620s and continued until the end of the 1600s. Brian Levack estimates that around 60,000 people were executed for witchcraft during the entire span of the witchcraft hysteria.
The early English settlers of North America, especially the Puritans of New England, believed that Satan "visibly and palpably" reigned in the New World. John Winthrop claimed that the Devil made rebellious Puritan women give birth to stillborn monsters with claws, sharp horns, and "on each foot three claws, like a young fowl." Cotton Mather wrote that devils swarmed around Puritan settlements "like the frogs of Egypt". The Puritans believed that the Native Americans were worshippers of Satan and described them as "children of the Devil". Some settlers claimed to have seen Satan himself appear in the flesh at native ceremonies. During the First Great Awakening, the "new light" preachers portrayed their "old light" critics as ministers of Satan. By the time of the Second Great Awakening, Satan's primary role in American evangelicalism was as the opponent of the evangelical movement itself, who spent most of his time trying to hinder the ministries of evangelical preachers, a role he has largely retained among present-day American fundamentalists.
By the early 1600s, skeptics in Europe, including the English author Reginald Scot and the Anglican bishop John Bancroft, had begun to criticize the belief that demons still had the power to possess people. This skepticism was bolstered by the belief that miracles only occurred during the Apostolic Age, which had long since ended. Later, Enlightenment thinkers, such as David Hume, Denis Diderot, and Voltaire, attacked the notion of Satan's existence altogether. Voltaire labelled John Milton's "Paradise Lost" a "disgusting fantasy" and declared that belief in Hell and Satan were among the many lies propagated by the Catholic Church to keep humanity enslaved. By the eighteenth century, trials for witchcraft had ceased in most western countries, with the notable exceptions of Poland and Hungary, where they continued. Belief in the power of Satan, however, remained strong among traditional Christians.
Mormonism developed its own views on Satan. According to the Book of Moses, the Devil offered to be the redeemer of mankind for the sake of his own glory. Conversely, Jesus offered to be the redeemer of mankind so that his father's will would be done. After his offer was rejected, Satan became rebellious and was subsequently cast out of heaven. In the Book of Moses, Cain is said to have "loved Satan more than God" and conspired with Satan to kill Abel. It was through this pact that Cain became a Master Mahan. The Book of Moses also says that Moses was tempted by Satan before calling upon the name of the "Only Begotten", which caused Satan to depart. Douglas Davies asserts that this text "reflects" the temptation of Jesus in the Bible.
Belief in Satan and demonic possession remains strong among Christians in the United States and Latin America. According to a 2013 poll conducted by YouGov, fifty-seven percent of people in the United States believe in a literal Devil, compared to eighteen percent of people in Britain. Fifty-one percent of Americans believe that Satan has the power to possess people. W. Scott Poole, author of "Satan in America: The Devil We Know", has opined that "In the United States over the last forty to fifty years, a composite image of Satan has emerged that borrows from both popular culture and theological sources" and that most American Christians do not "separate what they know [about Satan] from the movies from what they know from various ecclesiastical and theological traditions." The Catholic Church generally played down Satan and exorcism during late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, but Pope Francis brought renewed focus on the Devil in the early 2010s, stating, among many other pronouncements, that "The devil is intelligent, he knows more theology than all the theologians together." According to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", liberal Christianity tends to view Satan "as a [figurative] mythological attempt to express the reality and extent of evil in the universe, existing outside and apart from humanity but profoundly influencing the human sphere."
Bernard McGinn describes multiple traditions detailing the relationship between the Antichrist and Satan. In the dualist approach, Satan will become incarnate in the Antichrist, just as God became incarnate in Jesus. However, in Orthodox Christian thought, this view is problematic because it is too similar to Christ's incarnation. Instead, the "indwelling" view has become more accepted, which stipulates that the Antichrist is a human figure inhabited by Satan, since the latter's power is not to be seen as equivalent to God's.
The Arabic equivalent of the word "Satan" is "Shaitan" (شيطان, from the root šṭn شطن). The word itself is an adjective (meaning "astray" or "distant", sometimes translated as "devil") that can be applied to both man ("al-ins", الإنس) and "al-jinn" (الجن), but it is also used in reference to Satan in particular. In the Quran, Satan's name is Iblis (), probably a derivative of the Greek word "diabolos". Muslims do not regard Satan as the cause of evil, but as a tempter, who takes advantage of humans' inclinations toward self-centeredness.
Seven suras in the Quran describe how God ordered all the angels and Iblis to bow before the newly-created Adam. All the angels bowed, but Iblis refused, claiming to be superior to Adam because he was made from fire; whereas Adam was made from clay (). Consequently, God expelled him from Paradise and condemned him to Jahannam. Iblis thereafter became a "kafir", "an ungrateful disbeliever", whose sole mission is to lead humanity astray. God allows Iblis to do this, because he knows that the righteous will be able to resist Iblis's attempts to misguide them. On Judgement Day, while the lot of Satan remains in question, those who followed him will be thrown into the fires of Jahannam. After his banishment from Paradise, Iblis, who thereafter became known as "Al-Shaitan" ("the Demon"), lured Adam and Eve into eating the fruit from the forbidden tree.
The primary characteristic of Satan, aside from his hubris and despair, is his ability to cast evil suggestions ("waswās") into men and women. states that Satan has no influence over the righteous, but that those who fall in error are under his power. implies that those who obey God's laws are immune to the temptations of Satan. warns that Satan tries to keep Muslims from reading the Quran and recommends reciting the Quran as an antidote against Satan. refers to Satan as the enemy of humanity and forbids humans from worshipping him. In the Quranic retelling of the story of Job, Job knows that Satan is the one tormenting him.
In the Quran, Satan is apparently an angel, but, in , he is described as "from the jinns". This, combined with the fact that he describes himself as having been made from fire, posed a major problem for Muslims exegetes of the Quran, who disagree on whether Satan is a fallen angel or the leader of a group of evil jinn. According to a hadith from Ibn Abbas, Iblis was actually an angel whom God created out of fire. Ibn Abbas asserts that the word "jinn" could be applied to earthly jinn, but also to "fiery angels" like Satan.
Hasan of Basra, an eminent Muslim theologian who lived in the seventh century AD, was quoted as saying: "Iblis was not an angel even for the time of an eye wink. He is the origin of Jinn as Adam is of Mankind." The medieval Persian scholar Abu Al-Zamakhshari states that the words "angels" and "jinn" are synonyms. Another Persian scholar, Al-Baydawi, instead argues that Satan "hoped" to be an angel, but that his actions made him a jinn. Other Islamic scholars argue that Satan was a jinn who was admitted into Paradise as a reward for his righteousness and, unlike the angels, was given the choice to obey or disobey God. When he was expelled from Paradise, Satan blamed humanity for his punishment. Concerning the fiery origin of Iblis, Zakariya al-Qazwini and Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Ibshīhī state that all supernatural creatures originated from fire but the angels from its light and the jinn from its blaze, thus fire denotes a disembodiment origin of all spiritual entities. Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi argued that only the angels of mercy are created from light, but angels of punishment have been created from fire.
The Muslim historian Al-Tabari, who died in around 923 AD, writes that, before Adam was created, earthly jinn made of smokeless fire roamed the earth and spread corruption. He further relates that Iblis was originally an angel named "Azazil" or "Al-Harith", from a group of angels, in contrast to the jinn, created from the "fires of simoom", who was sent by God to confront the earthly jinn. Azazil defeated the jinn in battle and drove them into the mountains, but he became convinced that he was superior to humans and all the other angels, leading to his downfall. In this account, Azazil's group of angels were called "jinn" because they guarded Jannah (Paradise). In another tradition recorded by Al-Tabari, Satan was one of the earthly jinn, who was taken captive by the angels and brought to Heaven as a prisoner. God appointed him as judge over the other jinn and he became known as "Al-Hakam". He fulfilled his duty for a thousand years before growing negligent, but was rehabilitated again and resumed his position until his refusal to bow before Adam.
During the first two centuries of Islam, Muslims almost unanimously accepted the traditional story known as the Satanic Verses as true. According to this narrative, Muhammad was told by Satan to add words to the Quran which would allow Muslims to pray for the intercession of pagan goddesses. He mistook the words of Satan for divine inspiration. Modern Muslims almost universally reject this story as heretical, as it calls the integrity of the Quran into question.
On the third day of the Hajj, Muslim pilgrims to Mecca throw seven stones at a pillar known as the "Jamrah al-’Aqabah", symbolizing the stoning of the Devil. This ritual is based on the Islamic tradition that, when God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael, Satan tempted him three times not to do it, and, each time, Abraham responded by throwing seven stones at him.
The hadith teach that newborn babies cry because Satan touches them while they are being born, and that this touch causes people to have an aptitude for sin. This doctrine bears some similarities to the doctrine of original sin. Muslim tradition holds that only Jesus and Mary were not touched by Satan at birth. However, when he was a boy, Muhammad's heart was literally opened by an angel, who removed a black clot that symbolized sin.
Muslim tradition preserves a number of stories involving dialogues between Jesus and Iblis, all of which are intended to demonstrate Jesus's virtue and Satan's depravity. Ahmad ibn Hanbal records an Islamic retelling of Jesus's temptation by Satan in the desert from the Synoptic Gospels. Ahmad quotes Jesus as saying, "The greatest sin is love of the world. Women are the ropes of Satan. Wine is the key to every evil." Abu Uthman al-Jahiz credits Jesus with saying, "The world is Satan's farm, and its people are his plowmen." Al-Ghazali tells an anecdote about how Jesus went out one day and saw Satan carrying ashes and honey; when he asked what they were for, Satan replied, "The honey I put on the lips of backbiters so that they achieve their aim. The ashes I put on the faces of orphans, so that people come to dislike them." The thirteenth-century scholar Sibt ibn al-Jawzi states that, when Jesus asked him what truly broke his back, Satan replied, "The neighing of horses in the cause of Allah."
According to Sufi mysticism, Iblis refused to bow to Adam because he was fully devoted to God alone and refused to bow to anyone else. For this reason, Sufi masters regard Satan and Muhammad as the two most perfect monotheists. Sufis reject the concept of dualism and instead believe in the unity of existence. In the same way that Muhammad was the instrument of God's mercy, Sufis regard Satan as the instrument of God's wrath.
Muslims believe that Satan is also the cause of deceptions originating from the mind and desires for evil. He is regarded as a cosmic force for separation, despair and spiritual envelopment. Muslims do distinguish between the satanic temptations and the murmurings of the bodily lower self (Nafs). The lower self commands the person to do a specific task or to fulfill a specific desire; whereas the inspirations of Satan tempt the person to do evil in general and, after a person successfully resists his first suggestion, Satan returns with new ones. If a Muslim feels that Satan is inciting him to sin, he is advised to seek refuge with God by reciting: "In the name of Allah, I seek refuge in you, from Satan the outcast." Muslims are also obliged to "seek refuge" before reciting the Quran.
In the Bahá'í Faith, Satan is not regarded as an independent evil power as he is in some faiths, but signifies the "lower nature" of humans. `Abdu'l-Bahá explains: "This lower nature in man is symbolized as Satan — the evil ego within us, not an evil personality outside." All other evil spirits described in various faith traditions—such as fallen angels, demons, and jinns—are also metaphors for the base character traits a human being may acquire and manifest when he turns away from God. Actions, that are described as "satanic" in some Bahá'í writings, denote humans deeds caused by selfish desires.
Theistic Satanism, commonly referred to as "devil worship", views Satan as a deity, whom individuals may supplicate to. It consists of loosely affiliated or independent groups and cabals, which all agree that Satan is a real entity.
Atheistic Satanism, as practiced by the Satanic Temple and by followers of LaVeyan Satanism, holds that Satan does not exist as a literal anthropomorphic entity, but rather as a symbol of a cosmos which Satanists perceive to be permeated and motivated by a force that has been given many names by humans over the course of time. In this religion, "Satan" is not viewed or depicted as a hubristic, irrational, and fraudulent creature, but rather is revered with Prometheus-like attributes, symbolizing liberty and individual empowerment. To adherents, he also serves as a conceptual framework and an external metaphorical projection of the Satanist's highest personal potential. In his essay "Satanism: The Feared Religion", the current High Priest of the Church of Satan, Peter H. Gilmore, further expounds that "...Satan is a symbol of Man living as his prideful, carnal nature dictates. The reality behind Satan is simply the dark evolutionary force of entropy that permeates all of nature and provides the drive for survival and propagation inherent in all living things. Satan is not a conscious entity to be worshiped, rather a reservoir of power inside each human to be tapped at will".
LaVeyan Satanists embrace the original etymological meaning of the word "Satan" (Hebrew: שָּׂטָן "satan", meaning "adversary"). According to Peter H. Gilmore, "The Church of Satan has chosen Satan as its primary symbol because in Hebrew it means adversary, opposer, one to accuse or question. We see ourselves as being these Satans; the adversaries, opposers and accusers of all spiritual belief systems that would try to hamper enjoyment of our life as a human being."
Post-LaVeyan Satanists, like the adherents of The Satanic Temple, argue that the human animal has a natural altruistic and communal tendency, and frame Satan as a figure of struggle against injustice and activism. They also believe in bodily autonomy, that personal beliefs should conform to science and inspire nobility, and that people should atone for their mistakes.
The main deity in the tentatively Indo-European pantheon of the Yazidis, Melek Taus, is similar to the devil in Christian and Islamic traditions, as he refused to bow down before humanity. Therefore, Christians and Muslims often consider Melek Taus to be Satan. However, rather than being Satanic, Yazidism can be understood as a remnant of a pre-Islamic Middle Eastern Indo-European religion, and/or a ghulat Sufi movement founded by Shaykh Adi. In fact, there is no entity in Yazidism which represents evil in opposition to God; such dualism is rejected by Yazidis.
In the Middle Ages, the Cathars, practitioners of a dualistic religion, were accused of worshipping Satan by the Catholic Church. Pope Gregory IX stated in his work "Vox in Rama" that the Cathars believed that God had erred in casting Lucifer out of heaven and that Lucifer would return to reward his faithful. On the other hand, according to Catharism, the creator-god of the material world worshipped by the Catholic Church is actually Satan.
Wicca is a modern, syncretic Neopagan religion, whose practitioners many Christians have incorrectly assumed to worship Satan. In actuality, Wiccans do not believe in the existence of Satan or any analogous figure and have repeatedly and emphatically rejected the notion that they venerate such an entity. The cult of the skeletal figure of Santa Muerte, which has grown exponentially in Mexico, has been denounced by the Catholic Church as Devil-worship. However, devotees of Santa Muerte view her as an angel of death created by God, and many of them identify as Catholic.
Much modern folklore about Satanism does not originate from the actual beliefs or practices of theistic or atheistic Satanists, but rather from a mixture of medieval Christian folk beliefs, political or sociological conspiracy theories, and contemporary urban legends. An example is the Satanic ritual abuse scare of the 1980s — beginning with the memoir "Michelle Remembers" — which depicted Satanism as a vast conspiracy of elites with a predilection for child abuse and human sacrifice. This genre frequently describes Satan as physically incarnating in order to receive worship.
In Dante Alighieri's "Inferno", Satan appears as a giant demon, frozen mid-breast in ice at the center of the Ninth Circle of Hell. Satan has three faces and a pair of bat-like wings affixed under each chin. In his three mouths, Satan gnaws on Brutus, Judas Iscariot, and Cassius, whom Dante regarded as having betrayed the "two greatest heroes of the human race": Julius Caesar, the founder of the new order of government, and Jesus, the founder of the new order of religion. As Satan beats his wings, he creates a cold wind that continues to freeze the ice surrounding him and the other sinners in the Ninth Circle. Dante and Virgil climb up Satan's shaggy legs until gravity is reversed and they fall through the earth into the southern hemisphere.
Satan appears in several stories from "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer, including "The Summoner's Prologue", in which a friar arrives in Hell and sees no other friars, but is told there are millions. Then Satan lifts his tail to reveal that all of the friars live inside his anus. Chaucer's description of Satan's appearance is clearly based on Dante's. The legend of Faust, recorded in the 1589 chapbook "The History of the Damnable Life and the Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus", concerns a pact allegedly made by the German scholar Johann Georg Faust with a demon named Mephistopheles agreeing to sell his soul to Satan in exchange for twenty-four years of earthly pleasure. This chapbook became the source for Christopher Marlowe's "The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus".
John Milton's epic poem "Paradise Lost" features Satan as its main protagonist. Milton portrays Satan as a tragic antihero destroyed by his own hubris. The poem, which draws extensive inspiration from Greek tragedy, recreates Satan as a complex literary character, who dares to rebel against the "tyranny" of God, in spite of God's own omnipotence. The English poet and painter William Blake famously quipped that "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devils party without knowing it." "Paradise Regained", the sequel to "Paradise Lost", is a retelling of Satan's temptation of Jesus in the desert.
William Blake regarded Satan as a model of rebellion against unjust authority and features him in many of his poems and illustrations, including his 1780 book "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", in which Satan is celebrated as the ultimate rebel, the incarnation of human emotion and the epitome of freedom from all forms of reason and orthodoxy. Based on the Biblical passages portraying Satan as the accuser of sin, Blake interpreted Satan as "a promulgator of moral laws."
Satan's appearance is never described in the Bible or any early Christian writings, though Paul the Apostle does write that "Satan disguises himself as an angel of light" (). The Devil was never shown in early Christian artwork and may have first appeared in the sixth century in one of the mosaics of the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo. The mosaic "Christ the Good Sheppard" features a blue-violet angel at the left hand side of Christ behind three goats; opposite to a red angel on the right hand side and in front of sheep. Depictions of the devil became more common in the ninth century, where he is shown with cloven hooves, hairy legs, the tail of a goat, pointed ears, a beard, a flat nose, and a set of horns. Satan may have first become associated with goats through the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, recorded in , in which Jesus separates sheep (representing the saved) from goats (representing the damned); the damned are thrown into a hell along with "the devil and his angels."
Medieval Christians were known to adapt previously existing pagan iconography to suit depictions of Christian figures. Much of Satan's traditional iconography in Christianity appears to be derived from Pan, a rustic, goat-legged fertility god in ancient Greek religion. Early Christian writers such as Saint Jerome equated the Greek satyrs and the Roman fauns, whom Pan resembled, with demons. The Devil's pitchfork appears to have been adapted from the trident wielded by the Greek god Poseidon and Satan's flame-like hair seems to have originated from the Egyptian god Bes. By the High Middle Ages, Satan and devils appear in all works of Christian art: in paintings, sculptures, and on cathedrals. Satan is usually depicted naked, but his genitals are rarely shown and are often covered by animal furs. The goat-like portrayal of Satan was especially closely associated with him in his role as the object of worship by sorcerers and as the incubus, a demon believed to rape human women in their sleep.
Italian frescoes from the late Middle Ages onward frequently show Satan chained in Hell, feeding on the bodies of the perpetually damned. These frescoes are early enough to have inspired Dante's portrayal in his "Inferno". As the serpent in the Garden of Eden, Satan is often shown as a snake with arms and legs as well the head and full-breasted upper torso of a woman. Satan and his demons could take any form in medieval art, but, when appearing in their true form, they were often shown as short, hairy, black-skinned humanoids with clawed and bird feet and extra faces on their chests, bellies, genitals, buttocks, and tails. The modern popular culture image of Satan as a well-dressed gentleman with small horns and a tail originates from portrayals of Mephistopheles in the operas "La damnation de Faust" (1846) by Hector Berlioz, "Mefistofele" (1868) by Arrigo Boito, and "Faust" by Charles Gounod.
The Devil is depicted as a vampire bat in Georges Méliès' "The Haunted Castle" (1896), which is often considered the first horror film. So-called "Black Masses" have been portrayed in sensationalist B-movies since the 1960s. One of the first films to portray such a ritual was the 1965 film "Eye of the Devil", also known as "13". Alex Sanders, a former black magician, served as a consultant on the film to ensure that the rituals portrayed in it were depicted accurately. Over the next thirty years, the novels of Dennis Wheatley and the films of Hammer Film Productions both played a major role in shaping the popular image of Satanism.
The film version of Ira Levin's "Rosemary's Baby" established made Satanic themes a staple of mainstream horror fiction. Later films such as "The Exorcist" (1973), "The Omen" (1976) and "Angel Heart" (1987) feature Satan as an antagonist.
References to Satan in music can be dated back to the Middle Ages. During the fifth century, a musical interval called the tritone became known as "the devil in Music" and was banned by the Catholic Church. Giuseppe Tartini was inspired to write his most famous work, the Violin Sonata in G minor, also known as "The Devil's Trill", after dreaming of the Devil playing the violin. Tartini claimed that the sonata was a lesser imitation of what the Devil had played in his dream. Niccolò Paganini was believed to have derived his musical talent from a deal with the Devil. Charles Gounod's "Faust" features a narrative that involves Satan.
In the early 1900s, jazz and blues became known as the "Devil's Music" as they were considered "dangerous and unholy". According to legend, blues musician Tommy Johnson was a terrible guitarist before exchanging his soul to the Devil for a guitar. Later, Robert Johnson claimed that he had sold his soul in return for becoming a great blues guitarist. Satanic symbolism appears in rock music from the 1960s. Mick Jagger assumes the role of Lucifer in the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" (1968), while Black Sabbath portrayed the Devil in numerous songs, including "War Pigs" (1970) and "N.I.B." (1970). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27694 |
Structured programming
Structured programming is a programming paradigm aimed at improving the clarity, quality, and development time of a computer program by making extensive use of the structured control flow constructs of selection (if/then/else) and repetition (while and for), block structures, and subroutines.
It emerged in the late 1950s with the appearance of the ALGOL 58 and ALGOL 60 programming languages, with the latter including support for block structures. Contributing factors to its popularity and widespread acceptance, at first in academia and later among practitioners, include the discovery of what is now known as the structured program theorem in 1966, and the publication of the influential "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" open letter in 1968 by Dutch computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra, who coined the term "structured programming".
Structured programming is most frequently used with deviations that allow for clearer programs in some particular cases, such as when exception handling has to be performed.
Following the structured program theorem, all programs are seen as composed of control structures:
Subroutines; callable units such as procedures, functions, methods, or subprograms are used to allow a sequence to be referred to by a single statement.
Blocks are used to enable groups of statements to be treated as if they were one statement. "Block-structured" languages have a syntax for enclosing structures in some formal way, such as an if-statement bracketed by codice_6 as in ALGOL 68, or a code section bracketed by codice_7, as in PL/I and Pascal, whitespace indentation as in Python - or the curly braces codice_8 of C and many later languages.
It is possible to do structured programming in any programming language, though it is preferable to use something like a procedural programming language. Some of the languages initially used for structured programming include: ALGOL, Pascal, PL/I and Ada, but most new procedural programming languages since that time have included features to encourage structured programming, and sometimes deliberately left out features – notably GOTO – in an effort to make unstructured programming more difficult.
"Structured programming" (sometimes known as modular programming) enforces a logical structure on the program being written to make it more efficient and easier to understand and modify.
The structured program theorem provides the theoretical basis of structured programming. It states that three ways of combining programs—sequencing, selection, and iteration—are sufficient to express any computable function. This observation did not originate with the structured programming movement; these structures are sufficient to describe the instruction cycle of a central processing unit, as well as the operation of a Turing machine. Therefore, a processor is always executing a "structured program" in this sense, even if the instructions it reads from memory are not part of a structured program. However, authors usually credit the result to a 1966 paper by Böhm and Jacopini, possibly because Dijkstra cited this paper himself. The structured program theorem does not address how to write and analyze a usefully structured program. These issues were addressed during the late 1960s and early 1970s, with major contributions by Dijkstra, Robert W. Floyd, Tony Hoare, Ole-Johan Dahl, and David Gries.
P. J. Plauger, an early adopter of structured programming, described his reaction to the structured program theorem:
Donald Knuth accepted the principle that programs must be written with provability in mind, but he disagreed (and still disagrees) with abolishing the GOTO statement. In his 1974 paper, "Structured Programming with Goto Statements", he gave examples where he believed that a direct jump leads to clearer and more efficient code without sacrificing provability. Knuth proposed a looser structural constraint: It should be possible to draw a program's flow chart with all forward branches on the left, all backward branches on the right, and no branches crossing each other. Many of those knowledgeable in compilers and graph theory have advocated allowing only reducible flow graphs.
Structured programming theorists gained a major ally in the 1970s after IBM researcher Harlan Mills applied his interpretation of structured programming theory to the development of an indexing system for "The New York Times" research file. The project was a great engineering success, and managers at other companies cited it in support of adopting structured programming, although Dijkstra criticized the ways that Mills's interpretation differed from the published work.
As late as 1987 it was still possible to raise the question of structured programming in a computer science journal. Frank Rubin did so in that year with an open letter titled ""GOTO considered harmful" considered harmful". Numerous objections followed, including a response from Dijkstra that sharply criticized both Rubin and the concessions other writers made when responding to him.
By the end of the 20th century nearly all computer scientists were convinced that it is useful to learn and apply the concepts of structured programming. High-level programming languages that originally lacked programming structures, such as FORTRAN, COBOL, and BASIC, now have them.
While goto has now largely been replaced by the structured constructs of selection (if/then/else) and repetition (while and for), few languages are purely structured. The most common deviation, found in many languages, is the use of a return statement for early exit from a subroutine. This results in multiple exit points, instead of the single exit point required by structured programming. There are other constructions to handle cases that are awkward in purely structured programming.
The most common deviation from structured programming is early exit from a function or loop. At the level of functions, this is a codice_9 statement. At the level of loops, this is a codice_10 statement (terminate the loop) or codice_11 statement (terminate the current iteration, proceed with next iteration). In structured programming, these can be replicated by adding additional branches or tests, but for returns from nested code this can add significant complexity. C is an early and prominent example of these constructs. Some newer languages also have "labeled breaks", which allow breaking out of more than just the innermost loop. Exceptions also allow early exit, but have further consequences, and thus are treated below.
Multiple exits can arise for a variety of reasons, most often either that the subroutine has no more work to do (if returning a value, it has completed the calculation), or has encountered "exceptional" circumstances that prevent it from continuing, hence needing exception handling.
The most common problem in early exit is that cleanup or final statements are not executed – for example, allocated memory is not deallocated, or open files are not closed, causing memory leaks or resource leaks. These must be done at each return site, which is brittle and can easily result in bugs. For instance, in later development, a return statement could be overlooked by a developer, and an action which should be performed at the end of a subroutine (e.g., a trace statement) might not be performed in all cases. Languages without a return statement, such as standard Pascal and Seed7, do not have this problem.
Most modern languages provide language-level support to prevent such leaks; see detailed discussion at resource management. Most commonly this is done via unwind protection, which ensures that certain code is guaranteed to be run when execution exits a block; this is a structured alternative to having a cleanup block and a codice_12. This is most often known as codice_13 and considered a part of exception handling. In case of multiple codice_9 statements introducing codice_13 without exceptions might look strange. Various techniques exist to encapsulate resource management. An alternative approach, found primarily in C++, is Resource Acquisition Is Initialization, which uses normal stack unwinding (variable deallocation) at function exit to call destructors on local variables to deallocate resources.
Kent Beck, Martin Fowler and co-authors have argued in their refactoring books that nested conditionals may be harder to understand than a certain type of flatter structure using multiple exits predicated by guard clauses. Their 2009 book flatly states that "one exit point is really not a useful rule. Clarity is the key principle: If the method is clearer with one exit point, use one exit point; otherwise don’t". They offer a cookbook solution for transforming a function consisting only of nested conditionals into a sequence of guarded return (or throw) statements, followed by a single unguarded block, which is intended to contain the code for the common case, while the guarded statements are supposed to deal with the less common ones (or with errors). Herb Sutter and Andrei Alexandrescu also argue in their 2004 C++ tips book that the single-exit point is an obsolete requirement.
In his 2004 textbook, David Watt writes that "single-entry multi-exit control flows are often desirable". Using Tennent's framework notion of sequencer, Watt uniformly describes the control flow constructs found in contemporary programming languages and attempts to explain why certain types of sequencers are preferable to others in the context of multi-exit control flows. Watt writes that unrestricted gotos (jump sequencers) are bad because the destination of the jump is not self-explanatory to the reader of a program until the reader finds and examines the actual label or address that is the target of the jump. In contrast, Watt argues that the conceptual intent of a return sequencer is clear from its own context, without having to examine its destination. Watt writes that a class of sequencers known as "escape sequencers", defined as a "sequencer that terminates execution of a textually enclosing command or procedure", encompasses both breaks from loops (including multi-level breaks) and return statements. Watt also notes that while jump sequencers (gotos) have been somewhat restricted in languages like C, where the target must be an inside the local block or an encompassing outer block, that restriction alone is not sufficient to make the intent of gotos in C self-describing and so they can still produce "spaghetti code". Watt also examines how exception sequencers differ from escape and jump sequencers; this is explained in the next section of this article.
In contrast to the above, Bertrand Meyer wrote in his 2009 textbook that instructions like codice_10 and codice_11 "are just the old codice_12 in sheep's clothing" and strongly advised against their use.
Based on the coding error from the Ariane 501 disaster, software developer Jim Bonang argues that any exceptions thrown from a function violate the single-exit paradigm, and proposes that all inter-procedural exceptions should be forbidden. In C++ syntax, this is done by declaring all function signatures as codice_19 (since C++11) or codice_20. Bonang proposes that all single-exit conforming C++ should be written along the lines of:
bool MyCheck1() throw() {
Peter Ritchie also notes that, in principle, even a single codice_21 right before the codice_9 in a function constitutes a violation of the single-exit principle, but argues that Dijkstra's rules were written in a time before exception handling became a paradigm in programming languages, so he proposes to allow any number of throw points in addition to a single return point. He notes that solutions which wrap exceptions for the sake of creating a single-exit have higher nesting depth and thus are more difficult to comprehend, and even accuses those who propose to apply such solutions to programming languages which support exceptions of engaging in cargo cult thinking.
David Watt also analyzes exception handling in the framework of sequencers (introduced in this article in the previous section on early exits.) Watt notes that an abnormal situation (generally exemplified with arithmetic
overflows or input/output failures like file not found) is a kind of error that "is detected in some low-level program unit, but [for which] a handler is more naturally located in a high-level program unit". For example, a program might contain several calls to read files, but the action to perform when a file is not found depends on the meaning (purpose) of the file in question to the program and thus a handling routine for this abnormal situation cannot be located in low-level system code. Watts further notes that introducing status flags testing in the caller, as single-exit structured programming or even (multi-exit) return sequencers would entail, results in a situation where "the application code tends to get cluttered by tests of status flags" and that "the programmer might forgetfully or lazily omit to test a status flag. In fact, abnormal situations represented by status flags are by default ignored!" He notes that in contrast to status flags testing, exceptions have the opposite default behavior, causing the program to terminate unless the programmer explicitly deals with the exception in some way, possibly by adding code to willfully ignore it. Based on these arguments, Watt concludes that jump sequencers or escape sequencers (discussed in the previous section) aren't as suitable as a dedicated exception sequencer with the semantics discussed above.
The textbook by Louden and Lambert emphasizes that exception handling differs from structured programming constructs like codice_2 loops because the transfer of control "is set up at a different point in the program than that where the actual transfer takes place. At the point where the transfer actually occurs, there may be no syntactic indication that control will in fact be transferred." Computer science professor Arvind Kumar Bansal also notes that in languages which implement exception handling, even control structures like codice_4, which have the single-exit property in absence of exceptions, no longer have it in presence of exceptions, because an exception can prematurely cause an early exit in any part of the control structure; for instance if codice_25 throws an exception in codice_26, then the usual exit point after check() is not reached. Citing multiple prior studies by others (1999-2004) and their own results, Westley Weimer and George Necula wrote that a significant problem with exceptions is that they "create hidden control-flow paths that are difficult for programmers to reason about".
The necessity to limit code to single-exit points appears in some contemporary programming environments focused on parallel computing, such as OpenMP. The various parallel constructs from OpenMP, like codice_27, do not allow early exits from inside to the outside of the parallel construct; this restriction includes all manner of exits, from codice_10 to C++ exceptions, but all of these are permitted inside the parallel construct if the jump target is also inside it.
More rarely, subprograms allow multiple "entry." This is most commonly only "re"-entry into a coroutine (or generator/semicoroutine), where a subprogram yields control (and possibly a value), but can then be resumed where it left off. There are a number of common uses of such programming, notably for streams (particularly input/output), state machines, and concurrency. From a code execution point of view, yielding from a coroutine is closer to structured programming than returning from a subroutine, as the subprogram has not actually terminated, and will continue when called again – it is not an early exit. However, coroutines mean that multiple subprograms have execution state – rather than a single call stack of subroutines – and thus introduce a different form of complexity.
It is very rare for subprograms to allow entry to an arbitrary position in the subprogram, as in this case the program state (such as variable values) is uninitialized or ambiguous, and this is very similar to a goto.
Some programs, particularly parsers and communications protocols, have a number of states that follow each other in a way that is not easily reduced to the basic structures, and some programmers implement the state-changes with a jump to the new state. This type of state-switching is often used in the Linux kernel.
However, it is possible to structure these systems by making each state-change a separate subprogram and using a variable to indicate the active state (see trampoline). Alternatively, these can be implemented via coroutines, which dispense with the trampoline. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27695 |
Semiconductor device fabrication
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically the metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) devices used in the integrated circuit (IC) chips that are present in everyday electrical and electronic devices. It is a multiple-step sequence of photolithographic and chemical processing steps (such as surface passivation, thermal oxidation, planar diffusion and junction isolation) during which electronic circuits are gradually created on a wafer made of pure semiconducting material. Silicon is almost always used, but various compound semiconductors are used for specialized applications.
The entire manufacturing process, from start to packaged chips ready for shipment, takes six to eight weeks and is performed in highly specialized semiconductor fabrication plants, also called foundries or fabs. In more advanced semiconductor devices, such as modern 14/10/7 nm nodes, fabrication can take up to 15 weeks, with 11–13 weeks being the industry average. Production in advanced fabrication facilities is completely automated, and carried out in a hermetically sealed nitrogen environment to improve yield (the proportion of microchips in a wafer that function correctly), with automated material handling systems taking care of the transport of wafers from machine to machine. All machinery contains an internal nitrogen atmosphere. The air inside the machinery is usually kept cleaner than the surrounding air in the cleanroom. This internal atmosphere is known as a mini environment. Fabrication plants need large amounts of liquid nitrogen to maintain the atmosphere inside production machinery, which is constantly purged with nitrogen.
By industry standard, each generation of the semiconductor manufacturing process, also known as technology node, is designated by the process’ minimum feature size. Technology nodes, also known as "process technologies" or simply "nodes", are typically indicated by the size in nanometers (or historically micrometers) of the process' transistor gate length.
The first metal–oxide–silicon field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) were fabricated by Egyptian engineer Mohamed M. Atalla and Korean engineer Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs between 1959 and 1960. There were originally two types of MOSFET technology, PMOS (p-type MOS) and NMOS (n-type MOS). Both types were developed by Atalla and Kahng when they originally invented the MOSFET, fabricating both PMOS and NMOS devices at 20µm and 10µm scales.
An improved type of MOSFET technology, CMOS, was developed by Chih-Tang Sah and Frank Wanlass at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963. CMOS was commercialised by RCA in the late 1960s. RCA commercially used CMOS for its 4000-series integrated circuits in 1968, starting with a 20µm process before gradually scaling to a 10 µm process over the next several years.
Semiconductor device manufacturing has since spread from Texas and California in the 1960s to the rest of the world, including Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
The semiconductor industry is a global business today. The leading semiconductor manufacturers typically have facilities all over the world. Samsung Electronics, the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductors, has facilities in South Korea and the US. Intel, the second largest manufacturer, has facilities in Europe and Asia as well as the US. TSMC, the world's largest pure play foundry, has facilities in Taiwan, China, Singapore, and the US. Qualcomm and Broadcom are among the biggest fabless semiconductor companies, outsourcing their production to companies like TSMC. They also have facilities spread in different countries.
Since 2009, "node" has become a commercial name for marketing purposes that indicates new generations of process technologies, without any relation to gate length, metal pitch or gate pitch. For example, GlobalFoundries' 7 nm process is similar to Intel's 10 nm process, thus the conventional notion of a process node has become blurred. Additionally, TSMC and Samsung's 10 nm processes are only slightly denser than Intel's 14 nm in transistor density. They are actually much closer to Intel's 14 nm process than they are to Intel's 10 nm process (e.g. Samsung's 10 nm processes' fin pitch is the exact same as that of Intel's 14 nm process: 42 nm).
As of 2019, 14 nanometer and 10 nanometer chips are in mass production by Intel, UMC, TSMC, Samsung, Micron, SK Hynix, Toshiba Memory and GlobalFoundries, with 7 nanometer process chips in mass production by TSMC and Samsung, although their 7nanometer node definition is similar to Intel's 10 nanometer process. The 5 nanometer process began being produced by Samsung in 2018. As of 2019, the node with the highest transistor density is TSMC's 5nanometer N5 node, with a density of 171.3million transistors per square millimeter. In 2019, Samsung and TSMC announced plans to produce 3 nanometer nodes. GlobalFoundries has decided to stop the development of new nodes beyond 12 nanometers in order to save resources, as it has determined that setting up a new fab to handle sub-12nm orders would be beyond the company's financial abilities. , Samsung is the industry leader in advanced semiconductor scaling, followed by TSMC and then Intel.
This is a list of processing techniques that are employed numerous times throughout the construction of a modern electronic device; this list does not necessarily imply a specific order. Equipment for carrying out these processes is made by a handful of companies. All equipment needs to be tested before a semiconductor fabrication plant is started.
When feature widths were far greater than about 10 micrometres, semiconductor purity was not as big of an issue as it is today in device manufacturing. As devices became more integrated, cleanrooms must become even cleaner. Today, fabrication plants are pressurized with filtered air to remove even the smallest particles, which could come to rest on the wafers and contribute to defects. The workers in a semiconductor fabrication facility are required to wear cleanroom suits to protect the devices from human contamination. To prevent oxidation and to increase yield, FOUPs and semiconductor capital equipment may have a pure nitrogen environment with ISO class 1 levels of dust.
A typical wafer is made out of extremely pure silicon that is grown into mono-crystalline cylindrical ingots (boules) up to 300 mm (slightly less than 12 inches) in diameter using the Czochralski process. These ingots are then sliced into wafers about 0.75 mm thick and polished to obtain a very regular and flat surface.
In semiconductor device fabrication, the various processing steps fall into four general categories: deposition, removal, patterning, and modification of electrical properties.
Modern chips have up to eleven metal levels produced in over 300 sequenced processing steps.
FEOL processing refers to the formation of the transistors directly in the silicon. The raw wafer is engineered by the growth of an ultrapure, virtually defect-free silicon layer through epitaxy. In the most advanced logic devices, "prior" to the silicon epitaxy step, tricks are performed to improve the performance of the transistors to be built. One method involves introducing a "straining step" wherein a silicon variant such as silicon-germanium (SiGe) is deposited. Once the epitaxial silicon is deposited, the crystal lattice becomes stretched somewhat, resulting in improved electronic mobility. Another method, called "silicon on insulator" technology involves the insertion of an insulating layer between the raw silicon wafer and the thin layer of subsequent silicon epitaxy. This method results in the creation of transistors with reduced parasitic effects.
Front-end surface engineering is followed by growth of the gate dielectric (traditionally silicon dioxide), patterning of the gate, patterning of the source and drain regions, and subsequent implantation or diffusion of dopants to obtain the desired complementary electrical properties. In dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) devices, storage capacitors are also fabricated at this time, typically stacked above the access transistor (the now defunct DRAM manufacturer Qimonda implemented these capacitors with trenches etched deep into the silicon surface).
Once the various semiconductor devices have been created, they must be interconnected to form the desired electrical circuits. This occurs in a series of wafer processing steps collectively referred to as BEOL (not to be confused with "back end" of chip fabrication, which refers to the packaging and testing stages). BEOL processing involves creating metal interconnecting wires that are isolated by dielectric layers. The insulating material has traditionally been a form of SiO2 or a silicate glass, but recently new low dielectric constant materials are being used (such as silicon oxycarbide), typically providing dielectric constants around 2.7 (compared to 3.82 for SiO2), although materials with constants as low as 2.2 are being offered to chipmakers.
Historically, the metal wires have been composed of aluminum. In this approach to wiring (often called "subtractive aluminum"), blanket films of aluminum are deposited first, patterned, and then etched, leaving isolated wires. Dielectric material is then deposited over the exposed wires. The various metal layers are interconnected by etching holes (called ""vias")" in the insulating material and then depositing tungsten in them with a CVD technique; this approach is still used in the fabrication of many memory chips such as dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), because the number of interconnect levels is small (currently no more than four).
More recently, as the number of interconnect levels for logic has substantially increased due to the large number of transistors that are now interconnected in a modern microprocessor, the timing delay in the wiring has become so significant as to prompt a change in wiring material (from aluminum to copper interconnect layer) and a change in dielectric material (from silicon dioxides to newer low-K insulators). This performance enhancement also comes at a reduced cost via damascene processing, which eliminates processing steps. As the number of interconnect levels increases, planarization of the previous layers is required to ensure a flat surface prior to subsequent lithography. Without it, the levels would become increasingly crooked, extending outside the depth of focus of available lithography, and thus interfering with the ability to pattern. CMP (chemical-mechanical planarization) is the primary processing method to achieve such planarization, although dry "etch back" is still sometimes employed when the number of interconnect levels is no more than three.
The highly serialized nature of wafer processing has increased the demand for metrology in between the various processing steps. For example, thin film metrology based on ellipsometry or reflectometry is used to tightly control the thickness of gate oxide, as well as the thickness, refractive index and extinction coefficient of photoresist and other coatings. Wafer test metrology equipment is used to verify that the wafers haven't been damaged by previous processing steps up until testing; if too many dies on one wafer have failed, the entire wafer is scrapped to avoid the costs of further processing. Virtual metrology has been used to predict wafer properties based on statistical methods without performing the physical measurement itself.
Once the front-end process has been completed, the semiconductor devices are subjected to a variety of electrical tests to determine if they function properly. The proportion of devices on the wafer found to perform properly is referred to as the yield. Manufacturers are typically secretive about their yields, but it can be as low as 30%, meaning that only 30% of the chips on the wafer work as intended. Process variation is one among many reasons for low yield.
The number of defects (yield) is proportional to device (die) size. As an example, In December 2019, TSMC announced an average yield of ~80%, with a peak yield per wafer of >90% for their 5nm test chips with a die size of 17.92 mm2. The yield went down to 32.0% with an increase in die size to 100 mm2.
The fab tests the chips on the wafer with an electronic tester that presses tiny probes against the chip. The machine marks each bad chip with a drop of dye. Currently, electronic dye marking is possible if wafer test data is logged into a central computer database and chips are "binned" (i.e. sorted into virtual bins) according to the predetermined test limits. The resulting binning data can be graphed, or logged, on a wafer map to trace manufacturing defects and mark bad chips. This map can also be used during wafer assembly and packaging.
Chips are also tested again after packaging, as the bond wires may be missing, or analog performance may be altered by the package. This is referred to as the "final test".
Usually, the fab charges for testing time, with prices in the order of cents per second. Testing times vary from a few milliseconds to a couple of seconds, and the test software is optimized for reduced testing time. Multiple chip (multi-site) testing is also possible, because many testers have the resources to perform most or all of the tests in parallel.
Chips are often designed with "testability features" such as scan chains or a "built-in self-test" to speed testing, and reduce testing costs. In certain designs that use specialized analog fab processes, wafers are also laser-trimmed during testing, in order to achieve tightly-distributed resistance values as specified by the design.
Good designs try to test and statistically manage "corners" (extremes of silicon behavior caused by a high operating temperature combined with the extremes of fab processing steps). Most designs cope with at least 64 corners.
Once tested, a wafer is typically reduced in thickness in a process also known as "backlap", "backfinish" or "wafer thinning" before the wafer is scored and then broken into individual dice, a process known as wafer dicing. Only the good, unmarked chips are packaged.
Plastic or ceramic packaging involves mounting the die, connecting the die pads to the pins on the package, and sealing the die. Tiny bondwires are used to connect the pads to the pins. In the old days, wires were attached by hand, but now specialized machines perform the task. Traditionally, these wires have been composed of gold, leading to a lead frame (pronounced "leed frame") of solder-plated copper; lead is poisonous, so lead-free "lead frames" are now mandated by RoHS.
Chip scale package (CSP) is another packaging technology. A plastic dual in-line package, like most packages, is many times larger than the actual die hidden inside, whereas CSP chips are nearly the size of the die; a CSP can be constructed for each die "before" the wafer is diced.
The packaged chips are retested to ensure that they were not damaged during packaging and that the die-to-pin interconnect operation was performed correctly. A laser then etches the chip's name and numbers on the package.
Many toxic materials are used in the fabrication process. These include:
It is vital that workers should not be directly exposed to these dangerous substances. The high degree of automation common in the IC fabrication industry helps to reduce the risks of exposure. Most fabrication facilities employ exhaust management systems, such as wet scrubbers, combustors, heated absorber cartridges, etc., to control the risk to workers and to the environment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27696 |
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; , ) is an Indo-Aryan or Indic language of the ancient Indian subcontinent with a 3,500-year history. It is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism and the predominant language of most works of Hindu philosophy as well as some of the principal texts of Buddhism and Jainism. Sanskrit, in its variants and numerous dialects, was the "lingua franca" of ancient and medieval India. In the early 1st millennium AD, along with Buddhism and Hinduism, Sanskrit migrated to Southeast Asia, parts of East Asia and Central Asia, emerging as a language of high culture and of local ruling elites in these regions.
Sanskrit is an Old Indo-Aryan language. As one of the oldest documented members of the Indo-European family of languages, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. It is related to Greek and Latin, as well as Hittite, Luwian, Old Avestan and many other living and extinct languages with historical significance to Europe, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. It traces its linguistic ancestry to the Proto-Indo-Aryan, Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indo-European languages.
Sanskrit is traceable to the 2nd millennium BCE in a form known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the "Rigveda" as the earliest-known composition. A more refined and standardized grammatical form called Classical Sanskrit emerged in the mid-1st millennium BCE with the "Aṣṭādhyāyī" treatise of Pāṇini. Sanskrit, though not necessarily Classical Sanskrit, is the root language of many Prakrit languages. Examples include numerous, modern, North Indian, subcontinental daughter languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Kumaoni, Garhwali, Urdu, Dogri, Maithili, Konkani, Assamese, Odia, and Nepali. Sanskrit has significantly influenced the grammar, phonology and vocabulary of the Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam languages of South India.
The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, music, drama, scientific, technical and other texts. In the ancient era, Sanskrit compositions were orally transmitted by methods of memorisation of exceptional complexity, rigour and fidelity. The earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st century BCE, such as the few discovered in Ayodhya and Ghosundi-Hathibada (Chittorgarh). Sanskrit texts dated to the 1st millennium CE were written in the Brahmi script, the Nāgarī script, the historic South Indian scripts and their derivative scripts. Sanskrit is one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since India's independence in 1947. Sanskrit is a living language and spoken as a primary language in some villages in India. It is taught in a large number of schools in India. It also continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hinduism and some Buddhist practices such as recitation of hymns and chants.
In Sanskrit verbal adjective "" is a compound word consisting of "sam" (together, good, well, perfected) and "krta-" (made, formed, work). It connotes a work that has been "well prepared, pure and perfect, polished, sacred". According to Biderman, the perfection contextually being referred to in the etymological origins of the word is its tonal—rather than semantic—qualities. Sound and oral transmission were highly valued qualities in ancient India, and its sages refined the alphabet, the structure of words and its exacting grammar into a "collection of sounds, a kind of sublime musical mold", states Biderman, as an integral language they called "Sanskrit". From the late Vedic period onwards, state Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, resonating sound and its musical foundations attracted an "exceptionally large amount of linguistic, philosophical and religious literature" in India. Sound was visualized as "pervading all creation", another representation of the world itself; the "mysterious magnum" of Hindu thought. The search for perfection in thought and the goal of liberation were among the dimensions of sacred sound, and the common thread that weaved all ideas and inspirations became the quest for what the ancient Indians believed to be a perfect language, the "phonocentric episteme" of Sanskrit.
Sanskrit as a language competed with numerous, less exact vernacular Indian languages called "Prakritic languages" (""). The term "prakrta" literally means "original, natural, normal, artless", states Franklin Southworth. The relationship between Prakrit and Sanskrit is found in Indian texts dated to the 1st millennium CE. Patañjali acknowledged that Prakrit is the first language, one instinctively adopted by every child with all its imperfections and later leads to the problems of interpretation and misunderstanding. The purifying structure of the Sanskrit language removes these imperfections. The early Sanskrit grammarian Daṇḍin states, for example, that much in the Prakrit languages is etymologically rooted in Sanskrit, but involve "loss of sounds" and corruptions that result from a "disregard of the grammar". Daṇḍin acknowledged that there are words and confusing structures in Prakrit that thrive independent of Sanskrit. This view is found in the writing of Bharata Muni, the author of the ancient "Nāṭyaśāstra" text. The early Jain scholar Namisādhu acknowledged the difference, but disagreed that the Prakrit language was a corruption of Sanskrit. Namisādhu stated that the Prakrit language was the "pūrvam" (came before, origin) and that it came naturally to children, while Sanskrit was a refinement of Prakrit through "purification by grammar".
Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. It is one of three ancient documented languages that arose from a common root language now referred to as Proto-Indo-European language:
Other Indo-European languages related to Sanskrit include archaic and classical Latin (c. 600 BCE – 100 CE, old Italian), Gothic (archaic Germanic language, c. 350 CE), Old Norse (c. 200 CE and after), Old Avestan (c. late 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (c. 900 BCE). The closest ancient relatives of Vedic Sanskrit in the Indo-European languages are the Nuristani languages found in the remote Hindu Kush region of the northeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Himalayas, as well as the extinct Avestan and Old Persian—both Iranian languages. Sanskrit belongs to the satem group of the Indo-European languages.
Colonial era scholars familiar with Latin and Greek were struck by the resemblance of the Sanskrit language, both in its vocabulary and grammar, to the classical languages of Europe. It suggested a common root and historical links between some of the major distant ancient languages of the world.
In order to explain the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages, the Indo-Aryan migration theory states that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in the Indian subcontinent from the north-west sometime during the early second millennium BCE. Evidence for such a theory includes the close relationship between the Indo-Iranian tongues and the Baltic and Slavic languages, vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Uralic languages, and the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna. The pre-history of Indo-Aryan languages which preceded Vedic Sanskrit is unclear and various hypotheses place it over a fairly wide limit. According to Thomas Burrow, based on the relationship between various Indo-European languages, the origin of all these languages may possibly be in what is now Central or Eastern Europe, while the Indo-Iranian group possibly arose in Central Russia. The Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches separated quite early. It is the Indo-Aryan branch that moved into eastern Iran and then south into the Indian subcontinent in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Once in ancient India, the Indo-Aryan language underwent rapid linguistic change and morphed into the Vedic Sanskrit language.
The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit. The earliest attested Sanskrit text is the Rigveda, a Hindu scripture, from the mid-to-late second millennium BCE. No written records from such an early period survive if they ever existed. However, scholars are confident that the oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they were ceremonial literature where the exact phonetic expression and its preservation were a part of the historic tradition.
The "Rigveda" is a collection of books, created by multiple authors from distant parts of ancient India. These authors represented different generations, and the mandalas 2 to 7 are the oldest while the mandalas 1 and 10 are relatively the youngest. Yet, the Vedic Sanskrit in these books of the "Rigveda" "hardly presents any dialectical diversity", states Louis Renou—an Indologist known for his scholarship of the Sanskrit literature and the "Rigveda" in particular. According to Renou, this implies that the Vedic Sanskrit language had a "set linguistic pattern" by the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Beyond the "Rigveda", the ancient literature in Vedic Sanskrit that has survived into the modern age include the "Samaveda", "Yajurveda", "Atharvaveda" along with the embedded and layered Vedic texts such as the Brahmanas, Aranyakas and the early Upanishads. These Vedic documents reflect the dialects of Sanskrit found in the various parts of the northwestern, northern and eastern Indian subcontinent.
Vedic Sanskrit was both a spoken and literary language of ancient India. According to Michael Witzel, Vedic Sanskrit was a spoken language of the semi-nomadic Aryas who temporarily settled in one place, maintained cattle herds, practiced limited agriculture and after some time moved by wagon trains they called "grama". The Vedic Sanskrit language or a closely related Indo-European variant was recognized beyond ancient India as evidenced by the "Mitanni Treaty" between the ancient Hittite and Mitanni people, carved into a rock, in a region that are now parts of Syria and Turkey. Parts of this treaty such as the names of the Mitanni princes and technical terms related to horse training, for reasons not understood, are in early forms of Vedic Sanskrit. The treaty also invokes the gods Varuna, Mitra, Indra and Nasatya found in the earliest layers of the Vedic literature.
The Vedic Sanskrit found in the "Rigveda" is distinctly more archaic than other Vedic texts, and in many respects, the Rigvedic language is notably more similar to those found in the archaic texts of Old Avestan Zoroastrian "Gathas" and Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey". According to Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton—Indologists known for their translation of the "Rigveda"—, the Vedic Sanskrit literature "clearly inherited" from Indo-Iranian and Indo-European times, the social structures such as the role of the poet and the priests, the patronage economy, the phrasal equations and some of the poetic meters. While there are similarities, state Jamison and Brereton, there are also differences between Vedic Sanskrit, the Old Avestan, and the Mycenaean Greek literature. For example, unlike the Sanskrit similes in the "Rigveda", the Old Avestan "Gathas" lack simile entirely, and it is rare in the later version of the language. The Homerian Greek, like Rigvedic Sanskrit, deploys simile extensively, but they are structurally very different.
The early Vedic form of the Sanskrit language was far less homogenous, and it evolved over time into a more structured and homogeneous language, ultimately into the Classical Sanskrit by about the mid-1st millennium BCE. According to Richard Gombrich—an Indologist and a scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli and Buddhist Studies—the archaic Vedic Sanskrit found in the "Rigveda" had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. The language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the Buddha's time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages, states Gombrich.
The formalization of the Sanskrit language is credited to , along with Patanjali's "Mahabhasya" and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patanjali's work. Panini composed "" ("Eight-Chapter Grammar"). The century in which he lived is unclear and debated, but his work is generally accepted to be from sometime between 6th and 4th centuries BCE.
The was not the first description of Sanskrit grammar, but it is the earliest that has survived in full. Pāṇini cites ten scholars on the phonological and grammatical aspects of the Sanskrit language before him, as well as the variants in the usage of Sanskrit in different regions of India. The ten Vedic scholars he quotes are Apisali, Kashyapa, Gargya, Galava, Cakravarmana, Bharadvaja, Sakatayana, Sakalya, Senaka and Sphotayana. The of Panini became the foundation of Vyākaraṇa, a Vedanga. In the , language is observed in a manner that has no parallel among Greek or Latin grammarians. Pāṇini's grammar, according to Renou and Filliozat, defines the linguistic expression and a classic that set the standard for the Sanskrit language. Pāṇini made use of a technical metalanguage consisting of a syntax, morphology and lexicon. This metalanguage is organised according to a series of meta-rules, some of which are explicitly stated while others can be deduced.
Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit. His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia. It is unclear whether Pāṇini wrote his treatise on Sanskrit language or he orally created the detailed and sophisticated treatise then transmitted it through his students. Modern scholarship generally accepts that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as "lipi" ("script") and "lipikara" ("scribe") in section 3.2 of the "Aṣṭādhyāyī".
The Classical Sanskrit language formalized by Pāṇini, states Renou, is "not an impoverished language", rather it is "a controlled and a restrained language from which archaisms and unnecessary formal alternatives were excluded". The Classical form of the language simplified the "sandhi" rules but retained various aspects of the Vedic language, while adding rigor and flexibilities, so that it had sufficient means to express thoughts as well as being "capable of responding to the future increasing demands of an infinitely diversified literature", according to Renou. Pāṇini included numerous "optional rules" beyond the Vedic Sanskrit's "bahulam" framework, to respect liberty and creativity so that individual writers separated by geography or time would have the choice to express facts and their views in their own way, where tradition followed competitive forms of the Sanskrit language.
The phonetic differences between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit are negligible when compared to the intense change that must have occurred in the pre-Vedic period between Indo-Aryan language and the Vedic Sanskrit. The noticeable differences between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit include the much-expanded grammar and grammatical categories as well as the differences in the accent, the semantics and the syntax. There are also some differences between how some of the nouns and verbs end, as well as the "sandhi" rules, both internal and external. Quite many words found in the early Vedic Sanskrit language are never found in late Vedic Sanskrit or Classical Sanskrit literature, while some words have different and new meanings in Classical Sanskrit when contextually compared to the early Vedic Sanskrit literature.
Arthur Macdonell was among the early colonial era scholars who summarized some of the differences between the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. Louis Renou published in 1956, in French, a more extensive discussion of the similarities, the differences and the evolution of the Vedic Sanskrit within the Vedic period and then to the Classical Sanskrit along with his views on the history. This work has been translated by Jagbans Balbir.
The earliest known use of the word "Saṃskṛta" (Sanskrit), in the context of a language, is found in verses 3.16.14 and 5.28.17–19 of the "Ramayana".. Outside the learned sphere of written Classical Sanskrit, vernacular colloquial dialects (Prakrits) continued to evolve. Sanskrit co-existed with numerous other Prakrit languages of ancient India. The Prakrit languages of India also have ancient roots and some Sanskrit scholars have called these "Apabhramsa", literally "spoiled". The Vedic literature includes words whose phonetic equivalent are not found in other Indo-European languages but which are found in the regional Prakrit languages, which makes it likely that the interaction, the sharing of words and ideas began early in the Indian history. As the Indian thought diversified and challenged earlier beliefs of Hinduism, particularly in the form of Buddhism and Jainism, the Prakrit languages such as Pali in Theravada Buddhism and Ardhamagadhi in Jainism competed with Sanskrit in the ancient times. However, states Paul Dundas, a scholar of Jainism, these ancient Prakrit languages had "roughly the same relationship to Sanskrit as medieval Italian does to Latin." The Indian tradition states that the Buddha and the Mahavira preferred the Prakrit language so that everyone could understand it. However, scholars such as Dundas have questioned this hypothesis. They state that there is no evidence for this and whatever evidence is available suggests that by the start of the common era, hardly anybody other than learned monks had the capacity to understand the old Prakrit languages such as Ardhamagadhi.
Colonial era scholars questioned whether Sanskrit was ever a spoken language, or just a literary language. Scholars disagree in their answers. A section of Western scholars state that Sanskrit was never a spoken language, while others and particularly most Indian scholars state the opposite. Those who affirm Sanskrit to have been a vernacular language point to the necessity of Sanskrit being a spoken language for the oral tradition that preserved the vast number of Sanskrit manuscripts from ancient India. Secondly, they state that the textual evidence in the works of Yaksa, Panini and Patanajali affirms that the Classical Sanskrit in their era was a language that is spoken ("bhasha") by the cultured and educated. Some "sutras" expound upon the variant forms of spoken Sanskrit versus written Sanskrit. The 7th-century Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang mentioned in his memoir that official philosophical debates in India were held in Sanskrit, not in the vernacular language of that region.
According to Sanskrit linguist Madhav Deshpande, Sanskrit was a spoken language in a colloquial form by the mid-1st millennium BCE which coexisted with a more formal, grammatically correct form of literary Sanskrit. This, states Deshpande, is true for modern languages where colloquial incorrect approximations and dialects of a language are spoken and understood, along with more "refined, sophisticated and grammatically accurate" forms of the same language being found in the literary works. The Indian tradition, states Moriz Winternitz, has favored the learning and the usage of multiple languages from the ancient times. Sanskrit was a spoken language in the educated and the elite classes, but it was also a language that must have been understood in a wider circle of society because the widely popular folk epics and stories such as the "Ramayana", the "Mahabharata", the "Bhagavata Purana", the "Panchatantra" and many other texts are all in the Sanskrit language. The Classical Sanskrit with its exacting grammar was thus the language of the Indian scholars and the educated classes, while others communicated with approximate or ungrammatical variants of it as well as other natural Indian languages. Sanskrit, as the learned language of Ancient India, thus existed alongside the vernacular Prakrits. Many Sanskrit dramas indicate that the language coexisted with the vernacular Prakrits. Centres in Varanasi, Paithan, Pune and Kanchipuram were centers of classical Sanskrit learning and public debates until the arrival of the colonial era.
According to Étienne Lamotte—an Indologist and Buddhism scholar, Sanskrit became the dominant literary and inscriptional language because of its precision in communication. It was, states Lamotte, an ideal instrument for presenting ideas and as knowledge in Sanskrit multiplied so did its spread and influence. Sanskrit was adopted voluntarily as a vehicle of high culture, arts, and profound ideas. Pollock disagrees with Lamotte, but concurs that Sanskrit's influence grew into what he terms as "Sanskrit Cosmopolis" over a region that included all of South Asia and much of southeast Asia. The Sanskrit language cosmopolis thrived beyond India between 300 and 1300 CE.
Sanskrit has been the predominant language of Hindu texts encompassing a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, music, drama, scientific, technical and others. It is the predominant language of one of the largest collection of historic manuscripts. The earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st century BCE, such as the Ayodhya Inscription of Dhana and Ghosundi-Hathibada (Chittorgarh).
Though developed and nurtured by scholars of orthodox schools of Hinduism, Sanskrit has been the language for some of the key literary works and theology of heterodox schools of Indian philosophies such as Buddhism and Jainism. The structure and capabilities of the Classical Sanskrit language launched ancient Indian speculations about "the nature and function of language", what is the relationship between words and their meanings in the context of a community of speakers, whether this relationship is objective or subjective, discovered or is created, how individuals learn and relate to the world around them through language, and about the limits of language? They speculated on the role of language, the ontological status of painting word-images through sound, and the need for rules so that it can serve as a means for a community of speakers, separated by geography or time, to share and understand profound ideas from each other. These speculations became particularly important to the Mimamsa and the Nyaya schools of Hindu philosophy, and later to Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, states Frits Staal—a scholar of Linguistics with a focus on Indian philosophies and Sanskrit. Though written in a number of different scripts, the dominant language of Hindu texts has been Sanskrit. It or a hybrid form of Sanskrit became the preferred language of Mahayana Buddhism scholarship ; for example, one of the early and influential Buddhist philosophers, Nagarjuna (~200 CE), used Classical Sanskrit as the language for his texts. According to Renou, Sanskrit had a limited role in the Theravada tradition (formerly known as the Hinayana) but the Prakrit works that have survived are of doubtful authenticity. Some of the canonical fragments of the early Buddhist traditions, discovered in the 20th century, suggest the early Buddhist traditions used an imperfect and reasonably good Sanskrit, sometimes with a Pali syntax, states Renou. The Mahāsāṃghika and Mahavastu, in their late Hinayana forms, used hybrid Sanskrit for their literature. Sanskrit was also the language of some of the oldest surviving, authoritative and much followed philosophical works of Jainism such as the "Tattvartha Sutra" by Umaswati.
The Sanskrit language has been one of the major means for the transmission of knowledge and ideas in Asian history. Indian texts in Sanskrit were already in China by 402 CE, carried by the influential Buddhist pilgrim Faxian who translated them into Chinese by 418 CE. Xuanzang, another Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, learnt Sanskrit in India and carried 657 Sanskrit texts to China in the 7th century where he established a major center of learning and language translation under the patronage of Emperor Taizong. By the early 1st millennium CE, Sanskrit had spread Buddhist and Hindu ideas to Southeast Asia, parts of the East Asia and the Central Asia. It was accepted as a language of high culture and the preferred language by some of the local ruling elites in these regions. According to the Dalai Lama, the Sanskrit language is a parent language that is at the foundation of many modern languages of India and the one that promoted Indian thought to other distant countries. In Tibetan Buddhism, states the Dalai Lama, Sanskrit language has been a revered one and called "legjar lhai-ka" or "elegant language of the gods". It has been the means of transmitting the "profound wisdom of Buddhist philosophy" to Tibet.
The Sanskrit language created a pan-Indic accessibility to information and knowledge in the ancient and medieval times, in contrast to the Prakrit languages which were understood just regionally. It created a cultural bond across the subcontinent. As local languages and dialects evolved and diversified, Sanskrit served as the common language. It connected scholars from distant parts of the Indian subcontinent such as Tamil Nadu and Kashmir, states Deshpande, as well as those from different fields of studies, though there must have been differences in its pronunciation given the first language of the respective speakers. The Sanskrit language brought Indic people together, particularly its elite scholars. Some of these scholars of Indian history regionally produced vernacularized Sanskrit to reach wider audiences, as evidenced by texts discovered in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. Once the audience became familiar with the easier to understand vernacularized version of Sanskrit, those interested could graduate from colloquial Sanskrit to the more advanced Classical Sanskrit. Rituals and the rites-of-passage ceremonies have been and continue to be the other occasions where a wide spectrum of people hear Sanskrit, and occasionally join in to speak some Sanskrit words such as ""namah"".
Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of , around the fourth century BCE. Its position in the cultures of Greater India is akin to that of Latin and Ancient Greek in Europe. Sanskrit has significantly influenced most modern languages of the Indian subcontinent, particularly the languages of the northern, western, central and eastern Indian subcontinent.
Sanskrit declined starting about and after the 13th century. This coincides with the beginning of Islamic invasions of the Indian subcontinent to create, and thereafter expand the Muslim rule in the form of Sultanates, and later the Mughal Empire. With the fall of Kashmir around the 13th century, a premier center of Sanskrit literary creativity, Sanskrit literature there disappeared, perhaps in the "fires that periodically engulfed the capital of Kashmir" or the "Mongol invasion of 1320" states Sheldon Pollock. The Sanskrit literature which was once widely disseminated out of the northwest regions of the subcontinent, stopped after the 12th century. As Hindu kingdoms fell in the eastern and the South India, such as the great Vijayanagara Empire, so did Sanskrit. There were exceptions and short periods of imperial support for Sanskrit, mostly concentrated during the reign of the tolerant Mughal emperor Akbar. Muslim rulers patronized the Middle Eastern language and scripts found in Persia and Arabia, and the Indians linguistically adapted to this Persianization to gain employment with the Muslim rulers. Hindu rulers such as Shivaji of the Maratha Empire, reversed the process, by re-adopting Sanskrit and re-asserting their socio-linguistic identity. After Islamic rule disintegrated in the Indian subcontinent and the colonial rule era began, Sanskrit re-emerged but in the form of a "ghostly existence" in regions such as Bengal. This decline was the result of "political institutions and civic ethos" that did not support the historic Sanskrit literary culture.
Scholars are divided on whether or when Sanskrit died. Western authors such as John Snelling state that Sanskrit and Pali are both dead Indian languages. Indian authors such as M Ramakrishnan Nair state that Sanskrit was a dead language by the 1st millennium BCE. Sheldon Pollock states that in some crucial way, "Sanskrit is dead". After the 12th century, the Sanskrit literary works were reduced to "reinscription and restatements" of ideas already explored, and any creativity was restricted to hymns and verses. This contrasted with the previous 1,500 years when "great experiments in moral and aesthetic imagination" marked the Indian scholarship using Classical Sanskrit, states Pollock.
Other scholars state that Sanskrit language did not die, only declined. Hanneder disagrees with Pollock, finding his arguments elegant but "often arbitrary". According to Hanneder, a decline or regional absence of creative and innovative literature constitutes a negative evidence to Pollock's hypothesis, but it is not positive evidence. A closer look at Sanskrit in the Indian history after the 12th century suggests that Sanskrit survived despite the odds. According to Hanneder,
The Sanskrit language scholar Moriz Winternitz states, Sanskrit was never a dead language and it is still alive though its prevalence is lesser than ancient and medieval times. Sanskrit remains an integral part of Hindu journals, festivals, Ramlila plays, drama, rituals and the rites-of-passage. Similarly, Brian Hatcher states that the "metaphors of historical rupture" by Pollock are not valid, that there is ample proof that Sanskrit was very much alive in the narrow confines of surviving Hindu kingdoms between the 13th and 18th centuries, and its reverence and tradition continues.
Hanneder states that modern works in Sanskrit are either ignored or their "modernity" contested.
According to Robert Goldman and Sally Sutherland, Sanskrit is neither "dead" nor "living" in the conventional sense. It is a special, timeless language that lives in the numerous manuscripts, daily chants and ceremonial recitations, a heritage language that Indians contextually prize and some practice.
When the British introduced English to India in the 19th century, knowledge of Sanskrit and ancient literature continued to flourish as the study of Sanskrit changed from a more traditional style into a form of analytical and comparative scholarship mirroring that of Europe.
The relationship of Sanskrit to the Prakrit languages, particularly the modern form of Indian languages, is complex and spans about 3,500 years, states Colin Masica—a linguist specializing in South Asian languages. A part of the difficulty is the lack of sufficient textual, archaeological and epigraphical evidence for the ancient Prakrit languages with rare exceptions such as Pali, leading to a tendency of anachronistic errors. Sanskrit and Prakrit languages may be divided into Old Indo-Aryan (1500 BCE–600 BCE), Middle Indo-Aryan (600 BCE–1000 CE) and New Indo-Aryan (1000 CE–current), each can further be subdivided in early, middle or second, and late evolutionary substages.
Vedic Sanskrit belongs to the early Old Indo-Aryan while Classical Sanskrit to the later Old Indo-Aryan stage. The evidence for Prakrits such as Pali (Theravada Buddhism) and Ardhamagadhi (Jainism), along with Magadhi, Maharashtri, Sinhala, Sauraseni and Niya (Gandhari), emerge in the Middle Indo-Aryan stage in two versions—archaic and more formalized—that may be placed in early and middle substages of the 600 BCE–1000 CE period. Two literary Indic languages can be traced to the late Middle Indo-Aryan stage and these are Apabhramsa and Elu (a form of literary Sinhalese). Numerous North, Central, Eastern and Western Indian languages, such as Hindi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Nepali, Braj, Awadhi, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Marathi, and others belong to the New Indo-Aryan stage.
There is an extensive overlap in the vocabulary, phonetics and other aspects of these New Indo-Aryan languages with Sanskrit, but it is neither universal nor identical across the languages. They likely emerged from a synthesis of the ancient Sanskrit language traditions and an admixture of various regional dialects. Each language has some unique and regionally creative aspects, with unclear origins. Prakrit languages do have a grammatical structure, but like the Vedic Sanskrit, it is far less rigorous than Classical Sanskrit. The roots of all Prakrit languages may be in the Vedic Sanskrit and ultimately the Indo-Aryan language, their structural details vary from the Classical Sanskrit. It is generally accepted by scholars and widely believed in India that the modern Indic languages, such as Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi and Punjabi are descendants of the Sanskrit language. Sanskrit, states Burjor Avari, can be described as "the mother language of almost all the languages of north India".
The Sanskrit language's historic presence is attested across a wide geography beyond the Indian subcontinent. Inscriptions and literary evidence suggests that Sanskrit language was already being adopted in Southeast Asia and Central Asia in the 1st millennium CE, through monks, religious pilgrims and merchants.
The Indian subcontinent has been the geographic range of the largest collection of the ancient and pre-18th-century Sanskrit manuscripts and inscriptions. Beyond ancient India, significant collections of Sanskrit manuscripts and inscriptions have been found in China (particularly the Tibetan monasteries), Myanmar, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia. Sanskrit inscriptions, manuscripts or its remnants, including some of the oldest known Sanskrit written texts, have been discovered in dry high deserts and mountainous terrains such as in Nepal, Tibet, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan. Some Sanskrit texts and inscriptions have also been discovered in Korea and Japan.
In India, Sanskrit is among the 22 official languages of India in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. In 2010, Uttarakhand became the first state in India to make Sanskrit its second official language. In 2019, Himachal Pradesh made Sanskrit its second official language, becoming the second state in India to do so.
Sanskrit shares many Proto-Indo-European phonological features, although it features a larger inventory of distinct phonemes. The consonantal system is the same, though it systematically enlarged the inventory of distinct sounds. For example, Sanskrit added a voiceless aspirated "tʰ", to the voiceless "t", voiced "d" and voiced aspirated "dʰ" found in PIE languages.
The most significant and distinctive phonological development in Sanskrit is vowel-merger, states Stephanie Jamison—an Indo-European linguist specializing in Sanskrit literature. The short "*e", "*o" and "*a", all merge as "a" (अ) in Sanskrit, while long "*ē", "*ō" and "*ā", all merge as long "ā" (आ). These mergers occurred very early and significantly impacted Sanskrit's morphological system. Some phonological developments in it mirror those in other PIE languages. For example, the labiovelars merged with the plain velars as in other satem languages. The secondary palatalization of the resulting segments is more thorough and systematic within Sanskrit, states Jamison. A series of retroflex dental stops were innovated in Sanskrit to more thoroughly articulate sounds for clarity. For example, unlike the loss of the morphological clarity from vowel contraction that is found in early Greek and related southeast European languages, Sanskrit deployed "*y", "*w", and "*s" intervocalically to provide morphological clarity.
The cardinal vowels ("svaras") "i" (इ), "u" (उ), "a" (अ) distinguish length in Sanskrit, states Jamison. The short "a" (अ) in Sanskrit is a closer vowel than ā, equivalent to schwa. The mid-vowels ē (ए) and ō (ओ) in Sanskrit are monophthongizations of the Indo-Iranian diphthongs "*ai" and "*au". The Old Iranian language preserved "*ai" and "*au". The Sanskrit vowels are inherently long, though often transcribed "e" and "o" without the diacritic. The vocalic liquid "r̥" in Sanskrit is a merger of PIE "*r̥" and "*l̥". The long "r̥" is an innovation and it is used in a few analogically generated morphological categories.
According to Masica, Sanskrit has four traditional semivowels, with which were classed, "for morphophonemic reasons, the liquids: y, r, l, and v; that is, as y and v were the non-syllabics corresponding to i, u, so were r, l in relation to r̥ and l̥". The northwestern, the central and the eastern Sanskrit dialects have had a historic confusion between "r" and "l". The Paninian system that followed the central dialect preserved the distinction, likely out of reverence for the Vedic Sanskrit that distinguished the "r" and "l". However, the northwestern dialect only had "r", while the eastern dialect probably only had "l", states Masica. Thus literary works from different parts of ancient India appear inconsistent in their use of "r" and "l", resulting in doublets that is occasionally semantically differentiated.
Sanskrit possesses a symmetric consonantal phoneme structure based on how the sound is articulated, though the actual usage of these sounds conceals the lack of parallelism in the apparent symmetry possibly from historical changes within the language.
Sanskrit had a series of retroflex stops. All the retroflexes in Sanskrit are in "origin conditioned alternants of dentals, though from the beginning of the language they have a qualified independence", states Jamison.
Regarding the palatal plosives, the pronunciation is a matter of debate. In contemporary attestation, the palatal plosives are a regular series of palatal stops, supported by most Sanskrit sandhi rules. However, the reflexes in descendant languages, as well as a few of the sandhi rules regarding "ch", could suggest an affricate pronunciation.
"jh" was a marginal phoneme in Sanskrit, hence its phonology is more difficult to reconstruct; it was more commonly employed in the Middle Indo-Aryan languages as a result of phonological processes resulting in the phoneme.
The palatal nasal is a conditioned variant of n occurring next to palatal obstruents. The "anusvara" that Sanskrit deploys is a conditioned alternant of postvocalic nasals, under certain sandhi conditions. Its "visarga" is a word-final or morpheme-final conditioned alternant of s and r under certain sandhi conditions.
The voiceless aspirated series is also an innovation in Sanskrit but is significantly rarer than the other three series.
While the Sanskrit language organizes sounds for expression beyond those found in the PIE language, it retained many features found in the Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages. An example of a similar process in all three, states Jamison, is the retroflex sibilant ʂ being the automatic product of dental s following i, u, r, and k (mnemonically "ruki").
Sanskrit deploys extensive phonological alternations on different linguistic levels through "sandhi" rules (literally, the rules of "putting together, union, connection, alliance"). This is similar to the English alteration of "going to" as "gonna", states Jamison. The Sanskrit language accepts such alterations within it, but offers formal rules for the "sandhi" of any two words next to each other in the same sentence or linking two sentences. The external "sandhi" rules state that similar short vowels coalesce into a single long vowel, while dissimilar vowels form glides or undergo diphthongization. Among the consonants, most external "sandhi" rules recommend regressive assimilation for clarity when they are voiced. According to Jamison, these rules ordinarily apply at compound seams and morpheme boundaries. In Vedic Sanskrit, the external "sandhi" rules are more variable than in Classical Sanskrit.
The internal "sandhi" rules are more intricate and account for the root and the canonical structure of the Sanskrit word. These rules anticipate what are now known as the Bartholomae's law and Grassmann's law. For example, states Jamison, the "voiceless, voiced, and voiced aspirated obstruents of a positional series regularly alternate with each other (p ≈ b ≈ bʰ; t ≈ d ≈ dʰ, etc.; note, however, c ≈ j ≈ h), such that, for example, a morpheme with an underlying voiced aspirate final may show alternants with all three stops under differing internal sandhi conditions". The velar series (k, g, gʰ) alternate with the palatal series (c, j, h), while the structural position of the palatal series is modified into a retroflex cluster when followed by dental. This rule create two morphophonemically distinct series from a single palatal series.
Vocalic alternations in the Sanskrit morphological system is termed "strengthening", and called "guna" and "vriddhi" in the preconsonantal versions. There is an equivalence to terms deployed in Indo-European descriptive grammars, wherein Sanskrit's unstrengthened state is same as the zero-grade, "guna" corresponds to normal-grade, while "vriddhi" is same as the lengthened-state. The qualitative ablaut is not found in Sanskrit just like it is absent in Iranian, but Sanskrit retains quantitative ablaut through vowel strengthening. The transformations between unstrengthened to "guna" is prominent in the morphological system, states Jamison, while "vriddhi" is a particularly significant rule when adjectives of origin and appurtenance are derived. The manner in which this is done slightly differs between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit.
Sanskrit grants a very flexible syllable structure, where they may begin or end with vowels, be single consonants or clusters. Similarly, the syllable may have an internal vowel of any weight. The Vedic Sanskrit shows traces of following the Sievers-Edgerton Law, but Classical Sanskrit doesn't. Vedic Sanskrit has a pitch accent system, states Jamison, which were acknowledged by Panini, but in his Classical Sanskrit the accents disappear. Most Vedic Sanskrit words have one accent. However, this accent is not phonologically predictable, states Jamison. It can fall anywhere in the word and its position often conveys morphological and syntactic information. According to Masica, the presence of an accent system in Vedic Sanskrit is evidenced from the markings in the Vedic texts. This is important because of Sanskrit's connection to the PIE languages and comparative Indo-European linguistics.
Sanskrit, like most early Indo-European languages, lost the so-called "laryngeal consonants (cover-symbol "*H") present in the Proto-Indo-European", states Jamison. This significantly impacted the evolutionary path of the Sanskrit phonology and morphology, particularly in the variant forms of roots.
Because Sanskrit is not anyone's native language, it does not have a fixed pronunciation. People tend to pronounce it as they do their native language. The articles on Hindustani, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya and Bengali phonology will give some indication of the variation that is encountered. When Sanskrit was a spoken language, its pronunciation varied regionally and also over time. Nonetheless, Panini described the sound system of Sanskrit well enough that people have a fairly good idea of what he intended.
The basis of Sanskrit morphology is the root, states Jamison, "a morpheme bearing lexical meaning". The verbal and nominal stems of Sanskrit words are derived from this root through the phonological vowel-gradation processes, the addition of affixes, verbal and nominal stems. It then adds an ending to establish the grammatical and syntactic identity of the stem. According to Jamison, the "three major formal elements of the morphology are (i) root, (ii) affix, and (iii) ending; and they are roughly responsible for (i) lexical meaning, (ii) derivation, and (iii) inflection respectively".
A Sanskrit word has the following canonical structure:
The root structure has certain phonological constraints. Two of the most important constraints of a "root" is that it does not end in a short "a" (अ) and that it is monosyllabic. In contrast, the affixes and endings commonly do. The affixes in Sanskrit are almost always suffixes, with exceptions such as the augment "a-" added as prefix to past tense verb forms and the "-na/n-" infix in single verbal present class, states Jamison.
A verb in Sanskrit has the following canonical structure:
According to Ruppel, verbs in Sanskrit express the same information as other Indo-European languages such as English. Sanskrit verbs describe an action or occurrence or state, its embedded morphology informs as to "who is doing it" (person or persons), "when it is done" (tense) and "how it is done" (mood, voice). The Indo-European languages differ in the detail. For example, the Sanskrit language attaches the affixes and ending to the verb root, while the English language adds small independent words before the verb. In Sanskrit, these elements co-exist within the word.
Both verbs and nouns in Sanskrit are either thematic or athematic, states Jamison. "Guna" (strengthened) forms in the active singular regularly alternate in athematic verbs. The finite verbs of Classical Sanskrit have the following grammatical categories: person, number, voice, tense-aspect, and mood. According to Jamison, a portmanteau morpheme generally expresses the person-number-voice in Sanskrit, and sometimes also the ending or only the ending. The mood of the word is embedded in the affix.
These elements of word architecture are the typical building blocks in Classical Sanskrit, but in Vedic Sanskrit these elements fluctuate and are unclear. For example, in the "Rigveda" preverbs regularly occur in tmesis, states Jamison, which means they are "separated from the finite verb". This indecisiveness is likely linked to Vedic Sanskrit's attempt to incorporate accent. With nonfinite forms of the verb and with nominal derivatives thereof, states Jamison, "preverbs show much clearer univerbation in Vedic, both by position and by accent, and by Classical Sanskrit, tmesis is no longer possible even with finite forms".
While roots are typical in Sanskrit, some words do not follow the canonical structure. A few forms lack both inflection and root. Many words are inflected (and can enter into derivation) but lack a recognizable root. Examples from the basic vocabulary include kinship terms such as "mātar-" (mother), "nas-" (nose), "śvan-" (dog). According to Jamison, pronouns and some words outside the semantic categories also lack roots, as do the numerals. Similarly, the Sanskrit language is flexible enough to not mandate inflection.
The Sanskrit words can contain more than one affix that interact with each other. Affixes in Sanskrit can be athematic as well as thematic, according to Jamison. Athematic affixes can be alternating. Sanskrit deploys eight cases, namely nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative, vocative.
Stems, that is "root + affix", appear in two categories in Sanskrit: vowel stems and consonant stems. Unlike some Indo-European languages such as Latin or Greek, according to Jamison, "Sanskrit has no closed set of conventionally denoted noun declensions". Sanskrit includes a fairly large set of stem-types. The linguistic interaction of the roots, the phonological segments, lexical items and the grammar for the Classical Sanskrit consist of four Paninian components. These, states Paul Kiparsky, are the "Astadhyaayi", a comprehensive system of 4,000 grammatical rules, of which a small set are frequently used; "Sivasutras", an inventory of "anubandhas" (markers) that partition phonological segments for efficient abbreviations through the "pratyharas" technique; "Dhatupatha", a list of 2,000 verbal roots classified by their morphology and syntactic properties using diacritic markers, a structure that guides its writing systems; and, the "Ganapatha", an inventory of word groups, classes of lexical systems. There are peripheral adjuncts to these four, such as the "Unadisutras", which focus on irregularly formed derivatives from the roots.
Sanskrit morphology is generally studied in two broad fundamental categories: the nominal forms and the verbal forms. These differ in the types of endings and what these endings mark in the grammatical context. Pronouns and nouns share the same grammatical categories, though they may differ in inflection. Verb-based adjectives and participles are not formally distinct from nouns. Adverbs are typically frozen case forms of adjectives, states Jamison, and "nonfinite verbal forms such as infinitives and gerunds also clearly show frozen nominal case endings".
The Sanskrit language includes five tenses: present, future, past imperfect, past aorist and past perfect. It outlines three types of voices: active, passive and the middle. The middle is also referred to as the mediopassive, or more formally in Sanskrit as "parasmaipada" (word for another) and "atmanepada" (word for oneself).
The paradigm for the tense-aspect system in Sanskrit is the three-way contrast between the "present", the "aorist" and the "perfect" architecture. Vedic Sanskrit is more elaborate and had several additional tenses. For example, the "Rigveda" includes perfect and a marginal pluperfect. Classical Sanskrit simplifies the "present" system down to two tenses, the perfect and the imperfect, while the "aorist" stems retain the aorist tense and the "perfect" stems retain the perfect and marginal pluperfect. The classical version of the language has elaborate rules for both voice and the tense-aspect system to emphasize clarity, and this is more elaborate than in other Indo-European languages. The evolution of these systems can be seen from the earliest layers of the Vedic literature to the late Vedic literature.
Sanskrit recognizes three numbers—singular, dual, and plural. The dual is a fully functioning category, used beyond naturally paired objects such as hands or eyes, extending to any collection of two. The elliptical dual is notable in the Vedic Sanskrit, according to Jamison, where a noun in the dual signals a paired opposition. Illustrations include "dyāvā" (literally, "the two heavens" for heaven-and-earth), "mātarā" (literally, "the two mothers" for mother-and-father). A verb may be singular, dual or plural, while the person recognized in the language are forms of "I", "you", "he/she/it", "we" and "they".
There are three persons in Sanskrit: first, second and third. Sanskrit uses the 3×3 grid formed by the three numbers and the three persons parameters as the paradigm and the basic building block of its verbal system.
The Sanskrit language incorporates three genders: feminine, masculine and neuter. All nouns have inherent gender, but with some exceptions, personal pronouns have no gender. Exceptions include demonstrative and anaphoric pronouns. Derivation of a word is used to express the feminine. Two most common derivations come from feminine-forming suffixes, the "-ā-" (आ, Rādhā) and "-ī-" (ई, Rukmīnī). The masculine and neuter are much simpler, and the difference between them is primarily inflectional. Similar affixes for the feminine are found in many Indo-European languages, states Burrow, suggesting links of the Sanskrit to its PIE heritage.
Pronouns in Sanskrit include the personal pronouns of the first and second persons, unmarked for gender, and a larger number of gender-distinguishing pronouns and adjectives. Examples of the former include "ahám" (first singular), "vayám" (first plural) and "yūyám" (second plural). The latter can be demonstrative, deictic or anaphoric. Both the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit share the "sá/tám" pronominal stem, and this is the closest element to a third person pronoun and an article in the Sanskrit language, states Jamison.
Indicative, potential and imperative are the three mood forms in Sanskrit.
The Sanskrit language formally incorporates poetic metres. By the late Vedic era, this developed into a field of study and it was central to the composition of the Hindu literature including the later Vedic texts. This study of Sanskrit prosody is called "chandas" and considered as one of the six Vedangas, or limbs of Vedic studies.
Sanskrit prosody includes linear and non-linear systems. The system started off with seven major metres, according to Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, called the "seven birds" or "seven mouths of Brihaspati", and each had its own rhythm, movements and aesthetics wherein a non-linear structure (aperiodicity) was mapped into a four verse polymorphic linear sequence. A syllable in Sanskrit is classified as either "laghu" (light) or "guru" (heavy). This classification is based on a "matra" (literally, "count, measure, duration"), and typically a syllable that ends in a short vowel is a light syllable, while those that end in consonant, "anusvara" or "visarga" are heavy. The classical Sanskrit found in Hindu scriptures such as the "Bhagavad Gita" and many texts are so arranged that the light and heavy syllables in them follow a rhythm, though not necessarily a rhyme.
Sanskrit metres include those based on a fixed number of syllables per verse, and those based on fixed number of morae per verse. The Vedic Sanskrit employs fifteen metres, of which seven are common, and the most frequent are three (8-, 11- and 12-syllable lines). The Classical Sanskrit deploys both linear and non-linear metres, many of which are based on syllables and others based on diligently crafted verses based on repeating numbers of morae (matra per foot).
Meter and rhythm is an important part of the Sanskrit language. It may have played a role in helping preserve the integrity of the message and Sanskrit texts. The verse perfection in the Vedic texts such as the verse Upanishads and post-Vedic Smriti texts are rich in prosody. This feature of the Sanskrit language led some Indologists from the 19th century onwards to identify suspected portions of texts where a line or sections are off the expected metre.
The meter-feature of the Sanskrit language embeds another layer of communication to the listener or reader. A change in metres has been a tool of literary architecture and an embedded code to inform the reciter and audience that it marks the end of a section or chapter. Each section or chapter of these texts uses identical metres, rhythmically presenting their ideas and making it easier to remember, recall and check for accuracy. Authors coded a hymn's end by frequently using a verse of a metre different than that used in the hymn's body. However, Hindu tradition does not use the Gayatri metre to end a hymn or composition, possibly because it has enjoyed a special level of reverence in Hinduism.
The early history of writing Sanskrit and other languages in ancient India is a problematic topic despite a century of scholarship, states Richard Salomon—an epigraphist and Indologist specializing in Sanskrit and Pali literature. The earliest possible script from the Indian subcontinent is from the Indus Valley Civilization (3rd/2nd millennium BCE), but this script – if it is a script – remains undeciphered. If any scripts existed in the Vedic period, they have not survived. Scholars generally accept that Sanskrit was spoken in an oral society, and that an oral tradition preserved the extensive Vedic and Classical Sanskrit literature. Other scholars such as Jack Goody state that the Vedic Sanskrit texts are not the product of an oral society, basing this view by comparing inconsistencies in the transmitted versions of literature from various oral societies such as the Greek, Serbian, and other cultures, then noting that the Vedic literature is too consistent and vast to have been composed and transmitted orally across generations, without being written down.
"Lipi" is the term in Sanskrit which means "writing, letters, alphabet". It contextually refers to scripts, the art or any manner of writing or drawing. The term, in the sense of a writing system, appears in some of the earliest Buddhist, Hindu, and Jaina texts. Pāṇini's "Astadhyayi", composed sometime around the 5th or 4th century BCE, for example, mentions "lipi" in the context of a writing script and education system in his times, but he does not name the script. Several early Buddhist and Jaina texts, such as the "Lalitavistara Sūtra" and "Pannavana Sutta" include lists of numerous writing scripts in ancient India. The Buddhist texts list the sixty four "lipi" that the Buddha knew as a child, with the Brahmi script topping the list. "The historical value of this list is however limited by several factors", states Salomon. The list may be a later interpolation. The Jain canonical texts such as the "Pannavana Sutta"—probably older than the Buddhist texts—list eighteen writing systems, with the Brahmi topping the list and Kharotthi (Kharoshthi) listed as fourth. The Jaina text elsewhere states that the "Brahmi is written in 18 different forms", but the details are lacking. However, the reliability of these lists has been questioned and the empirical evidence of writing systems in the form of Sanskrit or Prakrit inscriptions dated prior to the 3rd century BCE has not been found. If the ancient surface for writing Sanskrit was palm leaves, tree bark and cloth—the same as those in later times, these have not survived. According to Salomon, many find it difficult to explain the "evidently high level of political organization and cultural complexity" of ancient India without a writing system for Sanskrit and other languages.
The oldest datable writing systems for Sanskrit are the Brāhmī script, the related Kharoṣṭhī script and the Brahmi derivatives. The Kharosthi was used in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent and it became extinct, while the Brahmi was used in all over the subcontinent along with regional scripts such as Old Tamil. Of these, the earliest records in the Sanskrit language are in Brahmi, a script that later evolved into numerous related Indic scripts for Sanskrit, along with Southeast Asian scripts (Burmese, Thai, Lao, Khmer, others) and many extinct Central Asian scripts such as those discovered along with the Kharosthi in the Tarim Basin of western China and in Uzbekistan. The most extensive inscriptions that have survived into the modern era are the rock edicts and pillar inscriptions of the 3rd-century BCE Mauryan emperor Ashoka, but these are not in Sanskrit.
Over the centuries, and across countries, a number of scripts have been used to write Sanskrit.
The Brahmi script for writing Sanskrit is a "modified consonant-syllabic" script. The graphic syllable is its basic unit, and this consists of a consonant with or without diacritic modifications. Since the vowel is an integral part of the consonants, and given the efficiently compacted, fused consonant cluster morphology for Sanskrit words and grammar, the Brahmi and its derivative writing systems deploy ligatures, diacritics and relative positioning of the vowel to inform the reader how the vowel is related to the consonant and how it is expected to be pronounced for clarity. This feature of Brahmi and its modern Indic script derivatives makes it difficult to classify it under the main script types used for the writing systems for most of the world's languages, namely logographic, syllabic and alphabetic.
The Brahmi script evolved into "a vast number of forms and derivatives", states Richard Salomon, and in theory, Sanskrit "can be represented in virtually any of the main Brahmi-based scripts and in practice it often is". Sanskrit does not have a native script. Being a phonetic language, it can be written in any precise script that efficiently maps unique human sounds to unique symbols. From the ancient times, it has been written in numerous regional scripts in South and Southeast Asia. Most of these are descendants of the Brahmi script. The earliest datable "varnamala" Brahmi alphabet system, found in later Sanskrit texts, is from the 2nd century BCE, found in Sughana, Haryana. It shows a "schoolboy's writing lessons", states Salomon.
Many modern era manuscripts are written and available in the Nagari script, whose form is attestable to the 1st millennium CE. The Nagari script is the ancestor of Devanagari (north India), Nandinagari (south India) and other variants. The Nāgarī script was in regular use by 7th century CE, and had fully evolved into Devanagari and Nandinagari scripts by about the end of the first millennium of the common era. The Devanagari script, states Banerji, became more popular for Sanskrit in India since about the 18th century. However, Sanskrit does have special historical connection to the Nagari script as attested by the epigraphical evidence.
The Nagari script has been thought as a north Indian script for Sanskrit as well as the regional languages such as Hindi, Marathi and Nepali. However, it has had a "supra-local" status as evidenced by 1st-millennium CE epigraphy and manuscripts discovered all over India and as far as Sri Lanka, Burma, Indonesia and in its parent form called the Siddhamatrka script found in manuscripts of East Asia. The Sanskrit and Balinese languages Sanur inscription on Belanjong pillar of Bali (Indonesia), dated to about 914 CE, is in part in the Nagari script.
The Nagari script used for Classical Sanskrit has the fullest repertoire of characters consisting of fourteen vowels and thirty three consonants. For the Vedic Sanskrit, it has two more allophonic consonantal characters (the intervocalic ळ "ḷa", and ळ्ह "ḷha"). To communicate phonetic accuracy, it also includes several modifiers such as the "anusvara" dot and the "visarga" double dot, punctuation symbols and others such as the "halanta" sign.
Other scripts such as Gujarati, Bangla, Odia and major south Indian scripts, states Salomon, "have been and often still are used in their proper territories for writing Sanskrit". These and many Indian scripts look different to the untrained eye, but the differences between Indic scripts is "mostly superficial and they share the same phonetic repertoire and systemic features", states Salomon. They all have essentially the same set of eleven to fourteen vowels and thirty-three consonants as established by the Sanskrit language and attestable in the Brahmi script. Further, a closer examination reveals that they all have the similar basic graphic principles, the same "varnamala" (literally, "garland of letters") alphabetic ordering following the same logical phonetic order, easing the work of historic skilled scribes writing or reproducing Sanskrit works across the Indian subcontinent. The Sanskrit language written in some Indic scripts exaggerate angles or round shapes, but this serves only to mask the underlying similarities. Nagari script favours symmetry set with squared outlines and right angles. In contrast, Sanskrit written in the Bangla script emphasizes the acute angles while the neighbouring Odia script emphasizes rounded shapes and uses cosmetically appealing "umbrella-like curves" above the script symbols.
In the south, where Dravidian languages predominate, scripts used for Sanskrit include the Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Grantha alphabets.
Since the late 18th century, Sanskrit has been transliterated using the Latin alphabet. The system most commonly used today is the IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration), which has been the academic standard since 1888. ASCII-based transliteration schemes have also evolved because of difficulties representing Sanskrit characters in computer systems. These include Harvard-Kyoto and ITRANS, a transliteration scheme that is used widely on the Internet, especially in Usenet and in email, for considerations of speed of entry as well as rendering issues. With the wide availability of Unicode-aware web browsers, IAST has become common online. It is also possible to type using an alphanumeric keyboard and transliterate to Devanagari using software like Mac OS X's international support.
European scholars in the 19th century generally preferred Devanagari for the transcription and reproduction of whole texts and lengthy excerpts. However, references to individual words and names in texts composed in European Languages were usually represented with Roman transliteration. From the 20th century onwards, because of production costs, textual editions edited by Western scholars have mostly been in Romanised transliteration.
The earliest known stone inscriptions in Sanskrit are in the Brahmi script from the first century BCE. These include the Ayodhyā (Uttar Pradesh) and Hāthībādā-Ghosuṇḍī (near Chittorgarh, Rajasthan) inscriptions. Both of these, states Salomon, are "essentially standard" and "correct Sanskrit", with a few exceptions reflecting an "informal Sanskrit usage". Other important Hindu inscriptions dated to the 1st century BCE, in relatively accurate classical Sanskrit and Brahmi script are the Yavanarajya inscription on a red sandstone slab and the long Naneghat inscription on the wall of a cave rest stop in the Western Ghats.
Besides these few examples from the 1st century BCE, the earliest Sanskrit and hybrid dialect inscriptions are found in Mathura (Uttar Pradesh). These date to the 1st and 2nd century CE, states Salomon, from the time of the Indo-Scythian Northern Satraps and the subsequent Kushan Empire. These are also in the Brahmi script. The earliest of these, states Salomon, are attributed to Ksatrapa Sodasa from the early years of 1st century CE. Of the Mathura inscriptions, the most significant is the Mora Well Inscription. In a manner similar to the Hathibada inscription, the Mora well inscription is a dedicatory inscription and is linked to the cult of the Vrishni heroes: it mentions a stone shrine (temple), pratima (murti, images) and calls the five Vrishnis as "bhagavatam". There are many other Mathura Sanskrit inscriptions in Brahmi script overlapping the era of Indo-Scythian Northern Satraps and early Kushanas. Other significant 1st-century inscriptions in reasonably good classical Sanskrit in the Brahmi script include the Vasu Doorjamb Inscription and the Mountain Temple inscription. The early ones are related to the Brahmanical, except for the inscription from Kankali Tila which may be Jaina, but none are Buddhist. A few of the later inscriptions from the 2nd century CE include Buddhist Sanskrit, while others are in "more or less" standard Sanskrit and related to the Brahmanical tradition.
In Maharashtra and Gujarat, Brahmi script Sanskrit inscriptions from the early centuries of the common era exist at the Nasik Caves site, near the Girnar mountain of Junagadh and elsewhere such as at Kanakhera, Kanheri, and Gunda. The Nasik inscription dates to the mid-1st century CE, is a fair approximation of standard Sanskrit and has hybrid features. The Junagadh rock inscription of Western Satraps ruler Rudradaman I (c. 150 CE, Gujarat) is the first long poetic-style inscription in "more or less" standard Sanskrit that has survived into the modern era. It represents a turning point in the history of Sanskrit epigraphy, states Salomon. Though no similar inscriptions are found for about two hundred years after the Rudradaman reign, it is important because its style is the prototype of the eulogy-style Sanskrit inscriptions found in the Gupta Empire era. These inscriptions are also in the Brahmi script.
The Nagarjunakonda inscriptions are the earliest known substantial South Indian Sanskrit inscriptions, probably from the late 3rd century or early 4th century CE, or both. These inscriptions are related to Buddhism and the Shaivism tradition of Hinduism. A few of these inscriptions from both traditions are verse-style in the classical Sanskrit language, while some such as the pillar inscription is written in prose and a hybridized Sanskrit language. An earlier hybrid Sanskrit inscription found on Amaravati slab is dated to the late 2nd century, while a few later ones include Sanskrit inscriptions along with Prakrit inscriptions related to Hinduism and Buddhism. After the 3rd century CE, Sanskrit inscriptions dominate and many have survived. Between the 4th and 7th centuries CE, south Indian inscriptions are exclusively in the Sanskrit language. In the eastern regions of the Indian subcontinent, scholars report minor Sanskrit inscriptions from the 2nd century, these being fragments and scattered. The earliest substantial true Sanskrit language inscription of Susuniya (West Bengal) is dated to the 4th century. Elsewhere, such as Dehradun (Uttarakhand), inscriptions in more or less correct classical Sanskrit inscriptions are dated to the 3rd century.
According to Salomon, the 4th-century reign of Samudragupta was the turning point when the classical Sanskrit language became established as the "epigraphic language par excellence" of the Indian world. These Sanskrit language inscriptions are either "donative" or "panegyric" records. Generally in accurate classical Sanskrit, they deploy a wide range of regional Indic writing systems extant at the time. They record the donation of a temple or stupa, images, land, monasteries, pilgrim's travel record, public infrastructure such as water reservoir and irrigation measures to prevent famine. Others praise the king or the donor in lofty poetic terms. The Sanskrit language of these inscriptions is written on stone, various metals, terracotta, wood, crystal, ivory, shell and cloth.
The evidence of the use of the Sanskrit language in Indic writing systems appears in southeast Asia in the first half of the 1st millennium CE. A few of these in Vietnam are bilingual where both the Sanskrit and the local language is written in the Indian alphabet. Early Sanskrit language inscriptions in Indic writing systems are dated to the 4th century in Malaysia, 5th to 6th centuries in Thailand near Si Thep and the Sak River, early 5th century in Kutai (east Borneo) and mid-5th century in west Java (Indonesia). Both major writing systems for Sanskrit, the North Indian and South Indian scripts, have been discovered in southeast Asia, but the Southern variety with its rounded shapes are far more common. The Indic scripts, particularly the Pallava script prototype, spread and ultimately evolved into Mon-Burmese, Khmer, Thai, Laos, Sumatran, Celebes, Javanese and Balinese scripts. From about the 5th century, Sanskrit inscriptions become common in many parts of South Asia and Southeast Asia, with significant discoveries in Nepal, Vietnam and Cambodia.
Sanskrit has been written in various scripts on a variety of media such as palm leaves, cloth, paper, rock and metal sheets, from ancient times.
For nearly 2,000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the "Ramayana" and "Mahabharata". The deviations from in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations "ārṣa" (आर्ष), meaning 'of the ṛṣis', the traditional title for the ancient authors. In some contexts, there are also more "prakritisms" (borrowings from common speech) than in Classical Sanskrit proper. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is a literary language heavily influenced by the Middle Indo-Aryan languages, based on early Buddhist Prakrit texts which subsequently assimilated to the Classical Sanskrit standard in varying degrees.
Sanskrit has greatly influenced the languages of India that grew from its vocabulary and grammatical base; for instance, Hindi is a "Sanskritised register" of Hindustani. All modern Indo-Aryan languages, as well as Munda and Dravidian languages have borrowed many words either directly from Sanskrit ("tatsama" words), or indirectly via middle Indo-Aryan languages ("tadbhava" words). Words originating in Sanskrit are estimated at roughly fifty percent of the vocabulary of modern Indo-Aryan languages, as well as the literary forms of Malayalam and Kannada. Literary texts in Telugu are lexically Sanskrit or Sanskritised to an enormous extent, perhaps seventy percent or more. Marathi is another prominent language in Western India, that derives most of its words and Marathi grammar from Sanskrit. Sanskrit words are often preferred in the literary texts in Marathi over corresponding colloquial Marathi word.
Buddhist Sanskrit has had a considerable influence on East Asian languages such as Chinese, state William Wang and Chaofen Sun. Many words have been adopted from Sanskrit into the Chinese, both in its historic religious discourse and everyday use. This process likely started about 200 CE and continued through about 1400 CE, with the efforts of monks such as Yuezhi, Anxi, Kangju, Tianzhu, Yan Fodiao, Faxian, Xuanzang and Yijing. Further, as the Chinese language and culture influenced the rest of East Asia, the ideas in Sanskrit texts and some of its linguistic elements migrated further.
Sanskrit has also influenced Sino-Tibetan languages, mostly through translations of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. Many terms were transliterated directly and added to the Chinese vocabulary. Chinese words like "chànà" (Devanagari: क्षण "" 'instantaneous period') were borrowed from Sanskrit. Many Sanskrit texts survive only in Tibetan collections of commentaries to the Buddhist teachings, the Tengyur.
Sanskrit was a language for religious purposes and for the political elite in parts of medieval era Southeast Asia, Central Asia and East Asia. In Southeast Asia, languages such as Thai and Lao contain many loanwords from Sanskrit, as does Khmer. Many Sanskrit loanwords are also found in Austronesian languages, such as Javanese, particularly the older form in which nearly half the vocabulary is borrowed. Other Austronesian languages, such as traditional Malay and modern Indonesian, also derive much of their vocabulary from Sanskrit. Similarly, Philippine languages such as Tagalog have some Sanskrit loanwords, although more are derived from Spanish. A Sanskrit loanword encountered in many Southeast Asian languages is the word "bhāṣā", or spoken language, which is used to refer to the names of many languages. English also has words of Sanskrit origin.
Sanskrit has also influenced the religious register of Japanese mostly through transliterations. These were borrowed from Chinese transliterations. In particular, the Shingon () sect of esoteric Buddhism has been relying on Sanskrit and original Sanskrit mantras and writings, as a means of realizing Buddhahood.
Sanskrit is the sacred language of various Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions. It is used during worship in Hindu temples. In Newar Buddhism, it is used in all monasteries, while Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhist religious texts and sutras are in Sanskrit as well as vernacular languages. Some of the revered texts of Jainism including the Tattvartha sutra, Ratnakaranda śrāvakācāra, the Bhaktamara Stotra and the Agamas are in Sanskrit. Further, states Paul Dundas, Sanskrit mantras and Sanskrit as a ritual language was commonplace among Jains throughout their medieval history.
Many Hindu rituals and rites-of-passage such as the "giving away the bride" and mutual vows at weddings, a baby's naming or first solid food ceremony and the goodbye during a cremation invoke and chant Sanskrit hymns. Major festivals such as the "Durga Puja" ritually recite entire Sanskrit texts such as the "Devi Mahatmya" every year particularly amongst the numerous communities of eastern India. In the south, Sanskrit texts are recited at many major Hindu temples such as the Meenakshi Temple. According to Richard H. Davis, a scholar of Religion and South Asian studies, the breadth and variety of oral recitations of the Sanskrit text "Bhagavad Gita" is remarkable. In India and beyond, its recitations include "simple private household readings, to family and neighborhood recitation sessions, to holy men reciting in temples or at pilgrimage places for passersby, to public Gita discourses held almost nightly at halls and auditoriums in every Indian city".
More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since India's independence in 1947. Much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages.
The Sahitya Akademi has given an award for the best creative work in Sanskrit every year since 1967. In 2009, Satya Vrat Shastri became the first Sanskrit author to win the Jnanpith Award, India's highest literary award.
Sanskrit is used extensively in the Carnatic and Hindustani branches of classical music. Kirtanas, bhajans, stotras, and shlokas of Sanskrit are popular throughout India. The samaveda uses musical notations in several of its recessions.
In Mainland China, musicians such as Sa Dingding have written pop songs in Sanskrit.
Numerous loan Sanskrit words are found in other major Asian languages. For example, Filipino, Cebuano, Lao, Khmer Thai and its alphabets, Malay, Indonesian (old Javanese-English dictionary by P.J. Zoetmulder contains over 25,500 entries), and even in English.
Since 1974, there has been a short daily news broadcast on state-run All India Radio. These broadcasts are also made available on the internet on AIR's website. Sanskrit news is broadcast on TV and on the internet through the DD National channel at 6:55 AM IST.
Over 90 weeklies, fortnightlies and quarterlies are published in Sanskrit. "Sudharma", a daily printed newspaper in Sanskrit, has been published out of Mysore, India, since 1970. It was started by K.N. Varadaraja Iyengar, a sanskrit scholar from Mysore. Sanskrit Vartman Patram and Vishwasya Vrittantam started in Gujarat during the last five years.
Sanskrit has been taught in schools from time immemorial in India. In modern times, the first Sanskrit University was Sampurnanand Sanskrit University, established in 1791 in the Indian city of Varanasi. Sanskrit is taught in 5,000 traditional schools (Pathashalas), and 14,000 schools in India, where there are also 22 colleges and universities dedicated to the exclusive study of the language. Sanskrit is one the 22 scheduled languages of India. Despite it being a studied school subject in contemporary India, Sanskrit is scarce as a first language. In the 2001 Census of India, 14,135 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue, while in the 2011 census, 24,821 people out of about 1.21 billion reported this to be the case.
According to the 2011 national census of Nepal, 1,669 people use Sanskrit as their first language.
The Central Board of Secondary Education of India (CBSE), along with several other state education boards, has made Sanskrit an alternative option to the state's own official language as a second or third language choice in the schools it governs. In such schools, learning Sanskrit is an option for grades 5 to 8 (Classes V to VIII). This is true of most schools affiliated with the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) board, especially in states where the official language is Hindi. Sanskrit is also taught in traditional gurukulas throughout India.
A number of colleges and universities in India have dedicated departments for Sanskrit studies.
St James Junior School in London, England, offers Sanskrit as part of the curriculum. Since September 2009, US high school students have been able to receive credits as Independent Study or toward Foreign Language requirements by studying Sanskrit as part of the "SAFL: Samskritam as a Foreign Language" program coordinated by Samskrita Bharati. In Australia, the private boys' high school Sydney Grammar School offers Sanskrit from years 7 through to 12, including for the Higher School Certificate. Other schools that offer Sanskrit include the Ficino School in Auckland, New Zealand; St James Preparatory Schools in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg, South Africa; John Colet School, Sydney, Australia; Erasmus School, Melbourne, Australia.
European scholarship in Sanskrit, begun by Heinrich Roth (1620–1668) and Johann Ernst Hanxleden (1681–1731), is considered responsible for the discovery of an Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones (1746–1794). This research played an important role in the development of Western philology, or historical linguistics.
The 18th- and 19th-century speculations about the possible links of Sanskrit to ancient Egyptian language were later proven to be wrong, but it fed an orientalist discourse both in the form Indophobia and Indophilia, states Trautmann. Sanskrit writings, when first discovered, were imagined by Indophiles to potentially be "repositories of the primitive experiences and religion of the human race, and as such confirmatory of the truth of Christian scripture", as well as a key to "universal ethnological narrative". The Indophobes imagined the opposite, making the counterclaim that there is little of any value in Sanskrit, portraying it as "a language fabricated by artful [Brahmin] priests", with little original thought, possibly copied from the Greeks who came with Alexander or perhaps the Persians.
Scholars such as William Jones and his colleagues felt the need for systematic studies of Sanskrit language and literature. This launched the Asiatic Society, an idea that was soon transplanted to Europe starting with the efforts of Henry Thomas Colebrooke in Britain, then Alexander Hamilton who helped expand its studies to Paris and thereafter his student Friedrich Schlegel who introduced Sanskrit to the universities of Germany. Schlegel nurtured his own students into influential European Sanskrit scholars, particularly through Franz Bopp and Friedrich Max Muller. As these scholars translated the Sanskrit manuscripts, the enthusiasm for Sanskrit grew rapidly among European scholars, states Trautmann, and chairs for Sanskrit "were established in the universities of nearly every German statelet" creating a competition for Sanskrit experts.
In India, Indonesia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia, Sanskrit phrases are widely used as mottoes for various national, educational and social organisations:
The song "My Sweet Lord" by George Harrison includes The Hare Krishna mantra, also referred to reverentially as the Maha Mantra, is a 16-word Vaishnava mantra which is mentioned in the Kali-Santarana Upanishad."Satyagraha", an opera by Philip Glass, uses texts from the "Bhagavad Gita", sung in Sanskrit. The closing credits of "The Matrix Revolutions" has a prayer from the "Brihadaranyaka Upanishad". The song "Cyber-raga" from Madonna's album "Music" includes Sanskrit chants, and "Shanti/Ashtangi" from her 1998 album "Ray of Light", which won a Grammy, is the ashtanga vinyasa yoga chant. The lyrics include the mantra Om shanti. Composer John Williams featured choirs singing in Sanskrit for "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and in "". The theme song of "Battlestar Galactica 2004" is the Gayatri Mantra, taken from the Rigveda. The lyrics of "The Child in Us" by Enigma also contains Sanskrit verses. In 2006, Mexican singer Paulina Rubio was influenced in Sanskrit for her concept album "Ananda". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27698 |
Sign language
Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulations in combination with non-manual elements. Sign languages are full-fledged natural languages with their own grammar and lexicon. Sign languages are not universal and they are not mutually intelligible with each other, although there are also striking similarities among sign languages.
Linguists consider both spoken and signed communication to be types of natural language, meaning that both emerged through an abstract, protracted aging process and evolved over time without meticulous planning. Sign language should not be confused with body language, a type of nonverbal communication.
Wherever communities of deaf people exist, sign languages have developed as handy means of communication and they form the core of local deaf cultures. Although signing is used primarily by the deaf and hard of hearing, it is also used by hearing individuals, such as those unable to physically speak, those who have trouble with spoken language due to a disability or condition (augmentative and alternative communication), or those with deaf family members, such as children of deaf adults.
It is unclear how many sign languages currently exist worldwide. Each country generally has its own native sign language, and some have more than one. The 2013 edition of "Ethnologue" lists 137 sign languages. Some sign languages have obtained some form of legal recognition, while others have no status at all.
Linguists distinguish natural sign languages from other systems that are precursors to them or derived from them, such as invented manual codes for spoken languages, home sign, "baby sign", and signs learned by non-human primates.
Groups of deaf people have used sign languages throughout history. One of the earliest written records of a sign language is from the fifth century BC, in Plato's "Cratylus", where Socrates says: "If we hadn't a voice or a tongue, and wanted to express things to one another, wouldn't we try to make signs by moving our hands, head, and the rest of our body, just as dumb people do at present?"
Until the 19th century, most of what is known about historical sign languages is limited to the manual alphabets (fingerspelling systems) that were invented to facilitate transfer of words from a spoken language to a sign language, rather than documentation of the language itself. Pedro Ponce de León (1520–1584) is said to have developed the first manual alphabet.
In 1620, Juan Pablo Bonet published (‘Reduction of letters and art for teaching mute people to speak’) in Madrid. It is considered the first modern treatise of sign language phonetics, setting out a method of oral education for deaf people and a manual alphabet.
In Britain, manual alphabets were also in use for a number of purposes, such as secret communication, public speaking, or communication by deaf people. In 1648, John Bulwer described "Master Babington", a deaf man proficient in the use of a manual alphabet, "contryved on the joynts of his fingers", whose wife could converse with him easily, even in the dark through the use of tactile signing.
In 1680, George Dalgarno published "Didascalocophus, or, The deaf and dumb mans tutor", in which he presented his own method of deaf education, including an "arthrological" alphabet, where letters are indicated by pointing to different joints of the fingers and palm of the left hand. Arthrological systems had been in use by hearing people for some time; some have speculated that they can be traced to early Ogham manual alphabets.
The vowels of this alphabet have survived in the contemporary alphabets used in British Sign Language, Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language. The earliest known printed pictures of consonants of the modern two-handed alphabet appeared in 1698 with "Digiti Lingua" (Latin for "Language" [or "Tongue"] "of the Finger"), a pamphlet by an anonymous author who was himself unable to speak. He suggested that the manual alphabet could also be used by mutes, for silence and secrecy, or purely for entertainment. Nine of its letters can be traced to earlier alphabets, and 17 letters of the modern two-handed alphabet can be found among the two sets of 26 handshapes depicted.
Charles de La Fin published a book in 1692 describing an alphabetic system where pointing to a body part represented the first letter of the part (e.g. Brow=B), and vowels were located on the fingertips as with the other British systems. He described such codes for both English and Latin.
By 1720, the British manual alphabet had found more or less its present form. Descendants of this alphabet have been used by deaf communities (or at least in classrooms) in former British colonies India, Australia, New Zealand, Uganda and South Africa, as well as the republics and provinces of the former Yugoslavia, Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean, Indonesia, Norway, Germany and the United States.
Frenchman Charles-Michel de l'Épée published his manual alphabet in the 18th century, which has survived largely unchanged in France and North America until the present time. In 1755, Abbé de l'Épée founded the first school for deaf children in Paris; Laurent Clerc was arguably its most famous graduate. Clerc went to the United States with Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet to found the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817. Gallaudet's son, Edward Miner Gallaudet, founded a school for the deaf in 1857 in Washington, D.C., which in 1864 became the National Deaf-Mute College. Now called Gallaudet University, it is still the only liberal arts university for deaf people in the world.
International Sign, formerly known as Gestuno, is used mainly at international deaf events such as the Deaflympics and meetings of the World Federation of the Deaf. While recent studies claim that International Sign is a kind of a pidgin, they conclude that it is more complex than a typical pidgin and indeed is more like a full sign language.
While the more commonly used term is International Sign, it is sometimes referred to as Gestuno, or International Sign Pidgin and International Gesture (IG). International Sign is a term used by the World Federation of the Deaf and other international organisations.
In linguistic terms, sign languages are as rich and complex as any spoken language, despite the common misconception that they are not "real languages". Professional linguists have studied many sign languages and found that they exhibit the fundamental properties that exist in all languages.
Sign languages are not mime—in other words, signs are conventional, often arbitrary and do not necessarily have a visual relationship to their referent, much as most spoken language is not onomatopoeic. While iconicity is more systematic and widespread in sign languages than in spoken ones, the difference is not categorical. The visual modality allows the human preference for close connections between form and meaning, present but suppressed in spoken languages, to be more fully expressed. This does not mean that sign languages are a visual rendition of a spoken language. They have complex grammars of their own and can be used to discuss any topic, from the simple and concrete to the lofty and abstract.
Sign languages, like spoken languages, organize elementary, meaningless units called phonemes into meaningful semantic units. (These were once called cheremes, from the Greek word for "hand", in the case of sign languages, by analogy to the phonemes, from Greek for "voice", of spoken languages, but now also called phonemes, since the function is the same.) This is often called duality of patterning. As in spoken languages, these meaningless units are represented as (combinations of) features, although crude distinctions are often also made in terms of handshape (or "handform"), orientation, location (or "place of articulation"), movement, and non-manual expression. More generally, both sign and spoken languages share the characteristics that linguists have found in all natural human languages, such as transitoriness, semanticity, arbitrariness, productivity, and cultural transmission.
Common linguistic features of many sign languages are the occurrence of classifier constructions, a high degree of inflection by means of changes of movement, and a topic-comment syntax. More than spoken languages, sign languages can convey meaning by simultaneous means, e.g. by the use of space, two manual articulators, and the signer's face and body. Though there is still much discussion on the topic of iconicity in sign languages, classifiers are generally considered to be highly iconic, as these complex constructions "function as predicates that may express any or all of the following: motion, position, stative-descriptive, or handling information". It needs to be noted that the term classifier is not used by everyone working on these constructions. Across the field of sign language linguistics the same constructions are also referred with other terms.
Today, linguists study sign languages as true languages, part of the field of linguistics. However, the category "sign languages" was not added to the "Linguistic Bibliography / Bibliographie Linguistique" until the 1988 volume, when it appeared with 39 entries.
There is a common misconception that sign languages are somehow dependent on spoken languages: that they are spoken language expressed in signs, or that they were invented by hearing people. Similarities in language processing in the brain between signed and spoken languages further perpetuated this misconception. Hearing teachers in deaf schools, such as Charles-Michel de l'Épée or Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, are often incorrectly referred to as "inventors" of sign language. Instead, sign languages, like all natural languages, are developed by the people who use them, in this case, deaf people, who may have little or no knowledge of any spoken language.
As a sign language develops, it sometimes borrows elements from spoken languages, just as all languages borrow from other languages that they are in contact with. Sign languages vary in how and how much they borrow from spoken languages. In many sign languages, a manual alphabet (fingerspelling) may be used in signed communication to borrow a word from a spoken language, by spelling out the letters. This is most commonly used for proper names of people and places; it is also used in some languages for concepts for which no sign is available at that moment, particularly if the people involved are to some extent bilingual in the spoken language. Fingerspelling can sometimes be a source of new signs, such as initialized signs, in which the handshape represents the first letter of a spoken word with the same meaning.
On the whole, though, sign languages are independent of spoken languages and follow their own paths of development. For example, British Sign Language (BSL) and American Sign Language (ASL) are quite different and mutually unintelligible, even though the hearing people of the United Kingdom and the United States share the same spoken language. The grammars of sign languages do not usually resemble those of spoken languages used in the same geographical area; in fact, in terms of syntax, ASL shares more with spoken Japanese than it does with English.
Similarly, countries which use a single spoken language throughout may have two or more sign languages, or an area that contains more than one spoken language might use only one sign language. South Africa, which has 11 official spoken languages and a similar number of other widely used spoken languages, is a good example of this. It has only one sign language with two variants due to its history of having two major educational institutions for the deaf which have served different geographic areas of the country.
Sign languages exploit the unique features of the visual medium (sight), but may also exploit tactile features (tactile sign languages). Spoken language is by and large linear; only one sound can be made or received at a time. Sign language, on the other hand, is visual and, hence, can use a simultaneous expression, although this is limited articulatorily and linguistically. Visual perception allows processing of simultaneous information.
One way in which many sign languages take advantage of the spatial nature of the language is through the use of classifiers. Classifiers allow a signer to spatially show a referent's type, size, shape, movement, or extent.
The large focus on the possibility of simultaneity in sign languages in contrast to spoken languages is sometimes exaggerated, though. The use of two manual articulators is subject to motor constraints, resulting in a large extent of symmetry or signing with one articulator only. Further, sign languages, just like spoken languages, depend on linear sequencing of signs to form sentences; the greater use of simultaneity is mostly seen in the morphology (internal structure of individual signs).
Sign languages convey much of their prosody through non-manual elements. Postures or movements of the body, head, eyebrows, eyes, cheeks, and mouth are used in various combinations to show several categories of information, including lexical distinction, grammatical structure, adjectival or adverbial content, and discourse functions.
At the lexical level, signs can be lexically specified for non-manual elements in addition to the manual articulation. For instance, facial expressions may accompany verbs of emotion, as in the sign for "angry" in Czech Sign Language. Non-manual elements may also be lexically contrastive. For example, in ASL (American Sign Language), facial components distinguish some signs from other signs. An example is the sign translated as "not yet", which requires that the tongue touch the lower lip and that the head rotate from side to side, in addition to the manual part of the sign. Without these features the sign would be interpreted as "late". Mouthings, which are (parts of) spoken words accompanying lexical signs, can also be contrastive, as in the manually identical signs for "doctor" and "battery" in Sign Language of the Netherlands.
While the content of a signed sentence is produced manually, many grammatical functions are produced non-manually (i.e., with the face and the torso). Such functions include questions, negation, relative clauses and topicalization. ASL and BSL use similar non-manual marking for yes/no questions, for example. They are shown through raised eyebrows and a forward head tilt.
Some adjectival and adverbial information is conveyed through non-manual elements, but what these elements are varies from language to language. For instance, in ASL a slightly open mouth with the tongue relaxed and visible in the corner of the mouth means 'carelessly', but a similar non-manual in BSL means 'boring' or 'unpleasant'.
Discourse functions such as turn taking are largely regulated through head movement and eye gaze. Since the addressee in a signed conversation must be watching the signer, a signer can avoid letting the other person have a turn by not looking at them, or can indicate that the other person may have a turn by making eye contact.
Iconicity is similarity or analogy between the form of a sign (linguistic or otherwise) and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness. The first studies on iconicity in ASL were published in the late 1970s, and early 1980s. Many early sign language linguists rejected the notion that iconicity was an important aspect of the language. Though they recognized that certain aspects of the language seemed iconic, they considered this to be merely extralinguistic, a property which did not influence the language. However, mimetic aspects of sign language (signs that imitate, mimic, or represent) are found in abundance across a wide variety of sign languages. For example, when deaf children learning sign language try to express something but do not know the associated sign, they will often invent an iconic sign that displays mimetic properties. Though it never disappears from a particular sign language, iconicity is gradually weakened as forms of sign languages become more customary and are subsequently grammaticized. As a form becomes more conventional, it becomes disseminated in a methodical way phonologically to the rest of the sign language community. Frishberg (1975) wrote a very influential paper addressing the relationship between arbitrariness and iconicity in ASL. She concluded that though originally present in many signs, iconicity is degraded over time through the application of grammatical processes. In other words, over time, the natural processes of regularization in the language obscures any iconically motivated features of the sign.
In 1978, Psychologist Roger Brown was one of the first to suggest that the properties of ASL give it a clear advantage in terms of learning and memory. In his study, Brown found that when a group of six hearing children were taught signs that had high levels of iconic mapping they were significantly more likely to recall the signs in a later memory task than another group of six children that were taught signs that had little or no iconic properties. In contrast to Brown, linguists Elissa Newport and Richard Meier found that iconicity "appears to have virtually no impact on the acquisition of American Sign Language".
A central task for the pioneers of sign language linguistics was trying to prove that ASL was a real language and not merely a collection of gestures or "English on the hands." One of the prevailing beliefs at this time was that 'real languages' must consist of an arbitrary relationship between form and meaning. Thus, if ASL consisted of signs that had iconic form-meaning relationship, it could not be considered a real language. As a result, iconicity as a whole was largely neglected in research of sign languages.
The cognitive linguistics perspective rejects a more traditional definition of iconicity as a relationship between linguistic form and a concrete, real-world referent. Rather it is a set of selected correspondences between the form and meaning of a sign. In this view, iconicity is grounded in a language user's mental representation ("construal" in cognitive grammar). It is defined as a fully grammatical and central aspect of a sign language rather than a peripheral phenomenon.
The cognitive linguistics perspective allows for some signs to be fully iconic or partially iconic given the number of correspondences between the possible parameters of form and meaning. In this way, the Israeli Sign Language (ISL) sign for "ask" has parts of its form that are iconic ("movement away from the mouth" means "something coming from the mouth"), and parts that are arbitrary (the handshape, and the orientation).
Many signs have metaphoric mappings as well as iconic or metonymic ones. For these signs there are three way correspondences between a form, a concrete source and an abstract target meaning. The ASL sign LEARN has this three way correspondence. The abstract target meaning is "learning". The concrete source is putting objects into the head from books. The form is a grasping hand moving from an open palm to the forehead. The iconic correspondence is between form and concrete source. The metaphorical correspondence is between concrete source and abstract target meaning. Because the concrete source is connected to two correspondences linguistics refer to metaphorical signs as "double mapped".
Although sign languages have emerged naturally in deaf communities alongside or among spoken languages, they are unrelated to spoken languages and have different grammatical structures at their core.
Sign languages may be classified by how they arise.
In non-signing communities, home sign is not a full language, but closer to a pidgin. Home sign is amorphous and generally idiosyncratic to a particular family, where a deaf child does not have contact with other deaf children and is not educated in sign. Such systems are not generally passed on from one generation to the next. Where they are passed on, creolization would be expected to occur, resulting in a full language. However, home sign may also be closer to full language in communities where the hearing population has a gestural mode of language; examples include various Australian Aboriginal sign languages and gestural systems across West Africa, such as Mofu-Gudur in Cameroon.
A village sign language is a local indigenous language that typically arises over several generations in a relatively insular community with a high incidence of deafness, and is used both by the deaf and by a significant portion of the hearing community, who have deaf family and friends. The most famous of these is probably the extinct Martha's Vineyard Sign Language of the US, but there are also numerous village languages scattered throughout Africa, Asia, and America.
Deaf-community sign languages, on the other hand, arise where deaf people come together to form their own communities. These include school sign, such as Nicaraguan Sign Language, which develop in the student bodies of deaf schools which do not use sign as a language of instruction, as well as community languages such as Bamako Sign Language, which arise where generally uneducated deaf people congregate in urban centers for employment. At first, Deaf-community sign languages are not generally known by the hearing population, in many cases not even by close family members. However, they may grow, in some cases becoming a language of instruction and receiving official recognition, as in the case of ASL.
Both contrast with speech-taboo languages such as the various Aboriginal Australian sign languages, which are developed by the hearing community and only used secondarily by the deaf. It is doubtful whether most of these are languages in their own right, rather than manual codes of spoken languages, though a few such as Yolngu Sign Language are independent of any particular spoken language. Hearing people may also develop sign to communicate with speakers of other languages, as in Plains Indian Sign Language; this was a contact signing system or pidgin that was evidently not used by deaf people in the Plains nations, though it presumably influenced home sign.
Language contact and creolization is common in the development of sign languages, making clear family classifications difficult – it is often unclear whether lexical similarity is due to borrowing or a common parent language, or whether there was one or several parent languages, such as several village languages merging into a Deaf-community language. Contact occurs between sign languages, between sign and spoken languages (contact sign, a kind of pidgin), and between sign languages and gestural systems used by the broader community. One author has speculated that Adamorobe Sign Language, a village sign language of Ghana, may be related to the "gestural trade jargon used in the markets throughout West Africa", in vocabulary and areal features including prosody and phonetics.
The only comprehensive classification along these lines going beyond a simple listing of languages dates back to 1991. The classification is based on the 69 sign languages from the 1988 edition of Ethnologue that were known at the time of the 1989 conference on sign languages in Montreal and 11 more languages the author added after the conference.
In his classification, the author distinguishes between primary and auxiliary sign languages as well as between single languages and names that are thought to refer to more than one language. The prototype-A class of languages includes all those sign languages that seemingly cannot be derived from any other language. Prototype-R languages are languages that are remotely modelled on a prototype-A language (in many cases thought to have been French Sign Language) by a process Kroeber (1940) called "stimulus diffusion". The families of BSL, DGS, JSL, LSF (and possibly LSG) were the products of creolization and relexification of prototype languages. Creolization is seen as enriching overt morphology in sign languages, as compared to reducing overt morphology in spoken languages.
Linguistic typology (going back to Edward Sapir) is based on word structure and distinguishes morphological classes such as agglutinating/concatenating, inflectional, polysynthetic, incorporating, and isolating ones.
Sign languages vary in word-order typology. For example, Austrian Sign Language, Japanese Sign Language and Indo-Pakistani Sign Language are Subject-object-verb while ASL is Subject-verb-object. Influence from the surrounding spoken languages is not improbable.
Sign languages tend to be incorporating classifier languages, where a classifier handshape representing the object is incorporated into those transitive verbs which allow such modification. For a similar group of intransitive verbs (especially motion verbs), it is the subject which is incorporated. Only in a very few sign languages (for instance Japanese Sign Language) are agents ever incorporated. in this way, since subjects of intransitives are treated similarly to objects of transitives, incorporation in sign languages can be said to follow an ergative pattern.
Brentari classifies sign languages as a whole group determined by the medium of communication (visual instead of auditory) as one group with the features monosyllabic and polymorphemic. That means, that one syllable (i.e. one word, one sign) can express several morphemes, e.g., subject and object of a verb determine the direction of the verb's movement (inflection).
Another aspect of typology that has been studied in sign languages is their systems for cardinal numbers. Typologically significant differences have been found between sign languages.
Children who are exposed to a sign language from birth will acquire it, just as hearing children acquire their native spoken language.
The Critical Period hypothesis suggests that language, spoken or signed, is more easily acquired as a child at a young age versus an adult because of the plasticity of the child's brain. In a study done at the University of McGill, they found that American Sign Language users who acquired the language natively (from birth) performed better when asked to copy videos of ASL sentences than ASL users who acquired the language later in life. They also found that there are differences in the grammatical morphology of ASL sentences between the two groups, all suggesting that there is a very important critical period in learning signed languages.
The acquisition of non-manual features follows an interesting pattern: When a word that always has a particular non-manual feature associated with it (such as a wh- question word) is learned, the non-manual aspects are attached to the word but don't have the flexibility associated with adult use. At a certain point, the non-manual features are dropped and the word is produced with no facial expression. After a few months, the non-manuals reappear, this time being used the way adult signers would use them.
Sign languages do not have a traditional or formal written form. Many deaf people do not see a need to write their own language.
Several ways to represent sign languages in written form have been developed.
So far, there is no consensus regarding the written form of sign language. Except for SignWriting, none are widely used. Maria Galea writes that SignWriting "is becoming widespread, uncontainable and untraceable. In the same way that works written in and about a well developed writing system such as the Latin script, the time has arrived where SW is so widespread, that it is impossible in the same way to list all works that have been produced using this writing system and that have been written about this writing system." In 2015, the Federal University of Santa Catarina accepted a dissertation written in Brazilian Sign Language using Sutton SignWriting for a master's degree in linguistics. The dissertation "The Writing of Grammatical Non-Manual Expressions in Sentences in LIBRAS Using the SignWriting System" by João Paulo Ampessan states that "the data indicate the need for [non-manual expressions] usage in writing sign language".
For a native signer, sign perception influences how the mind makes sense of their visual language experience. For example, a handshape may vary based on the other signs made before or after it, but these variations are arranged in perceptual categories during its development. The mind detects handshape contrasts but groups similar handshapes together in one category. Different handshapes are stored in other categories. The mind ignores some of the similarities between different perceptual categories, at the same time preserving the visual information within each perceptual category of handshape variation.
When Deaf people constitute a relatively small proportion of the general population, Deaf communities often develop that are distinct from the surrounding hearing community.
These Deaf communities are very widespread in the world, associated especially with sign languages used in urban areas and throughout a nation, and the cultures they have developed are very rich.
One example of sign language variation in the Deaf community is Black ASL. This sign language was developed in the Black Deaf community as a variant during the American era of segregation and racism, where young Black Deaf students were forced to attend separate schools than their white Deaf peers.
On occasion, where the prevalence of deaf people is high enough, a deaf sign language has been taken up by an entire local community, forming what is sometimes called a "village sign language" or "shared signing community". Typically this happens in small, tightly integrated communities with a closed gene pool. Famous examples include:
In such communities deaf people are generally well integrated in the general community and not socially disadvantaged,
so much so that it is difficult to speak of a separate "Deaf" community.
Many Australian Aboriginal sign languages arose in a context of extensive speech taboos, such as during mourning and initiation rites. They are or were especially highly developed among the Warlpiri, Warumungu, Dieri, Kaytetye, Arrernte, and Warlmanpa, and are based on their respective spoken languages.
A pidgin sign language arose among tribes of American Indians in the Great Plains region of North America (see Plains Indian Sign Language). It was used by hearing people to communicate among tribes with different spoken languages, as well as by deaf people. There are especially users today among the Crow, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. Unlike Australian Aboriginal sign languages, it shares the spatial grammar of deaf sign languages.
In the 1500s, a Spanish expeditionary, Cabeza de Vaca, observed natives in the western part of modern-day Florida using sign language, and in the mid-16th century Coronado mentioned that communication with the Tonkawa using signs was possible without a translator. Whether or not these gesture systems reached the stage at which they could properly be called languages is still up for debate. There are estimates indicating that as many as 2% of Native Americans are seriously or completely deaf, a rate more than twice the national average.
Sign language is also used by some people as a form of alternative or augmentative communication by people who can hear but cannot use their voices to speak.
Signs may also be used by hearing people for manual communication in secret situations, such as hunting, in noisy environments, underwater, through windows or at a distance.
Some sign languages have obtained some form of legal recognition, while others have no status at all. Sarah Batterbury has argued that sign languages should be recognized and supported not merely as an accommodation for the disabled, but as the communication medium of language communities.
One of the first demonstrations of the ability for telecommunications to help sign language users communicate with each other occurred when AT&T's videophone (trademarked as the "Picturephone") was introduced to the public at the 1964 New York World's Fair – two deaf users were able to freely communicate with each other between the fair and another city. However, video communication did not become widely available until sufficient bandwidth for the high volume of video data became available in the early 2000s.
The Internet now allows deaf people to talk via a video link, either with a special-purpose videophone designed for use with sign language or with "off-the-shelf" video services designed for use with broadband and an ordinary computer webcam. The special videophones that are designed for sign language communication may provide better quality than 'off-the-shelf' services and may use data compression methods specifically designed to maximize the intelligibility of sign languages. Some advanced equipment enables a person to remotely control the other person's video camera, in order to zoom in and out or to point the camera better to understand the signing.
In order to facilitate communication between deaf and hearing people, sign language interpreters are often used. Such activities involve considerable effort on the part of the interpreter, since sign languages are distinct natural languages with their own syntax, different from any spoken language.
The interpretation flow is normally between a sign language and a spoken language that are customarily used in the same country, such as French Sign Language (LSF) and spoken French in France, Spanish Sign Language (LSE) to spoken Spanish in Spain, British Sign Language (BSL) and spoken English in the U.K., and American Sign Language (ASL) and spoken English in the US and most of anglophone Canada (since BSL and ASL are distinct sign languages both used in English-speaking countries), etc. Sign language interpreters who can translate between signed and spoken languages that are not normally paired (such as between LSE and English), are also available, albeit less frequently.
With recent developments in artificial intelligence in computer science, some recent deep learning based machine translation algorithms have been developed which automatically translate short videos containing sign language sentences (often simple sentence consists of only one clause) directly to written language.
Interpreters may be physically present with both parties to the conversation but, since the technological advancements in the early 2000s, provision of interpreters in remote locations has become available. In video remote interpreting (VRI), the two clients (a sign language user and a hearing person who wish to communicate with each other) are in one location, and the interpreter is in another. The interpreter communicates with the sign language user via a video telecommunications link, and with the hearing person by an audio link. VRI can be used for situations in which no on-site interpreters are available.
However, VRI cannot be used for situations in which all parties are speaking via telephone alone. With video relay service (VRS), the sign language user, the interpreter, and the hearing person are in three separate locations, thus allowing the two clients to talk to each other on the phone through the interpreter.
Sign language is sometimes provided for television programmes. The signer usually appears in the bottom corner of the screen, with the programme being broadcast full size or slightly shrunk away from that corner. Typically for press conferences such as those given by the Mayor of New York City, the signer appears to stage left or right of the public official to allow both the speaker and signer to be in frame at the same time.
Paddy Ladd initiated deaf programming on British television in the 1980s and is credited with getting sign language on television and enabling deaf children to be educated in sign.
In traditional analogue broadcasting, many programmes are repeated, often in the early hours of the morning, with the signer present rather than have them appear at the main broadcast time. This is due to the distraction they cause to those not wishing to see the signer. On the BBC, many programmes that broadcast late at night or early in the morning are signed. Some emerging television technologies allow the viewer to turn the signer on and off in a similar manner to subtitles and closed captioning.
Legal requirements covering sign language on television vary from country to country. In the United Kingdom, the Broadcasting Act 1996 addressed the requirements for blind and deaf viewers, but has since been replaced by the Communications Act 2003.
As with any spoken language, sign languages are also vulnerable to becoming endangered. For example, a sign language used by a small community may be endangered and even abandoned as users shift to a sign language used by a larger community, as has happened with Hawai'i Sign Language, which is almost extinct except for a few elderly signers. Even nationally recognised sign languages can be endangered; for example, New Zealand Sign Language is losing users. Methods are being developed to assess the language vitality of sign languages.
There are a number of communication systems that are similar in some respects to sign languages, while not having all the characteristics of a full sign language, particularly its grammatical structure. Many of these are either precursors to natural sign languages or are derived from them.
When Deaf and Hearing people interact, signing systems may be developed that use signs drawn from a natural sign language but used according to the grammar of the spoken language. In particular, when people devise one-for-one sign-for-word correspondences between spoken words (or even morphemes) and signs that represent them, the system that results is a manual code for a spoken language, rather than a natural sign language. Such systems may be invented in an attempt to help teach Deaf children the spoken language, and generally are not used outside an educational context.
Some hearing parents teach signs to young hearing children. Since the muscles in babies' hands grow and develop quicker than their mouths, signs are seen as a beneficial option for better communication. Babies can usually produce signs before they can speak. This reduces the confusion between parents when trying to figure out what their child wants. When the child begins to speak, signing is usually abandoned, so the child does not progress to acquiring the grammar of the sign language.
This is in contrast to hearing children who grow up with Deaf parents, who generally acquire the full sign language natively, the same as Deaf children of Deaf parents.
Informal, rudimentary sign systems are sometimes developed within a single family. For instance, when hearing parents with no sign language skills have a deaf child, the child may develop a system of signs naturally, unless repressed by the parents. The term for these mini-languages is home sign (sometimes "kitchen sign").
Home sign arises due to the absence of any other way to communicate. Within the span of a single lifetime and without the support or feedback of a community, the child naturally invents signs to help meet his or her communication needs, and may even develop a few grammatical rules for combining short sequences of signs. Still, this kind of system is inadequate for the intellectual development of a child and it comes nowhere near meeting the standards linguists use to describe a complete language. No type of home sign is recognized as a full language.
There have been several notable examples of scientists teaching signs to non-human primates in order to communicate with humans, such as
chimpanzees, gorillas and
orangutans. However, linguists generally point out that this does not constitute knowledge of a human "language" as a complete system, rather than simply signs / words. Notable examples of animals who have learned signs include:
One theory of the evolution of human language states that it developed first as a gestural system, which later shifted to speech. An important question for this gestural theory is what caused the shift to vocalization.
"Note: the articles for specific sign languages (e.g. ASL or BSL) may contain further external links, e.g. for learning those languages." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27699 |
String (computer science)
In computer programming, a string is traditionally a sequence of characters, either as a literal constant or as some kind of variable. The latter may allow its elements to be mutated and the length changed, or it may be fixed (after creation). A string is generally considered as a data type and is often implemented as an array data structure of bytes (or words) that stores a sequence of elements, typically characters, using some character encoding. "String" may also denote more general arrays or other sequence (or list) data types and structures.
Depending on the programming language and precise data type used, a variable declared to be a string may either cause storage in memory to be statically allocated for a predetermined maximum length or employ dynamic allocation to allow it to hold a variable number of elements.
When a string appears literally in source code, it is known as a string literal or an anonymous string.
In formal languages, which are used in mathematical logic and theoretical computer science, a string is a finite sequence of symbols that are chosen from a set called an alphabet.
A string datatype is a datatype modeled on the idea of a formal string. Strings are such an important and useful datatype that they are implemented in nearly every programming language. In some languages they are available as primitive types and in others as composite types. The syntax of most high-level programming languages allows for a string, usually quoted in some way, to represent an instance of a string datatype; such a meta-string is called a "literal" or "string literal".
Although formal strings can have an arbitrary finite length, the length of strings in real languages is often constrained to an artificial maximum. In general, there are two types of string datatypes: "fixed-length strings", which have a fixed maximum length to be determined at compile time and which use the same amount of memory whether this maximum is needed or not, and "variable-length strings", whose length is not arbitrarily fixed and which can use varying amounts of memory depending on the actual requirements at run time (see Memory management). Most strings in modern programming languages are variable-length strings. Of course, even variable-length strings are limited in length – by the size of available computer memory. The string length can be stored as a separate integer (which may put another artificial limit on the length) or implicitly through a termination character, usually a character value with all bits zero such as in C programming language. See also "Null-terminated" below.
String datatypes have historically allocated one byte per character, and, although the exact character set varied by region, character encodings were similar enough that programmers could often get away with ignoring this, since characters a program treated specially (such as period and space and comma) were in the same place in all the encodings a program would encounter. These character sets were typically based on ASCII or EBCDIC. If text in one encoding was displayed on a system using a different encoding, text was often mangled, though often somewhat readable and some computer users learned to read the mangled text.
Logographic languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (known collectively as CJK) need far more than 256 characters (the limit of a one 8-bit byte per-character encoding) for reasonable representation. The normal solutions involved keeping single-byte representations for ASCII and using two-byte representations for CJK ideographs. Use of these with existing code led to problems with matching and cutting of strings, the severity of which depended on how the character encoding was designed. Some encodings such as the EUC family guarantee that a byte value in the ASCII range will represent only that ASCII character, making the encoding safe for systems that use those characters as field separators. Other encodings such as ISO-2022 and Shift-JIS do not make such guarantees, making matching on byte codes unsafe. These encodings also were not "self-synchronizing", so that locating character boundaries required backing up to the start of a string, and pasting two strings together could result in corruption of the second string.
Unicode has simplified the picture somewhat. Most programming languages now have a datatype for Unicode strings. Unicode's preferred byte stream format UTF-8 is designed not to have the problems described above for older multibyte encodings. UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 require the programmer to know that the fixed-size code units are different than the "characters", the main difficulty currently is incorrectly designed APIs that attempt to hide this difference (UTF-32 does make "code points" fixed-sized, but these are not "characters" due to composing codes).
Some languages, such as C++ and Ruby, normally allow the contents of a string to be changed after it has been created; these are termed "mutable" strings. In other languages, such as Java and Python, the value is fixed and a new string must be created if any alteration is to be made; these are termed "immutable" strings (some of these languages also provide another type that is mutable, such as Java and .NET , the thread-safe Java , and the Cocoa codice_1).
Strings are typically implemented as arrays of bytes, characters, or code units, in order to allow fast access to individual units or substrings—including characters when they have a fixed length. A few languages such as Haskell implement them as linked lists instead.
Some languages, such as Prolog and Erlang, avoid implementing a dedicated string datatype at all, instead adopting the convention of representing strings as lists of character codes.
Representations of strings depend heavily on the choice of character repertoire and the method of character encoding. Older string implementations were designed to work with repertoire and encoding defined by ASCII, or more recent extensions like the ISO 8859 series. Modern implementations often use the extensive repertoire defined by Unicode along with a variety of complex encodings such as UTF-8 and UTF-16.
The term "byte string" usually indicates a general-purpose string of bytes, rather than strings of only (readable) characters, strings of bits, or such. Byte strings often imply that bytes can take any value and any data can be stored as-is, meaning that there should be no value interpreted as a termination value.
Most string implementations are very similar to variable-length arrays with the entries storing the character codes of corresponding characters. The principal difference is that, with certain encodings, a single logical character may take up more than one entry in the array. This happens for example with UTF-8, where single codes (UCS code points) can take anywhere from one to four bytes, and single characters can take an arbitrary number of codes. In these cases, the logical length of the string (number of characters) differs from the physical length of the array (number of bytes in use). UTF-32 avoids the first part of the problem.
The length of a string can be stored implicitly by using a special terminating character; often this is the null character (NUL), which has all bits zero, a convention used and perpetuated by the popular C programming language. Hence, this representation is commonly referred to as a C string. This representation of an "n"-character string takes "n" + 1 space (1 for the terminator), and is thus an implicit data structure.
In terminated strings, the terminating code is not an allowable character in any string. Strings with "length" field do not have this limitation and can also store arbitrary binary data.
An example of a "null-terminated string" stored in a 10-byte buffer, along with its ASCII (or more modern UTF-8) representation as 8-bit hexadecimal numbers is:
The length of the string in the above example, "codice_2", is 5 characters, but it occupies 6 bytes. Characters after the terminator do not form part of the representation; they may be either part of other data or just garbage. (Strings of this form are sometimes called "ASCIZ strings", after the original assembly language directive used to declare them.)
Using a special byte other than null for terminating strings has historically appeared in both hardware and software, though sometimes with a value that was also a printing character. codice_3 was used by many assembler systems, codice_4 used by CDC systems (this character had a value of zero), and the ZX80 used codice_5 since this was the string delimiter in its BASIC language.
Somewhat similar, "data processing" machines like the IBM 1401 used a special word mark bit to delimit strings at the left, where the operation would start at the right. This bit had to be clear in all other parts of the string. This meant that, while the IBM 1401 had a seven-bit word, almost no-one ever thought to use this as a feature, and override the assignment of the seventh bit to (for example) handle ASCII codes.
Early microcomputer software relied upon the fact that ASCII codes do not use the high-order bit, and set it to indicate the end of a string. It must be reset to 0 prior to output.
The length of a string can also be stored explicitly, for example by prefixing the string with the length as a byte value. This convention is used in many Pascal dialects; as a consequence, some people call such a string a Pascal string or P-string. Storing the string length as byte limits the maximum string length to 255. To avoid such limitations, improved implementations of P-strings use 16-, 32-, or 64-bit words to store the string length. When the "length" field covers the address space, strings are limited only by the available memory.
If the length is bounded, then it can be encoded in constant space, typically a machine word, thus leading to an implicit data structure, taking "n" + "k" space, where "k" is the number of characters in a word (8 for 8-bit ASCII on a 64-bit machine, 1 for 32-bit UTF-32/UCS-4 on a 32-bit machine, etc.).
If the length is not bounded, encoding a length "n" takes log("n") space (see fixed-length code), so length-prefixed strings are a succinct data structure, encoding a string of length "n" in log("n") + "n" space.
In the latter case, the length-prefix field itself doesn't have fixed length, therefore the actual string data needs to be moved when the string grows such that the length field needs to be increased.
Here is a Pascal string stored in a 10-byte buffer, along with its ASCII / UTF-8 representation:
Many languages, including object-oriented ones, implement strings as records with an internal structure like:
class string {
However, since the implementation is usually hidden, the string must be accessed and modified through member functions. codice_6 is a pointer to a dynamically allocated memory area, which might be expanded as needed. See also string (C++).
Both character termination and length codes limit strings: For example, C character arrays that contain null (NUL) characters cannot be handled directly by C string library functions: Strings using a length code are limited to the maximum value of the length code.
Both of these limitations can be overcome by clever programming.
It is possible to create data structures and functions that manipulate them that do not have the problems associated with character termination and can in principle overcome length code bounds. It is also possible to optimize the string represented using techniques from run length encoding (replacing repeated characters by the character value and a length) and Hamming encoding.
While these representations are common, others are possible. Using ropes makes certain string operations, such as insertions, deletions, and concatenations more efficient.
The core data structure in a text editor is the one that manages the string (sequence of characters) that represents the current state of the file being edited.
While that state could be stored in a single long consecutive array of characters, a typical text editor instead uses an alternative representation as its sequence data structure—a gap buffer, a linked list of lines, a piece table, or a rope—which makes certain string operations, such as insertions, deletions, and undoing previous edits, more efficient.
The differing memory layout and storage requirements of strings can affect the security of the program accessing the string data. String representations requiring a terminating character are commonly susceptible to buffer overflow problems if the terminating character is not present, caused by a coding error or an attacker deliberately altering the data. String representations adopting a separate length field are also susceptible if the length can be manipulated. In such cases, program code accessing the string data requires bounds checking to ensure that it does not inadvertently access or change data outside of the string memory limits.
String data is frequently obtained from user input to a program. As such, it is the responsibility of the program to validate the string to ensure that it represents the expected format. Performing limited or no validation of user input can cause a program to be vulnerable to code injection attacks.
Sometimes, strings need to be embedded inside a text file that is both human-readable and intended for consumption by a machine. This is needed in, for example, source code of programming languages, or in configuration files. In this case, the NUL character doesn't work well as a terminator since it is normally invisible (non-printable) and is difficult to input via a keyboard. Storing the string length would also be inconvenient as manual computation and tracking of the length is tedious and error-prone.
Two common representations are:
While character strings are very common uses of strings, a string in computer science may refer generically to any sequence of homogeneously typed data. A bit string or byte string, for example, may be used to represent non-textual binary data retrieved from a communications medium. This data may or may not be represented by a string-specific datatype, depending on the needs of the application, the desire of the programmer, and the capabilities of the programming language being used. If the programming language's string implementation is not 8-bit clean, data corruption may ensue.
C programmers draw a sharp distinction between a "string", aka a "string of characters", which by definition is always null terminated, vs. a "byte string" or "pseudo string" which may be stored in the same array but is often not null terminated.
Using C string handling functions on such a "byte string" often seems to work, but later leads to security problems.
There are many algorithms for processing strings, each with various trade-offs. Competing algorithms can be analyzed with respect to run time, storage requirements, and so forth.
Some categories of algorithms include:
Advanced string algorithms often employ complex mechanisms and data structures, among them suffix trees and finite-state machines.
The name "stringology" was coined in 1984 by computer scientist Zvi Galil for the issue of algorithms and data structures used for string processing.
Character strings are such a useful datatype that several languages have been designed in order to make string processing applications easy to write. Examples include the following languages:
Many Unix utilities perform simple string manipulations and can be used to easily program some powerful string processing algorithms. Files and finite streams may be viewed as strings.
Some APIs like Multimedia Control Interface, embedded SQL or printf use strings to hold commands that will be interpreted.
Recent scripting programming languages, including Perl, Python, Ruby, and Tcl employ regular expressions to facilitate text operations. Perl is particularly noted for its regular expression use, and many other languages and applications implement Perl compatible regular expressions.
Some languages such as Perl and Ruby support string interpolation, which permits arbitrary expressions to be evaluated and included in string literals.
String functions are used to create strings or change the contents of a mutable string. They also are used to query information about a string. The set of functions and their names varies depending on the computer programming language.
The most basic example of a string function is the string length function – the function that returns the length of a string (not counting any terminator characters or any of the string's internal structural information) and does not modify the string. This function is often named codice_7 or codice_8. For example, codice_9 would return 11. Another common function is concatenation, where a new string is created by appending two strings, often this is the + addition operator.
Some microprocessor's instruction set architectures contain direct support for string operations, such as block copy (e.g. In intel x86m codice_10).
Let Σ be a finite set of symbols (alternatively called characters), called the alphabet. No assumption is made about the nature of the symbols. A string (or word) over Σ is any finite sequence of symbols from Σ. For example, if Σ = {0, 1}, then "01011" is a string over Σ.
The "length" of a string "s" is the number of symbols in "s" (the length of the sequence) and can be any non-negative integer; it is often denoted as |"s"|. The "empty string" is the unique string over Σ of length 0, and is denoted "ε" or "λ".
The set of all strings over Σ of length "n" is denoted Σ"n". For example, if Σ = {0, 1}, then Σ2 = {00, 01, 10, 11}. Note that Σ0 = {ε} for any alphabet Σ.
The set of all strings over Σ of any length is the Kleene closure of Σ and is denoted Σ*. In terms of Σ"n",
For example, if Σ = {0, 1}, then Σ* = {ε, 0, 1, 00, 01, 10, 11, 000, 001, 010, 011, ...}. Although the set Σ* itself is countably infinite, each element of Σ* is a string of finite length.
A set of strings over Σ (i.e. any subset of Σ*) is called a "formal language" over Σ. For example, if Σ = {0, 1}, the set of strings with an even number of zeros, {ε, 1, 00, 11, 001, 010, 100, 111, 0000, 0011, 0101, 0110, 1001, 1010, 1100, 1111, ...}, is a formal language over Σ.
"Concatenation" is an important binary operation on Σ*. For any two strings "s" and "t" in Σ*, their concatenation is defined as the sequence of symbols in "s" followed by the sequence of characters in "t", and is denoted "st". For example, if Σ = {a, b, ..., z}, "s" = bear, and "t" = hug, then "st" = bearhug and "ts" = hugbear.
String concatenation is an associative, but non-commutative operation. The empty string ε serves as the identity element; for any string "s", ε"s" = "s"ε = "s". Therefore, the set Σ* and the concatenation operation form a monoid, the free monoid generated by Σ. In addition, the length function defines a monoid homomorphism from Σ* to the non-negative integers (that is, a function formula_2, such that formula_3).
A string "s" is said to be a "substring" or "factor" of "t" if there exist (possibly empty) strings "u" and "v" such that "t" = "usv". The relation "is a substring of" defines a partial order on Σ*, the least element of which is the empty string.
A string "s" is said to be a prefix of "t" if there exists a string "u" such that "t" = "su". If "u" is nonempty, "s" is said to be a "proper" prefix of "t". Symmetrically, a string "s" is said to be a suffix of "t" if there exists a string "u" such that "t" = "us". If "u" is nonempty, "s" is said to be a "proper" suffix of "t". Suffixes and prefixes are substrings of "t". Both the relations "is a prefix of" and "is a suffix of" are prefix orders.
The reverse of a string is a string with the same symbols but in reverse order. For example, if "s" = abc (where a, b, and c are symbols of the alphabet), then the reverse of "s" is cba. A string that is the reverse of itself (e.g., "s" = madam) is called a palindrome, which also includes the empty string and all strings of length 1.
A string "s" = "uv" is said to be a rotation of "t" if "t" = "vu". For example, if Σ = {0, 1} the string 0011001 is a rotation of 0100110, where "u" = 00110 and "v" = 01. As another example, the string abc has three different rotations, viz. abc itself (with "u"=abc, "v"=ε), bca (with "u"=bc, "v"=a), and cab (with "u"=c, "v"=ab).
It is often useful to define an ordering on a set of strings. If the alphabet Σ has a total order (cf. alphabetical order) one can define a total order on Σ* called lexicographical order. For example, if Σ = {0, 1} and 0 < 1, then the lexicographical order on Σ* includes the relationships ε < 0 < 00 < 000 < ... < 0001 < 001 < 01 < 010 < 011 < 0110 < 01111 < 1 < 10 < 100 < 101 < 111 < 1111 < 11111 ... The lexicographical order is total if the alphabetical order is, but isn't well-founded for any nontrivial alphabet, even if the alphabetical order is.
See Shortlex for an alternative string ordering that preserves well-foundedness.
A number of additional operations on strings commonly occur in the formal theory. These are given in the article on string operations.
Strings admit the following interpretation as nodes on a graph, where "k" is the number of symbols in Σ:
The natural topology on the set of fixed-length strings or variable-length strings is the discrete topology, but the natural topology on the set of infinite strings is the limit topology, viewing the set of infinite strings as the inverse limit of the sets of finite strings. This is the construction used for the "p"-adic numbers and some constructions of the Cantor set, and yields the same topology.
Isomorphisms between string representations of topologies can be found by normalizing according to the lexicographically minimal string rotation. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27701 |
Satanism
Satanism is a group of ideological and philosophical beliefs based on Satan. Contemporary religious practice of Satanism began with the founding of the Church of Satan in 1966, although a few historical precedents exist. Prior to the public practice, Satanism existed primarily as an accusation by various Christian groups toward perceived ideological opponents, rather than a self-identity. Satanism, and the concept of Satan, has also been used by artists and entertainers for symbolic expression.
Accusations that various groups have been practicing Satanism have been made throughout much of Christian history. During the Middle Ages, the Inquisition attached to the Catholic Church alleged that various heretical Christian sects and groups, such as the Knights Templar and the Cathars, performed secret Satanic rituals. In the subsequent Early Modern period, belief in a widespread Satanic conspiracy of witches resulted in mass trials of alleged witches across Europe and the North American colonies. Accusations that Satanic conspiracies were active, and behind events such as Protestantism (and conversely, the Protestant claim that the Pope was the Antichrist) and the French Revolution continued to be made in Christendom during the eighteenth to the twentieth century. The idea of a vast Satanic conspiracy reached new heights with the influential Taxil hoax of France in the 1890s, which claimed that Freemasonry worshiped Satan, Lucifer, and Baphomet in their rituals. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Satanic ritual abuse hysteria spread through the United States and the United Kingdom, amid fears that groups of Satanists were regularly sexually abusing and murdering children in their rites. In most of these cases, there is no corroborating evidence that any of those accused of Satanism were actually practitioners of a Satanic religion or guilty of the allegations leveled at them.
Since the 19th century, various small religious groups have emerged that identify as Satanists or use Satanic iconography. Satanist groups that appeared after the 1960s are widely diverse, but two major trends are theistic Satanism and atheistic Satanism. Theistic Satanists venerate Satan as a supernatural deity, viewing him not as omnipotent but rather as a patriarch. In contrast, atheistic Satanists regard Satan as merely a symbol of certain human traits.
Contemporary religious Satanism is predominantly an American phenomenon, the ideas spreading elsewhere with the effects of globalization and the Internet. The Internet spreads awareness of other Satanists, and is also the main battleground for Satanist disputes. Satanism started to reach Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s, in time with the fall of the Soviet Union, and most noticeably in Poland and Lithuania, predominantly Roman Catholic countries.
In their study of Satanism, the religious studies scholars Asbjørn Dyrendal, James R. Lewis, and Jesper Aa. Petersen stated that the term "Satanism" "has a history of being a designation made by people against those whom they dislike; it is a term used for 'othering'". The concept of Satanism is an invention of Christianity, for it relies upon the figure of Satan, a character deriving from Christian mythology.
Elsewhere, Petersen noted that "Satanism as something others do is very different from Satanism as a self-designation".
Eugene Gallagher noted that, as commonly used, "Satanism" was usually "a polemical, not a descriptive term".
In 1994, the Italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne suggested to define Satanism with the simultaneous presence of "1) the worship of the character identified with the name of Satan or Lucifer in the Bible, 2) by organized groups with at least a minimal organization and hierarchy, 3) through ritual or liturgical practices." The definition applies regardless the way in which "each group perceives Satan, as personal or impersonal, real or symbolical.
The word "Satan" was not originally a proper name but rather an ordinary noun meaning "the adversary"; in this context, it appears at several points in the Old Testament. For instance, in the Book of Samuel, David is presented as the satan ("adversary") of the Philistines, while in the Book of Numbers the term appears as a verb, when God sent an angel to "satan" ("to oppose") Balaam. Prior to the composition of the New Testament, the idea developed within Jewish communities that Satan was the name of an angel who had rebelled against God and had been cast out of Heaven along with his followers; this account would be incorporated into contemporary texts like the Book of Enoch. This Satan was then featured in parts of the New Testament, where he was presented as a figure who tempted humans to commit sin; in the Book of Matthew and the Book of Luke, he attempted to tempt Jesus of Nazareth as the latter fasted in the wilderness.
The word "Satanism" was adopted into English from the French "satanisme". The terms "Satanism" and "Satanist" are first recorded as appearing in the English and French languages during the sixteenth century, when they were used by Christian groups to attack other, rival Christian groups. In a Roman Catholic tract of 1565, the author condemns the "heresies, blasphemies, and sathanismes [sic]" of the Protestants. In an Anglican work of 1559, Anabaptists and other Protestant sects are condemned as "swarmes of Satanistes [sic]". As used in this manner, the term "Satanism" was not used to claim that people literally worshipped Satan, but rather presented the view that through deviating from what the speaker or writer regarded as the true variant of Christianity, they were regarded as being essentially in league with the devil. During the nineteenth century, the term "Satanism" began to be used to describe those considered to lead a broadly immoral lifestyle, and it was only in the late nineteenth century that it came to be applied in English to individuals who were believed to consciously and deliberately venerate Satan. This latter meaning had appeared earlier in the Swedish language; the Lutheran Bishop Laurentius Paulinus Gothus had described devil-worshipping sorcerers as "Sathanister" in his "Ethica Christiana", produced between 1615 and 1630.
Historical and anthropological research suggests that nearly all societies have developed the idea of a sinister and anti-human force that can hide itself within society. This commonly involves a belief in witches, a group of individuals who invert the norms of their society and seek to harm their community, for instance by engaging in incest, murder, and cannibalism. Allegations of witchcraft may have different causes and serve different functions within a society. For instance, they may serve to uphold social norms, to heighten the tension in existing conflicts between individuals, or to scapegoat certain individuals for various social problems.
Another contributing factor to the idea of Satanism is the concept that there is an agent of misfortune and evil who operates on a cosmic scale, something usually associated with a strong form of ethical dualism that divides the world clearly into forces of good and forces of evil. The earliest such entity known is Angra Mainyu, a figure that appears in the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism. This concept was also embraced by Judaism and early Christianity, and although it was soon marginalized within Jewish thought, it gained increasing importance within early Christian understandings of the cosmos. While the early Christian idea of the Devil was not well developed, it gradually adapted and expanded through the creation of folklore, art, theological treatises, and morality tales, thus providing the character with a range of extra-Biblical associations.
As Christianity expanded throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, it came into contact with a variety of other religions, which it regarded as "pagan". Christian theologians claimed that the gods and goddesses venerated by these "pagans" were not genuine divinities, but were actually demons. However, they did not believe that "pagans" were deliberately devil-worshippers, instead claiming that they were simply misguided. In Christian iconography, the Devil and demons were given the physical traits of figures from Classical mythology such as the god Pan, fauns, and satyrs.
Those Christian groups regarded as heretics by the Roman Catholic Church were treated differently, with theologians arguing that they were deliberately worshipping the Devil. This was accompanied by claims that such individuals engaged in incestuous sexual orgies, murdered infants, and committed acts of cannibalism, all stock accusations that had previously been leveled at Christians themselves in the Roman Empire.
The first recorded example of such an accusation being made within Western Christianity took place in Toulouse in 1022, when two clerics were tried for allegedly venerating a demon. Throughout the Middle Ages, this accusation would be applied to a wide range of Christian heretical groups, including the Paulicians, Bogomils, Cathars, Waldensians, and the Hussites. The Knights Templar were accused of worshipping an idol known as Baphomet, with Lucifer having appeared at their meetings in the form of a cat. As well as these Christian groups, these claims were also made about Europe's Jewish community. In the thirteenth century, there were also references made to a group of "Luciferians" led by a woman named Lucardis which hoped to see Satan rule in Heaven. References to this group continued into the fourteenth century, although historians studying the allegations concur that these Luciferians were likely a fictitious invention.
Within Christian thought, the idea developed that certain individuals could make a pact with Satan. This may have emerged after observing that pacts with gods and goddesses played a role in various pre-Christian belief systems, or that such pacts were also made as part of the Christian cult of saints. Another possibility is that it derives from a misunderstanding of Augustine of Hippo's condemnation of augury in his "On the Christian Doctrine", written in the late fourth century. Here, he stated that people who consulted augurs were entering ""quasi pacts"" (covenants) with demons. The idea of the diabolical pact made with demons was popularized across Europe in the story of Faust, likely based in part on the real life Johann Georg Faust.
As the late medieval gave way to the early modern period, European Christendom experienced a schism between the established Roman Catholic Church and the breakaway Protestant movement. In the ensuing Reformation and Counter-Reformation, both Catholics and Protestants accused each other of deliberately being in league with Satan. It was in this context that the terms "Satanist" and "Satanism" emerged.
The early modern period also saw fear of Satanists reach its "historical apogee" in the form of the witch trials of the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. This came about as the accusations which had been leveled at medieval heretics, among them that of devil-worship, were applied to the pre-existing idea of the witch, or practitioner of malevolent magic. The idea of a conspiracy of Satanic witches was developed by educated elites, although the concept of malevolent witchcraft was a widespread part of popular belief and folkloric ideas about the night witch, the wild hunt, and the dance of the fairies were incorporated into it. The earliest trials took place in Northern Italy and France, before spreading it out to other areas of Europe and to Britain's North American colonies, being carried out by the legal authorities in both Catholic and Protestant regions.
Between 30,000 and 50,000 individuals were executed as accused Satanic witches.
Most historians agree that the majority of those persecuted in these witch trials were innocent of any involvement in Devil worship. However, in their summary of the evidence for the trials, the historians Geoffrey Scarre and John Callow thought it "without doubt" that some of those accused in the trials had been guilty of employing magic in an attempt to harm their enemies, and were thus genuinely guilty of witchcraft.
In seventeenth-century Sweden, a number of highway robbers and other outlaws living in the forests informed judges that they venerated Satan because he provided more practical assistance than God.
The historian of religion Massimo Introvigne regarded these practices as "folkloric Satanism".
During the eighteenth century, gentleman's social clubs became increasingly prominent in Britain and Ireland, among the most secretive of which were the Hellfire Clubs, which were first reported in the 1720s. The most famous of these groups was the Order of the Knights of Saints Francis, which was founded circa 1750 by the aristocrat Sir Francis Dashwood and which assembled first at his estate at West Wycombe and later in Medmenham Abbey. A number of contemporary press sources portrayed these as gatherings of atheist rakes where Christianity was mocked and toasts were made to the Devil. Beyond these sensationalist accounts, which may not be accurate portrayals of actual events, little is known about the activities of the Hellfire Clubs. Introvigne suggested that they may have engaged in a form of "playful Satanism" in which Satan was invoked "to show a daring contempt for conventional morality" by individuals who neither believed in his literal existence nor wanted to pay homage to him.
The French Revolution of 1789 dealt a blow to the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church in parts of Europe, and soon a number of Catholic authors began making claims that it had been masterminded by a conspiratorial group of Satanists. Among the first to do so was French Catholic priest Jean-Baptiste Fiard, who publicly claimed that a wide range of individuals, from the Jacobins to tarot card readers, were part of a Satanic conspiracy. Fiard's ideas were furthered by Alexis-Vincent-Charles Berbiguier, who devoted a lengthy book to this conspiracy theory; he claimed that Satanists had supernatural powers allowing them to curse people and to shapeshift into both cats and fleas. Although most of his contemporaries regarded Berbiguier as mad, his ideas gained credence among many occultists, including Stanislas de Guaita, a Cabalist who used them for the basis of his book, "The Temple of Satan".
In the early 20th century, the British novelist Dennis Wheatley produced a range of influential novels in which his protagonists battled Satanic groups. At the same time, non-fiction authors like Montague Summers and Rollo Ahmed published books claiming that Satanic groups practicing black magic were still active across the world, although they provided no evidence that this was the case. During the 1950s, various British tabloid newspapers repeated such claims, largely basing their accounts on the allegations of one woman, Sarah Jackson, who claimed to have been a member of such a group. In 1973, the British Christian Doreen Irvine published "From Witchcraft to Christ", in which she claimed to have been a member of a Satanic group that gave her supernatural powers, such as the ability to levitate, before she escaped and embraced Christianity.
In the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, various Christian preachers—the most famous being Mike Warnke in his 1972 book "The Satan-Seller"—claimed that they had been members of Satanic groups who carried out sex rituals and animal sacrifices before discovering Christianity. According to Gareth Medway in his historical examination of Satanism, these stories were "a series of inventions by insecure people and hack writers, each one based on a previous story, exaggerated a little more each time".
Other publications made allegations of Satanism against historical figures. The 1970s saw the publication of the Romanian Protestant preacher Richard Wurmbrand's book in which he argued—without corroborating evidence—that the socio-political theorist Karl Marx had been a Satanist.
At the end of the twentieth century, a moral panic developed around claims regarding a Devil-worshipping cult that made use of sexual abuse, murder, and cannibalism in its rituals, with children being among its victims. Initially, the alleged perpetrators of such crimes were labeled "witches", although the term "Satanist" was soon adopted as a favored alternative, and the phenomenon itself came to be called "the Satanism Scare". Promoters of the claims alleged that there was a conspiracy of organized Satanists who occupied prominent positions throughout society, from the police to politicians, and that they had been powerful enough to cover up their crimes.
One of the primary sources for the scare was "Michelle Remembers", a 1980 book by the Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder in which he detailed what he claimed were the repressed memories of his patient (and wife) Michelle Smith. Smith had claimed that as a child she had been abused by her family in Satanic rituals in which babies were sacrificed and Satan himself appeared. In 1983, allegations were made that the McMartin family—owners of a preschool in California—were guilty of sexually abusing the children in their care during Satanic rituals. The allegations resulted in a lengthy and expensive trial, in which all of the accused would eventually be cleared. The publicity generated by the case resulted in similar allegations being made in various other parts of the United States.
A prominent aspect of the Satanic Scare was the claim by those in the developing "anti-Satanism" movement that any child's claim about Satanic ritual abuse must be true, because children would not lie. Although some involved in the anti-Satanism movement were from Jewish and secular backgrounds, a central part was played by fundamentalist and evangelical forms of Christianity, in particular Pentecostalism, with Christian groups holding conferences and producing books and videotapes to promote belief in the conspiracy. Various figures in law enforcement also came to be promoters of the conspiracy theory, with such "cult cops" holding various conferences to promote it. The scare was later imported to the United Kingdom through visiting evangelicals and became popular among some of the country's social workers, resulting in a range of accusations and trials across Britain.
The Satanic ritual abuse hysteria died down between 1990 and 1994. In the late 1980s, the Satanic Scare had lost its impetus following increasing skepticism about such allegations, and a number of those who had been convicted of perpetrating Satanic ritual abuse saw their convictions overturned.
In 1990, an agent of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ken Lanning, revealed that he had investigated 300 allegations of Satanic ritual abuse and found no evidence for Satanism or ritualistic activity in any of them. In the UK, the Department of Health commissioned the anthropologist Jean La Fontaine to examine the allegations of SRA. She noted that while approximately half did reveal evidence of genuine sexual abuse of children, none revealed any evidence that Satanist groups had been involved or that any murders had taken place. She noted three examples in which lone individuals engaged in child molestation had created a ritual performance to facilitate their sexual acts, with the intent of frightening their victims and justifying their actions, but that none of these child molesters were involved in wider Satanist groups. By the 21st century, hysteria about Satanism has waned in most Western countries, although allegations of Satanic ritual abuse continued to surface in parts of continental Europe and Latin America.
From the late seventeenth through to the nineteenth century, the character of Satan was increasingly rendered unimportant in Western philosophy and ignored in Christian theology, while in folklore he came to be seen as a foolish rather than a menacing figure. The development of new values in the Age of Enlightenment—in particular those of reason and individualism—contributed to a shift in how many Europeans viewed Satan. In this context, a number of individuals took Satan out of the traditional Christian narrative and reread and reinterpreted him in light of their own time and their own interests, in turn generating new and different portraits of Satan.
The shifting view of Satan owes many of its origins to John Milton's epic poem "Paradise Lost" (1667), in which Satan features as the protagonist. Milton was a Puritan and had never intended for his depiction of Satan to be a sympathetic one. However, in portraying Satan as a victim of his own pride who rebeled against God he humanized him and also allowed him to be interpreted as a rebel against tyranny. This was how Milton's Satan was understood by later readers like the publisher Joseph Johnson, and the anarchist philosopher William Godwin, who reflected it in his 1793 book "Enquiry Concerning Political Justice". "Paradise Lost" gained a wide readership in the eighteenth century, both in Britain and in continental Europe, where it had been translated into French by Voltaire. Milton thus became "a central character in rewriting Satanism" and would be viewed by many later religious Satanists as a ""de facto" Satanist".
The nineteenth century saw the emergence of what has been termed "literary Satanism" or "romantic Satanism". According to Van Luijk, this cannot be seen as a "coherent movement with a single voice, but rather as a "post factum" identified group of sometimes widely divergent authors among whom a similar theme is found". For the literary Satanists, Satan was depicted as a benevolent and sometimes heroic figure, with these more sympathetic portrayals proliferating in the art and poetry of many romanticist and decadent figures. For these individuals, Satanism was not a religious belief or ritual activity, but rather a "strategic use of a symbol and a character as part of artistic and political expression".
Among the romanticist poets to adopt this view of Satan was the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had been influenced by Milton. In his poem "Laon and Cythna", Shelley praised the "Serpent", a reference to Satan, as a force for good in the universe.
Another was Shelley's fellow British poet Lord Byron, who included Satanic themes in his 1821 play "Cain", which was a dramatization of the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. These more positive portrayals also developed in France; one example was the 1823 work "Eloa" by Alfred de Vigny. Satan was also adopted by the French poet Victor Hugo, who made the character's fall from Heaven a central aspect of his "La Fin de Satan", in which he outlined his own cosmogony.
Although the likes of Shelley and Byron promoted a positive image of Satan in their work, there is no evidence that any of them performed religious rites to venerate him, and thus it is problematic to regard them as religious Satanists.
Radical left-wing political ideas had been spread by the American Revolution of 1765–83 and the French Revolution of 1789–99, and the figure of Satan, who was interpreted as having rebelled against the tyranny imposed by God, was an appealing one for many of the radical leftists of the period. For them, Satan was "a symbol for the struggle against tyranny, injustice, and oppression... a mythical figure of rebellion for an age of revolutions, a larger-than-life individual for an age of individualism, a free thinker in an age struggling for free thought". The French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who was a staunch critic of Christianity, embraced Satan as a symbol of liberty in several of his writings. Another prominent 19th century anarchist, the Russian Mikhail Bakunin, similarly described the figure of Satan as "the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds" in his book "God and the State". These ideas likely inspired the American feminist activist Moses Harman to name his anarchist periodical "Lucifer the Lightbearer". The idea of this "Leftist Satan" declined during the twentieth century, although it was used on occasion by authorities within the Soviet Union, who portrayed Satan as a symbol of freedom and equality.
During the 1960s and 1970s, several rock bands—namely the American Coven and the British Black Widow—employed the imagery of Satanism and witchcraft in their work. References to Satan also appeared in the work of those rock bands which were pioneering the heavy metal genre in Britain during the 1970s. Black Sabbath for instance made mention of Satan in their lyrics, although several of the band's members were practicing Christians and other lyrics affirmed the power of the Christian God over Satan. In the 1980s, greater use of Satanic imagery was made by heavy metal bands like Slayer, Kreator, Sodom, and Destruction. Bands active in the subgenre of death metal—among them Deicide, Morbid Angel, and Entombed—also adopted Satanic imagery, combining it with other morbid and dark imagery, such as that of zombies and serial killers.
Satanism would come to be more closely associated with the subgenre of black metal, in which it was foregrounded over the other themes that had been used in death metal. A number of black metal performers incorporated self-injury into their act, framing this as a manifestation of Satanic devotion. The first black metal band, Venom, proclaimed themselves to be Satanists, although this was more an act of provocation than an expression of genuine devotion to the Devil. Satanic themes were also used by the black metal bands Bathory and Hellhammer. However, the first black metal act to more seriously adopt Satanism was Mercyful Fate, whose vocalist, King Diamond, joined the Church of Satan. More often than not musicians associating themselves with black metal say they do not believe in legitimate Satanic ideology and often profess to being atheists, agnostics, or religious skeptics.
In contrast to King Diamond, various black metal Satanists sought to distance themselves from LaVeyan Satanism, for instance by referring to their beliefs as "devil worship". These individuals regarded Satan as a literal entity, and in contrast to LaVey's views, they associated Satanism with criminality, suicide, and terror. For them, Christianity was regarded as a plague which required eradication. Many of these individuals—such as Varg Vikernes and Euronymous—were Norwegian, and influenced by the strong anti-Christian views of this milieu, between 1992 and 1996 around fifty Norwegian churches were destroyed in arson attacks. Within the black metal scene, a number of musicians later replaced Satanic themes with those deriving from Heathenry, a form of modern Paganism.
Religious Satanism does not exist in a single form, as there are multiple different religious Satanisms, each with different ideas about what being a Satanist entails. The historian of religion Ruben van Luijk used a "working definition" in which Satanism was regarded as "the intentional, religiously motivated veneration of Satan".
Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen believed that it was not a single movement, but rather a milieu. They and others have nevertheless referred to it as a new religious movement. They believed that there was a family resemblance that united all of the varying groups in this milieu, and that most of them were self religions. They argued that there were a set of features that were common to the groups in this Satanic milieu: these were the positive use of the term "Satanist" as a designation, an emphasis on individualism, a genealogy that connects them to other Satanic groups, a transgressive and antinomian stance, a self-perception as an elite, and an embrace of values such as pride, self-reliance, and productive non-conformity.
Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen argued that the groups within the Satanic milieu could be divided into three groups: reactive Satanists, rationalist Satanists, and esoteric Satanists. They saw reactive Satanism as encompassing "popular Satanism, inverted Christianity, and symbolic rebellion" and noted that it situates itself in opposition to society while at the same time conforming to society's perspective of evil. Rationalist Satanism is used to describe the trend in the Satanic milieu which is atheistic, skeptical, materialistic, and epicurean. Esoteric Satanism instead applied to those forms which are theistic and draw upon ideas from other forms of Western esotericism, Modern Paganism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.
The first person to promote a Satanic philosophy was the Pole Stanislaw Przybyszewski, who promoted a Social Darwinian ideology.
The use of the term "Lucifer" was also taken up by the French ceremonial magician Eliphas Levi, who has been described as a "Romantic Satanist". During his younger days, Levi used "Lucifer" in much the same manner as the literary romantics. As he moved toward a more politically conservative outlook in later life, he retained the use of the term, but instead applied it as to what he believed was a morally neutral facet of the Absolute.
Levi was not the only occultist who wanted to use the term "Lucifer" without adopting the term "Satan" in a similar way. The early Theosophical Society held to the view that "Lucifer" was a force that aided humanity's awakening to its own spiritual nature. In keeping with this view, the Society began production of a journal titled "Lucifer".
"Satan" was also used within the esoteric system propounded by the Danish occultist Carl William Hansen, who used the pen name "Ben Kadosh". Hansen was involved in a variety of esoteric groups, including Martinism, Freemasonry, and the Ordo Templi Orientis, drawing on ideas from various groups to establish his own philosophy. In one pamphlet, he provided a "Luciferian" interpretation of Freemasonry. Kadosh's work left little influence outside of Denmark.
Both during his life and after it, the British occultist Aleister Crowley has been widely described as a Satanist, usually by detractors. Crowley stated he did not consider himself a Satanist, nor did he worship Satan, as he did not accept the Christian world view in which Satan was believed to exist. He nevertheless used imagery considered satanic, for instance by describing himself as "the Beast 666" and referring to the Whore of Babylon in his work, while in later life he sent "Antichristmas cards" to his friends. Dyrendel, Lewis, and Petersen noted that despite the fact that Crowley was not a Satanist, he "in many ways embodies the pre-Satanist esoteric discourse on Satan and Satanism through his lifestyle and his philosophy", with his "image and thought" becoming an "important influence" on the later development of religious Satanism.
In 1928 the Fraternitas Saturni (FS) was established in Germany; its founder, Eugen Grosche, published "Satanische Magie" ("Satanic Magic") that same year. The group connected Satan to Saturn, claiming that the planet related to the Sun in the same manner that Lucifer relates to the human world.
In 1932 an esoteric group known as the Brotherhood of the Golden Arrow was established in Paris, France by Maria de Naglowska, a Russian occultist who had fled to France following the Russian Revolution. She promoted a theology centered on what she called the Third Term of the Trinity consisting of Father, Son, and Sex, the latter of which she deemed to be most important. Her early disciples, who underwent what she called "Satanic Initiations", included models and art students recruited from bohemian circles. The Golden Arrow disbanded after Naglowska abandoned it in 1936. According to Introvigne, hers was "a quite complicated Satanism, built on a complex philosophical vision of the world, of which little would survive its initiator".
In 1969 a Satanic group based in Toledo, Ohio, part of the United States, came to public attention. Called the Our Lady of Endor Coven, it was led by a man named Herbert Sloane, who described his Satanic tradition as the Ophite Cultus Sathanas and alleged that it had been established in the 1940s. The group offered a Gnostic interpretation of the world in which the creator God was regarded as evil and the Biblical Serpent presented as a force for good who had delivered salvation to humanity in the Garden of Eden. Sloane's claims that his group had a 1940s origin remain unproven; it may be that he falsely claimed older origins for his group to make it appear older than Anton LaVey's Church of Satan, which had been established in 1966.
None of these groups had any real impact on the emergence of the later Satanic milieu in the 1960s.
Anton LaVey, who has been referred to as "The Father of Satanism", synthesized his religion through the establishment of the Church of Satan in 1966 and the publication of "The Satanic Bible" in 1969. LaVey's teachings promoted "indulgence", "vital existence", "undefiled wisdom", "kindness to those who deserve it", "responsibility to the responsible" and an "eye for an eye" code of ethics, while shunning "abstinence" based on guilt, "spirituality", "unconditional love", "pacifism", "equality", "herd mentality" and "scapegoating". In LaVey's view, the Satanist is a carnal, physical and pragmatic being—and enjoyment of physical existence and an undiluted view of this-worldly truth are promoted as the core values of Satanism, propagating a naturalistic worldview that sees mankind as animals existing in an amoral universe.
LaVey believed that the ideal Satanist should be individualistic and non-conformist, rejecting what he called the "colorless existence" that mainstream society sought to impose on those living within it. He praised the human ego for encouraging an individual's pride, self-respect, and self-realization and accordingly believed in satisfying the ego's desires. He expressed the view that self-indulgence was a desirable trait, and that hate and aggression were not wrong or undesirable emotions but that they were necessary and advantageous for survival. Accordingly, he praised the seven deadly sins as virtues which were beneficial for the individual. The anthropologist Jean La Fontaine highlighted an article that appeared in "The Black Flame", in which one writer described "a true Satanic society" as one in which the population consists of "free-spirited, well-armed, fully-conscious, self-disciplined individuals, who will neither need nor tolerate any external entity 'protecting' them or telling them what they can and cannot do."
The sociologist James R. Lewis noted that "LaVey was directly responsible for the genesis of Satanism as a serious religious (as opposed to a purely literary) movement". Scholars agree that there is no reliably documented case of Satanic continuity prior to the founding of the Church of Satan. It was the first organized church in modern times to be devoted to the figure of Satan, and according to Faxneld and Petersen, the Church represented "the first public, highly visible, and long-lasting organization which propounded a coherent satanic discourse". LaVey's book, "The Satanic Bible", has been described as the most important document to influence contemporary Satanism. The book contains the core principles of Satanism, and is considered the foundation of its philosophy and dogma. Petersen noted that it is "in many ways "the" central text of the Satanic milieu", with Lap similarly testifying to its dominant position within the wider Satanic movement. David G. Bromley calls it "iconoclastic" and "the best-known and most influential statement of Satanic theology." Eugene V. Gallagher says that Satanists use LaVey's writings "as lenses through which they view themselves, their group, and the cosmos." He also states: "With a clear-eyed appreciation of true human nature, a love of ritual and pageantry, and a flair for mockery, LaVey's "Satanic Bible" promulgated a gospel of self-indulgence that, he argued, anyone who dispassionately considered the facts would embrace."
A number of religious studies scholars have described LaVey's Satanism as a form of "self-religion" or "self-spirituality", with religious studies scholar Amina Olander Lap arguing that it should be seen as being both part of the "prosperity wing" of the self-spirituality New Age movement and a form of the Human Potential Movement. The anthropologist Jean La Fontaine described it as having "both elitist and anarchist elements", also citing one occult bookshop owner who referred to the Church's approach as "anarchistic hedonism". In "The Invention of Satanism", Dyrendal and Petersen theorized that LaVey viewed his religion as "an antinomian self-religion for productive misfits, with a cynically carnivalesque take on life, and no supernaturalism". The sociologist of religion James R. Lewis even described LaVeyan Satanism as "a blend of Epicureanism and Ayn Rand's philosophy, flavored with a pinch of ritual magic." The historian of religion Mattias Gardell described LaVey's as "a rational ideology of egoistic hedonism and self-preservation", while Nevill Drury characterized LaVeyan Satanism as "a religion of self-indulgence". It has also been described as an "institutionalism of Machiavellian self-interest".
Prominent Church leader Blanche Barton described Satanism as "an alignment, a lifestyle". LaVey and the Church espoused the view that "Satanists are born, not made"; that they are outsiders by their nature, living as they see fit, who are self-realized in a religion which appeals to the would-be Satanist's nature, leading them to realize they are Satanists through finding a belief system that is in line with their own perspective and lifestyle. Adherents to the philosophy have described Satanism as a non-spiritual religion of the flesh, or "...the world's first religion". LaVey used Christianity as a negative mirror for his new faith, with LaVeyan Satanism rejecting the basic principles and theology of Christian belief. It views Christianity – alongside other major religions, and philosophies such as humanism and liberal democracy – as a largely negative force on humanity; LaVeyan Satanists perceive Christianity as a lie which promotes idealism, self-denigration, herd behavior, and irrationality. LaVeyans view their religion as a force for redressing this balance by encouraging materialism, egoism, stratification, carnality, atheism, and social Darwinism. LaVey's Satanism was particularly critical of what it understands as Christianity's denial of humanity's animal nature, and it instead calls for the celebration of, and indulgence in, these desires. In doing so, it places an emphasis on the carnal rather than the spiritual.
Practitioners do not believe that Satan literally exists and do not worship him. Instead, Satan is viewed as a positive archetype embracing the Hebrew root of the word "Satan" as "adversary", who represents pride, carnality, and enlightenment, and of a cosmos which Satanists perceive to be motivated by a "dark evolutionary force of entropy that permeates all of nature and provides the drive for survival and propagation inherent in all living things". The Devil is embraced as a symbol of defiance against the Abrahamic faiths which LaVey criticized for what he saw as the suppression of humanity's natural instincts. Moreover, Satan also serves as a metaphorical external projection of the individual's godhood. LaVey espoused the view that "god" is a creation of man, rather than man being a creation of "god". In his book, "The Satanic Bible", the Satanist's view of god is described as the Satanist's true "self"—a projection of his or her own personality—not an external deity. Satan is used as a representation of personal liberty and individualism.
LaVey explained that the gods worshiped by other religions are also projections of man's true self. He argues that man's unwillingness to accept his own ego has caused him to externalize these gods so as to avoid the feeling of narcissism that would accompany self-worship. The current High Priest of the Church of Satan, Peter H. Gilmore, further expounds that "...Satan is a symbol of Man living as his prideful, carnal nature dictates [...] Satan is not a conscious entity to be worshiped, rather a reservoir of power inside each human to be tapped at will. The Church of Satan has chosen Satan as its primary symbol because in Hebrew it means adversary, opposer, one to accuse or question. We see ourselves as being these Satans; the adversaries, opposers and accusers of all spiritual belief systems that would try to hamper enjoyment of our life as a human being." The term "Theistic Satanism" has been described as "oxymoronic" by the church and its High Priest. The Church of Satan rejects the legitimacy of any other organizations who claim to be Satanists, dubbing them reverse-Christians, pseudo-Satanists or Devil worshipers, atheistic or otherwise, and maintains a purist approach to Satanism as expounded by LaVey.
After LaVey's death in 1997, the Church of Satan was taken over by a new administration and its headquarters were moved to New York. LaVey's daughter, the High Priestess Karla LaVey, felt this to be a disservice to her father's legacy. The First Satanic Church was re-founded on October 31, 1999 by Karla LaVey to carry on the legacy of her father. She continues to run it out of San Francisco, California.
The Satanic Temple is an American religious and political activist organization based in Salem, Massachusetts. The organization actively participates in public affairs that have manifested in several public political actions and efforts at lobbying, with a focus on the separation of church and state and using satire against Christian groups that it believes interfere with personal freedom. According to Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen, the group were "rationalist, political pranksters". Their pranks are designed to highlight religious hypocrisy and advance the cause of secularism. In one of their actions, they performed a "Pink Mass" over the grave of the mother of the evangelical Christian and prominent anti-LGBT preacher Fred Phelps; the Temple claimed that the mass converted the spirit of Phelps' mother into a lesbian.
The Satanic Temple does not believe in a supernatural Satan, as they believe that this encourages superstition that would keep them from being "malleable to the best current scientific understandings of the material world". The Temple uses the literary Satan as metaphor to construct a cultural narrative which promotes pragmatic skepticism, rational reciprocity, personal autonomy, and curiosity. Satan is thus used as a symbol representing "the eternal rebel" against arbitrary authority and social norms.
Theistic Satanism (also known as traditional Satanism, Spiritual Satanism or Devil worship) is a form of Satanism with the primary belief that Satan is an actual deity or force to revere or worship. Other characteristics of theistic Satanism may include a belief in magic, which is manipulated through ritual, although that is not a defining criterion, and theistic Satanists may focus solely on devotion.
Luciferianism can be understood best as a belief system or intellectual creed that venerates the essential and inherent characteristics that are affixed and commonly given to Lucifer. Luciferianism is often identified as an auxiliary creed or movement of Satanism, due to the common identification of Lucifer with Satan. Some Luciferians accept this identification and/or consider Lucifer as the "light bearer" and illuminated aspect of Satan, giving them the name of Satanists and the right to bear the title. Others reject it, giving the argument that Lucifer is a more positive and easy-going ideal than Satan. They are inspired by the ancient myths of Egypt, Rome and Greece, Gnosticism and traditional Western occultism.
According to the group's own claims, the Order of Nine Angles was established in Shropshire, Western England during the late 1960s, when a Grand Mistress united a number of ancient pagan groups active in the area.
This account states that when the Order's Grand Mistress migrated to Australia, a man known as "Anton Long" took over as the new Grand Master. From 1976 onward he authored an array of texts for the tradition, codifying and extending its teachings, mythos, and structure.
Various academics have argued that Long is the pseudonym of British neo-Nazi activist David Myatt, an allegation that Myatt has denied.
The ONA arose to public attention in the early 1980s, spreading its message through magazine articles over the following two decades. In 2000, it established a presence on the internet, later adopting social media to promote its message.
The ONA is a secretive organization, and lacks any central administration, instead operating as a network of allied Satanic practitioners, which it terms the "kollective". It consists largely of autonomous cells known as "nexions". The majority of these are located in Britain, Ireland, and Germany, although others are located elsewhere in Europe, and in Russia, Egypt, South Africa, Brazil, Australia, and the United States.
The ONA describe their occultism as "Traditional Satanism". The ONA's writings encourage human sacrifice, referring to their victims as "opfers". According to the Order's teachings, such opfers must demonstrate character faults that mark them out as being worthy of death, and accordingly the ONA insists that children must never be victims. No ONA cell have admitted to carrying out a sacrifice in a ritualized manner, but rather Order members have joined the police and military in order to carry out such killings. Faxneld described the Order as "a dangerous and extreme form of Satanism", while religious studies scholar Graham Harvey claimed that the ONA fit the stereotype of the Satanist "better than other groups" by embracing "deeply shocking" and illegal acts.
The Temple of Set is an initiatory occult society claiming to be the world's leading left-hand path religious organization. It was established in 1975 by Michael A. Aquino and certain members of the priesthood of the Church of Satan, who left because of administrative and philosophical disagreements. ToS deliberately self-differentiates from CoS in several ways, most significantly in theology and sociology. The philosophy of the Temple of Set may be summed up as "enlightened individualism"—enhancement and improvement of oneself by personal education, experiment and initiation. This process is necessarily different and distinctive for each individual. The members do not agree on whether Set is "real" or not, and they're not expected to.
The Temple presents the view that the name "Satan" was originally a corruption of the name "Set". The Temple teaches that Set is a real entity, the only real god in existence, with all others created by the human imagination. Set is described as having given humanity—through the means of non-natural evolution—the "Black Flame" or the "Gift of Set", a questioning intellect which sets the species apart from other animals. While Setians are expected to revere Set, they do not worship him. Central to Setian philosophy is the human individual, with self-deification presented as the ultimate goal.
In 2005 Petersen noted that academic estimates for the Temple's membership varied from between 300 and 500, and Granholm suggested that in 2007 the Temple contained circa 200 members.
Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen used the term "reactive Satanism" to describe one form of modern religious Satanism. They described this as an adolescent and anti-social means of rebelling in a Christian society, by which an individual transgresses cultural boundaries. They believed that there were two tendencies within reactive Satanism: one, "Satanic tourism", was characterized by the brief period of time in which an individual was involved, while the other, the "Satanic quest", was typified by a longer and deeper involvement.
The researcher Gareth Medway noted that in 1995 he encountered a British woman who stated that she had been a practicing Satanist during her teenage years. She had grown up in a small mining village, and had come to believe that she had psychic powers. After hearing about Satanism in some library books, she declared herself a Satanist and formulated a belief that Satan was the true god. After her teenage years she abandoned Satanism and became a chaos magickian.
Some reactive Satanists are teenagers or mentally disturbed individuals who have engaged in criminal activities. During the 1980s and 1990s, several groups of teenagers were apprehended after sacrificing animals and vandalizing both churches and graveyards with Satanic imagery. Introvigne expressed the view that these incidents were "more a product of juvenile deviance and marginalization than Satanism". In a few cases the crimes of these reactive Satanists have included murder. In 1970, two separate groups of teenagers—one led by Stanley Baker in Big Sur and the other by Steven Hurd in Los Angeles—killed a total of three people and consumed parts of their corpses in what they later claimed were sacrifices devoted to Satan. In 1984, a U.S. group called the Knights of the Black Circle killed one of its own members, Gary Lauwers, over a disagreement regarding the group's illegal drug dealing; group members later related that Lauwers' death was a sacrifice to Satan.
The American serial killer Richard Ramirez for instance claimed that he was a Satanist; during his 1980s killing spree he left an inverted pentagram at the scene of each murder and at his trial called out "Hail Satan!"
Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen observed that from surveys of Satanists conducted in the early 21st century, it was clear that the Satanic milieu was "heavily dominated by young males". They nevertheless noted that census data from New Zealand suggested that there may be a growing proportion of women becoming Satanists. In comprising more men than women, Satanism differs from most other religious communities, including most new religious communities. Most Satanists came to their religion through reading, either online or books, rather than through being introduced to it through personal contacts. Many practitioners do not claim that they converted to Satanism, but rather state that they were born that way, and only later in life confirmed that Satanism served as an appropriate label for their pre-existing worldviews. Others have stated that they had experiences with supernatural phenomena that led them to embracing Satanism. A number reported feelings of anger in respect of a set of practicing Christians and expressed the view that the monotheistic Gods of Christianity and other religions are unethical, citing issues such as the problem of evil. For some practitioners, Satanism gave a sense of hope, even for those who had been physically and sexually abused.
The surveys revealed that atheistic Satanists appeared to be in the majority, although the numbers of theistic Satanists appeared to grow over time. Beliefs in the afterlife varied, although the most popular afterlife views were reincarnation and the idea that consciousness survives bodily death. The surveys also demonstrated that most recorded Satanists practiced magic, although there were differing opinions as to whether magical acts operated according to etheric laws or whether the effect of magic was purely psychological. A number described performing cursing, in most cases as a form of vigilante justice.
Most practitioners conduct their religious observances in a solitary manner, and never or rarely meet fellow Satanists for rituals. Rather, the primary interaction that takes place between Satanists is online, on websites or via email.
From their survey data, Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen noted that the average length of involvement in the Satanic milieu was seven years. A Satanist's involvement in the movement tends to peak in the early twenties and drops off sharply in their thirties. A small proportion retain their allegiance to the religion into their elder years. When asked about their political views, the largest proportion of Satanists identified as apolitical or non-aligned, while only a small percentage identified as conservative despite the conservative views of prominent Satanists like LaVey and Marilyn Manson. A small minority of Satanists expressed support for the far right; conversely, over two-thirds expressed negative or extremely negative views about Nazism and neo-Nazism.
In 2004 it was claimed that Satanism was allowed in the Royal Navy of the British Armed Forces, despite opposition from Christians. In 2016, under a Freedom of Information request, the Navy Command Headquarters stated that "we do not recognise satanism as a formal religion, and will not grant facilities or make specific time available for individual 'worship'."
In 2005, the Supreme Court of the United States debated in the case of Cutter v. Wilkinson over protecting minority religious rights of prison inmates after a lawsuit challenging the issue was filed to them. The court ruled that facilities that accept federal funds cannot deny prisoners accommodations that are necessary to engage in activities for the practice of their own religious beliefs. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27706 |
Socialist law
Socialist law or Soviet law denotes a general type of legal system which has been (and continues to be) used in socialist and formerly socialist states. It is based on the civil law system, with major modifications and additions from Marxist-Leninist ideology. There is controversy as to whether socialist law ever constituted a separate legal system or not. If so, prior to the end of the Cold War, "socialist law" would be ranked among the major legal systems of the world.
While civil law systems have traditionally put great pains in defining the notion of private property, how it may be acquired, transferred, or lost, socialist law systems provide for most property to be owned by the Government or by agricultural co-operatives, and having special courts and laws for state enterprises.
Many scholars argue that socialist law was not a separate legal classification. Although the command economy approach of the communist states meant that most types of property could not be owned, the Soviet Union always had a civil code, courts that interpreted this civil code, and a civil law approach to legal reasoning (thus, both legal process and legal reasoning were largely analogous to the French or German civil code system). Legal systems in all socialist states preserved formal criteria of the Romano-Germanic civil law; for this reason, law theorists in post-socialist states usually consider the socialist law as a particular case of the Romano-Germanic civil law. Cases of development of common law into socialist law are unknown because of incompatibility of basic principles of these two systems (common law presumes influential rule-making role of courts while courts in socialist states play a dependent role).
Recent work, however, suggests that socialist law -- at least from the perspective of public law and constitutional design -- is a useful category. William Partlett and Eric Ip (in the NYU Journal of International Law and Policy) argue that socialist law helps to understand the "Russo-Leninist transplants" that currently operate in China's socialist law system. This helps to understand the "distinctive public law institutions and approaches in China that have been ignored by many scholars."
Soviet law displayed many special characteristics that derived from the socialist nature of the Soviet state and reflected Marxist-Leninist ideology. Vladimir Lenin accepted the Marxist conception of the law and the state as instruments of coercion in the hands of the bourgeoisie and postulated the creation of popular, informal tribunals to administer revolutionary justice. One of the main theoreticians of Soviet socialist legality in this early phase was Pēteris Stučka.
Alongside this utopian trend was one more critical of the concept of "proletarian justice", represented by Evgeny Pashukanis. A dictatorial trend developed that advocated the use of law and legal institutions to suppress all opposition to the regime. This trend reached its zenith under Joseph Stalin with the ascendancy of Andrey Vyshinsky, when the administration of justice was carried out mainly by the security police in special tribunals.
During the de-Stalinization of the Nikita Khrushchev era, a new trend developed, based on socialist legality, that stressed the need to protect the procedural and statutory rights of citizens, while still calling for obedience to the state. New legal codes, introduced in 1960, were part of the effort to establish legal norms in administering laws. Although socialist legality remained in force after 1960, the dictatorial and utopian trends continued to influence the legal process. Persecution of political and religious dissenters continued, but at the same time there was a tendency to decriminalize lesser offenses by handing them over to people's courts and administrative agencies and dealing with them by education rather than by incarceration. By late 1986, the Mikhail Gorbachev era was stressing anew the importance of individual rights in relation to the state and criticizing those who violated procedural law in implementing Soviet justice. This signaled a resurgence of socialist legality as the dominant trend. Socialist legality itself still lacked features associated with Western jurisprudence.
Socialist law is similar to the civil law but with a greatly increased public law sector and decreased private law sector.
A specific institution characteristic to Socialist law was the so-called burlaw court (or, verbally, "court of comrades", Russian товарищеский суд) which decided on minor offences. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27707 |
Semiconductor
A semiconductor material has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as metallic copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistance falls as its temperature rises; metals are the opposite. Its conducting properties may be altered in useful ways by introducing impurities ("doping") into the crystal structure. When two differently-doped regions exist in the same crystal, a semiconductor junction is created. The behavior of charge carriers, which include electrons, ions and electron holes, at these junctions is the basis of diodes, transistors and all modern electronics. Some examples of semiconductors are silicon, germanium, gallium arsenide, and elements near the so-called "metalloid staircase" on the periodic table. After silicon, gallium arsenide is the second most common semiconductor and is used in laser diodes, solar cells, microwave-frequency integrated circuits and others. Silicon is a critical element for fabricating most electronic circuits.
Semiconductor devices can display a range of useful properties, such as passing current more easily in one direction than the other, showing variable resistance, and sensitivity to light or heat. Because the electrical properties of a semiconductor material can be modified by doping, or by the application of electrical fields or light, devices made from semiconductors can be used for amplification, switching, and energy conversion.
The conductivity of silicon is increased by adding a small amount (of the order of 1 in 108) of pentavalent (antimony, phosphorus, or arsenic) or trivalent (boron, gallium, indium) atoms. This process is known as doping and resulting semiconductors are known as doped or extrinsic semiconductors. Apart from doping, the conductivity of a semiconductor can equally be improved by increasing its temperature. This is contrary to the behaviour of a metal in which conductivity decreases with increase in temperature.
The modern understanding of the properties of a semiconductor relies on quantum physics to explain the movement of charge carriers in a crystal lattice. Doping greatly increases the number of charge carriers within the crystal. When a doped semiconductor contains mostly free holes it is called "p-type", and when it contains mostly free electrons it is known as "n-type". The semiconductor materials used in electronic devices are doped under precise conditions to control the concentration and regions of p- and n-type dopants. A single semiconductor crystal can have many p- and n-type regions; the p–n junctions between these regions are responsible for the useful electronic behavior.
Some of the properties of semiconductor materials were observed throughout the mid 19th and first decades of the 20th century. The first practical application of semiconductors in electronics was the 1904 development of the cat's-whisker detector, a primitive semiconductor diode used in early radio receivers. Developments in quantum physics in turn led to the development of the transistor in 1947, the integrated circuit in 1958, and the MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) in 1959.
A large number of elements and compounds have semiconducting properties, including:
Most common semiconducting materials are crystalline solids, but amorphous and liquid semiconductors are also known. These include hydrogenated amorphous silicon and mixtures of arsenic, selenium and tellurium in a variety of proportions. These compounds share with better known semiconductors the properties of intermediate conductivity and a rapid variation of conductivity with temperature, as well as occasional negative resistance. Such disordered materials lack the rigid crystalline structure of conventional semiconductors such as silicon. They are generally used in thin film structures, which do not require material of higher electronic quality, being relatively insensitive to impurities and radiation damage.
Almost all of today's electronic technology involves the use of semiconductors, with the most important aspect being the integrated circuit (IC), which are found in laptops, scanners, cell-phones, etc. Semiconductors for ICs are mass-produced. To create an ideal semiconducting material, chemical purity is paramount. Any small imperfection can have a drastic effect on how the semiconducting material behaves due to the scale at which the materials are used.
A high degree of crystalline perfection is also required, since faults in crystal structure (such as dislocations, twins, and stacking faults) interfere with the semiconducting properties of the material. Crystalline faults are a major cause of defective semiconductor devices. The larger the crystal, the more difficult it is to achieve the necessary perfection. Current mass production processes use crystal ingots between in diameter which are grown as cylinders and sliced into wafers.
There is a combination of processes that is used to prepare semiconducting materials for ICs. One process is called thermal oxidation, which forms silicon dioxide on the surface of the silicon. This is used as a gate insulator and field oxide. Other processes are called photomasks and photolithography. This process is what creates the patterns on the circuity in the integrated circuit. Ultraviolet light is used along with a photoresist layer to create a chemical change that generates the patterns for the circuit.
Etching is the next process that is required. The part of the silicon that was not covered by the photoresist layer from the previous step can now be etched. The main process typically used today is called plasma etching. Plasma etching usually involves an etch gas pumped in a low-pressure chamber to create plasma. A common etch gas is chlorofluorocarbon, or more commonly known Freon. A high radio-frequency voltage between the cathode and anode is what creates the plasma in the chamber. The silicon wafer is located on the cathode, which causes it to be hit by the positively charged ions that are released from the plasma. The end result is silicon that is etched anisotropically.
The last process is called diffusion. This is the process that gives the semiconducting material its desired semiconducting properties. It is also known as doping. The process introduces an impure atom to the system, which creates the p-n junction. In order to get the impure atoms embedded in the silicon wafer, the wafer is first put in a 1,100 degree Celsius chamber. The atoms are injected in and eventually diffuse with the silicon. After the process is completed and the silicon has reached room temperature, the doping process is done and the semiconducting material is ready to be used in an integrated circuit.
Semiconductors are defined by their unique electric conductive behavior, somewhere between that of a conductor and an insulator.
The differences between these materials can be understood in terms of the quantum states for electrons, each of which may contain zero or one electron (by the Pauli exclusion principle). These states are associated with the electronic band structure of the material.
Electrical conductivity arises due to the presence of electrons in states that are delocalized (extending through the material), however in order to transport electrons a state must be "partially filled", containing an electron only part of the time. If the state is always occupied with an electron, then it is inert, blocking the passage of other electrons via that state.
The energies of these quantum states are critical, since a state is partially filled only if its energy is near the Fermi level (see Fermi–Dirac statistics).
High conductivity in a material comes from it having many partially filled states and much state delocalization.
Metals are good electrical conductors and have many partially filled states with energies near their Fermi level.
Insulators, by contrast, have few partially filled states, their Fermi levels sit within band gaps with few energy states to occupy.
Importantly, an insulator can be made to conduct by increasing its temperature: heating provides energy to promote some electrons across the band gap, inducing partially filled states in both the band of states beneath the band gap (valence band) and the band of states above the band gap (conduction band).
An (intrinsic) semiconductor has a band gap that is smaller than that of an insulator and at room temperature significant numbers of electrons can be excited to cross the band gap.
A pure semiconductor, however, is not very useful, as it is neither a very good insulator nor a very good conductor.
However, one important feature of semiconductors (and some insulators, known as "semi-insulators") is that their conductivity can be increased and controlled by doping with impurities and gating with electric fields. Doping and gating move either the conduction or valence band much closer to the Fermi level, and greatly increase the number of partially filled states.
Some wider-band gap semiconductor materials are sometimes referred to as semi-insulators. When undoped, these have electrical conductivity nearer to that of electrical insulators, however they can be doped (making them as useful as semiconductors). Semi-insulators find niche applications in micro-electronics, such as substrates for HEMT. An example of a common semi-insulator is gallium arsenide. Some materials, such as titanium dioxide, can even be used as insulating materials for some applications, while being treated as wide-gap semiconductors for other applications.
The partial filling of the states at the bottom of the conduction band can be understood as adding electrons to that band.
The electrons do not stay indefinitely (due to the natural thermal recombination) but they can move around for some time.
The actual concentration of electrons is typically very dilute, and so (unlike in metals) it is possible to think of the electrons in the conduction band of a semiconductor as a sort of classical ideal gas, where the electrons fly around freely without being subject to the Pauli exclusion principle. In most semiconductors the conduction bands have a parabolic dispersion relation, and so these electrons respond to forces (electric field, magnetic field, etc.) much like they would in a vacuum, though with a different effective mass.
Because the electrons behave like an ideal gas, one may also think about conduction in very simplistic terms such as the Drude model, and introduce concepts such as electron mobility.
For partial filling at the top of the valence band, it is helpful to introduce the concept of an electron hole.
Although the electrons in the valence band are always moving around, a completely full valence band is inert, not conducting any current.
If an electron is taken out of the valence band, then the trajectory that the electron would normally have taken is now missing its charge.
For the purposes of electric current, this combination of the full valence band, minus the electron, can be converted into a picture of a completely empty band containing a positively charged particle that moves in the same way as the electron.
Combined with the "negative" effective mass of the electrons at the top of the valence band, we arrive at a picture of a positively charged particle that responds to electric and magnetic fields just as a normal positively charged particle would do in vacuum, again with some positive effective mass.
This particle is called a hole, and the collection of holes in the valence band can again be understood in simple classical terms (as with the electrons in the conduction band).
When ionizing radiation strikes a semiconductor, it may excite an electron out of its energy level and consequently leave a hole. This process is known as "electron–hole pair generation". Electron-hole pairs are constantly generated from thermal energy as well, in the absence of any external energy source.
Electron-hole pairs are also apt to recombine. Conservation of energy demands that these recombination events, in which an electron loses an amount of energy larger than the band gap, be accompanied by the emission of thermal energy (in the form of phonons) or radiation (in the form of photons).
In some states, the generation and recombination of electron–hole pairs are in equipoise. The number of electron-hole pairs in the steady state at a given temperature is determined by quantum statistical mechanics. The precise quantum mechanical mechanisms of generation and recombination are governed by conservation of energy and conservation of momentum.
As the probability that electrons and holes meet together is proportional to the product of their numbers, the product is in steady state nearly constant at a given temperature, providing that there is no significant electric field (which might "flush" carriers of both types, or move them from neighbour regions containing more of them to meet together) or externally driven pair generation. The product is a function of the temperature, as the probability of getting enough thermal energy to produce a pair increases with temperature, being approximately exp(−"E""G"/"kT"), where "k" is Boltzmann's constant, "T" is absolute temperature and "E""G" is band gap.
The probability of meeting is increased by carrier traps – impurities or dislocations which can trap an electron or hole and hold it until a pair is completed. Such carrier traps are sometimes purposely added to reduce the time needed to reach the steady state.
The conductivity of semiconductors may easily be modified by introducing impurities into their crystal lattice. The process of adding controlled impurities to a semiconductor is known as "doping". The amount of impurity, or dopant, added to an "intrinsic" (pure) semiconductor varies its level of conductivity. Doped semiconductors are referred to as "extrinsic". By adding impurity to the pure semiconductors, the electrical conductivity may be varied by factors of thousands or millions.
A 1 cm3 specimen of a metal or semiconductor has of the order of 1022 atoms. In a metal, every atom donates at least one free electron for conduction, thus 1 cm3 of metal contains on the order of 1022 free electrons, whereas a 1 cm3 sample of pure germanium at 20 °C contains about atoms, but only free electrons and holes. The addition of 0.001% of arsenic (an impurity) donates an extra 1017 free electrons in the same volume and the electrical conductivity is increased by a factor of 10,000.
The materials chosen as suitable dopants depend on the atomic properties of both the dopant and the material to be doped. In general, dopants that produce the desired controlled changes are classified as either electron acceptors or donors. Semiconductors doped with "donor" impurities are called "n-type", while those doped with "acceptor" impurities are known as "p-type". The n and p type designations indicate which charge carrier acts as the material's majority carrier. The opposite carrier is called the minority carrier, which exists due to thermal excitation at a much lower concentration compared to the majority carrier.
For example, the pure semiconductor silicon has four valence electrons which bond each silicon atom to its neighbors. In silicon, the most common dopants are "group III" and "group V" elements. Group III elements all contain three valence electrons, causing them to function as acceptors when used to dope silicon. When an acceptor atom replaces a silicon atom in the crystal, a vacant state (an electron "hole") is created, which can move around the lattice and functions as a charge carrier. Group V elements have five valence electrons, which allows them to act as a donor; substitution of these atoms for silicon creates an extra free electron. Therefore, a silicon crystal doped with boron creates a p-type semiconductor whereas one doped with phosphorus results in an n-type material.
During manufacture, dopants can be diffused into the semiconductor body by contact with gaseous compounds of the desired element, or ion implantation can be used to accurately position the doped regions.
Some materials, when rapidly cooled to a glassy amorphous state, have semiconducting properties. These include B, Si, Ge, Se, and Te, and there are multiple theories to explain them.
The history of the understanding of semiconductors begins with experiments on the electrical properties of materials. The properties of negative temperature coefficient of resistance, rectification, and light-sensitivity were observed starting in the early 19th century.
Thomas Johann Seebeck was the first to notice an effect due to semiconductors, in 1821. In 1833, Michael Faraday reported that the resistance of specimens of silver sulfide decreases when they are heated. This is contrary to the behavior of metallic substances such as copper. In 1839, Alexandre Edmond Becquerel reported observation of a voltage between a solid and a liquid electrolyte when struck by light, the photovoltaic effect. In 1873 Willoughby Smith observed that selenium resistors exhibit decreasing resistance when light falls on them. In 1874, Karl Ferdinand Braun observed conduction and rectification in metallic sulfides, although this effect had been discovered much earlier by Peter Munck af Rosenschold () writing for the Annalen der Physik und Chemie in 1835, and Arthur Schuster found that a copper oxide layer on wires has rectification properties that ceases when the wires are cleaned. William Grylls Adams and Richard Evans Day observed the photovoltaic effect in selenium in 1876.
A unified explanation of these phenomena required a theory of solid-state physics which developed greatly in the first half of the 20th Century. In 1878 Edwin Herbert Hall demonstrated the deflection of flowing charge carriers by an applied magnetic field, the Hall effect. The discovery of the electron by J.J. Thomson in 1897 prompted theories of electron-based conduction in solids. Karl Baedeker, by observing a Hall effect with the reverse sign to that in metals, theorized that copper iodide had positive charge carriers. Johan Koenigsberger classified solid materials as metals, insulators and "variable conductors" in 1914 although his student Josef Weiss already introduced the term "Halbleiter" (semiconductor in modern meaning) in PhD thesis in 1910. Felix Bloch published a theory of the movement of electrons through atomic lattices in 1928. In 1930, B. Gudden stated that conductivity in semiconductors was due to minor concentrations of impurities. By 1931, the band theory of conduction had been established by Alan Herries Wilson and the concept of band gaps had been developed. Walter H. Schottky and Nevill Francis Mott developed models of the potential barrier and of the characteristics of a metal–semiconductor junction. By 1938, Boris Davydov had developed a theory of the copper-oxide rectifier, identifying the effect of the p–n junction and the importance of minority carriers and surface states.
Agreement between theoretical predictions (based on developing quantum mechanics) and experimental results was sometimes poor. This was later explained by John Bardeen as due to the extreme "structure sensitive" behavior of semiconductors, whose properties change dramatically based on tiny amounts of impurities. Commercially pure materials of the 1920s containing varying proportions of trace contaminants produced differing experimental results. This spurred the development of improved material refining techniques, culminating in modern semiconductor refineries producing materials with parts-per-trillion purity.
Devices using semiconductors were at first constructed based on empirical knowledge, before semiconductor theory provided a guide to construction of more capable and reliable devices.
Alexander Graham Bell used the light-sensitive property of selenium to transmit sound over a beam of light in 1880. A working solar cell, of low efficiency, was constructed by Charles Fritts in 1883 using a metal plate coated with selenium and a thin layer of gold; the device became commercially useful in photographic light meters in the 1930s. Point-contact microwave detector rectifiers made of lead sulfide were used by Jagadish Chandra Bose in 1904; the cat's-whisker detector using natural galena or other materials became a common device in the development of radio. However, it was somewhat unpredictable in operation and required manual adjustment for best performance. In 1906 H.J. Round observed light emission when electric current passed through silicon carbide crystals, the principle behind the light-emitting diode. Oleg Losev observed similar light emission in 1922 but at the time the effect had no practical use. Power rectifiers, using copper oxide and selenium, were developed in the 1920s and became commercially important as an alternative to vacuum tube rectifiers.
The first semiconductor devices used galena, including German physicist Ferdinand Braun's crystal detector in 1874 and Bengali physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose's radio crystal detector in 1901.
In the years preceding World War II, infrared detection and communications devices prompted research into lead-sulfide and lead-selenide materials. These devices were used for detecting ships and aircraft, for infrared rangefinders, and for voice communication systems. The point-contact crystal detector became vital for microwave radio systems, since available vacuum tube devices could not serve as detectors above about 4000 MHz; advanced radar systems relied on the fast response of crystal detectors. Considerable research and development of silicon materials occurred during the war to develop detectors of consistent quality.
Detector and power rectifiers could not amplify a signal. Many efforts were made to develop a solid-state amplifier and were successful in developing a device called the point contact transistor which could amplify 20db or more. In 1922, Oleg Losev developed two-terminal, negative resistance amplifiers for radio, but he perished in the Siege of Leningrad after successful completion. In 1926, Julius Edgar Lilienfeld patented a device resembling a field-effect transistor, but it was not practical. R. Hilsch and R. W. Pohl in 1938 demonstrated a solid-state amplifier using a structure resembling the control grid of a vacuum tube; although the device displayed power gain, it had a cut-off frequency of one cycle per second, too low for any practical applications, but an effective application of the available theory. At Bell Labs, William Shockley and A. Holden started investigating solid-state amplifiers in 1938. The first p–n junction in silicon was observed by Russell Ohl about 1941, when a specimen was found to be light-sensitive, with a sharp boundary between p-type impurity at one end and n-type at the other. A slice cut from the specimen at the p–n boundary developed a voltage when exposed to light.
The first working transistor was a point-contact transistor invented by John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain and William Shockley at Bell Labs in 1947. Shockley had earlier theorized a field-effect amplifier made from germanium and silicon, but he failed to build such a working device, before eventually using germanium to invent the point-contact transistor. In France, during the war, Herbert Mataré had observed amplification between adjacent point contacts on a germanium base. After the war, Mataré's group announced their "Transistron" amplifier only shortly after Bell Labs announced the "transistor".
In 1954, physical chemist Morris Tanenbaum fabricated the first silicon junction transistor at Bell Labs. However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on a mass-production basis, which limited them to a number of specialised applications.
The first silicon semiconductor device was a silicon radio crystal detector, developed by American engineer Greenleaf Whittier Pickard in 1906. In 1940, Russell Ohl discovered the p-n junction and photovoltaic effects in silicon. In 1941, techniques for producing high-purity germanium and silicon crystals were developed for radar microwave detectors during World War II. In 1955, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick at Bell Labs accidentally discovered that silicon dioxide (SiO2) could be grown on silicon, and they later proposed this could mask silicon surfaces during diffusion processes in 1958.
In the early years of the semiconductor industry, up until the late 1950s, germanium was the dominant semiconductor material for transistors and other semiconductor devices, rather than silicon. Germanium was initially considered the more effective semiconductor material, as it was able to demonstrate better performance due to higher carrier mobility. The relative lack of performance in early silicon semiconductors was due to electrical conductivity being limited by unstable quantum surface states, where electrons are trapped at the surface, due to dangling bonds that occur because unsaturated bonds are present at the surface. This prevented electricity from reliably penetrating the surface to reach the semiconducting silicon layer.
A breakthrough in silicon semiconductor technology came with the work of Egyptian engineer Mohamed Atalla, who developed the process of surface passivation by thermal oxidation at Bell Labs in the late 1950s. He discovered that the formation of a thermally grown silicon dioxide layer greatly reduced the concentration of electronic states at the silicon surface, and that silicon oxide layers could be used to electrically stabilize silicon surfaces. Atalla first published his findings in Bell memos during 1957, and then demonstrated it in 1958. This was the first demonstration to show that high-quality silicon dioxide insulator films could be grown thermally on the silicon surface to protect the underlying silicon p-n junction diodes and transistors. Atalla's surface passivation process enabled silicon to surpass the conductivity and performance of germanium, and led to silicon replacing germanium as the dominant semiconductor material. Atalla's surface passivation process is considered the most important advance in silicon semiconductor technology, paving the way for the mass-production of silicon semiconductor devices. By the mid-1960s, Atalla's process for oxidized silicon surfaces was used to fabricate virtually all integrated circuits and silicon devices. Surface passivation by thermal oxidation remains a key feature of silicon semiconductor technology.
In the late 1950s, Mohamed Atalla utilized his surface passivation and thermal oxidation methods to develop the metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) process, which he proposed could be used to build the first working silicon field-effect transistor. This led to the invention of the MOSFET (MOS field-effect transistor) by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng in 1959. It was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of uses, With its scalability, and much lower power consumption and higher density than bipolar junction transistors, the MOSFET became the most common type of transistor in computers, electronics, and communications technology such as smartphones. The US Patent and Trademark Office calls the MOSFET a "groundbreaking invention that transformed life and culture around the world".
The CMOS (complementary MOS) process was developed by Chih-Tang Sah and Frank Wanlass at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963. The first report of a floating-gate MOSFET was made by Dawon Kahng and Simon Sze in 1967. FinFET (fin field-effect transistor), a type of 3D multi-gate MOSFET, was developed by Digh Hisamoto and his team of researchers at Hitachi Central Research Laboratory in 1989. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27709 |
Starch
Starch or amylum is a polymeric carbohydrate consisting of numerous glucose units joined by glycosidic bonds. This polysaccharide is produced by most green plants as energy storage. It is the most common carbohydrate in human diets and is contained in large amounts in staple foods like potatoes, maize (corn), rice, and cassava, as well as in the grain Emmer wheat (Triticum amyleum), from which is produced a cultivated white starch.
Pure starch is a white, tasteless and odorless powder that is insoluble in cold water or alcohol. It consists of two types of molecules: the linear and helical amylose and the branched amylopectin. Depending on the plant, starch generally contains 20 to 25% amylose and 75 to 80% amylopectin by weight. Glycogen, the glucose store of animals, is a more highly branched version of amylopectin.
In industry, starch is converted into sugars, for example by malting, and fermented to produce ethanol in the manufacture of beer, whisky and biofuel. It is processed to produce many of the sugars used in processed foods. Mixing most starches in warm water produces a paste, such as wheatpaste, which can be used as a thickening, stiffening or gluing agent. The biggest industrial non-food use of starch is as an adhesive in the papermaking process. Starch can be applied to parts of some garments before ironing, to stiffen them.
The word "starch" is from its Germanic root with the meanings "strong, stiff, strengthen, stiffen". Modern German "Stärke" (strength) is related and referring for centuries main application, the use in textile: sizing yarn for weaving and starching linen. The Greek term for starch, "amylon" (ἄμυλον), which means "not milled", is also related. It provides the root amyl, which is used as a prefix for several 5-carbon compounds related to or derived from starch (e.g. amyl alcohol).
Starch grains from the rhizomes of "Typha" (cattails, bullrushes) as flour have been identified from grinding stones in Europe dating back to 30,000 years ago. Starch grains from sorghum were found on grind stones in caves in Ngalue, Mozambique dating up to 100,000 years ago.
Pure extracted wheat starch paste was used in Ancient Egypt possibly to glue papyrus. The extraction of starch is first described in the "Natural History" of Pliny the Elder around AD 77–79. Romans used it also in cosmetic creams, to powder the hair and to thicken sauces. Persians and Indians used it to make dishes similar to gothumai wheat halva. Rice starch as surface treatment of paper has been used in paper production in China since 700 CE.
In addition to starchy plants consumed directly, by 2008 66 million tonnes of starch were being produced per year worldwide. In 2011, production was increased to 73 million ton.
In the EU the starch industry produced about 8.5 million tonnes in 2008, with around 40% being used for industrial applications and 60% for food uses, most of the latter as glucose syrups. In 2017 EU production was 11 million ton of which 9,4 million ton was consumed in the EU and of which 54% were starch sweeteners.
The US produced about 27.5 million tons of starch in 2017, of which about 8.2 million tons was high fructose syrup, 6.2 million tons was glucose syrups, and 2.5 million tons were starch products. The rest of the starch was used for producing ethanol (1.6 billion gallons).
Most green plants store energy as starch, which is packed into semicrystalline granules. The extra glucose is changed into starch which is more complex than glucose (by plants). Young plants live on this stored energy in their roots, seeds, and fruits until it can find suitable soil in which to grow. An exception is the family Asteraceae (asters, daisies and sunflowers), where starch is replaced by the fructan inulin. Inulin-like fructans are also present in grasses such as wheat, in onions and garlic, bananas, and asparagus.
In photosynthesis, plants use light energy to produce glucose from carbon dioxide. The glucose is used to generate the chemical energy required for general metabolism, to make organic compounds such as nucleic acids, lipids, proteins and structural polysaccharides such as cellulose, or is stored in the form of starch granules, in amyloplasts. Toward the end of the growing season, starch accumulates in twigs of trees near the buds. Fruit, seeds, rhizomes, and tubers store starch to prepare for the next growing season.
Glucose is soluble in water, hydrophilic, binds with water and then takes up much space and is osmotically active; glucose in the form of starch, on the other hand, is not soluble, therefore osmotically inactive and can be stored much more compactly. The semicrystalline granules generally consist of concentric layers of amylose and amylopectin which can be made bioavailable upon cellular demand in the plant.
Glucose molecules are bound in starch by the easily hydrolyzed alpha bonds. The same type of bond is found in the animal reserve polysaccharide glycogen. This is in contrast to many structural polysaccharides such as chitin, cellulose and peptidoglycan, which are bound by beta bonds and are much more resistant to hydrolysis.
Plants produce starch by first converting glucose 1-phosphate to ADP-glucose using the enzyme glucose-1-phosphate adenylyltransferase. This step requires energy in the form of ATP. The enzyme starch synthase then adds the ADP-glucose via a 1,4-alpha glycosidic bond to a growing chain of glucose residues, liberating ADP and creating amylose. The ADP-glucose is almost certainly added to the non-reducing end of the amylose polymer, as the UDP-glucose is added to the non-reducing end of glycogen during glycogen synthesis.
Starch branching enzyme introduces 1,6-alpha glycosidic bonds between the amylose chains, creating the branched amylopectin. The starch debranching enzyme isoamylase removes some of these branches. Several isoforms of these enzymes exist, leading to a highly complex synthesis process.
Glycogen and amylopectin have similar structure, but the former has about one branch point per ten 1,4-alpha bonds, compared to about one branch point per thirty 1,4-alpha bonds in amylopectin. Amylopectin is synthesized from ADP-glucose while mammals and fungi synthesize glycogen from UDP-glucose; for most cases, bacteria synthesize glycogen from ADP-glucose (analogous to starch).
In addition to starch synthesis in plants, starch can be synthesized from non-food starch mediated by an enzyme cocktail. In this cell-free biosystem, beta-1,4-glycosidic bond-linked cellulose is partially hydrolyzed to cellobiose. Cellobiose phosphorylase cleaves to glucose 1-phosphate and glucose; the other enzyme—potato alpha-glucan phosphorylase can add a glucose unit from glucose 1-phosphorylase to the non-reducing ends of starch. In it, phosphate is internally recycled. The other product, glucose, can be assimilated by a yeast. This cell-free bioprocessing does not need any costly chemical and energy input, can be conducted in aqueous solution, and does not have sugar losses.
Starch is synthesized in plant leaves during the day and stored as granules; it serves as an energy source at night. The insoluble, highly branched starch chains have to be phosphorylated in order to be accessible for degrading enzymes. The enzyme glucan, water dikinase (GWD) phosphorylates at the C-6 position of a glucose molecule, close to the chains 1,6-alpha branching bonds. A second enzyme, phosphoglucan, water dikinase (PWD) phosphorylates the glucose molecule at the C-3 position. A loss of these enzymes, for example a loss of the GWD, leads to a starch excess (sex) phenotype, and because starch cannot be phosphorylated, it accumulates in the plastids.
After the phosphorylation, the first degrading enzyme, beta-amylase (BAM) can attack the glucose chain at its non-reducing end. Maltose is released as the main product of starch degradation. If the glucose chain consists of three or fewer molecules, BAM cannot release maltose. A second enzyme, disproportionating enzyme-1 (DPE1), combines two maltotriose molecules. From this chain, a glucose molecule is released. Now, BAM can release another maltose molecule from the remaining chain. This cycle repeats until starch is degraded completely. If BAM comes close to the phosphorylated branching point of the glucose chain, it can no longer release maltose. In order for the phosphorylated chain to be degraded, the enzyme isoamylase (ISA) is required.
The products of starch degradation are predominantly maltose and smaller amounts of glucose. These molecules are exported from the plastid to the cytosol, maltose via the maltose transporter, which if mutated (MEX1-mutant) results in maltose accumulation in the plastid. Glucose is exported via the plastidic glucose translocator (pGlcT). These two sugars act as a precursor for sucrose synthesis. Sucrose can then be used in the oxidative pentose phosphate pathway in the mitochondria, to generate ATP at night.
While amylose was thought to be completely unbranched, it is now known that some of its molecules contain a few branch points.
Amylose is a much smaller molecule than amylopectin. About one quarter of the mass of starch granules in plants consist of amylose, although there are about 150 times more amylose than amylopectin molecules.
Starch molecules arrange themselves in the plant in semi-crystalline granules. Each plant species has a unique starch granular size: rice starch is relatively small (about 2 μm) while potato starches have larger granules (up to 100 μm).
Starch becomes soluble in water when heated. The granules swell and burst, the semi-crystalline structure is lost and the smaller amylose molecules start leaching out of the granule, forming a network that holds water and increasing the mixture's viscosity. This process is called starch gelatinization. During cooking, the starch becomes a paste and increases further in viscosity. During cooling or prolonged storage of the paste, the semi-crystalline structure partially recovers and the starch paste thickens, expelling water. This is mainly caused by retrogradation of the amylose. This process is responsible for the hardening of bread or staling, and for the water layer on top of a starch gel (syneresis).
Some cultivated plant varieties have pure amylopectin starch without amylose, known as "waxy starches". The most used is waxy maize, others are glutinous rice and waxy potato starch. Waxy starches have less retrogradation, resulting in a more stable paste. High amylose starch, amylomaize, is cultivated for the use of its gel strength and for use as a resistant starch (a starch that resists digestion) in food products.
Synthetic amylose made from cellulose has a well-controlled degree of polymerization. Therefore, it can be used as a potential drug deliver carrier.
Certain starches, when mixed with water, will produce a non-newtonian fluid sometimes nicknamed "oobleck".
The enzymes that break down or hydrolyze starch into the constituent sugars are known as amylases.
Alpha-amylases are found in plants and in animals. Human saliva is rich in amylase, and the pancreas also secretes the enzyme. Individuals from populations with a high-starch diet tend to have more amylase genes than those with low-starch diets;
Beta-amylase cuts starch into maltose units. This process is important in the digestion of starch and is also used in brewing, where amylase from the skin of seed grains is responsible for converting starch to maltose (Malting, Mashing).
Given a heat of combustion of glucose of whereas that of starch is per mole of glucose monomer, hydrolysis releases about per mole, or per gram of glucose product.
If starch is subjected to dry heat, it breaks down to form dextrins, also called "pyrodextrins" in this context. This break down process is known as dextrinization. (Pyro)dextrins are mainly yellow to brown in color and dextrinization is partially responsible for the browning of toasted bread.
A triiodide (I3−) solution formed by mixing iodine and iodide (usually from potassium iodide) is used to test for starch; a dark blue color indicates the presence of starch. The details of this reaction are not fully known, but recent scientific work using single crystal x-ray crystallography and comparative Raman spectroscopy suggests that the final starch-iodine structure is similar to an infinite polyiodide chain like one found in a pyrroloperylene-iodine complex. The strength of the resulting blue color depends on the amount of amylose present. Waxy starches with little or no amylose present will color red. Benedict's test and Fehling's test is also done to indicate the presence of starch.
Starch indicator solution consisting of water, starch and iodide is often used in redox titrations: in the presence of an oxidizing agent the solution turns blue, in the presence of reducing agent the blue color disappears because triiodide (I3−) ions break up into three iodide ions, disassembling the starch-iodine complex. Starch solution was used as indicator for visualizing the periodic formation and consumption of triiodide intermediate in the Briggs-Rauscher oscillating reaction. The starch, however, changes the kinetics of the reaction steps involving triiodide ion.
A 0.3% w/w solution is the standard concentration for a starch indicator. It is made by adding 3 grams of soluble starch to 1 liter of heated water; the solution is cooled before use (starch-iodine complex becomes unstable at temperatures above 35 °C).
Each species of plant has a unique type of starch granules in granular size, shape and crystallization pattern. Under the microscope, starch grains stained with iodine illuminated from behind with polarized light show a distinctive Maltese cross effect (also known as extinction cross and birefringence).
Starch is the most common carbohydrate in the human diet and is contained in many staple foods. The major sources of starch intake worldwide are the cereals (rice, wheat, and maize) and the root vegetables (potatoes and cassava). Many other starchy foods are grown, some only in specific climates, including acorns, arrowroot, arracacha, bananas, barley, breadfruit, buckwheat, canna, colocasia, katakuri, kudzu, malanga, millet, oats, oca, polynesian arrowroot, sago, sorghum, sweet potatoes, rye, taro, chestnuts, water chestnuts and yams, and many kinds of beans, such as favas, lentils, mung beans, peas, and chickpeas.
Widely used prepared foods containing starch are bread, pancakes, cereals, noodles, pasta, porridge and tortilla.
Digestive enzymes have problems digesting crystalline structures. Raw starch is digested poorly in the duodenum and small intestine, while bacterial degradation takes place mainly in the colon. When starch is cooked, the digestibility is increased.
Starch gelatinization during cake baking can be impaired by sugar competing for water, preventing gelatinization and improving texture.
Before the advent of processed foods, people consumed large amounts of uncooked and unprocessed starch-containing plants, which contained high amounts of resistant starch. Microbes within the large intestine fermented the starch, produced short-chain fatty acids, which are used as energy, and support the maintenance and growth of the microbes. More highly processed foods are more easily digested and release more glucose in the small intestine—less starch reaches the large intestine and more energy is absorbed by the body. It is thought that this shift in energy delivery (as a result of eating more processed foods) may be one of the contributing factors to the development of metabolic disorders of modern life, including obesity and diabetes.
The amylose/amylopectin ratio, molecular weight and molecular fine structure influences the physicochemical properties as well as energy release of different types of starches. In addition, cooking and food processing significantly impacts starch digestibility and energy release. Starch can be classified as rapidly digestible, slowly digestible and resistant starch. Raw starch granules resist digestion by human enzymes and do not break down into glucose in the small intestine - they reach the large intestine instead and function as prebiotic dietary fiber. When starch granules are fully gelatinized and cooked, the starch becomes easily digestible and releases glucose quickly within the small intestine. When starchy foods are cooked and cooled, some of the glucose chains re-crystallize and become resistant to digestion again. Slowly digestible starch can be found in raw cereals, where digestion is slow but relatively complete within the small intestine.
The starch industry extracts and refines starches from seeds, roots and tubers, by wet grinding, washing, sieving and drying. Today, the main commercial refined starches are cornstarch, tapioca, arrowroot, and wheat, rice, and potato starches. To a lesser extent, sources of refined starch are sweet potato, sago and mung bean. To this day, starch is extracted from more than 50 types of plants.
Untreated starch requires heat to thicken or gelatinize. When a starch is pre-cooked, it can then be used to thicken instantly in cold water. This is referred to as a pregelatinized starch.
Starch can be hydrolyzed into simpler carbohydrates by acids, various enzymes, or a combination of the two. The resulting fragments are known as dextrins. The extent of conversion is typically quantified by dextrose equivalent (DE), which is roughly the fraction of the glycosidic bonds in starch that have been broken.
These starch sugars are by far the most common starch based food ingredient and are used as sweeteners in many drinks and foods. They include:
A modified starch is a starch that has been chemically modified to allow the starch to function properly under conditions frequently encountered during processing or storage, such as high heat, high shear, low pH, freeze/thaw and cooling.
The modified food starches are E coded according to the International Numbering System for Food Additives (INS):
INS 1400, 1401, 1402, 1403 and 1405 are in the EU food ingredients without an E-number. Typical modified starches for technical applications are cationic starches, hydroxyethyl starch and carboxymethylated starches.
As an additive for food processing, food starches are typically used as thickeners and stabilizers in foods such as puddings, custards, soups, sauces, gravies, pie fillings, and salad dressings, and to make noodles and pastas. They function as thickeners, extenders, emulsion stabilizers and are exceptional binders in processed meats.
Gummed sweets such as jelly beans and wine gums are not manufactured using a mold in the conventional sense. A tray is filled with native starch and leveled. A positive mold is then pressed into the starch leaving an impression of 1,000 or so jelly beans. The jelly mix is then poured into the impressions and put onto a stove to set. This method greatly reduces the number of molds that must be manufactured.
In the pharmaceutical industry, starch is also used as an excipient, as tablet disintegrant, and as binder.
Resistant starch is starch that escapes digestion in the small intestine of healthy individuals.
High amylose starch from corn has a higher gelatinization temperature than other types of starch and retains its resistant starch content through baking, mild extrusion and other food processing techniques. It is used as an insoluble dietary fiber in processed foods such as bread, pasta, cookies, crackers, pretzels and other low moisture foods. It is also utilized as a dietary supplement for its health benefits. Published studies have shown that resistant starch helps to improve insulin sensitivity, increases satiety, reduces pro-inflammatory biomarkers interleukin 6 and tumor necrosis factor alpha and improves markers of colonic function.
It has been suggested that resistant starch contributes to the health benefits of intact whole grains.
Papermaking is the largest non-food application for starches globally, consuming many millions of metric tons annually. In a typical sheet of copy paper for instance, the starch content may be as high as 8%. Both chemically modified and unmodified starches are used in papermaking. In the wet part of the papermaking process, generally called the "wet-end", the starches used are cationic and have a positive charge bound to the starch polymer. These starch derivatives associate with the anionic or negatively charged paper fibers / cellulose and inorganic fillers. Cationic starches together with other retention and internal sizing agents help to give the necessary strength properties to the paper web formed in the papermaking process (wet strength), and to provide strength to the final paper sheet (dry strength).
In the dry end of the papermaking process, the paper web is rewetted with a starch based solution. The process is called surface sizing. Starches used have been chemically, or enzymatically depolymerized at the paper mill or by the starch industry (oxidized starch). The size/starch solutions are applied to the paper web by means of various mechanical presses (size presses). Together with surface sizing agents the surface starches impart additional strength to the paper web and additionally provide water hold out or "size" for superior printing properties. Starch is also used in paper coatings as one of the binders for the coating formulations which include a mixture of pigments, binders and thickeners. Coated paper has improved smoothness, hardness, whiteness and gloss and thus improves printing characteristics.
Corrugated board adhesives are the next largest application of non-food starches globally. Starch glues are mostly based on unmodified native starches, plus some additive such as borax and caustic soda. Part of the starch is gelatinized to carry the slurry of uncooked starches and prevent sedimentation. This opaque glue is called a SteinHall adhesive. The glue is applied on tips of the fluting. The fluted paper is pressed to paper called liner. This is then dried under high heat, which causes the rest of the uncooked starch in glue to swell/gelatinize. This gelatinizing makes the glue a fast and strong adhesive for corrugated board production.
Clothing or laundry starch is a liquid prepared by mixing a vegetable starch in water (earlier preparations also had to be boiled), and is used in the laundering of clothes. Starch was widely used in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries to stiffen the wide collars and ruffs of fine linen which surrounded the necks of the well-to-do. During the 19th and early 20th century it was stylish to stiffen the collars and sleeves of men's shirts and the ruffles of women's petticoats by applying starch to them as the clean clothes were being ironed. Starch gave clothing smooth, crisp edges, and had an additional practical purpose: dirt and sweat from a person's neck and wrists would stick to the starch rather than to the fibers of the clothing. The dirt would wash away along with the starch; after laundering, the starch would be reapplied. Today, in many cultures, starch is sold in aerosol cans for home use, but in others it remain available in granular form for mixing with water.
Another large non-food starch application is in the construction industry, where starch is used in the gypsum wall board manufacturing process. Chemically modified or unmodified starches are added to the stucco containing primarily gypsum. Top and bottom heavyweight sheets of paper are applied to the formulation, and the process is allowed to heat and cure to form the eventual rigid wall board. The starches act as a glue for the cured gypsum rock with the paper covering, and also provide rigidity to the board.
Starch is used in the manufacture of various adhesives or glues for book-binding, wallpaper adhesives, paper sack production, tube winding, gummed paper, envelope adhesives, school glues and bottle labeling. Starch derivatives, such as yellow dextrins, can be modified by addition of some chemicals to form a hard glue for paper work; some of those forms use borax or soda ash, which are mixed with the starch solution at to create a very good adhesive. Sodium silicate can be added to reinforce these formula.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set the legal limit (Permissible exposure limit) for starch exposure in the workplace as 15 mg/m3 total exposure and 5 mg/m3 respiratory exposure over an 8-hour workday. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set a Recommended exposure limit (REL) of 10 mg/m3 total exposure and 5 mg/m3 respiratory exposure over an 8-hour workday. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27711 |
Sugar
Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Table sugar, granulated sugar, or regular sugar, refers to sucrose, a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose.
Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double sugars, are molecules composed of two monosaccharides joined by a glycosidic bond. Common examples are sucrose (table sugar) (glucose + fructose), lactose (glucose + galactose), and maltose (two molecules of glucose). In the body, compound sugars are hydrolysed into simple sugars.
Longer chains of monosaccharides are not regarded as sugars, and are called oligosaccharides or polysaccharides. Some other chemical substances, such as glycerol and sugar alcohols, may have a sweet taste, but are not classified as sugar.
Sugars are found in the tissues of most plants. Honey and fruit are abundant natural sources of unbounded simple sugars. Sucrose is especially concentrated in sugarcane and sugar beet, making them ideal for efficient commercial extraction to make refined sugar. In 2016, the combined world production of those two crops was about two billion tonnes. Maltose may be produced by malting grain. Lactose is the only sugar that cannot be extracted from plants. It can only be found in milk, including human breast milk, and in some dairy products. A cheap source of sugar is corn syrup, industrially produced by converting corn starch into sugars, such as maltose, fructose and glucose.
Sucrose is used in prepared foods (e.g. cookies and cakes), is sometimes added to commercially available processed food and beverages, and may be used by people as a sweetener for foods (e.g. toast and cereal) and beverages (e.g. coffee and tea). The average person consumes about of sugar each year, or in developed countries, equivalent to over 260 food calories per day. As sugar consumption grew in the latter part of the 20th century, researchers began to examine whether a diet high in sugar, especially refined sugar, was damaging to human health. Excessive consumption of sugar has been implicated in the onset of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, and tooth decay. Numerous studies have tried to clarify those implications, but with varying results, mainly because of the difficulty of finding populations for use as controls that consume little or no sugar. In 2015, the World Health Organization recommended that adults and children reduce their intake of free sugars to less than 10%, and encouraged a reduction to below 5%, of their total energy intake.
The etymology reflects the spread of the commodity. From Sanskrit ("śarkarā"), meaning "ground or candied sugar," came Persian "shakar", then to 12th century French "sucre" and the English "sugar".
The English word "jaggery", a coarse brown sugar made from date palm sap or sugarcane juice, has a similar etymological origin: Portuguese "jágara" from the Malayalam "cakkarā", which is from the Sanskrit "śarkarā".
Sugar has been produced in the Indian subcontinent since ancient times and its cultivation spread from there into modern-day Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass. It was not plentiful nor cheap in early times, and in most parts of the world, honey was more often used for sweetening. Originally, people chewed raw sugarcane to extract its sweetness. Sugarcane was a native of tropical Indian subcontinent (South Asia) and Southeast Asia.
Different species seem to have originated from different locations with "Saccharum barberi" originating in India and "S. edule" and "S. officinarum" coming from New Guinea. One of the earliest historical references to sugarcane is in Chinese manuscripts dating to 8th century BCE, which state that the use of sugarcane originated in India.
In the tradition of Indian medicine (āyurveda), the sugarcane is known by the name "Ikṣu" and the sugarcane juice is known as "Phāṇita". Its varieties, synonyms and characteristics are defined in nighaṇṭus such as the Bhāvaprakāśa (1.6.23, group of sugarcanes).
Sugar remained relatively unimportant until the Indians discovered methods of turning sugarcane juice into granulated crystals that were easier to store and to transport. Crystallized sugar was discovered by the time of the Imperial Guptas, around the 5th century CE. In the local Indian language, these crystals were called "khanda" (Devanagari: खण्ड, ), which is the source of the word "candy". Indian sailors, who carried clarified butter and sugar as supplies, introduced knowledge of sugar along the various trade routes they travelled. Traveling Buddhist monks took sugar crystallization methods to China. During the reign of Harsha (r. 606–647) in North India, Indian envoys in Tang China taught methods of cultivating sugarcane after Emperor Taizong of Tang (r. 626–649) made known his interest in sugar. China established its first sugarcane plantations in the seventh century. Chinese documents confirm at least two missions to India, initiated in 647 CE, to obtain technology for sugar refining. In the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and China, sugar became a staple of cooking and desserts.
Nearchus, admiral of Alexander of Macedonia, knew of sugar during the year 325 B.C., because of his participation in the campaign of India led by Alexander ("Arrian, Anabasis"). The Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in the 1st century CE described sugar in his medical treatise De Materia Medica, and Pliny the Elder, a 1st-century CE Roman, described sugar in his Natural History: "Sugar is made in Arabia as well, but Indian sugar is better. It is a kind of honey found in cane, white as gum, and it crunches between the teeth. It comes in lumps the size of a hazelnut. Sugar is used only for medical purposes." Crusaders brought sugar back to Europe after their campaigns in the Holy Land, where they encountered caravans carrying "sweet salt". Early in the 12th century, Venice acquired some villages near Tyre and set up estates to produce sugar for export to Europe. It supplemented the use of honey, which had previously been the only available sweetener. Crusade chronicler William of Tyre, writing in the late 12th century, described sugar as "very necessary for the use and health of mankind". In the 15th century, Venice was the chief sugar refining and distribution center in Europe.
There was a drastic change in the mid-15th century, when Madeira and the Canary Islands were settled from Europe, and sugar grown there. After this an "all-consuming passion for sugar ... swept through society" as it became far more easily available, though initially still very expensive. By 1492, Madeira was producing over three million pounds weight of sugar annually. Genoa, one of the centers of distribution, became known for candied fruit, while Venice specialized in pastries, sweets (candies), and sugar sculptures. Sugar was considered to have "valuable medicinal properties" as a "warm" food under prevailing categories, being "helpful to the stomach, to cure cold diseases, and sooth lung complaints".
A feast given in Tours in 1457 by Gaston de Foix, which is "probably the best and most complete account we have of a late medieval banquet" includes the first mention of sugar sculptures, as the final food brought in was "a heraldic menagerie sculpted in sugar: lions, stags, monkeys ... each holding in paw or beak the arms of the Hungarian king". Other recorded grand feasts in the decades following included similar pieces. Originally the sculptures seem to have been eaten in the meal, but later they become merely table decorations, the most elaborate called "triomfi". Several significant sculptors are known to have produced them; in some cases their preliminary drawings survive. Early ones were in brown sugar, partly cast in molds, with the final touches carved. They continued to be used until at least the Coronation Banquet for Edward VII of the United Kingdom in 1903; among other sculptures every guest was given a sugar crown to take away.
In August 1492 Christopher Columbus picked up sugar cane in La Gomera in the Canary Islands, which he carried to the New World. This was the introduction of this plant. The cuttings were planted and the first sugar-cane harvest in Hispaniola took place in 1501. Many sugar mills had been constructed in Cuba and Jamaica by the 1520s. The Portuguese took sugar cane to Brazil. By 1540, there were 800 cane-sugar mills in Santa Catarina Island and another 2,000 on the north coast of Brazil, Demarara, and Surinam.
Sugar was a luxury in Europe until the early 19th century, when it became more widely available, due to the rise of beet sugar in Prussia, and later in France under Napoleon. Beet sugar was a German invention, since, in 1747, Andreas Sigismund Marggraf announced the discovery of sugar in beets and devised a method using alcohol to extract it. Marggraf's student, Franz Karl Achard, devised an economical industrial method to extract the sugar in its pure form in the late 18th century. Achard first produced beet sugar in 1783 in Kaulsdorf, and in 1801, the world's first beet sugar production facility was established in Cunern, Silesia (then part of Prussia). The works of Marggraf and Achard were the starting point for the sugar industry in Europe, and for the modern sugar industry in general, since sugar was no longer a luxury product and a product almost only produced in warmer climates.
Sugar became highly popular and by the 19th century, sugar came to be considered a necessity. This evolution of taste and demand for sugar as an essential food ingredient resulted in major economic and social changes. Demand drove, in part, the colonization of tropical islands and areas where labor-intensive sugarcane plantations and sugar manufacturing could be successful. The demand for cheap labor to perform the labor-intensive cultivation and processing increased the demand for the slave trade from Africa (in particular West Africa).
After slavery was abolished, the demand for workers in the British Caribbean colonies was filled by indentured laborers from Indian subcontinent (in particular India). Millions of slave and indentured laborers were brought into the Caribbean and the Americas, Indian Ocean colonies, southeast Asia, Pacific Islands, and East Africa and Natal. Thus the modern ethnic mix of many nations that have been settled in the last two centuries has been influenced by the demand for sugar.
Sugar also led to some industrialization of areas where sugar cane was grown. For example, in the 1790s Lieutenant J. Paterson, of the Bengal establishment, promoted to the British Government the idea that sugar cane could grow in British India, where it had started, with many advantages and at less expense than in the West Indies. As a result, sugar factories were established in Bihar in eastern India.
During the Napoleonic Wars, sugar-beet production increased in continental Europe because of the difficulty of importing sugar when shipping was subject to blockade. By 1880 the sugar beet was the main source of sugar in Europe. It was also cultivated in Lincolnshire and other parts of England, although the United Kingdom continued to import the main part of its sugar from its colonies.
Until the late nineteenth century, sugar was purchased in loaves, which had to be cut using implements called sugar nips. In later years, granulated sugar was more usually sold in bags. Sugar cubes were produced in the nineteenth century. The first inventor of a process to produce sugar in cube form was Moravian Jakub Kryštof Rad, director of a sugar company in Dačice. He began sugar-cube production after being granted a five-year patent for the process on January 23, 1843. Henry Tate of Tate & Lyle was another early manufacturer of sugar cubes at his refineries in Liverpool and London. Tate purchased a patent for sugar-cube manufacture from German Eugen Langen, who in 1872 had invented a different method of processing of sugar cubes.
Sugar was rationed during World War I and more sharply during World War II. This led to the development and use of various artificial sweeteners.
Scientifically, "sugar" loosely refers to a number of carbohydrates, such as monosaccharides, disaccharides, or oligosaccharides. Monosaccharides are also called "simple sugars," the most important being glucose. Most monosaccharides have a formula that conforms to with n between 3 and 7 (deoxyribose being an exception). Glucose has the molecular formula . The names of typical sugars end with -"ose", as in "glucose" and "fructose". Sometimes such words may also refer to any types of carbohydrates soluble in water. The acyclic mono- and disaccharides contain either aldehyde groups or ketone groups. These carbon-oxygen double bonds (C=O) are the reactive centers. All saccharides with more than one ring in their structure result from two or more monosaccharides joined by glycosidic bonds with the resultant loss of a molecule of water () per bond.
Monosaccharides in a closed-chain form can form glycosidic bonds with other monosaccharides, creating disaccharides (such as sucrose) and polysaccharides (such as starch). Enzymes must hydrolyze or otherwise break these glycosidic bonds before such compounds become metabolized. After digestion and absorption the principal monosaccharides present in the blood and internal tissues include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Many pentoses and hexoses can form ring structures. In these closed-chain forms, the aldehyde or ketone group remains non-free, so many of the reactions typical of these groups cannot occur. Glucose in solution exists mostly in the ring form at equilibrium, with less than 0.1% of the molecules in the open-chain form.
Biopolymers of sugars are common in nature. Through photosynthesis, plants produce glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate (G3P), a phosphated 3-carbon sugar that is used by the cell to make monosaccharides such as glucose () or (as in cane and beet) sucrose (). Monosaccharides may be further converted into structural polysaccharides such as cellulose and pectin for cell wall construction or into energy reserves in the form of storage polysaccharides such as starch or inulin. Starch, consisting of two different polymers of glucose, is a readily degradable form of chemical energy stored by cells, and can be converted to other types of energy. Another polymer of glucose is cellulose, which is a linear chain composed of several hundred or thousand glucose units. It is used by plants as a structural component in their cell walls. Humans can digest cellulose only to a very limited extent, though ruminants can do so with the help of symbiotic bacteria in their gut. DNA and RNA are built up of the monosaccharides deoxyribose and ribose, respectively. Deoxyribose has the formula and ribose the formula .
Because sugars burn easily when exposed to flame, the handling of sugars risks dust explosion. The risk of explosion is higher when the sugar has been milled to superfine texture, such as for use in chewing gum. The 2008 Georgia sugar refinery explosion, which killed 14 people and injured 40, and destroyed most of the refinery, was caused by the ignition of sugar dust.
In its culinary use, exposing sugar to heat causes caramelization. As the process occurs, volatile chemicals such as diacetyl are released, producing the characteristic caramel flavor.
Fructose, galactose, and glucose are all simple sugars, monosaccharides, with the general formula C6H12O6. They have five hydroxyl groups (−OH) and a carbonyl group (C=O) and are cyclic when dissolved in water. They each exist as several isomers with dextro- and laevo-rotatory forms that cause polarized light to diverge to the right or the left.
Lactose, maltose, and sucrose are all compound sugars, disaccharides, with the general formula C12H22O11. They are formed by the combination of two monosaccharide molecules with the exclusion of a molecule of water.
The sugar contents of common fruits and vegetables are presented in Table 1.
The fructose to fructose plus glucose ratio is calculated by including the fructose and glucose coming from the sucrose.
In November 2019, scientists reported detecting, for the first time, sugar molecules, including ribose, in meteorites, suggesting that chemical processes on asteroids can produce some fundamentally essential bio-ingredients important to life, and supporting the notion of an RNA World prior to a DNA-based origin of life on Earth, and possibly, as well, the notion of panspermia.
Due to rising demand, sugar production in general increased some 14% over the period 2009 to 2018. The largest importers were China, Indonesia, and the United States.
Global production of sugarcane in 2016 was 1.9 billion tonnes, with Brazil producing 41% of the world total and India 18% (table).
Sugarcane refers to any of several species, or their hybrids, of giant grasses in the genus "Saccharum" in the family Poaceae. They have been cultivated in tropical climates in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia over centuries for the sucrose found in their stems. A great expansion in sugarcane production took place in the 18th century with the establishment of slave plantations in the Americas. The use of slavery for the labor-intensive process resulted in sugar production, enabling prices cheap enough for most people to buy. Mechanization reduced some labor needs, but in the 21st century, cultivation and production relied on low-wage laborers.
Sugar cane requires a frost-free climate with sufficient rainfall during the growing season to make full use of the plant's substantial growth potential. The crop is harvested mechanically or by hand, chopped into lengths and conveyed rapidly to the processing plant (commonly known as a sugar mill) where it is either milled and the juice extracted with water or extracted by diffusion. The juice is clarified with lime and heated to destroy enzymes. The resulting thin syrup is concentrated in a series of evaporators, after which further water is removed. The resulting supersaturated solution is seeded with sugar crystals, facilitating crystal formation and drying. Molasses is a by-product of the process and the fiber from the stems, known as bagasse, is burned to provide energy for the sugar extraction process. The crystals of raw sugar have a sticky brown coating and either can be used as they are, can be bleached by sulfur dioxide, or can be treated in a carbonatation process to produce a whiter product. About of irrigation water is needed for every one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of sugar produced.
In 2016, global production of sugar beets was 277 million tonnes, led by Russia with 19% of the world total (table).
The sugar beet became a major source of sugar in the 19th century when methods for extracting the sugar became available. It is a biennial plant, a cultivated variety of "Beta vulgaris" in the family Amaranthaceae, the tuberous root of which contains a high proportion of sucrose. It is cultivated as a root crop in temperate regions with adequate rainfall and requires a fertile soil. The crop is harvested mechanically in the autumn and the crown of leaves and excess soil removed. The roots do not deteriorate rapidly and may be left in the field for some weeks before being transported to the processing plant where the crop is washed and sliced, and the sugar extracted by diffusion. Milk of lime is added to the raw juice with calcium carbonate. After water is evaporated by boiling the syrup under a vacuum, the syrup is cooled and seeded with sugar crystals. The white sugar that crystallizes can be separated in a centrifuge and dried, requiring no further refining.
Refined sugar is made from raw sugar that has undergone a refining process to remove the molasses. Raw sugar is sucrose which is extracted from sugarcane or sugar beet. While raw sugar can be consumed, the refining process removes unwanted tastes and results in refined sugar or white sugar.
The sugar may be transported in bulk to the country where it will be used and the refining process often takes place there. The first stage is known as affination and involves immersing the sugar crystals in a concentrated syrup that softens and removes the sticky brown coating without dissolving them. The crystals are then separated from the liquor and dissolved in water. The resulting syrup is treated either by a carbonatation or by a phosphatation process. Both involve the precipitation of a fine solid in the syrup and when this is filtered out, many of the impurities are removed at the same time. Removal of color is achieved by using either a granular activated carbon or an ion-exchange resin. The sugar syrup is concentrated by boiling and then cooled and seeded with sugar crystals, causing the sugar to crystallize out. The liquor is spun off in a centrifuge and the white crystals are dried in hot air and ready to be packaged or used. The surplus liquor is made into refiners' molasses.
The International Commission for Uniform Methods of Sugar Analysis sets standards for the measurement of the purity of refined sugar, known as ICUMSA numbers; lower numbers indicate a higher level of purity in the refined sugar.
Refined sugar is widely used for industrial needs for higher quality. Refined sugar is purer (ICUMSA below 300) than raw sugar (ICUMSA over 1,500). The level of purity associated with the colors of sugar, expressed by standard number ICUMSA, the smaller ICUMSA numbers indicate the higher purity of sugar.
Brown sugars are granulated sugars, either containing residual molasses, or with the grains deliberately coated with molasses to produce a light- or dark-colored sugar. They are used in baked goods, confectionery, and toffees. Their darkness is due to the amount of molasses they contain. They may be classified based on their darkness or country of origin. For instance:
In most parts of the world, sugar is an important part of the human diet, making food more palatable and providing food energy. After cereals and vegetable oils, sugar derived from sugarcane and beet provided more kilocalories per capita per day on average than other food groups. According to one source, per capita consumption of sugar in 2016 was highest in the United States, followed by Germany and the Netherlands.
Brown and white granulated sugar are 97% to nearly 100% carbohydrates, respectively, with less than 2% water, and no dietary fiber, protein or fat (table). Brown sugar contains a moderate amount of iron (15% of the Reference Daily Intake in a 100 gram amount, see table), but a typical serving of 4 grams (one teaspoon), would provide 15 calories and a negligible amount of iron or any other nutrient. Because brown sugar contains 5–10% molasses reintroduced during processing, its value to some consumers is a richer flavor than white sugar.
Sugar refiners and manufacturers of sugary foods and drinks have sought to influence medical research and public health recommendations, with substantial and largely clandestine spending documented from the 1960s to 2016. The results of research on the health effects of sugary food and drink differ significantly, depending on whether the researcher has financial ties to the food and drink industry. A 2013 medical review concluded that "unhealthy commodity industries should have no role in the formation of national or international NCD [non-communicable disease] policy".
There have been similar efforts to steer coverage of sugar-related health information in popular media, including news media and social media.
A 2003 World Health Organization technical report provided evidence that high intake of sugary drinks (including fruit juice) increased the risk of obesity by adding to overall energy intake. By itself, sugar is not a factor causing obesity and metabolic syndrome, but rather – when over-consumed – is a component of unhealthy dietary behavior. Meta-analyses showed that excessive consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages increased the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome – including weight gain and obesity – in adults and children.
A 2019 meta-analysis found that sugar consumption does not improve mood, but can lower alertness and increase fatigue within an hour of consumption. Some studies report evidence of causality between high consumption of refined sugar and hyperactivity. One review of low-quality studies of children consuming high amounts of energy drinks showed association with higher rates of unhealthy behaviors, including smoking and alcohol abuse, and with hyperactivity and insomnia.
The 2003 WHO report stated that "Sugars are undoubtedly the most important dietary factor in the development of dental caries". A review of human studies showed that the incidence of caries is lower when sugar intake is less than 10% of total energy consumed.
The "empty calories" argument states that a diet high in added sugar will reduce consumption of foods that contain essential nutrients. This nutrient displacement occurs if sugar makes up more than 25% of daily energy intake, a proportion associated with poor diet quality and risk of obesity. Displacement may occur at lower levels of consumption.
Claims have been made of a sugar–Alzheimer's disease connection, but there is inconclusive evidence that cognitive decline is related to dietary fructose or overall energy intake.
The World Health Organization recommends that both adults and children reduce the intake of free sugars to less than 10% of total energy intake, and suggests a reduction to below 5%. "Free sugars" include monosaccharides and disaccharides added to foods, and sugars found in fruit juice and concentrates, as well as in honey and syrups. According to the WHO, "[t]hese recommendations were based on the totality of available evidence reviewed regarding the relationship between free sugars intake and body weight (low and moderate quality evidence) and dental caries (very low and moderate quality evidence)."
On May 20, 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced changes to the Nutrition Facts panel displayed on all foods, to be effective by July 2018. New to the panel is a requirement to list "Added sugars" by weight and as a percent of Daily Value (DV). For vitamins and minerals, the intent of DVs is to indicate how much should be consumed. For added sugars, the guidance is that 100% DV should not be exceeded. 100% DV is defined as 50 grams. For a person consuming 2000 calories a day, 50 grams is equal to 200 calories and thus 10% of total calories—the same guidance as the World Health Organization. To put this in context, most 355 mL (12 US fl oz) cans of soda contain 39 grams of sugar. In the United States, a government survey on food consumption in 2013–2014 reported that, for men and women aged 20 and older, the average total sugar intakes—naturally occurring in foods and added—were, respectively, 125 and 99 g/day.
Various culinary sugars have different densities due to differences in particle size and inclusion of moisture.
Domino Sugar gives the following weight to volume conversions (in United States customary units):
The "Engineering Resources – Bulk Density Chart" published in "Powder and Bulk" gives different values for the bulk densities:
Manufacturers of sugary products, such as soft drinks and candy, and the Sugar Research Foundation have been accused of trying to influence consumers and medical associations in the 1960s and 1970s by creating doubt about the potential health hazards of sucrose overconsumption, while promoting saturated fat as the main dietary risk factor in cardiovascular diseases. In 2016, the criticism led to recommendations that diet policymakers emphasize the need for high-quality research that accounts for multiple biomarkers on development of cardiovascular diseases. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27712 |
Salma Hayek
Salma Hayek Pinault (, ; born Salma Valgarma Hayek Jiménez; September 2, 1966) is a Mexican and American film actress and producer. She began her career in Mexico starring in the telenovela "Teresa" and starred in the film "El Callejón de los Milagros" ("Miracle Alley") for which she was nominated for an Ariel Award. In 1991, Hayek moved to Hollywood and came to prominence with roles in films such as "Desperado" (1995), "From Dusk till Dawn" (1996), "Wild Wild West", and "Dogma" (both 1999).
Her breakthrough role was in the 2002 film "Frida", as Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, for which she was nominated for Best Actress for the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award, and which she also produced. This movie received widespread attention and was a critical and commercial success.
She won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing in a Children/Youth/Family Special for "The Maldonado Miracle" in 2004, and received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series after guest-starring in the ABC television comedy-drama "Ugly Betty" in 2007. She also guest-starred on the NBC comedy series "30 Rock" from 2009 to 2013. In 2017, she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her role in "Beatriz at Dinner".
Hayek's recent films include "Grown Ups" (2010), "Puss in Boots" (2011), "Grown Ups 2" (2013), "Tale of Tales" (2015), "The Hitman's Bodyguard" (2017) and "Like a Boss" (2020).
Salma Hayek Jiménez was born in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico. Her father, Sami Hayek Domínguez, is Lebanese Mexican, hailing from the city of Baabdat, Lebanon, a city Salma and her father visited in 2015 to promote her movie "Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet". He owns an industrial-equipment firm and is an oil company executive in Mexico, who once ran for mayor of Coatzacoalcos. Her mother, Diana Jiménez Medina, is an opera singer and talent scout, and is Mexican of Spanish descent. In an interview in 2015 with "Un Nuevo Día" while visiting Madrid, Hayek described herself as fifty-percent Lebanese and fifty-percent Spanish, stating that her grandmother/maternal great-grandparents were from Spain. Her younger brother, Sami (born 1972), is a furniture designer.
Hayek was raised in a wealthy, devout Roman Catholic family, and at age 12 was sent to the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. In school, she was diagnosed with dyslexia. She attended university at the Universidad Iberoamericana where she studied International Relations. In a 2011 interview with "V" magazine, Hayek mentioned that she was once an illegal immigrant in the United States, although it was not for a long period of time.
At the age of 23, Hayek landed the title role in "Teresa" (1989), a successful Mexican telenovela that made her a star in Mexico. In 1994, Hayek starred in the film "El Callejón de los Milagros" ("Miracle Alley"), which has won more awards than any other movie in the history of Mexican cinema. For her performance, Hayek was nominated for an Ariel Award.
Hayek moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1991 to study acting under Stella Adler. She had limited fluency in English, and dyslexia. Robert Rodriguez, and his producer and then-wife, Elizabeth Avellan, soon gave Hayek a starring role opposite Antonio Banderas in 1995's "Desperado". She followed her role in "Desperado" with a brief role as a vampire queen in "From Dusk till Dawn", in which she performed an erotic table-top snake dance.
Hayek had a starring role opposite Matthew Perry in the 1997 romantic comedy "Fools Rush In". In 1999, she co-starred in Will Smith's "Wild Wild West". She also played a supporting role in Kevin Smith's "Dogma" film as Serendipity. In 2000, Hayek had an uncredited acting part opposite Benicio del Toro in "Traffic". In 2003, she reprised her role from "Desperado" by appearing in "Once Upon a Time in Mexico", the final film of the "Mariachi Trilogy".
Around 2000, Hayek founded film production company Ventanarosa, through which she produces film and television projects. Her first feature as a producer was 1999's "El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba", Mexico's official selection for submission for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars.
"Frida", co-produced by Hayek, was released in 2002. Starring Hayek as Frida Kahlo, and Alfred Molina as her unfaithful husband, Diego Rivera, the film was directed by Julie Taymor and featured an entourage of stars in supporting and minor roles (Valeria Golino, Ashley Judd, Edward Norton, Geoffrey Rush) and cameos (Antonio Banderas). She earned a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her performance.
"In the Time of the Butterflies" is a 2001 feature film based on the Julia Álvarez book of the same name, covering the lives of the Mirabal sisters. In the movie, Salma Hayek plays one of the sisters, Minerva, and Edward James Olmos plays the Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo whom the sisters opposed.
In 2003, Hayek produced and directed "The Maldonado Miracle", a Showtime movie based on the book of the same name, winning her a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing in a Children/Youth/Family Special. In December 2005, she directed a music video for Prince, titled "Te Amo Corazon" ("I love you, sweetheart") that featured Mía Maestro.
Hayek was an executive producer of "Ugly Betty", a television series that aired around the world from 2006 to 2010. Hayek adapted the series for American television with Ben Silverman, who acquired the rights and scripts from the Colombian telenovela "Yo Soy Betty La Fea" in 2001. Originally intended as a half-hour sitcom for NBC in 2004, the project would later be picked up by ABC for the 2006–2007 season with Silvio Horta also producing. Hayek guest-starred on "Ugly Betty" as Sofia Reyes, a magazine editor. She also had a cameo playing an actress in the telenovela within the show. The show won a Golden Globe Award for Best Comedy Series in 2007. Hayek's performance as Sofia resulted in a nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series at the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards.
In April 2007, Hayek finalized negotiations with MGM to become the CEO of her own Latin-themed film production company, Ventanarosa. The following month, she signed a two-year deal with ABC for Ventanarosa to develop projects for the network.
Hayek played the wife of Adam Sandler's character in the buddy comedy "Grown Ups", which also co-starred Chris Rock and Kevin James. At his insistence, Hayek co-starred with Antonio Banderas in the "Shrek" spin-off film "Puss in Boots" as the voice of the character Kitty Softpaws, who serves as Puss in Boots's female counterpart and love interest. In 2012, Hayek directed Jada Pinkett Smith in the music video "Nada Se Compara." She reprised her role in "Grown Ups 2", which was released in July 2013.
At the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con it was announced that she will star as Ajak in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film "The Eternals", directed by Chloé Zhao and scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on February 12, 2021.
Hayek has been a spokeswoman for Avon cosmetics since February 2004. She was a spokeswoman for Revlon in 1998. In 2001, she modeled for Chopard and was featured in 2006 Campari ads, photographed by Mario Testino. On April 3, 2009, she helped introduce La Doña, a watch by Cartier inspired by fellow Mexican actress María Félix.
Hayek has worked with the Procter & Gamble Company and UNICEF to promote the funding (through disposable diaper sales) of vaccines against maternal and neonatal tetanus. She is a global spokesperson for the Pampers/UNICEF "partnership" 1 Pack = 1 Vaccine to help raise awareness of the program. This "partnership" involves Procter & Gamble donating the cost of one tetanus vaccination (approximately 24 cents) for every pack of Pampers sold.
In 2008, Hayek co-founded Juice Generation's juice delivery program Cooler Cleanse. In 2017, she and Juice Generation founder Eric Helms launched the beauty subscription delivery service Blend It Yourself, based on Hayek's personal beauty elixirs. It supplies subscribers with the prepared organic frozen smoothie and acai bowl ingredients, some of which can also be applied as face masks. She also wrote the foreword to Helms' 2014 book "The Juice Generation: 100 Recipes for Fresh Juices and Superfood Smoothies".
In 2011, Hayek launched her own line of cosmetics, skincare, and haircare products called Nuance by Salma Hayek, to be sold at CVS stores in North America. Hayek was also featured in a series of Spanish language commercials for Lincoln cars.
In spring 2006, the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center in San Antonio, Texas displayed sixteen portrait paintings by muralist George Yepes and filmmaker Robert Rodriguez of Hayek as Aztec goddess Itzpapalotl.
Hayek is a naturalized United States citizen. She studied at Ramtha's School of Enlightenment and is a practitioner of yoga. Hayek, who was raised Catholic, has said she is not very devout anymore and does not believe in the institution (Church), but still believes in Jesus Christ and God.
On March 9, 2007, Hayek confirmed her engagement to French billionaire and Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault as well as her pregnancy. She gave birth to her daughter Valentina Paloma Pinault in September 2007 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. They were married on Valentine's Day 2009 in Paris. On April 25, 2009, they had a second ceremony in Venice.
On December 13, 2017, Hayek published an op-ed in "The New York Times" stating that she had been harassed and abused by Harvey Weinstein during the production of "Frida".
In 2019, the Pinault family pledged US$113 million to support the reconstruction efforts of the burned Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France.
Hayek's charitable work includes increasing awareness on violence against women and discrimination against immigrants. On July 19, 2005, Hayek testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary supporting reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. In February 2006, she donated $25,000 to a Coatzacoalcos, Mexico, shelter for battered women and another $50,000 to Monterrey based anti-domestic violence groups. Hayek is a board member of V-Day, the charity founded by playwright Eve Ensler. Nonetheless, Hayek has stated that she is not a feminist. She later revised her stance on this, stating: "I am a feminist because a lot of amazing women have made me who I am today. (...) But – it should not be just because I am a woman".
Hayek also advocates breastfeeding. During a UNICEF fact-finding trip to Sierra Leone, she breastfed a hungry week-old baby whose mother could not produce milk. She said she did it to reduce the stigma associated with breastfeeding and to encourage infant nutrition.
In 2010, Hayek's humanitarian work earned her a nomination for the VH1 Do Something Awards. In 2013, Hayek launched with Beyoncé and Frida Giannini a Gucci campaign, "Chime for Change", that aims to spread female empowerment.
For International Women's Day 2014 Hayek was one of the artist signatories of Amnesty International's letter, to then British Prime Minister David Cameron, campaigning for women's rights in Afghanistan. Following her visit to Lebanon in 2015, Hayek criticized the discrimination against women there.
In 2020, Hayek raised awareness for the disappearance of Vanessa Guillen through her Instagram.
In July 2007, "The Hollywood Reporter" ranked Hayek fourth in their inaugural Latino Power 50, a list of the most powerful members of the Hollywood Latino community. That same month, a poll found Hayek to be the "sexiest celebrity" out of a field of 3,000 celebrities (male and female); according to the poll, "65 percent of the U.S. population would use the term 'sexy' to describe her". In 2008, she was awarded the Women in Film Lucy Award in recognition of her excellence and innovation in her creative works that have enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television. In December of that year, "Entertainment Weekly" ranked Hayek number 17 in their list of the "25 Smartest People in TV."
She was one of fifteen women selected to appear on the cover of the September 2019 issue of "British Vogue", by guest editor Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27717 |
Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL) played in early February. It is the culmination of a regular season that begins in the late summer of the previous year.
The game was created as part of the merger agreement between the NFL and its rival the American Football League (AFL). It was agreed that the two champion teams would begin playing in an annual AFL–NFL World Championship Game until the merger officially began in 1970. The first game was played on January 15, 1967 after both leagues had completed their respective 1966 seasons. After the merger, each league was re-designated as a "conference", and the game has since been played between the conference champions to determine the NFL's league champion. The NFL restricts the use of its "Super Bowl" trademark, and it is frequently referred to as the "big game" or other generic terms by non-sponsoring corporations.
The New England Patriots and the Pittsburgh Steelers have the most Super Bowl championship titles with six each. The Patriots have the most Super Bowl appearances with 11. The National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC) are tied with 27 Super Bowl wins each.
The Super Bowl is the second-largest day for U.S. food consumption, after Thanksgiving Day. In addition, the Super Bowl has frequently been the most-watched American television broadcast of the year; the seven most-watched broadcasts in American television history are Super Bowls. In 2015, Super Bowl XLIX became the most-watched American television program in history with an audience of 114.4 million viewers, the fifth time in six years that the game had set a record. The Super Bowl is also among the most-watched sporting events in the world, and is second to the UEFA Champions League final as the most watched annual sporting event worldwide.
Commercial airtime during the Super Bowl broadcast is the most expensive of the year because of the high viewership, leading to companies regularly developing their most expensive advertisements for this broadcast. Watching and discussing the broadcast's commercials has become a significant aspect of the event. In addition, popular singers and musicians have performed during the event's pre-game and halftime ceremonies.
For four decades after its 1920 inception, the NFL successfully fended off several rival leagues. In 1960, the NFL encountered its most serious competitor when the American Football League (AFL) was formed. The AFL vied with the NFL for players and fans. The original "bowl game" was the Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena, California, which was first played in 1902 as the "Tournament East–West football game" as part of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses and moved to the new Rose Bowl Stadium in 1923. The stadium got its name from the fact that the game played there was part of the Tournament of Roses and that it was shaped like a bowl, much like the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut. The Tournament of Roses football game eventually came to be known as the Rose Bowl Game. Exploiting the Rose Bowl Game's popularity, post-season college football contests were created for Miami (the Orange Bowl), New Orleans (the Sugar Bowl), and El Paso (the Sun Bowl) in 1935, and for Dallas (the Cotton Bowl) in 1937. By the time the first Super Bowl was played, the term "bowl" for any major American football game was well established.
After the American Football League's inaugural season, AFL commissioner Joe Foss sent an invitation to the NFL on January 14, 1961 to schedule a "World Playoff" game between the two leagues' champions, beginning with the upcoming 1961 season. The first World Playoff game would have, if actually played, matched up the Houston Oilers vs. the Green Bay Packers. It took a half-dozen more seasons for this idea to become a reality.
In the mid-1960's, Lamar Hunt, owner of the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs, first used the term "Super Bowl" to refer to the AFL–NFL championship game in the merger meetings. Hunt later said the name was likely in his head because his children had been playing with a Super Ball toy; a vintage example of the ball is on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. In a July 25, 1966, letter to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, Hunt wrote, "I have kiddingly called it the 'Super Bowl,' which obviously can be improved upon."
The leagues' owners chose the name "AFL–NFL Championship Game", but in July 1966 the "Kansas City Star" quoted Hunt in discussing "the Super Bowl—that's my term for the championship game between the two leagues", and the media immediately began using the term. Although the league stated in 1967 that "not many people like it", asking for suggestions and considering alternatives such as "Merger Bowl" and "The Game", the Associated Press reported that "Super Bowl" "grew and grew and grew—until it reached the point that there was Super Week, Super Sunday, Super Teams, Super Players, ad infinitum". "Super Bowl" became official beginning with the third annual game.
Roman numerals are used to identify each Super Bowl, rather than the year in which it is held, since the fifth edition, in January 1971. The sole exception to this naming convention tradition occurred with Super Bowl 50, which was played on February 7, 2016, following the 2015 regular season, and the following year, the nomenclature returned to Roman numerals for Super Bowl LI, following the 2016 regular season.
After the NFL's Green Bay Packers won the first two Super Bowls, some team owners feared for the future of the merger. At the time, many doubted the competitiveness of AFL teams compared with their NFL counterparts, though that perception changed when the AFL's New York Jets defeated the NFL's Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in Miami. One year later, the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs defeated the NFL's Minnesota Vikings 23–7 in Super Bowl IV in New Orleans, which was the final AFL–NFL World Championship Game played before the merger. Beginning with the 1970 season, the NFL realigned into two conferences; the former AFL teams plus three NFL teams (the Baltimore Colts, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Cleveland Browns) would constitute the American Football Conference (AFC), while the remaining NFL clubs would form the National Football Conference (NFC). The champions of the two conferences would play each other in the Super Bowl.
The winning team receives the Vince Lombardi Trophy, named after the coach of the Green Bay Packers, who won the first two Super Bowl games and three of the five preceding NFL championships in 1961, 1962, and 1965. Following Lombardi's death in September 1970, the trophy was named the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The first trophy awarded under the new name was presented to the Baltimore Colts following their win in Super Bowl V in Miami.
Since 2002, the Super Bowl is currently played on the first Sunday in February. This is due to the current NFL schedule which consists of the opening weekend of the season being held immediately after Labor Day (the first Monday in September), the 17-week regular season (where teams each play 16 games and have one bye), the first three rounds of the playoffs, and the Super Bowl two weeks after the two Conference Championship Games. The Conference Championship Games are the third round of the playoffs. The week after the third round of the playoffs is when the Pro Bowl is played. The week after that, the Super Bowl is played. This schedule has been in effect since Super Bowl XXXVIII in February 2004. The date of the Super Bowl can thus be determined from the date of the preceding Labor Day. For example, Labor Day in 2015 occurred on September 7; therefore the next Super Bowl was scheduled exactly five months later on February 7, 2016.
Originally, the game took place in early to mid-January. For Super Bowl I there was only one round of playoffs: the pre-merger NFL and AFL Championship Games. The addition of two playoff rounds (first in 1967 and then in 1978), an increase in regular season games from 14 to 16 (1978), and the establishment of one bye-week per team (1990) have caused the Super Bowl to be played later. Partially offsetting these season-lengthening effects, simultaneous with the addition of two regular season games in 1978, the season was started earlier. Prior to 1978, the season started as late as September 21. Now, since Labor Day is always the first Monday of September, September 13 is the latest possible date for the first full Sunday set of games (since 2002, the regular season has started with the Kickoff Game on the first Thursday after Labor Day). The earliest possible season start date is September 7.
The Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots are tied with six Super Bowl wins; the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers have five victories each, while the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants have four Super Bowl championships. Fourteen other NFL franchises have won at least one Super Bowl.
The Patriots own the record for most Super Bowl appearances overall (eleven) and tied for the most won (six).
The Dallas Cowboys, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Denver Broncos are tied for second with eight appearances apiece, achieving reaching that milestone in this respective order. Belichick owns the record for most Super Bowl wins (eight) and participation in any capacity (twelve, nine times as head coach, once as assistant head coach, and twice as defensive coordinator). Dan Reeves previously held the Super Bowl participation record in any capacity (nine, twice as a player, three times as assistant coach, and four times as head coach). Brady has the most Super Bowl starts (nine) and wins as a player (six), while Charles Haley has the second-most wins among players (five).
Eight teams have appeared in Super Bowl games without a win. The Minnesota Vikings won the last NFL Championship before the merger but lost to the AFL champion Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl IV and became the first team to have appeared a record four times without a win. The Buffalo Bills played in a record four Super Bowls in a row but lost every one. The Patriots and Denver Broncos are tied for the most Super Bowl losses (five).
Four teams (the Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Houston Texans) have never appeared in a Super Bowl. The Browns and Lions both won NFL Championships prior to the creation of the Super Bowl, while the Jaguars (1995) and Texans (2002) are both recent NFL expansion teams.
The Green Bay Packers won the first two Super Bowls (known as the AFL–NFL World Championship Game for these first two contests), defeating the Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders following the and seasons, respectively. The Packers were led by quarterback, Bart Starr, who was named the Most Valuable Player (MVP) for both games. These two championships, coupled with the Packers' NFL championships in , , and , amount to the most successful stretch in NFL History; five championships in seven years, and the only threepeat in NFL history (1965, 1966, and 1967).
In Super Bowl III, the AFL's New York Jets defeated the eighteen-point favorite Baltimore Colts of the NFL, 16–7. The Jets were led by quarterback Joe Namath, who had famously guaranteed a Jets win prior to the game, and former Colts head coach Weeb Ewbank, and their victory proved that the AFL was the NFL's competitive equal. This was reinforced the following year when the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs defeated the NFL's Minnesota Vikings 23–7 in Super Bowl IV.
After the AFL–NFL merger was completed in 1970, three franchises—the Dallas Cowboys, Miami Dolphins, and Pittsburgh Steelers—would go on to dominate the 1970s, winning a combined eight Super Bowls in the decade.
The Baltimore Colts, now a member of the AFC, would start the decade by defeating the Cowboys in Super Bowl V, a game which is notable as being the only Super Bowl to date in which a player from the losing team won the Super Bowl MVP (Cowboys' linebacker Chuck Howley). Beginning with this Super Bowl, all Super Bowls have served as the NFL's championship game.
The Cowboys, coming back from a loss the previous season, won Super Bowl VI over the Dolphins. However, this would be the Dolphins' final loss for over a year, as the next year, the Dolphins would go 14–0 in the regular season and eventually win all their playoff games, capped off with a 14–7 victory in Super Bowl VII, becoming the first and only team to finish an entire perfect regular and postseason. The Dolphins would repeat as league champions by winning Super Bowl VIII a year later.
In the late 1970s, the Steelers became the first NFL dynasty of the post-merger era by winning four Super Bowls (IX, X, XIII, and XIV) in six years. They were led by head coach Chuck Noll, the play of offensive stars Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Lynn Swann, John Stallworth, and Mike Webster, and their dominant "Steel Curtain" defense, led by "Mean" Joe Greene, L. C. Greenwood, Ernie Holmes, Mel Blount, Jack Ham, and Jack Lambert. The coaches and administrators also were part of the dynasty's greatness as evidenced by the team's "final pieces" being part of the famous 1974 draft. The selections in that class have been considered the best by any pro franchise ever, as Pittsburgh selected four future Hall of Famers, the most for any team in any sport in a single draft. The Steelers were the first team to win three and then four Super Bowls and appeared in six AFC Championship Games during the decade, making the playoffs in eight straight seasons. Nine players and three coaches and administrators on the team have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Pittsburgh still remains the only team to win back-to-back Super Bowls twice and four Super Bowls in a six-year period.
The Steelers' dynasty was interrupted only by the Oakland Raiders' Super Bowl XI win and the Cowboys winning their second Super Bowl of the decade.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the tables turned for the AFC, as the NFC dominated the Super Bowls of the new decade and most of those in the 1990s. The NFC won 16 of the 20 Super Bowls during these two decades, including 13 straight from Super Bowl XIX to Super Bowl XXXI.
The most successful team of the 1980s was the San Francisco 49ers, which featured the West Coast offense of Hall of Fame head coach Bill Walsh. This offense was led by three-time Super Bowl MVP and Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana, Super Bowl MVP and Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice, running back Roger Craig, and defensive safety/cornerback Ronnie Lott. Under their leadership, the 49ers won four Super Bowls in the decade (XVI, XIX, XXIII, and XXIV) and made nine playoff appearances between 1981 and 1990, including eight division championships, becoming the second dynasty of the post-merger NFL.
The 1980s also produced the 1985 Chicago Bears, who posted an 18–1 record under head coach Mike Ditka; quarterback Jim McMahon; and Hall of Fame running back Walter Payton. Their team won Super Bowl XX in dominant fashion. The Washington Redskins and New York Giants were also top teams of this period; the Redskins won Super Bowls XVII, XXII, and XXVI. The Giants claimed Super Bowls XXI and XXV. As in the 1970s, the Oakland Raiders were the only team to interrupt the Super Bowl dominance of other teams; they won Super Bowls XV and XVIII (the latter as the Los Angeles Raiders).
Following several seasons with poor records in the 1980s, the Dallas Cowboys rose back to prominence in the 1990s. During this decade, the Cowboys made post-season appearances every year except for the seasons of 1990 and 1997. From 1992 to 1996, the Cowboys won their division championship each year. In this same period, the Buffalo Bills had made their mark reaching the Super Bowl for a record four consecutive years, only to lose all four. After Super Bowl championships by division rivals New York (1990) and Washington (1991), the Cowboys won three of the next four Super Bowls (XXVII, XXVIII, and XXX) led by quarterback Troy Aikman, running back Emmitt Smith, and wide receiver Michael Irvin. All three of these players went to the Hall of Fame. The Cowboys' streak was interrupted by the 49ers, who won their league-leading fifth title overall with Super Bowl XXIX with a dominant performance featuring the Super Bowl MVP and Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice, and Hall of Fame cornerback Deion Sanders; however, the Cowboys' victory in Super Bowl XXX the next year also gave them five titles overall and they did so with Sanders after he won the Super Bowl the previous year with the 49ers. The NFC's winning streak was continued by the Green Bay Packers led by Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre, won Super Bowl XXXI, their first championship since Super Bowl II in 1968.
Super Bowl XXXII saw quarterback John Elway and running back Terrell Davis lead the Denver Broncos to an upset victory over the defending champion Packers, snapping the NFC's thirteen-year winning streak. The following year, the Broncos defeated the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl XXXIII, Elway's fifth Super Bowl appearance, his second NFL championship, and his final NFL game. The back-to-back victories heralded a change in momentum in which AFC teams would win nine out of 12 Super Bowls. In the years between 1995 and 2018, five teams—the Steelers, New England Patriots, Broncos, Baltimore Ravens, and Indianapolis Colts—accounted for 22 of the 24 AFC Super Bowl appearances (including the last 16), with those same teams often meeting each other earlier in the playoffs. In contrast, the NFC saw a different representative in the Super Bowl every season from 2001 through 2010.
The New England Patriots became the dominant team throughout the early 2000s, winning the championship three out of four years early in the decade. They would become only the second team in the history of the NFL to do so (after the 1990s Dallas Cowboys). In Super Bowl XXXVI, first-year starting quarterback Tom Brady led his team to a 20–17 upset victory over the St. Louis Rams. Brady would go on to win the MVP award for this game. The Patriots also won Super Bowls XXXVIII and XXXIX defeating the Carolina Panthers and the Philadelphia Eagles respectively. This four-year stretch of Patriot dominance was interrupted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' 48–21 Super Bowl XXXVII victory over the Oakland Raiders.
The Pittsburgh Steelers and Indianapolis Colts continued the era of AFC dominance by winning Super Bowls XL and XLI in 2005–06 and 2006–07, respectively defeating the Seattle Seahawks and Chicago Bears.
In the 2007 season, the Patriots became the fourth team in NFL history to have a perfect unbeaten and untied regular season record, the second in the Super Bowl era after the 1972 Miami Dolphins, and the first to finish 16–0. They easily marched through the AFC playoffs and were heavy favorites in Super Bowl XLII. However, they lost that game to Eli Manning and the New York Giants 17–14, leaving the Patriots' 2007 record at 18–1.
The following season, the Steelers logged their record sixth Super Bowl title (XLIII) in a 27–23, final-minute victory against the Arizona Cardinals.
The 2009 season saw the New Orleans Saints defeat the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV by a score of 31–17 to take home their first Championship. With this victory, the Saints joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New York Jets as the only teams to have won in their sole Super Bowl appearance.
In the AFC, this era was dominated by the New England Patriots, with the only three other teams to represent the conference being the Pittsburgh Steelers, Denver Broncos and Baltimore Ravens. The Super Bowls of the late 2000s and 2010s are notable for the performances (and the pedigrees) of several of the participating quarterbacks, especially on the AFC side in repeated appearances by the same teams and players. In particular, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, or Peyton Manning appeared as the AFC team's quarterback in all but two of the Super Bowls from 2002 through 2019. Conversely, the only NFC teams to make the Super Bowl twice in this era were the Seattle Seahawks, led by quarterback Russell Wilson, and the New York Giants, led by quarterback Eli Manning.
One of these teams was featured in the culmination of the 2010 season, Super Bowl XLV, which brought the Green Bay Packers their fourth Super Bowl victory and record thirteenth NFL championship overall with the defeat of the Pittsburgh Steelers in February 2011. This became Aaron Rodgers' only Super Bowl victory. The following year, in Super Bowl XLVI, the Patriots made their first appearance of the decade, a position where they would become a mainstay. The Patriots, however, lost to the Eli Manning led New York Giants, 21–17, who had beaten the Patriots four years before. This was the Giants 4th Super Bowl victory.
In Super Bowl XLVII, the NFC's San Francisco 49ers were defeated by the Baltimore Ravens 34–31. The game had been dubbed as the 'Harbaugh Bowl' in the weeks leading up to the game, due to the fact that the coaches of the two teams, John Harbaugh and Jim Harbaugh, are brothers. During the 3rd quarter, the Ravens had a commanding 28–6 lead. However, there was a blackout in New Orleans, where the game was being played. The game was delayed for 34 minutes, and after play resumed, San Francisco stormed back with 17 straight points, but still lost. Super Bowl XLVIII, played at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium in February 2014, was the first Super Bowl held outdoors in a cold weather environment. The Seattle Seahawks won their first NFL title with a 43–8 defeat of the Denver Broncos, in a highly touted matchup that pitted Seattle's top-ranked defense against a Peyton Manning-led Denver offense that had broken the NFL's single-season scoring record.
In Super Bowl XLIX, the Patriots beat the defending Super Bowl champions, the Seahawks, by a score of 28–24. Down by 10, the Patriots hosted a late 4th quarter comeback to win the game with Tom Brady scoring two touchdowns in the 4th quarter. In a key play in the final seconds of the game, then rookie free agent Malcolm Butler would intercept a pass by Russell Wilson at the one yard line, allowing the Patriots to run out the clock and end the game.
Tom Brady was awarded his 3rd Super Bowl MVP, tying Joe Montana for the most Super Bowl MVP awards.
In Super Bowl 50, the first Super Bowl to be branded with Arabic numerals, the Broncos, led by the league's top-ranked defense, defeated the Carolina Panthers, who had the league's top-ranked offense, in what became the final game of quarterback Peyton Manning's career. Von Miller dominated, totaling 2.5 sacks and forcing two Cam Newton fumbles; both fumbles leading to Broncos touchdowns.
In Super Bowl LI, the first Super Bowl to end in overtime, the Atlanta Falcons led 28–3 late in the third quarter; however, they squandered the lead as the Patriots would tie the game 28–28 on back to back touchdowns and two point conversions. The Atlanta Falcons lost to the Patriots 34–28 in overtime. This 25 point deficit would be the largest comeback win for any team in a Super Bowl, breaking the previous of a 10 point deficit to comeback and win. The Patriots never held the lead until the game winning touchdown in overtime. Tom Brady was awarded his record fourth Super Bowl MVP and 5th win as a Super Bowl Champion, throwing a then record 466 yards for 43 completions.
In Super Bowl LII, the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the defending champion Patriots 41–33, ending a 57-year championship drought for the franchise. Nick Foles won the Super Bowl MVP. The Patriots totaled 613 yards in defeat, with Tom Brady breaking his previous Super Bowl record of 466 passing yards with an all time playoff record 505 passing yards in the high scoring game; while the Eagles would gain 538 yards in victory. The Patriots' 33 points was the highest losing score in Super Bowl history. The combined total of 1,151 yards of offense for both teams broke an NFL record (for any game) that had stood for nearly seven decades. It was the Eagles' third Super Bowl appearance, and their first win in franchise history.
While Super Bowl LII produced the second highest-scoring Super Bowl, the following year's Super Bowl LIII became the lowest-scoring Super Bowl. The Patriots defeated the Los Angeles Rams, 13–3. Tom Brady would receive a record sixth Super Bowl championship, the most of any player in NFL history, surpassing his tie with Charles Haley for five wins. Brady would also become the oldest player to ever win a Super Bowl at age 41, while Bill Belichick would be the oldest coach to ever win a Super Bowl at age 66. Wide receiver Julian Edelman was named Super Bowl MVP.
In Super Bowl LIV the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers in an end-game comeback, 31–20, for their first Super Bowl title in 50 years. This victory marked the first time since 1991 that the NFC did not have more Super Bowl victories than the AFC.
The Super Bowl is one of the most watched annual sporting events in the world, with viewership overwhelmingly domestic. The only other annual event that gathers more viewers is the UEFA Champions League final. For many years, the Super Bowl has possessed a large US and global television viewership, and it is often the most watched United States originating television program of the year. The game tends to have high Nielsen television ratings, which is usually around a 40 rating and 60 shares. This means that on average, more than 100 million people from the United States alone are tuned into the Super Bowl at any given moment.
In press releases preceding each year's event, the NFL typically claims that this year's Super Bowl will have a potential worldwide audience of around one billion people in over 200 countries. This figure refers to the number of people "able" to watch the game, not the number of people "actually" watching. However, the statements have been frequently misinterpreted in various media as referring to the latter figure, leading to a common misperception about the game's actual global audience. The New York-based media research firm Initiative measured the global audience for the 2005 Super Bowl at 93 million people, with 98 percent of that figure being viewers in North America, which meant roughly two million people outside North America watched the Super Bowl that year.
The 2015 Super Bowl XLIX holds the record for average number of U.S. viewers, with a final number of 114.4 million, making the game the most-viewed television broadcast of any kind in American history. The halftime show followed with 118.5 million viewers tuning in, and an all-time high of 168 million viewers in the United States had watched several portions of the Super Bowl 2015 broadcast. The game set a record for total viewers for the fifth time in six years.
The highest-rated game according to Nielsen was Super Bowl XVI in 1982, which was watched in 49.1% of households (73 shares), or 40,020,000 households at the time. Ratings for that game, a San Francisco victory over Cincinnati, may have been aided by a large blizzard that had affected much of the northeastern United States on game day, leaving residents to stay at home more than usual. Super Bowl XVI still ranks fourth on Nielsen's list of top-rated programs of all time, and three other Super Bowls, XII, XVII, and XX, made the top ten.
Famous commercial campaigns include the Budweiser "Bud Bowl" campaign, the 1984 introduction of Apple's Macintosh computer, and the 1999 and 2000 dot-com ads. As the television ratings of the Super Bowl have steadily increased over the years, prices have also increased every year, with advertisers paying as much as $3.5 million for a thirty-second spot during Super Bowl XLVI in 2012. A segment of the audience tunes into the Super Bowl solely to view commercials. In 2010, Nielsen reported that 51 percent of Super Bowl viewers tune in for the commercials. The Super Bowl halftime show has spawned another set of alternative entertainment such as the Lingerie Bowl, the Beer Bottle Bowl, and others.
Since 1991, the Super Bowl has begun between 6:19 and 6:40 PM EST so that most of the game is played during the primetime hours on the East Coast.
Note: Years listed are the year the game was actually played ("will be played") rather than what NFL season it is considered to have been.
Super Bowls I–VI were blacked out in the television markets of the host cities, due to league restrictions then in place.
The Super Bowl provides an extremely strong lead-in to programming following it on the same channel, the effects of which can last for several hours. For instance, in discussing the ratings of a local TV station, Buffalo television critic Alan Pergament noted on the coattails from Super Bowl XLVII, which aired on CBS: "A paid program that ran on CBS4 (WIVB-TV) at 2:30 in the morning had a 1.3 rating. That's higher than some CW prime time shows get on WNLO-TV, Channel 4's sister station."
Because of this strong coattail effect, the network that airs the Super Bowl typically takes advantage of the large audience to air an episode of a hit series, or to premiere the pilot of a promising new one in the lead-out slot, which immediately follows the Super Bowl and post-game coverage.
Early Super Bowls featured a halftime show consisting of marching bands from local colleges or high schools; but as the popularity of the game increased, a trend where popular singers and musicians performed during its pre-game ceremonies and the halftime show, or simply sang the national anthem of the United States or America the Beautiful emerged. Unlike regular season or playoff games, thirty minutes are allocated for the Super Bowl halftime. After a special live episode of the Fox sketch comedy series "In Living Color" caused a drop in viewership for the Super Bowl XXVI halftime show, the NFL sought to increase the Super Bowl's audience by hiring A-list talent to perform. They approached Michael Jackson, whose performance the following year drew higher figures than the game itself. Another notable performance came during Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, when U2 performed; during their third song, "Where the Streets Have No Name", the band played under a large projection screen which scrolled through names of the victims of the September 11 attacks.
For many years, Whitney Houston's performance of the national anthem at Super Bowl XXV in 1991, during the Gulf War, had long been regarded as one of the best renditions of the anthem in history. Prior to Super Bowl XLVIII, soprano Renee Fleming became the first opera singer to perform the anthem.
The halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVIII attracted controversy, following an incident in which Justin Timberlake removed a piece of Janet Jackson's top, briefly exposing one of her breasts before the broadcast quickly cut away from the shot. The incident led to fines being issued by the FCC (and a larger crackdown over "indecent" content broadcast on television), and MTV (then a sister to the game's broadcaster that year, CBS, under Viacom) being banned by the NFL from producing the Super Bowl halftime show in the future. In an effort to prevent a repeat of the incident, the NFL held a moratorium on Super Bowl halftime shows featuring pop performers, and instead invited a single, headlining veteran act, such as Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen. This practice ended at Super Bowl XLV, which returned to using current pop acts such as The Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga.
Excluding Super Bowl XXXIX, the famous "I'm going to Disney World!" advertising campaign took place in every Super Bowl since Super Bowl XXI when quarterback Phil Simms from the New York Giants became the first player to say the tagline.
As of Super Bowl LIV, 28 of 54 Super Bowls have been played in three cities: the Greater Miami area (eleven times), New Orleans (ten times), and the Greater Los Angeles area (seven times). No market or region without an active NFL franchise has ever hosted a Super Bowl, and the presence of an NFL team in a market or region is now a "de jure" requirement for bidding on the game. For instance while Los Angeles had been a seven time host city with its most recent being Super Bowl XXVII in 1993, it has not hosted one since due to the . The Louisiana Superdome has hosted seven Super Bowls, the most of any venue. The Orange Bowl was the only AFL stadium to host a Super Bowl and the only stadium to host consecutive Super Bowls, hosting Super Bowls II and III.
Seven Super Bowls have been held in a stadium other than the one the NFL team in that city was using at the time, a situation that has not arisen after Super Bowl XXVII's host stadium was selected on March 19, 1991. This was as the winning market was previously not required to host the Super Bowl in the same stadium that its NFL team used, if the stadium in which the Super Bowl was held was perceived to be a better stadium for a large high-profile event than the existing NFL home stadium in the same city; for example Los Angeles's last five Super Bowls were all played at the Rose Bowl, which has never been used by any NFL franchise outside of the Super Bowl. Besides the Rose Bowl, the only other Super Bowl venues that were not the home stadium to NFL teams at the time were Rice Stadium (the Houston Oilers had played in Rice Stadium previously but moved to the Astrodome several years prior to Super Bowl VIII) and Stanford Stadium. Starting with the selection of the Super Bowl XXVIII venue on May 23, 1990, the league has given preference in awarding the Super Bowl to brand new or recently renovated NFL stadiums, alongside a trend of teams demanding public money or relocating to play in new stadiums.
No team has ever played the Super Bowl in its home stadium. The closest any team has come was the 2017 Minnesota Vikings, who were within one win of playing Super Bowl LII in U.S. Bank Stadium, but lost the NFC Championship game to the Philadelphia Eagles. In that instance, U.S. Bank Stadium became the first Super Bowl host stadium (selected on May 20, 2014) to also host a Divisional Playoff Game in the same season (which the Vikings won); all previous times that the Super Bowl host stadium hosted another playoff game in the same postseason were all Wild Card games. Two teams have played the Super Bowl in their home market: the San Francisco 49ers, who won Super Bowl XIX in Stanford Stadium instead of Candlestick Park; and the Los Angeles Rams, who lost Super Bowl XIV in the Rose Bowl instead of Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, during the time when league often picked a stadium that was not home to an NFL team to host the Super Bowl (see above).
Traditionally, the NFL does not award Super Bowls to stadiums that are located in climates with an expected average daily temperature less than 50 °F (10 °C) on game day unless the field can be completely covered by a fixed or retractable roof. Six Super Bowls have been played in northern cities: two in the Detroit area—Super Bowl XVI at Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan and Super Bowl XL at Ford Field in Detroit, two in Minneapolis—Super Bowl XXVI at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome and Super Bowl LII at the U.S. Bank Stadium, one in Indianapolis at Lucas Oil Stadium for Super Bowl XLVI, and one in the New York area—Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium. Only MetLife Stadium did not have a roof (be it fixed or retractable) but it was still picked as the host stadium for Super Bowl XLVIII in an apparent waiver of the warm-climate rule, with a contingency plan to reschedule the game in the event of heavy snowfall. MetLife Stadium's selection over Sun Life Stadium generated controversy as the league requested a roof to be added to Sun Life Stadium (in the event of rainstorms) in order to considered for future Super Bowls.
There have been a few instances where the league has rescinded the Super Bowl from cities. Super Bowl XXVII in 1993 was originally awarded to Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona, but after Arizona voters elected not to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a paid state employees' holiday in 1990, the NFL moved the game to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. When voters in Arizona opted to create such a legal holiday in 1992, Super Bowl XXX in 1996 was awarded to Tempe. Super Bowl XXXIII was awarded first to Candlestick Park in San Francisco, but when plans to renovate the stadium fell through, the game was moved to Pro Player Stadium in greater Miami. Super Bowl XXXVII was awarded to a new stadium not yet built in San Francisco, when that stadium failed to be built, the game was moved to Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. Super Bowl XLIV, slated for February 7, 2010, was withdrawn from New York City's proposed West Side Stadium, because the city, state, and proposed tenants New York Jets could not agree on funding. Super Bowl XLIV was then eventually awarded to Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. Super Bowl XLIX in 2015 was originally given to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, but after two sales taxes failed to pass at the ballot box (a renovation proposal had passed successfully, but a second ballot question to add a rolling roof structure to be shared with Kaufmann Stadium critical for the game to be hosted was rejected), and opposition by local business leaders and politicians increased, Kansas City eventually withdrew its request to host the game. Super Bowl XLIX was then eventually awarded to State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
The location of the Super Bowl is chosen at a meeting of all NFL team owners, usually three to five years prior to the event. The game has never been played in a metropolitan area that lacked an NFL franchise at the time the game was played, although in 2007 NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suggested that a Super Bowl might be played in London, perhaps at Wembley Stadium.
Through Super Bowl LVI, teams were allowed to bid for the rights to host Super Bowls, where cities submitted proposals to host a Super Bowl and were evaluated in terms of stadium renovation and their ability to host, but this competition was rescinded in 2018. The league will make all decisions regarding hosting sites from Super Bowl LVII onward; the league will choose a potential venue unilaterally, the chosen team will put together a hosting proposal, and the league will vote upon it to determine if it is acceptable.
In 2014, a document listing the specific requirements of Super Bowl hosts was leaked, giving a clear list of what was required for a Super Bowl host. Some of the host requirements include:
Much of the cost of a Super Bowl is to be assumed by the host community, although some costs are enumerated within the requirements to be assumed by the NFL.
New Orleans, the site of the Super Bowl XLVII in 2013, invested more than $1 billion in infrastructure improvements in the years leading up to the game.
The designated "home team" alternates between the NFC team in odd-numbered games and the AFC team in even-numbered games. This alternation was initiated with the first Super Bowl, when the Green Bay Packers were the designated home team. Regardless of being the home or away team of record, each team has their team logo and wordmark painted in one of the end zones. Designated away teams have won 30 of 54 Super Bowls to date (approximately 56%).
Since Super Bowl XIII in January 1979, the home team is given the choice of wearing their colored or white jerseys. Originally, the designated home team had to wear their colored jerseys, which resulted in Dallas donning their less exposed dark blue jerseys for Super Bowl V. While most of the home teams in the Super Bowl have chosen to wear their colored jerseys, there have been six (6) exceptions: the Dallas Cowboys during Super Bowl XIII and XXVII, the Washington Redskins during Super Bowl XVII, the Pittsburgh Steelers during Super Bowl XL, the Denver Broncos during Super Bowl 50, and the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII. The Cowboys, since , have worn white jerseys at home. The Redskins wore white at home under coach Joe Gibbs starting in through , continued by Richie Petitbon and Norv Turner through , then again when Gibbs returned from through . Meanwhile, the Steelers, who have always worn their black jerseys at home since the AFL–NFL merger in , opted for the white jerseys after winning three consecutive playoff games on the road, wearing white. The Steelers' decision was compared with the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX; the Patriots had worn white jerseys at home during the season, but after winning road playoff games against the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins wearing red jerseys, New England opted to switch to crimson for the Super Bowl as the designated home team. For the Broncos in Super Bowl 50, Denver general manager John Elway simply stated, "We've had Super Bowl success in our white uniforms"; they previously had been in Super Bowls when wearing their orange jerseys. The Broncos' decision is also perceived to be made out of superstition, losing all Super Bowl games with the orange jerseys in terrible fashion. It is unclear why the Patriots chose to wear their white jerseys for Super Bowl LII. During the pairing of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, New England has mostly worn their blue jerseys for home games, but have worn white for a home game in the , , and seasons. The New England Patriots were 3–0 in their white uniforms in Super Bowls prior to Super Bowl LII with Belichick and Brady, and they may have been going on recent trends of teams who wear white for the Super Bowl game. White-shirted teams have won 34 of 54 Super Bowls to date (63%). The only teams to win in their dark-colored uniform in more recent years are the Green Bay Packers against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV, the Philadelphia Eagles against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LII, and the Kansas City Chiefs against the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LIV with teams in white winning 13 of the last 16 Super Bowls.
The 49ers, as part of the league's 75th Anniversary celebration, used their 1955 throwback uniform in Super Bowl XXIX, which for that year was their regular home jersey. The Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII wore their royal blue and yellow throwback uniforms, which they have previously worn for six home games including a home playoff game. No team has yet worn a third jersey or Color Rush uniform for the Super Bowl. The 49ers reportedly requested to wear an all-white third jersey ensemble for Super Bowl LIV, which the "San Francisco Chronicle" noted they could do with special permission from the league; the league never granted such permission, and the 49ers instead opted for their standard uniform of white jerseys with gold pants.
Fifteen different regions have hosted Super Bowls.
Note: Years listed are the year the game was actually played (or "will be played"; future games are denoted through "italics") rather than what NFL season it is considered to have been.
A total of 26 different stadiums, six of which no longer exist and one of which does not yet exist, either have hosted or are scheduled to host Super Bowls. The years listed in the table below are the years the game was actually played ("will be played") rather than what NFL season it is considered to have been.
Future venues:
The game has never been played in a region that lacked an NFL or AFL franchise at the time the game was played. San Diego is the only metropolitan area that has hosted past Super Bowls but does not currently have an NFL franchise; what is now SDCCU Stadium hosted three Super Bowls prior to that city losing its NFL franchise to relocation. Also, London, England, has occasionally been mentioned as a host city for a Super Bowl in the near future. Wembley Stadium has hosted several NFL games as part of the NFL International Series and is specifically designed for large, individual events. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has openly discussed the possibility on different occasions. Time zone complications are a significant obstacle to a Super Bowl in London; a typical 6:30 p.m. EST start would result in the game beginning at 11:30 p.m. local time in London, an unusually late hour to be holding spectator sports (the NFL has never in its history started a game later than 9:15 p.m. local time). As bids have been submitted for all Super Bowls through Super Bowl LVIII, the soonest that any stadium outside the NFL's footprint could serve as host would be Super Bowl LIX in 2025.
Seven stadiums that hosted a Super Bowl game no longer exist. Tulane Stadium, on the Tulane University campus, which hosted three Super Bowls, was demolished in November 1979; Tampa Stadium, which hosted two Super Bowls, was demolished in April 1999; Stanford Stadium, which hosted one Super Bowl, was demolished and redeveloped in 2005–06; the Orange Bowl, which hosted five Super Bowls, was demolished in May 2008; the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, which hosted the 1992 Super Bowl, was demolished in March 2014; the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, which hosted two Super Bowls, was demolished in November 2017; and the Pontiac Silverdome in suburban Detroit, which hosted the 1982 Super Bowl, was demolished in March 2018, five months following the demolition of the Georgia Dome.
The NFL is very active on stopping what it says is unauthorized commercial use of its trademarked terms "NFL", "Super Bowl", and "Super Sunday". As a result, many events and promotions tied to the game, but not sanctioned by the NFL, are asked to refer to it with euphemisms such as "The Big Game", or other generic descriptions. A radio spot for Planters nuts parodied this, by saying "it would be "super"... to have a "bowl"... of Planters nuts while watching the big game!" and comedian Stephen Colbert began referring to the game in 2014 as the "Superb Owl". In 2015, the NFL filed opposition with the USPTO Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to a trademark application submitted by an Arizona-based nonprofit for "Superb Owl". The NFL claims that the use of the phrase "Super Bowl" implies an NFL affiliation, and on this basis the league asserts broad rights to restrict how the game may be shown publicly; for example, the league says Super Bowl showings are prohibited in churches or at other events that "promote a message", while venues that do not regularly show sporting events cannot show the Super Bowl on any television screen larger than 55 inches. Some critics say the NFL is exaggerating its ownership rights by stating that "any use is prohibited", as this contradicts the broad doctrine of fair use in the United States. Legislation was proposed by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch in 2008 "to provide an exemption from exclusive rights in copyright for certain nonprofit organizations to display live football games", and "for other purposes".
In 2004, the NFL started issuing Cease and Desist letters to casinos in Las Vegas that were hosting Super Bowl parties. "Super Bowl" is a registered trademark, owned by the NFL, and any other business using that name for profit-making ventures is in violation of federal law, according to the letters. In reaction to the letters, many Vegas resorts, rather than discontinue the popular and lucrative parties, started referring to them as "Big Game Parties".
In 2006, the NFL made an attempt to trademark "The Big Game" as well; however, it withdrew the application in 2007 due to growing commercial and public relations opposition to the move, mostly from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley and their fans, as the Stanford Cardinal football and California Golden Bears football teams compete in the "Big Game", which has been played since 1892 (28 years before the formation of the NFL and 75 years before Super Bowl I). Additionally, the Mega Millions lottery game was known as "The Big Game" (then "The Big Game Mega Millions") from 1996 to 2002.
Like the other major professional leagues in the United States, the winner of the Super Bowl is usually declared de facto "World Champion." The origin of U.S. major professional sports using the term "World Champion" originates from the World Series of Major League Baseball, and it was later used during the first three Super Bowls when they were referred to as AFL–NFL World Championship Games. While controversial, most players in the league endorse the use of the word, due to the fact that there aren't any teams from other countries that have challenged for the title. The phrase is still engraved on the Super Bowl rings.
Notes
Further reading | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27718 |
Surface area
The surface area of a solid object is a measure of the total area that the surface of the object occupies. The mathematical definition of surface area in the presence of curved surfaces is considerably more involved than the definition of arc length of one-dimensional curves, or of the surface area for polyhedra (i.e., objects with flat polygonal faces), for which the surface area is the sum of the areas of its faces. Smooth surfaces, such as a sphere, are assigned surface area using their representation as parametric surfaces. This definition of surface area is based on methods of infinitesimal calculus and involves partial derivatives and double integration.
A general definition of surface area was sought by Henri Lebesgue and Hermann Minkowski at the turn of the twentieth century. Their work led to the development of geometric measure theory, which studies various notions of surface area for irregular objects of any dimension. An important example is the Minkowski content of a surface.
While the areas of many simple surfaces have been known since antiquity, a rigorous mathematical "definition" of area requires a great deal of care.
This should provide a function
which assigns a positive real number to a certain class of surfaces that satisfies several natural requirements. The most fundamental property of the surface area is its additivity: "the area of the whole is the sum of the areas of the parts". More rigorously, if a surface "S" is a union of finitely many pieces "S"1, …, "S""r" which do not overlap except at their boundaries, then
Surface areas of flat polygonal shapes must agree with their geometrically defined area. Since surface area is a geometric notion, areas of congruent surfaces must be the same and the area must depend only on the shape of the surface, but not on its position and orientation in space. This means that surface area is invariant under the group of Euclidean motions. These properties uniquely characterize surface area for a wide class of geometric surfaces called "piecewise smooth". Such surfaces consist of finitely many pieces that can be represented in the parametric form
with a continuously differentiable function formula_4 The area of an individual piece is defined by the formula
Thus the area of "S""D" is obtained by integrating the length of the normal vector formula_6 to the surface over the appropriate region "D" in the parametric "uv" plane. The area of the whole surface is then obtained by adding together the areas of the pieces, using additivity of surface area. The main formula can be specialized to different classes of surfaces, giving, in particular, formulas for areas of graphs "z" = "f"("x","y") and surfaces of revolution.
One of the subtleties of surface area, as compared to arc length of curves, is that surface area cannot be defined simply as the limit of areas of polyhedral shapes approximating a given smooth surface. It was demonstrated by Hermann Schwarz that already for the cylinder, different choices of approximating flat surfaces can lead to different limiting values of the area; this example is known as the Schwarz lantern.
Various approaches to a general definition of surface area were developed in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century by Henri Lebesgue and Hermann Minkowski. While for piecewise smooth surfaces there is a unique natural notion of surface area, if a surface is very irregular, or rough, then it may not be possible to assign an area to it at all. A typical example is given by a surface with spikes spread throughout in a dense fashion. Many surfaces of this type occur in the study of fractals. Extensions of the notion of area which partially fulfill its function and may be defined even for very badly irregular surfaces are studied in geometric measure theory. A specific example of such an extension is the Minkowski content of the surface.
The below given formulas can be used to show that the surface area of a sphere and cylinder of the same radius and height are in the ratio 2 : 3, as follows.
Let the radius be "r" and the height be "h" (which is 2"r" for the sphere).
formula_7
The discovery of this ratio is credited to Archimedes.
Surface area is important in chemical kinetics. Increasing the surface area of a substance generally increases the rate of a chemical reaction. For example, iron in a fine powder will combust, while in solid blocks it is stable enough to use in structures. For different applications a minimal or maximal surface area may be desired.
The surface area of an organism is important in several considerations, such as regulation of body temperature and digestion. Animals use their teeth to grind food down into smaller particles, increasing the surface area available for digestion. The epithelial tissue lining the digestive tract contains microvilli, greatly increasing the area available for absorption. Elephants have large ears, allowing them to regulate their own body temperature. In other instances, animals will need to minimize surface area; for example, people will fold their arms over their chest when cold to minimize heat loss.
The surface area to volume ratio (SA:V) of a cell imposes upper limits on size, as the volume increases much faster than does the surface area, thus limiting the rate at which substances diffuse from the interior across the cell membrane to interstitial spaces or to other cells. Indeed, representing a cell as an idealized sphere of radius "r", the volume and surface area are, respectively, "V" = 4/3 π "r"3; "SA" = 4 π "r"2. The resulting surface area to volume ratio is therefore 3/"r". Thus, if a cell has a radius of 1 μm, the SA:V ratio is 3; whereas if the radius of the cell is instead 10 μm, then the SA:V ratio becomes 0.3. With a cell radius of 100, SA:V ratio is 0.03. Thus, the surface area falls off steeply with increasing volume. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27725 |
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian – also called Serbo-Croat , Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin.
South Slavic languages historically formed a continuum. The turbulent history of the area, particularly due to expansion of the Ottoman Empire, resulted in a patchwork of dialectal and religious differences. Due to population migrations, Shtokavian became the most widespread language in the western Balkans, intruding westwards into the area previously occupied by Chakavian and Kajkavian (which further blend into Slovenian in the northwest). Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs differ in religion and were historically often part of different cultural circles, although a large part of the nations have lived side by side under foreign overlords. During that period, the language was referred to under a variety of names, such as "Slavic" in general or "Serbian", "Croatian" or "Bosnian" in particular. In a classicizing manner, it was also referred to as "Illyrian".
The process of linguistic standardization of Serbo-Croatian was originally initiated in the mid-19th-century Vienna Literary Agreement by Croatian and Serbian writers and philologists, decades before a Yugoslav state was established. From the very beginning, there were slightly different literary Serbian and Croatian standards, although both were based on the same dialect of Shtokavian, Eastern Herzegovinian. In the 20th century, Serbo-Croatian served as the official language of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (when it was called "Serbo-Croato-Slovenian"), and later as one of the official languages of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The breakup of Yugoslavia affected language attitudes, so that social conceptions of the language separated on ethnic and political lines. Since the breakup of Yugoslavia, Bosnian has likewise been established as an official standard in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and there is an ongoing movement to codify a separate Montenegrin standard.
Like other South Slavic languages, Serbo-Croatian has a simple phonology, with the common five-vowel system and twenty-five consonants. Its grammar evolved from Common Slavic, with complex inflection, preserving seven grammatical cases in nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. Verbs exhibit imperfective or perfective aspect, with a moderately complex tense system. Serbo-Croatian is a pro-drop language with flexible word order, subject–verb–object being the default. It can be written in Serbian Cyrillic or Gaj's Latin alphabet, whose thirty letters mutually map one-to-one, and the orthography is highly phonemic in all standards.
Serbo-Croatian generally goes by the individual names Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and sometimes Montenegrin and Bunjevac.
In the language itself, it is typically known as / "Serbo-Croatian", / "Croato-Serbian", or simply / "ours".
Throughout the history of the South Slavs, the vernacular, literary, and written languages (e.g. Chakavian, Kajkavian, Shtokavian) of the various regions and ethnicities developed and diverged independently. Prior to the 19th century, they were collectively called "Illyric", "Slavic", "Slavonian", "Bosnian", "Dalmatian", "Serbian" or "Croatian". Since the nineteenth century the term "Illyrian" or "Illyric" was used quite often (thus creating confusion with the Illyrian language). Although the word "Illyrian" was used on a few occasions before, its widespread usage began after Ljudevit Gaj and several other prominent linguists met at Ljudevit Vukotinović's house to discuss the issue in 1832. The term "Serbo-Croatian" was first used by Jacob Grimm in 1824, popularized by the Viennese philologist Jernej Kopitar in the following decades, and accepted by Croatian Zagreb grammarians in 1854 and 1859. At that time, Serb and Croat lands were still part of the Ottoman and Austrian Empires. Officially, the language was called variously "Serbo-Croat, Croato-Serbian, Serbian and Croatian, Croatian and Serbian, Serbian or Croatian, Croatian or Serbian." Unofficially, Serbs and Croats typically called the language "Serbian" or "Croatian", respectively, without implying a distinction between the two, and again in independent Bosnia and Herzegovina, "Bosnian", "Croatian", and "Serbian" were considered to be three names of a single official language. Croatian linguist Dalibor Brozović advocated the term "Serbo-Croatian" as late as 1988, claiming that in an analogy with Indo-European, Serbo-Croatian does not only name the two components of the same language, but simply charts the limits of the region in which it is spoken and includes everything between the limits (‘Bosnian’ and ‘Montenegrin’). Today, use of the term "Serbo-Croatian" is controversial due to the prejudice that nation and language must match. It is still used for lack of a succinct alternative, though alternative names have emerged, such as "Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian" (BCS), which is often seen in political contexts such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
In 9th Century, Old Church Slavonic was adopted as the language of the liturgy in churches serving various Slavic nations. This language was gradually adapted to non-liturgical purposes and became known as the Croatian version of Old Slavonic. The two variants of the language, liturgical and non-liturgical, continued to be a part of the Glagolitic service as late as the middle of the 19th century. The earliest known Croatian Church Slavonic Glagolitic manuscripts are the "Glagolita Clozianus" and the "Vienna Folia" from the 11th century.
The beginning of written Serbo-Croatian can be traced from the 10th century and on when Serbo-Croatian medieval texts were written in five scripts: Latin, Glagolitic, Early Cyrillic, Bosnian Cyrillic ("bosančica/bosanica"), and Arebica, the last principally by Bosniak nobility. Serbo-Croatian competed with the more established literary languages of Latin and Old Slavonic in the west and Persian and Arabic in the east.
Old Slavonic developed into the Serbo-Croatian variant of Church Slavonic between the 12th and 16th centuries.
Among the earliest attestations of Serbo-Croatian are the Humac tablet, dating from the 10th or 11th century, written in Bosnian Cyrillic and Glagolitic; the Plomin tablet, dating from the same era, written in Glagolitic; the Valun tablet, dated to the 11th century, written in Glagolitic and Latin; and the Inscription of Župa Dubrovačka, a Glagolitic tablet dated to the 11th century.
The Baška tablet from the late 11th century was written in Glagolitic. It is a large stone tablet found in the small Church of St. Lucy, Jurandvor on the Croatian island of Krk that contains text written mostly in Chakavian in the Croatian script. It is also important in the history of the nation as it mentions Zvonimir, the king of Croatia at the time.
The Charter of Ban Kulin of 1189, written by Ban Kulin of Bosnia, was an early Shtokavian text, written in Bosnian Cyrillic.
The luxurious and ornate representative texts of Serbo-Croatian Church Slavonic belong to the later era, when they coexisted with the Serbo-Croatian vernacular literature. The most notable are the "Missal of Duke Novak" from the Lika region in northwestern Croatia (1368), "Evangel from Reims" (1395, named after the town of its final destination), Hrvoje's Missal from Bosnia and Split in Dalmatia (1404), and the first printed book in Serbo-Croatian, the Glagolitic Missale Romanum Glagolitice (1483).
During the 13th century Serbo-Croatian vernacular texts began to appear, the most important among them being the "Istrian land survey" of 1275 and the "Vinodol Codex" of 1288, both written in the Chakavian dialect.
The Shtokavian dialect literature, based almost exclusively on Chakavian original texts of religious provenance (missals, breviaries, prayer books) appeared almost a century later. The most important purely Shtokavian vernacular text is the Vatican Croatian Prayer Book (c. 1400).
Both the language used in legal texts and that used in Glagolitic literature gradually came under the influence of the vernacular, which considerably affected its phonological, morphological, and lexical systems. From the 14th and the 15th centuries, both secular and religious songs at church festivals were composed in the vernacular.
Writers of early Serbo-Croatian religious poetry ("začinjavci") gradually introduced the vernacular into their works. These "začinjavci" were the forerunners of the rich literary production of the 16th-century literature, which, depending on the area, was Chakavian-, Kajkavian-, or Shtokavian-based. The language of religious poems, translations, miracle and morality plays contributed to the popular character of medieval Serbo-Croatian literature.
One of the earliest dictionaries, also in the Slavic languages as a whole, was the "Bosnian–Turkish Dictionary" of 1631 authored by Muhamed Hevaji Uskufi and was written in the Arebica script.
In the mid-19th century, Serbian (led by self-taught writer and folklorist Vuk Stefanović Karadžić) and most Croatian writers and linguists (represented by the Illyrian movement and led by Ljudevit Gaj and Đuro Daničić), proposed the use of the most widespread dialect, Shtokavian, as the base for their common standard language. Karadžić standardised the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, and Gaj and Daničić standardized the Croatian Latin alphabet, on the basis of vernacular speech phonemes and the principle of phonological spelling. In 1850 Serbian and Croatian writers and linguists signed the Vienna Literary Agreement, declaring their intention to create a unified standard. Thus a complex bi-variant language appeared, which the Serbs officially called "Serbo-Croatian" or "Serbian or Croatian" and the Croats "Croato-Serbian", or "Croatian or Serbian". Yet, in practice, the variants of the conceived common literary language served as different literary variants, chiefly differing in lexical inventory and stylistic devices. The common phrase describing this situation was that Serbo-Croatian or "Croatian or Serbian" was a single language. During the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the language of all three nations was called "Bosnian" until the death of administrator von Kállay in 1907, at which point the name was changed to "Serbo-Croatian".
With unification of the first the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes – the approach of Karadžić and the Illyrians became dominant. The official language was called "Serbo-Croato-Slovenian" ("srpsko-hrvatsko-slovenački") in the 1921 constitution. In 1929, the constitution was suspended, and the country was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, while the official language of Serbo-Croato-Slovene was reinstated in the 1931 constitution.
In June 1941, the Nazi puppet Independent State of Croatia began to rid the language of "Eastern" (Serbian) words, and shut down Serbian schools.
On January 15, 1944, the Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) declared Croatian, Serbian, Slovene, and Macedonian to be equal in the entire territory of Yugoslavia. In 1945 the decision to recognize Croatian and Serbian as separate languages was reversed in favor of a single Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian language. In the Communist-dominated second Yugoslavia, ethnic issues eased to an extent, but the matter of language remained blurred and unresolved.
In 1954, major Serbian and Croatian writers, linguists and literary critics, backed by Matica srpska and Matica hrvatska signed the Novi Sad Agreement, which in its first conclusion stated: "Serbs, Croats and Montenegrins share a single language with two equal variants that have developed around Zagreb (western) and Belgrade (eastern)". The agreement insisted on the equal status of Cyrillic and Latin scripts, and of Ekavian and Ijekavian pronunciations. It also specified that "Serbo-Croatian" should be the name of the language in official contexts, while in unofficial use the traditional "Serbian" and "Croatian" were to be retained. Matica hrvatska and Matica srpska were to work together on a dictionary, and a committee of Serbian and Croatian linguists was asked to prepare a "pravopis". During the sixties both books were published simultaneously in Ijekavian Latin in Zagreb and Ekavian Cyrillic in Novi Sad. Yet Croatian linguists claim that it was an act of unitarianism. The evidence supporting this claim is patchy: Croatian linguist Stjepan Babić complained that the television transmission from Belgrade always used the Latin alphabet— which was true, but was not proof of unequal rights, but of frequency of use and prestige. Babić further complained that the Novi Sad Dictionary (1967) listed side by side words from both the Croatian and Serbian variants wherever they differed, which one can view as proof of careful respect for both variants, and not of unitarism. Moreover, Croatian linguists criticized those parts of the Dictionary for being unitaristic that were written by Croatian linguists. And finally, Croatian linguists ignored the fact that the material for the "Pravopisni rječnik" came from the Croatian Philological Society. Regardless of these facts, Croatian intellectuals brought the Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Literary Language in 1967. On occasion of the publication's 45th anniversary, the Croatian weekly journal "Forum" published the Declaration again in 2012, accompanied by a critical analysis.
West European scientists judge the Yugoslav language policy as an exemplary one: although three-quarters of the population spoke one language, no single language was official on a federal level. Official languages were declared only at the level of constituent republics and provinces, and very generously: Vojvodina had five (among them Slovak and Romanian, spoken by 0.5 per cent of the population), and Kosovo four (Albanian, Turkish, Romany and Serbo-Croatian). Newspapers, radio and television studios used sixteen languages, fourteen were used as languages of tuition in schools, and nine at universities. Only the Yugoslav Army used Serbo-Croatian as the sole language of command, with all other languages represented in the army's other activities—however, this is not different from other armies of multilingual states, or in other specific institutions, such as international air traffic control where English is used worldwide. All variants of Serbo-Croatian were used in state administration and republican and federal institutions. Both Serbian and Croatian variants were represented in respectively different grammar books, dictionaries, school textbooks and in books known as pravopis (which detail spelling rules). Serbo-Croatian was a kind of soft standardisation. However, legal equality could not dampen the prestige Serbo-Croatian had: since it was the language of three quarters of the population, it functioned as an unofficial lingua franca. And within Serbo-Croatian, the Serbian variant, with twice as many speakers as the Croatian, enjoyed greater prestige, reinforced by the fact that Slovene and Macedonian speakers preferred it to the Croatian variant because their languages are also Ekavian. This is a common situation in other pluricentric languages, e.g. the variants of German differ according to their prestige, the variants of Portuguese too. Moreover, all languages differ in terms of prestige: "the fact is that languages (in terms of prestige, learnability etc.) are not equal, and the law cannot make them equal".
In 2017, the "Declaration on the Common Language" ("Deklaracija o zajedničkom jeziku"), signed by a group of NGOs and linguists from former Yugoslavia, argues that all variants belong to a common polycentric language.
The total number of persons who declared their native language as either 'Bosnian', 'Croatian', 'Serbian', 'Montenegrin', or 'Serbo-Croatian' in countries of the region is about 16 million.
Serbian is spoken by about 9.5 million, mostly in Serbia (6.7m), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.4m), and Montenegro (0.4m). Serbian minorities are found in North Macedonia and in Romania. In Serbia, there are about 760,000 second-language speakers of Serbian, including Hungarians in Vojvodina and the 400,000 estimated Roma. Familiarity of Kosovo Albanians with Serbian in Kosovo varies depending on age and education, and exact numbers are not available.
Croatian is spoken by roughly 4.8 million, including some 575,000 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A small Croatian minority that lives in Italy, known as Molise Croats, have somewhat preserved traces of the Croatian language. In Croatia, 170,000, mostly Italians and Hungarians, use it as a second language.
Bosnian is spoken by 2.2 million people, chiefly Bosniaks, including about 220,000 in Serbia and Montenegro.
The notion of Montenegrin as a separate standard from Serbian is relatively recent. In the 2003 census, around 150,000 Montenegrins, of the country's 620,000, declared Montenegrin as their native language. That figure is likely to increase, due to the country's independence and strong institutional backing of the Montenegrin language.
Serbo-Croatian is also a second language of many Slovenians and Macedonians, especially those born during the time of Yugoslavia. According to the 2002 Census, Serbo-Croatian and its variants have the largest number of speakers of the minority languages in Slovenia.
Outside the Balkans, there are over 2 million native speakers of the language(s), especially in countries which are frequent targets of immigration, such as Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, and the United States.
Serbo-Croatian is a highly inflected language. Traditional grammars list seven cases for nouns and adjectives: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative, and instrumental, reflecting the original seven cases of Proto-Slavic, and indeed older forms of Serbo-Croatian itself. However, in modern Shtokavian the locative has almost merged into dative (the only difference is based on accent in some cases), and the other cases can be shown declining; namely:
Like most Slavic languages, there are mostly three genders for nouns: masculine, feminine, and neuter, a distinction which is still present even in the plural (unlike Russian and, in part, the Čakavian dialect). They also have two numbers: singular and plural. However, some consider there to be three numbers (paucal or "dual," too), since (still preserved in closely related Slovene) after two ("dva", "dvije"/"dve"), three ("tri") and four ("četiri"), and all numbers ending in them (e.g. twenty-two, ninety-three, one hundred four) the genitive singular is used, and after all other numbers five ("pet") and up, the genitive plural is used. (The number one ["jedan"] is treated as an adjective.) Adjectives are placed in front of the noun they modify and must agree in both case and number with it.
There are seven tenses for verbs: past, present, future, exact future, aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect; and three moods: indicative, imperative, and conditional. However, the latter three tenses are typically used only in Shtokavian writing, and the time sequence of the exact future is more commonly formed through an alternative construction.
In addition, like most Slavic languages, the Shtokavian verb also has one of two aspects: perfective or imperfective. Most verbs come in pairs, with the perfective verb being created out of the imperfective by adding a prefix or making a stem change. The imperfective aspect typically indicates that the action is unfinished, in progress, or repetitive; while the perfective aspect typically denotes that the action was completed, instantaneous, or of limited duration. Some Štokavian tenses (namely, aorist and imperfect) favor a particular aspect (but they are rarer or absent in Čakavian and Kajkavian). Actually, aspects "compensate" for the relative lack of tenses, because aspect of the verb determines whether the act is completed or in progress in the referred time.
The Serbo-Croatian vowel system is simple, with only five vowels in Shtokavian. All vowels are monophthongs. The oral vowels are as follows:
The vowels can be short or long, but the phonetic quality does not change depending on the length. In a word, vowels can be long in the stressed syllable and the syllables following it, never in the ones preceding it.
The consonant system is more complicated, and its characteristic features are series of affricate and palatal consonants. As in English, voice is phonemic, but aspiration is not.
In consonant clusters all consonants are either voiced or voiceless. All the consonants are voiced if the last consonant is normally voiced or voiceless if the last consonant is normally voiceless. This rule does not apply to approximantsa consonant cluster may contain voiced approximants and voiceless consonants; as well as to foreign words ("Washington" would be transcribed as "VašinGton"), personal names and when consonants are not inside of one syllable.
Apart from Slovene, Serbo-Croatian is the only Slavic language with a pitch accent (simple tone) system. This feature is present in some other Indo-European languages, such as Swedish, Norwegian, and Ancient Greek. Neo-Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian, which is used as the basis for standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian, has four "accents", which involve either a rising or falling tone on either long or short vowels, with optional post-tonic lengths:
The tone stressed vowels can be approximated in English with "set" vs. "setting?" said in isolation for a short tonic "e," or "leave" vs. "leaving?" for a long tonic "i," due to the prosody of final stressed syllables in English.
General accent rules in the standard language:
There are no other rules for accent placement, thus the accent of every word must be learned individually; furthermore, in inflection, accent shifts are common, both in type and position (the so-called "mobile paradigms"). The second rule is not strictly obeyed, especially in borrowed words.
Comparative and historical linguistics offers some clues for memorising the accent position: If one compares many standard Serbo-Croatian words to e.g. cognate Russian words, the accent in the Serbo-Croatian word will be one syllable before the one in the Russian word, with the rising tone. Historically, the rising tone appeared when the place of the accent shifted to the preceding syllable (the so-called "Neoshtokavian retraction"), but the quality of this new accent was different – its melody still "gravitated" towards the original syllable. Most Shtokavian dialects (Neoshtokavian) dialects underwent this shift, but Chakavian, Kajkavian and the Old Shtokavian dialects did not.
Accent diacritics are not used in the ordinary orthography, but only in the linguistic or language-learning literature (e.g. dictionaries, orthography and grammar books). However, there are very few minimal pairs where an error in accent can lead to misunderstanding.
Serbo-Croatian orthography is almost entirely phonetic. Thus, most words should be spelled as they are pronounced. In practice, the writing system does not take into account allophones which occur as a result of interaction between words:
Also, there are some exceptions, mostly applied to foreign words and compounds, that favor morphological/etymological over phonetic spelling:
One systemic exception is that the consonant clusters ds and dš are not respelled as ts and tš (although "d" tends to be unvoiced in normal speech in such clusters):
Only a few words are intentionally "misspelled", mostly in order to resolve ambiguity:
Through history, this language has been written in a number of writing systems:
The oldest texts since the 11th century are in Glagolitic, and the oldest preserved text written completely in the Latin alphabet is , from 1345. The Arabic alphabet had been used by Bosniaks; Greek writing is out of use there, and Arabic and Glagolitic persisted so far partly in religious liturgies.
Today, it is written in both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Serbian and Bosnian variants use both alphabets, while Croatian uses the Latin only.
Latin script has become more and more popular in Serbia, as it is easy to input on phones and computers.
The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was revised by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić in the 19th century.
The Croatian Latin alphabet () followed suit shortly afterwards, when Ljudevit Gaj defined it as standard Latin with five extra letters that had diacritics, apparently borrowing much from Czech, but also from Polish, and inventing the unique digraphs , and . These digraphs are represented as , and respectively in the , published by the former Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb. The latter digraphs, however, are unused in the literary standard of the language. All in all, this makes Serbo-Croatian the only Slavic language to officially use both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts, albeit the Latin version is more commonly used.
In both cases, spelling is phonetic and spellings in the two alphabets map to each other one-to-one:
The digraphs "Lj", "Nj" and "Dž" represent distinct phonemes and are considered to be single letters. In crosswords, they are put into a single square, and in sorting, lj follows l and nj follows n, except in a few words where the individual letters are pronounced separately. For instance, "nadživ(j)eti" "to outlive" is composed of the prefix "out, over" and the verb "to live". The Cyrillic alphabet avoids such ambiguity by providing a single letter for each phoneme: .
"Đ" used to be commonly written as "Dj" on typewriters, but that practice led to too many ambiguities. It is also used on car license plates. Today "Dj" is often used again in place of "Đ" on the Internet as a replacement due to the lack of installed Serbo-Croat keyboard layouts.
Unicode has separate characters for the digraphs lj (LJ, Lj, lj), nj (NJ, Nj, nj) and dž (DŽ, Dž, dž).
South Slavic historically formed a dialect continuum, i.e. each dialect has some similarities with the neighboring one, and differences grow with distance. However, migrations from the 16th to 18th centuries resulting from the spread of Ottoman Empire on the Balkans have caused large-scale population displacement that broke the dialect continuum into many geographical pockets. Migrations in the 20th century, primarily caused by urbanization and wars, also contributed to the reduction of dialectal differences.
The primary dialects are named after the most common question word for "what": Shtokavian uses the pronoun "što" or "šta", Chakavian uses "ča" or "ca", Kajkavian ("kajkavski"), "kaj" or "kej". In native terminology they are referred to as "nar(j)ečje", which would be equivalent of "group of dialects", whereas their many subdialects are referred to as "dijalekti ""dialects" or "govori ""speeches".
The pluricentric Serbo-Croatian standard language and all four contemporary standard variants are based on the Eastern Herzegovinian subdialect of Neo-Shtokavian. Other dialects are not taught in schools or used by the state media. The Torlakian dialect is often added to the list, though sources usually note that it is a transitional dialect between Shtokavian and the Bulgaro-Macedonian dialects.
The Serbo-Croatian dialects differ not only in the question word they are named after, but also heavily in phonology, accentuation and intonation, case endings and tense system (morphology) and basic vocabulary. In the past, Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects were spoken on a much larger territory, but have been replaced by Štokavian during the period of migrations caused by Ottoman Turkish conquest of the Balkans in the 15th and the 16th centuries. These migrations caused the koinéisation of the Shtokavian dialects, that used to form the West Shtokavian (more closer and transitional towards the neighbouring Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects) and East Shtokavian (transitional towards the Torlakian and the whole Bulgaro-Macedonian area) dialect bundles, and their subsequent spread at the expense of Chakavian and Kajkavian. As a result, Štokavian now covers an area larger than all the other dialects combined, and continues to make its progress in the enclaves where non-literary dialects are still being spoken.
The differences among the dialects can be illustrated on the example of Schleicher's fable. Diacritic signs are used to show the difference in accents and prosody, which are often quite significant, but which are not reflected in the usual orthography.
A basic distinction among the dialects is in the reflex of the long Common Slavic vowel "jat", usually transcribed as *ě. Depending on the reflex, the dialects are divided into Ikavian, Ekavian, and Ijekavian, with the reflects of "jat" being /i/, /e/, and /ije/ or /je/ respectively. The long and short "jat" is reflected as long or short */i/ and /e/ in Ikavian and Ekavian, but Ijekavian dialects introduce a "ije"/"je" alternation to retain a distinction.
Standard Croatian and Bosnian are based on Ijekavian, whereas Serbian uses both Ekavian and Ijekavian forms (Ijekavian for Bosnian Serbs, Ekavian for most of Serbia). Influence of standard language through state media and education has caused non-standard varieties to lose ground to the literary forms.
The jat-reflex rules are not without exception. For example, when short "jat" is preceded by "r", in most Ijekavian dialects developed into /re/ or, occasionally, /ri/. The prefix "prě-" ("trans-, over-") when long became "pre-" in eastern Ijekavian dialects but to "prije-" in western dialects; in Ikavian pronunciation, it also evolved into "pre-" or "prije-" due to potential ambiguity with "pri-" ("approach, come close to"). For verbs that had "-ěti " in their infinitive, the past participle ending "-ěl" evolved into "-io" in Ijekavian Neoštokavian.
The following are some examples:
The nature and classification of Serbo-Croatian has been the subject of long-standing sociolinguistic debate. The question is whether Serbo-Croatian should be called a single language or a cluster of closely related languages.
Enisa Kafadar argues that there is only one Serbo-Croatian language with several varieties. This has made it possible to include all four varieties in new grammars of the language. Daniel Bunčić concludes that it is a pluricentric language, with four standard variants spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The mutual intelligibility between their speakers "exceeds that between the standard variants of English, French, German, or Spanish". "There is no doubt of the near 100% mutual intelligibility of (standard) Croatian and (standard) Serbian, as is obvious from the ability of all groups to enjoy each others’ films, TV and sports broadcasts, newspapers, rock lyrics etc." Other linguists have argued that the differences between the variants of Serbo-Croatian are less significant than those between the variants of English, German, Dutch, and Hindustani.
Among pluricentric languages, Serbo-Croatian was the only one with a pluricentric standardisation within one state. The dissolution of Yugoslavia has made Serbo-Croatian even more of a typical pluricentric language, since the variants of other pluricentric languages are also spoken in different states.
As in other pluricentric languages, all Serbo-Croatian standard varieties are based on the same dialect (the Eastern Herzegovinian subdialect of the Shtokavian dialect) and consequently, according to the sociolinguistic definitions, constitute a single pluricentric language (and not, for example, several Ausbau languages). "An examination of all the major 'levels' of language shows that BCS is clearly a single language with a single grammatical system."
In 2017, numerous prominent writers, scientists, journalists, activists and other public figures from Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia signed the Declaration on the Common Language, which states that in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro a common polycentric standard language is used, consisting of several standard varieties, such as German, English or Spanish.
The use of "Serbo-Croatian" as a linguistic label has been the subject of long-standing controversy. Wayles Browne calls it a "term of convenience" and notes the difference of opinion as to whether it comprises a single language or a cluster of languages. Ronelle Alexander refers to the national standards as three separate languages, but also notes that the reasons for this are complex and generally non-linguistic. She calls BCS (her term for Serbo-Croatian) a single language for communicative linguistic purposes, but three separate languages for symbolic non-linguistic purposes.
The current Serbian constitution of 2006 refers to the official language as "Serbian", while the Montenegrin constitution of 2007 proclaimed "Montenegrin" as the primary official language, but also grants other languages the right of official use.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has specified different Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) numbers for Croatian "(UDC 862," abbreviation hr) and Serbian "(UDC 861", abbreviation sr), while the cover term "Serbo-Croatian" is used to refer to the combination of original signs ("UDC 861/862," abbreviation sh). Furthermore, the "ISO 639" standard designates the Bosnian language with the abbreviations bos and bs.
While it operated, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which had English and French as official languages, translated court proceedings and documents into what it referred to as "Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian", usually abbreviated as BCS. Translators were employed from all regions of the former Yugoslavia and all national and regional variations were accepted, regardless of the nationality of the person on trial (sometimes against a defendant's objections), on the grounds of mutual intelligibility.
For utilitarian purposes, the Serbo-Croatian language is often called ""naš jezik" ("our language") or ""naški" (sic. "Ourish" or "Ourian") by native speakers. This term is frequently used to describe the Serbo-Croatian language by those who wish to avoid nationalistic and linguistic discussions. Native speakers traditionally describe their language as ""jedan ali ne jedinstven"—"one but not uniform".
The majority of mainstream Serbian linguists consider Serbian and Croatian to be one language, that is called Serbo-Croatian ("srpskohrvatski") or Croato-Serbian ("hrvatskosrpski"). A minority of Serbian linguists are of the opinion that Serbo-Croatian did exist, but has, in the meantime, dissolved.
The opinion of the majority of Croatian linguists is that there has never been a Serbo-Croatian language, but two different standard languages that overlapped sometime in the course of history. However, Croatian linguist Snježana Kordić has been leading an academic discussion on this issue in the Croatian journal "Književna republika" from 2001 to 2010. In the discussion, she shows that linguistic criteria such as mutual intelligibility, the huge overlap in the linguistic system, and the same dialect basis of the standard language are evidence that Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are four national variants of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language. Igor Mandić states: "During the last ten years, it has been the longest, the most serious and most acrid discussion (…) in 21st-century Croatian culture". Inspired by that discussion, a monograph on language and nationalism has been published.
The view of the majority of Croatian linguists that there is no single Serbo-Croatian language but several different standard languages has been sharply criticized by German linguist Bernhard Gröschel in his monograph "Serbo-Croatian Between Linguistics and Politics".
A more detailed overview, incorporating arguments from Croatian philology and contemporary linguistics, would be as follows:
The linguistic debate in this region is more about politics than about linguistics per se.
The topic of language for writers from Dalmatia and Dubrovnik prior to the 19th century made a distinction only between speakers of Italian or Slavic, since those were the two main groups that inhabited Dalmatian city-states at that time. Whether someone spoke Croatian or Serbian was not an important distinction then, as the two languages were not distinguished by most speakers.
However, most intellectuals and writers from Dalmatia who used the Štokavian dialect and practiced the Catholic faith saw themselves as part of a Croatian nation as far back as the mid-16th to 17th centuries, some 300 years before Serbo-Croatian ideology appeared. Their loyalty was first and foremost to Catholic Christendom, but when they professed an ethnic identity, they referred to themselves as "Slovin" and "Illyrian" (a sort of forerunner of Catholic baroque pan-Slavism) and Croatthese 30-odd writers over the span of c. 350 years always saw themselves as Croats first and never as part of a Serbian nation. It should also be noted that, in the pre-national era, Catholic religious orientation did not necessarily equate with Croat ethnic identity in Dalmatia. A Croatian follower of Vuk Karadžić, Ivan Broz, noted that for a Dalmatian to identify oneself as a Serb was seen as foreign as identifying oneself as Macedonian or Greek. Vatroslav Jagić pointed out in 1864:
On the other hand, the opinion of Jagić from 1864 is argued not to have firm grounds. When Jagić says "Croatian", he refers to a few cases referring to the Dubrovnik vernacular as "ilirski" (Illyrian). This was a common name for all Slavic vernaculars in Dalmatian cities among the Roman inhabitants. In the meantime, other written monuments are found that mention "srpski", "lingua serviana" (= Serbian), and some that mention Croatian. By far the most competent Serbian scientist on the Dubrovnik language issue, Milan Rešetar, who was born in Dubrovnik himself, wrote behalf of language characteristics: "The one who thinks that Croatian and Serbian are two separate languages must confess that Dubrovnik always (linguistically) used to be Serbian."
Finally, the former "medieval" texts from Dubrovnik and Montenegro dating before the 16th century were neither true Štokavian nor Serbian, but mostly specific a Jekavian-Čakavian that was nearer to actual Adriatic islanders in Croatia.
Nationalists have conflicting views about the language(s). The nationalists among the Croats conflictingly claim either that they speak an entirely separate language from Serbs and Bosniaks or that these two peoples have, due to the longer lexicographic tradition among Croats, somehow "borrowed" their standard languages from them. Bosniak nationalists claim that both Croats and Serbs have "appropriated" the Bosnian language, since Ljudevit Gaj and Vuk Karadžić preferred the Neoštokavian-Ijekavian dialect, widely spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as the basis for language standardization, whereas the nationalists among the Serbs claim either that any divergence in the language is artificial, or claim that the Štokavian dialect is theirs and the Čakavian Croats'— in more extreme formulations Croats have "taken" or "stolen" their language from the Serbs.
Proponents of unity among Southern Slavs claim that there is a single language with normal dialectal variations. The term "Serbo-Croatian" (or synonyms) is not officially used in any of the successor countries of former Yugoslavia.
In Serbia, the Serbian standard has an official status countrywide, while both Serbian and Croatian are official in the province of Vojvodina. A large Bosniak minority is present in the southwest region of Sandžak, but the "official recognition" of Bosnian is moot. Bosnian is an optional course in 1st and 2nd grade of the elementary school, while it is also in official use in the municipality of Novi Pazar. However, its nomenclature is controversial, as there is incentive that it is referred to as "Bosniak" ("bošnjački") rather than "Bosnian" ("bosanski") (see Bosnian language#Controversy and recognition for details).
Croatian is the official language of Croatia, while Serbian is also official in municipalities with significant Serb population.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, all three standard languages are recorded as official. Confrontations have on occasion been absurd. The academic Muhamed Filipović, in an interview to Slovenian television, told of a local court in a Croatian district requesting a paid translator to translate from Bosnian to Croatian before the trial could proceed.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia referred to the language as "Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian", usually abbreviated as BCS. Translators were employed from all regions of the former Yugoslavia and all national and regional variations were accepted, regardless of the nationality of the person on trial (sometimes against a defendant's objections), on the grounds of mutual intelligibility.
Since the year 2000, the ISO classification only recognizes "Serbo-Croatian" as a 'macrolanguage', since the original codes were removed from the ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-2 standards. That left the ISO 639-3 'macrolanguage' (a book-keeping device in the ISO 639-3 standard to keep track of which ISO 639-3 codes correspond with which ISO 639-2 codes) stranded without a corresponding ISO 639-2 code. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27730 |
Saint Kitts
Saint Kitts, also known more formally as Saint Christopher Island, is an island in the West Indies. The west side of the island borders the Caribbean Sea, and the eastern coast faces the Atlantic Ocean. Saint Kitts and the neighbouring island of Nevis constitute one country: the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis. Saint Kitts and Nevis are separated by a shallow channel known as "The Narrows".
Saint Kitts became home to the first Caribbean British and French colonies in the mid-1620s. Along with the island nation of Nevis, Saint Kitts was a member of the British West Indies until gaining independence on 19 September 1983.
The island is one of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles. It is situated about southeast of Miami, Florida, US. The land area of Saint Kitts is about , being approximately long and on average about across.
Saint Kitts has a population of around 40,000, the majority of whom are of African descent. The primary language is English, with a literacy rate of approximately 98%. Residents call themselves Kittitians.
Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the largest fortress ever built in the Western Caribbean. The island of Saint Kitts is home to the Warner Park Cricket Stadium, which was used to host 2007 Cricket World Cup matches. This made Saint Kitts and Nevis the smallest nation to ever host a World Cup event. Saint Kitts is also home to several institutions of higher education, including Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine, Windsor University School of Medicine, and the University of Medicine and Health Sciences.
The capital of the two-island nation, and also its largest port, is the town of Basseterre on Saint Kitts. There is a modern facility for handling large cruise ships there. A ring road goes around the perimeter of the island with smaller roads branching off it; the interior of the island is too steep for habitation.
Saint Kitts is away from Sint Eustatius to the north and from Nevis to the south. St. Kitts has three distinct groups of volcanic peaks: the North West or Mount Misery Range; the Middle or Verchilds Range and the South East or Olivees Range. The highest peak is Mount Liamuiga, formerly Mount Misery, a dormant volcano 1,156 m high.
The youngest volcanic center is Mt. Liamuiga, 5 km in diameter and rising to an elevation of 1155 m. Its last eruption was 1620 years ago, corresponding with the Steel Dust series of pyroclastic deposits on the western flank. The Mansion Series of pyroclastic deposits and andesite with basalt layers occur on the northern flank, along with mudflows. This volcano has a crater 900 m wide and 244 m deep, plus two distinct parasitic domes consisting primarily of andesite, Brimstone Hill and Sandy Point Hill which is coalesced with Farm Flat. Brimstone Hill is noted for having limestone on its flanks, which was dragged upward with the formation of the dome 44,400 years ago. Mt. Liamuiga partially overlays the Middle Range to the southeast. This Middle Range is another stratovolcano 976 m in height with a small summit crater containing a lake. Next in line is the 900 m South East Range, 1 Myr in age, consisting of four peaks. Ottley's dome and Monkey Hill dome are on the flanks, while the older volcanoes represented by Canada Hills, and Conaree Hills lie past the airport and Bassaterre on the southeast flank. The Salt Dome Peninsula contains the oldest volcanic deposits, 2.3-2.77 Myr in age, consisting of at least nine Pelean domes rising up to 319 m in height, which includes Williams Hill and St. Anthony's Peak.
During the last Ice Age, the sea level was up to lower and St. Kitts and Nevis were one island along with Saba and Sint Eustatius (also known as Statia).
St. Kitts was originally settled by pre-agricultural, pre-ceramic "Archaic people", who migrated south down the archipelago from Florida. In a few hundred years they disappeared, to be replaced by the ceramic-using and agriculturalist Saladoid people around 100 BC, who migrated to St. Kitts north up the archipelago from the banks of the Orinoco River in Venezuela. Around 800 AD, they were replaced by the Igneri people, members of the Arawak group.
Around 1300, the Kalinago, or Carib people arrived on the islands. These agriculturalists quickly dispersed the Igneri, and forced them northwards to the Greater Antilles. They named Saint Kitts "Liamuiga" meaning "fertile island", and would likely have expanded further north if not for the arrival of Europeans.
A Spanish expedition under Christopher Columbus arrived and claimed the island for Spain in 1493.
The first English colony was established in 1623, followed by a French colony in 1625. The English and French briefly united to massacre the local Kalinago, and then partitioned the island, with the English colonists in the middle and the French on either end. In 1629, a Spanish force sent to clear the islands of foreign settlement seized St. Kitts. The English settlement was rebuilt following the 1630 peace between England and Spain.
The island alternated repeatedly between English (then British) and French control during the 17th and 18th centuries, as one power took the whole island, only to have it switch hands due to treaties or military action. Parts of the island were heavily fortified, as exemplified by the UNESCO World Heritage Site at Brimstone Hill and the now-crumbling Fort Charles.
Since 1783, Saint Kitts has been affiliated with the Kingdom of Great Britain, which became the United Kingdom.
The island originally produced tobacco; but it changed to sugar cane in 1640, due to stiff competition from the colony of Virginia. The labour-intensive cultivation of sugar cane was the reason for the large-scale importation of African slaves. The importation began almost immediately upon the arrival of Europeans to the region.
The purchasing of enslaved Africans was outlawed in the British Empire by an Act of Parliament in 1807. Slavery was abolished by an Act of Parliament which became law on 1 August 1834. This emancipation was followed by four years of apprenticeship, put in place to protect the planters from losing their labour force.
1 August is now celebrated as a public holiday and is called Emancipation Day. In 1883, Saint Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla were all linked under one presidency, located on Saint Kitts, to the dismay of the Nevisians and Anguillans. Anguilla eventually separated out of this arrangement, in 1971, after an armed raid on Saint Kitts.
Sugar production continued to dominate the local economy until 2005, when, after 365 years of having a mono-culture, the government closed the sugar industry. This was due to huge losses and European Union plans to greatly cut sugar prices.
For purposes of governing, the island is divided into nine parishes:
Saint Kitts & Nevis uses the Eastern Caribbean dollar, which maintains a fixed exchange rate of 2.7-to-one with the United States dollar. The US dollar is almost as widely accepted as the Eastern Caribbean dollar.
For hundreds of years, Saint Kitts operated as a sugar monoculture, but due to decreasing profitability, the government closed the industry in 2005. Tourism is a major and growing source of income to the island, although the number and density of resorts is less than on many other Caribbean islands. Transportation, non-sugar agriculture, manufacturing and construction are the other growing sectors of the economy.
Saint Kitts is dependent on tourism to drive its economy. Tourism has been increasing since 1978. In 2009, there were 587,479 arrivals to Saint Kitts compared to 379,473 in 2007, which represents an increase of just under 40% growth in a two-year period. As tourism grows, the demand for vacation property increases in conjunction.
Saint Kitts & Nevis also acquires foreign direct investment from their unique citizenship by investment programme, outlined in their Citizenship Act of 1984. Interested parties can acquire citizenship if they pass the government's strict background checks and make an investment into an approved real estate development. Purchasers who pass government due diligence and make a minimum investment of US$400,000, into qualifying government approved real estate, are entitled to apply for citizenship of the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis. Many projects are approved under the citizenship by investment programme, and the main qualifying projects of interest can be found within the Henley Estates market overview .
The country hosts an annual St. Kitts Music Festival.
Robert L. Bradshaw International Airport serves Saint Kitts.
Daily connections from Charlotte, Miami and New York are available.
The Basseterre Ferry Terminal facilitates travel between Saint Kitts and sister island Nevis.
The narrow-gauge (30 inches) St. Kitts Scenic Railway circles the island and offers passenger service from its headquarters near the airport, although the service is geared more for tourists than as day-to-day transportation for residents. Built between 1912 and 1926 to haul sugar cane from farms to the sugar factory in Basseterre, since 2003 the railway has offered a 3.5-hour, 30-mile circle tour of the island on specially designed double-decker open-air coaches, with 12 miles of the trip being by bus.
Saint Kitts is or was the residence of: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27737 |
Shogi
Shogi was the earliest chess variant to allow captured pieces to be returned to the board by the capturing player. This drop rule is speculated to have been invented in the 15th century and possibly connected to the practice of 15th century mercenaries switching loyalties when captured instead of being killed.
The earliest predecessor of the game, chaturanga, originated in India in the 6th century, and the game was likely transmitted to Japan via China or Korea sometime after the Nara period. Shogi in its present form was played as early as the 16th century, while a direct ancestor without the drop rule was recorded from 1210 in a historical document "Nichūreki", which is an edited copy of "Shōchūreki" and "Kaichūreki" from the late Heian period (c. 1120).
Two players face each other across a board composed of rectangles in a grid of 9 "ranks" (rows, ) by 9 "files" (columns, ) yielding an 81 square board. In Japanese they are called "Sente" (first player) and "Gote" (second player), but in English are conventionally referred to as Black and White, with Black the first player.
The board is nearly always rectangular, and the rectangles are undifferentiated by marking or color. Pairs of dots mark the players' promotion zones.
Each player has a set of 20 flat wedge-shaped pentagonal pieces of slightly different sizes. Except for the kings, opposing pieces are undifferentiated by marking or color. Pieces face "forward" by having the pointed side of each piece oriented toward the opponent's side – this shows who controls the piece during play. The pieces from largest (most important) to smallest (least important) are:
Several of these names were chosen to correspond to their rough equivalents in international chess, and not as literal translations of the Japanese names.
Each piece has its name written on its surface in the form of two "kanji" (Chinese characters used in Japanese), usually in black ink. On the reverse side of each piece, other than the king and gold general, are one or two other characters, in amateur sets often in a different color (usually red); this side is turned face up during play to indicate that the piece has been promoted.
Following is a table of the pieces with their Japanese representations and English equivalents. The abbreviations are used for game notation and often when referring to the pieces in speech in Japanese.
English speakers sometimes refer to promoted bishops as "horses" and promoted rooks as "dragons", after their Japanese names, and generally use the Japanese term "tokin" for promoted pawns. Silver generals and gold generals are commonly referred to simply as "silvers" and "golds".
The characters inscribed on the reverse sides of the pieces to indicate promotion may be in red ink, and are usually cursive. The characters on the backs of the pieces that promote to gold generals are cursive variants of 'gold', becoming more cursive (more abbreviated) as the value of the original piece decreases. These cursive forms have these equivalents in print: for promoted silver, for promoted knight, for promoted lance, and for promoted pawn (tokin). Another typographic convention has abbreviated versions of the original values, with a reduced number of strokes: for a promoted knight , for a promoted lance , and the as above for a promoted silver, but (a hiragana symbol for the syllable "to") for "tokin".
The suggestion that the Japanese characters have deterred Western players from learning shogi has led to "Westernized" or "international" pieces which use iconic symbols instead of characters. Most players soon learn to recognize the characters, however, partially because the traditional pieces are already iconic by size, with more powerful pieces being larger. As a result, Westernized pieces have never become popular. Bilingual pieces with both Japanese characters and English captions have been developed as have pieces with animal cartoons.
Each player sets up friendly pieces facing forward (toward the opponent).
Traditionally, the order of placing the pieces on the board is determined. There are two commonly used orders, the "Ōhashi" order 大橋流 and the "Itō" order 伊藤流. Placement sets pieces with multiples (generals, knights, lances) from left to right in all cases, and follows the order:
A "furigoma" 振り駒 'piece toss' is used to decide who moves first. One of the players tosses five pawns. If the number of tokins (promoted pawns, と) facing up is higher than unpromoted pawns (歩), then the player who tossed the pawns plays "gote" 後手 'white' (that is, getting the second move). Among amateur tournaments, the higher-ranked player or defending champion performs the piece toss. In professional games, the furigoma is done on the behalf of the higher-ranked player/champion by the timekeeper who kneels by the side of the higher-ranked player and tosses the pawn pieces onto a silk cloth. In friendly amateur games, a player will ask the opponent to toss the pawns out of politeness. Otherwise, the person who tosses the pawns can be determined by Rock–paper–scissors.
After the piece toss "furigoma," the game proceeds. If multiple games are played, then players alternate turns for who goes first in subsequent games. (The terms "Black" and "White" are used to differentiate sides although there is no difference in the color of the pieces.) For each turn, a player may either move a piece that is currently on the board (and potentially promote it, capture an opposing piece, or both) or else drop a piece that has been previously captured onto a square of the board. These options are explained below.
The usual goal of a game is for one player to checkmate the other player's king, winning the game.
Most shogi pieces can move only to an adjacent square. A few may move across the board, and one jumps over intervening pieces.
The lance, bishop, and rook are "ranging" pieces: They can move any number of squares along a straight line limited only by intervening pieces and the edge of the board. If an opposing piece intervenes, it may be captured by removing it from the board and replacing it with the moving piece. If a friendly piece intervenes, the moving piece must stop short of that square; if the friendly piece is adjacent, the moving piece may not move in that direction at all.
A king (玉/王) moves one square in any direction, orthogonal or diagonal.
A rook (飛) moves any number of squares in an orthogonal direction.
A bishop (角) moves any number of squares in a diagonal direction. Because they cannot move orthogonally, the players' unpromoted bishops can reach only half the squares of the board, unless one is captured and then dropped.
A gold general (金) moves one square orthogonally, or one square diagonally forward, giving it six possible destinations. It cannot move diagonally backwards.
A silver general (銀) moves one square diagonally, or one square straight forward, giving it five possible destinations. Because an unpromoted silver can retreat more easily than a promoted one, it is common to leave a silver unpromoted at the far side of the board. (See Promotion).
A knight (桂) jumps at an angle intermediate to orthogonal and diagonal, amounting to one square straight forward plus one square diagonally forward, in a single move. Thus the knight has two possible forward destinations. Unlike international chess knights, shogi knights cannot move to the sides or in a backwards direction. The knight is the only piece that ignores intervening pieces on the way to its destination. It is not blocked from moving if the square in front of it is occupied, but neither can it capture a piece on that square. It is often useful to leave a knight unpromoted at the far side of the board. A knight "must" promote, however, if it reaches either of the two furthest ranks. (See Promotion.)
A lance (香) moves just like the rook except it cannot move backwards or to the sides. It is often useful to leave a lance unpromoted at the far side of the board. A lance "must" promote, however, if it reaches the furthest rank. (See Promotion.)
A pawn (歩) moves one square straight forward. It cannot retreat. Unlike international chess pawns, shogi pawns capture the same as they move. A pawn "must" promote if it arrives at the furthest rank. (See Promotion.) In practice, however, a pawn is usually promoted whenever possible. There are two restrictions on where a pawn may be dropped. (See Drops.)
All pieces but the knight move either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. These directions cannot be combined in a single move; one direction must be chosen.
Every piece blocks the movement of all other non-jumping pieces through the square it occupies.
If a piece occupies a legal destination for an opposing piece, it may be "captured" by removing it from the board and replacing it with the opposing piece. The capturing piece may not continue beyond that square on that turn. Shogi pieces capture the same as they move.
Normally when moving a piece, a player snaps it to the board with the ends of the fingers of the same hand. This makes a sudden sound effect, bringing the piece to the attention of the opponent. This is also true for capturing and dropping pieces. On a traditional "shogi-ban", the pitch of the snap is deeper, delivering a subtler effect.
A player's "promotion zone" consists of the furthest one-third of the board – the three ranks occupied by the opponent's pieces at setup. The zone is typically delineated on shogi boards by two inscribed dots. When a piece is moved, if part of the piece's path lies within the promotion zone (that is, if the piece moves into, out of, or wholly within the zone; but "not" if it is dropped into the zone – see Drops), then the player has the option to "promote" the piece at the end of the turn. Promotion is indicated by turning the piece over after it moves, revealing the character of the promoted piece.
If a pawn or lance is moved to the furthest rank, or a knight is moved to either of the two furthest ranks, that piece "must" promote (otherwise, it would have no legal move on subsequent turns). A silver general is never required to promote, and it is often advantageous to keep a silver general unpromoted. (It is easier, for example, to extract an unpromoted silver from behind enemy lines; whereas a promoted silver, with only one line of retreat, can be easily blocked.) A rook, bishop and a pawn is almost always promoted, unless there is a problem due to "mate with a dropped pawn".
Promoting a piece changes the way it moves. The various pieces promote as follows:
When captured, a piece loses its promoted status. Otherwise promotion is permanent.
A promoted rook ("dragon king", 龍王 "ryūō") moves as a rook and as a king. It is also called a dragon. Alternate forms: 龍, 竜.
A promoted bishop ("dragon horse", 龍馬 "ryūma") moves as a bishop and as a king. It is also known as a horse. Alternate form: 馬.
A promoted silver (成銀 "narigin") moves the same as a gold general. Alternate forms: 全, cursive 金.
A promoted knight (成桂 "narikei") moves the same as a gold general. Alternate forms: 圭, 今, cursive 金.
A promoted lance (成香 "narikyō") moves the same as a gold general. Alternate forms: 杏, 仝, cursive 金.
A promoted pawn (と金 "tokin") moves the same as a gold general. Alternate forms: と, 个.
Captured pieces are retained in hand and can be brought back into play under the capturing player's control. The Japanese term for "piece(s) in hand" is either 持ち駒 "mochigoma" or 手駒 "tegoma." On any turn, instead of moving a piece on the board, a player may select a piece in hand and place it – unpromoted side up and facing the opposing side – on any empty square. The piece is then one of that player's active pieces on the board and can be moved accordingly. This is called "dropping" the piece, or simply, a "drop". A drop counts as a complete move.
A drop cannot capture a piece, nor does dropping within the promotion zone result in immediate promotion. Capture and/or promotion may occur normally, however, on subsequent moves of the piece.
Restrictions. There are three restrictions on dropping pieces. The last two restrictions apply only to pawns.
It is common to keep captured pieces on a wooden stand (駒台 "komadai)" which is traditionally placed so that its bottom left corner aligns with the bottom right corner of the board from the perspective of each player. It is not permissible to hide pieces from full view.
It is common for players to swap bishops, which oppose each other across the board, early in the game. This leaves each player with a bishop in hand to be dropped later. The ability for drops in shogi give the game tactical richness and complexity. The fact that no piece ever goes entirely out of play accounts for the rarity of draws.
When a player's move threatens to capture the opposing king on the next turn, the move is said to "give check" to the king and the king is said to be "in check." If a player's king is in check, that player's responding move must remove the check if possible. Ways to remove a check include moving the king away from the threat, capturing the threatening piece, or placing another interposing piece between the king and the threatening piece.
To announce check in Japanese, one can say "ōte" (). However, this is an influence of international chess and is not required, even as a courtesy. Announcing a check vocally is unheard of in serious play.
The usual way for shogi games to end is for one side to checkmate the other side's king, after which the losing player will be given the opportunity to admit defeat. Unlike western chess or xiangqi, checkmate is almost always the end result in shogi since pieces never retire from play which gives the players a sufficient number of pieces to deliver checkmate. However, there are three other possible ways for a game to end: "repetition" ( "sennichite"), "impasse" ( "jishōgi"), and an "illegal move" (反則手). The first two – repetition and impasse – are particularly uncommon. Illegal moves are also uncommon in professional games although this may not be true with amateur players (especially beginners).
Unlike western chess, there is no tradition of offering a mutual draw by agreement.
If the king is in check and there is no possible move which could protect the king, the move is said to "checkmate" ("tsumi" 詰み) the king. Checkmate effectively means that the opponent wins the game as the player would have no remaining legal moves. (See also: tsumeshogi, hisshi.)
The losing player will usually resign when the situation is thought to be hopeless and may declare the resignation at any time during their turn. Although a player may resign just after they are checkmated, playing up to the checkmate point rarely occurs in practice as players normally resign as soon as a loss is deemed inevitable – such as when a "tsume" (forced mate sequence) is realized by the losing player. Similarly, if a player were to lose in an Entering King situation (see section below) by having less than 24 points (or by any of the other Impasse rules used by amateurs), then the player will usually resign before that point.
In traditional tournament play, a formal resignation is required – that is, a checkmate is not a sufficient condition for winning. The resignation is indicated by bowing and/or saying 'I lost' (負けました "makemashita") and/or placing the right hand over the piece stands. Placing the hand over the piece stand is a vestige of an older practice of gently dropping one's pieces in hand over the board in order to indicate resignation. In western practice, a handshake may be used.
In professional and serious (tournament) amateur games, a player who makes an illegal move loses immediately. The loss stands even if play continued and the move was discovered later in game. However, if neither the opponent nor a third party points out the illegal move and the opponent later resigned, the resignation stands as the result.
Illegal moves include:
In friendly amateur games, this rule is sometimes relaxed, and the player may be able to take back the illegal move and replay a new legal move.
In particular, the Two Pawn violation is most common illegal move played by professional players. The Two Pawn violation played by Takahiro Toyokawa (against Kōsuke Tamura) in the 2004 NHK Cup is infamous since it was broadcast on television. On the 109th move, Toyokawa (playing as Black) dropped a pawn to the 29 square while he already had a pawn in play on the board on the 23 square and, thus, lost the game.
If the same game position occurs four times with the same player to move and the same pieces in hand for each player, then the game ends in a repetition draw (千日手 "sennichite," lit. "moves for a thousand days"), as long as the positions are not due to perpetual check. Perpetual check (連続王手の千日手) is an illegal move (see above), which ends the game in a loss in tournament play.
In professional shogi, a repetition draw outcome is not a final result as draws essentially do not count. There can be only one victorious through wins. In the case of a repetition draw, professional shogi players will have to immediately play a subsequent game (or as many games as necessary) with sides reversed in order to obtain a true win outcome. (That is, the player who was White becomes Black, and vice versa.) Also, depending on the tournament, professional players play the subsequent game in the remainder of the allowed game time.
Thus, aiming for a repetition draw may be a possible professional strategy for the White player in order to play the second replay game as Black, which has a slight statistical advantage and/or greater initiative. For instance, Bishop Exchange Fourth File Rook is a passive strategy for White with the goal of a repetition draw (as it requires two tempo losses – swinging the rook and trading the bishops) while it is a very aggressive strategy if played by Black.
Repetition draws are rare in professional shogi occurring in about 1–2% of games and even rarer in amateur games. In professional shogi, repetition draws usually occur in the opening as certain positions are reached that are theoretically disadvantaged for both sides (reciprocal zugzwang). In amateur shogi, repetition draws tend to occur in the middle or endgame as a result of player errors.
The game reaches an Impasse or Deadlock (持将棋 "jishōgi") if both kings have advanced into their respective promotion zones – a situation known as 相入玉 ("ai-nyū gyoku" "double entering kings") – and neither player can hope to mate the other or to gain any further material. An Impasse can result in either a win or a draw. If an Impasse happens, the winner is decided as follows: each player agrees to an Impasse, then each rook or bishop, promoted or not, scores 5 points for the owning player, and all other pieces except kings score 1 point each. A player scoring fewer than 24 points loses. (Note that in the start position, both players have 27 points each.) If neither player has fewer than 24, the game is no contest — a draw. In professional shogi, an Impasse result is always a draw since a player that cannot obtain the 24 points will simply resign. "Jishōgi" is considered an outcome in its own right rather than no contest, but there is no practical difference. As an Impasse needs to be agreed on for the rule to be invoked, a player may refuse to do so and attempt to win the game in future moves. If that happens, there is no official rule about the verdict of the game.
However, in amateur shogi, there are different practices most of which force a win resolution to the Impasse in order to avoid a draw result.
The first draw by Impasse occurred in 1731 in a bishop handicap game between the seventh Lifetime Meijin, , and his brother, Sōkei Ōhashi.
As a practical matter, when an opponent's king has entered a player's own territory especially with supporting defending pieces, the opponent's king is often very difficult to mate given the forward attacking nature of most shogi pieces. This state is referred to as entering king (入玉 "nyū gyoku"). If both players' kings are in entering king states, the game becomes more likely to result in an impasse.
In the adjacent diagram example, although White's king is in a strong Bear-in-the-hole castle, Black's king has entered White's territory making it very difficult to mate. Therefore, this position favors Black.
An example of Entering King occurred in the fourth game of the 60th Ōi title match between Masayuki Toyoshima and Kazuki Kimura held on August 2021, 2019. After being unsuccessful in attacking Kimura and also in defending his own king within his camp, Toyoshima (playing as White) moved his king away from Kimura's attacking pieces by fleeing up the second file, ultimately entering his king into Kimura's camp by move 150. Although Toyoshima had achieved Entering King, he still had only 23 pointsone point shy of the required 24 points for an Impasse drawwhile Kimura (Black) had 31 points. Toyoshima then spent the next 134 moves trying to bring his point total, which fluctuated between 17 and 23, up to the necessary 24. By the 231st move, the game had reached a Double Entering Kings state, and by move 285 Kimura had successfully kept Toyoshima's point total at bay. Here, Toyoshima with 20 points (and Kimura at 34 points) resigned. Incidentally, this game broke the record of longest game in a title match.
For amateur games, there are various guidances with little standardization. Fairbairn reports a practice in the 1980s (considered a rule by the now defunct Shogi Association for The West) where the dispute is resolved by either player moving all friendly pieces into the promotion zone and then the game ends with points tallied.
Another resolution is the 27-Point (27点法) rule used for some amateur tournaments. One version of this is simply the player who has 27 or more points is the winner of the Impasse. Another version is a 27-Point Declaration rule. For instance, the Declaration rule on the online shogi site, 81Dojo, is that the player who wants to declare an Impasse win must (i) declare an intention win via Impasse, (ii) have the king in the enemy camp (the promotion zone for that player), (iii) 10 other pieces must be in the promotion zone, (iv) not be in check, (v) have time remaining, and (vi) must have 28 points if Black or 27 points if White. If all of these conditions are met, then the Impasse declarer will win the game regardless of whether the opponent objects.
Yet another resolution to Impasse is the so-called Try Rule (トライルール "torairūru"). In this case, after both kings have entered their corresponding promotion zones, then the player who first moves the king to the opponent's king's start square (51 for Black, 59 for White) first will be the winner. As an example, the popular (Shogi Wars) app by HEROZ Inc. used the Try Rule up until 2014. (Now the app uses a variant of the 27-Point Declaration Rule – although it differs from the variant used on the 81Dojo site.) The idea of "Try Rule" was taken from rugby football (see Try (rugby).
In professional tournaments, the rules typically require drawn games to be replayed with sides reversed, possibly with reduced time limits. This is rare compared to chess and xiangqi, occurring at a rate of 1–2% even in amateur games.
The 1982 "Meijin" title match between Makoto Nakahara and Hifumi Katoh was unusual in this regard with an impasse draw in the first (Double Fortress) game on April 13–14 (only the fifth draw in the then 40-year history of the tournament). This game (with Katoh as Black) lasted for 223 moves with 114 minutes spent pondering a single move. One of the reasons for the length of this game was that White (Nakahara) was very close to falling below the minimum of 24 points required for a draw. Thus, the end of the endgame was strategically about trying to keep White's points above the 24-point threshold. In this match, "sennichite" occurred in the sixth and eighth games. Thus, this best-of-seven match lasted eight games and took over three months to finish; Black did not lose a single game and the eventual victor was Katoh at 4–3.
Professional games are timed as in international chess, but professional shogi players are almost never expected to keep time in their games. Instead a timekeeper is assigned, typically an apprentice professional. Time limits are much longer than in international chess (9 hours a side plus extra time in the prestigious "Meijin" title match), and in addition "byōyomi" (literally "second counting") is employed. This means that when the ordinary time has run out, the player will from that point on have a certain amount of time to complete every move (a "byōyomi" period), typically upwards of one minute. The final ten seconds are counted down, and if the time expires the player to move loses the game immediately. Amateurs often play with electronic clocks that beep out the final ten seconds of a "byōyomi" period, with a prolonged beep for the last five.
Amateur players are ranked from 15 "kyū" to 1 kyū and then from 1 "dan" to 8 dan. Amateur 8 dan was previously only honorarily given to famous people. While it is now possible to win amateur 8 dan by actual strength (winning amateur Ryu-oh 3 times), this has yet to be achieved.
Professional players operate with their own scale, from 6 kyū to 3 dan for pro-aspiring players and professional 4 dan to 9 dan for formal professional players. Amateur and professional ranks are offset (with amateur 4 dan being equivalent to professional 6 kyū).
Shogi has a handicap system (like go) in which games between players of disparate strengths are adjusted so that the stronger player is put in a more disadvantageous position in order to compensate for the difference in playing levels. In a handicap game, one or more of White's pieces are removed from the setup, and instead White plays first.
There are two common systems used to notate piece movements in shogi game records. One is used in Japanese language texts while a second was created for western players by George Hodges and Glyndon Townhill in the English language. This system was updated by Hosking to be closer to the Japanese standard (two numerals). Other systems are used to notate shogi board positions. Unlike chess, the origin (11 square) is at the top right of a printed position rather than the bottom left.
In western piece movement notation, the format is the piece initial followed by the type of movement and finally the file and rank where the piece moved to. The piece initials are K (King), R (Rook), B (Bishop), G (Gold), S (Silver), N (Knight), L (Lance), and P (Pawn). Simple movement is indicated with -, captures with x, and piece drops with *. The files are indicated with numerals 1–9. The older Hodges standard used letters a–i for ranks, and the newer Hosking standard also uses numerals 1–9 for the ranks. Thus, Rx24 indicates 'rook captures on 24'. Promoted pieces are notated with + prefixed to the piece initial (e.g. +Rx24). Piece promotion is also indicated with + (e.g. S-21+) while unpromotion is indicated with = (e.g. S-21=). Piece ambiguity is resolved by notating which square a piece is moving from (e.g. N65-53+ means 'knight from 65 moves to 53 and promotes,' which distinguishes it from N45-53+).
The Japanese notation system uses Japanese characters for pieces and promotion indication and uses Japanese numerals instead of letters for ranks. Movement type aside from drops is not indicated, and the conventions for resolving ambiguity are quite different from the western system. As examples, the western Rx24 would be ' in Japanese notation, +Rx24 would be ', S-21+ would be ', S-21= would be ', and N65-53+ would be ' showing that the leftmost knight jumped (implicitly from the 65 square), which distinguishes it from ' in which the rightmost knight jumped.
Although not strictly part of the notational calculus for games, game results are indicated in Japanese newspapers, websites, etc. with wins indicated by a white circle and losses indicated by a black circle.
Shogi is similar to chess but has a much larger game tree complexity because of the use of drops, greater number of pieces, and larger board size. In comparison, shogi games average about 140 (half-)moves per game (or 70 chess move-pairs) whereas chess games average about 80 moves per game (or 40 chess move-pairs) and minishogi averages about 40 moves per game (or 20 chess move-pairs).
Like chess, however, the game can be divided into the opening, middle game and endgame, each requiring a different strategy. The opening consists of arranging one's defenses usually in a castle and positioning for attack, the mid game consists of attempting to break through the opposing defenses while maintaining one's own, and the endgame starts when one side's defenses have been compromised.
In the adjacent diagram, Black has chosen a Ranging Rook position (specifically Fourth File Rook) where the rook has been moved leftward away from its starting position. Additionally, Black is utilizing a Silver Crown castle, which is a type of fortification structure constructed with one silver and two gold pieces and the king moved inside of the fortification – the "silver crown" name comes from the silver being positioned directly above the king's head on the 27 square as if it were a crown. In the diagram, White has chosen a Static Rook position, in which the rook remains on its starting square. This Static Rook position is specifically a type of Counter-Ranging Rook position known as Bear-in-the-hole Static Rook that uses an Bear-in-the-hole castle. The Bear-in-the-hole fortification has the king moved all the way into very edge corner of the board on the 11 square as if it were a badger in a hole with a silver moved to the 22 square in order to close up the hole and additional reinforcing golds on 31 and 32 squares. This board position required 33 moves (or 12 move pairs as counted in western chess) to construct.
Shogi players are expected to follow etiquette in addition to rules explicitly described. Commonly accepted etiquette include following:
Shogi piece sets may contain two types of king pieces, (king) and (jewel). In this case, the higher classed player, in either social or genuine shogi player rank, may take the king piece. For example, in titleholder system games, the current titleholder takes the king piece as the higher.
The higher-ranked (or older) player also sits facing the door of the room and is the person who takes the pieces out of the piece box.
Shogi does not have a touch-move rule as in western chess tournament play or chu shogi. However, in professional games, a piece is considered to be moved when the piece has been let go of. In both amateur and professional play, any piece may be touched in order to adjust its centralization within its square (to look tidy).
Taking back moves (待った "matta") in professional games is prohibited. However, in friendly amateur games in Japan, it is often permitted.
Professional players are required to follow several ritualistic etiquette prescriptions such as kneeling exactly 15 centimeters from the shogi board, sitting in the formal seiza position, etc.
From "The Chess Variant Pages":
It is not clear when chess was brought to Japan. The earliest generally accepted mention of shogi is (1058–1064) by Fujiwara Akihira. The oldest archaeological evidence is a group of 16 shogi pieces excavated from the grounds of Kōfuku-ji in Nara Prefecture. As it was physically associated with a wooden tablet written on in the sixth year of Tenki (1058), the pieces are thought to date from that period. These simple pieces were cut from a writing plaque in the same five-sided shape as modern pieces, with the names of the pieces written on them.
The dictionary of common folk culture, (c. 1210–1221), a collection based on the two works and , describes two forms of shogi, large "(dai)" shogi and small "(shō)" shogi. These are now called Heian shogi (or Heian small shogi) and Heian dai shogi. Heian small shogi is the version on which modern shogi is based, but the "Nichūreki" states that one wins if one's opponent is reduced to a single king, indicating that drops had not yet been introduced. According to Kōji Shimizu, chief researcher at the Archaeological Institute of Kashihara, Nara Prefecture, the names of the Heian shogi pieces keep those of chaturanga (general, elephant, horse, chariot and soldier), and add to them the five treasures of Buddhism (jade, gold, silver, katsura tree, and incense).
Around the 13th century the game of dai shogi developed, created by increasing the number of pieces in Heian shogi, as was sho shogi, which added the rook, bishop, and drunken elephant from dai shogi to Heian shogi. The drunken elephant steps one square in any direction except directly backward, and promotes to the prince, which acts as a second king and must also be captured along with the original king for the other player to win. Around the 15th century, the rules of dai shogi were simplified, creating the game of chu shogi. Chu shogi, like its parent dai shogi, contains many distinct pieces, such as the queen (identical with Western chess) and the lion (which moves like a king, but twice per turn, potentially being able to capture twice, among other idiosyncrasies). The popularity of dai shogi soon waned in favour of chu shogi, until it stopped being played commonly. Chu shogi rivalled sho shogi in popularity until the introduction of drops in the latter, upon which standard shogi became ascendant, although chu shogi was still commonly played until about World War II, especially in Kyoto. Dai shogi was much less often played, but must have been remembered somewhat, as it is depicted in a woodcut by Kobayashi Kiyochika from around 1904 or 1905.
It is thought that the rules of standard shogi were fixed in the 16th century, when the drunken elephant was removed from the set of pieces present in sho shogi. There is no clear record of when drops were introduced, however.
In the Edo period, shogi variants were greatly expanded: tenjiku shogi, dai dai shogi, maka dai dai shogi, tai shogi, and taikyoku shogi were all invented. It is thought that these were played to only a very limited extent, however. Both standard shogi and Go were promoted by the Tokugawa shogunate. In 1612, the shogunate passed a law giving endowments to top shogi players (). During the reign of the eighth shōgun, Tokugawa Yoshimune, castle shogi tournaments were held once a year on the 17th day of Kannazuki, corresponding to November 17, which is Shogi Day on the modern calendar.
The title of "meijin" became hereditary in the Ōhashi and Itō families until the fall of the shogunate, when it came to be passed by recommendation. Today the title is used for the winner of the Meijin-sen competition, the first modern title match. From around 1899, newspapers began to publish records of shogi matches, and high-ranking players formed alliances with the aim of having their games published. In 1909, the was formed, and in 1924, the was formed. This was an early incarnation of the modern , or JSA, and 1924 is considered by the JSA to be the date it was founded.
In 1935, "meijin" Kinjirō Sekine stepped down, and the rank of meijin came to be awarded to the winner of a . became the first Meijin under this system in 1937. This was the start of the (see titleholder system). After the war other tournaments were promoted to title matches, culminating with the in 1988 for the modern line-up of seven. About 200 professional shogi players compete. Each year, the title holder defends the title against a challenger chosen from knockout or round matches.
After the Second World War, SCAP (occupational government mainly led by US) tried to eliminate all "feudal" factors from Japanese society and shogi was included in the possible list of items to be banned along with Bushido (philosophy of samurai) and other things. The reason for banning shogi for SCAP was its exceptional character as a board game seen in the usage of captured pieces. SCAP insisted that this could lead to the idea of prisoner abuse. But Kozo Masuda, then one of the top professional shogi players, when summoned to the SCAP headquarters for an investigation, criticized such understanding of shogi and insisted that it is not shogi but western chess that potentially contains the idea of prisoner abuse because it just kills the pieces of the opponent while shogi is rather democratic for giving prisoners the chance to get back into the game. Masuda also said that chess contradicts the ideal of gender equality in western society because the king shields itself behind the queen and runs away. Masuda’s assertion is said to have eventually led to the exemption of shogi from the list of items to be banned.
There are two organizations for shogi professional players in Japan: the JSA, and the , or LPSA. The JSA is the primary organization for men and women's professional shogi while the LPSA is a group of women professionals who broke away from the JSA in 2007 to establish their own independent organization. Both organize tournaments for their members and have reached an agreement to cooperate with each other to promote shogi through events and other activities. Top professional players are fairly well-paid from tournament earnings. In 2016, the highest tournament earners were Yoshiharu Habu and Akira Watanabe who earned ¥91,500,000 and ¥73,900,000. (The tenth highest earner, Kouichi Fukaura, won ¥18,490,000.)
The JSA recognizes two categories of shogi professionals: , and . Sometimes "kishi" are addressed as , a term from Go used to distinguish "kishi" from other classes of players. JSA professional ranks and female professional ranks are not equivalent and each has their own promotion criteria and ranking system. In 2006, the JSA officially granted women "professional status". This is not equivalent, however, to the more traditional way of "gaining professional status", i.e., being promoted from the : leagues of strong amateur players aspiring to become a professional. Rather, it is a separate system especially designed for female professionals. Qualified amateurs, regardless of gender, may apply for the "Shoreikai System" and all those who successfully "graduate" are granted "kishi" status; however, no woman has yet to accomplish this feat (the highest women have reached is "Shoreikai 3 "dan" league" by Kana Satomi and Tomoka Nishiyama), so "kishi" is de facto only used to refer to male shogi professionals.
The JSA is the only body which can organize tournaments for professionals, e.g., the eight major tournaments in the titleholder system and other professional tournaments. In 1996, Yoshiharu Habu became the only "kishi" to hold seven major titles at the same time. For female professionals, both the JSA and LPSA organize tournaments, either jointly or separately. Tournaments for amateurs may be organized by the JSA and LPSA as well as local clubs, newspapers, private corporations, educational institutions or municipal governments for cities or prefectures under the guidance of the JSA or LPSA.
Since the 1990s, shogi has grown in popularity outside Japan, particularly in the People's Republic of China, and especially in Shanghai. The January 2006 edition of stated that there were 120,000 shogi players in Shanghai. The spread of the game to countries where Chinese characters are not in common use, however, has been slower.
, in Europe there are currently over 1,200 active players.
Shogi has the highest game complexity of all popular chess variants. Computers have steadily improved in playing shogi since the 1970s. In 2007, champion Yoshiharu Habu estimated the strength of the 2006 world computer shogi champion Bonanza at the level of two-dan shoreikai.
The JSA prohibits its professionals from playing computers in public without prior permission, with the reason of promoting shogi and monetizing the computer–human events.
On October 12, 2010, after some 35 years of development, a computer finally beat a professional player, when the top ranked female champion Ichiyo Shimizu was beaten by the Akara2010 system in a game lasting just over 6 hours.
On July 24, 2011, computer shogi programs Bonanza and Akara crushed the amateur team of Kosaku and Shinoda in two games. The allotted time for the amateurs was one hour and then three minutes per move. The allotted time for the computer was 25 minutes and then 10 seconds per move.
On April 20, 2013, GPS Shogi defeated 8-dan professional shogi player Hiroyuki Miura in a 102-move game which lasted over 8 hours.
On December 13, 2015, the highest rated player on Shogi Club 24 was computer program Ponanza, rated 3455.
On April 10, 2016, Ponanza defeated Takayuki Yamasaki, 8-dan in 85 moves. Takayuki used 7 hours 9 minutes.
In October 2017, DeepMind claimed that its program AlphaZero, after a full nine hours of training, defeated elmo in a 100-game match, winning 90, losing 8, and drawing two.
From a computational complexity point of view, generalized shogi is EXPTIME-complete.
Hundreds of video games were released exclusively in Japan for several consoles.
According to professional player Yoshiharu Habu, in Japan shogi is viewed as not merely a game as entertainment or a mind sport but is instead an art that is a part of traditional Japanese culture along with haiku, tanka, noh, ikebana, and the Japanese tea ceremony. Its elevated status was established by the "iemoto" system supported by the historical shogunate.
The backwards "uma" (shogi horse symbol) is often featured on merchandise (such as on large decorative shogi piece sculptures, keychains, and other keepsakes) available for sale in Tendō. It also serves as a symbol of good luck. (Cf. Rabbit's foot.) There are multiple theories on its origin. One is that "uma" (うま ) spelled in the Japanese syllabary backwards is まう "mau" (舞う), which means "(to) dance" and dancing horses are a good luck omen.
In the manga series "Naruto", shogi plays an essential part in Shikamaru Nara's character development. He often plays it with his sensei, Asuma Sarutobi, apparently always beating him. When Asuma is fatally injured in battle, he reminds Shikamaru that the shogi king must always be protected, and draws a parallel between the king in shogi and his yet-unborn daughter, Mirai, whom he wanted Shikamaru to guide.
Shogi has been a central plot point in the manga and anime "Shion no Ō", the manga and anime "March Comes in Like a Lion", and the manga and television drama "81diver".
In the manga and anime "Durarara!!", the information broker Izaya Orihara plays a twisted version of chess, go and shogi, where he mixes all three games into one as a representation of the battles in Ikebukuro.
In the video game "Persona 5", the Star confidant is a high school shogi player looking to break into the ranks of the professionals. The player character will gain knowledge stat when spending time with the confidant, supposedly from learning to play shogi. The abilities learned from ranking up the confidant comes from Japanese shogi terms.
In the light novel, manga, and anime "The Ryuo's Work is Never Done!", protagonist Yaichi Kuzuryū is a prodigy shogi player who won the title of Ryūō at the age of 16. He is approached by Ai Hinatsuru, a 9-year-old girl who begs him to make her his disciple. Astonished by Ai's potential, Yaichi agrees to become her master, and the two then brave themselves together in the world of shogi with their friends and rivals.
In the anime "Asobi Asobase" Hanako's butler Maeda tells her shogi is a sport where you fire a beam from your butt, because he does not know the rules, so he cannot teach her how to actually play shogi. He follows this by demonstrating the sport and destroying the roof with a laser beam fired from behind.
Rules
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Solar energy
Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the Sun that is harnessed using a range of ever-evolving technologies such as solar heating, photovoltaics, solar thermal energy, solar architecture, molten salt power plants and artificial photosynthesis.
It is an essential source of renewable energy, and its technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or active solar depending on how they capture and distribute solar energy or convert it into solar power. Active solar techniques include the use of photovoltaic systems, concentrated solar power, and solar water heating to harness the energy. Passive solar techniques include orienting a building to the Sun, selecting materials with favorable thermal mass or light-dispersing properties, and designing spaces that naturally circulate air.
The large magnitude of solar energy available makes it a highly appealing source of electricity. The United Nations Development Programme in its 2000 World Energy Assessment found that the annual potential of solar energy was 1,575–49,837 exajoules (EJ). This is several times larger than the total world energy consumption, which was 559.8 EJ in 2012.
In 2011, the International Energy Agency said that "the development of affordable, inexhaustible and clean solar energy technologies will have huge longer-term benefits. It will increase countries' energy security through reliance on an indigenous, inexhaustible, and mostly import-independent resource, enhance sustainability, reduce pollution, lower the costs of mitigating global warming, and keep fossil fuel prices lower than otherwise. These advantages are global. Hence the additional costs of the incentives for early deployment should be considered learning investments; they must be wisely spent and need to be widely shared".
The Earth receives 174 petawatts (PW) of incoming solar radiation (insolation) at the upper atmosphere. Approximately 30% is reflected back to space while the rest is absorbed by clouds, oceans and land masses. The spectrum of solar light at the Earth's surface is mostly spread across the visible and near-infrared ranges with a small part in the near-ultraviolet. Most of the world's population live in areas with insolation levels of 150–300 watts/m², or 3.5–7.0 kWh/m² per day.
Solar radiation is absorbed by the Earth's land surface, oceans – which cover about 71% of the globe – and atmosphere. Warm air containing evaporated water from the oceans rises, causing atmospheric circulation or convection. When the air reaches a high altitude, where the temperature is low, water vapor condenses into clouds, which rain onto the Earth's surface, completing the water cycle. The latent heat of water condensation amplifies convection, producing atmospheric phenomena such as wind, cyclones and anti-cyclones. Sunlight absorbed by the oceans and land masses keeps the surface at an average temperature of 14 °C. By photosynthesis, green plants convert solar energy into chemically stored energy, which produces food, wood and the biomass from which fossil fuels are derived.
The total solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year. In 2002, this was more energy in one hour than the world used in one year. Photosynthesis captures approximately 3,000 EJ per year in biomass. The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the Earth's non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium combined,
The potential solar energy that could be used by humans differs from the amount of solar energy present near the surface of the planet because factors such as geography, time variation, cloud cover, and the land available to humans limit the amount of solar energy that we can acquire.
Geography affects solar energy potential because areas that are closer to the equator have a higher amount of solar radiation. However, the use of photovoltaics that can follow the position of the Sun can significantly increase the solar energy potential in areas that are farther from the equator. Time variation effects the potential of solar energy because during the nighttime, there is little solar radiation on the surface of the Earth for solar panels to absorb. This limits the amount of energy that solar panels can absorb in one day. Cloud cover can affect the potential of solar panels because clouds block incoming light from the Sun and reduce the light available for solar cells.
Besides, land availability has a large effect on the available solar energy because solar panels can only be set up on land that is otherwise unused and suitable for solar panels. Roofs are a suitable place for solar cells, as many people have discovered that they can collect energy directly from their homes this way. Other areas that are suitable for solar cells are lands that are not being used for businesses where solar plants can be established.
Solar technologies are characterized as either passive or active depending on the way they capture, convert and distribute sunlight and enable solar energy to be harnessed at different levels around the world, mostly depending on the distance from the equator. Although solar energy refers primarily to the use of solar radiation for practical ends, all renewable energies, other than Geothermal power and Tidal power, derive their energy either directly or indirectly from the Sun.
Active solar techniques use photovoltaics, concentrated solar power, solar thermal collectors, pumps, and fans to convert sunlight into useful outputs. Passive solar techniques include selecting materials with favorable thermal properties, designing spaces that naturally circulate air, and referencing the position of a building to the Sun. Active solar technologies increase the supply of energy and are considered supply side technologies, while passive solar technologies reduce the need for alternate resources and are generally considered demand-side technologies.
In 2000, the United Nations Development Programme, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and World Energy Council published an estimate of the potential solar energy that could be used by humans each year that took into account factors such as insolation, cloud cover, and the land that is usable by humans. The estimate found that solar energy has a global potential of per year "(see table below)".
Solar thermal technologies can be used for water heating, space heating, space cooling and process heat generation.
In 1878, at the Universal Exposition in Paris, Augustin Mouchot successfully demonstrated a solar steam engine, but couldn't continue development because of cheap coal and other factors.
In 1897, Frank Shuman, a US inventor, engineer and solar energy pioneer built a small demonstration solar engine that worked by reflecting solar energy onto square boxes filled with ether, which has a lower boiling point than water and were fitted internally with black pipes which in turn powered a steam engine. In 1908 Shuman formed the Sun Power Company with the intent of building larger solar power plants. He, along with his technical advisor A.S.E. Ackermann and British physicist Sir Charles Vernon Boys, developed an improved system using mirrors to reflect solar energy upon collector boxes, increasing heating capacity to the extent that water could now be used instead of ether. Shuman then constructed a full-scale steam engine powered by low-pressure water, enabling him to patent the entire solar engine system by 1912.
Shuman built the world's first solar thermal power station in Maadi, Egypt, between 1912 and 1913. His plant used parabolic troughs to power a engine that pumped more than of water per minute from the Nile River to adjacent cotton fields. Although the outbreak of World War I and the discovery of cheap oil in the 1930s discouraged the advancement of solar energy, Shuman's vision, and basic design were resurrected in the 1970s with a new wave of interest in solar thermal energy. In 1916 Shuman was quoted in the media advocating solar energy's utilization, saying:
Solar hot water systems use sunlight to heat water. In middle geographical latitudes (between 40 degrees north and 40 degrees south), 60 to 70% of the domestic hot water use, with water temperatures up to , can be provided by solar heating systems. The most common types of solar water heaters are evacuated tube collectors (44%) and glazed flat plate collectors (34%) generally used for domestic hot water; and unglazed plastic collectors (21%) used mainly to heat swimming pools.
As of 2007, the total installed capacity of solar hot water systems was approximately 154 thermal gigawatt (GWth). China is the world leader in their deployment with 70 GWth installed as of 2006 and a long-term goal of 210 GWth by 2020. Israel and Cyprus are the per capita leaders in the use of solar hot water systems with over 90% of homes using them. In the United States, Canada, and Australia, heating swimming pools is the dominant application of solar hot water with an installed capacity of 18 GWth as of 2005.
In the United States, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems account for 30% (4.65 EJ/yr) of the energy used in commercial buildings and nearly 50% (10.1 EJ/yr) of the energy used in residential buildings. Solar heating, cooling and ventilation technologies can be used to offset a portion of this energy.
Thermal mass is any material that can be used to store heat—heat from the Sun in the case of solar energy. Common thermal mass materials include stone, cement, and water. Historically they have been used in arid climates or warm temperate regions to keep buildings cool by absorbing solar energy during the day and radiating stored heat to the cooler atmosphere at night. However, they can be used in cold temperate areas to maintain warmth as well. The size and placement of thermal mass depend on several factors such as climate, daylighting, and shading conditions. When duly incorporated, thermal mass maintains space temperatures in a comfortable range and reduces the need for auxiliary heating and cooling equipment.
A solar chimney (or thermal chimney, in this context) is a passive solar ventilation system composed of a vertical shaft connecting the interior and exterior of a building. As the chimney warms, the air inside is heated, causing an updraft that pulls air through the building. Performance can be improved by using glazing and thermal mass materials in a way that mimics greenhouses.
Deciduous trees and plants have been promoted as a means of controlling solar heating and cooling. When planted on the southern side of a building in the northern hemisphere or the northern side in the southern hemisphere, their leaves provide shade during the summer, while the bare limbs allow light to pass during the winter. Since bare, leafless trees shade 1/3 to 1/2 of incident solar radiation, there is a balance between the benefits of summer shading and the corresponding loss of winter heating. In climates with significant heating loads, deciduous trees should not be planted on the Equator-facing side of a building because they will interfere with winter solar availability. They can, however, be used on the east and west sides to provide a degree of summer shading without appreciably affecting winter solar gain.
Solar cookers use sunlight for cooking, drying, and pasteurization. They can be grouped into three broad categories: box cookers, panel cookers, and reflector cookers. The simplest solar cooker is the box cooker first built by Horace de Saussure in 1767. A basic box cooker consists of an insulated container with a transparent lid. It can be used effectively with partially overcast skies and will typically reach temperatures of . Panel cookers use a reflective panel to direct sunlight onto an insulated container and reach temperatures comparable to box cookers. Reflector cookers use various concentrating geometries (dish, trough, Fresnel mirrors) to focus light on a cooking container. These cookers reach temperatures of and above but require direct light to function properly and must be repositioned to track the Sun.
Solar concentrating technologies such as parabolic dish, trough and Scheffler reflectors can provide process heat for commercial and industrial applications. The first commercial system was the Solar Total Energy Project (STEP) in Shenandoah, Georgia, US where a field of 114 parabolic dishes provided 50% of the process heating, air conditioning and electrical requirements for a clothing factory. This grid-connected cogeneration system provided 400 kW of electricity plus thermal energy in the form of 401 kW steam and 468 kW chilled water, and had a one-hour peak load thermal storage. Evaporation ponds are shallow pools that concentrate dissolved solids through evaporation. The use of evaporation ponds to obtain salt from seawater is one of the oldest applications of solar energy. Modern uses include concentrating brine solutions used in leach mining and removing dissolved solids from waste streams. Clothes lines, clotheshorses, and clothes racks dry clothes through evaporation by wind and sunlight without consuming electricity or gas. In some states of the United States legislation protects the "right to dry" clothes. Unglazed transpired collectors (UTC) are perforated sun-facing walls used for preheating ventilation air. UTCs can raise the incoming air temperature up to and deliver outlet temperatures of . The short payback period of transpired collectors (3 to 12 years) makes them a more cost-effective alternative than glazed collection systems. As of 2003, over 80 systems with a combined collector area of had been installed worldwide, including an collector in Costa Rica used for drying coffee beans and a collector in Coimbatore, India, used for drying marigolds.
Solar distillation can be used to make saline or brackish water potable. The first recorded instance of this was by 16th-century Arab alchemists. A large-scale solar distillation project was first constructed in 1872 in the Chilean mining town of Las Salinas. The plant, which had solar collection area of , could produce up to per day and operate for 40 years. Individual still designs include single-slope, double-slope (or greenhouse type), vertical, conical, inverted absorber, multi-wick, and multiple effect. These stills can operate in passive, active, or hybrid modes. Double-slope stills are the most economical for decentralized domestic purposes, while active multiple effect units are more suitable for large-scale applications.
Solar water disinfection (SODIS) involves exposing water-filled plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles to sunlight for several hours. Exposure times vary depending on weather and climate from a minimum of six hours to two days during fully overcast conditions. It is recommended by the World Health Organization as a viable method for household water treatment and safe storage. Over two million people in developing countries use this method for their daily drinking water.
Solar energy may be used in a water stabilization pond to treat waste water without chemicals or electricity. A further environmental advantage is that algae grow in such ponds and consume carbon dioxide in photosynthesis, although algae may produce toxic chemicals that make the water unusable.
Molten salt can be employed as a thermal energy storage method to retain thermal energy collected by a solar tower or solar trough of a concentrated solar power plant so that it can be used to generate electricity in bad weather or at night. It was demonstrated in the Solar Two project from 1995–1999. The system is predicted to have an annual efficiency of 99%, a reference to the energy retained by storing heat before turning it into electricity, versus converting heat directly into electricity. The molten salt mixtures vary. The most extended mixture contains sodium nitrate, potassium nitrate and calcium nitrate. It is non-flammable and non-toxic, and has already been used in the chemical and metals industries as a heat-transport fluid. Hence, experience with such systems exists in non-solar applications.
The salt melts at . It is kept liquid at in an insulated "cold" storage tank. The liquid salt is pumped through panels in a solar collector where the focused irradiance heats it to . It is then sent to a hot storage tank. This is so well insulated that the thermal energy can be usefully stored for up to a week.
When electricity is needed, the hot salt is pumped to a conventional steam-generator to produce superheated steam for a turbine/generator as used in any conventional coal, oil, or nuclear power plant. A 100-megawatt turbine would need a tank about tall and in diameter to drive it for four hours by this design.
Several parabolic trough power plants in Spain and solar power tower developer SolarReserve use this thermal energy storage concept. The Solana Generating Station in the U.S. has six hours of storage by molten salt. The María Elena plant is a 400 MW thermo-solar complex in the northern Chilean region of Antofagasta employing molten salt technology.
Solar power is the conversion of sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV), or indirectly using concentrated solar power (CSP). CSP systems use lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam. PV converts light into electric current using the photoelectric effect.
Solar power is anticipated to become the world's largest source of electricity by 2050, with solar photovoltaics and concentrated solar power contributing 16 and 11 percent to the global overall consumption, respectively. In 2016, after another year of rapid growth, solar generated 1.3% of global power.
Commercial concentrated solar power plants were first developed in the 1980s. The 392 MW Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, in the Mojave Desert of California, is the largest solar power plant in the world. Other large concentrated solar power plants include the 150 MW Solnova Solar Power Station and the 100 MW Andasol solar power station, both in Spain. The 250 MW Agua Caliente Solar Project, in the United States, and the 221 MW Charanka Solar Park in India, are the world's largest photovoltaic plants. Solar projects exceeding 1 GW are being developed, but most of the deployed photovoltaics are in small rooftop arrays of less than 5 kW, which are connected to the grid using net metering or a feed-in tariff.
In the last two decades, photovoltaics (PV), also known as solar PV, has evolved from a pure niche market of small scale applications towards becoming a mainstream electricity source. A solar cell is a device that converts light directly into electricity using the photoelectric effect. The first solar cell was constructed by Charles Fritts in the 1880s. In 1931 a German engineer, Dr Bruno Lange, developed a photo cell using silver selenide in place of copper oxide. Although the prototype selenium cells converted less than 1% of incident light into electricity, both Ernst Werner von Siemens and James Clerk Maxwell recognized the importance of this discovery. Following the work of Russell Ohl in the 1940s, researchers Gerald Pearson, Calvin Fuller and Daryl Chapin created the crystalline silicon solar cell in 1954. These early solar cells cost US$286/watt and reached efficiencies of 4.5–6%. By 2012 available efficiencies exceeded 20%, and the maximum efficiency of research photovoltaics was in excess of 40%.
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) systems use lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam. The concentrated heat is then used as a heat source for a conventional power plant. A wide range of concentrating technologies exists; the most developed are the parabolic trough, the concentrating linear fresnel reflector, the Stirling dish, and the solar power tower. Various techniques are used to track the Sun and focus light. In all of these systems a working fluid is heated by the concentrated sunlight, and is then used for power generation or energy storage.
Sunlight has influenced building design since the beginning of architectural history. Advanced solar architecture and urban planning methods were first employed by the Greeks and Chinese, who oriented their buildings toward the south to provide light and warmth.
The common features of passive solar architecture are orientation relative to the Sun, compact proportion (a low surface area to volume ratio), selective shading (overhangs) and thermal mass. When these features are tailored to the local climate and environment, they can produce well-lit spaces that stay in a comfortable temperature range. Socrates' Megaron House is a classic example of passive solar design. The most recent approaches to solar design use computer modeling tying together solar lighting, heating and ventilation systems in an integrated solar design package. Active solar equipment such as pumps, fans, and switchable windows can complement passive design and improve system performance.
Urban heat islands (UHI) are metropolitan areas with higher temperatures than that of the surrounding environment. The higher temperatures result from increased absorption of solar energy by urban materials such as asphalt and concrete, which have lower albedos and higher heat capacities than those in the natural environment. A straightforward method of counteracting the UHI effect is to paint buildings and roads white and to plant trees in the area. Using these methods, a hypothetical "cool communities" program in Los Angeles has projected that urban temperatures could be reduced by approximately 3 °C at an estimated cost of US$1 billion, giving estimated total annual benefits of US$530 million from reduced air-conditioning costs and healthcare savings.
Agriculture and horticulture seek to optimize the capture of solar energy to optimize the productivity of plants. Techniques such as timed planting cycles, tailored row orientation, staggered heights between rows and the mixing of plant varieties can improve crop yields. While sunlight is generally considered a plentiful resource, the exceptions highlight the importance of solar energy to agriculture. During the short growing seasons of the Little Ice Age, French and English farmers employed fruit walls to maximize the collection of solar energy. These walls acted as thermal masses and accelerated ripening by keeping plants warm. Early fruit walls were built perpendicular to the ground and facing south, but over time, sloping walls were developed to make better use of sunlight. In 1699, Nicolas Fatio de Duillier even suggested using a tracking mechanism which could pivot to follow the Sun. Applications of solar energy in agriculture aside from growing crops include pumping water, drying crops, brooding chicks and drying chicken manure. More recently the technology has been embraced by vintners, who use the energy generated by solar panels to power grape presses.
Greenhouses convert solar light to heat, enabling year-round production and the growth (in enclosed environments) of specialty crops and other plants not naturally suited to the local climate. Primitive greenhouses were first used during Roman times to produce cucumbers year-round for the Roman emperor Tiberius. The first modern greenhouses were built in Europe in the 16th century to keep exotic plants brought back from explorations abroad. Greenhouses remain an important part of horticulture today. Plastic transparent materials have also been used to similar effect in polytunnels and row covers.
Development of a solar-powered car has been an engineering goal since the 1980s. The World Solar Challenge is a biannual solar-powered car race, where teams from universities and enterprises compete over across central Australia from Darwin to Adelaide. In 1987, when it was founded, the winner's average speed was and by 2007 the winner's average speed had improved to .
The North American Solar Challenge and the planned South African Solar Challenge are comparable competitions that reflect an international interest in the engineering and development of solar powered vehicles.
Some vehicles use solar panels for auxiliary power, such as for air conditioning, to keep the interior cool, thus reducing fuel consumption.
In 1975, the first practical solar boat was constructed in England. By 1995, passenger boats incorporating PV panels began appearing and are now used extensively. In 1996, Kenichi Horie made the first solar-powered crossing of the Pacific Ocean, and the "Sun21" catamaran made the first solar-powered crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in the winter of 2006–2007. There were plans to circumnavigate the globe in 2010.
In 1974, the unmanned AstroFlight Sunrise airplane made the first solar flight. On 29 April 1979, the "Solar Riser" made the first flight in a solar-powered, fully controlled, man-carrying flying machine, reaching an altitude of . In 1980, the "Gossamer Penguin" made the first piloted flights powered solely by photovoltaics. This was quickly followed by the "Solar Challenger" which crossed the English Channel in July 1981. In 1990 Eric Scott Raymond in 21 hops flew from California to North Carolina using solar power. Developments then turned back to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with the "Pathfinder" (1997) and subsequent designs, culminating in the "Helios" which set the altitude record for a non-rocket-propelled aircraft at in 2001. The "Zephyr", developed by BAE Systems, is the latest in a line of record-breaking solar aircraft, making a 54-hour flight in 2007, and month-long flights were envisioned by 2010. As of 2016, Solar Impulse, an electric aircraft, is currently circumnavigating the globe. It is a single-seat plane powered by solar cells and capable of taking off under its own power. The design allows the aircraft to remain airborne for several days.
A solar balloon is a black balloon that is filled with ordinary air. As sunlight shines on the balloon, the air inside is heated and expands, causing an upward buoyancy force, much like an artificially heated hot air balloon. Some solar balloons are large enough for human flight, but usage is generally limited to the toy market as the surface-area to payload-weight ratio is relatively high.
Solar chemical processes use solar energy to drive chemical reactions. These processes offset energy that would otherwise come from a fossil fuel source and can also convert solar energy into storable and transportable fuels. Solar induced chemical reactions can be divided into thermochemical or photochemical. A variety of fuels can be produced by artificial photosynthesis. The multielectron catalytic chemistry involved in making carbon-based fuels (such as methanol) from reduction of carbon dioxide is challenging; a feasible alternative is hydrogen production from protons, though use of water as the source of electrons (as plants do) requires mastering the multielectron oxidation of two water molecules to molecular oxygen. Some have envisaged working solar fuel plants in coastal metropolitan areas by 2050 the splitting of seawater providing hydrogen to be run through adjacent fuel-cell electric power plants and the pure water by-product going directly into the municipal water system. Another vision involves all human structures covering the Earth's surface (i.e., roads, vehicles and buildings) doing photosynthesis more efficiently than plants.
Hydrogen production technologies have been a significant area of solar chemical research since the 1970s. Aside from electrolysis driven by photovoltaic or photochemical cells, several thermochemical processes have also been explored. One such route uses concentrators to split water into oxygen and hydrogen at high temperatures (). Another approach uses the heat from solar concentrators to drive the steam reformation of natural gas thereby increasing the overall hydrogen yield compared to conventional reforming methods. Thermochemical cycles characterized by the decomposition and regeneration of reactants present another avenue for hydrogen production. The Solzinc process under development at the Weizmann Institute of Science uses a 1 MW solar furnace to decompose zinc oxide (ZnO) at temperatures above . This initial reaction produces pure zinc, which can subsequently be reacted with water to produce hydrogen.
Thermal mass systems can store solar energy in the form of heat at domestically useful temperatures for daily or interseasonal durations. Thermal storage systems generally use readily available materials with high specific heat capacities such as water, earth and stone. Well-designed systems can lower peak demand, shift time-of-use to off-peak hours and reduce overall heating and cooling requirements.
Phase change materials such as paraffin wax and Glauber's salt are another thermal storage medium. These materials are inexpensive, readily available, and can deliver domestically useful temperatures (approximately ). The "Dover House" (in Dover, Massachusetts) was the first to use a Glauber's salt heating system, in 1948. Solar energy can also be stored at high temperatures using molten salts. Salts are an effective storage medium because they are low-cost, have a high specific heat capacity, and can deliver heat at temperatures compatible with conventional power systems. The Solar Two project used this method of energy storage, allowing it to store in its 68 m³ storage tank with an annual storage efficiency of about 99%.
Off-grid PV systems have traditionally used rechargeable batteries to store excess electricity. With grid-tied systems, excess electricity can be sent to the transmission grid, while standard grid electricity can be used to meet shortfalls. Net metering programs give household systems credit for any electricity they deliver to the grid. This is handled by 'rolling back' the meter whenever the home produces more electricity than it consumes. If the net electricity use is below zero, the utility then rolls over the kilowatt-hour credit to the next month. Other approaches involve the use of two meters, to measure electricity consumed vs. electricity produced. This is less common due to the increased installation cost of the second meter. Most standard meters accurately measure in both directions, making a second meter unnecessary.
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity stores energy in the form of water pumped when energy is available from a lower elevation reservoir to a higher elevation one. The energy is recovered when demand is high by releasing the water, with the pump becoming a hydroelectric power generator.
Beginning with the surge in coal use, which accompanied the Industrial Revolution, energy consumption has steadily transitioned from wood and biomass to fossil fuels. The early development of solar technologies starting in the 1860s was driven by an expectation that coal would soon become scarce. However, development of solar technologies stagnated in the early 20th century in the face of the increasing availability, economy, and utility of coal and petroleum.
The 1973 oil embargo and 1979 energy crisis caused a reorganization of energy policies around the world. It brought renewed attention to developing solar technologies. Deployment strategies focused on incentive programs such as the Federal Photovoltaic Utilization Program in the US and the Sunshine Program in Japan. Other efforts included the formation of research facilities in the US (SERI, now NREL), Japan (NEDO), and Germany (Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE).
Commercial solar water heaters began appearing in the United States in the 1890s. These systems saw increasing use until the 1920s but were gradually replaced by cheaper and more reliable heating fuels. As with photovoltaics, solar water heating attracted renewed attention as a result of the oil crises in the 1970s, but interest subsided in the 1980s due to falling petroleum prices. Development in the solar water heating sector progressed steadily throughout the 1990s, and annual growth rates have averaged 20% since 1999. Although generally underestimated, solar water heating and cooling is by far the most widely deployed solar technology with an estimated capacity of 154 GW as of 2007.
The International Energy Agency has said that solar energy can make considerable contributions to solving some of the most urgent problems the world now faces:
The development of affordable, inexhaustible, and clean solar energy technologies will have huge longer-term benefits. It will increase countries' energy security through reliance on an indigenous, inexhaustible, and mostly import-independent resource, enhance sustainability, reduce pollution, lower the costs of mitigating climate change, and keep fossil fuel prices lower than otherwise. These advantages are global. Hence the additional costs of the incentives for early deployment should be considered learning investments; they must be wisely spent and need to be widely shared.
In 2011, a report by the International Energy Agency found that solar energy technologies such as photovoltaics, solar hot water, and concentrated solar power could provide a third of the world's energy by 2060 if politicians commit to limiting climate change and transitioning to renewable energy. The energy from the Sun could play a key role in de-carbonizing the global economy alongside improvements in energy efficiency and imposing costs on greenhouse gas emitters. "The strength of solar is the incredible variety and flexibility of applications, from small scale to big scale".
The International Organization for Standardization has established several standards relating to solar energy equipment. For example, ISO 9050 relates to glass in the building, while ISO 10217 relates to the materials used in solar water heaters. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27743 |
Standard conditions for temperature and pressure
Standard temperature and pressure are standard sets of conditions for experimental measurements to be established to allow comparisons to be made between different sets of data. The most used standards are those of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), although these are not universally accepted standards. Other organizations have established a variety of alternative definitions for their standard reference conditions.
In chemistry, IUPAC changed the definition of standard temperature and pressure (STP) in 1982:
STP should not be confused with the standard state commonly used in thermodynamic evaluations of the Gibbs energy of a reaction.
NIST uses a temperature of 20 °C (293.15 K, 68 °F) and an absolute pressure of 1 atm (14.696 psi, 101.325 kPa). This standard is also called normal temperature and pressure (abbreviated as NTP).
The International Standard Metric Conditions for natural gas and similar fluids are and 101.325 kPa.
In industry and commerce, standard conditions for temperature and pressure are often necessary to define the standard reference conditions to express the volumes of gases and liquids and related quantities such as the rate of volumetric flow (the volumes of gases vary significantly with temperature and pressure): standard cubic meters per second (sm3/s), and normal cubic meters per second (nm3/s).
However, many technical publications (books, journals, advertisements for equipment and machinery) simply state "standard conditions" without specifying them; often substituting the term with older "normal conditions", or "NC". In special cases this can lead to confusion and errors. Good practice always incorporates the reference conditions of temperature and pressure. If not stated, some room environment conditions are supposed, close to 1 atm pressure, 293 К (20 °C), and 0% humidity.
Before 1918, many professionals and scientists using the metric system of units defined the standard reference conditions of temperature and pressure for expressing gas volumes as being and . During those same years, the most commonly used standard reference conditions for people using the imperial or U.S. customary systems was and 14.696 psi (1 atm) because it was almost universally used by the oil and gas industries worldwide. The above definitions are no longer the most commonly used in either system of units.
Many different definitions of standard reference conditions are currently being used by organizations all over the world. The table below lists a few of them, but there are more. Some of these organizations used other standards in the past. For example, IUPAC has, since 1982, defined standard reference conditions as being 0 °C and 100 kPa (1 bar), in contrast to its old standard of 0 °C and 101.325 kPa (1 atm). The new value is the mean atmospheric pressure at an altitude of about 112 metres, which is closer to the worldwide median altitude of human habitation (194 m).
Natural gas companies in Europe, Australia, and South America have adopted 15 °C (59 °F) and 101.325 kPa (14.696 psi) as their standard gas volume reference conditions, used as the base values for defining the standard cubic meter. Also, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) each have more than one definition of standard reference conditions in their various standards and regulations.
Note: This table needs careful checking. For example the American Association of Physicists in Medicine paper quotes a temperature of 22°C. It does not quote a Fahrenheit equivalent. The correct Fahrenheit equivalent is 71.6°F, not 72°F as stated in the table.
Abbreviations:
In aeronautics and fluid dynamics the "International Standard Atmosphere" (ISA) is a specification of pressure, temperature, density, and speed of sound at each altitude. The International Standard Atmosphere is representative of atmospheric conditions at mid latitudes. In the USA this information is specified the U.S. Standard Atmosphere which is identical to the "International Standard Atmosphere" at all altitudes up to 65,000 feet above sea level.
Because many definitions of standard temperature and pressure differ in temperature significantly from standard laboratory temperatures (e.g. 0 °C vs. ~25 °C), reference is often made to "standard laboratory conditions" (a term deliberately chosen to be different from the term "standard conditions for temperature and pressure", despite its semantic near identity when interpreted literally). However, what is a "standard" laboratory temperature and pressure is inevitably geography-bound, given that different parts of the world differ in climate, altitude and the degree of use of heat/cooling in the workplace. For example, schools in New South Wales, Australia use 25 °C at 100 kPa for standard laboratory conditions.
ASTM International has published Standard ASTM E41- Terminology Relating to Conditioning and hundreds of special conditions for particular materials and test methods. Other standards organizations also have specialized standard test conditions.
It is equally as important to indicate the applicable reference conditions of temperature and pressure when stating the molar volume of a gas as it is when expressing a gas volume or volumetric flow rate. Stating the molar volume of a gas without indicating the reference conditions of temperature and pressure has very little meaning and can cause confusion.
The molar volume of gases around STP and at atmospheric pressure can be calculated with an accuracy that is usually sufficient by using the ideal gas law. The molar volume of any ideal gas may be calculated at various standard reference conditions as shown below:
Technical literature can be confusing because many authors fail to explain whether they are using the ideal gas constant "R", or the specific gas constant "R"s. The relationship between the two constants is "R"s = "R" / "m", where "m" is the molecular mass of the gas.
The US Standard Atmosphere (USSA) uses 8.31432 m3·Pa/(mol·K) as the value of "R". However, the USSA,1976 does recognize that this value is not consistent with the values of the Avogadro constant and the Boltzmann constant. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27745 |
Script kiddie
In programming and hacking cultures, a script kiddie, skiddie, or skid is an unskilled individual who uses scripts or programs, such as a web shell, developed by others to attack computer systems and networks and deface websites. It is generally assumed that most script kiddies are juveniles who lack the ability to write sophisticated programs or exploits on their own and that their objective is to try to impress their friends or gain credit in computer-enthusiast communities. However, the term does not relate to the actual age of the participant. The term is considered to be derogatory.
In a Carnegie Mellon report prepared for the U.S. Department of Defense in 2005, script kiddies are defined as The more immature but unfortunately often just as dangerous exploiter of security lapses on the Internet. The typical script kiddy uses existing and frequently well known and easy-to-find techniques and programs or scripts to search for and exploit weaknesses in other computers on the Internet—often randomly and with little regard or perhaps even understanding of the potentially harmful consequences.
Script kiddies have at their disposal a large number of effective, easily downloadable programs capable of breaching computers and networks. Such programs have included remote denial-of-service WinNuke, trojans, Back Orifice, NetBus and Sub7 vulnerability scanner/injector kit Metasploit and often software intended for legitimate security auditing.
Script kiddies vandalize websites both for the thrill of it and to increase their reputation among their peers. Some more malicious script kiddies have used virus toolkits to create and propagate the Anna Kournikova and Love Bug viruses.
Script kiddies lack, or are only developing, programming skills sufficient to understand the effects and side effects of their actions. As a result, they leave significant traces which lead to their detection, or directly attack companies which have detection and countermeasures already in place, or in some cases, leave automatic crash reporting turned on.
One of the most common types of attack utilized by script kiddies involves a form of social engineering, whereby the attacker somehow manipulates or tricks a user into sharing their information. This is often done through the creation of fake websites where users will input their login (a form of phishing), thus allowing the script kiddie access to the account.
An elitist subculture of hacking and programming communities, cheat-devs, are responsible for the development and maintenance of clients sold via P2C (pay to cheat) websites and communities. These individuals, colloquially recognized as "ratters", must circumvent the target program's security features to become undetected by the anti-cheat. In these communities, a strata of less capable individuals known as script kiddies infamously leach off cheat-devs for source codes and ideas. Script kiddies also download, slightly modify, then takes credit for the entire development of common sources. Enchilada is a term also used to describe script kiddie. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27750 |
Scalable Vector Graphics
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based vector image format for two-dimensional graphics with support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since 1999.
SVG images and their behaviors are defined in XML text files. This means that they can be searched, indexed, scripted, and compressed. As XML files, SVG images can be created and edited with any text editor, as well as with drawing software.
All major modern web browsers—including Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari, and Microsoft Edge—have SVG rendering support.
SVG has been in development within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since 1999 after six competing proposals for vector graphics languages had been submitted to the consortium during 1998. The early SVG Working Group decided not to develop any of the commercial submissions, but to create a new markup language that was informed by but not really based on any of them.
SVG allows three types of graphic objects: vector graphic shapes such as paths and outlines consisting of straight lines and curves, bitmap images, and text. Graphical objects can be grouped, styled, transformed and composited into previously rendered objects. The feature set includes nested transformations, clipping paths, alpha masks, filter effects and template objects. SVG drawings can be interactive and can include animation, defined in the SVG XML elements or via scripting that accesses the SVG Document Object Model (DOM). SVG uses CSS for styling and JavaScript for scripting. Text, including internationalization and localization, appearing in plain text within the SVG DOM, enhances the accessibility of SVG graphics.
The SVG specification was updated to version 1.1 in 2011. There are two 'Mobile SVG Profiles,' SVG Tiny and SVG Basic, meant for mobile devices with reduced computational and display capabilities. Scalable Vector Graphics 2 became a W3C Candidate Recommendation on 15 September 2016. SVG 2 incorporates several new features in addition to those of SVG 1.1 and SVG Tiny 1.2.
Though the SVG Specification primarily focuses on vector graphics markup language, its design includes the basic capabilities of a page description language like Adobe's PDF. It contains provisions for rich graphics, and is compatible with CSS for styling purposes. SVG has the information needed to place each glyph and image in a chosen location on a printed page.
SVG drawings can be dynamic and interactive. Time-based modifications to the elements can be described in SMIL, or can be programmed in a scripting language (e.g. ECMAScript or JavaScript). The W3C explicitly recommends SMIL as the standard for animation in SVG.
A rich set of event handlers such as ""onmouseover"" and ""onclick"" can be assigned to any SVG graphical object to apply actions and events.
SVG images, being XML, contain many repeated fragments of text, so they are well suited for lossless data compression algorithms. When an SVG image has been compressed with the gzip algorithm, it is referred to as an "SVGZ" image and uses the corresponding codice_1 filename extension. Conforming SVG 1.1 viewers will display compressed images. An SVGZ file is typically 20 to 50 percent of the original size. W3C provides SVGZ files to test for conformance.
SVG was developed by the W3C SVG Working Group starting in 1998, after six competing vector graphics submissions were received that year:
The working group was chaired at the time by Chris Lilley of the W3C.
SVG 2.0 removes or deprecates some features of SVG 1.1 and incorporates new features from HTML5 and Web Open Font Format:
It reached Candidate Recommendation stage on 15 September 2016. The latest draft was released on 16 February 2020.
Because of industry demand, two mobile profiles were introduced with SVG 1.1: "SVG Tiny" (SVGT) and "SVG Basic" (SVGB).
These are subsets of the full SVG standard, mainly intended for user agents with limited capabilities. In particular, SVG Tiny was defined for highly restricted mobile devices such as cellphones; it does not support styling or scripting. SVG Basic was defined for higher-level mobile devices, such as smartphones.
In 2003, the 3GPP, an international telecommunications standards group, adopted SVG Tiny as the mandatory vector graphics media format for next-generation phones. SVGT is the required vector graphics format and support of SVGB is optional for Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and Packet-switched Streaming Service. It was later added as required format for vector graphics in 3GPP IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS).
Neither mobile profile includes support for the full Document Object Model (DOM), while only SVG Basic has optional support for scripting, but because they are fully compatible subsets of the full standard, most SVG graphics can still be rendered by devices which only support the mobile profiles.
SVGT 1.2 adds a microDOM (μDOM), styling and scripting.
The MPEG-4 Part 20 standard - "Lightweight Application Scene Representation (LASeR) and Simple Aggregation Format (SAF)" is based on SVG Tiny. It was developed by MPEG (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11) and published as ISO/IEC 14496-20:2006. SVG capabilities are enhanced in MPEG-4 Part 20 with key features for mobile services, such as dynamic updates, binary encoding, state-of-art font representation. SVG was also accommodated in MPEG-4 Part 11, in the Extensible MPEG-4 Textual (XMT) format - a textual representation of the MPEG-4 multimedia content using XML.
The SVG 1.1 specification defines 14 functional areas or feature sets:
An SVG document can define components including shapes, gradients etc., and use them repeatedly. SVG images can also contain raster graphics, such as PNG and JPEG images, and further SVG images.
This code will produce the colored shapes shown in the image, excluding the grid and labels:
The use of SVG on the web was limited by the lack of support in older versions of Internet Explorer (IE). Many web sites that serve SVG images, such as Wikipedia, also provide the images in a raster format, either automatically by HTTP content negotiation or by allowing the user directly to choose the file.
Google announced on 31 August 2010 that it had started to index SVG content on the web, whether it is in standalone files or embedded in HTML, and that users would begin to see such content listed among their search results.
It was announced on 8 December 2010 that Google Image Search would also begin indexing SVG files. The site announced an option to restrict image searches to SVG files on 11 February 2011. Web search engine can parse and navigate this format.
Konqueror was the first browser to support SVG in release version 3.2 in February 2004. As of 2011, all major desktop browsers, and many minor ones, have some level of SVG support. Other browsers' implementations are not yet complete; see comparison of layout engines for further details.
Some earlier versions of Firefox (e.g. versions between 1.5 and 3.6), as well as a smattering of other now-outdated web browsers capable of displaying SVG graphics, needed them embedded in codice_35 or codice_36 elements to display them integrated as parts of an HTML webpage instead of using the standard way of integrating images with codice_37. However, SVG images may be included in XHTML pages using XML namespaces.
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, was critical of early versions of Internet Explorer for its failure to support SVG.
There are several advantages to native and full support: plugins are not needed, SVG can be freely mixed with other content in a single document, and rendering and scripting become considerably more reliable.
SVG Tiny (SVGT) 1.1 and 1.2 are mobile profiles for SVG. SVGT 1.2 includes some features not found in SVG 1.1, including non-scaling strokes, which are supported by some SVG 1.1 implementations, such as Opera, Firefox and WebKit. As shared code bases between desktop and mobile browsers increased, the use of SVG 1.1 over SVGT 1.2 also increased.
Support for SVG may be limited to SVGT on older or more limited smart phones or may be primarily limited by their respective operating system. Adobe Flash Lite has optionally supported SVG Tiny since version 1.1. At the SVG Open 2005 conference, Sun demonstrated a mobile implementation of SVG Tiny 1.1 for the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) platform.
Mobiles that use Opera Mobile, as well as the iPhone's built in browser, also include SVG support. However, even though it used the WebKit engine, the Android built-in browser did not support SVG prior to v3.0 (Honeycomb). Prior to v3.0, Firefox Mobile 4.0b2 (beta) for Android was the first browser running under Android to support SVG by default.
The level of SVG Tiny support available varies from mobile to mobile, depending on the SVG engine installed. Many newer mobile products support additional features beyond SVG Tiny 1.1, like gradient and opacity; this is sometimes referred to as "SVGT 1.1+", though there is no such standard.
RIM's BlackBerry has built-in support for SVG Tiny 1.1 since version 5.0. Support continues for WebKit-based BlackBerry Torch browser in OS 6 and 7.
Nokia's S60 platform has built-in support for SVG. For example, icons are generally rendered using the platform's SVG engine. Nokia has also led the JSR 226: Scalable 2D Vector Graphics API expert group that defines Java ME API for SVG presentation and manipulation. This API has been implemented in S60 Platform 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 and onward. Some Series 40 phones also support SVG (such as Nokia 6280).
Most Sony Ericsson phones beginning with K700 (by release date) support SVG Tiny 1.1. Phones beginning with K750 also support such features as opacity and gradients. Phones with Sony Ericsson Java Platform-8 have support for JSR 226.
Windows Phone has supported SVG since version 7.5.
SVG is also supported on various mobile devices from Motorola, Samsung, LG, and Siemens mobile/BenQ-Siemens. eSVG, an SVG rendering library mainly written for embedded devices, is available on some mobile platforms.
SVG images can be produced by the use of a vector graphics editor, such as Inkscape, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Flash Professional, or CorelDRAW, and rendered to common raster image formats such as PNG using the same software. Inkscape uses a (built-in) potrace to import raster image formats.
Software can be programmed to render SVG images by using a library such as librsvg used by GNOME since 2000, or Batik. SVG images can also be rendered to any desired popular image format by using ImageMagick, a free command-line utility (which also uses librsvg under the hood).
Other uses for SVG include embedding for use in word processing (e.g. with LibreOffice) and desktop publishing (e.g. Scribus), plotting graphs (e.g. gnuplot), and importing paths (e.g. for use in GIMP or Blender). Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office 2019 offer support for importing and editing SVG images. The Uniform Type Identifier for SVG used by Apple is codice_38 and conforms to codice_39 and codice_40. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27751 |
Spectroscopy
Spectroscopy is the study of the interaction between matter and electromagnetic radiation (via electron spectroscopy, atomic spectroscopy, etc). Historically, spectroscopy originated through the study of visible light dispersed according to its wavelength, by a prism. Later the concept was expanded greatly to include any interaction with radiative energy as a function of its wavelength or frequency, predominantly in the electromagnetic spectrum, although matter waves and acoustic waves can also be considered forms of radiative energy; recently, with tremendous difficulty, even gravitational waves have been associated with a spectral signature in the context of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and laser interferometry. Spectroscopic data are often represented by an emission spectrum, a plot of the response of interest, as a function of wavelength or frequency.
Spectroscopy, primarily in the electromagnetic spectrum, is a fundamental exploratory tool in the fields of physics, chemistry, and astronomy, allowing the composition, physical structure and electronic structure of matter to be investigated at atomic scale, molecular scale, macro scale, and over astronomical distances. Important applications arise from biomedical spectroscopy in the areas of tissue analysis and medical imaging.
Spectroscopy and spectrography are terms used to refer to the measurement of radiation intensity as a function of wavelength and are often used to describe experimental spectroscopic methods. Spectral measurement devices are referred to as spectrometers, spectrophotometers, spectrographs or spectral analyzers.
Daily observations of color can be related to spectroscopy. Neon lighting is a direct application of atomic spectroscopy. Neon and other noble gases have characteristic emission frequencies (colors). Neon lamps use collision of electrons with the gas to excite these emissions. Inks, dyes and paints include chemical compounds selected for their spectral characteristics in order to generate specific colors and hues. A commonly encountered molecular spectrum is that of nitrogen dioxide. Gaseous nitrogen dioxide has a characteristic red absorption feature, and this gives air polluted with nitrogen dioxide a reddish-brown color. Rayleigh scattering is a spectroscopic scattering phenomenon that accounts for the color of the sky.
Spectroscopic studies were central to the development of quantum mechanics and included Max Planck's explanation of blackbody radiation, Albert Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect and Niels Bohr's explanation of atomic structure and spectra. Spectroscopy is used in physical and analytical chemistry because atoms and molecules have unique spectra. As a result, these spectra can be used to detect, identify and quantify information about the atoms and molecules. Spectroscopy is also used in astronomy and remote sensing on Earth. Most research telescopes have spectrographs. The measured spectra are used to determine the chemical composition and physical properties of astronomical objects (such as their temperature and velocity).
One of the central concepts in spectroscopy is a resonance and its corresponding resonant frequency. Resonances were first characterized in mechanical systems such as pendulums. Mechanical systems that vibrate or oscillate will experience large amplitude oscillations when they are driven at their resonant frequency. A plot of amplitude vs. excitation frequency will have a peak centered at the resonance frequency. This plot is one type of spectrum, with the peak often referred to as a spectral line, and most spectral lines have a similar appearance.
In quantum mechanical systems, the analogous resonance is a coupling of two quantum mechanical stationary states of one system, such as an atom, via an oscillatory source of energy such as a photon. The coupling of the two states is strongest when the energy of the source matches the energy difference between the two states. The energy formula_1 of a photon is related to its frequency formula_2 by formula_3 where formula_4 is Planck's constant, and so a spectrum of the system response vs. photon frequency will peak at the resonant frequency or energy. Particles such as electrons and neutrons have a comparable relationship, the de Broglie relations, between their kinetic energy and their wavelength and frequency and therefore can also excite resonant interactions.
Spectra of atoms and molecules often consist of a series of spectral lines, each one representing a resonance between two different quantum states. The explanation of these series, and the spectral patterns associated with them, were one of the experimental enigmas that drove the development and acceptance of quantum mechanics. The hydrogen spectral series in particular was first successfully explained by the Rutherford-Bohr quantum model of the hydrogen atom. In some cases spectral lines are well separated and distinguishable, but spectral lines can also overlap and appear to be a single transition if the density of energy states is high enough. Named series of lines include the principal, sharp, diffuse and fundamental series.
Spectroscopy is a sufficiently broad field that many sub-disciplines exist, each with numerous implementations of specific spectroscopic techniques. The various implementations and techniques can be classified in several ways.
The types of spectroscopy are distinguished by the type of radiative energy involved in the interaction. In many applications, the spectrum is determined by measuring changes in the intensity or frequency of this energy. The types of radiative energy studied include:
The types of spectroscopy also can be distinguished by the nature of the interaction between the energy and the material. These interactions include:
Spectroscopic studies are designed so that the radiant energy interacts with specific types of matter.
Atomic spectroscopy was the first application of spectroscopy developed. Atomic absorption spectroscopy and atomic emission spectroscopy involve visible and ultraviolet light. These absorptions and emissions, often referred to as atomic spectral lines, are due to electronic transitions of outer shell electrons as they rise and fall from one electron orbit to another. Atoms also have distinct x-ray spectra that are attributable to the excitation of inner shell electrons to excited states.
Atoms of different elements have distinct spectra and therefore atomic spectroscopy allows for the identification and quantitation of a sample's elemental composition. After inventing the spectroscope, Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff discovered new elements by observing their emission spectra. Atomic absorption lines are observed in the solar spectrum and referred to as Fraunhofer lines after their discoverer. A comprehensive explanation of the hydrogen spectrum was an early success of quantum mechanics and explained the Lamb shift observed in the hydrogen spectrum, which further led to the development of quantum electrodynamics.
Modern implementations of atomic spectroscopy for studying visible and ultraviolet transitions include flame emission spectroscopy, inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy, glow discharge spectroscopy, microwave induced plasma spectroscopy, and spark or arc emission spectroscopy. Techniques for studying x-ray spectra include X-ray spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence.
The combination of atoms into molecules leads to the creation of unique types of energetic states and therefore unique spectra of the transitions between these states. Molecular spectra can be obtained due to electron spin states (electron paramagnetic resonance), molecular rotations, molecular vibration, and electronic states. Rotations are collective motions of the atomic nuclei and typically lead to spectra in the microwave and millimeter-wave spectral regions. Rotational spectroscopy and microwave spectroscopy are synonymous. Vibrations are relative motions of the atomic nuclei and are studied by both infrared and Raman spectroscopy. Electronic excitations are studied using visible and ultraviolet spectroscopy as well as fluorescence spectroscopy.
Studies in molecular spectroscopy led to the development of the first maser and contributed to the subsequent development of the laser.
The combination of atoms or molecules into crystals or other extended forms leads to the creation of additional energetic states. These states are numerous and therefore have a high density of states. This high density often makes the spectra weaker and less distinct, i.e., broader. For instance, blackbody radiation is due to the thermal motions of atoms and molecules within a material. Acoustic and mechanical responses are due to collective motions as well.
Pure crystals, though, can have distinct spectral transitions, and the crystal arrangement also has an effect on the observed molecular spectra. The regular lattice structure of crystals also scatters x-rays, electrons or neutrons allowing for crystallographic studies.
Nuclei also have distinct energy states that are widely separated and lead to gamma ray spectra. Distinct nuclear spin states can have their energy separated by a magnetic field, and this allows for nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
Other types of spectroscopy are distinguished by specific applications or implementations:
The history of spectroscopy began with Isaac Newton's optics experiments (1666–1672). Newton applied the word "spectrum" to describe the rainbow of colors that combine to form white light and that are revealed when the white light is passed through a prism. During the early 1800s, Joseph von Fraunhofer made experimental advances with dispersive spectrometers that enabled spectroscopy to become a more precise and quantitative scientific technique. Since then, spectroscopy has played and continues to play a significant role in chemistry, physics, and astronomy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27752 |
List of science fiction themes
The following is a list of articles about recurring themes in science fiction. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27753 |
Samaritanism
The Samaritan religion, also known as Samaritanism, is the national religion of the Samaritans. The Samaritans adhere to the Samaritan Torah, which they believe is the original, unchanged Torah, as opposed to the Torah used by Jews. In addition to the Samaritan Torah, Samaritans also revere their version of the Book of Joshua and recognize some Biblical figures, such as Eli.
Samaritanism is internally described as the religion that began with Moses, unchanged over the millennia that have since passed. Samaritans believe Judaism and the Jewish Torah have been corrupted by time and no longer serve the duties God mandated on Mount Sinai. Jews view the Temple Mount as the most sacred location in their faith, but Samaritans regard Mount Gerizim as their holiest site.
Samaritanism holds that the summit of Mount Gerizim is the true location of God's Holy Place, as opposed to the Foundation Stone on the Temple Mount as Judaism teaches. As such, Samaritans trace their history as a separate entity from the Jews back to the time of Moses, where they believe Joshua laid the foundation for their temple. Samaritan historiography traces the schism itself to the High Priest Eli abandoning Moses' Tabernacle in favor of Mount Gerizim following Joshua's death.
Abu l-Fath, who in the 14th century wrote a major work of Samaritan history, comments on Samaritan origins as follows:
A terrible civil war broke out between Eli son of Yafni, of the line of Ithamar, and the sons of Pincus (Phinehas), because Eli son of Yafni resolved to usurp the High Priesthood from the descendants of Pincus. He used to offer sacrifices on an altar of stones. He was 50 years old, endowed with wealth and in charge of the treasury of the Children of Israel. ...
He offered a sacrifice on the altar, but without salt, as if he were inattentive. When the Great High Priest Ozzi learned of this, and found the sacrifice was not accepted, he thoroughly disowned him; and it is (even) said that he rebuked him.
Thereupon he and the group that sympathized with him, rose in revolt and at once he and his followers and his beasts set off for Shiloh. Thus Israel split in factions. He sent to their leaders saying to them, "Anyone who would like to see wonderful things, let him come to me." Then he assembled a large group around him in Shiloh, and built a Temple for himself there; he constructed a place like the Temple (on Mount Gerizim). He built an altar, omitting no detail—it all corresponded to the original, piece by piece.
At this time the Children of Israel split into three factions. A loyal faction on Mount Gerizim; a heretical faction that followed false gods; and the faction that followed Eli son of Yafni in Shiloh.
Further, the "Samaritan Chronicle Adler", or New Chronicle, believed to have been composed in the 18th century using earlier chronicles as sources, states:
Samaritanism emerged as an independent ethnic culture following its survival of the Assyrian captivity in the 8th century BC. The traditional Jewish narrative of 2 Kings and Josephus, has it that the people of Israel were removed by the king of the Assyrians (Sargon II) to Halah, to Gozan on the Khabur River and to the towns of the Medes. The king of the Assyrians, we are then told, then brought people from Babylon, Kutha, Avah, Emath, and Sepharvaim to settle in Samaria. Because God sent lions among them to kill them, the king of the Assyrians sent one of the priests from Bethel to teach the new settlers about God's ordinances. The eventual result was that the new settlers worshiped both the God of the land and their own gods from the countries from which they came.
Modern genetic studies (2004) suggest that Samaritans' lineages trace back to a common ancestor with Jews in the paternally-inherited Jewish high priesthood (Cohanim) temporally proximate to the period of the Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel, and are probably descendants of the historical Israelite population, albeit isolated given the people's reclusive history. This casts doubt into, if not totally disproves, this historical theory that Samaritans originated from Assyria.
Furthermore, the Dead Sea scroll 4Q372, which recounts the hope that the northern tribes will return to the land of Joseph, remarks that the current dwellers in the north are fools, an enemy people, but does not explicitly refer to them as foreigners. It goes on to say that these people, the Samaritans, mocked Jerusalem and built a temple on a high place (Gerizim) to provoke Israel.
Conflicts between the Samaritans and the Jews were numerous between the end of the Assyrian diaspora and the Bar Kokhba revolt. The Tanakh describes multiple instigations from the Samaritan population against the Jews and disparages them, and Jesus' Parable of the Good Samaritan also gives evidence of conflict. The destruction of Mount Gerizim's Samaritan temple is attributed to the High Priest John Hyrcanus.
Following the failed revolts, Mount Gerizim was rededicated with a new temple, which was ultimately again destroyed during the Samaritan Revolts. Persecution of Samaritans was common in the following centuries.
The principle beliefs of Samaritanism are as follows:
The Samaritan preserve the proto-Hebraic script, conserve the institution of a High Priesthood, and the practice of slaughtering and eating lambs on Passover eve. They celebrate Pesach, Shavuot, Sukkot but use a different mode from that employed in Judaism in order to determine the dates annually.Yom Teru'ah (the Biblical name for "Rosh Hashanah"), at the beginning of Tishrei, is not considered a New Year as it is in Rabbinic Judaism.
Passover is particularly important in the Samaritan community, climaxing with the sacrifice of up to 40 sheep. The Counting of the Omer remains largely unchanged; however, the week before Shavuot is a unique festival celebrating the continued commitment Samaritanism has maintained since the time of Moses. Shavuot is characterized by nearly day-long services of continuous prayer, especially over the stones on Gerizim traditionally attributed to Joshua.
During Sukkot, the sukkah is built inside houses, as opposed to outdoor settings that are traditional among Jews. Samaritan historian Benyamim Tsedaka traces the indoor-sukkah tradition to persecution of Samaritans during the Byzantine Empire. The roof of the Samaritan sukkah is decorated with citrus fruits and the branches of palm, myrtle, and willow trees, according to the Samaritan interpretation of the four species designated in the Torah for the holiday.
The restrictions of Yom Kippur are more universal in Samaritanism, with even breastfeeding and the feeding of children being disallowed.
Samaritan law differs from Halakha (Rabbinic Jewish law) and other Jewish movements. The Samaritans have several groups of religious texts, which correspond to Jewish Halakha. A few examples of such texts are: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27754 |
Statute of Anne
The Statute of Anne, also known as the Copyright Act 1710 (cited either as 8 Ann. c. 21 or as 8 Ann. c. 19), is an act of the Parliament of Great Britain passed in 1710, which was the first statute to provide for copyright regulated by the government and courts, rather than by private parties.
Prior to the statute's enactment in 1710, copying restrictions were authorized by the Licensing of the Press Act 1662. These restrictions were enforced by the Stationers' Company, a guild of printers given the exclusive power to print—and the responsibility to censor—literary works. The censorship administered under the Licensing Act led to public protest; as the act had to be renewed at two-year intervals, authors and others sought to prevent its reauthorisation. In 1694, Parliament refused to renew the Licensing Act, ending the Stationers' monopoly and press restrictions.
Over the next 10 years the Stationers repeatedly advocated bills to re-authorize the old licensing system, but Parliament declined to enact them. Faced with this failure, the Stationers decided to emphasise the benefits of licensing to authors rather than publishers, and the Stationers succeeded in getting Parliament to consider a new bill. This bill, which after substantial amendments was granted Royal Assent on 5 April 1710, became known as the Statute of Anne owing to its passage during the reign of Queen Anne. The new law prescribed a copyright term of 14 years, with a provision for renewal for a similar term, during which only the author and the printers to whom they chose to license their works could publish the author's creations. Following this, the work's copyright would expire, with the material falling into the public domain. Despite a period of instability known as the Battle of the Booksellers when the initial copyright terms under the Statute began to expire, the Statute of Anne remained in force until the Copyright Act 1842 replaced it.
The statute is considered a "watershed event in Anglo-American copyright history ... transforming what had been the publishers' private law copyright into a public law grant". Under the statute, copyright was for the first time vested in authors rather than publishers; it also included provisions for the public interest, such as a legal deposit scheme. The Statute was an influence on copyright law in several other nations, including the United States, and even in the 21st century is "frequently invoked by modern judges and academics as embodying the utilitarian underpinnings of copyright law".
With the introduction of the printing press to England by William Caxton in 1476, printed works became both more common and more economically important. As early as 1483, Richard III recognised the value of literary works by specifically exempting them from the government's protectionist legislation. Over the next fifty years, the government moved further towards economic regulation, abolishing the provision with the Printers and Binders Act 1534, which also banned the import of foreign works and empowered the Lord Chancellor to set maximum pricing for English books. This was followed by increasing degrees of censorship. A further proclamation of 1538, aiming to stop the spread of Lutheran doctrine, saw Henry VIII note that "sondry contentious and sinyster opiniones, have by wrong teachynge and naughtye bokes increaced and growen within this his realme of England", and declare that all authors and printers must allow the Privy Council or their agents to read and censor books before publication.
This censorship peaked on 4 May 1557, when Mary I issued a royal warrant formally incorporating the Stationers' Company. The old method of censorship had been limited by the Second Statute of Repeal, and with Mary's increasing unpopularity the existing system was unable to cope with the number of critical works being printed. Instead, the royal warrant devolved this power to the Company. This was done by decreeing that only the Company's publishers could print and distribute books. Their Wardens were given the power to enter any printing premises, destroy illegal works and imprison anyone found manufacturing them. In this way the government "harnessed the self interest of the publishers to the yoke of royal incentive", guaranteeing that the Company would follow the rules due to the economic monopoly it gave their members. With the abolition of the Star Chamber and Court of High Commission by the Long Parliament, the legal basis for this warrant was removed, but the Long Parliament chose to replace it with the Licensing Act 1662. This provided that the Company would retain their original powers, and imposed additional restrictions on printing; King's Messengers were permitted to enter any home or business in search of illegal presses. The legislation required renewal every two years, and was regularly reapproved.
This was not "copyright" as is normally understood; although there was a monopoly on the right to copy, this was available to publishers, not authors, and did not exist by default; it only applied to books which had been accepted and published by the Company. A member of the Company would register the book, and would then have a perpetual copyright over its printing, copying and publication, which could be leased, transferred to others or given to heirs upon the member's death. The only exception to this was that, if a book was out of print for more than 6 months and the publisher ignored a warning to make it available, the copyright would be released and other publishers would be permitted to copy it. Authors themselves were not particularly respected until the 18th century, and were not permitted to be members of the Company, playing no role in the development or use of its licences despite the Company's sovereign authority to decide what was published. There is evidence that some authors were recognised by the Company itself to have the right to copy and the right to alter their works; these authors were uniformly the writers of uneconomical books who were underwriting their publication.
The Company's monopoly, censorship and failure to protect authors made the system highly unpopular; John Milton wrote "Areopagitica" as a result of his experiences with the Company, accusing Parliament of being deceived by "the fraud of some old patentees and monopolisers in the trade of bookselling". He was not the first writer to criticise the system, with John Locke writing a formal memorandum to the MP Edward Clarke in 1693 while the Licensing Act was being renewed, complaining that the existing system restricted the free exchange of ideas and education while providing an unfair monopoly for Company members. Academic Mark Rose attributes the efforts of Milton to promote the "bourgeois public sphere", along with the Glorious Revolution's alterations to the political system and the rise of public coffee houses, as the source of growing public unhappiness with the system. At the same time, this was a period in which clearly defined political parties were taking shape, and with the promise of regular elections, an environment where the public were of increasing importance to the political process. The result was a "developing public sphere [which] provided the context that enabled the collapse of traditional press controls".
The result of this environment was the lapse of the Licensing Act. In November 1694, a committee was appointed by the Commons to see what laws were "lately expired and expiring [and] fit to be revived and continued". The Committee reported in January 1695, and suggested the renewal of the Licensing Act; this was included in the "Continuation Bill", but rejected by the House of Commons on 11 February. When it reached the House of Lords, the Lords re-included the Licensing Act, and returned the bill to the Commons. In response, a second committee was appointed – this one to produce a report indicating why the Commons disagreed with the inclusion of the Licensing Act, and chaired by Edward Clarke. This committee soon reported to the Commons, and Clarke was ordered to carry a message to the Lords requesting a conference over the Act. On 18 April 1695, Clarke met with representatives of the Lords, and they agreed to allow the Continuation Bill to pass without the renewal of the Licensing Act. With this, "the Lords' decision heralded an end to a relationship that had developed throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries between the State and the Company of Stationers", ending both nascent publishers' copyright and the existing system of censorship.
John Locke's close relationship with Clarke, along with the respect he commanded, is seen by academics as what led to this decision. Locke had spent the early 1690s campaigning against the statute, considering it "ridiculous" that the works of dead authors were held perpetually in copyright. In letters to Clarke he wrote of the absurdity of the existing system, complaining primarily about the unfairness of it to authors, and "[t]he parallels between Locke's commentary and those reasons presented by the Commons to the Lords for refusing to renew the 1662 Act are striking". He was assisted by a number of independent printers and booksellers, who opposed the monopolistic aspects of the Act, and introduced a petition in February 1693 that the Act prevented them from conducting their business. The "developing public sphere", along with the harm the existing system had caused to both major political parties, is also seen as a factor.
The failure to renew the Licensing Act led to confusion and both positive and negative outcomes; while the government no longer played a part in censoring publications, and the monopoly of the Company over printing was broken, there was uncertainty as to whether or not copyright was a binding legal concept without the legislation. Economic chaos also resulted; with the Company now unable to enforce any monopoly, provincial towns began establishing printing presses, producing cheaper books than the London booksellers. The absence of the censorship provisions also opened Britain up as a market for internationally printed books, which were similarly cheaper than those British printers could produce.
The rejection of the existing system was not done with universal approval, and there were ultimately twelve unsuccessful attempts to replace it. The first was introduced to the House of Commons on 11 February 1695. A committee, again led by Clarke, was to write a "Bill for the Better Regulating of Printing and the Printing Presses". This bill was essentially a copy of the Licensing Act, but with a narrower jurisdiction; only books covering religion, history, the affairs of the state or the law would require official authorisation. Four days after its introduction, the Stationers' held an emergency meeting to agree to petition the Commons – this was because the bill did not contain any reference to books as property, eliminating their monopoly on copying. Clarke also had issues with the provisions, and the debate went on until the end of the Parliamentary session, with the bill failing to pass.
With the end of the Parliamentary session came the first general election under the Triennial Act 1694, which required the Monarch to dissolve Parliament every 3 years, causing a general election. This led to the "golden age" of the English electorate, and allowed for the forming of two major political parties – the Whigs and Tories. At the same time, with the failure to renew the Licensing Act, a political press developed. While the Act had been in force only one official newspaper existed; the "London Gazette", published by the government. After its demise, a string of newspapers sprang into being, including the "Flying Post", the "Evening Post" and the "Daily Courant". Newspapers had a strong bias towards particular parties, with the "Courant" and the "Flying Post" supporting the Whigs and the "Evening Post" in favour of the Tories, leading to politicians from both parties realising the importance of an efficient propaganda machine in influencing the electorate. This added a new dimension to the Commons' decision to reject two new renewals of the Licensing Act in the new Parliamentary session.
Authors, as well as Stationers, then joined the demand for a new system of licensing. Jonathan Swift was a strong advocate for licensing, and Daniel Defoe wrote on 8 November 1705 that with the absence of licensing, "One Man Studies Seven Year, to bring a finish'd Peice into the World, and a Pyrate Printer, Reprints his Copy immediately, and Sells it for a quarter of the Price ... these things call for an Act of Parliament". Seeing this, the Company took the opportunity to experiment with a change to their approach and argument. Instead of lobbying because of the effect the absence of legislation was having on their trade, they lobbied on behalf of the authors, but seeking the same things. The first indication of this change in approach comes from the 1706 pamphlet by John How, a stationer, titled "Reasons humbly Offer'd for a Bill for the Encouragement of Learning and the Improvement of Printing". This argued for a return to licensing, not with reference to the printers, but because without something to protect authors and guarantee them an income, "Learned men will be wholly discouraged from Propagating the most useful Parts of Knowledge and Literature". Using these new tactics and the support of authors, the Company petitioned Parliament again in both 1707 and 1709 to introduce a bill providing for copyright.
Although both bills failed, they led to media pressure that was exacerbated by both Defoe and How. Defoe's "A Review", published on 3 December 1709 and demanding "a Law in the present Parliament ... for the Encouragement of Learning, Arts, and Industry, by securing the Property of Books to the Authors or Editors of them", was followed by How's "Some Thoughts on the Present State of Printing and Bookselling", which hoped that Parliament "might think fit to secure Property in Books by a Law". This was followed by another review by Defoe on 6 December, in which he even went so far as to provide a draft text for the bill. On 12 December, the Stationers submitted yet another petition asking for legislation on the issue, and the House of Commons gave three MPs – Spencer Compton, Craven Peyton and Edward Wortley – permission to form a drafting committee. On 11 January 1710, Wortley introduced this bill, titling it "A Bill for the Encouragement of Learning and for Securing the Property of Copies of Books to the rightful Owners thereof".
The bill imposed fines on anyone who imported or traded in unlicensed or foreign books, required every book for which copyright protection was sought to be entered into the Stationers' Register, provided a legal deposit system centred around the King's Library, the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, but said nothing about limiting the term of copyright. It also specified that books were property; an emphasis on the idea that authors deserved copyright simply due to their efforts. The Stationers were enthusiastic, urging Parliament to pass the bill, and it received its second reading on 9 February. A Committee of the Whole met to amend it on 21 February, with further alterations made when it was passed back to the House of Commons on 25 February. Alterations during this period included minor changes, such as extending the legal deposit system to cover Sion College and the Faculty of Advocates, but also major ones, including the introduction of a limit on the length of time for which copyright would be granted.
Linguistic amendments were also included; the line in the preamble emphasising that authors possessed books as they would any other piece of property was dropped, and the bill moved from something designed "for Securing the Property of Copies of Books to the rightful Owners thereof" to a bill "for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies". Another amendment allowed anyone to own and trade in copies of books, undermining the Stationers. Other changes were made when the bill went to the House of Lords, and it was finally returned to the Commons on 5 April. The aims of the resulting statute are debated; Ronan Deazley suggests that the intent was to balance the rights of the author, publisher and public in such a way as to ensure the maximum dissemination of works, while other academics argue that the bill was intended to protect the Company's monopoly or, conversely, to weaken it. Oren Bracha, writing in the "Berkeley Technology Law Journal", says that when considering which of these options are correct, "the most probable answer [is] all of them". Whatever the motivations, the bill was passed on 5 April 1710, and is commonly known simply as the Statute of Anne due its passage during the reign of Queen Anne.
Consisting of 11 sections, the Statute of Anne is formally titled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of Copies, during the Times therein mentioned". The preamble for the Statute indicates the purpose of the legislation – to bring order to the book trade – saying:
The Statute then continued by stating the nature of copyright. The right granted was the right to copy; to have sole control over the printing and reprinting of books, with no provision to benefit the owner of this right after the sale. This right, previously held by the Stationers' Company's members, would automatically be given to the author as soon as it was published, although they had the ability to license these rights to another person. The copyright could be gained through two stages; first, the registration of the book's publication with the Company, to prevent unintentional infringement, and second, the deposit of copies of the book at the Stationers' Company, the royal library and various universities. One restriction on copyright was a "cumbersome system" designed to prohibit unreasonably high prices for books, which limited how much authors could charge for copies. There was also a prohibition on importing foreign works, with exceptions made for Latin and Greek classics.
Once registration had been completed and the deposits were made, the author was granted an exclusive right to control the copying of the book. Penalties for infringing this right were severe, with all infringing copies to be destroyed and large fines to be paid to both the copyright holder and the government; there was only a three-month statute of limitations on bringing a case, however. This exclusive right's length was dependent on when the book had been published. If it was published after 10 April 1710, the length of copyright was 14 years; if published before that date, 21 years. An author who survived until the copyright expired would be granted an additional 14-year term, and when that ran out, the works would enter the public domain. Copyright under the Statute applied to Scotland and England, as well as Ireland when that country joined the union in 1800.
The Statute was initially welcomed, ushering in "stability to an insecure book trade" while providing for a "pragmatic bargain" between the rights of the author, publisher and public intended to boost public learning and the availability of knowledge. The clause requiring book deposits, however, was not seen as a success. If the books were not deposited, the penalties would be severe, with a fine of £5. The number of deposits required, however, meant that it was a substantial burden; a print run might only be of 250 copies, and if they were particularly expensive to print, it could be cheaper to ignore the law. Some booksellers argued that the deposit provision only applied to registered books, and so deliberately avoided registration just to be able to minimise their liability. This was further undermined by the ruling in "Beckford v Hood", where the Court of King's Bench confirmed that, even without registration, copyright could be enforced against infringers.
Another failure, identified by Bracha, is not found in what the Statute covered, but in what it did not. The Statute did not provide any means for identifying authors, did not identify what constituted authored works, and covered only "books", even while discussing "property" as a whole. Moreover, the right provided was merely that of "making and selling ... exact reprints. To a large extent, the new regime was the old stationer's privilege, except it was universalised, capped in time, and formally conferred upon authors rather than publishers". The effect of the Statute on authors was also minimal. Previously, publishers would have bought the original manuscript from writers for a lump sum; with the passage of the Statute, they simply did the same thing, but with the manuscript's copyright as well. The remaining economic power of the Company also allowed them to pressure booksellers and distributors into continuing their past arrangements, meaning that even theoretically "public domain" works were, in practise, still treated as copyrighted.
When the copyrights granted to works published before the Statute began to expire in 1731, the Stationers' Company and their publishers again began to fight to preserve the status quo. Their first port of call was Parliament, where they lobbied for new legislation to extend the length of copyright, and when this failed, they turned to the courts. Their principal argument was that copyright had not been created by the Statute of Anne; it existed beforehand, in the common law, and was perpetual. As such, even though the Statute provided for a limited term, all works remained in copyright under the common law regardless of when statutory copyright expired. Starting in 1743, this began a thirty-year campaign known as the "Battle of the Booksellers". They first tried going to the Court of Chancery and applying for injunctions prohibiting other publishers from printing their works, and this was initially successful. A series of legal setbacks over the next few years, however, left the law ambiguous.
The first major action taken to clarify the situation was "Millar v Taylor". Andrew Millar, a British publisher, purchased the rights to James Thomson's "The Seasons" in 1729, and when the copyright term expired, a competing publisher named Robert Taylor began issuing his own reprints of the work. Millar sued, and went to the Court of King's Bench to obtain an injunction and advocate perpetual copyright at common law. The jury found that the facts submitted by Millar were accurate, and asked the judges to clarify whether common law copyright existed. The first arguments were delivered on 30 June 1767, with John Dunning representing Millar and Edward Thurlow representing Taylor. A second set of arguments were submitted for Millar by William Blackstone on 7 June, and judgment was given on 20 April 1769. The final decision, written by Lord Mansfield and endorsed by Aston and Willes JJ, confirmed that there existed copyright at common law that turned "upon Principles before and independent" of the Statute of Anne, something justified because it was right "that an Author should reap the pecuniary Profits of his own Ingenuity and Labour". In other words, regardless of the Statute, there existed a perpetual copyright under the common law. Yates J dissented, on the grounds that the focus on the author obscured the effect this decision would have on "the rest of mankind", which he felt would be to create a virtual monopoly, something that would harm the public and should certainly not be considered "an encouragement of the propagation of learning".
Although this decision was a boon to the Stationers, it was short-lived. Following "Millar", the right to print "The Seasons" was sold to a coalition of publishers including Thomas Becket. Two Scottish printers, Alexander and John Donaldson, began publishing an unlicensed edition, and Becket successfully obtained an injunction to stop them. This decision was appealed in "Donaldson v Beckett", and eventually went to the House of Lords. After consulting with the judges of the King's Bench, Common Pleas and Exchequer of Pleas, the Lords concluded that copyright was not perpetual, and that the term permitted by the Statute of Anne was the maximum length of legal protection for publishers and authors alike.
Until its repeal, most extensions to copyright law were based around provisions found in the Statute of Anne. The one successful bill from the lobbying in the 1730s, which came into force on 29 September 1739, extended the provision prohibiting the import of foreign books to also prohibit the import of books that, while originally published in Britain, were being reprinted in foreign nations and then shipped to England and Wales. This was intended to stop the influx of cheap books from Ireland, and also repealed the price restrictions in the Statute of Anne. Another alteration was over the legal deposit provisions of the Statute, which many booksellers found unfair. Despite an initial period of compliance, the principle of donating copies of books to certain libraries lapsed, partly due to the unwieldiness of the statute's provisions and partly because of a lack of cooperation by the publishers. In 1775 Lord North, who was Chancellor of the University of Oxford, succeeded in passing a bill that reiterated the legal deposit provisions and granted the universities perpetual copyright on their works.
Another range of extensions came in relation to what could be copyrighted. The Statute only referred to books, and being an Act of Parliament, it was necessary to pass further legislation to include various other types of intellectual property. The Engraving Copyright Act 1734 extended copyright to cover engravings, statutes in 1789 and 1792 involved cloth, sculptures were copyrighted in 1814 and the performance of plays and music were covered by copyright in 1833 and 1842 respectively. The length of copyright was also altered; the Copyright Act 1814 set a copyright term of either 28 years, or the natural life of the author if this was longer. Despite these expansions, some still felt copyright was not a strong enough regime. In 1837, Thomas Noon Talfourd introduced a bill into Parliament to expand the scope of copyright. A friend of many men of letters, Talfourd aimed to provide adequate rewards for authors and artists. He campaigned for copyright to exist for the life of the author, with an additional 60 years after that. He also proposed that existing statutes be codified under the bill, so that the case law that had arisen around the Statute of Anne was clarified.
Talfourd's proposals led to opposition, and he reintroduced modified versions of them year on year. Printers, publishers and booksellers were concerned about the cost implications for original works, and for reprinting works that had fallen out of copyright. Many within Parliament argued that the bill failed to take into account the public interest, including Lord Macaulay, who succeeded in defeating one of Talfourd's bills in 1841. The Copyright Act 1842 passed, but "fell far short of Talfourd's dream of a uniform, consistent, codified law of copyright". It extended copyright to life plus seven years, and, as part of the codification clauses, repealed the Statute of Anne.
The Statute of Anne is traditionally seen as "a historic moment in the development of copyright", and the first statute in the world to provide for copyright. Craig Joyce and Lyman Ray Patterson, writing in the "Emory Law Journal", call this a "too simple understanding [that] ignores the statute's source", arguing that it is at best a derivative of the Licensing Act. Even considering this, however, the Statute of Anne was "the watershed event in Anglo-American copyright history ... transforming what had been the publishers' private law copyright into a public law grant". Patterson, writing separately, does note the differences between the Licensing Act and the Statute of Anne; the question of censorship was, by 1710, out of the question, and in that regard the Statute is distinct, not providing for censorship.
It also marked the first time that copyright had been vested primarily in the author, rather than the publisher, and also the first time that the injurious treatment of authors by publishers was recognised; regardless of what authors signed away, the second 14-year term of copyright would automatically return to them. Even in the 21st century, the Statute of Anne is "frequently invoked by modern judges and academics as embodying the utilitarian underpinnings of copyright law". In "IceTV v Nine Network", for example, the High Court of Australia noted that the title of the Statute "echoed explicitly the emphasis on the practical or utilitarian importance that certain seventeenth-century philosophers attached to knowledge and its encouragement in the scheme of human progress". Despite "widely recognised flaws", the Act became a model copyright statute, both within the United Kingdom and internationally. Christophe Geiger notes that it is "a difficult, almost impossible task" to analyse the relationship between the Statute of Anne and early French copyright law, both because it is difficult to make a direct connection, and because the ongoing debate over both has led to radically different interpretations of each nation's law.
Similarly, Belgium took no direct influence from the Statute or English copyright theory, but Joris Deene of the University of Ghent identifies an indirect influence "at two levels"; the criteria for what constitutes copyrightable material, which comes from the work of English theorists such as Locke and Edward Young, and the underlying justification of copyright law. In Belgium, this justification is both that copyright serves the public interest, and that copyright is a "private right" that serves the interests of individual authors. Both theories were taken into account in "Donaldson v Beckett", as well as in the drafting of the Statute of Anne, and Deene infers that they subsequently affected the Belgian debates over their first copyright statute. In the United States, the Copyright Clause of the United States Constitution and the first Federal copyright statute, the Copyright Act of 1790, both draw on the Statute of Anne. The 1790 Act contains provisions for a 14-year term of copyright and sections that provide for authors who published their works before 1790, both of which mirror the protection offered by the Statute 80 years previously. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27760 |
School choice
"School choice" is a term for pre-college public education options, describing a wide array of programs offering students and their families voluntary alternatives to publicly provided schools, to which students are generally assigned by the location of their family residence. In the United States, the most common—both by number of programs and by number of participating students—school choice programs are scholarship tax credit programs, which allow individuals or corporations to receive tax credits toward their state taxes in exchange for donations made to non-profit organizations that grant private school scholarships. In other cases, a similar subsidy may be provided by the state through a school voucher program. Other school choice options include open enrollment laws (which allow students to attend public schools outside the district in which the students live), charter schools, magnet schools, virtual schools, homeschooling, education savings accounts (ESAs), and individual tax credits or deductions for educational expenses.
Economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman proposed in 1955 using free market principles to improve the United States public school system. The practice had been that children were assigned a public school based on where their parents live, which public schools were funded by state and local taxes. Friedman proposed that parents should be able to receive those education funds in the form of vouchers, which would allow them to choose their children's schools, including both public and private, religious and non-religious options. In 1996, Friedman and his wife economist Rose Director Friedman founded the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, (now EdChoice). This American education reform organization headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana seeks to advance “school choice for all children” nationwide.
The first use of school vouchers in the United States came in the form of state tuition grants provided by Virginia's 1956 Stanley Plan, which financed white-only private schools known as segregation academies. Other states followed until the practice was disallowed by "Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County" (1964). While "school choice" has always implied school improvement, debates have regularly followed about the motivation and implementation.
States with scholarship tax credit programs grant individuals and/or businesses a credit, whether full or partial, toward their taxes for donations made to scholarship granting organizations (also called school tuition organizations). SGOs/STOs use the donations to create scholarships that are then given to help pay for the cost of tuition for students. These scholarships allow students to attend private schools or out-of-district public schools that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive for many families. These programs currently exist in fourteen states: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia in the United States.
Vouchers give students the opportunity to attend a private school of their choosing, secular or religious. This would be paid for by accessing all or part of the public funding set aside for their children’s education.
Charter schools are independent public schools which are exempt from many of the state and local regulations which govern most public schools. These exemptions grant charter schools some autonomy and flexibility with decision-making, such as teacher union contracts, hiring, and curriculum. In return, charter schools are subject to stricter accountability on spending and academic performance. The majority of states (and the District of Columbia) have charter school laws, though they vary in how charter schools are approved. Minnesota was the first state to have a charter school law and the first charter school in the United States, City Academy High School, opened in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1992. The prevalence of charter schools has increased with the support of the Obama Administration. Under the Administration, the Department of Education has provided funding incentives to states and school districts that increase the number of charter schools.
Somewhere between 22 and 26% of Dayton, Ohio children are in charter schools. This is the highest percentage in the nation. Other hotbeds for charter schools are Kansas City (24%), Washington, D.C. (20-24%), and Arizona. Almost one in four public schools in Arizona are charter schools, comprising about 8% of total enrollment.
Charter schools can also come in the form of cyber charters. Cyber charter schools deliver the majority of their instruction over the internet instead of in a school building. And, like all charter schools, cyber charters are public schools, but they are free from some of the rules and regulations that conventional public schools must follow.
Magnet schools are public schools that often have a specialized function like science, technology, or art. These magnet schools, unlike charter schools, are not open to all children. Much like many private schools, some (but not all) magnet schools require a test to get in. Magnet schools are an example of open enrollment programs. Open enrollment refers to district or statewide programs that allow families to choose public schools other than the ones they are assigned. Intradistrict open enrollment programs allow school choice within a district. Interdistrict open enrollment allows families to choose schools outside the district in other districts.
"Home education" or "home schooling" is instruction in a child's home, or provided primarily by a parent, or under direct parental control. Informal home education has always taken place, and formal instruction in the home has at times also been very popular. As public education grew in popularity during the 1900s, however, the number of people educated at home using a planned curriculum dropped. In the last 20 years, in contrast, the number of children being formally educated at home has grown tremendously, in particular in the United States. The laws relevant to home education differ throughout the country. In some states the parent simply needs to notify the state that the child will be educated at home. In other states the parents are not free to educate at home unless at least one parent is a certified teacher and yearly progress reports are reviewed by the state. Such laws are not always enforced however. According to the federal government, about 1.1 million children were home educated in 2003.
District of Choice is a program in California created during 1993, allowing any California public school district to enroll students outside district lines. To participate in the program, district governing boards only need to declare themselves a District of Choice and set a quota for how many transfer students to accept to participate in the program. School districts cannot discriminate among students to enroll, but can limit them through an unbiased lottery system. The program was created in response to several parent's concerns over the lack of choice of schools to enroll their children in. Currently 47 school districts and 10,000 students participate in the program, serving 5 percent of school districts and 0.2 percent of students in California.
This variant of school choice allows the parent to withdraw their child out of the public or charter school, and receive a direct deposit of public funds into a government-authorized savings account. These funds are often distributed in the form of a debit card that can be used to pay for various services, such as private school tuition and fees, online programs, private tutoring, community college costs, higher education services, and other approved learning materials and services. ESA’s also acquire the ability to pay for a combination of public school courses and private services.
Certain states allow parents to claim a tax credit or deduction as a means to provide relief for certain educational expenses. These can include private school tuition, textbooks, school supplies and equipment, tutoring, and transportation. Currently, Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin have such programs.
This form of choice abates the income tax for parents, so approved educational expenses can be more economical. Approved educational expenses include private school tuition, supplies, computers, books, tutors, and transportation.
Online learning permits students to work with teachers and their courses over the internet. This can be used in cooperation with, or in place of traditional classroom instruction. The online learning can be also paid for by accessing ESA’s and vouchers.
This form of tutelage is a student-tailored form of education. This form of instruction can have various combinations. For example, course choice programs, public school courses, and special education therapies can all be integrated into a students curriculum. There are a myriad of possibilities, especially as learning innovations continue to occur.
The goal of school choice programs is to give parents more control over their child's education and to allow parents to pursue the most appropriate learning environments for children. For example, school choice may enable parents to choose a school that provides religious instruction, stronger discipline, better foundational skills (including reading, writing, mathematics, and science), everyday skills (from handling money to farming), or other desirable foci.
Supporters of voucher models of school choice argue that choice creates competition between schools for students. Schools that fail to attract students can be closed. Advocates of school choice argue that this competition for students (and the dollars that come with them) create a catalyst for schools to create innovative programs, become more responsive to parental demands, and to increase student achievement. Caroline Hoxby suggests that this competition increases the productivity of a school. Hoxby describes a productive school as being one that produces high student achievement for each dollar spent. Others suggest that this competition gives parents more power to influence their child's school in the school marketplace. Parents and students become the consumers and schools must work to attract new students with new programs. Parents also have the ability to punish schools that they judge to be inferior by leaving the 'bad' school for a better, more highly ranked school. Parents look for schools that will advocate for the needs of their child and if the school does not meet the needs required for that child, parents have the choice to find a school that will be more suitable. This freedom to choose puts the consequences of good or bad choosing on the parents instead of the government.
Another argument in favor of school choice is based on cost-effectiveness. Studies undertaken by the Cato Institute and other libertarian and conservative think tanks conclude that privately run education both costs less and produces superior outcomes compared to public education.
Others argue that since children from impoverished families almost exclusively attend D or F ranked public schools, school choice programs would give parents the power to opt their children out of poorly-performing schools assigned by zip code and seek better education elsewhere. Supporters say this would level the playing field by broadening opportunities for low-income students—particularly minorities—to attend high-quality schools that would otherwise be accessible only to higher-income families.
The Organisation Internationale pour le Droit à l'Education et la Liberté d'Enseignement (OIDEL), an international non-profit organization for the development of freedom of education, maintains that the right to education is a fundamental human right which cannot exist without the presence of State benefits and the protection of individual liberties. According to the organization, freedom of education notably implies the freedom for parents to choose a school for their children without discrimination on the basis of finances. To advance freedom of education, OIDEL promotes a greater parity between public and private schooling systems.
Teachers' unions in the United States are very opposed to school choice. School choice measures are criticized as profiteering in an under-regulated environment. Charter authorization organizations have non-profit status; and contract with related for-profit entities with public funding. Reports indicate that charters create organizational arms that profit by charging high rent, and that while the facilities are used as schools, there are no property taxes. Walton Foundation has also held charter school investment conferences featuring Standard & Poor's, Piper Jaffray, Bank of America, and Wells Capital Management.
Public school entities are chiefly concerned that these school choice measures are taking funding away from public schools and therefore depleting their already strained resources. Other opponents of certain school choice policies (particularly vouchers) have cited the Establishment Clause and individual state Blaine amendments, which forbid, to one degree or another, the use of direct government aid to religiously affiliated entities. This is of particular concern in the voucher debate because voucher dollars are often spent at parochial schools.
Some school choice measures are criticized by public school entities, organizations opposed to church-state entanglement, and self-identified liberal advocacy groups. Known plaintiffs who have filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of state sponsored school choice laws are as follows: School Boards Associations, Public School Districts, Federations for Teachers, Associations of School Business Officials, Education Associations/Associations of Educators (unions for public school teachers), the American Civil Liberties Union, Freedom From Religion Foundation, and People for the American Way.
There is evidence that school choice programs reduce housing prices, and that they do so in high-performing districts more than in low-performing districts.
The basic compulsory educational system in Finland is the nine-year comprehensive school (Finnish "peruskoulu", Swedish "grundskola", "basic school"), for which school attendance is mandatory (homeschooling is allowed, but extremely rare). There are no so-called "gifted" programs. The more able children are expected to help those who are slower to catch on.
The French government subsidizes most private primary and secondary schools, including those affiliated with religious denominations, under contracts stipulating that education must follow the same curriculum as public schools and that schools cannot discriminate on grounds of religion or force pupils to attend religion classes.
This system of "école libre" (Free Schooling) is mostly used not for religious reasons, but for practical reasons (private schools may offer more services, such as after-class tutoring) as well as the desire of parents living in disenfranchised areas to send their children away from the local schools, where they perceive that the youth are too prone to delinquency or have too many difficulties keeping up with schooling requirements that the educational content is bound to suffer. The threatened repealing of that status in the 1980s triggered mass street demonstrations in favor of the status.
Sweden reformed its school system in 1992. Its system of school choice is one of the freest in the world, allowing students to use public funds for the publicly or privately run school of their choice, including religious and for-profit schools. Fifteen years after the reform, private school enrollment had increased from 1% to 10% of the student population.
In Chile, there is an extensive voucher system in which the state pays private and municipal schools directly, based on average attendance (90% of the country students utilize such a system). The result has been a steady increase in the number and recruitment of private schools that show consistently better results in standardized testing than municipal schools. The reduction of students in municipal schools has gone from 78% of all students in 1981, to 57% in 1990, and to less than 50% in 2005.
Regarding vouchers in Chile, researchers have found that when controls for the student's background (parental income and education) are introduced, the difference in performance between public and private subsectors is not significant. There is also greater variation within each subsector than between the two systems.
A variety of forms of school choice exist in the United States. It is a highly debatable subject because some people wish to use taxpayer dollars in order to allow low-income students the choice of a private schools by way of vouchers.
Scholarship tax credit programs currently exist in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
Arizona has a well-known and fast-growing tax credit program. In the Arizona Individual Private School Tuition Tax Credit Program, in accordance with A.R.S. §43-1089 and §1089.03, individuals can claim up to $1,053 and couples filing joint returns can claim up to $2106 (for 2014, amounts are indexed annually). Nearly 24,000 children received scholarships in the 2011-2012 school year. Since the program has started in 1998, over 77,500 taxpayers have participated in the program, providing over $500 million in scholarship money for children at private schools across the state.
The Arizona program was challenged in court in "ACSTO v Winn" by a group of state taxpayers on the grounds that the tax credit violated the First Amendment because the tuition grants could go to students who attend private schools with religious affiliations. The suit was initially brought against the state until the Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization (ACSTO), one of the largest School Tuition Organizations in the state, voluntarily stepped in to represent the defense with the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly Alliance Defense Fund). Typically, taxpayers are not allowed to bring suit against the government regarding how taxes are spent because injury would be purely speculative. In addition, insomuch as a donation to a School Tuition Organization is still a charitable act, just like any donation to a charity, there would be no standing unless all charitable deduction programs nationwide were brought under scrutiny. The Court ruled 5-4 to let the tax credit program stand. In April 2011, a Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll found that a majority of American voters (60%) felt that the tax credits support school choice for parents whereas 26% felt as it the tax credits support religion.
In Iowa, the Educational Opportunities Act was signed into law in 2006, creating a pool of tax credits for eligible donors to student tuition organizations (STOs). At first, these tax caps were $5 million but in 2007, Governor Chet Culver increased the total amount to $7.5 million. The Iowa Alliance for Choice in Education (Iowa ACE) oversees the STOs and advocates for school choice in Iowa.
Greater Opportunities for Access to Learning (GOAL) is the Georgia program which offers a state income tax credit to donors of scholarships to private schools. Representative David Casas was responsible for passing the Georgia version of the school choice legislation.
Vouchers currently exist in Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, Indiana and, most recently, the District of Columbia and Georgia.
The largest and oldest Voucher program is in Milwaukee. Started in 1990, and expanded in 1995, it currently allows no more than 15% of the district's public school enrollment to use vouchers. As of 2005 over 14,000 students use vouchers and they are nearing the 15% cap.
School vouchers are legally controversial in some states. In 2014 a lawsuit sought to challenge the legality of the Florida voucher program.
In the U.S., the legal and moral precedents for vouchers may have been set by the G.I. bill, which includes a voucher program for university-level education of veterans. The G.I. bill permits veterans to take their educational benefits at religious schools, an extremely divisive issue when applied to primary and secondary schools.
In "Zelman v. Simmons-Harris", 536 U.S. 639 (2002), the Supreme Court of the United States held that school vouchers could be used to pay for education in sectarian schools without violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. As a result, states are basically free to enact voucher programs that provide funding for any school of the parent's choosing.
The Supreme Court has not decided, however, whether states can provide vouchers for secular schools only, excluding sectarian schools. Proponents of funding for parochial schools argue that such an exclusion would violate the free exercise clause. However, in "Locke v. Davey", 540 U.S. 712 (2004), the Court held that states could exclude majors in "devotional theology" from an otherwise generally available college scholarship. The Court has not indicated, however, whether this holding extends to the public school context, and it may well be limited to the context of individuals training to enter the ministry.
The majority of states (and the District of Columbia) have charter school laws. Minnesota was the first state to have a charter school law and the first charter school in the United States, City Academy, opened in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1992.
Dayton, Ohio has between 22–26% of all children in charter schools. This is the highest percentage in the nation. Other hotbeds for charter schools are Kansas City (24%), Washington, D.C. (20-24%) and the State of Arizona. Almost 1 in 4 public schools in Arizona are charter schools, comprising about 8% of total enrollment.
Charter schools can also come in the form of Cyber Charters. Cyber charter schools deliver the majority of their instruction over the internet instead of in a school building. And, like charter schools, they are public schools, but free of many of the rules and regulations that public schools must follow.
Magnet schools are public schools that often have a specialized function like science, technology or art. These magnet schools, unlike charter schools, are not open to all children. Much like many private schools, the students must test into the school.
The laws relevant to homeschooling differ between US states. In some states the parent simply needs to notify the state that the child will be educated at home. In other states the parents are not free to educate at home unless at least one parent is a certified teacher and yearly progress reports are reviewed by the state. Such laws are not always enforced however. According to the Federal Government, about 1.1 million children were Home Educated in 2003.
The United States has school choice at the university level. College students can get subsidized tuition by attending "any" public college or university within their state of residence. Furthermore, the U.S. federal government provides tuition assistance for both public and private colleges via the G.I. Bill and federally guaranteed student loans. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27761 |
Star Frontiers
Star Frontiers is a science fiction role-playing game produced by TSR beginning in 1982. The game offered a space opera action-adventure setting.
"Star Frontiers" takes place near the center of a spiral galaxy (the setting does not specify whether the galaxy is our own Milky Way).
A previously undiscovered quirk of the laws of physics allows starships to jump to "The Void", a hyperspatial realm that greatly shortens the travel times between inhabited worlds, once they reach 1% of the speed of light (3,000 km/s).
The basic game setting was an area known as "The Frontier Sector" where four sentient races (Dralasite, Humans, Vrusk, and Yazirian) had met and formed the United Planetary Federation (UPF). The original homeworlds of the Dralasites, Humans, and Vrusk were never detailed in the setting and it is possible that they no longer existed. A large number of the star systems shown on the map of the Frontier sector in the basic rulebook were unexplored and undetailed, allowing the Gamemaster (called the "referee" in the game) to put whatever they wished there.
Players could take on any number of possible roles in the setting but the default was to act as hired agents of the Pan Galactic corporation in exploring the Frontier and fighting the aggressive incursions of the alien and mysterious worm-like race known as the Sathar. Most published modules for the game followed these themes.
These races were altered heavily and reused in TSR's "Spelljammer", and were later loosely republished for "d20 Future" by Wizards of the Coast.
The game was a percentile-based system and used only 10-sided dice (d10). Characters had attributes rated from 1-100 (usually in the 25-75 range) which could be rolled against for raw-attribute actions such as lifting items or getting out of the way of falling rocks. There were eight attributes that were paired together (and shared the same rating to begin with)—Strength/Stamina, Dexterity/Reaction Speed, Intuition/Logic, and Personality/Leadership.
Characters also each had a Primary Skill Area (PSA—Military, Technological, or Biosocial) which allowed them to buy skills that fell into their PSA at a discount. Skills were rated from 1–6 and usually consisted of a set of subskills that gave a chance for accomplishing a particular action as a base percentage plus a 10% bonus for each skill level the character had in the skill. Weapon skills were based on the character's relevant attribute (Dexterity or Strength) but other skills had a base chance of success independent of the character's attributes. Many of the technological skills were penalized by the complexity of the robot, security system, or computer the character was attempting to manipulate (also rated from 1 to 6).
Characters were usually quite durable in combat—it would take several hits from normal weapons to kill an average character. Medical technology was also advanced—characters could recover quickly from wounds with appropriate medical attention and a dead character could be "frozen" and revived later.
Vehicle and robot rules were included in the "Alpha Dawn" basic set. A beneficial feature of the game was its seamless integration of personal, vehicle and aerial combat simulation. The "Knight Hawks" rules expansion set included detailed rules for starships.
The basic set also included a short "bestiary" of creatures native to the world of Volturnus (the setting for the introductory module included with the basic boxed set), along with rules for creating new creatures.
Character advancement consisted of spending experience points on improving skills and attributes.
The basic boxed set was renamed "Alpha Dawn" after the expansions began publication. It included two ten-sided dice, a large set of cardboard counters, and a folding map with a futuristic city on one side and various wilderness areas on the other for use with the included adventure, SF-0: "Crash on Volturnus".
A second boxed set called "Knight Hawks" followed shortly. It provided rules for using starships in the setting and also a set of wargame rules for fighting space battles between the UPF and Sathar. Included were counters for starships, two-ten sided dice, a large folding map with open space on one side and on the other a space station and starship (for use with the included adventure), and the adventure SFKH-0: "Warriors of White Light". This set was designed by Douglas Niles (who also designed the D&D wargame "Battlesystem", released two years later).
Adventures printed separately for the game included two more adventures set on Volturnus (SF-1: "Volturnus, Planet of Mystery" and SF-2: "Starspawn of Volturnus" continuing the adventure included in the basic set), SF-3: "Sundown on Starmist", SF-4: "Mission to Alcazzar", SF-5: "Bugs in the System" and SF-6: "Dark Side of the Moon". The last two modules (SF-5 and SF-6) were written by authors from TSR's UK division, and are distinctly different from the others in the series in tone and production style.
Adventures using the "Knight Hawks" rules included SFKH-1: "Dramune Run" and a trilogy set "Beyond the Frontier" in which the players learn more about the Sathar and foil their latest plot (SFKH-2: "Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes", SFKH-3: "Face of the Enemy", and SFKH-4: "The War Machine").
Two modules also re-created the plot and setting of the movies "" and "".
A late addition to the line was "Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space" which introduced several additional races and radical changes to the game's mechanics. Of the three planned volumes of the Guide, only the first was ever published (in 1985), leaving the game in a partially-overhauled state. Gamers were given little to no practical advice on how to convert their existing characters to the new rules, and TSR never published any further products using the "Zebulon's" concepts.
Wizards of the Coast published many of the races originally found in "Star Frontiers" in their "d20 Future" supplement for d20 Modern.
A version of the setting called "Star Law", which uses the d20 system rules was published as an alternate campaign setting in the d20 Future book. It uses the species names of Vrusk, Dralasite, Sathar, and Yazirian, but is not actually the "Star Frontiers" setting.
Andy Slack reviewed "Star Frontiers" for "White Dwarf" #37, giving it an overall rating of 7 out of 10, and stated that "Unfortunately, I can't say the system struck me as especially realistic; but if you like action adventure, thinking with your fists, and "Star Wars" (and who doesn't from time to time) you can have a lot of fun with this game."
William A. Barton reviewed "Star Frontiers" in "The Space Gamer" No. 60. Barton commented that ""Star Frontiers" probably isn't going to lose TSR any money. But I wish there were a lot more to commend it than that."
Jim Bambra reviewed "Star Frontiers" for "Imagine" magazine, and said that "In summary, the "Starfrontiers" game is an excellent introduction to Sci Fi gaming, a game I heartily recommend to beginners and experienced gamers. A lot of expertise has gone into the designing of this product and the result is a very enjoyable and easy to learn game." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27762 |
Structuralism
In sociology, anthropology, and linguistics, structuralism is the methodology that implies elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader, overarching system or structure. It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel. Alternatively, as summarized by philosopher Simon Blackburn, structuralism is "the belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract structure".
Structuralism in Europe developed in the early 1900s, mainly in France and Russian Empire, in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague, Moscow and Copenhagen schools of linguistics. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when structural linguistics were facing serious challenges from thinkers and philosophers such as Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance, an array of scholars in the humanities borrowed Saussure's concepts for use in their respective fields of study. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was arguably the first such scholar, sparking a widespread interest in structuralism.
The structuralist mode of reasoning has been applied in a diverse range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary criticism, economics and architecture. The most prominent thinkers associated with structuralism include Claude Lévi-Strauss, linguist Roman Jakobson, and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. As an intellectual movement, structuralism was initially presumed to be the heir apparent to existentialism. However, by the late 1960s, many of structuralism's basic tenets came under attack from a new wave of predominantly French intellectuals such as the philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, the philosopher Jacques Derrida, the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, and the literary critic Roland Barthes. Though elements of their work necessarily relate to structuralism and are informed by it, these theorists have generally been referred to as post-structuralists. In the 1970s, structuralism was criticized for its rigidity and ahistoricism. Despite this, many of structuralism's proponents, such as Lacan, continue to assert an influence on continental philosophy and many of the fundamental assumptions of some of structuralism's post-structuralist critics are a continuation of structuralism.
The term "structuralism" in reference to social science first appeared in the works of French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who gave rise in France to the structuralist movement, influencing the thinking of other writers such as Louis Althusser, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, as well as the structural Marxism of Nicos Poulantzas, most of whom disavowed themselves as being a part of this movement.
The origins of structuralism connect with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure on linguistics, which has roots in Panini's Grammar, along with the linguistics of the Prague and Moscow schools. In brief, Saussure's structural linguistics propounded three related concepts.
Proponents of structuralism would argue that a specific domain of culture may be understood by means of a structure—modelled on language—that is distinct both from the organizations of reality and those of ideas or the imagination—the "third order". In Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, for example, the structural order of "the Symbolic" is distinguished both from "the Real" and "the Imaginary"; similarly, in Althusser's Marxist theory, the structural order of the capitalist mode of production is distinct both from the actual, real agents involved in its relations and from the ideological forms in which those relations are understood.
Blending Freud and Saussure, the French (post)structuralist Jacques Lacan applied structuralism to psychoanalysis and, in a different way, Jean Piaget applied structuralism to the study of psychology. But Jean Piaget, who would better define himself as constructivist, considers structuralism as "a method and not a doctrine" because for him "there exists no structure without a construction, abstract or genetic".
Although the French theorist Louis Althusser is often associated with a brand of structural social analysis which helped give rise to "structural Marxism", such association was contested by Althusser himself in the Italian foreword to the second edition of "Reading Capital". In this foreword Althusser states the following:
Despite the precautions we took to distinguish ourselves from the 'structuralist' ideology ..., despite the decisive intervention of categories foreign to 'structuralism' ..., the terminology we employed was too close in many respects to the 'structuralist' terminology not to give rise to an ambiguity. With a very few exceptions ... our interpretation of Marx has generally been recognized and judged, in homage to the current fashion, as 'structuralist'... We believe that despite the terminological ambiguity, the profound tendency of our texts was not attached to the 'structuralist' ideology.
In a later development, feminist theorist Alison Assiter enumerated four ideas that she says are common to the various forms of structuralism. First, that a structure determines the position of each element of a whole. Second, that every system has a structure. Third, structural laws deal with co-existence rather than change. Fourth, structures are the "real things" that lie beneath the surface or the appearance of meaning.
In "Course in General Linguistics" the analysis focuses not on the "use" of language (called ""parole"", or speech), but rather on the underlying system of language (called ""langue""). This approach examines how the elements of language relate to each other in the present, synchronically rather than diachronically. Saussure argued that linguistic signs were composed of two parts:
This was quite different from previous approaches that focused on the relationship between words and the things in the world that they designate. Other key notions in structural linguistics include paradigm, syntagm, and value (though these notions were not fully developed in Saussure's thought). A structural "idealism" is a class of linguistic units (lexemes, morphemes or even constructions) that are possible in a certain position in a given linguistic environment (such as a given sentence), which is called the "syntagm". The different functional role of each of these members of the paradigm is called "value" ("" in French).
Saussure's "Course" influenced many linguists between World War I and World War II. In the United States, for instance, Leonard Bloomfield developed his own version of structural linguistics, as did Louis Hjelmslev in Denmark and Alf Sommerfelt in Norway. In France Antoine Meillet and Émile Benveniste continued Saussure's project, and members of the Prague school of linguistics such as Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy conducted research that would be greatly influential. However, by the 1950s Saussure's linguistic concepts were under heavy criticism and were soon largely abandoned by practicing linguists:
Saussure's views are not held, so far as I know, by modern linguists, only by literary critics and the occasional philosopher. [Strict adherence to Saussure] has elicited wrong film and literary theory on a grand scale. One can find dozens of books of literary theory bogged down in signifiers and signifieds, but only a handful that refer to Chomsky.
The clearest and most important example of Prague school structuralism lies in phonemics. Rather than simply compiling a list of which sounds occur in a language, the Prague school sought to examine how they were related. They determined that the inventory of sounds in a language could be analysed in terms of a series of contrasts. Thus in English the sounds /p/ and /b/ represent distinct phonemes because there are cases (minimal pairs) where the contrast between the two is the only difference between two distinct words (e.g. 'pat' and 'bat'). Analyzing sounds in terms of contrastive features also opens up comparative scope—it makes clear, for instance, that the difficulty Japanese speakers have differentiating /r/ and /l/ in English and other languages is because these sounds are not contrastive in Japanese. Phonology would become the paradigmatic basis for structuralism in a number of different fields.
According to structural theory in anthropology and social anthropology, meaning is produced and reproduced within a culture through various practices, phenomena and activities that serve as systems of signification. A structuralist approach may study activities as diverse as food-preparation and serving rituals, religious rites, games, literary and non-literary texts, and other forms of entertainment to discover the deep structures by which meaning is produced and reproduced within the culture. For example, Lévi-Strauss analysed in the 1950s cultural phenomena including mythology, kinship (the alliance theory and the incest taboo), and food preparation. In addition to these studies, he produced more linguistically focused writings in which he applied Saussure's distinction between "langue" and "parole" in his search for the fundamental structures of the human mind, arguing that the structures that form the "deep grammar" of society originate in the mind and operate in people unconsciously. Lévi-Strauss took inspiration from mathematics.
Another concept used in structural anthropology came from the Prague school of linguistics, where Roman Jakobson and others analysed sounds based on the presence or absence of certain features (such as voiceless vs. voiced). Lévi-Strauss included this in his conceptualization of the universal structures of the mind, which he held to operate based on pairs of binary oppositions such as hot-cold, male-female, culture-nature, cooked-raw, or marriageable vs. tabooed women.
A third influence came from Marcel Mauss (1872–1950), who had written on gift-exchange systems. Based on Mauss, for instance, Lévi-Strauss argued that kinship systems are based on the exchange of women between groups (a position known as 'alliance theory') as opposed to the 'descent'-based theory described by Edward Evans-Pritchard and Meyer Fortes. While replacing Marcel Mauss at his "Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes" chair, Lévi-Strauss' writing became widely popular in the 1960s and 1970s and gave rise to the term "structuralism" itself.
In Britain, authors such as Rodney Needham and Edmund Leach were highly influenced by structuralism. Authors such as Maurice Godelier and Emmanuel Terray combined Marxism with structural anthropology in France. In the United States, authors such as Marshall Sahlins and James Boon built on structuralism to provide their own analysis of human society. Structural anthropology fell out of favour in the early 1980s for a number of reasons. D'Andrade suggests that this was because it made unverifiable assumptions about the universal structures of the human mind. Authors such as Eric Wolf argued that political economy and colonialism should be at the forefront of anthropology. More generally, criticisms of structuralism by Pierre Bourdieu led to a concern with how cultural and social structures were changed by human agency and practice, a trend which Sherry Ortner has referred to as 'practice theory'.
One example is Learning Capitalist Culture where Douglas E. Foley applies a mixture of structural and Marxist theorys to his ethnographic fieldwork among high schoolers in Texas. Foley analyzes how the high school reaches a shared goal through the lens of social solidarity when he observes "Mexicanos" and "Anglo-Americans" come together on the same football team to defeat the school's rivals. However, he also continually applies a marxist lens and states that he," wanted to wow peers with a new cultural marxist theory of schooling."
Some anthropological theorists, however, while finding considerable fault with Lévi-Strauss's version of structuralism, did not turn away from a fundamental structural basis for human culture. The Biogenetic Structuralism group for instance argued that some kind of structural foundation for culture must exist because all humans inherit the same system of brain structures. They proposed a kind of neuroanthropology which would lay the foundations for a more complete scientific account of cultural similarity and variation by requiring an integration of cultural anthropology and neuroscience—a program that theorists such as Victor Turner also embraced.
In literary theory, structuralist criticism relates literary texts to a larger structure, which may be a particular genre, a range of intertextual connections, a model of a universal narrative structure, or a system of recurrent patterns or motifs. The field of structuralist semiotics argues that there must be a structure in every text, which explains why it is easier for experienced readers than for non-experienced readers to interpret a text. Hence, everything that is written seems to be governed by specific rules, or a "grammar of literature", that one learns in educational institutions and that are to be unmasked.
A potential problem of structuralist interpretation is that it can be highly reductive, as scholar Catherine Belsey puts it: "the structuralist danger of collapsing all difference." An example of such a reading might be if a student concludes the authors of "West Side Story" did not write anything "really" new, because their work has the same structure as Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". In both texts a girl and a boy fall in love (a "formula" with a symbolic operator between them would be "Boy + Girl") despite the fact that they belong to two groups that hate each other ("Boy's Group - Girl's Group" or "Opposing forces") and conflict is resolved by their death. Structuralist readings focus on how the structures of the single text resolve inherent narrative tensions. If a structuralist reading focuses on multiple texts, there must be some way in which those texts unify themselves into a coherent system. The versatility of structuralism is such that a literary critic could make the same claim about a story of two "friendly" families ("Boy's Family + Girl's Family") that arrange a marriage between their children despite the fact that the children hate each other ("Boy - Girl") and then the children commit suicide to escape the arranged marriage; the justification is that the second story's structure is an 'inversion' of the first story's structure: the relationship between the values of love and the two pairs of parties involved have been reversed.
Structuralistic literary criticism argues that the "literary banter of a text" can lie only in new structure, rather than in the specifics of character development and voice in which that structure is expressed. Literary structuralism often follows the lead of Vladimir Propp, Algirdas Julien Greimas, and Claude Lévi-Strauss in seeking out basic deep elements in stories, myths, and more recently, anecdotes, which are combined in various ways to produce the many versions of the ur-story or ur-myth.
There is considerable similarity between structural literary theory and Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism, which is also indebted to the anthropological study of myths. Some critics have also tried to apply the theory to individual works, but the effort to find unique structures in individual literary works runs counter to the structuralist program and has an affinity with New Criticism.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, existentialism, such as that propounded by Jean-Paul Sartre, was the dominant European intellectual movement. Structuralism rose to prominence in France in the wake of existentialism, particularly in the 1960s. The initial popularity of structuralism in France led to its spread across the globe.
Structuralism rejected the concept of human freedom and choice and focused instead on the way that human experience and thus, behaviour, is determined by various structures. The most important initial work on this score was Claude Lévi-Strauss's 1949 volume "The Elementary Structures of Kinship". Lévi-Strauss had known Roman Jakobson during their time together at the New School in New York during WWII and was influenced by both Jakobson's structuralism as well as the American anthropological tradition. In "Elementary Structures" he examined kinship systems from a structural point of view and demonstrated how apparently different social organizations were in fact different permutations of a few basic kinship structures. In the late 1950s he published "Structural Anthropology", a collection of essays outlining his program for structuralism.
By the early 1960s structuralism as a movement was coming into its own and some believed that it offered a single unified approach to human life that would embrace all disciplines. Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida focused on how structuralism could be applied to literature.
The so-called "Gang of Four" of structuralism was Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Barthes, and Foucault.
Structuralism is less popular today than other approaches, such as post-structuralism and deconstruction. Structuralism has often been criticized for being ahistorical and for favouring deterministic structural forces over the ability of people to act. As the political turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s (and particularly the student uprisings of May 1968) began affecting academia, issues of power and political struggle moved to the center of people's attention.
In the 1980s, deconstruction—and its emphasis on the fundamental ambiguity of language rather than its crystalline logical structure—became popular. By the end of the century structuralism was seen as an historically important school of thought, but the movements that it spawned, rather than structuralism itself, commanded attention.
Several social thinkers and academics have strongly criticized structuralism or even dismissed it "in toto". The French hermeneutic philosopher Paul Ricœur (1969) criticized Lévi-Strauss for constantly overstepping the limits of validity of the structuralist approach, ending up in what Ricœur described as "a Kantianism without a transcendental subject". Anthropologist Adam Kuper (1973) argued that "'Structuralism' came to have something of the momentum of a millennial movement and some of its adherents felt that they formed a secret society of the seeing in a world of the blind. Conversion was not just a matter of accepting a new paradigm. It was, almost, a question of salvation." Philip Noel Pettit (1975) called for an abandoning of "the positivist dream which Lévi-Strauss dreamed for semiology" arguing that semiology is not to be placed among the natural sciences. Cornelius Castoriadis (1975) criticized structuralism as failing to explain symbolic mediation in the social world; he viewed structuralism as a variation on the "logicist" theme, and he argued that, contrary to what structuralists advocate, language—and symbolic systems in general—cannot be reduced to logical organizations on the basis of the binary logic of oppositions. Critical theorist Jürgen Habermas (1985) accused structuralists, such as Foucault, of being positivists; he remarked that while Foucault is not an ordinary positivist, he nevertheless paradoxically uses the tools of science to criticize science (see "Performative contradiction" and "Foucault–Habermas debate"). Sociologist Anthony Giddens (1993) is another notable critic; while Giddens draws on a range of structuralist themes in his theorizing, he dismisses the structuralist view that the reproduction of social systems is merely "a mechanical outcome". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27763 |
Systems engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinking principles to organize this body of knowledge. The individual outcome of such efforts, an engineered system, can be defined as a combination of components that work in synergy to collectively perform a useful function.
Issues such as requirements engineering, reliability, logistics, coordination of different teams, testing and evaluation, maintainability and many other disciplines necessary for successful system design, development, implementation, and ultimate decommission become more difficult when dealing with large or complex projects. Systems engineering deals with work-processes, optimization methods, and risk management tools in such projects. It overlaps technical and human-centered disciplines such as industrial engineering, process systems engineering, mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering, control engineering, software engineering, electrical engineering, cybernetics, aerospace engineering, organizational studies, civil engineering and project management. Systems engineering ensures that all likely aspects of a project or system are considered, and integrated into a whole.
The systems engineering process is a discovery process that is quite unlike a manufacturing process. A manufacturing process is focused on repetitive activities that achieve high quality outputs with minimum cost and time. The systems engineering process must begin by discovering the real problems that need to be resolved, and identifying the most probable or highest impact failures that can occur – systems engineering involves finding solutions to these problems.
The term "systems engineering" can be traced back to Bell Telephone Laboratories in the 1940s. The need to identify and manipulate the properties of a system as a whole, which in complex engineering projects may greatly differ from the sum of the parts' properties, motivated various industries, especially those developing systems for the U.S. Military, to apply the discipline.
When it was no longer possible to rely on design evolution to improve upon a system and the existing tools were not sufficient to meet growing demands, new methods began to be developed that addressed the complexity directly. The continuing evolution of systems engineering comprises the development and identification of new methods and modeling techniques. These methods aid in a better comprehension of the design and developmental control of engineering systems as they grow more complex. Popular tools that are often used in the systems engineering context were developed during these times, including USL, UML, QFD, and IDEF0.
In 1990, a professional society for systems engineering, the "National Council on Systems Engineering" (NCOSE), was founded by representatives from a number of U.S. corporations and organizations. NCOSE was created to address the need for improvements in systems engineering practices and education. As a result of growing involvement from systems engineers outside of the U.S., the name of the organization was changed to the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) in 1995. Schools in several countries offer graduate programs in systems engineering, and continuing education options are also available for practicing engineers.
Systems engineering signifies only an approach and, more recently, a discipline in engineering. The aim of education in systems engineering is to formalize various approaches simply and in doing so, identify new methods and research opportunities similar to that which occurs in other fields of engineering. As an approach, systems engineering is holistic and interdisciplinary in flavour.
The traditional scope of engineering embraces the conception, design, development, production and operation of physical systems. Systems engineering, as originally conceived, falls within this scope. "Systems engineering", in this sense of the term, refers to the building of engineering concepts.
The use of the term "systems engineer" has evolved over time to embrace a wider, more holistic concept of "systems" and of engineering processes. This evolution of the definition has been a subject of ongoing controversy, and the term continues to apply to both the narrower and broader scope.
Traditional systems engineering was seen as a branch of engineering in the classical sense, that is, as applied only to physical systems, such as spacecraft and aircraft. More recently, systems engineering has evolved to a take on a broader meaning especially when humans were seen as an essential component of a system. Checkland, for example, captures the broader meaning of systems engineering by stating that 'engineering' "can be read in its general sense; you can engineer a meeting or a political agreement."
Consistent with the broader scope of systems engineering, the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) has defined three types of systems engineering: (1) Product Systems Engineering (PSE) is the traditional systems engineering focused on the design of physical systems consisting of hardware and software. (2) Enterprise Systems Engineering (ESE) pertains to the view of enterprises, that is, organizations or combinations of organizations, as systems. (3) Service Systems Engineering (SSE) has to do with the engineering of service systems. Checkland defines a service system as a system which is conceived as serving another system. Most civil infrastructure systems are service systems.
Systems engineering focuses on analyzing and eliciting customer needs and required functionality early in the development cycle, documenting requirements, then proceeding with design synthesis and system validation while considering the complete problem, the system lifecycle. This includes fully understanding all of the stakeholders involved. Oliver et al. claim that the systems engineering process can be decomposed into
Within Oliver's model, the goal of the Management Process is to organize the technical effort in the lifecycle, while the Technical Process includes "assessing available information", "defining effectiveness measures", to "create a behavior model", "create a structure model", "perform trade-off analysis", and "create sequential build & test plan".
Depending on their application, although there are several models that are used in the industry, all of them aim to identify the relation between the various stages mentioned above and incorporate feedback. Examples of such models include the Waterfall model and the VEE model.
System development often requires contribution from diverse technical disciplines. By providing a systems (holistic) view of the development effort, systems engineering helps mold all the technical contributors into a unified team effort, forming a structured development process that proceeds from concept to production to operation and, in some cases, to termination and disposal. In an acquisition, the holistic integrative discipline combines contributions and balances tradeoffs among cost, schedule, and performance while maintaining an acceptable level of risk covering the entire life cycle of the item.
This perspective is often replicated in educational programs, in that systems engineering courses are taught by faculty from other engineering departments, which helps create an interdisciplinary environment.
The need for systems engineering arose with the increase in complexity of systems and projects, in turn exponentially increasing the possibility of component friction, and therefore the unreliability of the design. When speaking in this context, complexity incorporates not only engineering systems, but also the logical human organization of data. At the same time, a system can become more complex due to an increase in size as well as with an increase in the amount of data, variables, or the number of fields that are involved in the design. The International Space Station is an example of such a system.
The development of smarter control algorithms, microprocessor design, and analysis of environmental systems also come within the purview of systems engineering. Systems engineering encourages the use of tools and methods to better comprehend and manage complexity in systems. Some examples of these tools can be seen here:
Taking an interdisciplinary approach to engineering systems is inherently complex since the behavior of and interaction among system components is not always immediately well defined or understood. Defining and characterizing such systems and subsystems and the interactions among them is one of the goals of systems engineering. In doing so, the gap that exists between informal requirements from users, operators, marketing organizations, and technical specifications is successfully bridged.
One way to understand the motivation behind systems engineering is to see it as a method, or practice, to identify and improve common rules that exist within a wide variety of systems. Keeping this in mind, the principles of systems engineering – holism, emergent behavior, boundary, et al. – can be applied to any system, complex or otherwise, provided systems thinking is employed at all levels. Besides defense and aerospace, many information and technology based companies, software development firms, and industries in the field of electronics & communications require systems engineers as part of their team.
An analysis by the INCOSE Systems Engineering center of excellence (SECOE) indicates that optimal effort spent on systems engineering is about 15–20% of the total project effort. At the same time, studies have shown that systems engineering essentially leads to reduction in costs among other benefits. However, no quantitative survey at a larger scale encompassing a wide variety of industries has been conducted until recently. Such studies are underway to determine the effectiveness and quantify the benefits of systems engineering.
Systems engineering encourages the use of modeling and simulation to validate assumptions or theories on systems and the interactions within them.
Use of methods that allow early detection of possible failures, in safety engineering, are integrated into the design process. At the same time, decisions made at the beginning of a project whose consequences are not clearly understood can have enormous implications later in the life of a system, and it is the task of the modern systems engineer to explore these issues and make critical decisions. No method guarantees today's decisions will still be valid when a system goes into service years or decades after first conceived. However, there are techniques that support the process of systems engineering. Examples include soft systems methodology, Jay Wright Forrester's System dynamics method, and the Unified Modeling Language (UML)—all currently being explored, evaluated, and developed to support the engineering decision process.
Education in systems engineering is often seen as an extension to the regular engineering courses, reflecting the industry attitude that engineering students need a foundational background in one of the traditional engineering disciplines (e.g., aerospace engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering, industrial engineering, chemical engineering)—plus practical, real-world experience to be effective as systems engineers. Undergraduate university programs explicitly in systems engineering are growing in number but remain uncommon, the degrees including such material most often presented as a BS in Industrial Engineering. Typically programs (either by themselves or in combination with interdisciplinary study) are offered beginning at the graduate level in both academic and professional tracks, resulting in the grant of either a MS/MEng or Ph.D./EngD degree.
INCOSE, in collaboration with the Systems Engineering Research Center at Stevens Institute of Technology maintains a regularly updated directory of worldwide academic programs at suitably accredited institutions. As of 2017, it lists over 140 universities in North America offering more than 400 undergraduate and graduate programs in systems engineering. Widespread institutional acknowledgment of the field as a distinct subdiscipline is quite recent; the 2009 edition of the same publication reported the number of such schools and programs at only 80 and 165, respectively.
Education in systems engineering can be taken as "Systems-centric" or "Domain-centric":
Both of these patterns strive to educate the systems engineer who is able to oversee interdisciplinary projects with the depth required of a core-engineer.
Systems engineering tools are strategies, procedures, and techniques that aid in performing systems engineering on a project or product. The purpose of these tools vary from database management, graphical browsing, simulation, and reasoning, to document production, neutral import/export and more.
There are many definitions of what a system is in the field of systems engineering. Below are a few authoritative definitions:
The systems engineering process encompasses all creative, manual and technical activities necessary to define the product and which need to be carried out to convert a system definition to a sufficiently detailed system design specification for product manufacture and deployment. Design and development of a system can be divided into four stages, each with different definitions:
Depending on their application, tools are used for various stages of the systems engineering process:
Models play important and diverse roles in systems engineering. A model can be defined in several
ways, including:
Together, these definitions are broad enough to encompass physical engineering models used in the verification of a system design, as well as schematic models like a functional flow block diagram and mathematical (i.e., quantitative) models used in the trade study process. This section focuses on the last.
The main reason for using mathematical models and diagrams in trade studies is to provide estimates of system effectiveness, performance or technical attributes, and cost from a set of known or estimable quantities. Typically, a collection of separate models is needed to provide all of these outcome variables. The heart of any mathematical model is a set of meaningful quantitative relationships among its inputs and outputs. These relationships can be as simple as adding up constituent quantities to obtain a total, or as complex as a set of differential equations describing the trajectory of a spacecraft in a gravitational field. Ideally, the relationships express causality, not just correlation. Furthermore, key to successful systems engineering activities are also the methods with which these models are efficiently and effectively managed and used to simulate the systems. However, diverse domains often present recurring problems of modeling and simulation for systems engineering, and new advancements are aiming to crossfertilize methods among distinct scientific and engineering communities, under the title of 'Modeling & Simulation-based Systems Engineering'.
Initially, when the primary purpose of a systems engineer is to comprehend a complex problem, graphic representations of a system are used to communicate a system's functional and data requirements. Common graphical representations include:
A graphical representation relates the various subsystems or parts of a system through functions, data, or interfaces. Any or each of the above methods are used in an industry based on its requirements. For instance, the N2 chart may be used where interfaces between systems is important. Part of the design phase is to create structural and behavioral models of the system.
Once the requirements are understood, it is now the responsibility of a systems engineer to refine them, and to determine, along with other engineers, the best technology for a job. At this point starting with a trade study, systems engineering encourages the use of weighted choices to determine the best option. A decision matrix, or Pugh method, is one way (QFD is another) to make this choice while considering all criteria that are important. The trade study in turn informs the design, which again affects graphic representations of the system (without changing the requirements). In an SE process, this stage represents the iterative step that is carried out until a feasible solution is found. A decision matrix is often populated using techniques such as statistical analysis, reliability analysis, system dynamics (feedback control), and optimization methods.
Systems Modeling Language (SysML), a modeling language used for systems engineering applications, supports the specification, analysis, design, verification and validation of a broad range of complex systems.
Lifecycle Modeling Language (LML), is an open-standard modeling language designed for systems engineering that supports the full lifecycle: conceptual, utilization, support and retirement stages.
Many related fields may be considered tightly coupled to systems engineering. The following areas have contributed to the development of systems engineering as a distinct entity: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27764 |
Sam & Max
Sam & Max is a media franchise focusing on the titular fictional characters, the Freelance Police. The characters, who occupy a universe that parodies American popular culture, were created by Steve Purcell in his youth, and later debuted in a 1987 comic book series. The characters have since been the subject of a graphic adventure video game developed by LucasArts, a produced for Fox in cooperation with Nelvana Limited, and a series of episodic adventure games developed by Telltale Games. In addition, a variety of machinima and a webcomic have been produced for the series.
The characters are a pair of anthropomorphic, vigilante private investigators based in a dilapidated office block in New York City. Sam is a six-foot-tall dog who wears a suit and a fedora, while Max is a short and aggressive "hyperkinetic rabbity thing". Both enjoy solving problems and cases as maniacally as possible, often with complete disregard for the law. Driving a seemingly indestructible black-and-white 1960 DeSoto Adventurer, the pair travel to many contemporary and historical locations to fight crime, including the Moon, Ancient Egypt, the White House and the Philippines, as well as several fictitious locations.
The series has been very successful despite its relatively limited amount of media, and has gathered a significant fan base. However, the franchise did not gain more widespread recognition until after the 1993 release of LucasArts' "Sam & Max Hit the Road", which cultivated interest in Purcell's original comics. "Sam & Max Hit the Road" is regarded as an exceptional adventure game and an iconic classic of computer gaming in the 1990s. Subsequent video games and the television series have also fared well with both critics and fans; critics consider the episodic video games to be the first successful application of the episodic distribution model.
The idea of "Sam & Max" originated with Steve Purcell's younger brother, Dave, who invented the concept of a comic about a detective team consisting of a dog and a rabbit in his youth. Dave often left the comics around the house, so Steve, in a case of sibling rivalry, often finished the incomplete stories in parodies of their original form, deliberately making the characters mix up each other's names, over-explain things, shoot at each other and mock the way in which they had been drawn, as "kind of a parody of the way a kid talks when he's writing comics". Over time, this developed from Steve merely mocking his brother's work to him creating his own full stories with the characters. Ultimately, in the late 1970s, Dave Purcell gave Steve the rights to the characters, signing them over in a contract on Steve's birthday and allowing him to develop the characters in his own way. In 1980, Purcell began to produce "Sam & Max" comic strips for the weekly newsletter of the California College of Arts and Crafts. While the visual appearance of the characters had not yet been fully developed, the stories were similar in style to those that followed when Purcell was offered by "Fish Police" author Steven Moncuse the chance to publish his work properly in 1987.
Many aspects of the "Sam & Max" comics were influenced by Purcell's own experiences. Rats and cockroaches are common throughout the franchise, the former inspired by Purcell's pet rat. In another example, Sam and Max are occasionally shown playing a game called "fizzball", in which the object of the exercise is to hit a can of beer in mid-air with a solid axe handle. Purcell had previously invented the game with his friends, including fellow comic book writers Art Adams and Mike Mignola.
Sam is a laid-back but enthusiastic, brown-coated anthropomorphic Irish Wolfhound, described as a "canine shamus". He wears either a gray or blue suit with a matching fedora, to make people more cooperative when conversing with a six-foot talking dog. A warped sense of justice makes Sam the more passionate of the pair for their police work, only held back from taking his job seriously by Max. Nevertheless, he enjoys the mannerisms and dress that come with their line of work. Sam possesses near encyclopedic amounts of knowledge, particularly on obscure topics, and is prone to long-winded sentences filled with elaborate terminology. Although he is always keen to display this information—regardless of its accuracy—Sam can be capable of total ignorance towards more practical matters; for instance, despite his regard for his DeSoto Adventurer, he is severely negligent with the car's maintenance. Sam still retains various doglike qualities: he is excitable, enthusiastic but also susceptible to emotions of embarrassment and guilt. Nevertheless, Sam is "not above sticking his head out the car window and letting his tongue flap in the breeze". Sam rarely loses his temper, and is able to react to panic-inducing situations with extreme calm. When he does get angry, Sam tends to react in a violent, uncharacteristically savage manner, in which case it is usually Max that calms him down and prevents him from acting upon his anger. Sam usually is armed with an oversized .44 revolver. Sam is voiced by Bill Farmer in "Sam & Max Hit the Road", Harvey Atkin in the animated series and David Nowlin in Telltale's games.
Max is an anthropomorphic "hyperkinetic, three-foot rabbity thing" with white fur, but prefers being called a lagomorph. Max retains few characteristics consistent with a rabbit, with permanently rigid ears set in an excited posture and a huge jaw normally stuck in a crazed grin. Unhinged, uninhibited and near psychotic, Max enjoys violence and tends to prefer the aggressive way of solving problems, seeing the world as little more than a vessel for his "pinball-like stream of consciousness". This creates a seeming disregard for self-preservation; Max will revel in dangerous situations with little impression that he understands the risks he faces. As a result, Max is usually enthusiastic to engage in any activity, including being used by Sam as a cable cutter or an impromptu bludgeon. Despite this, Max possesses a sharp mind and an observational nature, and enjoys interpreting new experiences in as unpredictable a manner as possible. However, Max has a distaste for long stories and occasionally loses focus during lengthy scenes of plot exposition; by his own admission, Max possesses a particularly short attention span. Despite his seemingly heartless personality, he believes strongly in protecting Sam. However, Max can still act violently towards his friend, stating that when he dies he will take Sam with him. Moreover, Max is extremely possessive of Sam and their status as partners and best friends. Max traditionally carries a Luger pistol, but as he wears no clothes, other characters often make comments as to where Max keeps it on his person. Purcell considers Max to be representative of pure id, the uncoordinated instinctual trends of the human psyche. Max's voice is provided by Nick Jameson in "Sam & Max Hit the Road" and by Rob Tinkler in the animated series. Andrew Chaikin originally voiced Max in the first episode of Telltale's games before being replaced by William Kasten, while Dave Boat voices the character "Poker Night 2".
Sam and Max debuted in the 1987 comic book series "Sam & Max: Freelance Police", published by Fishwrap Productions, also the publisher of "Fish Police". The first comic, "Monkeys Violating the Heavenly Temple", was Steve Purcell's first full story. The comic came about after Purcell agreed to create a full "Sam & Max" story for publication alongside Steve Moncuse's "Fish Police" series. "Monkeys Violating the Heavenly Temple" established many of the key features in the series; the main story of the comic saw the Freelance Police journey to the Philippines to stop a volcano god cult. "Night of the Gilded Heron-Shark" and "Night of the Cringing Wildebeest" accompanied the main story, focusing on a stand-off with a group of gangsters in Sam and Max's office and an investigation into a carnival refreshment booth respectively.
Over the subsequent years, several other comics were published, often by different publishers, including and Epic Comics. "Fair Wind to Java" was originally published in 1988 as a Munden's Bar story in the pages of First Comics' "Grimjack", featuring the Freelance Police fighting pyramid-building aliens in Ancient Egypt, and was followed in 1989 by "On the Road", a three chapter story showing what Sam and Max do on vacation. In 1990, a Christmas themed story, "The Damned Don't Dance" was released. 1992 saw the release of a further two comics; "Bad Day On The Moon" took the Freelance Police to deal with a roach infestation bothering giant rats on the Moon, and was later adapted as a story for the animated TV series, whilst "Beast From The Cereal Aisle" focused on the duo conducting an exorcism at the local supermarket. Two more comics were produced in 1997, "The Kids Take Over" and "Belly Of The Beast". The former has Sam and Max wake up from cryogenic sleep to discover that the entire world is now ruled by children while the latter sees the Freelance Police confronting a vampire abducting children at Halloween.
Purcell joined LucasArts in 1988 as an artist and game designer, where he was approached about contributing to LucasArts' new quarterly newsletter, "The Adventurer", a publication designed to inform customers about upcoming LucasArts games and company news. From its debut issue in 1990 to 1996, Purcell created twelve comic strips for the newsletter. The strips portrayed a variety of stories, from similar plots as in the comic books to parodies of LucasArts games such as "Monkey Island" and "Full Throttle" and the Lucasfilm franchises "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones".
In 1995, all of the comics and "The Adventurer" strips published to that date were released in a compilation, "Sam & Max: Surfin' the Highway". Published by Marlowe & Company, the 154 page book was updated and republished in 1996. This original version of "Surfin' the Highway" went out of print in 1997, becoming a high priced collectors item sold through services such as eBay. In 2007, a 197-page twenty-year anniversary edition, containing all printed comics and strips as well as a variety of other artwork, was co-designed by Steve Purcell and Jake Rodkin and published by Telltale Games. This second publication received an Eisner Award nomination for "Best Graphic Album – Reprint" in 2009.
In December 2005, Purcell started a "Sam & Max" webcomic, hosted on the website of Telltale Games. Entitled "The Big Sleep", the webcomic began with Sam and Max bursting out of their graves at Kilpeck Church in England, symbolizing the Freelance Police's return after nearly a decade. In the twelve page story, Max has to save Sam after earwigs start a colony in Sam's brain. The webcomic concluded in April 2007, and was later awarded the Eisner Award for "Best Digital Comic" of 2007.
Following LucasArts' employment of Purcell in 1988, the characters of Sam and Max appeared in internal testing material for new SCUMM engine programmers; Purcell created animated versions of the characters and an office backdrop for the programmers to practice on. In 1992, LucasArts offered Purcell the chance to create a video game out of the characters, out of a wish to use new characters after the success of its two other main adventure titles, "Monkey Island" and "Maniac Mansion", and after a positive reaction from fans to the "Sam & Max" comic strips featured in LucasArts' "The Adventurer" newsletter. Consequently, development on a graphic adventure game, "Sam & Max Hit the Road", began shortly after. Based on the SCUMM engine and designed by Sean Clark, Michael Stemmle, Steve Purcell and his future wife Collette Michaud, the game was partially based on the 1989 comic "On The Road", and featured the Freelance Police travelling across America in search of an escaped bigfoot. Sam was voiced in the game by comedian Bill Farmer, while actor Nick Jameson voiced Max. "Sam & Max Hit the Road" was originally released for DOS in November 1993. Soon after "Sam & Max Hit the Road", another "Sam & Max" game using SCUMM entered planning under Purcell and Dave Grossman, but was abandoned. In a later interview Grossman described this sequel's highlight as "a giant spaceship shaped like Max's head".
In September 2001 development began on a new project, "Sam & Max Plunge Through Space". The game was to be an Xbox exclusive title, developed by Infinite Machine, a small company consisting of a number of former LucasArts employees. The story of the game was developed by Purcell and fellow designer Chuck Jordan and involved the Freelance Police travelling the galaxy to find a stolen Statue of Liberty. However, Infinite Machine went bankrupt within a year, partially due to the failure of their first game, "New Legends", and the project was abandoned.
At the 2002 Electronic Entertainment Expo convention, nearly a decade after the release of "Sam & Max Hit the Road", LucasArts announced the production of a PC sequel, entitled "Sam & Max: Freelance Police". "Freelance Police", like "Hit the Road", was to be a point-and-click graphic adventure game, using a new 3D game engine. Development of "Freelance Police" was led by Michael Stemmle. Steve Purcell contributed to the project by writing the story and producing concept art. Farmer and Jameson were also set to reprise their voice acting roles. In March 2004, however, quite far into the game's development, "Sam & Max: Freelance Police" was abruptly cancelled by LucasArts, citing "current market place realities and underlying economic considerations" in a short press release. The fan reaction to the cancellation was strong; a petition of 32,000 signatures stating the disappointment of fans was later presented to LucasArts.
After LucasArts' license with Steve Purcell expired in 2005, the "Sam & Max" franchise moved to Telltale Games, a company of former LucasArts employees who had worked on a number of LucasArts adventure games, including on the development of "Freelance Police". Under Telltale Games, a new episodic series of "Sam & Max" video games was announced. Like both "Sam & Max Hit the Road" and "Freelance Police", "Sam & Max Save the World" was in a point-and-click graphic adventure game format. The game used a new 3D game engine, different from the one used in "Freelance Police". The first season ran for six episodes, each with a self-contained storyline but with an overall story arc involving hypnotism running through the series. The first episode was released on GameTap in October 2006, with episodes following regularly until April 2007. Sam is voiced by David Nowlin, while Max is voiced by William Kasten in all episodes except the first one, where Andrew Chaikin voices the character. In addition, Telltale Games produced fifteen machinima shorts to accompany the main episodes. These shorts were released in groups of three in between the release of each episode, showing the activities of the Freelance Police in between each story.
A second season of episodic video games developed by Telltale Games was announced in July 2007. "Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space" followed the same overall format as "Save the World", with each episode having an overarching storyline involving time travel and laundering of the souls of the dead. As with "Save the World", episodes were originally published on GameTap before being made available for general release. The season consisted of five episodes and ran from November 2007 to April 2008. Nowlin and Kasten both returned to reprise their voice roles. In addition to the main games, a twenty-minute machinima video was produced, taking the form of a "Sam & Max" Christmas special.
A third game entitled "Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse" was confirmed in May 2008 for release in 2009; the title was later pushed back to 2010, with concept art emerging after Telltale's completion of "Tales of Monkey Island". The season again ran for five episodes, released monthly from April to August 2010. "The Devil's Playhouse" followed a structure similar to "'Tales of Monkey Island", with each episode forming a part of an ongoing narrative, involving psychic powers and forces that used them for world domination. A two-minute Flash cartoon also accompanied the game, dealing with the origin story of General Skun-ka'pe, one of the game's antagonists. Max also appears in Telltale's 2010 casual game "Poker Night at the Inventory" alongside Tycho Brahe from "Penny Arcade", the Heavy from "Team Fortress 2" and Strong Bad from "Homestar Runner". Sam and Max (now voiced by Dave Boat) also appear in the game's sequel alongside Claptrap from "Borderlands", Brock Samson from "The Venture Bros.", Ash Williams from "Evil Dead" and GLaDOS from "Portal".
"Sam & Max" were adapted into a cartoon series for Fox in 1997. Produced by Canadian studio Nelvana, the series ran for 24 episodes. Each episode was approximately ten minutes, and were often aired in pairs. Broadcast on Fox Kids in the United States, YTV in Canada, and Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, the first episode was aired on October 4, 1997; the series concluded on April 25, 1998. As opposed to the more adult humor in the rest of the series, "The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police" was aimed more at children, even though some humor in it was often directed at adults. As such, the violence inherent in the franchise is toned down, including removing Sam and Max's guns, and the characters do not use the moderate profanity that they use in their other appearances. As in most "Sam & Max" stories, the series revolves around the Freelance Police accepting missions from their mysterious superior, the commissioner, and embarking on cases to a large variety of implausible locations. Sam is voiced by Harvey Atkin, while Max is voiced by Robert Tinkler. The series performed well and was considered a success, and in 1998 received the Gemini Award for "Best Animated Program or Series". Despite the series' success, a second series was never commissioned. In June 2007, it was reported that Shout! Factory were preparing a DVD release of the series. In October 2007, as part of their marketing for "Sam & Max Save the World", GameTap hosted the series on their website. The DVD release of the series was later published in March 2008.
The "Sam & Max" franchise features a variety of soundtracks that accompany its video game products. This music is mostly grounded in film noir jazz, incorporating various other styles at certain points, such as Dixieland, waltz and mariachi, usually to support the cartoon nature of the series. The first "Sam & Max" game, "Sam & Max Hit the Road", was one of the first games to feature a fully scored music soundtrack, written by LucasArts' composers Clint Bajakian, Michael Land and Peter McConnell. The music was incorporated into the game using Land and McConnell's iMUSE engine, which allowed for audio to be synchronized with the visuals. Although the full soundtrack was never released, audio renders of four of the game's MIDI tracks were included on the CD version of the game.
For "Sam & Max Save the World", "Beyond Time and Space", and "The Devil's Playhouse", Telltale Games contracted composer Jared Emerson-Johnson, a musician whose previous work included composition and sound editing for LucasArts, to write the scores. The soundtracks for the first two games were released in two disc sets after the release of the games themselves; the "Season One Soundtrack" was published in July 2007, whilst the "Season Two Soundtrack" was released in September 2008. Emerson-Johnson's scores use live performances as opposed to synthesized music often used elsewhere in the video game industry. Critics reacted positively to Emerson-Johnson's scores, IGN described Emerson-Johnson's work as a "breath of fresh air", while 1UP.com praised his work as "top-caliber" and Music4Games stated that the "whimsical nature of [the classical jazz approach] is well suited to the "Sam & Max" universe, which approaches American popular culture with a level of irreverence". Purcell later commented that Emerson-Johnson had seamlessly blended a "huge palette of genres and styles", whilst in September 2008, Brendan Q. Ferguson, one of the lead designers on "Save the World" and "Beyond Time and Space", stated that he believed that it was Emerson-Johnson's scores that created the vital atmosphere in the games, noting that prior to the implementation of the soundtracks, playing the games was an "unrelenting horror".
The "Sam & Max" franchise has been highly successful critically, and is considered an iconic and influential aspect of the video game industry in the 1990s and the adventure game genre. In 2007, Steve Purcell wrote that he was somewhat surprised at the success of his creation, noting that the series had gained a large fan gathering despite the small size of the franchise. As the series contains only a small amount of comics, video games and a short TV series, Purcell commented that there was "certainly not enough material to build that relentless traction of an endlessly renewed sitcom or a syndicated comic that has existed since the Korean Conflict". The comics were well received by critics, many praising the humor and style of the stories and characters. However, later commentators have noted that the comic book series did not gain much popularity or recognition until after the release of "Sam & Max Hit the Road" in 1993; the later episodic video games are seen to have revived interest in the comics again, resulting in the creation of the webcomic "The Big Sleep" and publication of an anniversary edition of "Surfin' The Highway".
Upon its release in 1993, "Sam & Max Hit the Road" was met with near universal acclaim. Critics praised the title for its humor, voice acting, graphics, music and gameplay. It has since come to be regarded as a classic graphic adventure game, one of the most critically successful projects by LucasArts to date. "Sam & Max Hit the Road" is regularly featured in lists of top games, and was nominated for the 1994 Annie Award for "Best Animated CD-ROM", although the award instead went to LucasArts' "". The abrupt cancellation of the sequel to "Sam & Max Hit the Road" in 2004 garnered substantial criticism of LucasArts. In addition to a petition of 32,000 signatures objecting to the termination of development on "Sam & Max: Freelance Police", both Steve Purcell and the media were critical of LucasArts' decision. Purcell stated that he failed to understand quite why the game was cancelled, as he believed the development of the game was proceeding without hindrance, while the media put forward the view that LucasArts was moving to consolidate its position with low business risk "Star Wars" video games instead of pursuing the adventure games that had brought them success in earlier years. The cancellation of "Freelance Police" is often cited as the culmination in a perceived decline in the overall adventure game genre, and LucasArts later dismissed many of the designers involved with developing their adventure games, effectively ending their adventure game era.
Although "Sam & Max Save the World" did not receive the critical acclaim that "Sam & Max Hit the Road" acquired, it still received a favorable response from critics across its release in 2006 and 2007. Critics praised the game's humor, graphics and gameplay, although concerns were voiced over the low difficulty of the puzzles and the effectiveness of the story. "Save the World" is considered by journalists in the video game industry to be the first successful application of episodic gaming, as Telltale Games had managed to release a steady stream content with only small time gaps. Previous attempts by Valve with the "Half-Life" series, Ritual Entertainment with "SiN Episodes" and Telltale Games themselves with "" were for a variety of reasons not considered successful implementations of the distribution model. "Beyond Time and Space" was considered similar to "Save the World" and reviewers equally praised and faulted the game on this, although overall "Beyond Time and Space" received a good reception from critics.
The success of the franchise has spawned a selection of merchandise, including posters and prints, items of clothing and sketchbooks of Purcell's work during various stages of the series' development. Collectable statues of the characters have also been created. However, despite references in Purcell's sketchbooks and demand from both fans and journalists alike, plush toys of Sam have not been produced. However, a plush toy of Max has been created and sold, albeit limited edition, as a collaboration between internet shop Hashtag Collectibles and Steve Purcell. In late 2018, it was announced that Boss Fight Studios would be producing a new line of action figures based on the Freelance Police for 2019, the prototypes were first revealed at New York Toy Fair 2019. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27766 |
Sandstone
Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) mineral particles or rock fragments (clasts) or organic material.
Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) because they are the most resistant minerals to weathering processes at the Earth's surface, as seen in the Goldich dissolution series. Like uncemented sand, sandstone may be any color due to impurities within the minerals, but the most common colors are tan, brown, yellow, red, grey, pink, white, and black. Since sandstone beds often form highly visible cliffs and other topographic features, certain colors of sandstone have been strongly identified with certain regions.
Rock formations that are primarily composed of sandstone usually allow the percolation of water and other fluids and are porous enough to store large quantities, making them valuable aquifers and petroleum reservoirs. Fine-grained aquifers, such as sandstones, are better able to filter out pollutants from the surface than are rocks with cracks and crevices, such as limestone or other rocks fractured by seismic activity.
Quartz-bearing sandstone can be changed into quartzite through metamorphism, usually related to tectonic compression within orogenic belts.
Sandstones are "clastic" in origin (as opposed to either "organic", like chalk and coal, or "chemical", like gypsum and jasper).
They are formed from cemented grains that may either be fragments of a pre-existing rock or be mono-minerallic crystals. The cements binding these grains together are typically calcite, clays, and silica. Grain sizes in sands are defined (in geology) within the range of 0.0625 mm to 2 mm (0.0025–0.08 inches). Clays and sediments with smaller grain sizes not visible with the naked eye, including siltstones and shales, are typically called "argillaceous" sediments; rocks with larger grain sizes, including breccias and conglomerates, are termed "rudaceous" sediments.
The formation of sandstone involves two principal stages. First, a layer or layers of sand accumulates as the result of sedimentation, either from water (as in a stream, lake, or sea) or from air (as in a desert). Typically, sedimentation occurs by the sand settling out from suspension; i.e., ceasing to be rolled or bounced along the bottom of a body of water or ground surface (e.g., in a desert or erg). Finally, once it has accumulated, the sand becomes sandstone when it is compacted by the pressure of overlying deposits and cemented by the precipitation of minerals within the pore spaces between sand grains.
The most common cementing materials are silica and calcium carbonate, which are often derived either from dissolution or from alteration of the sand after it was buried. Colors will usually be tan or yellow (from a blend of the clear quartz with the dark amber feldspar content of the sand). A predominant additional colourant in the southwestern United States is iron oxide, which imparts reddish tints ranging from pink to dark red (terracotta), with additional manganese imparting a purplish hue. Red sandstones, both Old Red Sandstone and New Red Sandstone, are also seen in the Southwest and West of Britain, as well as central Europe and Mongolia. The regularity of the latter favours use as a source for masonry, either as a primary building material or as a facing stone, over other forms of construction.
Framework grains are sand-sized ( diameter) detrital fragments that make up the bulk of a sandstone. These grains can be classified into several different categories based on their mineral composition:
Matrix is very fine material, which is present within interstitial pore space between the framework grains. The nature of the matrix within the interstitial pore space results in a twofold classification:
Cement is what binds the siliciclastic framework grains together. Cement is a secondary mineral that forms after deposition and during burial of the sandstone. These cementing materials may be either silicate minerals or non-silicate minerals, such as calcite.
Pore space includes the open spaces within a rock or a soil. The pore space in a rock has a direct relationship to the porosity and permeability of the rock. The porosity and permeability are directly influenced by the way the sand grains are packed together.
All sandstones are composed of the same general minerals. These minerals make up the framework components of the sandstones. Such components are quartz, feldspars, and lithic fragments. Matrix may also be present in the interstitial spaces between the framework grains. Below is a list of several major groups of sandstones. These groups are divided based on mineralogy and texture. Even though sandstones have very simple compositions which are based on framework grains, geologists have not been able to agree on a specific, right way, to classify sandstones. Sandstone classifications are typically done by point-counting a thin section using a method like the Gazzi-Dickinson Method. The composition of a sandstone can have important information regarding the genesis of the sediment when used with a triangular "Q"uartz, "F"eldspar, "L"ithic fragment (QFL diagrams). Many geologists, however, do not agree on how to separate the triangle parts into the single components so that the framework grains can be plotted. Therefore, there have been many published ways to classify sandstones, all of which are similar in their general format.
Visual aids are diagrams that allow geologists to interpret different characteristics about a sandstone. The following QFL chart and the sandstone provenance model correspond with each other therefore, when the QFL chart is plotted those points can then be plotted on the sandstone provenance model. The stage of textural maturity chart illustrates the different stages that a sandstone goes through.
Dott's (1964) sandstone classification scheme is one of many such schemes used by geologists for classifying sandstones. Dott's scheme is a modification of Gilbert's classification of silicate sandstones, and it incorporates R.L. Folk's dual textural and compositional maturity concepts into one classification system. The philosophy behind combining Gilbert's and R. L. Folk's schemes is that it is better able to "portray the continuous nature of textural variation from mudstone to arenite and from stable to unstable grain composition". Dott's classification scheme is based on the mineralogy of framework grains, and on the type of matrix present in between the framework grains.
In this specific classification scheme, Dott has set the boundary between arenite and wackes at 15% matrix. In addition, Dott also breaks up the different types of framework grains that can be present in a sandstone into three major categories: quartz, feldspar, and lithic grains.
Sandstone has been used for domestic construction and housewares since prehistoric times, and continues to be used.
Sandstone was a popular building material from ancient times. It is relatively soft, making it easy to carve. It has been widely used around the world in constructing temples, homes, and other buildings. It has also been used for artistic purposes to create ornamental fountains and statues.
Some sandstones are resistant to weathering, yet are easy to work. This makes sandstone a common building and paving material including in asphalt concrete. However, some that have been used in the past, such as the Collyhurst sandstone used in North West England, have been found less resistant, necessitating repair and replacement in older buildings. Because of the hardness of individual grains, uniformity of grain size and friability of their structure, some types of sandstone are excellent materials from which to make grindstones, for sharpening blades and other implements. Non-friable sandstone can be used to make grindstones for grinding grain, e.g., gritstone.
A type of pure quartz sandstone, orthoquartzite, with more of 90–95 percent of quartz, has been proposed for nomination to the Global Heritage Stone Resource. In some regions of Argentina, the orthoquartzite-stoned facade is one of the main features of the Mar del Plata style bungalows. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27772 |
Scanning tunneling microscope
A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer (at IBM Zürich), the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. For an STM, good resolution is considered to be 0.1 nm lateral resolution and 0.01 nm (10 pm) depth resolution. With this resolution, individual atoms within materials are routinely imaged and manipulated. The STM can be used not only in ultra-high vacuum but also in air, water, and various other liquid or gas ambients, and at temperatures ranging from near zero kelvin to over 1000 °C.
STM is based on the concept of quantum tunneling. When a conducting tip is brought very near to the surface to be examined, a bias (voltage difference) applied between the two can allow electrons to tunnel through the vacuum between them. The resulting "tunneling current" is a function of tip position, applied voltage, and the local density of states (LDOS) of the sample. Information is acquired by monitoring the current as the tip's position scans across the surface, and is usually displayed in image form. STM can be a challenging technique, as it requires extremely clean and stable surfaces, sharp tips, excellent vibration control, and sophisticated electronics, but nonetheless many hobbyists have built their own.
First, a voltage bias is applied and the tip is brought close to the sample by coarse sample-to-tip control, which is turned off when the tip and sample are sufficiently close. At close range, fine control of the tip in all three dimensions when near the sample is typically piezoelectric, maintaining tip-sample separation W typically in the 4-7 Å (0.4-0.7 nm) range, which is the equilibrium position between attractive (3 This leads to a height variation and thus the image comes from the tip topography across the sample and gives a constant charge density surface; this means contrast on the image is due to variations in charge density. In constant height mode, the voltage and height are both held constant while the current changes to keep the voltage from changing; this leads to an image made of current changes over the surface, which can be related to charge density. The benefit to using a constant height mode is that it is faster, as the piezoelectric movements require more time to register the height change in constant current mode than the current change in constant height mode. All images produced by STM are grayscale, with color optionally added in post-processing in order to visually emphasize important features.
In addition to scanning across the sample, information on the electronic structure at a given location in the sample can be obtained by sweeping voltage and measuring current at a specific location. This type of measurement is called scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) and typically results in a plot of the local density of states as a function of energy within the sample. The advantage of STM over other measurements of the density of states lies in its ability to make extremely local measurements: for example, the density of states at an impurity site can be compared to the density of states far from impurities.
Framerates of at least 25 Hz enable so called video-rate STM. Framerates up to 80 Hz are possible with fully working feedback that adjusts the height of the tip. Due to the line-by-line scanning motion, a proper comparison on the speed requires not only the framerate, but also the number of pixels in an image: with a framerate of 10 Hz and 100x100 pixels the tip moves with a line frequency of 1 kHz, whereas it moves with only with 500 Hz, when measuring with a faster framerate of 50 Hz but only 10x10 pixels. Video-rate STM can be used to scan surface diffusion.
The components of an STM include scanning tip, piezoelectric controlled height and x,y scanner, coarse sample-to-tip control, vibration isolation system, and computer.
The resolution of an image is limited by the radius of curvature of the scanning tip of the STM. Additionally, image artifacts can occur if the tip has two tips at the end rather than a single atom; this leads to “double-tip imaging,” a situation in which both tips contribute to the tunneling. Therefore, it has been essential to develop processes for consistently obtaining sharp, usable tips. Recently, carbon nanotubes have been used in this instance.
The tip is often made of tungsten or platinum-iridium, though gold is also used. Tungsten tips are usually made by electrochemical etching, and platinum-iridium tips by mechanical shearing.
Due to the extreme sensitivity of tunnel current to height, proper vibration insulation or an extremely rigid STM body is imperative for obtaining usable results. In the first STM by Binnig and Rohrer, magnetic levitation was used to keep the STM free from vibrations; now mechanical spring or gas spring systems are often used. Additionally, mechanisms for reducing eddy currents are sometimes implemented.
Maintaining the tip position with respect to the sample, scanning the sample and acquiring the data is computer controlled. The computer may also be used for enhancing the image with the help of image processing as well as performing quantitative measurements.
Many other microscopy techniques have been developed based upon STM. These include photon scanning microscopy (PSTM), which uses an optical tip to tunnel photons; scanning tunneling potentiometry (STP), which measures electric potential across a surface; spin polarized scanning tunneling microscopy (SPSTM), which uses a ferromagnetic tip to tunnel spin-polarized electrons into a magnetic sample,
multi-tip scanning tunneling microscopy which enables electrical measurements to be performed at the nanoscale, and atomic force microscopy (AFM), in which the force caused by interaction between the tip and sample is measured.
Other STM methods involve manipulating the tip in order to change the topography of the sample. This is attractive for several reasons. Firstly the STM has an atomically precise positioning system which allows very accurate atomic scale manipulation. Furthermore, after the surface is modified by the tip, it is a simple matter to then image with the same tip, without changing the instrument. IBM researchers developed a way to manipulate xenon atoms adsorbed on a nickel surface. This technique has been used to create electron "corrals" with a small number of adsorbed atoms, which allows the STM to be used to observe electron Friedel oscillations on the surface of the material. Aside from modifying the actual sample surface, one can also use the STM to tunnel electrons into a layer of electron beam photoresist on a sample, in order to do lithography. This has the advantage of offering more control of the exposure than traditional electron beam lithography. Another practical application of STM is atomic deposition of metals (gold, silver, tungsten, etc.) with any desired (pre-programmed) pattern, which can be used as contacts to nanodevices or as nanodevices themselves.
Variable temperature STM was used to investigate temperature dependency of molecular rotations on single crystalline surfaces.
Rotating molecules appear blurred compared to non-rotating ones.
Recently groups have found they can use the STM tip to rotate individual bonds within single molecules. The electrical resistance of the molecule depends on the orientation of the bond, so the molecule effectively becomes a molecular switch.
Tunneling is a functioning concept that arises from quantum mechanics. Classically, an object hitting an impenetrable barrier will not pass through. In contrast, objects with a very small mass, such as the electron, have wavelike characteristics which permit such an event, referred to as tunneling.
Electrons behave as beams of energy, and in the presence of a potential "U"("z"), assuming 1-dimensional case, the energy levels "ψn"("z") of the electrons are given by solutions to Schrödinger’s equation,
where "ħ" is the reduced Planck’s constant, "z" is the position, and "m" is the mass of an electron. If an electron of energy "E" is incident upon an energy barrier of height "U"("z"), the electron wave function is a traveling wave solution,
where
if "E" > "U"("z"), which is true for a wave function inside the tip or inside the sample. Inside a barrier, "E" < "U"("z") so the wave functions which satisfy this are decaying waves,
where
quantifies the decay of the wave inside the barrier, with the barrier in the +"z" direction for formula_6.
Knowing the wave function allows one to calculate the probability density for that electron to be found at some location. In the case of tunneling, the tip and sample wave functions overlap such that when under a bias, there is some finite probability to find the electron in the barrier region and even on the other side of the barrier. Let us assume the bias is "V" and the barrier width is "W". This probability, "P", that an electron at "z"=0 (left edge of barrier) can be found at "z"="W" (right edge of barrier) is proportional to the wave function squared,
If the bias is small, we can let "U" − "E" ≈ "φM" in the expression for "κ", where "φM", the work function, gives the minimum energy needed to bring an electron from an occupied level, the highest of which is at the Fermi level (for metals at "T"=0 kelvins), to vacuum level. When a small bias "V" is applied to the system, only electronic states very near the Fermi level, within "eV" (a product of electron charge and voltage, not to be confused here with electronvolt unit), are excited. These excited electrons can tunnel across the barrier. In other words, tunneling occurs mainly with electrons of energies near the Fermi level.
However, tunneling does require that there be an empty level of the same energy as the electron for the electron to tunnel into on the other side of the barrier. It is because of this restriction that the tunneling current can be related to the density of available or filled states in the sample. The current due to an applied voltage "V" (assume tunneling occurs sample to tip) depends on two factors: 1) the number of electrons between "E"f and "eV" in the sample, and 2) the number among them which have corresponding free states to tunnel into on the other side of the barrier at the tip. The higher the density of available states the greater the tunneling current. When "V" is positive, electrons in the tip tunnel into empty states in the sample; for a negative bias, electrons tunnel out of occupied states in the sample into the tip.
Mathematically, this tunneling current is given by
One can sum the probability over energies between "E"f − "eV" and "E"f to get the number of states available in this energy range per unit volume, thereby finding the local density of states (LDOS) near the Fermi level. The LDOS near some energy "E" in an interval "ε" is given by
and the tunnel current at a small bias V is proportional to the LDOS near the Fermi level, which gives important information about the sample. It is desirable to use LDOS to express the current because this value does not change as the volume changes, while probability density does. Thus the tunneling current is given by
where ρs(0,"E"f) is the LDOS near the Fermi level of the sample at the sample surface. This current can also be expressed in terms of the LDOS near the Fermi level of the sample at the tip surface,
The exponential term in the above equations means that small variations in W greatly influence the tunnel current. If the separation is decreased by 1 Å, the current increases by an order of magnitude, and vice versa.
This approach fails to account for the "rate" at which electrons can pass the barrier. This rate should affect the tunnel current, so it can be treated using the Fermi's golden rule with the appropriate tunneling matrix element. John Bardeen solved this problem in his study of the metal-insulator-metal junction. He found that if he solved Schrödinger’s equation for each side of the junction separately to obtain the wave functions ψ and χ for each electrode, he could obtain the tunnel matrix, M, from the overlap of these two wave functions. This can be applied to STM by making the electrodes the tip and sample, assigning ψ and χ as sample and tip wave functions, respectively, and evaluating M at some surface S between the metal electrodes, where z=0 at the sample surface and z=W at the tip surface.
Now, Fermi’s Golden Rule gives the rate for electron transfer across the barrier, and is written
where δ(Eψ–Eχ) restricts tunneling to occur only between electron levels with the same energy. The tunnel matrix element, given by
is a description of the lower energy associated with the interaction of wave functions at the overlap, also called the resonance energy.
Summing over all the states gives the tunneling current as
where "f" is the Fermi function, ρs and ρT are the density of states in the sample and tip, respectively. The Fermi distribution function describes the filling of electron levels at a given temperature T.
An earlier, similar invention, the "Topografiner" of R. Young, J. Ward, and F. Scire from the NIST, relied on field emission. However, Young is credited by the Nobel Committee as the person who realized that it should be possible to achieve better resolution by using the tunnel effect. It was later discovered that an even higher resolution could be achieved by calculating the Doppler effect. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27774 |
Stem cell
In multicellular organisms, stem cells are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can differentiate into various types of cells and divide indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type of cell in a cell lineage. They are found in both embryonic and adult organisms, but they have slightly different properties in each. They are usually distinguished from progenitor cells, which cannot divide indefinitely, and precursor or blast cells, which are usually committed to differentiating into one cell type.
In mammals, roughly 50–150 cells make up the inner cell mass during the blastocyst stage of embryonic development, around days 5–14. These have stem-cell capability. "In vivo", they eventually differentiate into all of the body's cell types (making them pluripotent). This process starts with the differentiation into the three germ layers – the ectoderm, mesoderm and endoderm – at the gastrulation stage. However, when they are isolated and cultured "in vitro", they can be kept in the stem-cell stage and are known as embryonic stem cells (ESCs).
Adult stem cells are found in a few select locations in the body, known as niches, such as those in the bone marrow or gonads. They exist to replenish rapidly lost cell types and are multipotent or unipotent, meaning they only differentiate into a few cell types or one cell type. In mammals, they include, among others, hematopoietic stem cells, which replenish blood and immune cells, basal cells, which maintain the skin epithelium, and mesenchymal stem cells, which maintain bone, cartilage, muscle and fat cells. Adult stem cells are a small minority of cells; they are vastly outnumbered by the progenitor cells and terminally differentiated cells that they differentiate into.
Research into stem cells grew out of findings by Canadian biologists Ernest A. McCulloch and James E. Till at the University of Toronto in the 1960s. , the only established medical therapy using stem cells is hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, first performed in 1958 by French oncologist Georges Mathé. Since 1998 however, it has been possible to culture and differentiate human embryonic stem cells (in stem-cell lines). The process of isolating these cells has been controversial, because it typically results in the destruction of the embryo. Sources for isolating ESCs have been restricted in some European countries and Canada, but others such as the UK and China have promoted the research. Somatic cell nuclear transfer is a cloning method that can be used to create a cloned embryo for the use of its embryonic stem cells in stem cell therapy. In 2006, a Japanese team led by Shinya Yamanaka discovered a method to convert mature body cells back into stem cells. These were termed induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).
The key properties of a stem cell were first defined by Ernest McCulloch and James Till in the early 1960s. They discovered the blood-forming stem cell, the hematopoietic stem cell (HSC), through their pioneering work in mice. McCulloch and Till began a series of experiments in which bone marrow cells were injected into irradiated mice. They observed lumps in the spleens of the mice that were linearly proportional to the number of bone marrow cells injected. They hypothesized that each lump (colony) was a clone arising from a single marrow cell (stem cell). In subsequent work, McCulloch and Till, joined by graduate student Andy Becker and senior scientist Lou Siminovitch, confirmed that each lump did in fact arise from a single cell. Their results were published in "Nature" in 1963. In that same year, Siminovitch was a lead investigator for studies that found colony-forming cells were capable of self-renewal, which is a key defining property of stem cells that Till and McCulloch had theorized.
The first therapy using stem cells was a bone marrow transplant performed by French oncologist Georges Mathé in 1958 on five workers at the Vinča Nuclear Institute in Yugoslavia who had been affected by a criticality accident. The workers all survived.
In 1981, embryonic stem (ES) cells were first isolated and successfully cultured using mouse blastocysts by British biologists Martin Evans and Matthew Kaufman. This allowed the formation of murine genetic models, a system in which the genes of mice are deleted or altered in order to study their function in pathology. By 1998, embryonic stem cells were first isolated by American biologist James Thomson, which made it possible to have new transplantation methods or various cell types for testing new treatments. In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka’s team in Kyoto, Japan converted fibroblasts into pluripotent stem cells by modifying the expression of only four genes. The feat represents the origin of induced pluripotent stem cells, known as iPS cells.
The classical definition of a stem cell requires that it possesses two properties:
Two mechanisms ensure that a stem cell population is maintained (doesn't shrink in size):
1. Asymmetric cell division: a stem cell divides into one mother cell, which is identical to the original stem cell, and another daughter cell, which is differentiated.
When a stem cell self-renews, it divides and does not disrupt the undifferentiated state. This self-renewal demands control of cell cycle as well as upkeep of multipotency or pluripotency, which all depends on the stem cell.
2. Stochastic differentiation: when one stem cell grows and divides into two differentiated daughter cells, another stem cell undergoes mitosis and produces two stem cells identical to the original.
Stem cells use telomerase, a protein that restores telomeres, to protect their DNA and extend their cell division limit (the Hayflick limit).
Potency specifies the differentiation potential (the potential to differentiate into different cell types) of the stem cell.
In practice, stem cells are identified by whether they can regenerate tissue. For example, the defining test for bone marrow or hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) is the ability to transplant the cells and save an individual without HSCs. This demonstrates that the cells can produce new blood cells over a long term. It should also be possible to isolate stem cells from the transplanted individual, which can themselves be transplanted into another individual without HSCs, demonstrating that the stem cell was able to self-renew.
Properties of stem cells can be illustrated "in vitro", using methods such as clonogenic assays, in which single cells are assessed for their ability to differentiate and self-renew. Stem cells can also be isolated by their possession of a distinctive set of cell surface markers. However, "in vitro" culture conditions can alter the behavior of cells, making it unclear whether the cells shall behave in a similar manner "in vivo". There is considerable debate as to whether some proposed adult cell populations are truly stem cells.
Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are the cells of the inner cell mass of a blastocyst, formed prior to implantation in the uterus. In human embryonic development the blastocyst stage is reached 4–5 days after fertilization, at which time it consists of 50–150 cells. ESCs are pluripotent and give rise during development to all derivatives of the three germ layers: ectoderm, endoderm and mesoderm. In other words, they can develop into each of the more than 200 cell types of the adult body when given sufficient and necessary stimulation for a specific cell type. They do not contribute to the extraembryonic membranes or to the placenta.
During embryonic development the cells of the inner cell mass continuously divide and become more specialized. For example, a portion of the ectoderm in the dorsal part of the embryo specializes as 'neurectoderm', which will become the future central nervous system. Later in development, neurulation causes the neurectoderm to form the neural tube. At the neural tube stage, the anterior portion undergoes encephalization to generate or 'pattern' the basic form of the brain. At this stage of development, the principal cell type of the CNS is considered a neural stem cell.
The neural stem cells self-renew and at some point transition into radial glial progenitor cells (RGPs). Early-formed RGPs self-renew by symmetrical division to form a reservoir group of progenitor cells. These cells transition to a neurogenic state and start to divide asymmetrically to produce a large diversity of many different neuron types, each with unique gene expression, morphological, and functional characteristics. The process of generating neurons from radial glial cells is called neurogenesis. The radial glial cell, has a distinctive bipolar morphology with highly elongated processes spanning the thickness of the neural tube wall. It shares some glial characteristics, most notably the expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP). The radial glial cell is the primary neural stem cell of the developing vertebrate CNS, and its cell body resides in the ventricular zone, adjacent to the developing ventricular system. Neural stem cells are committed to the neuronal lineages (neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes), and thus their potency is restricted.
Nearly all research to date has made use of mouse embryonic stem cells (mES) or human embryonic stem cells (hES) derived from the early inner cell mass. Both have the essential stem cell characteristics, yet they require very different environments in order to maintain an undifferentiated state. Mouse ES cells are grown on a layer of gelatin as an extracellular matrix (for support) and require the presence of leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) in serum media. A drug cocktail containing inhibitors to GSK3B and the MAPK/ERK pathway, called 2i, has also been shown to maintain pluripotency in stem cell culture. Human ESCs are grown on a feeder layer of mouse embryonic fibroblasts and require the presence of basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF or FGF-2). Without optimal culture conditions or genetic manipulation, embryonic stem cells will rapidly differentiate.
A human embryonic stem cell is also defined by the expression of several transcription factors and cell surface proteins. The transcription factors Oct-4, Nanog, and Sox2 form the core regulatory network that ensures the suppression of genes that lead to differentiation and the maintenance of pluripotency. The cell surface antigens most commonly used to identify hES cells are the glycolipids stage specific embryonic antigen 3 and 4, and the keratan sulfate antigens Tra-1-60 and Tra-1-81. The molecular definition of a stem cell includes many more proteins and continues to be a topic of research.
By using human embryonic stem cells to produce specialized cells like nerve cells or heart cells in the lab, scientists can gain access to adult human cells without taking tissue from patients. They can then study these specialized adult cells in detail to try to discern complications of diseases, or to study cell reactions to proposed new drugs.
Because of their combined abilities of unlimited expansion and pluripotency, embryonic stem cells remain a theoretically potential source for regenerative medicine and tissue replacement after injury or disease., however, there are currently no approved treatments using ES cells. The first human trial was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in January 2009. However, the human trial was not initiated until October 13, 2010 in Atlanta for spinal cord injury research. On November 14, 2011 the company conducting the trial (Geron Corporation) announced that it will discontinue further development of its stem cell programs. Differentiating ES cells into usable cells while avoiding transplant rejection are just a few of the hurdles that embryonic stem cell researchers still face. Embryonic stem cells, being pluripotent, require specific signals for correct differentiation – if injected directly into another body, ES cells will differentiate into many different types of cells, causing a teratoma. Ethical considerations regarding the use of unborn human tissue are another reason for the lack of approved treatments using embryonic stem cells. Many nations currently have moratoria or limitations on either human ES cell research or the production of new human ES cell lines.
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) are known to be multipotent, which can be found in adult tissues, for example, in the muscle, liver, bone marrow. Mesenchymal stem cells usually function as structural support in various organs as mentioned above, and control the movement of substances. MSC can differentiate into numerous cell categories as an illustration of adipocytes, osteocytes, and chondrocytes, derived by the mesodermal layer. Where the mesoderm layer provides an increase to the body’s skeletal elements, such as relating to the cartilage or bone. The term “meso” means middle, infusion originated from the Greek, signifying that mesenchymal cells are able to range and travel in early embryonic growth among the ectodermal and endodermal layers. This mechanism helps with space-filling thus, key for repairing wounds in adult organisms that have to do with mesenchymal cells in the dermis (skin), bone, or muscle.
Mesenchymal stem cells are known to be essential for regenerative medicine. They are broadly studied in clinical trials. Since they are easily isolated and obtain high yield, high plasticity, which makes able to facilitate inflammation and encourage cell growth, cell differentiation, and restoring tissue derived from immunomodulation and immunosuppression. MSC comes from the bone marrow, which requires an aggressive procedure when it comes to isolating the quantity and quality of the isolated cell, and it varies by how old the donor. When comparing the rates of MSC in the bone marrow aspirates and bone marrow stroma, the aspirates tend to have lower rates of MSC than the stroma. MSC are known to be heterogeneous, and they express a high level of pluripotent markers when compared to other types of stem cells, such as embryonic stem cells.
Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) have the ability to divide indefinitely while keeping their pluripotency, which is made possible through specialized mechanisms of cell cycle control. Compared to proliferating somatic cells, ESCs have unique cell cycle characteristics—such as rapid cell division caused by shortened G1 phase, absent G0 phase, and modifications in cell cycle checkpoints—which leaves the cells mostly in S phase at any given time. ESCs’ rapid division is demonstrated by their short doubling time, which ranges from 8 to 10 hours, whereas somatic cells have doubling time of approximately 20 hours or longer. As cells differentiate, these properties change: G1 and G2 phases lengthen, leading to longer cell division cycles. This suggests that a specific cell cycle structure may contribute to the establishment of pluripotency.
Particularly because G1 phase is the phase in which cells have increased sensitivity to differentiation, shortened G1 is one of the key characteristics of ESCs and plays an important role in maintaining undifferentiated phenotype. Although the exact molecular mechanism remains only partially understood, several studies have shown insight on how ESCs progress through G1—and potentially other phases—so rapidly.
The cell cycle is regulated by complex network of cyclins, cyclin-dependent kinases (Cdk), cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors (Cdkn), pocket proteins of the retinoblastoma (Rb) family, and other accessory factors. Foundational insight into the distinctive regulation of ESC cell cycle was gained by studies on mouse ESCs (mESCs). mESCs showed a cell cycle with highly abbreviated G1 phase, which enabled cells to rapidly alternate between M phase and S phase. In a somatic cell cycle, oscillatory activity of Cyclin-Cdk complexes is observed in sequential action, which controls crucial regulators of the cell cycle to induce unidirectional transitions between phases: Cyclin D and Cdk4/6 are active in the G1 phase, while Cyclin E and Cdk2 are active during the late G1 phase and S phase; and Cyclin A and Cdk2 are active in the S phase and G2, while Cyclin B and Cdk1 are active in G2 and M phase. However, in mESCs, this typically ordered and oscillatory activity of Cyclin-Cdk complexes is absent. Rather, the Cyclin E/Cdk2 complex is constitutively active throughout the cycle, keeping retinoblastoma protein (pRb) hyperphosphorylated and thus inactive. This allows for direct transition from M phase to the late G1 phase, leading to absence of D-type cyclins and therefore a shortened G1 phase. Cdk2 activity is crucial for both cell cycle regulation and cell-fate decisions in mESCs; downregulation of Cdk2 activity prolongs G1 phase progression, establishes a somatic cell-like cell cycle, and induces expression of differentiation markers.
In human ESCs (hESCs), the duration of G1 is dramatically shortened. This has been attributed to high mRNA levels of G1-related Cyclin D2 and Cdk4 genes and low levels of cell cycle regulatory proteins that inhibit cell cycle progression at G1, such as p21CipP1, p27Kip1, and p57Kip2. Furthermore, regulators of Cdk4 and Cdk6 activity, such as members of the Ink family of inhibitors (p15, p16, p18, and p19), are expressed at low levels or not at all. Thus, similar to mESCs, hESCs show high Cdk activity, with Cdk2 exhibiting the highest kinase activity. Also similar to mESCs, hESCs demonstrate the importance of Cdk2 in G1 phase regulation by showing that G1 to S transition is delayed when Cdk2 activity is inhibited and G1 is arrest when Cdk2 is knocked down. However unlike mESCs, hESCs have a functional G1 phase. hESCs show that the activities of Cyclin E/Cdk2 and Cyclin A/Cdk2 complexes are cell cycle dependent and the Rb checkpoint in G1 is functional.
ESCs are also characterized by G1 checkpoint non-functionality, even though the G1 checkpoint is crucial for maintaining genomic stability. In response to DNA damage, ESCs do not stop in G1 to repair DNA damages but instead, depend on S and G2/M checkpoints or undergo apoptosis. The absence of G1 checkpoint in ESCs allows for removal of cells with damaged DNA, hence avoiding potential mutations from inaccurate DNA repair. Consistent with this idea, ESCs are hypersensitive to DNA damage to minimize mutations passed onto the next generation.
The primitive stem cells located in the organs of fetuses are referred to as fetal stem cells.
There are two types of fetal stem cells:
Adult stem cells, also called somatic (from Greek σωματικóς, "of the body") stem cells, are stem cells which maintain and repair the tissue in which they are found. They can be found in children, as well as adults.
There are three known accessible sources of autologous adult stem cells in humans:
Stem cells can also be taken from umbilical cord blood just after birth. Of all stem cell types, autologous harvesting involves the least risk. By definition, autologous cells are obtained from one's own body, just as one may bank his or her own blood for elective surgical procedures.
Pluripotent adult stem cells are rare and generally small in number, but they can be found in umbilical cord blood and other tissues. Bone marrow is a rich source of adult stem cells, which have been used in treating several conditions including liver cirrhosis, chronic limb ischemia and endstage heart failure. The quantity of bone marrow stem cells declines with age and is greater in males than females during reproductive years. Much adult stem cell research to date has aimed to characterize their potency and self-renewal capabilities. DNA damage accumulates with age in both stem cells and the cells that comprise the stem cell environment. This accumulation is considered to be responsible, at least in part, for increasing stem cell dysfunction with aging (see DNA damage theory of aging).
Most adult stem cells are lineage-restricted (multipotent) and are generally referred to by their tissue origin (mesenchymal stem cell, adipose-derived stem cell, endothelial stem cell, dental pulp stem cell, etc.). Muse cells (multi-lineage differentiating stress enduring cells) are a recently discovered pluripotent stem cell type found in multiple adult tissues, including adipose, dermal fibroblasts, and bone marrow. While rare, muse cells are identifiable by their expression of SSEA-3, a marker for undifferentiated stem cells, and general mesenchymal stem cells markers such as CD105. When subjected to single cell suspension culture, the cells will generate clusters that are similar to embryoid bodies in morphology as well as gene expression, including canonical pluripotency markers Oct4, Sox2, and Nanog.
Adult stem cell treatments have been successfully used for many years to treat leukemia and related bone/blood cancers through bone marrow transplants. Adult stem cells are also used in veterinary medicine to treat tendon and ligament injuries in horses.
The use of adult stem cells in research and therapy is not as controversial as the use of embryonic stem cells, because the production of adult stem cells does not require the destruction of an embryo. Additionally, in instances where adult stem cells are obtained from the intended recipient (an autograft), the risk of rejection is essentially non-existent. Consequently, more US government funding is being provided for adult stem cell research.
With the increasing demand of human adult stem cells for both research and clinical purposes (typically 1–5 million cells per kg of body weight are required per treatment) it becomes of utmost importance to bridge the gap between the need to expand the cells in vitro and the capability of harnessing the factors underlying replicative senescence. Adult stem cells are known to have a limited lifespan in vitro and to enter replicative senescence almost undetectably upon starting in vitro culturing.
Multipotent stem cells are also found in amniotic fluid. These stem cells are very active, expand extensively without feeders and are not tumorigenic. Amniotic stem cells are multipotent and can differentiate in cells of adipogenic, osteogenic, myogenic, endothelial, hepatic and also neuronal lines.
Amniotic stem cells are a topic of active research.
Use of stem cells from amniotic fluid overcomes the ethical objections to using human embryos as a source of cells. Roman Catholic teaching forbids the use of embryonic stem cells in experimentation; accordingly, the Vatican newspaper "Osservatore Romano" called amniotic stem cells "the future of medicine".
It is possible to collect amniotic stem cells for donors or for autologous use: the first US amniotic stem cells bank was opened in 2009 in Medford, MA, by Biocell Center Corporation and collaborates with various hospitals and universities all over the world.
Adult stem cells have limitations with their potency; unlike embryonic stem cells (ESCs), they are not able to differentiate into cells from all three germ layers. As such, they are deemed multipotent.
However, reprogramming allows for the creation of pluripotent cells, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), from adult cells. These are not adult stem cells, but somatic cells (e.g. epithelial cells) reprogrammed to give rise to cells with pluripotent capabilities. Using genetic reprogramming with protein transcription factors, pluripotent stem cells with ESC-like capabilities have been derived. The first demonstration of induced pluripotent stem cells was conducted by Shinya Yamanaka and his colleagues at Kyoto University. They used the transcription factors Oct3/4, Sox2, c-Myc, and Klf4 to reprogram mouse fibroblast cells into pluripotent cells. Subsequent work used these factors to induce pluripotency in human fibroblast cells. Junying Yu, James Thomson, and their colleagues at the University of Wisconsin–Madison used a different set of factors, Oct4, Sox2, Nanog and Lin28, and carried out their experiments using cells from human foreskin. However, they were able to replicate Yamanaka's finding that inducing pluripotency in human cells was possible.
Induced pluripotent stem cells differ from embryonic stem cells. They share many similar properties, such as pluripotency and differentiation potential, the expression of pluripotency genes, epigenetic patterns, embryoid body and teratoma formation, and viable chimera formation, but there are many differences within these properties. The chromatin of iPSCs appears to be more "closed" or methylated than that of ESCs. Similarly, the gene expression pattern between ESCs and iPSCs, or even iPSCs sourced from different origins. There are thus questions about the "completeness" of reprogramming and the somatic memory of induced pluripotent stem cells. Despite this, inducing somatic cells to be pluripotent appears to be viable.
As a result of the success of these experiments, Ian Wilmut, who helped create the first cloned animal Dolly the Sheep, has announced that he will abandon somatic cell nuclear transfer as an avenue of research.
IPSCs has helped the field of medicine significantly by finding numerous ways to cure diseases. Since human IPSCc has given the advantage to make vitro models to study toxins and pathogenesis.
Furthermore, induced pluripotent stem cells provide several therapeutic advantages. Like ESCs, they are pluripotent. They thus have great differentiation potential; theoretically, they could produce any cell within the human body (if reprogramming to pluripotency was "complete"). Moreover, unlike ESCs, they potentially could allow doctors to create a pluripotent stem cell line for each individual patient. Frozen blood samples can be used as a valuable source of induced pluripotent stem cells. Patient specific stem cells allow for the screening for side effects before drug treatment, as well as the reduced risk of transplantation rejection. Despite their current limited use therapeutically, iPSCs hold create potential for future use in medical treatment and research.
The key factors controlling the cell cycle also regulate pluripotency. Thus, manipulation of relevant genes can maintain pluripotency and reprogram somatic cells to an induced pluripotent state. However, reprogramming of somatic cells is often low in efficiency and considered stochastic.
With the idea that a more rapid cell cycle is a key component of pluripotency, reprogramming efficiency can be improved. Methods for improving pluripotency through manipulation of cell cycle regulators include: overexpression of Cyclin D/Cdk4, phosphorylation of Sox2 at S39 and S253, overexpression of Cyclin A and Cyclin E, knockdown of Rb, and knockdown of members of the Cip/Kip family or the Ink family. Furthermore, reprogramming efficiency is correlated with the number of cell divisions happened during the stochastic phase, which is suggested by the growing inefficiency of reprogramming of older or slow diving cells.
Lineage is an important procedure to analyze developing embryos. Since cell lineages shows the relationship between cells at each division. This helps in analyzing stem cell lineages along the way which helps recognize stem cell effectiveness, lifespan, and other factors. With the technique of cell lineage mutant genes can be analyzed in stem cell clones that can help in genetic pathways. These pathways can regulate how the stem cell perform
To ensure self-renewal, stem cells undergo two types of cell division (see "Stem cell division and differentiation" diagram). Symmetric division gives rise to two identical daughter cells both endowed with stem cell properties. Asymmetric division, on the other hand, produces only one stem cell and a progenitor cell with limited self-renewal potential. Progenitors can go through several rounds of cell division before terminally differentiating into a mature cell. It is possible that the molecular distinction between symmetric and asymmetric divisions lies in differential segregation of cell membrane proteins (such as receptors) between the daughter cells.
An alternative theory is that stem cells remain undifferentiated due to environmental cues in their particular niche. Stem cells differentiate when they leave that niche or no longer receive those signals. Studies in "Drosophila" germarium have identified the signals decapentaplegic and adherens junctions that prevent germarium stem cells from differentiating.
Stem cell therapy is the use of stem cells to treat or prevent a disease or condition. Bone marrow transplant is a form of stem cell therapy that has been used for many years because it has proven to be effective in clinical trials.
Stem cell implantation may help in strengthening the left-ventricle of the heart, as well as retaining the heart tissue to patients who have suffered from heart attacks in the past.
Stem cell treatments may lower symptoms of the disease or condition that is being treated. The lowering of symptoms may allow patients to reduce the drug intake of the disease or condition. Stem cell treatment may also provide knowledge for society to further stem cell understanding and future treatments.
Stem cell treatments may require immunosuppression because of a requirement for radiation before the transplant to remove the person's previous cells, or because the patient's immune system may target the stem cells. One approach to avoid the second possibility is to use stem cells from the same patient who is being treated.
Pluripotency in certain stem cells could also make it difficult to obtain a specific cell type. It is also difficult to obtain the exact cell type needed, because not all cells in a population differentiate uniformly. Undifferentiated cells can create tissues other than desired types.
Some stem cells form tumors after transplantation; pluripotency is linked to tumor formation especially in embryonic stem cells, fetal proper stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells. Fetal proper stem cells form tumors despite multipotency.
Stem cell tourism is the internet based-industry in which stem cell procedures are advertised to the public as a proven cure. in the majority of cases resulting in patients and families traveling overseas to obtain procedures that are not proven, or part of an FDA approved clinical trial. These procedures have not gone through the vetting process of clinical research and they lack rigorous scientific support. Although for the general public, this advertising may sound authoritative, for translational doctors and scientists this leads to the exploitation of vulnerable patients. These procedures lack the reproducibility, the rigor that is required. Although the term may imply traveling long distances, in recent years, there has been an explosion of "stem cell clinics' in the US which has been well documented. these activities are highly profitable for the clinic but no benefit for the patients, sometimes experiencing complications like spinal tumors, death, or financial ruin, all of which are documented in the scientific literature. There is a great deal of interest in educating the public and patients, families and doctors who deal with patients requesting stem cells clinics.
Despite the great interest generated in the public for the use of stem cells, among all stem cell scientists, including the International Society for Stem Cell Research, the largest academic organization of scientist and advocates for stem cell research in the world. Stem cell therapy is still under development and although there is a great deal of research around the world. Rigorous stem cell trials are still ongoing and patients should be educated to be aware of the unethical clinics in the US or abroad, that offer stem cells procedures as a cure when it is still under investigation.
Some of the fundamental patents covering human embryonic stem cells are owned by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) – they are patents 5,843,780, 6,200,806, and 7,029,913 invented by James A. Thomson. WARF does not enforce these patents against academic scientists, but does enforce them against companies.
In 2006, a request for the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to re-examine the three patents was filed by the Public Patent Foundation on behalf of its client, the non-profit patent-watchdog group Consumer Watchdog (formerly the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights). In the re-examination process, which involves several rounds of discussion between the USPTO and the parties, the USPTO initially agreed with Consumer Watchdog and rejected all the claims in all three patents, however in response, WARF amended the claims of all three patents to make them more narrow, and in 2008 the USPTO found the amended claims in all three patents to be patentable. The decision on one of the patents (7,029,913) was appealable, while the decisions on the other two were not. Consumer Watchdog appealed the granting of the '913 patent to the USPTO's Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) which granted the appeal, and in 2010 the BPAI decided that the amended claims of the '913 patent were not patentable. However, WARF was able to re-open prosecution of the case and did so, amending the claims of the '913 patent again to make them more narrow, and in January 2013 the amended claims were allowed.
In July 2013, Consumer Watchdog announced that it would appeal the decision to allow the claims of the '913 patent to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), the federal appeals court that hears patent cases. At a hearing in December 2013, the CAFC raised the question of whether Consumer Watchdog had legal standing to appeal; the case could not proceed until that issue was resolved.
Diseases and conditions where stem cell treatment is being investigated include:
Research is underway to develop various sources for stem cells, and to apply stem cell treatments for neurodegenerative diseases and conditions, diabetes, heart disease, and other conditions. Research is also underway in generating organoids using stem cells, which would allow for further understanding of human development, organogenesis, and modeling of human diseases.
In more recent years, with the ability of scientists to isolate and culture embryonic stem cells, and with scientists' growing ability to create stem cells using somatic cell nuclear transfer and techniques to create induced pluripotent stem cells, controversy has crept in, both related to abortion politics and to human cloning.
Hepatotoxicity and drug-induced liver injury account for a substantial number of failures of new drugs in development and market withdrawal, highlighting the need for screening assays such as stem cell-derived hepatocyte-like cells, that are capable of detecting toxicity early in the drug development process. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27783 |
Sappho
Sappho (; "Sapphō" ; Aeolic Greek "Psápphō"; c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was an Archaic Greek poet from the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by a lyre. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess". Most of Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is extant has mostly survived in fragmentary form; two notable exceptions are the "Ode to Aphrodite" and the Tithonus poem. As well as lyric poetry, ancient commentators claimed that Sappho wrote elegiac and iambic poetry. Three epigrams attributed to Sappho are extant, but these are actually Hellenistic imitations of Sappho's style.
Little is known of Sappho's life. She was from a wealthy family from Lesbos, though her parents' names are uncertain. Ancient sources say that she had three brothers; the names of two of them, Charaxos and Larichos, are mentioned in the Brothers Poem discovered in 2014. She was exiled to Sicily around 600 BC, and may have continued to work until around 570. Later legends surrounding Sappho's love for the ferryman Phaon and her death are unreliable.
Sappho was a prolific poet, probably composing around 10,000 lines. Her poetry was well-known and greatly admired through much of antiquity, and she was among the canon of nine lyric poets most highly esteemed by scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria. Sappho's poetry is still considered extraordinary and her works continue to influence other writers. Beyond her poetry, she is well known as a symbol of love and desire between women, with the English words "sapphic" and "lesbian" being derived from her own name and the name of her home island respectively. Whilst her importance as a poet is confirmed from the earliest times, all interpretations of her work have been coloured and influenced by discussions of her sexuality.
There are three sources of information about Sappho's life: her "testimonia", the history of her times, and what can be gleaned from her own poetry — although scholars are cautious when reading poetry as a biographical source.
"Testimonia" is a term of art in ancient studies that refers to collections of classical biographical and literary references to classical authors. The "testimonia" regarding Sappho do not contain references contemporary to Sappho. The representations of Sappho's life that occur in the "testimonia" always need to be assessed for accuracy, because many of them are certainly not correct. The "testimonia" are also a source of knowledge regarding how Sappho's poetry was received in antiquity. Some details mentioned in the "testimonia" are derived from Sappho's own poetry, which is of great interest, especially considering the "testimonia" originate from a time when more of Sappho's poetry was extant than is the case for modern readers.
Little is known about Sappho's life for certain. She was from Mytilene on the island of Lesbos and was probably born around 630 BC.
Tradition names her mother as Cleïs, though ancient scholars may simply have guessed this name, assuming that Sappho's daughter Cleïs was named after her. Sappho's father's name is less certain. Ten names are known for Sappho's father from the ancient "testimonia"; this proliferation of possible names suggests that he was not explicitly named in any of Sappho's poetry. The earliest and most commonly attested name for Sappho's father is Scamandronymus. In Ovid's "Heroides", Sappho's father died when she was seven. Sappho's father is not mentioned in any of her surviving works, but Campbell suggests that this detail may have been based on a now-lost poem. Sappho's own name is found in numerous variant spellings, even in her own Aeolian dialect; the form that appears in her own extant poetry is Psappho.
No reliable portrait of Sappho's physical appearance has survived; all extant representations, ancient and modern, are artists' conceptions. In the Tithonus poem she describes her hair as now white but formerly "melaina", i.e. black. A literary papyrus of the second century A.D. describes her as "pantelos mikra", quite tiny. Alcaeus possibly describes Sappho as "violet-haired", which was a common Greek poetic way of describing dark hair. Some scholars dismiss this tradition as unreliable.
Sappho was said to have three brothers: Erigyius, Larichus, and Charaxus. According to Athenaeus, Sappho often praised Larichus for pouring wine in the town hall of Mytilene, an office held by boys of the best families. This indication that Sappho was born into an aristocratic family is consistent with the sometimes rarefied environments that her verses record. One ancient tradition tells of a relation between Charaxus and the Egyptian courtesan Rhodopis. Herodotus, the oldest source of the story, reports that Charaxus ransomed Rhodopis for a large sum and that Sappho wrote a poem rebuking him for this.
Sappho may have had a daughter named Cleïs, who is referred to in two fragments. Not all scholars accept that Cleïs was Sappho's daughter. Fragment 132 describes Cleïs as "παῖς" ("pais"), which, as well as meaning "child", can also refer to the "youthful beloved in a male homosexual liaison". It has been suggested that Cleïs was one of Sappho's younger lovers, rather than her daughter, though Judith Hallett argues that the language used in fragment 132 suggests that Sappho was referring to Cleïs as her daughter.
According to the Suda, Sappho was married to Kerkylas of Andros. However, the name appears to have been invented by a comic poet: the name "Kerkylas" comes from the word "κέρκος" ("kerkos"), a possible meaning of which is "penis", and is not otherwise attested as a name, while "Andros", as well as being the name of a Greek island, is a form of the Greek word "ἀνήρ" ("aner"), which means man. Thus, the name may be a joke name, and as such could be rendered as "Dick Allcock from the Isle of Man".
Sappho and her family were exiled from Lesbos to Syracuse, Sicily, around 600 BC. The Parian Chronicle records Sappho going into exile some time between 604 and 591. This may have been as a result of her family's involvement with the conflicts between political elites on Lesbos in this period, the same reason for Sappho's contemporary Alcaeus' exile from Mytilene around the same time. Later the exiles were allowed to return.
A tradition going back at least to Menander (Fr. 258 K) suggested that Sappho killed herself by jumping off the Leucadian cliffs for love of Phaon, a ferryman. This is regarded as unhistorical by modern scholars, perhaps invented by the comic poets or originating from a misreading of a first-person reference in a non-biographical poem. The legend may have resulted in part from a desire to assert Sappho as heterosexual.
Sappho probably wrote around 10,000 lines of poetry; today, only about 650 survive. She is best known for her lyric poetry, written to be accompanied by music. The Suda also attributes to Sappho epigrams, elegiacs, and iambics; three of these epigrams are extant, but are in fact later Hellenistic poems inspired by Sappho, as are the iambic and elegiac poems attributed to her in the Suda. Ancient authors claim that Sappho primarily wrote love poetry, and the indirect transmission of Sappho's work supports this notion. However, the papyrus tradition suggests that this may not have been the case: a series of papyri published in 2014 contains fragments of ten consecutive poems from Book I of the Alexandrian edition of Sappho, of which only two are certainly love poems, while at least three and possibly four are primarily concerned with family.
Sappho's poetry was probably first written down on Lesbos, either in her lifetime or shortly afterwards, initially probably in the form of a score for performers of Sappho's work. In the fifth century, Athenian book publishers probably began to produce copies of Lesbian lyric poetry, some including explanatory material and glosses as well as the poems themselves. Some time in the second or third century, Alexandrian scholars produced a critical edition of Sappho's poetry. There may have been more than one Alexandrian edition – John J. Winkler argues for two, one edited by Aristophanes of Byzantium and another by his pupil Aristarchus of Samothrace. This is not certain – ancient sources tell us that Aristarchus' edition of Alcaeus replaced the edition by Aristophanes, but are silent on whether Sappho's work, too, went through multiple editions.
The Alexandrian edition of Sappho's poetry was based on the existing Athenian collections, and was divided into at least eight books, though the exact number is uncertain. Many modern scholars have followed Denys Page, who conjectured a ninth book in the standard edition; Yatromanolakis doubts this, noting that though "testimonia" refer to an eighth book of Sappho's poetry, none mention a ninth. Whatever its make-up, the Alexandrian edition of Sappho probably grouped her poems by their metre: ancient sources tell us that each of the first three books contained poems in a single specific metre. Ancient editions of Sappho, possibly starting with the Alexandrian edition, seem to have ordered the poems in at least the first book of Sappho's poetry – which contained works composed in Sapphic stanzas – alphabetically.
Even after the publication of the standard Alexandrian edition, Sappho's poetry continued to circulate in other poetry collections. For instance, the Cologne Papyrus on which the Tithonus poem is preserved was part of a Hellenistic anthology of poetry, which contained poetry arranged by theme, rather than by metre and incipit, as it was in the Alexandrian edition.
The earliest surviving manuscripts of Sappho, including the potsherd on which fragment 2 is preserved, date to the third century BC, and thus predate the Alexandrian edition. The latest surviving copies of Sappho’s poems transmitted directly from ancient times are written on parchment codex pages from the sixth and seventh centuries AD, and were surely reproduced from ancient papyri now lost. Manuscript copies of Sappho's works may have survived a few centuries longer, but around the 9th century her poetry appears to have disappeared, and by the twelfth century, John Tzetzes could write that "the passage of time has destroyed Sappho and her works".
According to legend, Sappho's poetry was lost because the church disapproved of her morals. These legends appear to have originated in the renaissance – around 1550, Jerome Cardan wrote that Gregory Nazianzen had Sappho's work publicly destroyed, and at the end of the sixteenth century Joseph Justus Scaliger claimed that Sappho's works were burned in Rome and Constantinople in 1073 on the orders of Pope Gregory VII.
In reality, Sappho's work was probably lost as the demand for it was insufficiently great for it to be copied onto parchment when codices superseded papyrus scrolls as the predominant form of book. Another contributing factor to the loss of Sappho's poems may have been the perceived obscurity of her Aeolic dialect, which contains many archaisms and innovations absent from other ancient Greek dialects. During the Roman period, by which time the Attic dialect had become the standard for literary compositions, many readers found Sappho's dialect difficult to understand and, in the second century AD, the Roman author Apuleius specifically remarks on its "strangeness".
Only approximately 650 lines of Sappho's poetry still survive, of which just one poem – the "Ode to Aphrodite" – is complete, and more than half of the original lines survive in around ten more fragments. Many of the surviving fragments of Sappho contain only a single word – for example, fragment 169A is simply a word meaning "wedding gifts", and survives as part of a dictionary of rare words. The two major sources of surviving fragments of Sappho are quotations in other ancient works, from a whole poem to as little as a single word, and fragments of papyrus, many of which were discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. Other fragments survive on other materials, including parchment and potsherds. The oldest surviving fragment of Sappho currently known is the Cologne papyrus which contains the Tithonus poem, dating to the third century BC.
Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, only the ancient quotations of Sappho survived. In 1879, the first new discovery of a fragment of Sappho was made at Fayum. By the end of the nineteenth century, Grenfell and Hunt had begun to excavate an ancient rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus, leading to the discoveries of many previously unknown fragments of Sappho. Fragments of Sappho continue to be rediscovered. Most recently, major discoveries in 2004 (the "Tithonus poem" and a new, previously unknown fragment) and 2014 (fragments of nine poems: five already known but with new readings, four, including the "Brothers Poem", not previously known) have been reported in the media around the world.
Sappho clearly worked within a well-developed tradition of Lesbian poetry, which had evolved its own poetic diction, meters, and conventions. Among her famous poetic forebears were Arion and Terpander. Nonetheless, her work is innovative; it is some of the earliest Greek poetry to adopt the "lyric 'I'" – to write poetry adopting the viewpoint of a specific person, in contrast to the earlier epic poets Homer and Hesiod, who present themselves more as "conduits of divine inspiration". Her poetry explores individual identity and personal emotions – desire, jealousy, and love; it also adopts and reinterprets the existing imagery epic poetry in exploring these themes.
Sappho's poetry is known for its clear language and simple thoughts, sharply-drawn images, and use of direct quotation which brings a sense of immediacy. Unexpected word-play is a characteristic feature of her style. An example is from fragment 96: "now she stands out among Lydian women as after sunset the rose-fingered moon exceeds all stars", a variation of the Homeric epithet "rosy-fingered Dawn". Sappho's poetry often uses hyperbole, according to ancient critics "because of its charm". An example is found in fragment 111, where Sappho writes that "The groom approaches like Ares [...] Much bigger than a big man".
Leslie Kurke groups Sappho with those archaic Greek poets from what has been called the "élite" ideological tradition, which valued luxury ("habrosyne") and high birth. These elite poets tended to identify themselves with the worlds of Greek myths, gods, and heroes, as well as the wealthy East, especially Lydia. Thus in fragment 2 Sappho has Aphrodite "pour into golden cups nectar lavishly mingled with joys", while in the Tithonus poem she explicitly states that "I love the finer things ["habrosyne"]". According to Page DuBois, the language, as well as the content, of Sappho's poetry evokes an aristocratic sphere. She contrasts Sappho's "flowery,[...] adorned" style with the "austere, decorous, restrained" style embodied in the works of later classical authors such as Sophocles, Demosthenes, and Pindar.
Traditional modern literary critics of Sappho's poetry have tended to see her poetry as a vivid and skilled but spontaneous and naive expression of emotion: typical of this view are the remarks of H. J. Rose that "Sappho wrote as she spoke, owing practically nothing to any literary influence," and that her verse displays "the charm of absolute naturalness." Against this essentially romantic view, one school of more recent critics argues that, on the contrary, Sappho's poetry displays and depends for its effect on a sophisticated deployment of the strategies of traditional Greek rhetorical genres - so that it seems spontaneous, whilst actually being very crafted.
Today Sappho, for many, is a symbol of female homosexuality; the common term "lesbian" is an allusion to Sappho, originating from the name of the island of Lesbos, where she was born. However, she has not always been so considered. In classical Athenian comedy (from the Old Comedy of the fifth century to Menander in the late fourth and early third centuries BC), Sappho was caricatured as a promiscuous heterosexual woman, and it is not until the Hellenistic period that the first "testimonia" which explicitly discuss Sappho's homoeroticism are preserved. The earliest of these is a fragmentary biography written on papyrus in the late third or early second century BC, which states that Sappho was "accused by some of being irregular in her ways and a woman-lover". Denys Page comments that the phrase "by some" implies that even the full corpus of Sappho's poetry did not provide conclusive evidence of whether she described herself as having sex with women. These ancient authors do not appear to have believed that Sappho did, in fact, have sexual relationships with other women, and as late as the tenth century the Suda records that Sappho was "slanderously accused" of having sexual relationships with her "female pupils".
Among modern scholars, Sappho's sexuality is still debated – André Lardinois has described it as the "Great Sappho Question". Early translators of Sappho sometimes heterosexualised her poetry. Ambrose Philips' 1711 translation of the Ode to Aphrodite portrayed the object of Sappho's desire as male, a reading that was followed by virtually every other translator of the poem until the twentieth century, while in 1781 Alessandro Verri interpreted fragment 31 as being about Sappho's love for Phaon. Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker argued that Sappho's feelings for other women were "entirely idealistic and non-sensual", while Karl Otfried Müller wrote that fragment 31 described "nothing but a friendly affection": Glenn Most comments that "one wonders what language Sappho would have used to describe her feelings if they had been ones of sexual excitement", if this theory were correct. By 1970, it would be argued that the same poem contained "proof positive of [Sappho's] lesbianism".
All critical comment is, of course, embedded in the values of its time, and the world view of the person writing it. Today, it is generally accepted that Sappho's poetry portrays homoerotic feelings: as Sandra Boehringer puts it, her works "clearly celebrate eros between women". Toward the end of the twentieth century, though, some scholars began to reject the question of whether or not Sappho was a lesbian – Glenn Most wrote that Sappho herself "would have had no idea what people mean when they call her nowadays a homosexual", André Lardinois stated that it is "nonsensical" to ask whether Sappho was a lesbian, and Page duBois calls the question a "particularly obfuscating debate".
One of the major focuses of scholars studying Sappho has been to attempt to determine the cultural context in which Sappho's poems were composed and performed. Various cultural contexts and social roles played by Sappho have been suggested, including teacher, cult-leader, and poet performing for a circle of female friends. However, the performance contexts of many of Sappho's fragments are not easy to determine, and for many more than one possible context is conceivable.
One longstanding suggestion of a social role for Sappho is that of "Sappho as schoolmistress". At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German classicist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff posited that Sappho was a sort of schoolteacher, in order to "explain away Sappho's passion for her 'girls and defend her from accusations of homosexuality. The view continues to be influential, both among scholars and the general public, though more recently the idea has been criticised by historians as anachronistic and has been rejected by several prominent classicists as unjustified by the evidence. In 1959, Denys Page, for example, stated that Sappho's extant fragments portray "the loves and jealousies, the pleasures and pains, of Sappho and her companions"; and he adds, "We have found, and shall find, no trace of any formal or official or professional relationship between them, ... no trace of Sappho the principal of an academy." David A. Campbell in 1967 judged that Sappho may have "presided over a literary coterie", but that "evidence for a formal appointment as priestess or teacher is hard to find". None of Sappho's own poetry mentions her teaching, and the earliest "testimonium" to support the idea of Sappho as a teacher comes from Ovid, six centuries after Sappho's lifetime. Despite these problems, many newer interpretations of Sappho's social role are still based on this idea. In these interpretations, Sappho was involved in the ritual education of girls, for instance as a trainer of choruses of girls.
Even if Sappho did compose songs for training choruses of young girls, not all of her poems can be interpreted in this light, and despite scholars' best attempts to find one, Yatromanolakis argues that there is no single performance context to which all of Sappho's poems can be attributed. Parker argues that Sappho should be considered as part of a group of female friends for whom she would have performed, just as her contemporary Alcaeus is. Some of her poetry appears to have been composed for identifiable formal occasions, but many of her songs are about – and possibly were to be performed at – banquets.
In antiquity Sappho's poetry was highly admired, and several ancient sources refer to her as the "tenth Muse". The earliest surviving poem to do so is a third-century BC epigram by Dioscorides, but poems are preserved in the "Greek Anthology" by Antipater of Sidon and attributed to Plato on the same theme. She was sometimes referred to as "The Poetess", just as Homer was "The Poet". The scholars of Alexandria included Sappho in the canon of nine lyric poets. According to Aelian, the Athenian lawmaker and poet Solon asked to be taught a song by Sappho "so that I may learn it and then die". This story may well be apocryphal, especially as Ammianus Marcellinus tells a similar story about Socrates and a song of Stesichorus, but it is indicative of how highly Sappho's poetry was considered in the ancient world.
Sappho's poetry also influenced other ancient authors. In Greek, the Hellenistic poet Nossis was described by Marilyn B. Skinner as an imitator of Sappho, and Kathryn Gutzwiller argues that Nossis explicitly positioned herself as an inheritor of Sappho's position as a woman poet. Beyond poetry, Plato cites Sappho in his "Phaedrus", and Socrates' second speech on love in that dialogue appears to echo Sappho's descriptions of the physical effects of desire in fragment 31. In the first century BC, Catullus established the themes and metres of Sappho's poetry as a part of Latin literature, adopting the Sapphic stanza, believed in antiquity to have been invented by Sappho, giving his lover in his poetry the name "Lesbia" in reference to Sappho, and adapting and translating Sappho's 31st fragment in his poem 51.
Other ancient poets wrote about Sappho's life. She was a popular character in ancient Athenian comedy, and at least six separate comedies called "Sappho" are known. The earliest known ancient comedy to take Sappho as its main subject was the early-fifth or late-fourth century BC "Sappho" by Ameipsias, though nothing is known of it apart from its name. Sappho was also a favourite subject in the visual arts, the most commonly depicted poet on sixth and fifth-century Attic red-figure vase paintings, and the subject of a sculpture by Silanion.
From the fourth century BC, ancient works portray Sappho as a tragic heroine, driven to suicide by her unrequited love for Phaon. For instance, a fragment of a play by Menander says that Sappho threw herself off of the cliff at Leucas out of her love for Phaon. Ovid's "Heroides" 15 is written as a letter from Sappho to her supposed love Phaon, and when it was first rediscovered in the 15th century was thought to be a translation of an authentic letter of Sappho's. Sappho's suicide was also depicted in classical art, for instance on a first-century BC basilica in Rome near the Porta Maggiore.
While Sappho's poetry was admired in the ancient world, her character was not always so well considered. In the Roman period, critics found her lustful and perhaps even homosexual. Horace called her "mascula Sappho" in his "Epistles", which the later Porphyrio commented was "either because she is famous for her poetry, in which men more often excel, or because she is maligned for having been a tribad". By the third century AD, the difference between Sappho's literary reputation as a poet and her moral reputation as a woman had become so significant that the suggestion that there were in fact two Sapphos began to develop. In his "Historical Miscellanies", Aelian wrote that there was "another Sappho, a courtesan, not a poetess".
By the medieval period, Sappho's works had been lost, though she was still quoted in later authors. Her work became more accessible in the sixteenth century through printed editions of those authors who had quoted her. In 1508 Aldus Manutius printed an edition of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which contained Sappho 1, the "Ode to Aphrodite", and the first printed edition of Longinus' "On the Sublime", complete with his quotation of Sappho 31, appeared in 1554. In 1566, the French printer Robert Estienne produced an edition of the Greek lyric poets which contained around 40 fragments attributed to Sappho.
In 1652, the first English translation of a poem by Sappho was published, in John Hall's translation of "On the Sublime". In 1681 Anne Le Fèvre's French edition of Sappho made her work even more widely known. Theodor Bergk's 1854 edition became the standard edition of Sappho in the second half of the 19th century; in the first part of the 20th, the papyrus discoveries of new poems by Sappho led to editions and translations by Edwin Marion Cox and John Maxwell Edmonds, and culminated in the 1955 publication of Edgar Lobel's and Denys Page's "Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta".
Like the ancients, modern critics have tended to consider Sappho's poetry "extraordinary". As early as the 9th century, Sappho was referred to as a talented woman poet, and in works such as Boccaccio's "De Claris Mulieribus" and Christine de Pisan's "Book of the City of Ladies" she gained a reputation as a learned lady. Even after Sappho's works had been lost, the Sapphic stanza continued to be used in medieval lyric poetry, and with the rediscovery of her work in the Renaissance, she began to increasingly influence European poetry. In the 16th century, members of La Pléiade, a circle of French poets, were influenced by her to experiment with Sapphic stanzas and with writing love-poetry with a first-person female voice.
From the Romantic era, Sappho's work – especially her "Ode to Aphrodite" – has been a key influence of conceptions of what lyric poetry should be. Such influential poets as Alfred Lord Tennyson in the nineteenth century, and A. E. Housman in the twentieth, have been influenced by her poetry. Tennyson based poems including "Eleanore" and "Fatima" on Sappho's fragment 31, while three of Housman's works are adaptations of the Midnight poem, long thought to be by Sappho though the authorship is now disputed. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Imagists – especially Ezra Pound, H. D., and Richard Aldington – were influenced by Sappho's fragments; a number of Pound's poems in his early collection "Lustra" were adaptations of Sapphic poems, while H. D.'s poetry was frequently Sapphic in "style, theme or content", and in some cases, such as "Fragment 40" more specifically invoke Sappho's writing.
It was not long after the rediscovery of Sappho that her sexuality once again became the focus of critical attention. In the early seventeenth century, John Donne wrote "Sapho to Philaenis", returning to the idea of Sappho as a hypersexual lover of women. The modern debate on Sappho's sexuality began in the 19th century, with Welcker publishing, in 1816, an article defending Sappho from charges of prostitution and lesbianism, arguing that she was chaste – a position which would later be taken up by Wilamowitz at the end of the 19th and Henry Thornton Wharton at the beginning of the 20th centuries. Despite attempts to defend her good name, in the nineteenth century Sappho was co-opted by the Decadent Movement as a lesbian "daughter of de Sade", by Charles Baudelaire in France and later Algernon Charles Swinburne in England. By the late 19th century, lesbian writers such as Michael Field and Amy Levy became interested in Sappho for her sexuality, and by the turn of the twentieth century she was a sort of "patron saint of lesbians".
From the beginning of the 19th century, women poets such as Felicia Hemans ("The Last Song of Sappho") and Letitia Elizabeth Landon ("Sketch the First. Sappho", and in "Ideal Likenesses") took Sappho as one of their progenitors. Sappho also began to be regarded as a role model for campaigners for women's rights, beginning with works such as Caroline Norton's "The Picture of Sappho". Later in that century, she would become a model for the so-called New Woman – independent and educated women who desired social and sexual autonomy – and by the 1960s, the feminist Sappho was – along with the hypersexual, often but not exclusively lesbian Sappho – one of the two most important cultural perceptions of Sappho.
The discoveries of new poems by Sappho in 2004 and 2014 excited both scholarly and media attention. The announcement of the Tithonus poem was the subject of international news coverage, and was described by Marylin Skinner as "the "trouvaille" of a lifetime". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27784 |
Simon bar Kokhba
Simon ben Kosevah, or Cosibah, known to posterity as Bar Kokhba (; died 135 CE), was a Jewish military leader who led the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE. The revolt established a three-year-long independent Jewish state in which Bar Kokhba ruled as "Nasi" ("Prince"). Some of the rabbinic scholars in his time imagined him to be the long-expected Messiah. Bar Kokhba fell in the fortified town of Betar, after a prolonged siege of three and half years.
Documents discovered in the 20th century in the Cave of Letters give his original name, with variations: Simeon bar Kosevah (), Bar Koseva () or Ben Koseva (). It is probable that his original name was Bar Koseva. The name may indicate that his father or his place of origin was named Koseva(h), but might as well be a general family name.
During the revolt, the Jewish sage Rabbi Akiva regarded Simon as the Jewish messiah, and gave him the surname "Bar Kokhba" meaning "Son of the Star" in Aramaic, from the Star Prophecy verse from Numbers : "There shall come a star out of Jacob". The name Bar Kokhba does not appear in the Talmud but in ecclesiastical sources. The Jerusalem Talmud ("Taanit" 4:5) mentions him by the name of Bar Koziva. Rabbinical writers subsequent to Rabbi Akiva did not share Rabbi Akiva's estimation of ben Kosiva. Akiva's disciple, Jose ben Halaphta, in the Seder 'Olam (chapter 30) called him "bar Koziba" (), meaning, "son of the lie". The judgment of Bar Koseba that is implied by this change of name was carried on by later rabbinic scholarship at least to the time of the codification of the Talmud, where the name is always rendered "Simon bar Koziba" () or Bar Kozevah.
Despite the devastation wrought by the Romans during the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), which left the population and countryside in ruins, a series of laws passed by Roman Emperors provided the incentive for the second rebellion. Based on the delineation of years in Eusebius' "Chronicon" (whose Latin translation is known as the Chronicle of Jerome) the Jewish revolt began under the Roman governor Tineius (Tynius) Rufus in the 16th year of Hadrian's reign, or what was equivalent to the 4th year of the 227th Olympiad. Hadrian sent an army to crush the resistance, but it faced a strong opponent, since Bar Kokhba, as the recognised leader of Israel, punished any Jew who refused to join his ranks. Two and a half years later, after the war had ended, the Roman emperor Hadrian barred Jews from entering Ælia Capitolina, the pagan city he had built on the ruins of Jewish Jerusalem. The name Aelia was derived from one of the emperor's names, Aelius. According to Philostorgius, this was done so that its former Jewish inhabitants "might not find in the name of the city a pretext for claiming it as their country."
The second Jewish rebellion took place 60 years after the first and established an independent state lasting three years. For many Jews of the time, this turn of events was heralded as the long hoped for Messianic Age. The Romans fared very poorly during the initial revolt facing a unified Jewish force, in contrast to the First Jewish-Roman War, where Flavius Josephus records three separate Jewish armies fighting each other for control of the Temple Mount during the three weeks after the Romans had breached Jerusalem's walls and were fighting their way to the center. Being outnumbered and taking heavy casualties, the Romans adopted a scorched earth policy which reduced and demoralised the Judean populace, slowly grinding away at the will of the Judeans to sustain the war.
During the final phase of the war, Bar Kokhba took up refuge in the fortress of Betar. The Romans eventually captured it after laying siege to the city for three and a half years, and they killed all the defenders except for one Jewish youth, Simeon ben Gamliel, whose life was spared. Rabbi Yohanan has related the following account of the massacre: "The brains of three-hundred children were found upon one stone, along with three-hundred baskets of what remained of phylacteries ("tefillin") were found in Betar, each and every one of which had the capacity to hold three measures (three "seahs", or what is equivalent to about 28 liters). If you should come to take [all of them] into account, you would find that they amounted to three-hundred measures." Rabban [Shimon] Gamliel said: "Five-hundred schools were in Betar, while the smallest of them wasn't less than three-hundred children. They used to say, ‘If the enemy should ever come upon us, with these metal pointers [used in pointing at the letters of sacred writ] we'll go forth and stab them.’ But since iniquities had caused [their fall], the enemy came in and wrapped up each and every child in his own book and burnt them together, and no one remained except me." According to Cassius Dio, 580,000 Jews were killed in overall war operations across the country, and some 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed to the ground, while the number of those who perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out.
So costly was the Roman victory, that the Emperor Hadrian, when reporting to the Roman Senate, did not see fit to begin with the customary greeting “If you and your children are healthy, it is well; I and the legions are healthy.”
In the aftermath of the war, Hadrian consolidated the older political units of Judaea, Galilee and Samaria into the new province of Syria Palaestina, which is commonly interpreted as an attempt to complete the disassociation with Judaea.
Over the past few decades, new information about the revolt has come to light, from the discovery of several collections of letters, some possibly by Bar Kokhba himself, in the Cave of Letters overlooking the Dead Sea. These letters can now be seen at the Israel Museum.
According to Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin, Bar Kokhba tried to revive Hebrew and make Hebrew the official language of the Jews as part of his messianic ideology. In "A Roadmap to the Heavens: An Anthropological Study of Hegemony among Priests, Sages, and Laymen (Judaism and Jewish Life)" by Sigalit Ben-Zion (page 155), Yadin remarked: "it seems that this change came as a result of the order that was given by Bar Kokhba, who wanted to revive the Hebrew language and make it the official language of the state."
Simon bar Kokhba is portrayed in rabbinic literature as being somewhat irrational and irascible in conduct. The Talmud says that he presided over an army of Jewish insurgents numbering some 200,000, but had compelled its young recruits to prove their valor by each man chopping off one of his own fingers. The Sages of Israel complained to him why he marred the people of Israel with such blemishes. Whenever he would go forth into battle, he was reported as saying: "O Master of the universe, there is no need for you to assist us [against our enemies], but do not embarrass us either!" It is also said of him that he killed his maternal uncle, Rabbi Elazar Hamudaʻi, after suspecting him of collaborating with the enemy, thereby forfeiting Divine protection, which led to the destruction of Betar in which Bar Kokhba himself also perished.
Hadrian is thought to have personally supervised over the closing military operations in the siege against Betar. When the Roman army eventually took the city, soldiers carried Bar Kokhba's severed head to Hadrian, and when Hadrian asked who it was that killed him, a Samaritan replied that he had killed him. When Hadrian requested that they bring the severed head (Latin:"protome") of the slain victim close to him that he might see it, Hadrian observed that a serpent was wrapped around the head. Hadrian then relied: "Had it not been for God who killed him, who would have been able to kill him!?"
Bar Kokhba was a ruthless leader, punishing any Jew who refused to join his ranks. According to Eusebius' "Chronicon", he severely punished the sect of Christians with death by different means of torture for their refusal to fight against the Romans.
Since the end of the nineteenth century, Bar-Kochba has been the subject of numerous works of art (dramas, operas, novels, etc.), including:
Another operetta on the subject of Bar Kokhba was written by the Russian-Jewish emigre composer Yaacov Bilansky Levanon in Palestine in the 1920s.
John Zorn's Masada Chamber Ensemble recorded an album called "Bar Kokhba", showing a photograph of the Letter of Bar Kokhba to Yeshua, son of Galgola on the cover.
According to a legend, during his reign, Bar Kokhba was once presented a mutilated man, who had his tongue ripped out and hands cut off. Unable to talk or write, the victim was incapable of telling who his attackers were. Thus, Bar Kokhba decided to ask simple questions to which the dying man was able to nod or shake his head with his last movements; the murderers were consequently apprehended.
In Hungary, this legend spawned the "Bar Kokhba game", in which one of two players comes up with a word or object, while the other must figure it out by asking questions only to be answered with "yes" or "no". The questioner usually asks first if it is a living being, if not, if it is an object, if not, it is surely an abstraction. The verb "kibarkochbázni" ("to Bar Kochba out") became a common language verb meaning "retrieving information in an extremely tedious way". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27786 |
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental illness characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (often hearing voices), delusions (having beliefs not shared by others), and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdrawal, decreased emotional expression, and lack of motivation. Symptoms typically come on gradually, begin in young adulthood, and in many cases never resolve. There is no objective diagnostic test; diagnosis is based on observed behavior, a history that includes the person's reported experiences, and reports of others familiar with the person. To be diagnosed with schizophrenia, symptoms and functional impairment need to be present for six months, (DSM-5), or one month, (ICD-11). Many people with schizophrenia have other mental disorders that often includes an anxiety disorder such as panic disorder, an obsessive–compulsive disorder, or a substance use disorder.
About 0.3% to 0.7% of people are affected by schizophrenia during their lifetimes. In 2017, there were an estimated 1.1 million new cases and in 2019 a total of 20 million cases globally. Males are more often affected and on average have an earlier onset. The causes of schizophrenia include genetic and environmental factors. Genetic factors include a variety of common and rare genetic variants. Possible environmental factors include being raised in a city, cannabis use during adolescence, infections, the ages of a person's mother or father, and poor nutrition during pregnancy.
About half of those diagnosed with schizophrenia will have a significant improvement over the long term with no further relapses, and a small proportion of these will recover completely. The other half will have a lifelong impairment, and severe cases may be repeatedly admitted to hospital. Social problems such as long-term unemployment, poverty, homelessness, exploitation, and victimization are common consequences of schizophrenia. Compared to the general population, people with schizophrenia have a higher suicide rate (about 5% overall) and more physical health problems, leading to an average decreased life expectancy of 20 years. In 2015, an estimated 17,000 people worldwide died from behavior related to or caused by schizophrenia.
The mainstay of treatment is an antipsychotic medication, along with counselling, job training, and social rehabilitation. Up to a third of people do not respond to initial antipsychotics, in which case the antipsychotic clozapine may be used. In situations where there is a risk of harm to self or others, a short involuntary hospitalization may be necessary. Long-term hospitalization may be needed for a small number of people with severe schizophrenia. In countries where supportive services are limited or unavailable, long-term hospital stays are more typical.
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by significant alterations in perception, thoughts, mood, and behavior. Symptoms are described in terms of positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms. The positive symptoms of schizophrenia are the same for any psychosis and are sometimes referred to as psychotic symptoms. These may be present in any of the different psychoses, and are often transient making early diagnosis of schizophrenia problematic. Psychosis noted for the first time in a person who is later diagnosed with schizophrenia is referred to as a first-episode psychosis (FEP).
Positive symptoms are those symptoms that are not normally experienced, but are present in people during a psychotic episode in schizophrenia. They include delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized thoughts and speech, typically regarded as manifestations of psychosis. Hallucinations most commonly involve the sense of hearing as hearing voices but can sometimes involve any of the other senses of taste, sight, smell, and touch. They are also typically related to the content of the delusional theme. Delusions are bizarre or persecutory in nature. Distortions of self-experience such as feeling as if one's thoughts or feelings are not really one's own, to believing that thoughts are being inserted into one's mind, sometimes termed passivity phenomena, are also common. Thought disorders can include thought blocking, and disorganized speech – speech that is not understandable is known as word salad. Positive symptoms generally respond well to medication.
Negative symptoms are deficits of normal emotional responses or of other thought processes. The five recognised domains of negative symptoms are: emotional blunting – showing flat expressions or little emotion; alogia – a poverty of speech; anhedonia – an inability to feel pleasure; asociality – the lack of desire to form relationships, and avolition – a lack of motivation and apathy. Other related symptoms are social withdrawal, self-neglect particularly in hygiene, and self-care, and loss of judgment. Negative symptoms appear to contribute more to poor quality of life, functional impairment, and to the burden on others than do positive symptoms. People with greater negative symptoms often have a history of poor adjustment before the onset of illness. Negative symptoms are less responsive to medication, and are the most difficult to treat.
Cognitive deficits are the earliest and most constantly found symptoms in schizophrenia. They are often evident long before the onset of illness in the prodromal stage, and may be present in early adolescence, or childhood. They are a core feature but not considered to be core symptoms, as are positive and negative symptoms. However, their presence and degree of dysfunction is taken as a better indicator of functionality than the presentation of core symptoms. Cognitive deficits become worse at first episode psychosis but then return to baseline, and remain fairly stable over the course of the illness.
The deficits in cognition are seen to drive the negative psychosocial outcome in schizophrenia, and are claimed to equate to a possible reduction in IQ from the norm of 100 to 70–85. Cognitive deficits may be of neurocognition (nonsocial) or of social cognition. Neurocognition is the ability to receive and remember information, and includes verbal fluency, memory, reasoning, problem solving, speed of processing, and auditory and visual perception. Verbal memory and attention are seen to be the most affected. Verbal memory impairment is associated with a decreased level of semantic processing (relating meaning to words). Another memory impairment is that of episodic memory. An impairment in visual perception that is consistently found in schizophrenia is that of visual backward masking. Visual processing impairments include an inability to perceive complex visual illusions. Social cognition is concerned with the mental operations needed to interpret, and understand the self and others in the social world. This is also an associated impairment, and facial emotion perception is often found to be difficult. Facial perception is critical for ordinary social interaction. Cognitive impairments do not usually respond to antipsychotics, and there are a number of
interventions that are used to try to improve them.
The most general symptoms of schizophrenia tend to appear in adolescence or early adulthood typically between the ages of 16 and 30. The onset of schizophrenia can occur at different ages. Onset is when the first positive symptoms of psychosis occur, and is known as first episode psychosis (FEP). Onset typically occurs between the late teens and mid-30s, with the peak incidence occurring in males in the early to mid twenties, and in females in the late twenties. There is also a sex difference with males being affected more often than females, and having a worse outcome.
Outside of these ages, onset before the age of 17 is known as early-onset, and before the age of 13, as can sometimes occur is known as childhood schizophrenia or very early-onset. A later stage of onset can occur between the ages of 40 and 60, known as late-onset schizophrenia. A later onset over the age of 60 which may be difficult to differentiate as schizophrenia, is known as very-late-onset schizophrenia-like psychosis. Late onset has shown that a higher rate of females are affected; they have less severe symptoms, and need lower doses of antipsychotics. There has been a dramatic increase in the numbers of older adults with schizophrenia. An estimated 70% of those with schizophrenia have cognitive deficits, and these are most pronounced in early onset, and late-onset illness.
Onset may happen suddenly, or may occur after the slow and gradual development of a number of signs and symptoms in a period known as the prodromal stage. Up to 75% of those with schizophrenia go through a prodromal stage. The negative and cognitive symptoms in the prodrome can precede FEP by many months, and up to five years. The period from FEP and treatment is known as the duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) which is seen to be a factor in functional outcome. The prodromal stage is the high-risk stage for the development of psychosis. Since the progression to first episode psychosis, is not inevitable an alternative term is often preferred of at risk mental state Recognition and early intervention at the prodromal stage would minimize the disruption to educational and social development associated with schizophrenia, and has been the focus of many studies. It is suggested that the use of anti-inflammatory compounds such as D-serine may prevent the transition to schizophrenia. Cognitive symptoms are not secondary to positive symptoms, or to the side effects of antipsychotics.
Cognitive impairments in the prodromal stage become worse after first episode psychosis (after which they return to baseline and then remain fairly stable), making early intervention to prevent such transition of prime importance. Early treatment with cognitive behavioral therapies are the gold standard. Neurological soft signs of clumsiness and loss of fine motor movement are often found in schizophrenia, and these resolve with effective treatment of FEP.
Genetic, environmental, and vulnerability factors are involved in the development of schizophrenia. The interactions of these risk factors are complex, as numerous and diverse insults from conception to adulthood can be involved. A genetic predisposition on its own, without interacting environmental factors, will not give rise to the development of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is described as a neurodevelopmental disorder that lacks a precise boundary in its definition.
Estimates of the heritability of schizophrenia are between 70% and 80%, which implies that 70% to 80% of the individual differences in risk to schizophrenia is associated with genetics. These estimates vary because of the difficulty in separating genetic and environmental influences, and their accuracy has been queried. The greatest single risk factor for developing schizophrenia is having a first-degree relative with the disease (risk is 6.5%); more than 40% of identical twins of those with schizophrenia are also affected. If one parent is affected the risk is about 13% and if both are affected the risk is nearly 50%. However, DSM-5 points out that most people with schizophrenia have no family history of psychosis. Results of candidate gene studies of schizophrenia have generally failed to find consistent associations, and the genetic loci identified by genome-wide association studies as associated with schizophrenia explain only a small fraction of the variation in the disease.
Many genes are known to be involved in schizophrenia, each with small effect and unknown transmission and expression. The summation of these effect sizes into a polygenic risk score can explain at least 7% of the variability in liability for schizophrenia. Around 5% of cases of schizophrenia are understood to be at least partially attributable to rare copy-number variations (CNVs); these structural variations are associated with known genomic disorders involving deletions at 22q11.2 (DiGeorge syndrome), duplications at 16p11.2 "16p11.2 duplication" (most frequently found) and deletions at 15q11.2 (Burnside-Butler syndrome). Some of these CNVs increase the risk of developing schizophrenia by as much as 20-fold, and are frequently comorbid with autism and intellectual disabilities.
The genes CRHR1 and CRHBP have been shown to be associated with a severity of suicidal behavior. These genes code for stress response proteins needed in the control of the HPA axis, and their interaction can affect this axis. Response to stress can cause lasting changes in the function of the HPA axis possibly disrupting the negative feedback mechanism, homeostasis, and the regulation of emotion leading to altered behaviors.
The question of how schizophrenia could be primarily genetically influenced, given that people with schizophrenia have lower fertility rates, is a paradox. It is expected that genetic variants that increase the risk of schizophrenia would be selected against due to their negative effects on reproductive fitness. A number of potential explanations have been proposed, including that alleles associated with schizophrenia risk confers a fitness advantage in unaffected individuals. While some evidence has not supported this idea, others propose that a large number of alleles each contributing a small amount can persist.
Environmental factors, each associated with a slight risk of developing schizophrenia in later life include oxygen deprivation, infection, prenatal maternal stress, and malnutrition in the mother during fetal development. A risk is also associated with maternal obesity, in increasing oxidative stress, and dysregulating the dopamine and serotonin pathways. Both maternal stress and infection have been demonstrated to alter fetal neurodevelopment through an increase of pro-inflammatory cytokines. There is a slighter risk associated with being born in the winter or spring possibly due to vitamin D deficiency or a prenatal viral infection. Other infections during pregnancy or around the time of birth that have been linked to an increased risk include infections by "Toxoplasma gondii" and "Chlamydia". The increased risk is about five to eight percent. Viral infections of the brain during childhood are also linked to a risk of schizophrenia during adulthood.
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), severe forms of which are classed as childhood trauma, range from being bullied or abused, to the death of a parent. Many adverse childhood experiences can cause toxic stress and increase the risk of psychosis. Schizophrenia was the last diagnosis to benefit from the link made between ACEs and adult mental health outcomes.
Living in an urban environment during childhood or as an adult has consistently been found to increase the risk of schizophrenia by a factor of two, even after taking into account drug use, ethnic group, and size of social group. Other risk factors of importance include social isolation, immigration related to social adversity and racial discrimination, family dysfunction, unemployment, and poor housing conditions. Having a father older than 40 years, or parents younger than 20 years are also associated with schizophrenia.
Cannabis-use may be a contributory factor in schizophrenia, potentially increasing the risk of the disease in those who are already at risk. The increased risk may require the presence of certain genes within an individual. Its use is associated with doubling the rate. The use of a more potent form of cannabis known as skunk increases the risk further.
About half of those with schizophrenia use recreational drugs, including cannabis, nicotine, and alcohol excessively. Recreational drugs include stimulants such as amphetamine and cocaine that can lead to a temporary stimulant psychosis, which presents very similarly to schizophrenia. Rarely, alcohol use can also result in a similar alcohol-related psychosis. Drugs may also be used as coping mechanisms by people who have schizophrenia, to deal with depression, anxiety, boredom, and loneliness. The use of cannabis and tobacco are not associated with the development of cognitive deficits, and sometimes a reverse relationship is found where their use improves these symptoms. However, substance abuse is associated with an increased risk of suicide, and a poor response to treatment.
The mechanisms of schizophrenia are unknown, and a number of models have been put forward to explain the link between altered brain function and schizophrenia. One of the most common is the dopamine model, which attributes psychosis to the mind's faulty interpretation of the misfiring of dopaminergic neurons. This has been directly related to the symptoms of delusions and hallucinations. Abnormal dopamine signaling has been implicated in schizophrenia based on the usefulness of medications that affect the dopamine receptor and the observation that dopamine levels are increased during acute psychosis. A decrease in D1 receptors in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex may also be responsible for deficits in working memory.
Another hypothesis is the glutamate model that links alterations between glutamatergic neurotransmission and neural oscillations that affect connections between the thalamus and the cortex. Studies have shown that a reduced expression of a glutamate receptor – NMDA receptor, and glutamate blocking drugs such as phencyclidine and ketamine can mimic the symptoms and cognitive problems associated with schizophrenia. Post-mortem studies consistently find that a subset of these neurons fail to express GAD67 (GAD1), in addition to abnormalities in brain morphometry. The subsets of interneurons that are abnormal in schizophrenia are responsible for the synchronizing of neural ensembles needed during working memory tasks. These give the neural oscillations produced as gamma waves that have a frequency of between 30 and 80 hertz. Both working memory tasks and gamma waves are impaired in schizophrenia, which may reflect abnormal interneuron functionality.
There are often impairments in cognition, social skills, and motor skills before the onset of schizophrenia, which suggests a neurodevelopmental model. Such frameworks have hypothesized links between these biological abnormalities and symptoms. Furthermore, problems before birth such as maternal infection, maternal malnutrition and complications during pregnancy all increase risk for schizophrenia. Schizophrenia usually emerges 18-25, an age period that overlaps with certain stages of neurodevelopment that are implicated in schizophrenia.
Deficits in executive functions, such as planning, inhibition, and working memory, are pervasive in schizophrenia. Although these functions are dissociable, their dysfunction in schizophrenia may reflect an underlying deficit in the ability to represent goal related information in working memory, and to utilize this to direct cognition and behavior. These impairments have been linked to a number of neuroimaging and neuropathological abnormalities. For example, functional neuroimaging studies report evidence of reduced neural processing efficiency, whereby the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is activated to a greater degree to achieve a certain level of performance relative to controls on working memory tasks. These abnormalities may be linked to the consistent post-mortem finding of reduced neuropil, evidenced by increased pyramidal cell density and reduced dendritic spine density. These cellular and functional abnormalities may also be reflected in structural neuroimaging studies that find reduced grey matter volume in association with deficits in working memory tasks.
Positive symptoms have been linked to reduced cortical thickness in the superior temporal gyrus. Severity of negative symptoms has been linked to reduced thickness in the left medial orbitofrontal cortex. Anhedonia, traditionally defined as a reduced capacity to experience pleasure, is frequently reported in schizophrenia. However, a large body of evidence suggests that hedonic responses are intact in schizophrenia, and that what is reported to be anhedonia is a reflection of dysfunction in other processes related to reward. Overall, a failure of reward prediction is thought to lead to impairment in the generation of cognition and behavior required to obtain rewards, despite normal hedonic responses.
It has been hypothesized that in some people, development of schizophrenia is related to intestinal tract dysfunction such as seen with non-celiac gluten sensitivity or abnormalities in the gut microbiota. A subgroup of persons with schizophrenia present an immune response to gluten differently from that found in people with celiac, with elevated levels of certain serum biomarkers of gluten sensitivity such as anti-gliadin IgG or anti-gliadin IgA antibodies.
Another theory links abnormal brain lateralization to the development of being left-handed which is significantly more common in those with schizophrenia. This abnormal development of hemispheric assymetry is noted in schizophrenia. Studies have concluded that the link is a true and verifiable effect that may reflect a genetic link between lateralization and schizophrenia.
Bayesian models of brain functioning have been utilized to link abnormalities in cellular functioning to symptoms. Both hallucinations and delusions have been suggested to reflect improper encoding of prior expectations, thereby causing expectation to excessively influence sensory perception and the formation of beliefs. In approved models of circuits that mediate predictive coding, reduced NMDA receptor activation, could in theory result in the positive symptoms of delusions and hallucinations.
Using machine learning, two neuroanatomical subtypes of schizophrenia have been described.
Subtype 1 shows widespread low grey matter volumes, particularly in the thalamus, nucleus accumbens, medial temporal, medial prefrontal, frontal, and insular cortices. Subtype 2 shows increased volume in the basal ganglia and internal capsule, with otherwise normal brain volume.
There is no objective test or biomarker to confirm diagnosis. Psychoses can occur in several conditions and are often transient making early diagnosis of schizophrenia difficult. Psychosis noted for the first time in a person that is later diagnosed with schizophrenia is referred to as a first-episode psychosis (FEP).
Schizophrenia is diagnosed based on criteria in either the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association, or the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) published by the World Health Organization. These criteria use the self-reported experiences of the person and reported abnormalities in behavior, followed by a psychiatric assessment. The mental status examination is an important part of the assessment. An established tool for assessing the severity of positive and negative symptoms is the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). This has been seen to have shortcomings relating to negative symptoms, and other scales – the "Clinical Assessment Interview for Negative Symptoms" (CAINS), and the "Brief Negative Symptoms Scale" (BNSS) have been introduced. DSM-5, the fifth edition was published in 2013, and gives a "Scale to Assess the Severity of Symptom Dimensions" outlining eight dimensions of symptoms.
DSM-5 states that to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, two diagnostic criteria have to be met over the period of one month, with a significant impact on social or occupational functioning for at least six months. One of the symptoms needs to be either delusions, hallucinations, or disorganized speech. A second symptom could be one of the negative symptoms, or severely disorganized or catatonic behaviour. A different diagnosis of schizophreniform disorder can be made before the six months needed for the diagnosis of schizophrenia.
In Australia the guideline for diagnosis is for six months or more with symptoms severe enough to affect ordinary functioning. In the UK diagnosis is based on having the symptoms for most of the time for one month, with symptoms that significantly affect the ability to work, study, or to carry on ordinary daily living, and with other similar conditions ruled out.
The ICD criteria are typically used in European countries; the DSM criteria are used predominantly in the United States and Canada, and are prevailing in research studies. In practice, agreement between the two systems is high. The current proposal for the ICD-11 criteria for schizophrenia recommends adding self-disorder as a symptom.
A major unresolved difference between the two diagnostic systems is that of the requirement in DSM of an impaired functional outcome. WHO for ICD argues that not all people with schizophrenia have functional deficits and so these are not specific for the diagnosis.
Both manuals have adopted the chapter heading of "Schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders"; ICD modifying this as "Schizophrenia spectrum and other primary psychotic disorders". The definition of schizophrenia remains essentially the same as that specified by the 2000 text revised DSM-IV (DSM-IV-TR). However, with the publication of DSM-5, the APA removed all sub-classifications of schizophrenia. ICD-11 has also removed subtypes. The removed subtype from both, of catatonic has been relisted in ICD-11 as a "psychomotor disturbance" that may be present in schizophrenia.
Another major change was to remove the importance previously given to Schneider's first-rank symptoms. DSM-5 still uses the listing of schizophreniform disorder but ICD-11 no longer includes it. DSM-5 also recommends that a better distinction be made between a current condition of schizophrenia and its historical progress, to achieve a clearer overall characterization.
A dimensional assessment has been included in DSM-5 covering eight dimensions of symptoms to be rated (using the "Scale to Assess the Severity of Symptom Dimensions") – these include the five diagnostic criteria plus cognitive impairments, mania, and depression. This can add relevant information for the individual in regard to treatment, prognosis, and functional outcome; it also enables the response to treatment to be more accurately described.
Two of the negative symptoms – avolition and diminished emotional expression, have been given more prominence in both manuals.
Many people with schizophrenia have one or more other disorders that often includes an anxiety disorder such as panic disorder, an obsessive-compulsive disorder, or a substance use disorder. These are separate disorders that need separate treatments.
Psychotic symptoms lasting less than a month may be diagnosed as brief psychotic disorder, and various conditions may be classed as psychotic disorder not otherwise specified; schizoaffective disorder is diagnosed if symptoms of mood disorder are substantially present alongside psychotic symptoms. If the psychotic symptoms are the direct physiological result of a general medical condition or a substance, then the diagnosis is one of a psychosis secondary to that condition. Schizophrenia is not diagnosed if symptoms of pervasive developmental disorder are present unless prominent delusions or hallucinations are also present.
Sleep disorders are commonly found with schizophrenia, and are early signs of illness and also of relapse. Sleep disorders are linked with positive symptoms that include disorganized thinking and can adversely affect neocortical plasticity and cognition. The consolidation of memories is disrupted in sleep disorders. They are associated with severity of illness, a poor prognosis, and poor quality of life. Sleep onset and maintenance insomnia is a common symptom, regardless of whether treatment has been received or not. There is also a clozapine-induced somnolence. A related condition is antipsychotic-induced restless legs syndrome. Genetic variations have been found associated with these conditions involving the circadian rhythm, dopamine and histamine metabolism, and signal transduction.
Psychotic symptoms may be present in several other conditions, and mental disorders, including bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, substance intoxication, substance-induced psychosis, and a number of drug withdrawal syndromes. Non-bizarre delusions are also present in delusional disorder, and social withdrawal in social anxiety disorder, avoidant personality disorder and schizotypal personality disorder. Schizotypal personality disorder has symptoms that are similar but less severe than those of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia occurs along with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) considerably more often than could be explained by chance, although it can be difficult to distinguish obsessions that occur in OCD from the delusions of schizophrenia.
A more general medical and neurological examination may be needed to rule out medical illnesses which may rarely produce psychotic schizophrenia-like symptoms, such as metabolic disturbance, systemic infection, syphilis, HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder, epilepsy, limbic encephalitis, and brain lesions. Stroke, multiple sclerosis, hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, and dementias such as Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, frontotemporal dementia, and the Lewy body dementias may also be associated with schizophrenia-like psychotic symptoms. It may be necessary to rule out a delirium, which can be distinguished by visual hallucinations, acute onset and fluctuating level of consciousness, and indicates an underlying medical illness. Investigations are not generally repeated for relapse unless there is a specific "medical" indication or possible adverse effects from antipsychotic medication. In children hallucinations must be separated from typical childhood fantasies.
Prevention of schizophrenia is difficult as there are no reliable markers for the later development of the disorder. There is tentative though inconclusive evidence for the effectiveness of early intervention to prevent schizophrenia in the prodrome phase. There is some evidence that early intervention in those with first-episode psychosis may improve short-term outcomes, but there is little benefit from these measures after five years. Cognitive behavioral therapy may reduce the risk of psychosis in those at high risk after a year and is recommended in this group, by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Another preventive measure is to avoid drugs that have been associated with development of the disorder, including cannabis, cocaine, and amphetamines.
Antipsychotics are prescribed following a first-episode psychosis, and following remission a preventive maintenance use is continued to avoid relapse. However, it is recognised that some people do recover following a single episode and that long-term use of antipsychotics will not be needed but there is no way of identifying this group.
The primary treatment of schizophrenia is the use of antipsychotic medications, often in combination with psychosocial interventions and social supports. Community support services including drop-in centers, visits by members of a community mental health team, supported employment, and support groups are common. The time between the onset of psychotic symptoms to being given treatment – the duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) is associated with a poorer outcome in both the short term and the long term.
Voluntary or involuntary admittance to hospital may be needed to treat a severe episode, however, hospital stays are as short as possible. In the UK large mental hospitals termed asylums began to be closed down in the 1950s with the advent of antipsychotics, and with an awareness of the negative impact of long-term hospital stays on recovery. This process was known as deinstitutionalization, and community and supportive services were developed in order to support this change. Many other countries followed suit with the US starting in the 60s. There will still remain a few people who do not improve enough to be discharged. In those countries that lack the necessary supportive and social services long-term hospital stays are more usual.
The first-line treatment for schizophrenia is an antipsychotic. The first-generation antipsychotics, now called typical antipsychotics, are dopamine antagonists that block D2 receptors, and affect the neurotransmission of dopamine. Those brought out later, the second-generation antipsychotics known as atypical antipsychotics, can also have effect on another neurotransmitter serotonin. Antipsychotics can reduce the symptoms of anxiety within hours of their use but for other symptoms they may take several days or weeks to reach their full effect. They have little effect on negative and cognitive symptoms, which may be helped by additional psychotherapies and medications.
There is no single antipsychotic suitable for first-line treatment for everyone, as responses and tolerances vary between people. Atypical antipsychotics may be more effective but are associated with greater side effects. Later antipsychotics that are only partial D2 receptor agonists including aripiprazole, and brexpiprazole were marketed as third-generation antipsychotics but have been considered as atypicals.
After a first-episode psychosis where there has been a full recovery with no symptoms for twelve months, stopping medication may be considered. Up to 40% in these cases remain well though some may need to continue on low doses. Where there has been a second relapse but with no further symptoms after a full year, antipsychotics may be reduced. Repeated psychotic episodes worsen the long-term outlook and the risk of relapse following a second episode is high, and long-term treatment is usually recommended. Antipsychotics may need to be stopped or switched, if a person fails to improve adequately or has associated adverse effects. This needs to be closely monitored, and should take place over weeks or months, except in urgent situations such as the development of agranulocytosis from the use of clozapine. In this type of abrupt stoppage a more severe rebound psychosis can occur.
Tobacco smoking increases the metabolism of some antipsychotics, by strongly activitating CYP1A2 the enzyme that breaks them down, and a significant difference is found in these levels between smokers and non-smokers. It is recommended that the dosage for those smokers on clozapine be increased by 50%, and for those on olanzapine by 30%. The result of stopping smoking can lead to an increased concentration of the antipsychotic that may result in toxicity, so that monitoring of effects would need to take place with a view to decreasing the dosage; many symptoms may be noticeably worsened, and extreme fatigue, and seizures are also possible with a risk of relapse. Likewise those who resume smoking may need their dosages adjusted accordingly. The altering effects are due to compounds in tobacco smoke and not to nicotine; the use of nicotine replacement therapy therefore has the equivalent effect of stopping smoking and monitoring would still be needed.
About 30 to 50 percent of people with schizophrenia fail to accept that they have an illness or comply with their recommended treatment. For those who are unwilling or unable to take medication regularly, long-acting injections of antipsychotics may be used, either monthly or three-monthly. They reduce the risk of relapse to a greater degree than oral medications. When used in combination with psychosocial interventions, they may improve long-term adherence to treatment.
Research findings suggested that other neurotransmission systems including serotonin, glutamate, GABA, and acetycholine were implicated in the development of schizophrenia, and that a more inclusive medication was needed. A new first-in-class antipsychotic that targets multiple neurotransmitter systems called lumateperone (ITI-007), was trialed and approved by the FDA in December 2019 for the treatment of schizophrenia in adults. Lumateperone is a small molecule agent that shows improved safety, and tolerance. It interacts with dopamine, serotonin, and glutamate in a complex, uniquely selective manner, and is seen to improve negative symptoms, and social functioning. Lumateperone was also found to reduce potential metabolic dysfunction, have lower rates of movement disorders, and have lower cardiovascular side effects such as a fast heart rate.
Most antipsychotics have side effects. Typical antipsychotics are associated with a higher rate of movement disorders including akathisia. Some atypicals are associated with considerable weight gain, diabetes and the risk of metabolic syndrome. Risperidone (atypical) has a similar rate of extrapyramidal symptoms to haloperidol (typical). A rare but potentially lethal condition of neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) has been associated with the use of antipsychotics. Through its early recognition, and timely intervention rates have declined. However, an awareness of the syndrome is advised to enable intervention. Another less rare condition of tardive dyskinesia can occur due to long-term use of antipsychotics, developing after many months or years of use. It is more often reported with use of typical antipsychotics. A common but often overlooked adverse effect is constipation which can be severe and life-threatening.
Clozapine is associated with side effects that include weight gain, tiredness, and hypersalivation. More serious adverse effects include seizures, NMS, neutropenia, and agranulocytosis (lowered white blood cell count) and its use needs careful monitoring. Studies have found that antipsychotic treatment following NMS and neutropenia may sometimes be successfully rechallenged (restarted) with clozapine. Early findings suggest that the concurrent use of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (GCSF) to maintain the neutrophil count whilst on rechallenge following neutropenia, is safe and effective. But, if agranulocytosis was later to occur there would be little if any therapeutic alternative which would ordinarily be GCSF.
Clozapine is also associated with thromboembolism (including pulmonary embolism), myocarditis, and cardiomyopathy. A systematic review of clozapine-associated pulmonary embolism indicates that this adverse effect can often be fatal, and that it has an early onset, and is dose-dependent. The findings advised the consideration of using a prevention therapy for venous thromboembolism after starting treatment with clozapine, and continuing this for six months. The adverse effect of constipation is three times more likely to occur with the use of clozapine, and severe cases can lead to ileus and bowel ischemia resulting in many fatalities.
However, the risk of serious adverse effects from clozapine is low, and there are the beneficial effects to be gained of a reduced risk of suicide, and aggression. Typical antipsychotics and atypical risperidone can have a side effect of sexual dysfunction. Clozapine, olanzapine, and quetiapine are associated with beneficial effects on sexual functioning helped by various psychotherapies. Unwanted side effects cause people to stop treatment, resulting in relapses.
About half of those with schizophrenia will respond favourably to antipsychotics, and have a good outcome in terms of functionality. However, up to a third of people do not respond to antipsychotics, and their positive symptoms persist. Following two trials of different antipsychotics over six weeks, that also prove ineffective, they will be classed as having treatment resistant schizophrenia (TRS), and clozapine will be offered. Clozapine is of benefit to around half of this group although it has the potentially serious side effect of agranulocytosis (lowered white blood cell count) in less than 4% of people. Between 12 and 20 per cent will not respond to clozapine and this group is said to have ultra treatment resistant schizophrenia. ECT may be offered to treat TRS as an add-on therapy, and is shown to sometimes be of benefit. A review concluded that this use only has an effect on medium-term TRS and that there is not enough evidence to support its use other than for this group.
TRS is often accompanied by a low quality of life, and greater social dysfunction. TRS may be the result of inadequate rather than inefficient treatment; it also may be a false label due to medication not being taken regularly, or at all. About 16 per cent of people who had initially been responsive to treatment later develop resistance. This could relate to the length of time on APs, with treatment becoming less responsive. This finding also supports the involvement of dopamine in the development of schizophrenia. Studies suggest that TRS may be a more heritable form.
TRS may be evident from first episode psychosis, or from a relapse. It can vary in its intensity and response to other therapies. This variation is seen to possibly indicate an underlying neurobiology such as dopamine supersensitivity (DSS), glutamate or serotonin dysfunction, inflammation and oxidative stress. Studies have found that dopamine supersensitivity is found in up to 70% of those with TRS. The variation has led to the suggestion that treatment responsive and treatment resistant schizophrenia be considered as two different subtypes. It is further suggested that if the subtypes could be distinguished at an early stage significant implications could follow for treatment considerations, and for research. Neuroimaging studies have found a significant decrease in the volume of grey matter in those with TRS with no such change seen in those who are treatment responsive. In those with ultra treatment resistance the decrease in grey matter volume was larger.
A link has been made between the gut microbiota and the development of TRS. The most prevalent cause put forward for TRS is that of mutation in the genes responsible for drug effectiveness. These include liver enzyme genes that control the availability of a drug to brain targets, and genes responsible for the structure and function of these targets. In the colon the bacteria encode a hundred times more genes than exist in the human genome. Only a fraction of ingested drugs reach the colon, having been already exposed to small intestinal bacteria, and absorbed in the portal circulation. This small fraction is then subject to the metabolic action of many communities of bacteria. Activation of the drug depends on the composition and enzymes of the bacteria and of the specifics of the drug, and therefore a great deal of individual variation can affect both the usefulness of the drug and its tolerability. It is suggested that parenteral administration of antipsychotics would bypass the gut and be more successful in overcoming TRS. The composition of gut microbiota is variable between individuals, but they are seen to remain stable. However, phyla can change in response to many factors including ageing, diet, substance-use, and medications – especially antibiotics, laxatives, and antipsychotics. In FEP, schizophrenia has been linked to significant changes in the gut microbiota that can predict response to treatment.
Disruption of the gut microbiota has been linked to inflammation, and disorders of the central nervous system. This includes schizophrenia, and probiotic supplementation has been proposed to improve its symptoms. A review found no evidence to support this but it concludes that probiotics may be of benefit in regulating bowel movements and lessening the metabolic effects of antipsychotics.
A review explains the need for an optimal level of vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids for the proper synthesis and control of the neurotransmitter serotonin. Serotonin regulates executive function, sensory gating, and social behavior – all of which are commonly impaired in schizophrenia. The model proposed suggests that supplementation would help in preventing and treating these brain dysfunctions. Another review finds that omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin D are among the nutritional factors known to have a beneficial effect on mental health. A Cochrane review found evidence to suggest that the use of omega 3 fatty acids in the prodromal stage may prevent the transition to psychosis but the evidence was poor quality and further studies were called for.
A number of psychosocial interventions that include several types of psychotherapy may be useful in the treatment of schizophrenia such as: family therapy, group therapy, cognitive remediation therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and metacognitive training. Skills training, and help with substance use, and weight management– often needed as a side effect of an antipsychotic, are also offered. In the US, interventions for first episode psychosis have been brought together in an overall approach known as coordinated speciality care (CSC) and also includes support for education. In the UK "care across all phases" is a similar approach that covers many of the treament guidelines recommended. The aim is to reduce the number of relapses and stays in hospital.
Other support services for education, employment, and housing are usually offered. For people suffering from severe schizophrenia, and discharged from a stay in hospital, these services are often brought together in an integrated approach to offer support in the community away from the hospital setting. In addition to medicine management, housing, and finances, assistance is given for more routine matters such as help with shopping and using public transport. This approach is known as assertive community treatment (ACT) and has been shown to achieve positive results in symptoms, social functioning and quality of life. Another more intense approach is known as "intensive care management" (ICM). ICM is a stage further than ACT and emphasises support of high intensity in smaller caseloads, (less than twenty). This approach is to provide long-term care in the community. Studies show that ICM improves many of the relevant outcomes including social functioning.
Some studies have shown little evidence for the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in either reducing symptoms or preventing relapse. However, other studies have found that CBT does improve overall psychotic symptoms (when in use with medication) and has been recommended in Canada, but it has been seen here to have no effect on social function, relapse, or quality of life. In the UK it is recommended as an add-on therapy in the treatment of schizophrenia, but is not supported for use in treatment resistant schizophrenia. Arts therapies are seen to improve negative symptoms in some people, and are recommended by NICE in the UK. This approach however, is criticised as having not been well-researched, and arts therapies are not recommended in Australian guidelines for example. Peer support, in which people with personal experience of schizophrenia, provide help to each other, is of unclear benefit.
Exercise therapy has been shown to improve positive and negative symptoms, cognition, and improve quality of life. Aerobic exercise has been shown to improve cognitive deficits of working memory and attention. Exercise has also been shown to increase the volume of the hippocampus in those with schizophrenia. A decrease in hippocampal volume is one of the factors linked to the development of the disease. However, there still remains the problem of increasing motivation for, and maintaining participation in physical activity. Supervised sessions are recommended. In the UK healthy eating advice is offered alongside exercise programs.
Acupuncture is a procedure generally known to be safe and with few adverse effects. A Cochrane review found limited evidence for its possible antipsychotic effects in the treatment of schizophrenia and called for more studies. Another review found limited evidence for its use as an add-on therapy for symptoms relief but positive results were found for the treatment of sleep disorders that often accompany schizophrenia.
"Wendan decoction" is a classic herbal treatment in traditional Chinese medicine used for symptoms of psychosis, and other conditions. Wendan decoction is safe, accessible, and inexpenive, and a Cochrane review was carried out for its possible effects on schizophrenia symptoms. Limited evidence was found for its positive antipsychotic effects in the short term, and it was associated with fewer adverse effects. Used as an add-on to an antipsychotic, wider positive effects were found. Larger studies of improved quality were called for.
Schizophrenia has great human and economic costs. It results in a decreased life expectancy of 20 years. This is primarily because of its association with obesity, poor diet, a sedentary lifestyle, and smoking, with an increased rate of suicide playing a lesser role. Side effects of antipsychotics may also increase the risk. These differences in life expectancy increased between the 1970s and 1990s. An Australian study puts the rate of early death at 25 years, and views the main cause to be related to heart disease. Primary polydipsia, or excessive fluid intake, is relatively common in people with chronic schizophrenia. This may lead to hyponatremia which can be life-threatening. Antipsychotics can lead to a dry mouth, but there are several other factors that may contribute to the disorder. It is suggested to lead to a reduction in life expectancy by 13 per cent. A study has suggested that real barriers to improving the mortality rate in schizophrenia are poverty, overlooking the symptoms of other illnesses, stress, stigma, and medication side effects, and that these need to be changed.
Schizophrenia is a major cause of disability, with active psychosis ranked as the third-most-disabling condition after tetraplegia and dementia, and ahead of paraplegia and blindness. Approximately 75% of people with schizophrenia have ongoing disability with relapses and 16.7 million people globally are deemed to have moderate or severe disability from the condition. Some people do recover completely and others function well in society. Most people with schizophrenia live independently with community support. About 85% are unemployed. In people with a first episode of psychosis a good long-term outcome occurs in 42%, an intermediate outcome in 35% and a poor outcome in 27%. Outcomes for schizophrenia appear better in the developing than the developed world. These conclusions have been questioned. Social problems, such as long-term unemployment, poverty, homelessness, exploitation, stigmatization and victimization are common consequences, and lead to social exclusion.
There is a higher than average suicide rate associated with schizophrenia estimated at around 5% to 6%, most often occurring in the period following onset or first hospital admission. Several times more (20 to 40%) attempt suicide at least once. There are a variety of risk factors, including male gender, depression, a high IQ, heavy smoking, and substance abuse. Repeated relapse is linked to an increased risk of suicidal behavior. The use of clozapine can reduce the risk of suicide and aggression.
Schizophrenia and smoking have shown a strong association in studies worldwide. Use of cigarettes is especially high in those diagnosed with schizophrenia, with estimates ranging from 80 to 90% being regular smokers, as compared to 20% of the general population. Those who smoke tend to smoke heavily, and additionally smoke cigarettes with high nicotine content. Some propose that this is in an effort to improve symptoms. Among people with schizophrenia use of cannabis is also common.
In 2017, the Global Burden of Disease Study estimated there were 1.1 million new cases, and in 2019 WHO reported a total of 20 million cases globally. Schizophrenia affects around 0.3–0.7% of people at some point in their life. It occurs 1.4 times more frequently in males than females and typically appears earlier in men – the peak ages of onset are 25 years for males and 27 years for females. Onset in childhood, before the age of 13 can sometimes occur. A later onset can occur between the ages of 40 and 60, known as late onset, and also after 60 known as very late onset.
Worldwide, schizophrenia is the most common psychotic disorder. The frequency of schizophrenia varies across the world, within countries, and at the local and neighborhood level. This variation has been estimated to be fivefold. It causes approximately one percent of worldwide disability adjusted life years and resulted in 17,000 deaths in 2015.
In 2000, the World Health Organization found the percentage of people affected and the number of new cases that develop each year is roughly similar around the world, with age-standardized prevalence per 100,000 ranging from 343 in Africa to 544 in Japan and Oceania for men, and from 378 in Africa to 527 in Southeastern Europe for women. About 1.1% of adults have schizophrenia in the United States. However, in areas of conflict this figure can rise to between 4.0 and 6.5%.
The history of schizophrenia is complex and does not lend itself easily to a linear narrative. Accounts of a schizophrenia-like syndrome are rare in records before the 19th century. The earliest cases detailed were reported in 1797, and 1809. "Dementia praecox", meaning premature dementia was used by German psychiatrist Heinrich Schüle in 1886, and then in 1891 by Arnold Pick in a case report of hebephrenia. In 1893 Emil Kraepelin used the term in making a distinction, known as the Kraepelinian dichotomy, between the two psychoses – dementia praecox, and manic depression (now called bipolar disorder). Kraepelin believed that "dementia praecox" was probably caused by a systemic disease that affected many organs and nerves, affecting the brain after puberty in a final decisive cascade. It was thought to be an early form of dementia, a degenerative disease. When it became evident that the disorder was not degenerative it was renamed schizophrenia by Eugen Bleuler in 1908.
The word "schizophrenia" translates roughly as "splitting of the mind" and is Modern Latin from the Greek roots "schizein" (σχίζειν, "to split") and "phrēn", (φρεν, "mind") Its use was intended to describe the separation of function between personality, thinking, memory, and perception.
The term schizophrenia used to be associated with "split personality" by the general population but that usage went into decline when "split personality" became known as a separate disorder, first as "multiple identity disorder ", and later as dissociative identity disorder. In 2002 in Japan the name was changed to "integration disorder", and in 2012 in South Korea, the name was changed to "attunement disorder" to reduce the stigma, both with good results.
In the early 20th century, the psychiatrist Kurt Schneider listed the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia into two groups of hallucinations, and delusions. The hallucinations were listed as specific to auditory, and the delusional included thought disorders. These were seen as the symptoms of first-rank importance and were termed first-rank symptoms. Whilst these were also sometimes seen to be relevant to the psychosis in manic-depression, they were highly suggestive of schizophrenia and typically referred to as first-rank symptoms of schizophrenia. The most common first-rank symptom was found to belong to thought disorders. In 2013 the first-rank symptoms were excluded from the DSM-5 criteria. First-rank symptoms are seen to be of limited use in detecting schizophrenia but may be of help in differential diagnosis.
The earliest attempts to treat schizophrenia were psychosurgical, involving either the removal of brain tissue from different regions or the severing of pathways. These were notably frontal lobotomies and cingulotomies which were carried out from the 1930s. In the 1930s a number of shock therapies were introduced which induced seizures (convulsions) or comas. Insulin shock therapy involved the injecting of large doses of insulin in order to induce comas, which in turn produced hypoglycemia and convulsions. The use of electricity to induce seizures was developed, and in use as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) by 1938. Stereotactic surgeries were developed in the 1940s. Treatment was revolutionized in the mid-1950s with the development and introduction of the first typical antipsychotic, chlorpromazine. In the 1970s the first atypical antipsychotic clozapine, was introduced followed by the introduction of others.
In the early 1970s in the US, the diagnostic model used for schizophrenia was broad and clinically-based using DSM II. It had been noted that schizophrenia was diagnosed far more in the US than in Europe which had been using the ICD-9 criteria. The US model was criticised for failing to demarcate clearly those people with a mental illness, and those without. In 1980 DSM III was published and showed a shift in focus from the clinically-based biopsychosocial model to a reason-based medical model. DSM IV showed an increased focus to an evidence-based medical model. DSM-5 was published in 2013 and introduced changes to DSM IV.
In 2002, the term for schizophrenia in Japan was changed from to to reduce stigma. The new name also interpreted as "integration disorder" was inspired by the biopsychosocial model; it increased the percentage of people who were informed of the diagnosis from 37 to 70% over three years. A similar change was made in South Korea in 2012 to "attunement disorder". A professor of psychiatry, Jim van Os, has proposed changing the English term to "psychosis spectrum syndrome". In 2013 with the reviewed DSM-5, the DSM-5 committee was in favor of giving a new name to schizophrenia but they referred this to WHO.
In the United States, the cost of schizophrenia – including direct costs (outpatient, inpatient, drugs, and long-term care) and non-health care costs (law enforcement, reduced workplace productivity, and unemployment) – was estimated to be $62.7 billion in 2002. In the UK the cost in 2016 was put at £11.8 billion per year with a third of that figure directly attributable to the cost of hospital and social care, and treatment.
The book "A Beautiful Mind" chronicled the life of John Forbes Nash who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia but who went on to win the Nobel Prize for Economics. This was later made into the film with the same name. An earlier documentary was made with the title "A Brilliant Madness".
In 1964 a lengthy case study of three males diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia who each had the delusional belief that they were Jesus Christ was published as a book. This has the title of "The Three Christs of Ypsilanti", and a film with the title "Three Christs" was released in 2020. Such religious delusions are a fairly common feature in psychoses including schizophrenia.
People with severe mental illness, including schizophrenia, are at a significantly greater risk of being victims of both violent and non-violent crime. Schizophrenia has been associated with a higher rate of violent acts, but most appear to be related to associated substance abuse. Rates of homicide linked to psychosis are similar to those linked to substance misuse, and parallel the overall rate in a region. What role schizophrenia has on violence independent of drug misuse is controversial, but certain aspects of individual histories or mental states may be factors. About 11% of people in prison for homicide have schizophrenia and 21% have mood disorders. Another study found about 8-10% of people with schizophrenia had committed a violent act in the past year compared to 2% of the general population.
Media coverage relating to violent acts by people with schizophrenia reinforces public perception of an association between schizophrenia and violence. In a large, representative sample from a 1999 study, 12.8% of Americans believed that those with schizophrenia were "very likely" to do something violent against others, and 48.1% said that they were "somewhat likely" to. Over 74% said that people with schizophrenia were either "not very able" or "not able at all" to make decisions concerning their treatment, and 70.2% said the same of money-management decisions. The perception of people with psychosis as violent more than doubled between the 1950s and 2000, according to one meta-analysis.
Schizophrenia is not believed to occur in non-human species but it may be possible to develop a pharmacologically induced non-human primate model of schizophrenia.
Various agents have been explored for possible effectiveness in treating negative symptoms, for which antipsychotics have been of little benefit. There have been trials on medications with anti-inflammatory activity, based on the premise that inflammation might play a role in the pathology of schizophrenia.
Research has found a tentative benefit in using minocycline, a broad-spectrum antibiotic, as an add-on treatment for schizophrenia. Reviews have found that minocycline as an add-on therapy appears to be effective in improving all dimensions of symptoms, and has been found to be safe and well tolerated, but larger studies are called for.
A review of the effects of nidotherapy – efforts to change the environment to improve functional ability was inconclusive, and it was suggested that it be treated as an experimental approach.
Various brain stimulation techniques are being studied to treat the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, in particular auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs). A 2015 Cochrane review found unclear evidence of benefit. Most studies focus on transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCM), and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Techniques based on focused ultrasound for deep brain stimulation could provide insight for the treatment of AVHs.
Another active area of research is the study of a variety of potential biomarkers that would be of invaluable help not only in the diagnosis but also in the treatment and prognosis of schizophrenia. Possible biomarkers include markers of inflammation, neuroimaging, BDNF, genetics, and speech analysis. Some inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein are useful in detecting levels of inflammation implicated in some psychiatric disorders but they are not disorder-specific. However, other inflammatory cytokines are found to be elevated in first episode psychosis and acute relapse that are normalized after treatment with antipsychotics, and these may be considered as state markers. Deficits in sleep spindles in schizophrenia may serve as a marker of an impaired thalamocortical circuit, and a mechanism for memory impairment. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=27790 |
Tau Ceti
Tau Ceti, Latinized from τ Ceti, is a single star in the constellation Cetus that is spectrally similar to the Sun, although it has only about 78% of the Sun's mass. At a distance of just under from the Solar System, it is a relatively nearby star and the closest solitary G-class star. The star appears stable, with little stellar variation, and is metal-deficient.
Observations have detected more than ten times as much dust surrounding Tau Ceti as is present in the Solar System. Since December 2012, there has been evidence of possibly five planets orbiting Tau Ceti, with two of these being potentially in the habitable zone. Because of its debris disk, any planet orbiting Tau Ceti would face far more impact events than Earth. Despite this hurdle to habitability, its solar analog (Sun-like) characteristics have led to widespread interest in the star. Given its stability, similarity and relative proximity to the Sun, Tau Ceti is consistently listed as a target for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and appears in some science fiction literature.
It can be seen with the unaided eye with an apparent magnitude of 3.5. As seen from Tau Ceti, the Sun would be in the northern hemisphere constellation Boötes with an apparent magnitude of about 2.6.
The name "Tau Ceti" is the Bayer designation for this star, established in 1603 as part of German celestial cartographer Johann Bayer's "Uranometria" star catalogue: it is "number T" in Bayer's sequence of constellation Cetus. In the catalogue of stars in the "Calendarium" of Al Achsasi al Mouakket, written at Cairo about 1650, this star was designated "Thālith al Naʽāmāt" (ثالث النعامات - "thālith al-naʽāmāt"), which was translated into Latin as "Tertia Struthionum", meaning "the third of the ostriches". This star, along with η Cet (Deneb Algenubi), θ Cet (Thanih Al Naamat), ζ Cet (Baten Kaitos), and υ Cet, were "Al Naʽāmāt" (النعامات), the Hen Ostriches.
In Chinese astronomy, the "Square Celestial Granary" () refers to an asterism consisting of τ Ceti, ι Ceti, η Ceti, ζ Ceti, θ Ceti and 57 Ceti. Consequently, the Chinese name for τ Ceti itself is "the Fifth Star of Square Celestial Granary" ().
The proper motion of a star is its rate of movement across the celestial sphere, determined by comparing its position relative to more distant background objects. Tau Ceti is considered to be a high-proper-motion star, although it only has an annual traverse of just under 2 arc seconds. Thus it will require about 2000 years before the location of this star shifts by more than a degree. A high proper motion is an indicator of closeness to the Sun. Nearby stars can traverse an angle of arc across the sky more rapidly than the distant background stars and are good candidates for parallax studies. In the case of Tau Ceti, the parallax measurements indicate a distance of . This makes it one of the closest star systems to the Sun and the next-closest spectral class-G star after Alpha Centauri A.
The radial velocity of a star is the component of its motion that is toward or away from the Sun. Unlike proper motion, a star's radial velocity cannot be directly observed, but can be determined by measuring its spectrum. Due to the Doppler shift, the absorption lines in the spectrum of a star will be shifted slightly toward the red (or longer wavelengths) if the star is moving away from the observer, or toward blue (or shorter wavelengths) when it moves toward the observer. In the case of Tau Ceti, the radial velocity is about −17 km/s, with the negative value indicating that it is moving toward the Sun. The star will make its closest approach to the Sun in about 43,000 years, when it comes to within .
The distance to Tau Ceti, along with its proper motion and radial velocity, together give the motion of the star through space. The space velocity relative to the Sun is . This result can then be used to compute an orbital path of Tau Ceti through the Milky Way. It has a mean galacto-centric distance of () and an orbital eccentricity of 0.22.
The Tau Ceti system is believed to have only one stellar component. A dim optical companion has also been observed with magnitude 13.1. As of 2000, it was distant from the primary. It may be gravitationally bound, but it is considered more likely to be a line-of-sight coincidence.
Most of what is known about the physical properties of Tau Ceti and its system has been determined through spectroscopic measurements. By comparing the spectrum to computed models of stellar evolution, the age, mass, radius and luminosity of Tau Ceti can be estimated. However, using an astronomical interferometer, measurements of the radius of the star can be made directly to an accuracy of 0.5%. Through such means, the radius of Tau Ceti has been measured to be of the solar radius. This is about the size that is expected for a star with somewhat lower mass than the Sun.
The rotation period for Tau Ceti was measured by periodic variations in the classic H and K absorption lines of singly ionized calcium (Ca II). These lines are closely associated with surface magnetic activity, so the period of variation measures the time required for the activity sites to complete a full rotation about the star. By this means the rotation period for Tau Ceti is estimated to be . Due to the Doppler effect, the rotation rate of a star affects the width of the absorption lines in the spectrum (light from the side of the star moving away from the observer will be shifted to a longer wavelength; light from the side moving towards the observer will be shifted toward a shorter wavelength). By analyzing the width of these lines, the rotational velocity of a star can be estimated. The projected rotation velocity for Tau Ceti is
where "v"eq is the velocity at the equator, and "i" is the inclination angle of the rotation axis to the line of sight. For a typical G8 star, the rotation velocity is about . The relatively low rotational velocity measurements may indicate that Tau Ceti is being viewed from nearly the direction of its pole.
The chemical composition of a star provides important clues to its evolutionary history, including the age at which it formed. The interstellar medium of dust and gas from which stars form is primarily composed of hydrogen and helium with trace amounts of heavier elements. As nearby stars continually evolve and die, they seed the interstellar medium with an increasing portion of heavier elements. Thus younger stars tend to have a higher portion of heavy elements in their atmospheres than do the older stars. These heavy elements are termed "metals" by astronomers, and the portion of heavy elements is the metallicity. The amount of metallicity in a star is given in terms of the ratio of iron (Fe), an easily observed heavy element, to hydrogen. A logarithm of the relative iron abundance is compared to the Sun. In the case of Tau Ceti, the atmospheric metallicity is
equivalent to about a third the solar abundance. Past measurements have varied from −0.13 to −0.60.
This lower abundance of iron indicates that Tau Ceti is almost certainly older than the Sun. Its age had previously been estimated to be about , but is now thought to be around half that, at . This compares with for the Sun. However, computed age estimates for Tau Ceti can range from 4.4 to , depending on the model adopted.
Besides rotation, another factor that can widen the absorption features in the spectrum of a star is pressure broadening. The presence of nearby particles affects the radiation emitted by an individual particle. So the line width is dependent on the surface pressure of the star, which in turn is determined by the temperature and surface gravity. This technique was used to determine the surface gravity of Tau Ceti. The , or logarithm of the star's surface gravity, is about 4.4, very close to the for the Sun.
The luminosity of Tau Ceti is equal to only 55% of the Sun's luminosity. A terrestrial planet would need to orbit this star at a distance of about to match the solar insolation level of Earth. This is approximately the same as the average distance between Venus and the Sun.
The chromosphere of Tau Ceti—the portion of a star's atmosphere just above the light-emitting photosphere—currently displays little or no magnetic activity, indicating a stable star. One 9-year study of temperature, granulation, and the chromosphere showed no systematic variations; Ca II emissions around the H and K infrared bands show a possible 11-year cycle, but this is weak relative to the Sun. Alternatively it has been suggested that the star could be in a low-activity state analogous to a Maunder minimum—a historical period, associated with the Little Ice Age in Europe, when sunspots became exceedingly rare on the Sun's surface. Spectral line profiles of Tau Ceti are extremely narrow, indicating low turbulence and observed rotation. The star's oscillations have an amplitude about half that of the Sun and a lower mode lifetime.
Principal factors driving research interest in Tau Ceti are its proximity, its Sun-like characteristics and their implications for possible planets and life. For categorization purposes, Hall and Lockwood report that "the terms 'solarlike star', 'solar analog', and 'solar twin' [are] progressively restrictive descriptions". Tau Ceti fits the second category, given its similar mass and low variability, but relative lack of metals. The similarities have inspired popular culture references for decades, as well as scientific examination.
Tau Ceti has been a target of radial-velocity planetary searches. As of 1988, observations ruled out any periodical variations attributable to massive planets around Tau Ceti inside of Jupiter-like distances. Ever more precise measurements continue to rule out such planets, at least until December 2012. The velocity precision reached is about 11 m/s measured over a 5-year time span. This result excludes the presence of hot Jupiters and probably excludes any planets with minimal mass greater than or equal to Jupiter's mass and with orbital periods less than 15 years. In addition, a survey of nearby stars by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera was completed in 1999, including a search for faint companions to Tau Ceti; none were discovered to limits of the telescope's resolving power.
However, as of 2019, analysis of the star has detected the signature of a possible planet of a few Jovian masses, with a tangential velocity of around 11.3 m/s. Its exact size and position have not been determined, though it is known not to be larger than 5 Jupiter masses if it is orbiting between 3 and 20 AU. The observed signal could be explained for example, by a Jupiter analog orbiting at 5 AU.
These searches only excluded larger brown dwarf bodies and closer orbiting giant planets, so smaller, Earth-like planets in orbit around the star were not precluded. If "hot Jupiters" did exist in close orbit, they would likely disrupt the star's habitable zone; their exclusion was thus considered positive for the possibility of Earth-like planets. General research has shown a positive correlation between the presence of planets and a relatively high-metallicity parent star, suggesting that stars with lower metallicity such as Tau Ceti have a lower chance of having planets. Primitive life on Tau Ceti's planets might reveal itself through an atmospheric composition unlikely to be abiotic, just as oxygen on Earth is indicative of life.
The most optimistic search project to date was Project Ozma, which was intended to "search for extraterrestrial intelligence" (SETI) by examining selected stars for indications of artificial radio signals. It was run by the astronomer Frank Drake, who selected Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani as the initial targets. Both are located near the Solar System and are physically similar to the Sun. No artificial signals were found despite 200 hours of observations. Subsequent radio searches of this star system have also turned up negative.
This lack of results has not dampened interest in observing the Tau Ceti system for biosignatures. In 2002, astronomers Margaret Turnbull and Jill Tarter developed the Catalog of Nearby Habitable Systems (HabCat) under the auspices of Project Phoenix, another SETI endeavour. The list contained more than theoretically habitable systems, approximately 10% of the original sample. The next year, Turnbull would further refine the list to the 30 most promising systems out of within 100 light-years from the Sun, including Tau Ceti; this will form part of the basis of radio searches with the Allen Telescope Array. She also chose Tau Ceti for a final shortlist of just five stars suitable for searches by the (indefinitely postponed) Terrestrial Planet Finder telescope system, commenting that "these are places I'd want to live if God were to put our planet around another star".
On December 19, 2012, evidence was presented that suggest a system of five planets orbiting Tau Ceti. The planets' estimated minimal masses are between 2 and 6 Earth masses, and their orbital periods range from 14 to 640 days. One of them, tentatively named Tau Ceti e, appears to orbit about half as far from Tau Ceti as Earth does from the Sun. With Tau Ceti's luminosity of 52% that of the Sun and a distance from the star of 0.552 AU, the planet would receive 1.71 times as much stellar radiation as Earth does, slightly less than Venus with 1.91 times Earth's. Nevertheless, some research places it within the star's habitable zone. The Planetary Habitability Laboratory has estimated that Tau Ceti f, which would receive 28.5% as much starlight as Earth, would be narrowly within the habitable zone of the star as well.
The team that made the discovery in 2013 went on to refine and improve their methodology, and with updated radial-velocity measurements, published new results in August 2017. They confirmed Tau Ceti e and f as candidates, but failed to consistently detect Tau Ceti b (although this could still be a false negative) and c (which appeared to orbit the star suspiciously close to the star's rotation period, strongly suggesting its already weakly defined apparent signal is correlated to stellar rotation rather than to an orbiting planet). Instead they found two new planetary candidates, Tau Ceti g and h, with orbits of 20 and 49 days. They did find some evidence for the existence of Tau Ceti d, but, because it did not show up in all data sets, they were unable to confirm it as a candidate planet.
The updated 4-planet model is dynamically packed and potentially stable for billions of years, but with further refinements more planet candidates could still be detected (including b and c). The signals detected from the candidate planets have radial velocities as low as 30 cm/s, and the experimental method used in their detection, as it was applied to HARPS, could in theory have detected down to around 20 cm/s.
The habitable zone for this star, defined as the locations where liquid water could be present on an Earth-sized planet, is at a radius of 0.55–1.16 AU, where 1 AU is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun.
If Tau Ceti is aligned in such a way that it is nearly pole-on to Earth (as its rotation could indicate), that would mean that the planets would be, rather than slightly larger to a few times Earth's mass, they would be on the leagues of tens of Earth masses to even hundreds. For example, if Tau Ceti f's orbit was inclined 70 degrees from being face-on to Earth, its mass would be Earth masses, making it a super-Earth on the middle-to-low end. However, this scenario isn't necessarily true; since Tau Ceti's debris disk has an inclination of , and this could mean that the planets' orbits are similarly inclined. This would put f between and Earth masses, which means it's slightly more likely to be a mini-Neptune, if it is assumed that the debris disk and f's orbits are equal.
Tau Ceti e is a candidate planet orbiting Tau Ceti that was detected by statistical analyses of the data of the star's variations in radial velocity that were obtained using HIRES, AAPS, and HARPS. Its possible properties were refined in 2017: it orbits at a distance of 0.552 AU (between the orbits of Venus and Mercury in the Solar System) with an orbital period of 168 days and has a minimum mass of 3.93 Earth masses. If Tau Ceti e possesses an Earth-like atmosphere, the surface temperature would be around . Based upon the incident flux upon the planet, a study by Güdel et al. (2014) speculated that the planet may lie outside the habitable zone and closer to a Venus-like world.
Tau Ceti f is a candidate super-Earth orbiting Tau Ceti that was discovered in 2012 by statistical analyses of the star's variations in radial velocity, based on data obtained using HIRES, AAPS, and HARPS. It is of interest because its orbit places it in Tau Ceti's extended habitable zone. However, a 2015 study implies that it has been in the temperate zone for less than one billion years, so there may not be a detectable biosignature.
Few properties of the planet are known other than its orbit and mass. It orbits Tau Ceti at a distance of 1.35 AU (near Mars's orbit in the Solar System) with an orbital period of 642 days and has a minimum mass of 3.93 Earth masses.
In 2004, a team of UK astronomers led by Jane Greaves discovered that Tau Ceti has more than ten times the amount of cometary and asteroidal material orbiting it than does the Sun. This was determined by measuring the disk of cold dust orbiting the star produced by collisions between such small bodies. This result puts a damper on the possibility of complex life in the system, because any planets would suffer from large impact events roughly ten times more frequently than Earth. Greaves noted at the time of her research that "it is likely that [any planets] will experience constant bombardment from asteroids of the kind believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs". Such bombardments would inhibit the development of biodiversity between impacts. However, it is possible that a large Jupiter-sized gas giant could deflect comets and asteroids.
The debris disk was discovered by measuring the amount of radiation emitted by the system in the far infrared portion of the spectrum. The disk forms a symmetric feature that is centered on the star, and its outer radius averages . The lack of infrared radiation from the warmer parts of the disk near Tau Ceti imply an inner cut-off at a radius of . By comparison, the Solar System's Kuiper belt extends from 30 to . To be maintained over a long period of time, this ring of dust must be constantly replenished through collisions by larger bodies. The bulk of the disk appears to be orbiting Tau Ceti at a distance of 35–, well outside the orbit of the habitable zone. At this distance, the dust belt may be analogous to the Kuiper belt that lies outside the orbit of Neptune in the Solar System.
Tau Ceti shows that stars need not lose large disks as they age, and such a thick belt may not be uncommon among Sun-like stars. Tau Ceti's belt is only 1/20 as dense as the belt around its young neighbor, Epsilon Eridani. The relative lack of debris around the Sun may be the unusual case: one research-team member suggests the Sun may have passed close to another star early in its history and had most of its comets and asteroids stripped away. Stars with large debris disks have changed the way astronomers think about planet formation because debris disk stars, where dust is continually generated by collisions, appear to form planets readily. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31307 |
Tim Berra
Dr. Tim M. Berra is Academy Professor and Professor Emeritus of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at The Ohio State University. He received the Ph.D. in Biology from Tulane University in 1969. He is a three-time recipient of Fulbright Fellowships to Australia in 1969,1979, and 2009. He taught at the University of Papua New Guinea before joining the faculty of OSU in 1972. Over the last 50 years he has spent over 11 years doing fieldwork in Australia.
He is the author of over 85 scientific papers and 8 books including Evolution and the Myth of Creationism published by Stanford University Press in 1990. His book A Natural History of Australia (Academic Press, 1998) features 200 of his color photographs, 220 line drawings and maps, and over 500 references. Freshwater Fish Distribution featuring 169 maps, 324 fish drawings and 1,700 references was published by University of Chicago Press in 2007. Charles Darwin: The Concise Story of an Extraordinary Man, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2009 and features 60 b/w illustrations and 16 color plates. It describes the life of Darwin and his significance to western thought. A sequel to that book, Darwin & his Children: His Other Legacy, was published by Oxford University Press in 2013. It examines the lives of Darwin's 10 children from birth to death. Dr. Berra's latest book, Bourbon: What the Educated Drinker Should Know, was published in spring 2019 by Acclaim Press and describes bourbon's history and the bourbon making process from start to finish. The unique format of the book is lavishly illustrated with color photographs by the author.
In 1992 Berra was visiting professor at the University of Concepción in Chile, and in 1996 he was visiting professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He took early retirement from The Ohio State University in July 1995 to devote full-time to research and writing.
Dr. Berra is the former editor of The Ohio Journal of Science and was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium where he also served on the Conservation and Collection Management Committee. He was also the ichthyological book review editor of Copeia, the journal of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. He resigned these positions at the end of 2000 to pursue fieldwork supported by the National Geographic Society and the Columbus Zoo in Australia in 2001.
He is a member of the Board of Governors of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and Research Associate at the Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory in Darwin, Australia where he spent most of 2001 working on the life history of the nurseryfish. He returned to Darwin in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2009, 2011, 2014, and 2016 to continue his nurseryfish research. He was keynote speaker at the bicentennial celebrations of Charles Darwin's birthday at Charles Darwin University in Sept. 2009. He is University Professorial Fellow at Charles Darwin University and a Fellow of the Linnean Society. Dr. Berra's paper in BioScience (May 2010) on inbreeding in the Darwin/Wedgwood families attracted international media attention including a story in the NY Times and NPR interview. Preserved scientific specimens collected by Prof. Berra are housed at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) in Washington, D.C. and were the subject of an extensive article in the Columbus Dispatch 27 September 2009. In December 2014 The Ohio State University awarded Dr. Berra the title of Academy Professor in recognition of his on-going research after achieving emeritus status. The Australian-American Fulbright Commission profiled Berra's career in their flagship magazine, Minds and Hearts, 1 March 2017, p 12–15. Berra is an Executive Bourbon Steward and member of the Stave and Thief Society, a bourbon certification program of the Kentucky Distiller's Association.
http://u.osu.edu/berra.1/ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31322 |
Type IX submarine
The Type IX U-boat was designed by Nazi Germany's "Kriegsmarine" in 1935 and 1936 as a large ocean-going submarine for sustained operations far from the home support facilities. Type IX boats were briefly used for patrols off the eastern United States in an attempt to disrupt the stream of troops and supplies bound for Europe. It was derived from the Type IA, and appeared in various sub-types.
Type IXs had six torpedo tubes; four at the bow and two at the stern. They carried six reloads internally and had five external torpedo containers (three at the stern and two at the bow) which stored ten additional torpedoes. The total of 22 torpedoes allowed U-boat commanders to follow a convoy and strike night after night. Some of the IXC boats were fitted for mine operations; as mine-layers they could carry 44 TMA or 66 TMB mines.
Secondary armament was provided by one deck gun with 180 rounds. Anti-aircraft armament differed throughout the war. They had two periscopes in the tower. Types IXA and IXB had an additional periscope in the control room, which was removed in Type IXC and afterward.
These long range boats were frequently equipped with Focke-Achgelis Fa 330 rotor kite towed rotary-wing aircraft.
DeSchiMAG AG Weser of Bremen built eight Type IXA U-boats.
Type IXB was an improved model with an increased range. It was the most successful version overall with each boat averaging a total of over sunk.
Notable IXB boats included commanded by Reinhard Hardegen, which opened up the attack in the US waters in early 1942 known as Operation Drumbeat, and operating off Freetown, Sierra Leone under the command of Günther Hessler, which had the most successful single mission of the war ever with close to sunk.
DeSchiMAG AG Weser of Bremen built 14 Type IXB U-boats.
Type IXC was a further refinement of the class with storage for an additional 43 tonnes of fuel, increasing the boat's range. This series omitted the control room periscope leaving the boats with two tower scopes.
As mine-layers they could carry 44 TMA or 66 TMB mines, though through and through (35 boats), were not fitted for mine operations.
The only U-boat sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, , was a Type IXC.
"U-505" survives at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and was completely renovated after being moved in 2004 to a purpose-built indoor berth.
DeSchiMAG AG Weser and Seebeckwerft of Bremen, and Deutsche Werft of Hamburg built 54 Type IXC submarines.
Type IXC/40 was an improved Type IXC with slightly increased range and surfaced speed. The remains of are on display at Woodside Ferry Terminal, Birkenhead.
DeSchiMAG AG Weser and Seebeckwerft of Bremen, and Deutsche Werft of Hamburg, built 87 of this type.
Type IXD was significantly longer and heavier than the IXC/40. It was faster than the IXC but at the cost of slightly reduced maneuverability. They had three pairs of Daimler Benz diesels: two pairs for cruise and one for high speed or battery recharge. There were three variants: the IXD1, IXD2 and IXD/42. The IXD1 had unreliable engines and they were later converted for use in surface transport vessels.
The IXD2 comprised most of the class and had a range of . The IXD/42, was almost identical but with more engine power (5,400 ehp instead of 4,400).
In 1943 and 1944 the torpedo tubes were removed from a number of IXD boats converted for transport use. In their new role they could transport 252 tonnes of cargo. The range was extended to .
DeSchiMAG AG Weser of Bremen built 30 Type IXD U-boats.
Several Type IXD/42 U-boats were contracted to be built DeSchiMAG AG Weser of Bremen, but only two were commissioned. They were: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31331 |
International Obfuscated C Code Contest
The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (abbreviated IOCCC) is a computer programming contest for the most creatively obfuscated C code. Held annually in the years 1984–1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2004–2006, 2011–2015 and then in 2018, it is described as "celebrating [C's] syntactical opaqueness". The winning code for the 25th contest, held in 2018, was released in May 2018.
Entries are evaluated anonymously by a panel of judges. The judging process is documented in the competition guidelines and consists of elimination rounds. By tradition, no information is given about the total number of entries for each competition. Winning entries are awarded with a category, such as "Worst Abuse of the C preprocessor" or "Most Erratic Behavior", and then announced on the official IOCCC website. The contest states that being announced on the IOCCC website is the reward for winning.
The IOCCC was started by Landon Curt Noll and Larry Bassel in 1984 while employed at National Semiconductor's Genix porting group. The idea for the contest came after they compared notes with each other about some poorly written code that they had to fix, notably the Bourne shell, which used macros to emulate ALGOL 68 syntax, and a buggy version of finger for BSD. The contest itself was the topic of a quiz question in the 1993 Computer Bowl. After a hiatus of five years starting in 2006, the contest returned in 2011.
Compared with other programming contests, the IOCCC is described as "not all that serious" by Michael Swaine, editor of "Dr. Dobbs".
Each year, the rules of the contest are published on the IOCCC website. Rules vary from year to year and are posted with a set of guidelines that attempt to convey the spirit of the rules.
The rules are often deliberately written with loopholes that contestants are encouraged to find and abuse. Entries that take advantage of loopholes can cause the rules for the following year's contest to be adjusted.
Entries often employ strange or unusual tricks, such as using the C preprocessor to do things it was not designed to do, or avoiding commonly used constructs in the C programming language in favor of much more obscure ways of achieving the same thing. Two contest winners generated a list of prime numbers using the C preprocessor "spectacularly", according to "Dr. Dobbs". Some quotes from 2004 winners include:
Contributions have included source code formatted to resemble images, text, etc., after the manner of ASCII art, preprocessor redefinitions to make code harder to read, and self-modifying code. In several years, an entry was submitted that required a new definition of some of the rules for the next year. This is regarded as a high honor. An example is the world's shortest self-reproducing program. The entry was a program designed to output its own source code, and which had zero bytes of source code. When the program ran, it printed out zero bytes, equivalent to its source code.
In the effort to take obfuscation to its extremes, contestants have produced programs which skirt around the edges of C standards, or result in constructs which trigger rarely used code path combinations in compilers. As a result, several of the past entries may not compile directly in a modern compiler, and some may cause crashes.
Within the code size limit of only a few kilobytes, contestants have managed to do complicated things – a 2004 winner turned out an operating system.
"Toledo Nanochess" is a chess engine developed by Mexican Oscar Toledo Gutiérrez, a five-time winner of the IOCCC. In accordance with IOCCC rules, it is 1255 characters long. The author claims that it is the world's smallest chess program written in C.
The source code for "Toledo Nanochess" and other engines is available.
Because "Toledo Nanochess" is based on Toledo's winning entry from the 18th IOCCC (Best Game), it is heavily obfuscated.
On February 2, 2014, the author published the book "Toledo Nanochess: The commented source code", which contains the fully commented source code.
As of February 7, 2010, it appears to be one of only two chess engines written in less than 2 kilobytes of C that are able to play full legal chess moves, along with "Micro-Max" by Dutch physicist H. G. Muller. In 2014 the 1 kilobyte barrier was broken by "Super Micro Chess" – a derivative of Micro-Max – totaling 760 characters (spaces and newlines included). A smaller version, "Toledo Picochess", consisting of 944 non-blank characters, also exists.
Source code excerpt
B,i,y,u,b,I[411],*G=I,x=10,z=15,M=1e4;X(w,c,h,e,S,s){int t,o,L,E,d,O=e,N=-M*M,K
=78-h«x,p,*g,n,*m,A,q,r,C,J,a=y?-x:x;y^=8;G++;d=w||s&&s>=h&&v 0,0)>M;do{_ o=I[
p=O]){q=o&z^y _ q<7){A=q--&2?8:4;C=o-9&z?q["& .$ "]:42;do{r=I[p+=C[l]-64]_!w|p
==w){g=q|p+a-S?0:I+S _!r&(q|A<3||g)||(r+1&z^y)>9&&q|A>2){_ m=!(r-2&7))P G[1]=O,
K;J=n=o&z;E=I[p-a]&z;t=q|E-7?n:(n+=2,6^y);Z n<=t){L=r?l[r&7]*9-189-h-q:0 _ s)L
+=(1-q?l[p/x+5]-l[O/x+5]+l[p%x+6]*-~!q-l[O%x+6]+o/16*8:!!m*9)+(q?0:!(I[p-1]^n)+
!(I[p+1]^n)+l[n&7]*9-386+!!g*99+(A<2))+!(E^y^9)_ s>h||1z|d){p[I]=n,O
[I]=m?*g=*m,*m=0:g?*g=0:0;L-=X(s>h|d?0:p,L-N,h+1,G[1],J=q|A>1?0:p,s)_!(h||s-1|B
-O|i-n|p-b|LM;O[I]=o;p[I]=r;m?
n+=J||(g=I+p,m=p2||(p=O,q|A>2|o>z&
!r&&++C*--A));}}}Z++O>98?O=20:e-O);P N+M*M&&N>-K+1924|d?N:0;}main(){Z++B<121)*G
=B/x%x<2|B%x<2?7:B/x&4?0:*l++&31;Z B=19){Z B++<99)putchar(B%x?l[B[I]|16]:x.
x-(B=F)){i=I[B+=(x-F)*x]&z;b=F;b+=(x-F)*x;Z x-(*G=F))i=*G^8^y;}else v u,5);v u,
Below is a 1988 entry which calculates pi by looking at its own area:
int F=00,OO=00;main(){F_OO();printf("%1.3f\n",4.*-F/OO/OO);}F_OO()
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Another example is the following flight simulator, the winner of the 1998 IOCCC, as listed and described in "Calculated Bets: Computers, Gambling, and Mathematical Modeling to Win" (2001) and shown below:
double L ,o ,P
0,0,WhitePixel(e,0) ),KeyPressMask); for(XMapWindow(e,z); ; T=sin(O)){ struct timeval G={ 0,dt*1e6}
sin(j); a=B*T*D-E*W; XClearWindow(e,z); t=T*E+ D*B*W; j+=d*_*D-_*F*E; P=W*E*B-T*D; for (o+=(I=D*W+E
]== 0|K K)N=1e4; else{ q=W/K *4E2+2e2; C= 2E2+4e2/ K
This program needs the following command line on a Linux system to be compiled:
cc banks.c -o banks -DIT=XK_Page_Up -DDT=XK_Page_Down \ | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31332 |
Territorial integrity
Territorial integrity is the principle under international law that prohibits states from the use of force against the "territorial integrity or political independence" of another state. It is enshrined in of the UN Charter and has been recognized as customary international law. Conversely it states that imposition by force of a border change is an act of aggression. It is a political term, for example when applied to a nation-state like Iraq, which has borders which were imposed at the end of WWI.
In recent years there has been tension between this principle and the concept of humanitarian intervention under Article 73.b of the United Nations Charter "to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of advancement."
As far back as the earliest written records known, there have been political units claiming a definite territory. Intrusion into these territories was often considered an act of war, and normally resulted in combat. There were also sometimes several layers of authority, with units waging war on each other while both recognising some higher authority. Ancient and medieval nobility would fight private wars amongst while still acknowledging the same king or emperor, such as was case in the Spring and Autumn period in ancient China, when the Eastern Zhou Dynasty were nominal rulers. Catholic monarchs would often fight one another while recognizing the ecclesiastical authority of the same Pope.
Supporters of the concept of Westphalian sovereignty consider that the modern idea of territorial integrity began with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. However, ancient Chinese and ancient Indigenous cultures of North America and Australia, amongst others, contain diverse territorial understandings surrounding regional integrity.
The League of Nations was intended to uphold territorial integrity and other principles of international law. It did condemn the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. It broadly supported the Chinese Republic over the creation of Manchukuo in Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia. Most historians say that the League was discredited by its failure to make these judgements effective.
With the formation of the United Nations (UN) and, later, such organizations as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (now Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), territorial integrity became a part of international resolutions. The Helsinki Final Act dealt with both the inviolability of frontiers and the territorial integrity of States, among other things.
The recent (post-World War II) strict application of territorial integrity has given rise to a number of problems and, when faced with reality "on the ground", can be seen as too artificial a construct.
Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein, speaking to the International Institute for Strategic Studies on 25 January 2001, argued for a more flexible approach to territorial integrity, in line with historical norms, saying, "Let us accept the fact that states have lifecycles similar to those of human beings who created them. Hardly any Member State of the United Nations has existed within its present borders for longer than five generations. The attempt to freeze human evolution has in the past been a futile responsibility and has probably brought about more violence, rather than if such a process had been controlled peacefully. Restrictions on self-determination threaten not only democracy itself but the state which seeks its legitimation in democracy."
At the 2005 World Summit, the world's nations agreed on a "Responsibility to Protect", allowing a right for humanitarian intervention. It has been argued that this could create a flexible application of concepts of sovereignty and territorial integrity, easing the strict adherence and taking into account the "de facto" status of the territory and other factors present on a case by case basis. The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1674, adopted by the United Nations Security Council on April 28, 2006, "Reaffirm[ed] the provisions of paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document regarding the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity".
However, this responsibility to protect refers only to the ability of external powers to override sovereignty and does not explicitly involve the changing of borders.
The International Court of Justice advisory opinion on Kosovo's declaration of independence claims that territorial integrity is not violated as far as international law is concerned by declarations of independence in themselves. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31335 |
Tachi
A was a type of traditionally made Japanese sword worn by the samurai class of feudal Japan. Tachi and katana generally differ in length, degree of curvature, and how they were worn when sheathed, the latter depending on the location of the "mei", or signature, on the tang. The tachi style of swords preceded the development of the katana, which was not mentioned by name until near the end of the twelfth century; tachi are known to have been made in the "Kotō" period, ranging from 900 to 1596.
The production of swords in Japan is divided into specific time periods:
Authentic tachi were forged during the Kotō period, before 1596. The tachi preceded the "katana"; the latter was not mentioned by name to indicate a blade distinct from a tachi until near the end of the twelfth century. With a few exceptions, katana and tachi can be distinguished from each other if signed by the location of the signature ("mei") on the tang. In general the signature should be carved into the side of the tang that would face outward when the sword was worn on the wielder's left waist. Since a "tachi" was worn cutting edge down, and the "katana" was worn cutting edge up the "mei" would be in opposite locations on the tang of both types of swords.
An authentic tachi that was manufactured in the correct time period had an average cutting edge length () of 70–80 cm (– in) and compared to a katana was generally lighter in proportion to its length, had a greater taper from hilt to point, was more curved and had a smaller point area.
Unlike the traditional manner of wearing the katana, the tachi was worn hung from the belt with the cutting-edge down, and was most effective when used by cavalry. Deviations from the average length of tachi have the prefixes "ko-" for "short" and "ō-" for "great, large" attached. For instance, tachi that were "shōtō" and closer in size to a "wakizashi" were called "kodachi". The longest tachi (considered a 15th-century "ōdachi") in existence is more than in total length with a blade, but believed to be ceremonial. In the late 1500s and early 1600s many old surviving tachi blades were converted into katana by having their original tangs cut ("o-suriage"), which meant the signatures were removed from the swords.
For a sword to be worn in "tachi style" it needed to be mounted in a "tachi koshirae". The tachi koshirae had two hangers (ashi) which allowed the sword to be worn in a horizontal position with the cutting edge down. A sword not mounted in a tachi koshirae could be worn tachi style by use of a "koshiate", a leather device which would allow any sword to be worn in the tachi style.
According to author Karl F. Friday, before the 13th century there are no written references or drawings etc. that show swords of any kind were actually used while on horseback.
The "uchigatana" was derived from the tachi and was the predecessor to the katana as the battlesword of feudal Japan's "bushi" (warrior class), and as it evolved into the later design, the tachi and the uchigatana were often differentiated from each other only by how they were worn, the fittings for the blades, and the location of the signature (mei).
As a result of the first Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274, tachi started to be made thicker and wider.
In later Japanese feudal history, during the Sengoku and Edo periods, certain high-ranking warriors of what became the ruling class would wear their sword tachi-style (edge-downward), rather than with the scabbard thrust through the belt with the edge upward.
With the rising of statism in Shōwa Japan, the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy implemented swords called shin and kaiguntō, which were worn tachi style (cutting edge down). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31337 |
The Adventures of Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin ( ) is a series of 24 "bande dessinée" albums created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. By 2007, a century after Hergé's birth in 1907, "Tintin" had been published in more than 70 languages with sales of more than 200 million copies, and had been adapted for radio, television, theatre, and film.
The series first appeared in French on 10 January 1929, in ("The Little Twentieth"), a youth supplement to the Belgian newspaper ("The Twentieth Century"). The success of the series led to serialised strips published in Belgium's leading newspaper ("The Evening") and spun into a successful "Tintin" magazine. In 1950, Hergé created Studios Hergé, which produced the canonical versions of 11 "Tintin" albums.
The series is set during a largely realistic 20th century. Its hero is Tintin, a courageous young Belgian reporter and adventurer. He is aided by his faithful dog Snowy ( in the original French edition). Other protagonists include the brash and cynical Captain Haddock and the intelligent but hearing-impaired Professor Calculus (), as well as the incompetent detectives Thomson and Thompson () and the opera diva Bianca Castafiore.
The series has been admired for its clean, expressive drawings in Hergé's signature ("clear line") style. Its well-researched plots straddle a variety of genres: swashbuckling adventures with elements of fantasy, action, mysteries, political thrillers, and science fiction. The stories feature slapstick humour, offset by dashes of sophisticated satire and political or cultural commentary.
Georges Prosper Remi, best known under the pen name Hergé, was employed as an illustrator at "Le Vingtième Siècle" ("The Twentieth Century"), a staunchly Roman Catholic, conservative Belgian newspaper based in Hergé's native Brussels. Run by the Abbé Norbert Wallez, the paper described itself as a "Catholic Newspaper for Doctrine and Information" and disseminated a far-right, fascist viewpoint. Wallez appointed Hergé editor of a new Thursday youth supplement, titled (""The Little Twentieth""). Propagating Wallez's sociopolitical views to its young readership, it contained explicitly profascist and antisemitic sentiment. In addition to editing the supplement, Hergé illustrated ("The Extraordinary Adventures of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Cochonnet"), a comic strip authored by a member of the newspaper's sport staff. Dissatisfied with this, Hergé wanted to write and draw his own cartoon strip.
He already had experience creating comic strips. From July 1926, he had written a strip about a Boy Scout patrol leader titled "Les Aventures de Totor C.P. des Hannetons" ("The Adventures of Totor, Scout Leader of the Cockchafers") for the Scouting newspaper ("The Belgian Boy Scout"). Totor was a strong influence on Tintin, with Hergé describing the latter as being like Totor's younger brother. Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier stated that graphically, Totor and Tintin were "virtually identical" except for the Scout uniform, also noting many similarities between their respective adventures, particularly in the illustration style, the fast pace of the story, and the use of humour. He was fascinated by new techniques in the medium such as the systematic use of speech bubbles—found in such American comics as George McManus' "Bringing up Father", George Herriman's "Krazy Kat", and Rudolph Dirks's "Katzenjammer Kids", copies of which had been sent to him from Mexico by the paper's reporter Léon Degrelle.
Although Hergé wanted to send Tintin to the United States, Wallez ordered him to set his adventure in the Soviet Union, acting as antisocialist propaganda for children. The result, "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets", was serialised in "Le Petit Vingtième" from January 1929 to May 1930. Popular in Francophone Belgium, Wallez organised a publicity stunt at the Paris Gare du Nord railway station, following which he organised the publication of the story in book form. The story's popularity led to an increase in sales, so Wallez granted Hergé two assistants. At Wallez's direction, in June he began serialisation of the second story, "Tintin in the Congo", designed to encourage colonial sentiment towards the Belgian Congo. Authored in a paternalistic style that depicted the Congolese as child-like idiots, in later decades it was accused of racism, but at the time was uncontroversial and popular, and further publicity stunts were held to increase sales.
For the third adventure, "Tintin in America", serialised from September 1931 to October 1932, Hergé finally got to deal with a scenario of his own choice, and used the work to push an anticapitalist, anticonsumerist agenda in keeping with the paper's ultraconservative ideology. "The Adventures of Tintin" had been syndicated to a Catholic magazine named ("Brave Hearts") since 1930, and Hergé was soon receiving syndication requests from Swiss and Portuguese newspapers, too.
Hergé went on to pen a string of "Adventures of Tintin", sending his character to real locations such as the Belgian Congo, the United States, Egypt, India, Tibet, China, and the United Kingdom. He also sent Tintin to fictional countries of his own devising, such as the Latin American republic of San Theodoros, the East European kingdom of Syldavia, or the fascist state of Borduria—whose leader, Müsstler, was a combination of Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini.
In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Belgium as World War II spread further across Europe. Although Hergé briefly fled to France and considered a self-imposed exile, he ultimately decided to return to his occupied homeland. For political reasons, the Nazi authorities closed down "Le Vingtième Siècle", leaving Hergé unemployed. In search of employment, he got a job as an illustrator at Belgium's leading newspaper, "Le Soir" ("The Evening"), which was allowed to continue publication under German management. On 17 October 1940, he was made editor of the children's supplement, "Le Soir Jeunesse", in which he set about producing new Tintin adventures. In this new, more repressive political climate of German-occupied Belgium, Hergé could no longer politicize "The Adventures of Tintin" lest he be arrested by the Gestapo. As Harry Thompson noted, Tintin's role as a reporter came to an end, to be replaced by his new role as an explorer.
In September 1944, the Allies entered Brussels and Hergé's German employers fled. "Le Soir" was shut down and "The Adventures of Tintin" was put on hold.
Then in 1946, Hergé accepted an invitation from Belgian comic publisher Raymond Leblanc and his new publishing company Le Lombard to continue "The Adventures of Tintin" in the new ("Tintin" magazine).
Hergé quickly learned that he no longer had the independence he preferred; he was required to produce two coloured pages a week for Leblanc's magazine—a tall order.
In 1950, Hergé began to poach the better members of the "Tintin" magazine staff to work in the large house on Avenue Louise that contained the fledgling Studios Hergé. Bob De Moor (who imitated Hergé's style and did half the work), Guy Dessicy (colourist), and Marcel DeHaye (secretary) were the nucleus. To this, Hergé added Jacques Martin (imitated Hergé's style), Roger Leloup (detailed, realistic drawings), Eugène Evany (later chief of the Studios), Michel Demaret (letterer), and Baudouin Van Den Branden (secretary).
As Harry Thompson observed, the idea was to turn the process of creating "The Adventures of Tintin" into a "veritable production line, the artwork passing from person to person, everyone knowing their part, like an artistic orchestra with Hergé conducting."
The studios produced eight new Tintin albums for "Tintin" magazine, and coloured and reformatted two old Tintin albums.
Studios Hergé continued to release additional publications until Hergé's death in 1983. In 1986, a 24th unfinished album was released, the studios were disbanded, and the assets were transferred to the Hergé Foundation.
Tintin is a young Belgian reporter and adventurer who becomes involved in dangerous cases in which he takes heroic action to save the day. The "Adventures" may feature Tintin hard at work in his investigative journalism, but seldom is he seen actually turning in a story.
Readers and critics have described Tintin as a well-rounded yet open-ended, intelligent, and creative character, noting that his rather neutral personality—sometimes labelled as bland—permits a balanced reflection of the evil, folly, and foolhardiness, which surrounds him. The character never compromises his Boy Scout ideals, which represent Hergé's own, and his status allows the reader to assume his position within the story, rather than merely following the adventures of a strong protagonist. Tintin's iconic representation enhances this aspect, with Scott McCloud noting that it "allows readers to mask themselves in a character and safely enter a sensually stimulating world."
Snowy ("Milou" in Hergé's original version), a white Wire Fox Terrier dog, is Tintin's loyal companion. Like Captain Haddock, he is fond of Loch Lomond brand Scotch whisky, and Snowy's occasional bouts of drinking tend to get him into trouble, as does his only fear: arachnophobia.
Captain Archibald Haddock ("Capitaine Haddock" in Hergé's original version) is a Merchant Marine sea captain and Tintin's best friend. Introduced in "The Crab with the Golden Claws", Haddock is initially depicted as a weak and alcoholic character, but later evolves to become genuinely heroic and even a socialite after he finds a treasure from his ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock ("Chevalier François de Hadoque" in the original version). The Captain's coarse humanity and sarcasm act as a counterpoint to Tintin's often-implausible heroism; he is always quick with a dry comment whenever the boy reporter seems too idealistic. The hot-tempered Haddock uses a range of colourful insults and curses to express his feelings, such as "billions of billious blue blistering barnacles" ("Mille milliards de mille sabords de tonnerre de Brest" in the original version) or "ten thousand thundering typhoons".
Professor Cuthbert Calculus ("Professeur Tryphon Tournesol" in Hergé's original version; "tournesol" is the French word for "sunflower") is an absent-minded and partially deaf physicist and a regular character alongside Tintin, Snowy, and Captain Haddock. He was introduced in "Red Rackham's Treasure", and based partially on Auguste Piccard, a Swiss physicist.
Hergé's supporting characters have been cited as far more developed than the central character, each imbued with strength of character and depth of personality, which has been compared with that of the characters of Charles Dickens. Hergé used the supporting characters to create a realistic world in which to set his protagonists' adventures. To further the realism and continuity, characters would recur throughout the series. The occupation of Belgium and the restrictions imposed upon Hergé forced him to focus on characterisation to avoid depicting troublesome political situations. As a result, the colourful supporting cast was developed during this period.
Thomson and Thompson (Dupont et Dupond in Hergé's original version) are two incompetent detectives who look like identical twins, their only discernible difference being the shape of their moustaches. First introduced in "Cigars of the Pharaoh", they provide much of the comic relief throughout the series, being afflicted with chronic spoonerisms. They are extremely clumsy, thoroughly incompetent, and usually bent on arresting the wrong character. The detectives usually wear bowler hats and carry walking sticks except when sent abroad; during those missions they attempt the national costume of the locality they are visiting, but instead dress in conspicuously stereotypical folkloric attire which makes them stand apart. The detectives were based partly on Hergé's father Alexis and uncle Léon, identical twins who often took walks together, wearing matching bowler hats while carrying matching walking sticks.
Bianca Castafiore is an opera singer of whom Haddock is terrified. She was first introduced in "King Ottokar's Sceptre" and seems to appear wherever the protagonists travel, along with her maid Irma and pianist Igor Wagner. Although amiable and strong-willed, she is also comically foolish, whimsical, absent-minded, talkative, and seemingly unaware that her voice is shrill and appallingly loud. Her speciality is the Jewel Song ( / "Ah! My beauty past compare, these jewels bright I wear") from opera, "Faust", which she sings at the least provocation, much to Haddock's dismay. She is often maternal toward Haddock, of whose dislike she remains ignorant. She often confuses words, especially names, with other words that rhyme with them or of which they remind her; "Haddock" is frequently replaced by malapropisms such as "Paddock", "Stopcock", or "Hopscotch", while Nestor, Haddock's butler, is confused with "Chestor" and "Hector". Her own name means "white and chaste flower": a meaning to which Professor Calculus once refers when he breeds a white rose and names it for the singer. She was based upon opera divas in general (according to Hergé's perception), Hergé's Aunt Ninie (who was known for her "shrill" singing of opera), and, in the post-war comics, on Maria Callas.
Other recurring characters include Nestor the butler, Chang (or Chang-Chong -Chen in full) the loyal Chinese boy, Rastapopoulos the criminal mastermind, Jolyon Wagg the infuriating (to Haddock) insurance salesman, General Alcazar the South American freedom fighter and President of San Theodoros, Mohammed Ben Kalish Ezab the Arab emir, and Abdullah his mischievous son, Dr. Müller the evil German psychiatrist, Oliveira da Figueira the friendly Portuguese salesman, Cutts the butcher whose phone number is repeatedly confused with Haddock's, and Allan the henchman of Rastapopoulos and formerly Haddock's first mate.
The settings within "Tintin" have also added depth to the strips. Hergé mixes real and fictional lands into his stories. In "King Ottokar's Sceptre" (revisited once more in "The Calculus Affair") Hergé creates two fictional countries, Syldavia and Borduria, and invites the reader to tour them in text through the insertion of a travel brochure into the storyline. Other fictional lands include Khemed on the Arabian Peninsula and San Theodoros, São Rico, and Nuevo Rico in South America, as well as the kingdom of Gaipajama in India. Apart from these fictitious locations, Tintin also visits real places such as Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, Belgian Congo, Peru, India, Egypt, Indonesia, Nepal, Tibet, and China. Other actual locales used were the Sahara Desert, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Moon.
Hergé's extensive research began with "The Blue Lotus"; Hergé stated, "It was from that time that I undertook research and really interested myself in the people and countries to which I sent Tintin, out of a sense of responsibility to my readers".
Hergé's use of research and photographic reference allowed him to build a realised universe for Tintin, going so far as to create fictionalised countries, dressing them with specific political cultures. These were heavily informed by the cultures evident in Hergé's lifetime. Pierre Skilling has asserted that Hergé saw monarchy as "the legitimate form of government", noting that democratic "values seem underrepresented in [such] a classic Franco-Belgian strip". Syldavia in particular is described in considerable detail, Hergé creating a history, customs, and a language, which is actually a Slavic-looking transcript of Marols, a working-class Brussels dialect. He set the country in the Balkans, and it is, by his own admission, modelled after Albania. The country finds itself threatened by neighbouring Borduria, with an attempted annexation appearing in "King Ottokar's Sceptre". This situation parallels the Italian conquest of Albania, and that of Czechoslovakia and Austria by expansionist Nazi Germany prior to World War II.
Hergé's use of research would include months of preparation for Tintin's voyage to the moon in the two-part storyline spread across "Destination Moon" and "Explorers on the Moon". His research for the storyline was noted in "New Scientist": "The considerable research undertaken by Hergé enabled him to come very close to the type of space suit that would be used in future Moon exploration, although his portrayal of the type of rocket that was actually used was a long way off the mark". The moon rocket is based on the German V-2 rockets.
In his youth, Hergé admired and suggested that a number of images within "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" reflected this influence, particularly the pictures of animals. , the Art Deco designer, also affected early Tintin adventures: "His influence can be detected at the beginning of the "Soviets", where my drawings are designed along a decorative line, like an 'S'." Hergé also felt no compunction in admitting that he had stolen the image of round noses from George McManus, feeling they were "so much fun that I used them, without scruples!"
During the extensive research Hergé carried out for "The Blue Lotus", he became influenced by Chinese and Japanese illustrative styles and woodcuts. This is especially noticeable in the seascapes, which are reminiscent of works by Hokusai and Hiroshige.
Hergé also declared Mark Twain an influence, although this admiration may have led him astray when depicting Incas as having no knowledge of an upcoming solar eclipse in "Prisoners of the Sun", an error T. F. Mills attributed to an attempt to portray "Incas in awe of a latter-day 'Connecticut Yankee'".
Tintin first appeared in English in the weekly British children's comic "Eagle" in 1951 with the story "King Ottokar's Sceptre". It was translated in conjunction with Casterman, Tintin's publishers, and starts by describing Tintin as "a French boy". Snowy was called by his French name "Milou".
The process of translating Tintin into British English was then commissioned in 1958 by Methuen, Hergé's British publishers. It was a joint operation, headed by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner, working closely with Hergé to attain an accurate translation as true as possible to the original work. Due in part to the large amount of language-specific word play (such as punning) in the series, especially the jokes which played on Professor Calculus' partial deafness, it was never the intention to translate literally, instead striving to sculpt a work whose idioms and jokes would be meritorious in their own right. Despite the free hand Hergé afforded the two, they worked closely with the original text, asking for regular assistance to understand Hergé's intentions.
The British translations were also Anglicised to appeal to British customs and values. Milou, for example, was renamed Snowy at the translators' discretion. Captain Haddock's was renamed Marlinspike Hall.
When it came time to translate "The Black Island", which is set in Great Britain, the opportunity was taken to redraw the entire book. Methuen had decided that the book did not portray Great Britain accurately enough, and had compiled a list of 131 errors of detail which should be put right, such as ensuring that the British police were unarmed and ensuring scenes of the British countryside were more accurate for discerning British readers. The resulting album is the dramatically updated and redrawn 1966 version that is the most commonly available today. , Egmont publishes Tintin books in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
The "Tintin" books have had relatively limited popularity in the United States.
The works were first adapted for the American English market by Golden Books, a branch of the Western Publishing Company in the 1950s. The albums were translated from French into American English with some artwork panels blanked except for the speech balloons. This was done to remove content considered to be inappropriate for children, such as drunkenness and free mixing of races. The albums were not popular and only six were published in mixed order. The edited albums later had their blanked areas redrawn by Hergé to be more acceptable, and they currently appear this way in published editions around the world.
From 1966 to 1979, "Children's Digest" included monthly instalments of "The Adventures of Tintin". These serialisations served to increase Tintin's popularity, introducing him to many thousands of new readers in the United States.
Atlantic Monthly Press, in cooperation with Little, Brown and Company beginning in the 1970s, republished the albums based on the British translations. Alterations were made to vocabulary not well known to an American audience (such as gaol, tyre, saloon, and spanner). , Little, Brown and Company (owned by the Hachette Book Group USA) continues to publish Tintin books in the United States.
Moulinsart's official Tintin app in Apple's App Store, launched with the release of the digital version of "Tintin in the Congo" on 5 June 2015, features brand new English language translations by journalist, writer and Tintin expert Michael Farr.
The English-language "Adventures of Tintin" books were originally published with handwritten lettering created by cartographer Neil Hyslop. 1958's "The Crab with the Golden Claws" was the first to be published with Hyslop's lettering. Hyslop was given versions of Hergé's artwork with blank panels. Hyslop would write his English script on a clear cellophane-like material, aiming to fit within the original speech bubble. Occasionally the size of the bubbles would need to be adjusted if the translated text would not fit. In the early 2000s, Tintin's English publishers Egmont discontinued publishing books featuring Hyslop's handwritten lettering, instead publishing books with text created with digital fonts. This change was instigated by publisher Casterman and Hergé's estate managers Moulinsart, who decided to replace localised hand-lettering with a single computerised font for all Tintin titles worldwide.
On 1 June 2006, the Dalai Lama bestowed the International Campaign for Tibet's Light of Truth Award upon the Hergé Foundation, along with South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The award was in recognition of Hergé's book "Tintin in Tibet", Hergé's most personal adventure, which the Executive Director of ICT Europe Tsering Jampa noted was "for many ... their introduction to the awe-inspiring landscape and culture of Tibet". In 2001, the Hergé Foundation demanded the recall of the Chinese translation of the work, which had been released with the title "Tintin in Chinese Tibet". The work was subsequently published with the correct translation of the title. Accepting on behalf of the Hergé Foundation, Hergé's widow Fanny Rodwell stated, "We never thought that this story of friendship would have a resonance more than 40 years later".
The study of Tintin, sometimes referred to as "Tintinology", has become the life work of some literary critics in Belgium, France and England. Belgian author Philippe Goddin has written "Hergé et Tintin reporters: Du Petit Vingtième au Journal Tintin" (1986, later republished in English as "Hergé and Tintin Reporters: From "Le Petit Vingtième" to "Tintin" Magazine" in 1987) and "Hergé et les Bigotudos" (1993) amongst other books on the series. In 1983, French author Benoît Peeters released "Le Monde d'Hergé", subsequently published in English as "Tintin and the World of Hergé" in 1988. English reporter Michael Farr has written works such as "Tintin, 60 Years of Adventure" (1989), "Tintin: The Complete Companion" (2001), "Tintin & Co." (2007) and "The Adventures of Hergé" (2007), while English television producer Harry Thompson authored "Tintin: Hergé and his Creation" (1991).
Literary critics, primarily in French-speaking Europe, have also examined "The Adventures of Tintin". In 1984, Jean-Marie Apostolidès published his study of the "Adventures of Tintin" from a more "adult" perspective as "Les Métamorphoses de Tintin", published in English as "The Metamorphoses of Tintin, or Tintin for Adults" in 2010. In reviewing Apostolidès' book, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal of "The New Republic" thought that it was "not for the faint of heart: it is packed with close textual analysis and laden with psychological jargon." Following Apostolidès's work, French psychoanalyst Serge Tisseron examined the series in his books "Tintin et les Secrets de Famille" ("Tintin and the Family Secrets"), which was published in 1990, and "Tintin et le Secret d'Hergé" ("Tintin and Hergé's Secret"), published in 1993.
The first English-language work of literary criticism devoted to the series was "Tintin and the Secret of Literature", written by the novelist Tom McCarthy and published in 2006. McCarthy compares Hergé's work with that of Aeschylus, Honoré de Balzac, Joseph Conrad, and Henry James and argues that the series contains the key to understanding literature itself. McCarthy considered the "Adventures of Tintin" to be "stupendously rich", containing "a mastery of plot and symbol, theme and sub-text" which, influenced by Tisseron's psychoanalytical readings of the work, he believed could be deciphered to reveal a series of recurring themes, ranging from bartering to implicit sexual intercourse that Hergé had featured throughout the series. Reviewing the book in "The Telegraph", Toby Clements argued that McCarthy's work, and literary criticism of Hergé's comic strips in general, cut "perilously close" to simply feeding "the appetite of those willing to cross the line between enthusiast and obsessive" in the Tintinological community.
The earliest stories in "The Adventures of Tintin" have been criticised for displaying racial stereotypes, animal cruelty, colonialism, violence, and even fascist leanings, including ethnocentric, caricatured portrayals of non-Europeans. While the Hergé Foundation has presented such criticism as naïveté and scholars of Hergé such as Harry Thompson have said that "Hergé did what he was told by the Abbé Wallez", Hergé himself felt that his background made it impossible to avoid prejudice, stating, "I was fed the prejudices of the bourgeois society that surrounded me."
In "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets", the Bolsheviks were presented as villains. Hergé drew on "Moscow Unveiled", a work given to him by Wallez and authored by Joseph Douillet, the former Belgian consul in Russia, that is highly critical of the Soviet regime, although Hergé contextualised this by noting that in Belgium, at the time a devout Catholic nation, "Anything Bolshevik was atheist". In the story, Bolshevik leaders are motivated by personal greed and a desire to deceive the world. Tintin discovers, buried, "the hideout where Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin have collected together wealth stolen from the people". By 1999, even while Tintin's politics was the subject of a debate in the French parliament, part of this presentation was noted as far more reasonable, with British weekly newspaper "The Economist" declaring, "In retrospect, however, the land of hunger and tyranny painted by Hergé was uncannily accurate".
"Tintin in the Congo" has been criticised as presenting the Africans as naïve and primitive. In the original work, Tintin is shown at a blackboard addressing a class of African children. "My dear friends," he says, "I am going to talk to you today about your fatherland: Belgium." Hergé redrew this in 1946 to show a lesson in mathematics. Hergé later admitted the flaws in the original story, excusing it saying, "I portrayed these Africans according to ... this purely paternalistic spirit of the time." Sue Buswell, who was the editor of Tintin at Methuen, summarised the perceived problems with the book in 1988 as "all to do with rubbery lips and heaps of dead animals", although Thompson noted her quote may have been "taken out of context".
Drawing on André Maurois' "Les Silences du colonel Bramble", Hergé presents Tintin as a big-game hunter, accidentally killing fifteen antelope as opposed to the one needed for the evening meal. However, concerns over the number of dead animals led "Tintin"s Scandinavian publishers to request changes. A page of Tintin killing a rhinoceros by drilling a hole in its back and inserting a stick of dynamite was deemed excessive; Hergé replaced the page with one in which the rhino accidentally discharges Tintin's rifle while he sleeps under a tree. In 2007, the UK's Commission for Racial Equality called for the book to be pulled from shelves after a complaint, stating, "It beggars belief that in this day and age that any shop would think it acceptable to sell and display "Tintin in the Congo"." In August 2007, a Congolese student filed a complaint in Brussels that the book was an insult to the Congolese people. Public prosecutors investigated, and a criminal case was initiated, although the matter was transferred to a civil court. Belgium's Centre for Equal Opportunities warned against "over-reaction and hyper political correctness".
Hergé altered some of the early albums in subsequent editions, usually at the demand of publishers. For example, at the instigation of his American publishers, many of the African characters in "Tintin in America" were re-coloured to make their race Caucasian or ambiguous. "The Shooting Star" originally had an American villain with the Jewish surname of "Blumenstein". This proved controversial, as the character exhibited exaggerated, stereotypically Jewish characteristics. "Blumenstein" was changed to an American with a less ethnically specific name, Mr. Bohlwinkel, in later editions and subsequently to a South American of a fictional country—São Rico. Hergé later discovered that 'Bohlwinkel' was also a Jewish name. In recent years, even Tintin's politics of peace have been investigated.
"The Adventures of Tintin" has been adapted in a variety of media besides the original comic strip and its collections. Hergé encouraged adaptations and members of his studio working on the animated films. After Hergé's death in 1983, the Hergé Foundation and Moulinsart, the foundation's commercial and copyright wing, became responsible for authorising adaptations and exhibitions.
Two animated television adaptations and one radio adaptation have been made.
"Hergé's Adventures of Tintin" () (1957) was the first production of Belvision Studios. Ten of Hergé's books were adapted, each serialised into a set of five-minute episodes, with 103 episodes produced. The series was directed by Ray Goossens and written by Belgian comic artist Greg, later editor-in-chief of "Tintin" magazine, and produced by Raymond Leblanc. Most stories in the series varied widely from the original books, often changing whole plots.
"The Adventures of Tintin" () (1991–92) was the more successful "Tintin" television series. An adaptation of twenty-one "Tintin" books, it was directed by Stéphane Bernasconi and was produced by Ellipse (France) and Nelvana (Canada) on behalf of the Hergé Foundation. The series adhered closely to the albums to such an extent that panels from the original were often transposed directly to the screen. The series aired in over fifty countries and was released on DVD. It aired in the US on HBO.
"The Adventures of Tintin" (1992–93) radio series was produced by BBC Radio 4. The dramas starred Richard Pearce as Tintin and Andrew Sachs as Snowy. Captain Haddock was played by Leo McKern in Series One and Lionel Jeffries in Series Two, Professor Calculus was played by Stephen Moore and Thomson and Thompson were played by Charles Kay.
The "Adventures of Tintin" were also released as radio dramas on LP and compact cassette recordings in French language versions in Belgium, France and Canada, German language versions in Germany, Swedish language versions in Sweden, Danish language versions in Denmark and Norwegian language versions in Norway.
Five feature-length "Tintin" films were made before Hergé's death in 1983 and one more in 2011.
"The Crab with the Golden Claws" () (1947) was the first successful attempt to adapt one of the comics into a feature film. Written and directed by Claude Misonne and João B Michiels, the film was a stop-motion puppet production created by a small Belgian studio.
"Tintin and the Golden Fleece" () (1961), the first live action "Tintin" film, was adapted not from one of Hergé's "Adventures of Tintin" but instead from an original script written by André Barret and Rémo Forlani. Directed by Jean-Jacques Vierne and starring Jean-Pierre Talbot as Tintin and Georges Wilson as Haddock, the plot involves Tintin travelling to Istanbul to collect the "Golden Fleece", a ship left to Haddock in the will of his friend, Themistocle Paparanic. Whilst in the city however, Tintin and Haddock discover that a group of villains also want possession of the ship, believing that it would lead them to a hidden treasure.
"Tintin and the Blue Oranges" () (1964), the second live action "Tintin" film, was released due to the success of the first. Again based upon an original script, once more by André Barret, it was directed by Philippe Condroyer and starred Talbot as Tintin and Jean Bouise as Haddock. The plot reveals a new invention, the blue orange, that can grow in the desert and solve world famines, devised by Calculus' friend, the Spanish Professor Zalamea. An emir whose interests are threatened by the invention of the blue orange proceeds to kidnap both Zalamea and Calculus, and Tintin and Haddock travel to Spain in order to rescue them.
"Tintin and the Temple of the Sun" () (1969), the first traditional animation "Tintin" film, was adapted from two of Hergé's "Adventures of Tintin": "The Seven Crystal Balls" and "Prisoners of the Sun". The first full-length, animated film from Raymond Leblanc's Belvision, which had recently completed its television series based upon the Tintin stories; it was directed by Eddie Lateste and featured a musical score by the critically acclaimed composer François Rauber. The adaptation is mostly faithful, although the "Seven Crystal Balls" portion of the story was heavily condensed.
"Tintin and the Lake of Sharks" () (1972), the second traditional animation "Tintin" film and the last Tintin release for nearly 40 years, it was based on an original script by Greg and directed by Raymond Leblanc. Belvision's second feature takes Tintin to Syldavia to outwit his old foe Rastapopoulos. While the look of the film is richer, the story is less convincing. The movie was subsequently adapted into a comic album made up of stills from the film.
"" (2011) was Steven Spielberg's motion capture 3D film based on three Hergé albums: "The Crab with the Golden Claws" (1941), "The Secret of the Unicorn" (1943), and "Red Rackham's Treasure" (1944). Peter Jackson's company Weta Digital provided the animation and special effects. The movie received positive reviews and was a box office success.
"I, Tintin" () (1976) was produced by Belvision Studios and Pierre Film.
"Tintin and I" () (2003), a documentary film directed by Anders Høgsbro Østergaard and co-produced by companies from Denmark, Belgium, France, and Switzerland, was based on a taped interview with Hergé by Numa Sadoul from 1971. Although the interview was published as a book, Hergé was allowed to edit the work prior to publishing and much of the interview was excised. Years after Hergé's death, the filmmaker returned to the original tapes and restored Hergé's often personal, insightful thoughts—and in the process brought viewers closer to the world of Tintin and Hergé. It was broadcast in the United States on the PBS network on 11 July 2006.
"Sur les traces de Tintin" ("On the trail of Tintin") (2010) was a five-part documentary television series which recaps several albums of the book series by combining comic panels (motionless or otherwise) with live-action imagery, with commentary provided.
Hergé himself helped to create two stage plays, collaborating with humourist Jacques Van Melkebeke. "Tintin in the Indies: The Mystery of the Blue Diamond" (1941) covers much of the second half of "Cigars of the Pharaoh" as Tintin attempts to rescue a stolen blue diamond. "Mr. Boullock's Disappearance" (1941–1942) has Tintin, Snowy, and Thomson and Thompson travel around the world and back to Brussels again to unmask an impostor trying to lay claim to a missing millionaire's fortune. The plays were performed at the Théâtre Royal des Galeries in Brussels. The scripts of the plays are unfortunately lost.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, two Tintin plays were produced at the Arts Theatre in the West End of London, adapted by Geoffrey Case for the Unicorn Theatre Company. These were "Tintin's Great American Adventure", based on the comic "Tintin in America" (1976–1977) and "Tintin and the Black Island", based on "The Black Island" (1980–81); this second play later toured.
A musical based on "The Seven Crystal Balls" and "Prisoners of the Sun" premièred on 15 September 2001 at the (City Theatre) in Antwerp, Belgium. It was entitled (""Tintin – Temple of the Sun (The Musical)"") and was broadcast on Canal Plus, before moving on to Charleroi in 2002 as .
The Young Vic theatre company in London ran "Hergé's Adventures of Tintin", a musical version of "Tintin in Tibet", at the Barbican Arts Centre (2005–2006); the production was directed by Rufus Norris and was adapted by Norris and David Greig. The show was successfully revived at the Playhouse Theatre in the West End of London before touring (2006–2007) to celebrate the centenary of Hergé's birth in 2007.
Tintin began appearing in video games when Infogrames Entertainment, SA, a French game company, released the side scroller "Tintin on the Moon" in 1989.
The same company released a platformer video game titled "Tintin in Tibet" in 1995 for the Super NES and Mega Drive/Genesis.
Another platformer from Infogrames titled "Prisoners of the Sun" was released the following year for the Super NES, PC, and Game Boy Color.
As computer graphics technology improved, video game experiences improved. In 2001, Tintin became 3D in a game called "", released by Infogrames for the PC and PlayStation.
Then in 2011, an action-adventure video game called "", a tie-in to the 2011 movie, was released by Ubisoft in October 2011.
Images from the series have long been licensed for use on merchandise, the success of "Tintin" magazine helping to create a market for such items. Tintin's image has been used to sell a wide variety of products, from alarm clocks to underpants. Countless separate items related to the character have been available, with some becoming collectors' items in their own right.
The Hergé Foundation has maintained control of the licenses, through Moulinsart, the commercial wing of the foundation. Speaking in 2002, Peter Horemans, the then director general at Moulinsart, noted this control: "We have to be very protective of the property. We don't take lightly any potential partners and we have to be very selective ... for him to continue to be as popular as he is, great care needs to be taken of his use." However, the Foundation has been criticised by scholars as "trivialising the work of Hergé by concentrating on the more lucrative merchandising" in the wake of a move in the late 1990s to charge them for using relevant images to illustrate their papers on the series.
Tintin memorabilia and merchandise has allowed a chain of stores based solely on the character to become viable. The first shop was launched in 1984 in Covent Garden, London. Tintin shops have also opened in both Bruges and Brussels in Belgium, and in Montpellier, France. In 2014, a Tintin shop opened in Taguig, the Philippines, only the second of its kind in Southeast Asia. The first Tintin shop in Southeast Asia opened in Singapore in 2010.
The British bookstore chain, Ottakar's, founded in 1987, was named after the character of King Ottokar from the Tintin book "King Ottokar's Sceptre", and their shops stocked a large amount of Tintin merchandise until their takeover by Waterstone's in 2006.
Tintin's image has been used on postage stamps on numerous occasions.
The first "Tintin" postage stamp was an eight-franc stamp issued by Belgian Post for the 50th anniversary of the publication of Tintin's first adventure on 29 September 1979, featuring Tintin and Snowy looking through a magnifying glass at several stamps.
In 1999, a nine-stamp block celebrating ten years of the Belgian Comic Strip Center was issued, with the center stamp a photo of Tintin's famous moon rocket that dominates the Comic Strip Center's entry hall.
To mark the end of the Belgian Franc and to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the publication of "Tintin in the Congo", two more stamps were issued by Belgian Post on 31 December 2001: Tintin in a pith helmet and a souvenir sheet with a single stamp in the center. The stamps were jointly issued in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In 2004, Belgian Post celebrated its own seventy-fifth anniversary, as well as the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of "Explorers on the Moon", and the thirty-fifth anniversary of the moon landings with a souvenir sheet of five stamps based upon the "Explorers on the Moon" adventure.
To celebrate the centenary of Hergé's birth in 2007, Belgian Post issued a sheet of 25 stamps depicting the album covers of all 24 "Adventures of Tintin" (in 24 languages) plus Hergé's portrait in the center.
A souvenir sheet of ten stamps called "Tintin on screen", issued 30 August 2011, depicts the "Tintin" film and television adaptations.
Tintin has also been commemorated by coin several times.
In 1995, the (Paris Mint) issued a set of twelve gold medallions, available in a limited edition of 5000.
A silver medallion was minted in 2004 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Tintin book "Explorers on the Moon", again in a limited run, this time of 10,000. It quickly sold out.
In 2004, Belgium minted a limited edition commemorative euro coin featuring Tintin and Snowy celebrating the 75th anniversary of Tintin's first adventure in January 2004. Although it has a face value of €10, it is, as with other commemorative euro coins, legal tender only in the country in which it was issued—in this case, Belgium.
In 2006–2012 France issued the Comic Strip Heroes commemorative coin series featuring famous Franco-Belgian comics, beginning in 2006 with "Tintin".
It was a set of six different euro coins honouring Hergé: three 1½-euro silver coins featuring Tintin and the Professor, Tintin and Captain Haddock, and Tintin and Chang; a €10 (gold) featuring Tintin; and a €20 (silver) and a €50 (gold) featuring Tintin and Snowy. In 2007, on Hergé's centenary, Belgium issued its €20 (silver) Hergé/Tintin coin.
During Hergé's lifetime, parodies were produced of the "Adventures of Tintin", with one of the earliest appearing in Belgian newspaper "La Patrie" after the liberation of the country from Nazi German occupation in September 1944. Entitled (""Tintin in the Land of the Nazis""), the short and crudely drawn strip lampoons Hergé for working for a Nazi-run newspaper during the occupation.
Following Hergé's death, hundreds more unofficial parodies and pastiches of the "Adventures of Tintin" were produced, covering a wide variety of different genres. Tom McCarthy divided such works into three specific groupings: pornographic, political, and artistic. In a number of cases, the actual name "Tintin" is replaced by something similar, like Nitnit, Timtim, or Quinquin, within these books.
McCarthy's first group, pornographic parodies, includes 1976's "Tintin en Suisse" ("Tintin in Switzerland") and Jan Bucquoy's 1992 work "La Vie Sexuelle de Tintin" ("Tintin's Sex Life"), featuring Tintin and the other characters engaged in sexual acts. Another such example was "Tintin in Thailand", in which Tintin, Haddock, and Calculus travel to the East Asian country for a sex holiday. The book began circulating in December 1999, but in 2001, Belgian police arrested those responsible and confiscated 650 copies for copyright violation.
Other parodies have been produced for political reasons: for instance, "Tintin in Iraq" lampoons the world politics of the early 21st century, with Hergé's character General Alcazar representing President of the United States George W. Bush. Written by the pseudonymous Jack Daniels, "" (1989) is a revolutionary socialist comic set in Britain during the 1980s, with Tintin and his uncle (modelled after Captain Haddock) being working class Englishmen who turn to socialism in order to oppose the capitalist policies of the Conservative Party government of Margaret Thatcher. When first published in Britain, it caused an outrage in the mainstream press, with one paper issuing the headline that "Commie nutters turn Tintin into picket yob!"
Other comic creators have chosen to create artistic stories that are more like fan fiction than parody. The Swiss artist Exem created the irreverent comic adventures of Zinzin, what "The Guardian" calls "the most beautifully produced of the pastiches." Similarly, Canadian cartoonist Yves Rodier has produced a number of Tintin works, none of which have been authorised by the Hergé Foundation, including a 1986 "completion" of the unfinished "Tintin and Alph-art", which he drew in Hergé's style.
The response to these parodies has been mixed in the Tintinological community. Many despise them, seeing them as an affront to Hergé's work. Nick Rodwell of the Hergé Foundation took this view, declaring that "None of these copyists count as true fans of Hergé. If they were, they would respect his wishes that no one but him draw Tintin's adventures." Where possible, the foundation has taken legal action against those known to be producing such items. Others have taken a different attitude, considering such parodies and pastiches to be tributes to Hergé, and collecting them has become a "niche specialty".
After Hergé's death in 1983, his art began to be honoured at exhibitions around the world, keeping "Tintin" awareness at a high level.
The first major "Tintin" exhibition in London was "Tintin: 60 years of Adventure", held in 1989 at the Town Hall in Chelsea. This early exhibition displayed many of Hergé's original sketches and inks, as well as some original gouaches.
In 2001, an exhibition entitled (""Billions of Blistering Barnacles!"") was shown at the National Navy Museum () in Paris.
In 2002, the Bunkamura Museum of Art in Tokyo staged an exhibition of original Hergé drawings as well as of the submarine and rocket ship invented in the strips by Professor Calculus.
The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, hosted the exhibition "The Adventures of Tintin at Sea" in 2004, focusing on Tintin's sea exploits, and in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the publication of Tintin's first adventure.
2004 also saw an exhibition in Halles Saint Géry in Brussels titled "Tintin et la ville" ("Tintin and the City") showcasing all cities in the world Tintin had travelled.
The Belgian Comic Strip Center in the Brussels business district added exhibits dedicated to Hergé in 2004.
The Brussels' Comic Book Route in the center of Brussels added its first "Tintin" mural in July 2005.
The centenary of Hergé's birth in 2007 was commemorated at the largest museum for modern art in Europe, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, with "Hergé", an art exhibition honouring his work. The exhibition, which ran from 20 December 2006 until 19 February 2007, featured some 300 of Hergé's boards and original drawings, including all 124 original plates of "The Blue Lotus".
Laurent le Bon, organiser of the exhibit said, "It was important for the Centre to show the work of Hergé next to that of Matisse or Picasso." Michael Farr said, "Hergé has long been seen as a father figure in the comics world. If he's now recognised as a modern artist, that's very important."
2009 saw the opening of the Hergé Museum (), designed in contemporary style, in the town of Louvain-la-Neuve, south of Brussels. Visitors follow a sequence of eight permanent exhibit rooms covering the entire range of Hergé's work, showcasing the world of Tintin and his other creations. In addition, the new museum has already seen many temporary exhibits, including "Into Tibet With Tintin".
Hergé is recognised as one of the leading cartoonists of the twentieth century. Most notably, Hergé's style has been influential to creators of other Franco-Belgian comics. Contributors to "Tintin" magazine have employed , and later artists Jacques Tardi, Yves Chaland, Jason Little, Phil Elliott, Martin Handford, Geof Darrow, Eric Heuvel, Garen Ewing, Joost Swarte, and others have produced works using it.
In the wider art world, both Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein have claimed Hergé as one of their most important influences. Lichtenstein made paintings based on fragments from "Tintin" comics, whilst Warhol used and even made a series of paintings with Hergé as the subject. Warhol, who admired Tintin's "great political and satirical dimensions", said, "Hergé has influenced my work in the same way as Walt Disney. For me, Hergé was more than a comic strip artist".
Hergé has been lauded as "creating in art a powerful graphic record of the 20th century's tortured history" through his work on Tintin, whilst Maurice Horn's "World Encyclopedia of Comics" declares him to have "spear-headed the post-World War II renaissance of European comic art". French philosopher Michel Serres noted that the twenty-three completed Tintin albums constituted a "" ("masterpiece") to which "the work of no French novelist is comparable in importance or greatness".
In 1966, Charles de Gaulle said, "In the end, you know, my only international rival is Tintin! We are the small ones, who do not let themselves be had by the great ones."
In March 2015, Brussels Airlines painted an Airbus A320-200 with registration OO-SNB in a special Tintin livery.
Tintin has become a symbol of Belgium and so was used in a variety of visual responses to the 2016 Brussels bombings.
Following are the twenty-four canonical "Tintin" comic albums, with their English titles. Publication dates are for the original French-language versions.
The following are double albums with a continuing story arc:
Hergé attempted and then abandoned "Le Thermozéro" (1958). Outside the "Tintin" series, a 48-page comic album supervised (but not written) by Hergé, "Tintin and the Lake of Sharks", was released in 1972; it was based on the film .
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Tecumseh, Michigan
Tecumseh is a city in Lenawee County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated where M-50 crosses the River Raisin, a few miles east of M-52. Tecumseh is about southwest of Detroit, south of Ann Arbor, and north of Toledo, Ohio.
As of the 2010 census, the city has a population of 8,521. The city is surrounded on three sides by Tecumseh Township, but the two are politically independent. Raisin Township borders the southern edge of the city. The city was rated #93 in 2009, as one of 100 of the best small towns to live in by CNNMoney.
The boundaries of Lenawee County were laid out by a proclamation of the Territorial Governor, Lewis Cass on September 10, 1822. Lenawee remained attached to Monroe County, out of which it was formed, until an act of the Territorial Legislature passed on December 26, 1826, organized the county government.
The first settlement in the county was made two years earlier, on May 21, 1824, in Tecumseh. The settlers, consisting of fifteen men, eleven women, and six children, all came from Jefferson County, New York. In 1823, Musgrove Evans had located the land and persuaded General Joseph W. Brown and the others to move to the site. Brown and Evans, along with Austin Eli Wing purchased land there and platted the village of Tecumseh in 1824. These founders appealed to Governor Cass to locate the county seat of Lenawee at Tecumseh. This was accomplished by an act of the Territorial Legislature on June 30, 1824, even though county government would not be organized for another year and a half. The city was named after the Shawnee chief Tecumseh.
Tecumseh remained the county seat until 1838, when it was transferred to Adrian. The Township of Tecumseh was organized on April 12, 1837, initially encompassing the entire northern third of the county.
Just to the north of Tecumseh, the village of Bownville was established in 1823 by Austin Wing. It was annexed by Tecumseh in 1838.
Tecumseh is located in Southeast Michigan.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water.
As of the census of 2010, there were 8,521 people, 3,604 households, and 2,304 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 3,957 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 96.0% White, 0.4% African American, 0.4% Native American, 0.7% Asian, 0.8% from other races, and 1.6% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 4.4% of the population.
There were 3,604 households, of which 32.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.0% were married couples living together, 11.3% had a female householder with no husband present, 3.6% had a male householder with no wife present, and 36.1% were non-families. 31.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 14.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.35 and the average family size was 2.96.
The median age in the city was 39.8 years. 24.7% of residents were under the age of 18; 7.1% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 25.4% were from 25 to 44; 27.4% were from 45 to 64; and 15.5% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 46.8% male and 53.2% female.
As of the census of 2000, there were 8,574 people, 3,499 households, and 2,337 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,659.4 per square mile (640.3/km2). There were 3,651 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 95.85% White, 0.19% African American, 0.63% Native American, 0.69% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 1.49% from other races, and 1.14% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 4.40% of the population.
There were 3,499 households, out of which 33.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 52.8% were married couples living together, 10.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.2% were non-families. 28.5% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.42 and the average family size was 2.99.
In the city, the population was spread out, with 26.4% under the age of 18, 7.5% from 18 to 24, 29.4% from 25 to 44, 21.5% from 45 to 64, and 15.1% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 92.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.2 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $46,106, and the median income for a family was $58,239. Males had a median income of $39,672 versus $27,630 for females. The per capita income for the city was $22,797. About 3.5% of families and 4.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 3.9% of those under age 18 and 7.4% of those age 65 or over.
One of the village's most well-known manufacturers was Tecumseh Products. Founded by the Herrick family during the early part of the 20th century, Tecumseh Products initially began business manufacturing refrigeration compressors, leading Tecumseh to be known as the "Refrigeration Capital of the World." The company moved out of Tecumseh in 2008, moving the remaining production to a plant in Tupelo, Mississippi, and its headquarters to Pittsfield Township, Michigan, just outside Ann Arbor, Michigan. Consolidated Biscuit Company of McComb, Ohio, agreed to buy the Products plant in 2008, pending an environmental review. However, the deal fell through after Consolidated Biscuit Company was sold The site was found to be contaminated and cleanup begun in 2017. The land was purchased by a local developer - 100 E. Patterson LLC - with plans to clean up the land and develop mixed use space for light industrial, commercial and retail uses. The State of Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) awarded the City of Tecumseh $2,000,000 in funding to aid the developer in cleanup efforts. At the end of 2018 demolition at the site was nearly complete and cleanup efforts were underway with new industrial building construction planned for 2019.
Overall, the City of Tecumseh's economy is quite diverse including over 250 businesses ranging from Tier 1 Automotive Suppliers to small locally owned bakeries and shoe stores. The downtown is thriving with successful businesses ranging from antiques, breweries and wineries, retail, restaurants, customer jewelers, locally owned department stores and more. Some of the largest employers include: Kirchhoff Automotive, Tecumseh Public Schools, ProMedica, Busch's, GLOVE Enterprises, Ervin Industries, Tuckey's Big Boy, Old National Bank, City of Tecumseh, Ididit, Tecumseh Packaging Solutions, Glycon, Spectrum Printers, Diggypod, Martin's Home Center, JR's Grill & Pub, Basil Boys, Evans Street Station and Howard Hanna. See chart for additional employment details.
In 2010, the city began hosting the Tecumseh Ice Sculpting Festival in the downtown area on the penultimate weekend in January. Another festival is Appleumpkin (the second weekend in October) which attracts approximately 30,000 tourists from around the region annually. In addition to the two main annual events, the city of Tecumseh holds several other events each year like the Classic Car and Bike Show, Diva's at Dusk, Holiday Open House, Annual Pet Parade and Sidewalk Sales. In addition to events, Tecumseh also boasts culturally rich activities like the annual Art Trail which features sculptures throughout Tecumseh which are changed on an annual basis, as well as the annual Art Walk which pairs local artists and merchants for residents and visitors to enjoy. Tecumseh is also home to the Carnegie Preservation League, a non profit that saved a historical landmark building and renovated it to create lofts and gallery space for local artists.
The Southern Michigan Railroad Society, an operating railroad museum, runs through Tecumseh., along with the proximity to M.I.S.(Michigan International Speedway), brings many tourists to the area allowing for many antique dealers, cafes and fine dining to flourish along the m-50 corridor.
The city of Tecumseh is home to Tecumseh Public Schools which includes one traditional high school, Tecumseh High School, (grades 9–12), one alternative high school, Tecumseh Alternative High School; two middle schools, Tecumseh East STEAM Center, (grade 7 or 8), and Tecumseh West STEAM Center, (grade 7 or 8); and three elementary schools, Tecumseh North Early Learning Center (grades K–1), Tecumseh South Early Learning Center (grades K–1), and Tecumseh Compass Learning Center (grades 2-6).
Tecumseh students have access to the Lenawee Intermediate School District (LISD) and the Southern Michigan Center for Science and Industry. Tecumseh Public Schools seek to provide a myriad of educational opportunities to create a work ready workforce, including industry-specific programs to focus on the needs of area businesses. Tecumseh Public Schools has a graduation rate of 96.84% with over 65% of graduates enrolling in post secondary education. Tecumseh's central location provides easy access to major universities, including the top 10 that graduates choose: Jackson College, Washtenaw Community College, Eastern Michigan University, Michigan State University, Central Michigan University, Siena Heights University, Western Michigan University, the University of Toledo, and the University of Michigan.
Former U.S. Congressman Fernando C. Beaman practiced law in Tecumseh in the 1800s.
Historian and literary critic Ronald Crane was born in Tecumseh.
Joseph C. Satterthwaite was born in Tecumseh. Satterthwaite was an American diplomat serving in such positions as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Director General of Foreign Service, and Diplomatic Agent/Consul General.
Andrew Kehoe was born and raised in Tecumseh. On May 18, 1927, he perpetrated the Bath School disaster in Bath, Michigan, killing 45 people, including himself. It remains the worst school related mass murder in U.S. history.
Actress Julie Parrish, born October 21, 1940 in Middlesboro, Kentucky, spent her early years in Lake City, Tennessee, but moved to Tecumseh at age 11. There she graduated from Tecumseh High School (Michigan). Parrish attended modeling school, won "Young Model of The Year', and pursued a career in acting. She appeared with Jerry Lewis in "It's Only Money" (1962) and "The Nutty Professor" (1963).
A horse, Don Juan, that belonged to General George Armstrong Custer is buried in Tecumseh. The horse had been sent to a friend living in Tecumseh after the General's death. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31339 |
The Mythical Man-Month
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering is a book on software engineering and project management by Fred Brooks first published in 1975, with subsequent editions in 1982 and 1995. Its central theme is that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later". This idea is known as Brooks' law, and is presented along with the second-system effect and advocacy of prototyping.
Brooks' observations are based on his experiences at IBM while managing the development of OS/360. He had added more programmers to a project falling behind schedule, a decision that he would later conclude had, counter-intuitively, delayed the project even further. He also made the mistake of asserting that one project—involved in writing an ALGOL compiler—would require six months, regardless of the number of workers involved (it required longer). The tendency for managers to repeat such errors in project development led Brooks to quip that his book is called "The Bible of Software Engineering", because "everybody quotes it, some people read it, and a few people go by it".
The book is widely regarded as a classic on the human elements of software engineering.
The work was first published in 1975 (), reprinted with corrections in 1982, and republished in an anniversary edition with four extra chapters in 1995 (), including a reprint of the essay "No Silver Bullet" with commentary by the author.
Brooks discusses several causes of scheduling failures. The most enduring is his discussion of Brooks's law:
"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later". Man-month is a hypothetical unit of work representing the work done by one person in one month; Brooks' law says that the possibility of measuring useful work in man-months is a myth, and is hence the centerpiece of the book.
Complex programming projects cannot be perfectly partitioned into discrete tasks that can be worked on without communication between the workers and without establishing a set of complex interrelationships between tasks and the workers performing them.
Therefore, assigning more programmers to a project running behind schedule will make it even later. This is because the time required for the new programmers to learn about the project and the increased communication overhead will consume an ever-increasing quantity of the calendar time available. When "n" people have to communicate among themselves, as "n" increases, their output decreases and when it becomes negative the project is delayed further with every person added.
Brooks added ""No Silver Bullet — Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering""—and further reflections on it, ""'No Silver Bullet' Refired""—to the anniversary edition of "The Mythical Man-Month".
Brooks insists that there is no one silver bullet -- "there is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude [tenfold] improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity."
The argument relies on the distinction between accidental complexity and essential complexity, similar to the way Amdahl's law relies on the distinction between "strictly serial" and "parallelizable".
The second-system effect proposes that, when an architect designs a second system, it is the most dangerous system they will ever design, because they will tend to incorporate all of the additions they originally did not add to the first system due to inherent time constraints. Thus, when embarking on a second system, an engineer should be mindful that they are susceptible to over-engineering it.
The author makes the observation that in a suitably complex system there is a certain irreducible number of errors. Any attempt to fix observed errors tends to result in the introduction of other errors.
Brooks wrote "Question: How does a large software project get to be one year late? Answer: One day at a time!" Incremental slippages on many fronts eventually accumulate to produce a large overall delay. Continued attention to meeting small individual milestones is required at each level of management.
To make a user-friendly system, the system must have conceptual integrity, which can only be achieved by separating architecture from implementation. A single chief architect (or a small number of architects), acting on the user's behalf, decides what goes in the system and what stays out. The architect or team of architects should develop an idea of what the system should do and make sure that this vision is understood by the rest of the team. A novel idea by someone may not be included if it does not fit seamlessly with the overall system design. In fact, to ensure a user-friendly system, a system may deliberately provide "fewer" features than it is capable of. The point being, if a system is too complicated to use, many features will go unused because no one has time to learn them.
The chief architect produces a manual of system specifications. It should describe the external specifications of the system in detail, "i.e.", everything that the user sees. The manual should be altered as feedback comes in from the implementation teams and the users.
When designing a new kind of system, a team "will" design a throw-away system (whether it intends to or not). This system acts as a "pilot plan" that reveals techniques that will subsequently cause a complete redesign of the system. This second, "smarter" system should be the one delivered to the customer, since delivery of the pilot system would cause nothing but agony to the customer, and possibly ruin the system's reputation and maybe even the company.
Every project manager should create a small core set of formal documents defining the project objectives, how they are to be achieved, who is going to achieve them, when they are going to be achieved, and how much they are going to cost. These documents may also reveal inconsistencies that are otherwise hard to see.
When estimating project times, it should be remembered that programming products (which can be sold to paying customers) and programming systems are both three times as hard to write as simple independent in-house programs. It should be kept in mind how much of the work week will actually be spent on technical issues, as opposed to administrative or other non-technical tasks, such as meetings, and especially "stand-up" or "all-hands" meetings.
To avoid disaster, all the teams working on a project should remain in contact with each other in as many ways as possible—e-mail, phone, meetings, memos etc. Instead of assuming something, implementers should ask the architect(s) to clarify their intent on a feature they are implementing, before proceeding with an assumption that might very well be completely incorrect. The architect(s) are responsible for formulating a group picture of the project and communicating it to others.
Much as a surgical team during surgery is led by one surgeon performing the most critical work, while directing the team to assist with less critical parts, it seems reasonable to have a "good" programmer develop critical system components while the rest of a team provides what is needed at the right time. Additionally, Brooks muses that "good" programmers are generally five to ten times as productive as mediocre ones.
Software is invisible. Therefore, many things only become apparent once a certain amount of work has been done on a new system, allowing a user to experience it. This experience will yield insights, which will change a user's needs or the perception of the user's needs. The system should, therefore, be changed to fulfill the changed requirements of the user. This can only occur up to a certain point, otherwise the system may never be completed. At a certain date, no more changes should be allowed to the system and the code should be frozen. All requests for changes should be delayed until the "next" version of the system.
Instead of every programmer having their own special set of tools, each team should have a designated tool-maker who may create tools that are highly customized for the job that team is doing, "e.g.", a code generator tool that creates code based on a specification. In addition, system-wide tools should be built by a common tools team, overseen by the project manager.
There are two techniques for lowering software development costs that Brooks writes about: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31340 |
Tupac Shakur
Tupac Amaru Shakur ( ; born Lesane Parish Crooks, 16 June 197113 September 1996), popularly known by his stage name 2Pac, was an American rapper and actor. Considered by many to be one of the most influential rappers of all time, much of Shakur's work has been noted for addressing contemporary social issues that plagued inner cities, and he is considered a symbol of resistance and activism against inequality.
Shakur was born in the Manhattan borough of New York City but relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1988. He later moved to Los Angeles in 1993 to further pursue his music career. By the time he released his debut album "2Pacalypse Now" in 1991, he had become a central figure in West Coast hip hop, introducing social issues in the genre at a time when gangsta rap was dominant in the mainstream. Shakur achieved further critical and commercial success with his follow-up albums "Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z..." (1993) and "Me Against the World" (1995).
Shakur became heavily involved in the growing East Coast–West Coast hip hop rivalry between 1995-1996. His double-disc album "All Eyez on Me" (1996) became certified Diamond by the RIAA. On September 7, 1996, Shakur was shot four times by an unknown assailant in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas; he died six days later and the gunman was never captured. The Notorious B.I.G., Shakur's friend turned rival, was at first considered a suspect, but was also murdered in another drive-by shooting six months later. Five more albums have been released since his death, all of which have been certified platinum in the United States.
Shakur is one of the best-selling music artists of all time having sold over 75 million records worldwide. In 2002, he was inducted into the Hip-Hop Hall of Fame. In 2017, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. "Rolling Stone" named Shakur in its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Outside music, Shakur also gained considerable success as an actor, with his starring roles as Bishop in "Juice" (1992), Lucky in "Poetic Justice" (1993) where he starred alongside Janet Jackson, Ezekiel in "Gridlock'd" (1997), and Jake in "Gang Related" (1997), all garnering praise from critics.
Tupac Amaru Shakur was born on June 16, 1971, in the East Harlem section of New York City's Manhattan borough. While born Lesane Parish Crooks, he was renamed, at age one, after Túpac Amaru II (the descendant of the last Incan ruler, Túpac Amaru), who was executed in Peru in 1781 after his failed revolt against Spanish rule.
Shakur's mother explained, "I wanted him to have the name of revolutionary, indigenous people in the world. I wanted him to know he was part of a world culture and not just from a neighborhood." Tupac had an older stepbrother, Mopreme "Komani" Shakur, and a half-sister, Sekyiwa, two years his junior. His parents, Afeni Shakur—born Alice Faye Williams in North Carolina—and his birth father, Billy Garland, had been active Black Panther Party members in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
A month before Tupac's birth, his mother Afeni was tried in New York City as part of the Panther 21 criminal trial. She was acquitted of over 150 charges, in sum, "Conspiracy against the United States government and New York landmarks." Other family members who were further involved in the Black Panthers' Black Liberation Army were convicted of serious crimes and imprisoned.
Tupac's godfather, Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, a high-ranking Panther, was convicted of murdering a school teacher during a 1968 robbery, although his sentence was overturned. In 1982, for aiding the 1979 New Jersey prison escape of Tupac's step-aunt and godmother Assata Shakur, his stepfather Mutulu Shakur spent four years among the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Captured in 1986, Mutulu was convicted and imprisoned for the 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored truck, during which police officers and a guard were killed.
In 1984, Tupac's family moved from New York City to Baltimore, Maryland. He did eighth grade at Roland Park Middle School, then two years at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. On transfer to the Baltimore School for the Arts, he studied acting, poetry, jazz, and ballet. He performed in Shakespeare's plays—depicting timeless themes, now seen in gang warfare, he would recall—and as the Mouse King role in "The Nutcracker" ballet. With his friend Dana "Mouse" Smith as beatbox, he won competitions as reputedly the school's best rapper. Also known for his humor, he could mix with all crowds. As a teen, he listened to musicians including Kate Bush, Culture Club, Sinéad O'Connor, and U2.
At Baltimore's arts high school, Tupac befriended Jada Pinkett, who would become a subject of some of his poems. After his death, she would call him "one of my best friends. He was like a brother. It was beyond friendship for us. The type of relationship we had, you only get that once in a lifetime." Upon connecting with the Baltimore Young Communist League USA, Tupac dated the daughter of the director of the local chapter of the Communist Party USA. In 1988, Shakur moved to Marin City, California, a small, impoverished community, about five miles (eight km) north of San Francisco. In nearby Mill Valley, he attended Tamalpais High School, where he performed in several theater productions.
In Tupac's adulthood he continued befriending individuals of diverse backgrounds. His friends would range from Mike Tyson and Chuck D to Jim Carrey and Alanis Morissette, who in April 1996 said that she and Tupac were planning to open a restaurant together.
In April 1995, early in his prison sentence, Tupac married his then longtime girlfriend Keisha Morris. The marriage officially ended in March 1996. In the four months before his death, Tupac lived with his girlfriend Kidada Jones, daughter of the record producer Quincy Jones and the actress Peggy Lipton.
In 1994, Tupac had spoken against interracial marriage, but retracted these comments, Kidada herself having been born through an interracial marriage. She was beside him at his death. Some of Tupac's song lyrics suggest a belief in a god, perhaps in the manner of deism. Apparently not believing in Heaven and Hell as typified, he perhaps believed in karma.
In January 1991, Tupac, rapper, nationally debuted under the stage name 2Pac, guest on rap group Digital Underground's single "Same Song," compiled on the soundtrack of the February 1991 movie "Nothing but Trouble".
2Pac's first two solo albums, November 1991's "2Pacalypse Now" and February 1993's "Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z...", preceded September 1994's of his side group Thug Life, himself in it.
Rapper/producer Stretch guests on the above, three 2Pac projects. 2Pac's third solo album, March 1995's "Me Against the World", features rap clique Dramacydal, reshaping as the Outlawz on 2Pac's fourth solo.
The fourth 2Pac solo album, and last in his lifetime, February 1996's "All Eyez on Me", features also, among its numerous guests, Thug Life member Big Syke. Yet another solo album was already finished.
November 1996's "", under the stage name Makaveli, is a studio album made in one August week, whereas later posthumous albums are archival productions.
Later posthumous albums are "R U Still Down?" (1997), "Greatest Hits" (1998), "Still I Rise" (1999), "Until the End of Time" (2001), "Better Dayz" (2002), "Loyal to the Game" (2004), "Pac's Life" (2006).
Tupac, using the stage name MC New York, began recording in 1989. That year, he began attending the poetry classes of Leila Steinberg. Soon, she became the budding music artist's manager.
Steinberg organized with Tupac's rap group Strictly Dope a concert. She managed to get Tupac signed by Atron Gregory, manager of the rap group Digital Underground. In 1990, Gregory placed Tupac with the Underground as a roadie and backup dancer.
Under the stage name 2Pac, he debuted on the group's January 1991 single "Same Song," leading the group's January 1991 EP titled "This Is an EP Release", while 2Pac appeared in the music video. It also went on the soundtrack of the February 1991 movie "Nothing but Trouble", starting Dan Akroyd, John Candy, Chevy Chase, and Demi Moore.
2Pac's debut album, "2Pacalypse Now"—alluding to the 1979 film "Apocalypse Now"—arriving in November 1991, would bear three singles. Some prominent rappers—like Nas, Eminem, Game, and Talib Kweli—cite it as an inspiration. Aside from "If My Homie Calls," the singles "Trapped" and "Brenda's Got a Baby" poetically depict individual struggles under socioeconomic disadvantage. But once a Texas defense attorney, with a young client who had shot a state trooper, rationalized the defendant had been listening to the album, which touches upon police brutality, controversy ensued.
US Vice President Dan Quayle partially reacted, "There's no reason for a record like this to be released. It has no place in our society." Tupac, finding himself misunderstood, explained, in part, "I just wanted to rap about things that affected young black males. When I said that, I didn't know that I was gonna tie myself down to just take all the blunts and hits for all the young black males, to be the media's kicking post for young black males." In any case, "2Pacalypse Now" was certified Gold, half a million copies sold. Altogether, "2Pacalypse Now" seats well with the socially conscious rap, addressing urban black concerns, still prevalent in rap at the time.
2Pac's second album, "Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z...", arrived in February 1993. A critical and commercial advance, it debuted at #24 on the pop albums chart, the Billboard 200. More hardcore overall, it emphasizes Tupac's sociopolitical views, and has a metallic production quality, in fact featuring Ice Cube, the famed primary creator of N.W.A's "Fuck tha Police," but who, in his own solo albums, had newly gone militantly political, along with L.A.'s original gangsta rapper, Ice-T, who in June 1992 had sparked controversy with his band Body Count's track "Cop Killer," heavy metal.
In fact, in its vinyl release, side A, tracks 1 to 8, is labeled the "Black Side," while side B, tracks 9 to 16, is the "Dark Side." Nonetheless, the album carries the single "I Get Around," a party anthem featuring the Underground's Shock G and Money-B, which would render 2Pac's popular breakthrough, reaching #11 on the pop singles chart, the Billboard Hot 100. And it carries the optimistic compassion of another hit, "Keep Ya Head Up," encouraging women. This album would be certified Platinum, a million copies sold. As of 2004, among 2Pac albums, including of posthumous and compilation albums, the "Strictly" album would 10th in sales, about 1 366 000 copies.
In late 1993, Shakur formed the group Thug Life with Tyrus "Big Syke" Himes, Diron "Macadoshis" Rivers, his stepbrother Mopreme Shakur, and Walter "Rated R" Burns. Thug Life released its only album, "", on October 11, 1994. It went Gold. It carries the single "Pour Out a Little Liquor", produced by Johnny "J" Jackson, who would also produce much of Shakur's album "All Eyez on Me". Usually, Thug Life performed live without Tupac. The track "Pour Out a Little Liquor" appears also on the 1994 film "Above the Rim"'s soundtrack. But under the heavy criticism of gangsta rap at the time, the album's original version was scrapped, and the album redone with mostly new tracks. Still, along with Stretch, Tupac would perform the first planned first single, "Out on Bail," which was never released, at the 1994 Source Awards.
2Pac's third album, arriving in March 1995 as "Me Against the World", is now hailed as his magnum opus, and commonly ranks among the greatest, most influential rap albums. The album sold 240,000 copies in its first week, setting a then record for highest first-week sales for a solo male rapper. The lead single, "Dear Mama," arrived in February with the B side "Old School." The album's most successful single, it topping the Hot Rap Singles chart, and peaked at #9 on the pop singles chart, the Billboard Hot 100. In July, it was certified Platinum. It ranked #51 on the year-end charts. The second single, "So Many Tears," released in June, reached #6 on the Hot Rap Singles chart and #44 on Hot 100. August brought the final single, "Temptations," reaching #68 on the Hot 100, #35 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks, and #13 on the Hot Rap Singles. At the 1996 Soul Train Music Awards, Tupac won for best rap album. In 2001, it ranked 4th among his total albums in sales, with about 3 524 567 copies sold in the US.
While imprisoned February to October 1995, Tupac wrote only one song, he would say. Rather, he took to political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli's treatise "The Prince" and military strategist Sun Tzu's treatise "The Art of War". And on Tupac's behalf, his wife Keisha Morris communicated to Suge Knight of Death Row Records that Tupac, in dire straits financially, needed help, his mother about to lose her house. In August, after sending $15,000 for her, Suge began visiting Tupac in prison. In one of his letters to Nina Bhadreshwar, recently hired edit a planned magazine, "Death Row Uncut", Tupac discusses plans to start a "new chapter." Eventually, music journalist Kevin Powell would say that Shakur, once released, more aggressive, "seemed like a completely transformed person."
2Pac's fourth album, "All Eyez on Me", arrived on February 13, 1996. Of two discs, it basically was rap's first double album—meeting two of the three albums due in Tupac's contract with Death Row—and bore five singles while perhaps marking the peak of 1990s rap. With standout production, the album has more party tracks and often a triumphant tone. As 2Pac's second album to hit #1 on both the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and the pop albums chart, the Billboard 200, it sold 566,000 copies in its first week and was it was certified 5× Multi-Platinum in April. "How Do U Want It" as well as "California Love" reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. At the 1997 Soul Train Awards, it won in R&B/Soul or Rap Album of the Year. At the 24th American Music Awards, Tupac won in Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Artist. The album was certified 9× Multi-Platinum in June 1998, and 10× in July 2014.
Tupac's fifth and final studio album, "The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory", commonly called simply "The 7 Day Theory", was released under a newer stage name, Makaveli. This album had been created in seven days total during August 1996. The lyrics were written and recorded in three days, and mixing took another four days. In 2005, MTV.com ranked "The 7 Day Theory" at #9 among the hip hop's greatest albums ever, and by 2006 a classic album. Its singular poignance, through hurt and rage, contemplation and vendetta, resonate with many fans. But according to George "Papa G" Pryce, Death Row Records' then director of public relations, the album was meant to be "underground," and "was not really to come out," but, "after Tupac was murdered, it did come out." It peaked at #1 on "Billboard"'s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and on the Billboard 200, with the second-highest debut-week sales total of any album that year. On June 15, 1999, it was certified 4× Multi-Platinum.
Tupac's first film appearance was in 1991 in "Nothing but Trouble", a cameo by the Digital Underground. Yet in 1992, he starred in "Juice", where he plays the fictional Roland Bishop, a violent gang member. "Rolling Stone"s Peter Travers calls him "the film's most magnetic figure."
Then, in 1993, Tupac starred alongside Janet Jackson in John Singleton's romance film, "Poetic Justice". Tupac then played another gangster, the fictional Birdie, in "Above the Rim". Soon after Tupac's death, three more films starring him were released, "Bullet" (1996), "Gridlock'd" (1997), and "Gang Related" (1997).
Director Allen Hughes had cast Tupac as Sharif in the 1993 film "Menace II Society", but replaced him once Tupac assaulted him on set. Nonetheless, in 2013, Hughes appraises that Tupac would have outshone the other actors, "because he was bigger than the movie." For the lead role in the eventual 2001 film "Baby Boy", a role played by Tyrese Gibson, director John Singleton had originally had Tupac in mind. Ultimately, the set design includes in the protagonist's bedroom a Tupac mural, and the film's score includes the 2Pac song "Hail Mary."
In October 1991, Shakur filed a $10-million lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department for allegedly brutalizing him over jaywalking. The case was settled for about $43 000. Yet thereafter, he would be involved in a series of cases where he was accused of inflicting the harm.
On August 22, 1992, in Marin City, Shakur performed outdoors at a festival. For about an hour after it, he signed autographs and posed for photos.
Allegedly, once a conflict broke out, Shakur drew but dropped a legally carried Colt Mustang that someone with him then picked up while it accidentally discharged. About 100 yards, or 90 meters, away in a schoolyard, Qa'id Walker-Teal, a boy age 6, on his bicycle, was fatally shot in the forehead.
Police matched the bullet to a .38-caliber pistol registered to Shakur. And his stepbrother Maurice Harding was arrested. But no charges were filed. Lack of witnesses stymied prosecution. In 1995, Qa'id's mother filed against Shakur a wrongful death suit, settled for about $300 000 to $500 000.
In October 1993, in Atlanta, Mark Whitwell and Scott Whitwell, two brothers, both police officers off duty, were out celebrating with their wives, one of whom had passed the state's bar examination. Drunk, the officers crossed the street while a passing car, carrying Shakur, allegedly almost struck them. The Whitwells, later found to have stolen guns, argued with the car's occupants, soon joined by a second car. Ultimately, Shakur shot one officer in the buttocks and the other in the leg, back, or abdomen. Shakur was charged in the shooting. Mark Whitwell was charged with firing at Shakur's car and later lying to the investigation. Prosecutors dropped all charges against the parties.
On April 5, 1993, charged with felonious assault, Shakur allegedly threw a microphone and swung a baseball bat at rapper Chauncey Wynn, of the group M.A.D., at a concert at Michigan State University. On September 14, 1994, Shakur pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, and was sentenced to 30 days in jail, twenty of them suspended, and ordered to 35 hours of community service.
Slated to star as Sharif in the 1993 Hughes brothers' film "Menace II Society", Shakur was replaced by actor Vonte Sweet after allegedly assaulting one of the film's director, Allen Hughes. In early 1994, Shakur served 15 days in jail once found guilty of the assault. The prosecution's evidence included a "Yo! MTV Raps" interview where Shakur boasts that he had "beat up the director of "Menace II Society"."
In November 1993, Shakur and three other men were charged in New York with sexually assaulting a woman in his hotel room. The woman, Ayanna Jackson, alleged that after consensual oral sex in his hotel room, she returned a later day, but then was raped by him and other men there. Interviewed on "The Arsenio Hall Show", Shakur said he was hurt that "a woman would accuse me of taking something from her."
On December 1, 1994, denying that he had himself raped her, Shakur was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse, but acquitted of associated sodomy and gun charges. In February 1995, he was sentenced to 18 months to years in prison by a judge who alleged "an act of brutal violence against a helpless woman." On October 12, 1995, pending judicial appeal, Shakur was released from Clinton Correctional Facility, once Suge Knight, CEO of Death Row Records, arranged for posting of his $1.4 million bond. On April 5, 1996, Shakur was sentence to 120 days in jail for violating his release terms by failing to appear for a road cleanup job. But on June 8, his sentence was deferred via appeals pending in other cases.
In 1991, 2Pac debuted on a new record label, Interscope Records, that knew little about rap music. Until that year, Ruthless Records, formed during 1986 in Los Angeles county's Compton city, had prioritized rap, and its group N.W.A had led gangsta rap to platinum sales, but N.W.A's lyrics, outrageously violent and misogynist, precluded mainstream breakthrough. On the other hand, also specializing in rap, Profile Records, in New York City, had a mainstream, pop breakthrough, Run-DMC's "Walk This Way”, in 1986. In April 1991, N.W.A disbanded via Dre. Dre's departure to, with Suge Knight, launch Death Row Records, in Los Angeles city. With it very first two albums, Death Row became the first record label both to prioritize rap and to regularly release mainstream, pop hits with it.
Released by Death Row in late 1992, Dre's "The Chronic"—its "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" ubiquitous on pop radio and "Let Me Ride" winning a Grammy—was trailed in late 1993 by Snoop's "Doggystyle". Gangsta rap, no less, these propelled the West Coast, for the first time, ahead of New York to rap's center stage. But meanwhile, in 1993, Andre Harrell of Uptown Records, in New York, fired his star A&R man, Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs, later "P. Diddy." Puffy, while leaving behind his standout projects Jodeci and Mary J. Blige—two R&B acts—took to his own, new record label, Bad Boy Records, the promising gangsta rapper Biggie Smalls, soon also known as The Notorious B.I.G. His debut album, released in late 1994 as "Ready to Die", promptly returned rap's spotlight to New York.
In 1988, Randy "Stretch" Walker, along with his brother, dubbed Majesty, and a friend debuted with an EP as rap group and production team, Live Squad, in New York City's borough Queens. Tupac's early days with Digital Underground made his acquaintance with Stretch, who featured on a track of the Digital Underground's 1991 album "Sons of the P". Becoming fast friends, Tupac and Stretch recorded and performed together often. Stretch as well as Live Squad contributed tracks on 2Pac's first two albums, first November 1991, then February 1993, and on 2Pac's side group Thug Life's of September 1994.
The end of Tupac's and Stretch's friendship in late 1994 surprised the New York rap scene. The next 2pac album, released in March 1995, lacks Stretch, and 2Pac's album after that, released in February 1996, has lines suggesting Stretch's impending death for betrayal. No objective evidence would publicly emerge to tangibly incriminate Stretch in the gun attack on Tupac, while with Stretch and two others, at about 12:30 AM on November 30, 1994. In any case, after a Live Squad production session for the second album of Queens rapper Nas, Stretch's vehicle was chased while receiving fatal gunfire at about 12:30 AM on November 30, 1995.
During 1993 and 1994, the Biggie Smalls guest verses on several singles, often R&B, like Mary J. Blige's "What's the 411? Remix," set high expectations for his debut album. The perfectionism of Puffy, still forming his Bad Boy label, extended its recording to 18 months. In 1993, visiting Los Angeles, Biggie asked a local drug dealer for an introduction to Tupac, who then welcomed Biggie and Biggie's friends to Tupac's house and treated them to food, weed, and entertainment. On later visits to Los Angeles, Biggie would stay at Tupac's place. And when in New York, Tupac would go to Brooklyn and hang out with Biggie and his circle.
During this period, at his own live shows, Tupac would call Biggie onto stage to rap with him and Stretch. Together, they recorded the songs "Runnin' from the Police" and "House of Pain." Reportedly, Biggie asked Tupac to manage him, whereupon Tupac advised him that Puffy would make him a star. Yet in the meantime, Tupac's lifestyle was comparatively lavish, whereas Biggie appeared to continue wearing the same pair of boots for perhaps a year. Tupac welcomed Biggie to join his side group Thug Life. Biggie would instead form his own side group, the Junior M.A.F.I.A., with his Brooklyn friends Lil' Cease and Lil' Kim, on Bad Boy.
Despite the "weird" timing of Stretch's shooting death, a theory implicates gunman Ronald "Tenad" Washington both here and in the 2002 murder of Run-DMC's Jam Master Jay via, as the unverified theory speculates, Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff punishing the rap mentor for recording 50 Cent despite Supreme's prohibition after this young rapper's 1999 song "Ghetto Qu'ran" had mentioned activities of the Queens drug gang Supreme Team. Supreme was a friend, rather, of Irv Gotti, cofounder of Murder Inc Records, whose rapper Ja Rule would vie among New York rappers after the March 1997 shooting death of Biggie, visiting Los Angeles.
By some accounts, the role Birdie, played by Shakur in the 1994 film "Above the Rim", had been modeled on a New York underworld tough, Jacques "Haitian Jack" Agnant, a manager and promoter of rappers. Reportedly, Shakur met him at a Queens nightclub, where, noticing him amid women and champagne, Shakur asked for an introduction. Reportedly, Biggie advised Tupac to avoid him, but Tupac disregarded the warning.
In November 1993, in his Manhattan hotel room, Shakur received a woman's return visit. Soon, she alleged sexual assault by him and three other men there: his road manager Charles Fuller, aged 24, one Ricardo Brown, aged 30, and a "Nigel," later understood as Haitian Jack. In November 1994, Jack's case was spit off and closed via misdemeanor plea without incarceration. In 2007, for shooting at someone, he would be deported. Yet in November 1994, A. J. Benza, in the New York "Daily News", reported Tupac's new disdain for Jack.
Through Haitian Jack, Tupac had met James "Jimmy Henchman" Rosemond. Another underworld figure formidable, Jimmy Henchman doubled as music manager. Bryce Wilson's Groove Theory was an early client. The Game as well as Gucci Mane were later clients. In 1994, a client lesser known, and signed to Uptown Records, was rapper Little Shawn, friend of Biggie and Lil' Cease. Eventually, Jack and Henchman would reportedly fall out, allegedly shooting at each other in Miami. And for his major drug trafficking, Henchman would be sent to prison on a life sentence. But in the early 1990s, Jack and Henchman reputedly shared interests, including a specialty of robbing and extorting music artists.
On November 29, 1994, while in New York, Tupac was recording verses for a mixtape of Ron G. Tupac was repeatedly distracted by his beeper. It was music manager James "Jimmy Henchman" Rosemond, reportedly offering $7 000 for Tupac to stop by Quad Studios, in Times Square, that very night to record a verse for his client Little Shawn. Tupac was leery, but, needing cash to offset steepening legal costs, took the gig. Tupac arrived with Stretch and another or two. In the lobby, three men initiated robbery at gunpoint, whereupon Tupac, resisting, was shot. Shakur speculated that shooting was the main motive.
Three hours after surgery, against doctor's advice, Shakur checked out of Bellevue Hospital Center. The next day, in a Manhattan courtroom bandaged in a wheelchair, he received the jury's verdict in his ongoing criminal trial for a November 1993 incident in his hotel room. Convicted of three counts of molestation, he was acquitted of six other charges, including sodomy and gun charges.
In a 1995 interview with "Vibe" magazine, Shakur accused Sean Combs, Jimmy Henchman, and Biggie, among others, of setting up or being privy to the November 1994 robbery and shooting. "Vibe" alerted the names of the accused. When Biggie's entourage went downstairs, Shakur was being taken out on a stretcher, giving the finger to onlookers.
In March 2008, Chuck Philips, in the "Los Angeles Times", reported on an alleged ordered hit on Shakur. The newspaper retracted the article since it relied partially on FBI documents later discovered forged, supplied by a man convicted of fraud. In June 2011, convicted murderer Dexter Isaac, incarcerated in Brookyn, issued a confession that he had been one of the gunman who had robbed and shot Shakur at Henchman's order. Philips then named Isaac as one of his own, retracted article's unnamed sources.
Tupac became convinced that Stretch had likely been somehow privy to the impending hit. Present during its unfolding, Stretch had shown atypical tolerance for and exemption from it, Tupac felt. But Tupac accused James "Jimmy Henchman" Rosemond, rather, of arranging the hit. Further, Tupac was convinced the Bad Boy record label's inner circle, especially its star rapper Christopher "Biggie" Wallace and label's boss Sean "Puffy" Combs, two who had seemed Tupac's friends, had certainly been privy.
During 1995, imprisoned, impoverished, and his mother about to lose her house, Tupac had his wife Keisha Morris get word to Marion "Suge" Knight, in Los Angeles, boss of Death Row Records. Reportedly, Tupac's mother promptly received $15,000. After an August visit to Clinton Correctional Facility in northern New York state, Suge traveled southward to New York City to join Death Row's entourage to the 2nd Annual Source Awards ceremony. Already reputed for strongarm tactics on the Los Angeles rap scene, Suge used his brief stage time mainly to belittle Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs, boss of Bad Boy Entertainment, the label then leading New York rap scene, who routinely performed with his own artists. Before closing with a brief comment of support for Tupac, Suge invited artists seeking the spotlight for themselves to join Death Row. Eventually, Puff recalled that to preempt severe retaliation from his Bad Boy orbit, he had promptly confronted Suge, whose reply—that he had meant Jermaine Dupri, of So So Def Recordings, in Atlanta—was politic enough to deescalate the conflict.
Still, among the fans, the previously diffuse rivalry between America's only two mainstream rap scenes had instantly flared already. And while in New York, Suge visited Uptown Records, where Puff, under its founder Andre Harrell, had started in the music business through an internship. Apparently without paying Uptown, Suge obtained the releases of Puff's prime Uptown recruits Jodeci, its producer DeVante Swing, and Mary J. Blige, all then signing Suge's management company. On September 24, 1995, at a party for Dupri in Atlanta at the Platinum House nightclub, a Bad Boy circle entered a heated dispute with Suge and Suge's friend Jai Hassan-Jamal "Big Jake" Robles, a Bloods gang member and Death Row bodyguard. According to eyewitnesses, including a Fulton County sheriff, working there as a nightclub bouncer, Puff had heatedly disputed with Suge inside the club, whereas several minutes later, outside the club, it was Puff's childhood friend and own bodyguard, Anthony “Wolf” Jones, who had aimed a gun at Big Jake, fatally shot while entering Suge's car.
The attorneys of Puff and his bodyguard both denied any involvement by their clients, while Puff's added that Puff had not even been with his bodyguard that night. Over 20 years later, the case remains officially unresolved. Yet immediately and persistently, Suge blamed Puff, cementing the enmity between the two bosses, whose two record labels dominated the rap genre's two mainstream centers. In the late 1990s, Southern rap's growth into the mainstream would dispel the East–West paradigm. But in the meantime, in October 1995, violating his probation, Suge visited Tupac in prison again. Suge posted $1.4 million bond. And with appeal of his December 1994 conviction pending, Shakur returned to Los Angeles and joined Death Row. On June 4, 1996, it released the 2Pac B side "Hit 'Em Up." In this venonmous tirade, the proclaimed "Bad Boy killer" threatens violent payback on all things Bad Boy—Biggie, Puffy, Junior M.A.F.I.A., the company—and on any in New York's rap scene, like rap duo Mobb Deep and obscure rapper Chino XL, who allegedly had commented against Shakur about the dispute.
On the night of September 7, 1996, Shakur was in Las Vegas, Nevada, to celebrate his business partner Tracy Danielle Robinson's birthday and attended the Bruce Seldon vs. Mike Tyson boxing match with Suge Knight at the MGM Grand. Afterward, in its lobby, someone in their group spotted Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, an alleged Southside Compton Crip, whom the individual accused of having recently, in a shopping mall, tried to snatch his neckchain with Death Row Records medallion. The hotel's surveillance footage shows the ensuing assault on Anderson. Shakur soon stopped by his hotel room and then headed with Knight to his Death Row nightclub, Club 662, in a black BMW 750iL sedan, part of a larger convoy.
At about 11 PM, for its loud music and lack of license plates, bicycle-mounted police stopped the car on Las Vegas Boulevard. The plates were found in the trunk, and the car was released without a ticket. At about 11:15, at a stop light, a white, four-door, late-model Cadillac sedan pulled up to the passenger, and an arriving occupant rapidly fired at Shakur, who was struck four times, once in the arm, once in the thigh, and twice in the chest, one bullet entering his right lung. Shards hit Knight's head. Not in the car, Shakur's bodyguard, Frank Alexander, had been tasked, he would say, to drive the car of Shakur's girlfriend, Kidada Jones.
Shakur was taken to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, heavily sedated, put on life support, and later, to prevent involuntary reactions injurious, put under a barbiturate-induced coma. In the intensive-care unit, on the afternoon of September 13, 1996, Shakur died from internal bleeding. He was pronounced dead at 4:03 PM. The official causes of death are respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest associated with multiple gunshot wounds. Shakur's body was cremated the next day. Members of the Outlawz, recalling a line in his song "Black Jesus," although uncertain of the artist's attempt a literal meaning, chose to interpret the request seriously, and, after mixing them with marijuana, smoked some of his body's ashes.
In 2011, via the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI documents reveal its investigation of the Jewish Defense League for making death threats against Shakur and other rappers. In 2002, investigative journalist Chuck Philips, after a year of work, reported in the "Los Angeles Times" that Anderson, a Southside Compton Crip, having been attacked by Suge and Shakur's entourage at the MGM Hotel after the boxing match, had fired the fatal gunshots, but that Las Vegas police had interviewed him only once, briefly, before his death in an unrelated shooting. Philips's 2002 article also alleges the involvement of Christopher "Biggie Smalls" Wallace and several within New York City's criminal underworld. Both Anderson and Wallace denied involvement, while Wallace offered a confirmed alibi. Music journalist John Leland, in the "New York Times", called the evidence "inconclusive."
Shakur is considered by many to be one of the most significant rappers of all time. Much of his work has been noted for addressing contemporary social issues that plagued inner cities, and he is considered a symbol of resistance and activism against inequality. The online, rap magazine "AllHipHop" held a 2007 roundtable where, among fellow New York rappers, Cormega, citing tour experience with New York rap duo Mobb Deep, imparted a broad assessment: "Biggie ran New York. 'Pac ran "America"." In 2010, writing "Rolling Stone" magazine's entry on Tupac Shakur at #86 among the "100 greatest artists," New York rapper 50 Cent appraised, "Every rapper who grew up in the Nineties owes something to Tupac. He didn't sound like anyone who came before him." Dotdash, formerly About.com, while ranking him fifth among the greatest rappers, nonetheless notes, "Tupac Shakur is the most influential hip-hop artist of all time. Even in death, 2Pac remains a transcendental rap figure." Yet to some, he was a "father figure" who, said rapper YG, "makes you want to be better—at every level."
According to music journalist Chuck Philips, the dead artist "had helped elevate rap from a crude street fad to a complex art form, setting the stage for the current global hip-hop phenomenon." Philips writes, "The slaying silenced one of modern music’s most eloquent voices—a ghetto poet whose tales of urban alienation captivated young people of all races and backgrounds." Via numerous fans perceiving him, despite the questionable of his conduct, as a martyr, "the downsizing of martyrdom cheapens its use," Michael Eric Dyson concedes. But Dyson adds, "Some, or even most, of that criticism can be conceded without doing damage to Tupac's martyrdom in the eyes of those disappointed by more traditional martyrs." More simply, his writings, published after his death, inspired rapper YG to return to school and get his GED.
In 1997, Shakur's mother founded the Shakur Family Foundation. Later renamed the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation, or TASF, it launched with a stated mission to "provide training and support for students who aspire to enhance their creative talents." The TASF sponsors essay contests, charity events, a performing arts day camp for teenagers, and undergraduate scholarships. In June 2005, the TASF opened the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts, or TASCA, in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Afeni also narrates the documentary "", released in November 2003, and nominated for Best Documentary at the 2005 Academy Awards. Meanwhile, with "Forbes" ranking Tupac Shakur at 10th among top-earning dead celebrities in 2002, Afeni Shakur launched Makaveli Branded Clothing in 2003.
In late 1997, the University of California, Berkeley, offered the course "History 98: Poetry and History of Tupac Shakur," a course led by a student. Yet in April 2003, Harvard University cosponsored the symposium "All Eyez on Me: Tupac Shakur and the Search for the Modern Folk Hero." The papers presented cover his ranging influence from entertainment to sociology. Calling him a "Thug Nigga Intellectual," an "organic intellectual," English scholar Mark Anthony Neal assessed his death as leaving a "leadership void amongst hip-hop artists," as this "walking contradiction" helps, Neal explained, "make being an intellectual accessible to ordinary people." Tracing Tupac's mythical status, Murray Forman discussed him as "O.G.," or "Ostensibly Gone," with fans, using digital mediums, "resurrecting Tupac as an ethereal life force." Music scholar Emmett Price, calling him a "black folk hero," traced his persona to black American folklore's tricksters, which, after abolition, evolved into the urban "bad-man." Yet in Tupac's "terrible sense of urgency," Price identified instead a quest to "unify mind, body, and spirit."
In 2005, Death Row released, on DVD, "", his final recorded live performance, an event on July 4, 1996. In August 2006, "Tupac Shakur Legacy", an "interactive biography" by Jamal Joseph, arrived with previously unpublished family photographs, intimate stories, and over 20 detachable copies of his handwritten song lyrics, contracts, scripts, poetry, and other papers. In 2006, the 2Pac album "Pac's Life" was released and, like the previous, was among the recording industry's most popular releases. In 2008, his estate made about $15 million.
In 2014, BET explains that "his confounding mixture of ladies' man, thug, revolutionary and poet has forever altered our perception of what a rapper should look like, sound like and act like. In 50 Cent, Ja Rule, Lil Wayne, newcomers like Freddie Gibbs and even his friend-turned-rival Biggie, it's easy to see that Pac is the most copied MC of all time. There are murals bearing his likeness in New York, Brazil, Sierra Leone, Bulgaria and countless other places; he even has statues in Atlanta and Germany. Quite simply, no other rapper has captured the world's attention the way Tupac did and still does."
On April 15, 2012, at the Coachella Music Festival, rappers Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre joined a 2Pac hologram, and, as a partly virtual trio, performed the 2Pac songs "Hail Mary" and "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted." There were talks of a tour, but Dre refused. Meanwhile, the "Greatest Hits" album, released in 1998, and which in 2000 had left the pop albums chart, the Billboard 200, returned to the chart and reached #129, while also other 2Pac albums and singles drew sales gains. And in early 2015, the Grammy Museum opened an exhibition dedicated to Tupac Shakur.
In 2008, the play "Holler If Ya Hear Me", based on Tupac lyrics, played on Broadway, but, among Broadway's worst-selling musicals in recent years, ran only six weeks. In development since 2013, a Tupac biopic, "All Eyez on Me", began filming in Atlanta in December 2015, and was released on June 16, 2017, in concept Tupac Shakur's 46th birthday, albeit to generally negative reviews. In August 2019, a docuseries directed by Allen Hughes, "Outlaw: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur", was announced.
In 2003, MTV's viewers voted 2Pac the greatest MC. In 2005, on "Vibe" magazine's online message boards, a user asked others for the “Top 10 Best of All Time." Vibe staff, then, "sorting out, averaging and spending a lot of energy," found, "Tupac coming in at first". In 2006, MTV staff placed him second. In 2012, "The Source" magazine ranked him fifth among all-time "lyricists". In 2010, "Rolling Stone" placed him at #86 among the "100 Greatest Artists."
In 2007, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "Definitive 200" albums—choices irking some otherwise—placed "All Eyez on Me" at #90 and "Me Against the World" at #170. In 2009, drawing praise, the Vatican added "Changes," a 1998 posthumous track, to its online playlist. On June 23, 2010, the Library of Congress sent "Dear Mama" to the National Recording Registry, the third rap song, after a Grandmaster Flash and a Public Enemy, ever to arrive there.
In 2002, Tupac Shakur was inducted into the Hip-Hop Hall of Fame. Two years later, cable television's music network VH1 held its first ever Hip Hop Honors, where the honorees were, it says, "2Pac, Run-DMC, DJ Hollywood, Kool Herc, KRS-One, Public Enemy, Rock Steady Crew, Sugarhill Gang." On December 30, 2016, in his first year of eligibility, Tupac was nominated, and on the following April 7 was among five inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Shakur's life has been explored in several documentaries, each trying to capture the many different events during his short lifetime, most notably the Academy Award-nominated "", released in 2003. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31341 |
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray is a Gothic and philosophical novel by Oscar Wilde, first published complete in the July 1890 issue of "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine". Fearing the story was indecent, prior to publication the magazine's editor deleted roughly five hundred words without Wilde's knowledge. Despite that censorship, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" offended the moral sensibilities of British book reviewers, some of whom said that Oscar Wilde merited prosecution for violating the laws guarding public morality. In response, Wilde aggressively defended his novel and art in correspondence with the British press, although he personally made excisions of some of the most controversial material when revising and lengthening the story for book publication the following year.
The longer and revised version of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" published in book form in 1891 featured an aphoristic preface—a defence of the artist's rights and of art for art's sake—based in part on his press defences of the novel the previous year. The content, style, and presentation of the preface made it famous in its own right, as a literary and artistic manifesto. In April 1891, the publishing firm of Ward, Lock and Company, who had distributed the shorter, more inflammatory, magazine version in England the previous year, published the revised version of "The Picture of Dorian Gray".
"The Picture of Dorian Gray" is the only novel written by Wilde. It exists in several versions: the 1890 magazine edition (in 13 chapters), with important material deleted before publication by the magazine's editor, J. M. Stoddart; the "uncensored" version submitted to "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine" for publication (also in 13 chapters), with all of Wilde's original material intact, first published in 2011 by Harvard University Press; and the 1891 book edition (in 20 chapters). As literature of the 19th century, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" "pivots on a gothic plot device" with strong themes interpreted from "Faust".
Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist impressed and infatuated by Dorian's beauty; he believes that Dorian's beauty is responsible for the new mood in his art as a painter. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic world view: that beauty and sensual fulfilment are the only things worth pursuing in life.
Newly understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses the desire to sell his soul, to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a libertine life of varied amoral experiences while staying young and beautiful; all the while, his portrait ages and records every sin.
"The Picture of Dorian Gray" begins on a beautiful summer day in Victorian England, where Lord Henry Wotton, an opinionated man, is observing the sensitive artist Basil Hallward painting the portrait of Dorian Gray, a handsome young man who is Basil's ultimate muse. While sitting for the painting, Dorian listens to Lord Henry espousing his hedonistic world view and begins to think that beauty is the only aspect of life worth pursuing, prompting Dorian to wish that his portrait would age instead of himself.
Under Lord Henry's hedonistic influence, Dorian fully explores his sensuality. He discovers the actress Sibyl Vane, who performs Shakespeare plays in a dingy, working-class theatre. Dorian approaches and courts her, and soon proposes marriage. The enamoured Sibyl calls him "Prince Charming", and swoons with the happiness of being loved, but her protective brother, James, warns that if "Prince Charming" harms her, he will murder him.
Dorian invites Basil and Lord Henry to see Sibyl perform in "Romeo and Juliet". Sibyl, too enamoured with Dorian to act, performs poorly, which makes both Basil and Lord Henry think Dorian has fallen in love with Sibyl because of her beauty instead of her acting talent. Embarrassed, Dorian rejects Sibyl, telling her that acting was her beauty; without that, she no longer interests him. On returning home, Dorian notices that the portrait has changed; his wish has come true, and the man in the portrait bears a subtle sneer of cruelty.
Conscience-stricken and lonely, Dorian decides to reconcile with Sibyl, but he is too late, as Lord Henry informs him that Sibyl has killed herself. Dorian then understands that, where his life is headed, lust and beauty shall suffice. Dorian locks the portrait up, and over the following eighteen years, he experiments with every vice, influenced by a morally poisonous French novel that Lord Henry Wotton gave him.
One night, before leaving for Paris, Basil goes to Dorian's house to ask him about rumours of his self-indulgent sensualism. Dorian does not deny his debauchery, and takes Basil to see the portrait. The portrait has become so hideous that Basil is only able to identify it as his by the signature he affixes to all of his portraits. Basil is horrified, and beseeches Dorian to pray for salvation. In anger, Dorian blames his fate on Basil and stabs him to death. Dorian then calmly blackmails an old friend, the scientist Alan Campbell, into using his knowledge of chemistry to destroy the body of Basil Hallward. Alan later kills himself.
To escape the guilt of his crime, Dorian goes to an opium den, where James Vane is unknowingly present. James had been seeking vengeance upon Dorian ever since Sibyl killed herself, but had no leads to pursue as the only thing he knew about Dorian was the name Sibyl called him, "Prince Charming". In the opium den, however, he hears someone refer to Dorian as "Prince Charming", and he accosts Dorian. Dorian deceives James into believing that he is too young to have known Sibyl, who killed herself eighteen years earlier, as his face is still that of a young man. James relents and releases Dorian, but is then approached by a woman from the opium den who reproaches James for not killing Dorian. She confirms that the man was Dorian Gray and explains that he has not aged in eighteen years. James runs after Dorian, but he has gone.
James then begins to stalk Dorian, causing Dorian to fear for his life. However, during a shooting party, a hunter accidentally kills James Vane, who was lurking in a thicket. On returning to London, Dorian tells Lord Henry that he will live righteously from now on. His new probity begins with deliberately not breaking the heart of the naïve Hetty Merton, his current romantic interest. Dorian wonders if his newly-found goodness has rescinded the corruption in the picture but when he looks at it, he sees only an even uglier image of himself. From that, Dorian understands that his true motives for the self-sacrifice of moral reformation were the vanity and curiosity of his quest for new experiences, along with the desire to restore beauty to the picture.
Deciding that only full confession will absolve him of wrongdoing, Dorian decides to destroy the last vestige of his conscience and the only piece of evidence remaining of his crimes; the picture. In a rage, he takes the knife with which he murdered Basil Hallward and stabs the picture. The servants of the house awaken on hearing a cry from the locked room; on the street, a passerby who also heard the cry calls the police. On entering the locked room, the servants find an unknown old man stabbed in the heart, his figure withered and decrepit. The servants identify the disfigured corpse by the rings on its fingers, which belonged to Dorian Gray. Beside him, the portrait is now restored to its former appearance of beauty.
Oscar Wilde said that, in the novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1891), three of the characters were reflections of himself:
About the literary hero, the author Oscar Wilde said, "in every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust." As in the legend of "Faust", in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" a temptation (ageless beauty) is placed before the protagonist, which he indulges. In each story, the protagonist entices a beautiful woman to love him, and then destroys her life. In the preface to the novel (1891), Wilde said that the notion behind the tale is "old in the history of literature", but was a thematic subject to which he had "given a new form".
Unlike the academic "Faust", the gentleman Dorian makes no deal with the Devil, who is represented by the cynical hedonist Lord Henry, who presents the temptation that will corrupt the virtue and innocence that Dorian possesses at the start of the story. Throughout, Lord Henry appears unaware of the effect of his actions upon the young man; and so frivolously advises Dorian, that "the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing." As such, the devilish Lord Henry is "leading Dorian into an unholy pact, by manipulating his innocence and insecurity."
In the preface to "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1891), Wilde speaks of the sub-human Caliban character from "The Tempest". In chapter five, he writes: "He felt as if he had come to look for Miranda and had been met by Caliban". When Dorian tells Lord Henry about his new love Sibyl Vane, he mentions the Shakespeare plays in which she has acted, and refers to her by the name of the heroine of each play. Later, Dorian speaks of his life by quoting Hamlet, a privileged character who impels his potential suitor (Ophelia) to suicide, and prompts her brother (Laertes) to swear mortal revenge.
The anonymous "poisonous French novel" that leads Dorian to his fall is a thematic variant of "À rebours" (1884), by Joris-Karl Huysmans. In the biography "Oscar Wilde" (1989), the literary critic Richard Ellmann said: Wilde does not name the book, but at his trial he conceded that it was, or almost [was], Huysmans's "À rebours" ... to a correspondent, he wrote that he had played a "fantastic variation" upon "À rebours", and someday must write it down. The references in "Dorian Gray" to specific chapters are deliberately inaccurate.
Some commentators have suggested that "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was influenced by the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's (anonymously published) first novel "Vivian Grey" (1826) as, "a kind of homage from one outsider to another." The name of Dorian Gray's love interest, Sibyl Vane, may be a modified fusion of the title of Disraeli's best known novel ("Sybil") and Vivian Grey's love interest Violet Fane, who, like Sibyl Vane, dies tragically. There is also a scene in "Vivian Grey" in which the eyes in the portrait of a "beautiful being" move when its subject dies.
"The Picture of Dorian Gray" originally was a novella submitted to "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine" for serial publication. In 1889, J. M. Stoddart, an editor for Lippincott, was in London to solicit novellas to publish in the magazine. On 30 August 1889, Stoddart dined with Oscar Wilde, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and T. P. Gill at the Langham Hotel, and commissioned novellas from each writer. Conan Doyle promptly submitted "The Sign of the Four" (1890) to Stoddart, but Wilde was more dilatory; Conan Doyle's second Sherlock Holmes novel was published in the February 1890 edition of "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine", yet Stoddart did not receive Wilde's manuscript for "The Picture of Dorian Gray" until 7 April 1890, nine months after having commissioned the novel from him.
The literary merits of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" impressed Stoddart, but, as an editor, he told the publisher, George Lippincott, "in its present condition there are a number of things an innocent woman would make an exception to. ..." Among the pre-publication deletions that Stoddart and his editors made to the text of Wilde's original manuscript were: (i) passages alluding to homosexuality and to homosexual desire; (ii) all references to the fictional book title "Le Secret de Raoul" and its author, Catulle Sarrazin; and (iii) all "mistress" references to Gray's lovers, Sibyl Vane and Hetty Merton.
"The Picture of Dorian Gray" was published on 20 June 1890, in the July issue of "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine". British reviewers condemned the novel's immorality, and said condemnation was so controversial that the W H Smith publishing house withdrew every copy of the July 1890 issue of "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine" from its bookstalls in railway stations.
Consequent to the harsh criticism of the 1890 magazine edition, Wilde ameliorated the homoerotic references, to simplify the moral message of the story. In the magazine edition (1890), Basil tells Lord Henry how he "worships" Dorian, and begs him not to "take away the one person that makes my life absolutely lovely to me." In the magazine edition, Basil concentrates upon love, whereas, in the book edition (1891), Basil concentrates upon his art, saying to Lord Henry, "the one person who gives my art whatever charm it may possess: my life as an artist depends on him."
The magazine edition of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890) was expanded from thirteen to twenty chapters; and the magazine edition's final chapter was divided into two chapters, the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of the book edition of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1891). Wilde's textual additions were about "fleshing out of Dorian as a character" and providing details of his ancestry that made his "psychological collapse more prolonged and more convincing."
The introduction of the James Vane character to the story develops the socio-economic background of the Sibyl Vane character, thus emphasising Dorian's selfishness and foreshadowing James's accurate perception of the essentially immoral character of Dorian Gray; thus, he correctly deduced Dorian's dishonourable intent towards Sibyl. The sub-plot about James Vane's dislike of Dorian gives the novel a Victorian tinge of class struggle. With such textual changes, Oscar Wilde meant to diminish the moralistic controversy about the novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray".
Consequent to the harsh criticism of the magazine edition of the novel, the textual revisions to "The Picture of Dorian Gray" included a preface in which Wilde addressed the criticisms and defended the reputation of his novel. To communicate how the novel should be read, in the preface, Wilde explains the role of the artist in society, the purpose of art, and the value of beauty. It traces Wilde's cultural exposure to Taoism and to the philosophy of Chuang Tsǔ (Zhuang Zhou). Earlier, before writing the preface, Wilde had written a book review of Herbert Giles's translation of the work of Zhuang Zhou. The preface was first published in the 1891 edition of the novel; nonetheless, by June 1891, Wilde was defending "The Picture of Dorian Gray" against accusations that it was a bad book.
In the essay "The Artist as Critic", Oscar Wilde said:
In the 19th century, the critical reception of the novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890) was poor. The book critic of "The Irish Times" said, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was "first published to some scandal." Such book reviews achieved for the novel a "certain notoriety for being 'mawkish and nauseous', 'unclean', 'effeminate' and 'contaminating'." Such moralistic scandal arose from the novel's homoeroticism, which offended the sensibilities (social, literary, and aesthetic) of Victorian book critics. Yet, most of the criticism was personal, attacking Wilde for being a hedonist with a distorted view of conventional morality of Victorian Britain. In the 30 June 1890 issue of the "Daily Chronicle", the book critic said that Wilde's novel contains "one element ... which will taint every young mind that comes in contact with it." In the 5 July 1890 issue of the "Scots Observer", a reviewer asked "Why must Oscar Wilde 'go grubbing in muck-heaps?'" In response to such criticism, Wilde obscured the homoeroticism of the story and expanded the personal background of the characters.
After the initial publication of the magazine edition of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890), Wilde expanded the text from 13 to 20 chapters and obscured the homoerotic themes of the story. In the novel version of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1891), chapters 3, 5, and 15 to 18, inclusive, are new; and chapter 13 of the magazine edition was divided, and became chapters 19 and 20 of the novel edition. In 1895, at his trials, Oscar Wilde said he revised the text of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" because of letters sent to him by the cultural critic Walter Pater.
Passages revised for the novel
Passages added to the novel
The uncensored edition
In 2011, the Belknap Press published "The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition". The edition includes text that was deleted by J. M. Stoddart, the story's initial editor, before its publication in "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine" in 1890. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31342 |
Trilogy
A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected and can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, and video games, and are less common in other art forms. Three-part works that are considered components of a larger work also exist, such as the triptych or the three-movement sonata, but they are not commonly referred to with the term "trilogy".
Most trilogies are works of fiction involving the same characters or setting, such as "The Deptford Trilogy" of novels by Robertson Davies and "The Apu Trilogy" of films by Satyajit Ray. Other fiction trilogies are connected only by theme: for example, each film of Krzysztof Kieślowski's "Three Colors" trilogy explores one of the political ideals of the French Republic (liberty, equality, fraternity). Trilogies can also be connected in less obvious ways, such as "The Nova Trilogy" of novels by William S. Burroughs, each written using cut-up technique.
The term is less often applied to music, such as the "Berlin Trilogy" of David Bowie which is linked together by musical sound and lyrical themes, all having been recorded at least partly in Berlin, Germany.
The term is seldom applied outside art. One example is the "Marshall Trilogy", a common term for three rulings written by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall from 1823 to 1832 concerning the legal status of Native Americans under U.S. law.
Trilogies—and series in general—are common in science fiction and fantasy.
Trilogies ( "trilogia") date back to ancient times. In the Dionysia festivals of ancient Greece, for example, trilogies of plays were performed followed by a fourth satyr play. "The Oresteia" is the only surviving trilogy of these ancient Greek plays, originally performed at the festival in Athens in 458 BC. The three Theban plays, or Oedipus cycle, by Sophocles, originating in 5th century BC, is not a true example of a trilogy because the plays were written at separate times and with different themes/purposes.
Technical changes in printing and film in the mid-to-late 20th century made the creation of trilogies more feasible, while the development of mass media and modern global distribution networks has made them more likely to be lucrative.
Creators of trilogies may later add more works. In such a case, the original three works may or may not keep the title "trilogy".
The first three novels in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series were dubbed a trilogy, and even after he extended the series, author Douglas Adams continued to use the term for humorous effect - for example, calling "Mostly Harmless" "the fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named trilogy."
Christopher Paolini changed the name of his "The Inheritance Trilogy" to "The Inheritance Cycle" when he wrote a fourth book.
The Star Wars Trilogy of three films released between 1977 and 1983 has since been expanded into a trilogy of trilogies, including the original trilogy, the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy released between 1999 and 2005 and the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy released between 2015 and 2019.
Sometimes a trio of works is known as a trilogy because of its creator. For example, before Kevin Smith's films "Clerks", "Mallrats" and "Chasing Amy" were often marketed as "The New Jersey Trilogy" because they had overlapping characters, events and locations. After the release of a fourth film, "Dogma", the series is referred to as "the View Askewniverse". Another example of this kind of arrangement is Edgar Wright's Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, consisting of "Shaun of the Dead", "Hot Fuzz", and "The World's End".
Three works with similar themes from a creator may later come to be known as a trilogy, especially if produced one after the other. An example is the "Dollars Trilogy" by Sergio Leone; no continuity between the three movies was intended by Leone, but American marketers advertised the Clint Eastwood character in each film as being the same "Man with No Name". Similarly, issues 48, 49, and 50 of the "Fantastic Four" comic book which introduced the characters of Galactus and Silver Surfer are commonly known as the Galactus Trilogy, although the term wasn't used in the original issues.
In the era of home video, story arcs from a long-running television series might be packaged as a trilogy boxset even if they weren't presented as such originally. The so-called E-Space Trilogy of "Doctor Who" includes the stories "Full Circle", "State of Decay" and "Warriors Gate," consecutive stories set in E-Space.
One of the most popular "trilogies" of fantasy books, "The Lord of the Rings" by J. R. R. Tolkien, is not a trilogy, though it is often referred to as such. Tolkien regarded it as a single work and divided it into a prologue, six books and six appendices. Because of the high cost of type-setting and the modest anticipated sales, it was originally published in three volumes to minimize any potential financial loss. It is still most commonly sold as three volumes, but has also been published in one-volume and seven-volume editions (six books and the appendices).
Occasionally, more than three works are planned but never finished. The "Gormenghast" fantasy trilogy is a trilogy by default, as author Mervyn Peake planned to write more novels set in that fictional world until his health declined. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31347 |
Tyrosine
Tyrosine (symbol Tyr or Y) or 4-hydroxyphenylalanine is one of the 20 standard amino acids that are used by cells to synthesize proteins. It is a non-essential amino acid with a polar side group. The word "tyrosine" is from the Greek "tyrós", meaning "cheese", as it was first discovered in 1846 by German chemist Justus von Liebig in the protein casein from cheese. It is called tyrosyl when referred to as a functional group or side chain. While tyrosine is generally classified as a hydrophobic amino acid, it is more hydrophilic than phenylalanine. It is encoded by the codons UAC and UAU in messenger RNA.
Aside from being a proteinogenic amino acid, tyrosine has a special role by virtue of the phenol functionality. It occurs in proteins that are part of signal transduction processes and functions as a receiver of phosphate groups that are transferred by way of protein kinases. Phosphorylation of the hydroxyl group can change the activity of the target protein, or may form part of a signaling cascade via SH2 domain binding.
A tyrosine residue also plays an important role in photosynthesis. In chloroplasts (photosystem II), it acts as an electron donor in the reduction of oxidized chlorophyll. In this process, it loses the hydrogen atom of its phenolic OH-group. This radical is subsequently reduced in the photosystem II by the four core manganese clusters.
The Dietary Reference Intake (recommended dietary allowance, RDA) for phenylalanine and tyrosine is 33 mg per kilogram of body weight, or 15 mg per pound. For a 70 kg person, this is 2.31 g (phenylalanine + tyrosine).
Tyrosine, which can also be synthesized in the body from phenylalanine, is found in many high-protein food products such as chicken, turkey, fish, milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, cheese, peanuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, soy products and lima beans, but also in avocados and bananas. For example, the white of an egg has about 250 mg per egg, while lean beef/lamb/pork/salmon/chicken/turkey contains about 1 g per portion.
In plants and most microorganisms, tyr is produced via prephenate, an intermediate on the shikimate pathway. Prephenate is oxidatively decarboxylated with retention of the hydroxyl group to give "p"-hydroxyphenylpyruvate, which is transaminated using glutamate as the nitrogen source to give tyrosine and α-ketoglutarate.
Mammals synthesize tyrosine from the essential amino acid phenylalanine (phe), which is derived from food. The conversion of phe to tyr is catalyzed by the enzyme phenylalanine hydroxylase, a monooxygenase. This enzyme catalyzes the reaction causing the addition of a hydroxyl group to the end of the 6-carbon aromatic ring of phenylalanine, such that it becomes tyrosine.
Some of the tyrosine residues can be "tagged" (at the hydroxyl group) with a phosphate group (phosphorylated) by protein kinases. In its phosphorylated form, tyrosine is called phosphotyrosine. Tyrosine phosphorylation is considered to be one of the key steps in signal transduction and regulation of enzymatic activity. Phosphotyrosine can be detected through specific antibodies. Tyrosine residues may also be modified by the addition of a sulfate group, a process known as tyrosine sulfation. Tyrosine sulfation is catalyzed by tyrosylprotein sulfotransferase (TPST). Like the phosphotyrosine antibodies mentioned above, antibodies have recently been described that specifically detect sulfotyrosine.
In dopaminergic cells in the brain, tyrosine is converted to L-DOPA by the enzyme tyrosine hydroxylase (TH). TH is the rate-limiting enzyme involved in the synthesis of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine can then be converted into other catecholamines, such as norepinephrine (noradrenaline) and epinephrine (adrenaline).
The thyroid hormones triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) in the colloid of the thyroid are also derived from tyrosine.
The latex of "Papaver somniferum", the opium poppy, has been shown to convert tyrosine into the alkaloid morphine and the bio-synthetic pathway has been established from tyrosine to morphine by using Carbon-14 radio-labelled tyrosine to trace the in-vivo synthetic route.
Tyrosine ammonia lyase (TAL) is an enzyme in the natural phenols biosynthesis pathway. It transforms L-tyrosine into p-coumaric acid.
Tyrosine is also the precursor to the pigment "melanin".
Tyrosine (or its precursor phenylalanine) is needed to synthesize the benzoquinone structure which forms part of coenzyme Q10.
The decomposition of L-tyrosine (syn. "para"-hydroxyphenylalanine) begins with an α-ketoglutarate dependent transamination through the tyrosine transaminase to "para"-hydroxyphenylpyruvate. The positional description "para", abbreviated "p", mean that the hydroxyl group and side chain on the phenyl ring are across from each other (see the illustration below).
The next oxidation step catalyzes by "p"-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase and splitting off CO2 homogentisate (2,5-dihydroxyphenyl-1-acetate). In order to split the aromatic ring of homogentisate, a further dioxygenase, homogentisate 1,2-dioxygenase is required. Thereby, through the incorporation of a further O2 molecule, maleylacetoacetate is created.
Fumarylacetoacetate is created by maleylacetoacetate "cis"-"trans"-isomerase through rotation of the carboxyl group created from the hydroxyl group via oxidation. This "cis-trans"-isomerase contains glutathione as a coenzyme. Fumarylacetoacetate is finally split by the enzyme fumarylacetoacetate hydrolase through the addition of a water molecule.
Thereby fumarate (also a metabolite of the citric acid cycle) and acetoacetate (3-ketobutyroate) are liberated. Acetoacetate is a ketone body, which is activated with succinyl-CoA, and thereafter it can be converted into acetyl-CoA, which in turn can be oxidized by the citric acid cycle or be used for fatty acid synthesis.
Phloretic acid is also a urinary metabolite of tyrosine in rats.
Three structural isomers of L-tyrosine are known. In addition to the common amino acid L-tyrosine, which is the para isomer ("para"-tyr, "p"-tyr or 4-hydroxyphenylalanine), there are two additional regioisomers, namely "meta"-tyrosine (also known as , L-"m"-tyrosine, and "m"-tyr) and "ortho"-tyrosine ("o"-tyr or 2-hydroxyphenylalanine), that occur in nature. The "m"-tyr and "o"-tyr isomers, which are rare, arise through non-enzymatic free-radical hydroxylation of phenylalanine under conditions of oxidative stress.
m-Tyrosine and analogues (rare in nature but available synthetically) have shown application in Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and arthritis.
Tyrosine is a precursor to neurotransmitters and increases plasma neurotransmitter levels (particularly dopamine and norepinephrine), but has little if any effect on mood in normal subjects. However, a number of studies have found tyrosine to be useful during conditions of stress, cold, fatigue (in mice), prolonged work and sleep deprivation, with reductions in stress hormone levels, reductions in stress-induced weight loss seen in animal trials, and improvements in cognitive and physical performance seen in human trials.
Tyrosine does not seem to have any significant effect on cognitive or physical performance in normal circumstances, but does help sustain working memory better during multitasking.
L-tyrosine and its derivatives (L-DOPA, melanin, phenylpropanoids, and others) are used in pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements, and food additives. Two methods were formerly used to manufacture L-tyrosine. The first involves the extraction of the desired amino acid from protein hydrolysates using a chemical approach. The second utilizes enzymatic synthesis from phenolics, pyruvate, and ammonia through the use of tyrosine phenol-lyase. Advances in genetic engineering and the advent of industrial fermentation have shifted the synthesis of L-tyrosine to the use of engineered strains of "E. coli". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31349 |
Thabo Mbeki
Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki (; born 18 June 1942) is a South African politician who served as the second president of South Africa from 16 June 1999 to 24 September 2008. On 20 September 2008, with about nine months left in his second term, Mbeki announced his resignation after being recalled by the National Executive Committee of the ANC, following a conclusion by judge C. R. Nicholson of improper interference in the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), including the prosecution of Jacob Zuma for corruption. On 12 January 2009, the Supreme Court of Appeal unanimously overturned judge Nicholson's judgement but the resignation stood.
During his tenure in office, the South African economy grew at an average rate of 4.5% per year, creating employment in the middle sectors of the economy. The Black middle-class was significantly expanded with the implementation of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). This growth increased the demand for trained professionals, whose numbers were strained by emigration due to violent crime, but failed to address unemployment amongst the unskilled bulk of the population. He attracted the bulk of Africa's Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and made South Africa the focal point of African growth. He was the architect of NEPAD whose aim is to develop an integrated socio-economic development framework for Africa. He also oversaw the successful building of economic bridges to BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations with the eventual formation of the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum to "further political consultation and co-ordination as well as strengthening sectoral co-operation, and economic relations".
Mbeki mediated in issues on the African continent including: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ivory Coast, and some important peace agreements. Mbeki oversaw the transition from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to the African Union (AU). His "quiet diplomacy" in Zimbabwe, however, is blamed for protracting the survival of Robert Mugabe's regime at the cost of thousands of lives and intense economic pressure on Zimbabwe's neighbours. He became a vocal leader of the Non-Aligned Movement in the United Nations, and, while leveraging South Africa's seat on the Security Council, he agitated for reform of that body.
Mbeki has received worldwide criticism for his stance on AIDS. He questions the link between HIV and AIDS, and believes that the correlation between poverty and the AIDS rate in Africa was a challenge to the viral theory of AIDS. His fate was not helped by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and the overhaul of the pharmaceutical industry in South Africa. His ban of antiretroviral drugs in public hospitals is estimated to be responsible for the premature deaths of between 330,000 and 365,000 people.
Born and raised in Mbewuleni, Cape Province, Union of South Africa, Mbeki is one of four children of Epainette and Govan Mbeki. The economist Moeletsi Mbeki is one of his brothers. His father was a stalwart of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party. He is a native Xhosa speaker and his father Govan named him Thabo after his old close friend Thabo Mofutsanyana. His parents were both teachers and activists in a rural area of strength to the African National Congress, and Mbeki describes himself as "born into the struggle"; a portrait of Karl Marx sat on the family mantelpiece, and a portrait of Mohandas Gandhi was on the wall.
Mbeki attended primary school in Idutywa and Butterworth and acquired a secondary education at Lovedale, Alice. In 1959, he was expelled from school as a result of student strikes and forced to continue his studies at home. In the same year, he sat for matriculation examinations at St. John's High School, Umtata. In the ensuing years, he completed A-level examinations (the same tests undertaken in schools in England) in Johannesburg; and undertook an economics degree as an external student with the University of London. During this time, the ANC was outlawed and Mbeki was involved in underground activities in the Pretoria-Witwatersrand (now Gauteng) area. He was also involved in mobilising students in support of the ANC call for a stay at home to be held in protest of South Africa becoming a republic. He also holds a master's degree in economics from Sussex University.he was the first black South African to obtain a distinction in economics.
In December 1961, Mbeki was elected secretary of the African Students' Association. In the following year, he left South Africa on instructions of the ANC.
Govan Mbeki had come to the rural Eastern Cape as a political activist after earning two university degrees; he urged his family to make the ANC their family, and of his children, Thabo Mbeki is the one who most clearly followed that instruction, joining the party at the age of fourteen and devoting his life to it thereafter.
Mbeki, aged 16, had a child with Olive Mpahlwa named Monwabise Kwanda. Monwabise Kwanda disappeared in 1981 with Thabo's youngest brother Jama.
On 23 November 1974, Mbeki married Zanele (née Dlamini) at Farnham Castle in the United Kingdom. They have no children.
After the banning of the ANC, the organisation decided it would be better for Mbeki to go into exile. In 1962, Mbeki and a group of comrades left South Africa disguised as a football team. They travelled in a minibus to Botswana and flew from there to Tanzania, where Mbeki accompanied Kenneth Kaunda, who later became Zambia's post-independence president, to London. Mbeki stayed with Oliver Tambo, who would later be elected the longest serving president of the ANC in the absence of the jailed Rivonia trialists. Mbeki worked part-time with Tambo and Yusuf Dadoo while studying economics at Sussex University in the coastal town of Brighton. At one stage, Mbeki shared a flat with two other students, Mike Yates and Derek Gunby. Together the trio would become firm friends and frequent a local bar when they were not discussing politics and listening to music. It was here that Mbeki developed a deep love for Brecht and Shakespeare and an appreciation of Yeats. He also came to love the blues. In February 1963, three months after his arrival at the University, Mbeki was elected onto the Student Union Committee. By April, he was one of 28 signatories petitioning in support of "Spies for Peace", a document that revealed secret information about Britain's plans for civil defence and government in the event of a nuclear attack.
On 11 July 1963, the High Command of the ANC was caught at Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, one of them being Govan Mbeki. To hold the prisoners, the General Laws Amendment Act, Number 37 of 1963, was rushed through Parliament and applied retrospectively to 27 June 1962, mainly but not exclusively so that the people arrested at Rivonia could be detained and held in solitary confinement. In July of the same year, Mbeki began mobilising international support against apartheid. Horrified at the Act, Mbeki led a successful motion in the Student Union to condemn the move and join the boycott of South African goods. He strongly condemned the South African government's new restrictions on political activity and likened it to in the politics of Nazi Germany. In April 1964, Mbeki appeared before a delegation of the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid to plead for the life of his father, who by then had been charged with planning an armed uprising against the state. The death penalty seemed a certainty for all the Rivonia Treason Trialists. This was the first time Mbeki had spoken about his father from the perspective of a son, but the biological category was converted into a political context.
On 6 October, the Rivonia Trialists were formally charged. On 13 June 1964, Mbeki organised a march from Brighton to London, after the Rivonia Trialists were found guilty of high treason. They were expected to be sentenced to death. The students held a night march to 10 Downing Street and handed a petition, signed by 664 staff and students at Sussex University, to the Prime Minister. Thereafter, they held a demonstration outside South Africa House in Trafalgar Square. The next day, London television showed Mbeki leading the march. This kind of lobbying helped the Trialists, who were spared the hangman's noose. For the next three decades, Mbeki would take up the job of rallying support against apartheid. Mbeki completed his bachelor's degree in economics at Sussex University in May 1965. With his own parents unable to attend his graduation ceremony, Adelaide Tambo and Michael Harmel took their place at the event. While in London, Mbeki spent all of his summers with the Tambo family.
After completing his first degree, Mbeki planned to join uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and he sought permission to do so, but this plan was vetoed by Tambo, who advised him to do a Master's degree. In October 1965, Mbeki returned to Sussex for one year to do his Masters in Economics and Development. Mbeki at this time shared a flat with Peter Lawrence and Ingram, situated at 3 Sillwood Street. While in England, Mbeki supported the Labour Party, then-led by Harold Wilson. Mbeki was intensely critical of the New Left revision of Marxism that swept Europe in the latter half of the 1960s and remained ardently loyal to the Soviet Union, which at the time heavily sponsored the ANC's underground movement, providing them with financial and educational support, as well as arms and military training. On 18 May 1966, Mbeki organised a 24-hour vigil at the Clock Tower in Brighton's central square against Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Rhodesia. In October 1966 Mbeki moved to London to work for the ANC full-time. During this period he met his wife to be, Zanele Dlamini, a social worker from Alexandra Township in Johannesburg, who was also studying in London. Zanele had just moved to London at this time.
In 1966, Mbeki appealed to Oliver Tambo to allow any South African student who supported the ANC to be admitted into the movement's Youth and Students Section (YSS), irrespective of race. Tambo agreed and the YSS became the first non-racial arm of the ANC. In the same year, the ANC upheld its decision to exclude non-Africans from its National Executive meeting in its Morogoro conference. Mbeki busied himself with issues such as the protest against increases in student fees for foreign students, nuclear disarmament, and solidarity struggles with the peoples of Zimbabwe, Spain, Cyprus, Iraq, Iran and Vietnam, and the Portuguese-controlled territories. The YSS took an active role in the anti-Vietnam War movement, a campaign spearheaded by Mbeki. This led to Mbeki's friend, Essop Pahad, being elected onto the organising committee of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC). The YSS became a major player in the anti-war marches. On 17 March 1968, Mbeki, took part in a massive anti-Vietnam demonstration outside the American embassy in London's Grosvenor Square and had his upper right molar tooth cracked when he was attacked by a policeman. Although he was arraigned and arrested for his part in the demonstration, he was not one of the 246 that were eventually charged. Mbeki completed his Master's degree at Sussex University in May 1968.
Mbeki was finally given permission to undergo a year of military training at the Lenin International School in Moscow. He arrived in Moscow in February 1969 and became a student at the Lenin Institute, which was established exclusively for communists, the exception being non-communist members of liberation movements who could get ideological training at the Institute. Mbeki excelled at the Institute and regularly addressed the Institutes' weekly assembly. While in Moscow, he continued writing articles, documents and speeches for the ANC and its organs. In June 1969, Mbeki was chosen to be secretary of a high-level SACP delegation to the International Conference of Communist and Workers Parties in Moscow. In June 1970, Mbeki was secretly shuttled from his military camp north-west of Moscow to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) guest house in Volynskoye, where the South African Communist Party's (SACP's) Central Committee was holding its meeting. This was indeed significant because, up to this point, the SACP leadership had been largely non-African. Mbeki and several Africans were now included in the committee, including Chris Hani. Both Hani and Mbeki celebrated their 28th birthdays at this meeting, making them the youngest members to ever serve on the committee. While in Moscow, Mbeki was trained in advanced guerrilla warfare at Skhodnya, and although he was more comfortable with a book rather than a gun, the training was considered a necessary requirement if he was to be accepted as a leader. His military training was cut short as he was sent back to London to prepare for a new post in Lusaka. Throughout Mbeki's training, he kept in constant contact with Zanele.
Together with Oliver Tambo, Mbeki left London for Lusaka in April 1971 to take up the position of assistant secretary of the ANC's Revolutionary Council (RC). This was the first time in nine years that Mbeki was setting foot on African soil. The aim of the RC at this time was to bridge an ever-widening gap between the ANC in exile and the people back home. In Lusaka, Mbeki was housed in a secret location in Makeni, south-west of the city. Later, Mbeki moved over to work in the ANC's propaganda section. But he continued to attend RC meetings. Four months after his arrival in Lusaka, Mbeki travelled to Beichlingen to deliver a speech on behalf of the ANC's Executive Committee at the YSS summer school. This was a turning point in Mbeki's life as it was the first time he spoke on behalf of the ANC as opposed to the ANC Youth League.
In December 1972, Mbeki joined Tambo at Heathrow Airport to meet Mangosuthu Buthelezi to discuss mass resistance to apartheid. Mbeki is credited with facilitating the establishment of Inkatha – it was his responsibility to nurture the relationship between Buthelezi and the ANC. Mbeki was deployed to Botswana in 1973 to facilitate the development of an internal underground.
Mbeki's life took a significant turn on 23 November 1974 when he married Zanele Dlamini. The wedding ceremony took place at Farnham Castle, the residence of Zanele's sister Edith and her husband, Wilfred Grenville-Grey. Adelaide Tambo and Mendi Msimang stood in loco-parentis for Mbeki while Essop Pahad was Mbeki's best man. The wedding, according to ANC rules, had to be approved by the organisation – a rule that applied to all permanently deployed members of the ANC.
In January 1975, just a few months after his marriage to Zanele, Mbeki was sent to Swaziland to assess the possibility of setting up an ANC frontline base in the country. Ostensibly attending a UN conference, Mbeki was accompanied by Max Sisulu. The duo met with Sisulu's sister, Lindiwe Sisulu, who was studying at the University at Swaziland. Lindiwe set up a meeting for the two at the home of S'bu Ndebele, then a librarian at the university. Mbeki and Sisulu held meetings in Swaziland for a week with South Africans studying there to assess the situation. They returned to Lusaka after a week, when their visas had expired. Mbeki reported back to the ANC that the possibility of establishing an ANC base in Swaziland was promising, especially because of its location, as it was close to Johannesburg and Durban.
As a result, Mbeki was sent back to Swaziland to recruit soldiers for the organisation's military wing. In Swaziland, Mbeki recruited hundreds of people into the ANC. He also liaised with Buthelezi and the latter's newly formed Inkatha movement, and set up structures within South Africa. Mbeki's aim was to establish contact with as many Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) members as he could and to draw them into the ANC. Ironically, while Mbeki was converting BC adherents into ANC members, he would himself absorb many aspects of BC ideology.
In March 1976, Mbeki, Albert Dhlomo and Jacob Zuma were arrested in Swaziland, but the trio managed to escape deportation to South Africa. Instead, a month after their arrest, they were escorted across the border to Mozambique. From there, Mbeki went back to Lusaka for a few months before being posted to Nigeria in January 1977. Before leaving Lusaka, Mbeki was appointed as deputy to Duma Nokwe in the Department of Information and Propaganda (DIP). Mbeki's mission in Nigeria was to establish diplomatic relations with Olusegun Obasanjo's regime, – a mission that proved to be quite successful as Mbeki was to build a lasting relationship with the Nigerian authorities, eclipsing the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in Nigeria. Zanele, who was running the Africa offices of the International University Education Fund in Lusaka, spent much of 1977 with her husband in Nigeria.
In 1978, Mbeki became political secretary in the office of Oliver Tambo. He became a close confidant of Tambo, advising him on all matters and writing many of his speeches. One of his duties as secretary was to choose a theme each year in accordance with the ANC's current activities – 1979, for example, was known as "The Year of the Spear", while 1980 was "The Year of the Charter." From 1979, with Mbeki as his right-hand man, Tambo began building up the guerrilla movement into an internationally recognised guardian of South African freedom.
Mbeki was sent to Salisbury (renamed to Harare in 1980) immediately after Robert Mugabe took office as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe in 1980. On 11 August 1980, Tambo and Mbeki met with Mugabe and his advisor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, in Salisbury. The meeting resulted in MK being allowed to move ammunition and cadres through Zimbabwe. Mugabe guaranteed that his government would assist ANC cooperatives in Zimbabwe. Mbeki, preferring to return to Lusaka, decided to hand over the reins in Zimbabwe to Chris Hani, who was to continue the relationship with Mugabe. In July 1981 Joe Gqabi, the ANC representative in Zimbabwe, was assassinated at his home. The relationship between the ANC and the Zimbabwean government came under strain. During the 1980s, Mbeki became a leading figure in the SACP, rising to the party's central committee by the mid-1980s. The SACP was a vital part of the ANC alliance.
In February 1982, Mbeki's brother Jama disappeared. He was later presumed dead. In 1985, PW Botha declared a State of Emergency and gave the army and police special powers. In 1986, the South African Army sent a captain in the South African Defence Force (SADF) to kill Mbeki. The plan was to put a bomb in his house in Lusaka, but the assassin was arrested by the Zambian police before he could go through with the plan.
In 1985, Mbeki became the ANC's director of the Department of Information and Publicity and coordinated diplomatic campaigns to involve more white South Africans in anti-apartheid activities. In 1989, he rose in the ranks to head the ANC's Department of International Affairs and was involved in the ANC's negotiations with the South African government.
Mbeki played a major role in turning the international media against apartheid. Raising the diplomatic profile of the ANC, Mbeki acted as a point of contact for foreign governments and international organisations and he was extremely successful in this position. Mbeki also played the role of ambassador to the steady flow of delegates from the elite sectors of white South Africa. These included academics, clerics, business people and representatives of liberal white groups who travelled to Lusaka to assess the ANC's views on a democratic, free South Africa.
Mbeki was seen as pragmatic, eloquent, rational and urbane. He was known for his diplomatic style and sophistication.
In the early 1980s, Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and Aziz Pahad were appointed by Tambo to conduct private talks with representatives of the National Party government. Twelve meetings between the parties took place between November 1987 and May 1990, most of them held at Mells Park House, a country house near Bath in Somerset, England. By September 1989, the team secretly met with Maritz Spaarwater and Mike Louw in a hotel in Switzerland. Known as "Operation Flair", PW Botha was kept informed of all the meetings. At the same time, Mandela and Kobie Coetzee, the Minister of Justice, were also holding secret talks.
In 1989, Botha suffered a stroke and was replaced by FW De Klerk, who announced on 2 February 1990 that the ANC, SACP, PAC and other liberation movements were to be unbanned. This was a dramatic step, even for the National Party, but it was the pragmatic and moderate attitude of Mandela and Mbeki that played a crucial role in paving the way forward. Both of them reassured the National Party that the mass Black constituency would accept the idea of negotiations. A new constitutional order was in the offing. As a sign of goodwill, De Klerk set free a few of the ANC's top leadership at the end of 1989, among them Govan Mbeki.
Between 1990 and 1994, the ANC began preparing for the first democratic elections. It was an adjustment period and Mbeki played a crucial role in transforming the ANC into a legal political organisation. In 1991, the ANC was able to hold its first legal conference in the country after 30 years of being banned. The party now had the task of finding a middle ground for discussion between all the various factions: the returning exiles, the long-term prisoners and those who had stayed behind to lead the struggle. Mbeki was chosen as national chair while Cyril Ramaphosa was elected secretary general and the ANC's chief negotiator at the multiparty talks. Mbeki had up to this point been handling much of the diplomatic talks with the apartheid regime, and given his diplomatic experience and the level of bargaining that was expected, it came as a surprise that Mbeki was sidelined in favour of Ramaphosa.
Mbeki was now in a contest to become Mandela's deputy. His rivals were Ramaphosa and Chris Hani, secretary general of the SACP. However, Mbeki had a strong support base among the ANC Youth League and the ANC's Women's League. When Chris Hani was assassinated in 1993, Mbeki and Ramaphosa were left to contest the position of Deputy President.
After leaving the Eastern Cape, Thabo Mbeki lived in Johannesburg, working with Walter Sisulu. After the arrest and imprisonment of Sisulu, Mandela and his father—and facing a similar fate—he left South Africa as one of a number of young ANC militants (Umkhonto we Sizwe cadres) sent abroad to continue their education and their anti-apartheid activities. He ultimately spent 28 years in exile, returning to his homeland only after the release of Nelson Mandela.
Mbeki spent the early years of his exile in the United Kingdom. In 1962, aged 19, he arrived at the brand-new University of Sussex, earning first a BA degree in economics, and then remaining to complete a Master's degree in African studies. While at Sussex he saw himself as a representative of the ANC and helped motivate the university population against apartheid. Still in the UK, he worked in the ANC's London office on Penton Street. He received military training in the Soviet Union and lived at different times in Botswana, Swaziland and Nigeria, but his primary base was in Lusaka, Zambia, the site of the ANC headquarters.
In 1973, Mbeki was sent to Botswana, where he engaged the Botswana government in discussions to open an ANC office there. He left Botswana in 1974. In 1975, he became a member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC. In December 1976, he was sent to Nigeria as a representative of the ANC.
While in exile, his brother Jama Mbeki, a supporter of the rival Pan Africanist Congress, was killed by agents of the Lesotho government in 1982 while attempting to assist the Lesotho Liberation Army. His son Kwanda, the product of a liaison in Mbeki's teenage years, was killed while trying to leave South Africa to join his father. When Mbeki finally was able to return home to South Africa and was reunited with his own father, the elder Mbeki told a reporter, "You must remember that Thabo Mbeki is no longer my son. He is my comrade!" A news article pointed out that this was an expression of pride, explaining, "For Govan Mbeki, a son was a mere biological appendage; to be called a comrade, on the other hand, was the highest honour."
Mbeki devoted his life to the ANC and during his years in exile was given increased responsibility. Following the 1976 Soweto riots – a student uprising in the township outside Johannesburg – he initiated a regular radio broadcast from Lusaka, tying ANC followers inside the country to their exiled leaders. Encouraging activists to keep up the pressure on the apartheid regime was a key component in the ANC's campaign to liberate their country. In the late 1970s, Mbeki made a number of trips to the United States in search of support among US corporations. Literate and funny, he made a wide circle of friends in New York City. Mbeki was appointed head of the ANC's information department in 1984 and then became head of the international department in 1989, reporting directly to Oliver Tambo, then President of the ANC. Tambo was Mbeki's long-time mentor.
In 1985, Mbeki was a member of a delegation that began meeting secretly with representatives of the South African business community, and in 1989, he led the ANC delegation that conducted secret talks with the South African government. These talks led to the unbanning of the ANC and the release of political prisoners. He also participated in many of the other important negotiations between the ANC and the government that eventually led to the democratisation of South Africa.
He became a Deputy President of South Africa in May 1994 on the attainment of universal suffrage (Right To Vote), and sole Deputy President in June 1996. He succeeded Nelson Mandela as ANC president in December 1997 and as President of South Africa in June 1999; he was re-elected for a second term in April 2004.
Mbeki has been a powerful figure in African politics, positioning South Africa as a regional power broker and promoting the idea that African political conflicts should be solved by Africans. He headed the formation of both the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the African Union (AU) and has played influential roles in brokering peace deals in Rwanda, Burundi, Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has also tried to popularise the concept of an African Renaissance. He sees African dependence on aid and foreign intervention as a major barrier, and sees structures like NEPAD and the AU as part of a process in which Africa solves its own problems without relying on outside assistance.
Mbeki has sometimes been characterised as remote and academic, although in his second campaign for the Presidency in 2004, many observers described him as finally relaxing into more traditional ways of campaigning, sometimes dancing at events and even kissing babies. Mbeki used his weekly column in the ANC newsletter "ANC Today", to produce discussions on a variety of topics. He sometimes used his column to deliver pointed invective against political opponents, and at other times used it as a kind of professor of political theory, educating ANC cadres on the intellectual justifications for African National Congress policy. Although these columns were remarkable for their dense prose, they often were used to influence news. Although Mbeki did not generally make a point of befriending or courting reporters, his columns and news events often yielded good results for his administration by ensuring that his message is a primary driving force of news coverage.
Indeed, in initiating his columns, Mbeki stated his view that the bulk of South African media sources did not speak for or to the South African majority, and stated his intent to use "ANC Today" to speak directly to his constituents rather than through the media.
The CIA World Factbook says: "South African economic policy is fiscally conservative, but pragmatic, focusing on targeting inflation and liberalising trade as means to increase job growth and household income."
Mbeki, as an ANC insider and while president, was a major force behind the continued neoliberal structure of the South African economy. He drew criticism from the left for his perceived abandonment of state-interventionist social democratic economic policies, such as nationalisation, land reform, and democratic capital controls, prescribed by the Freedom Charter, the ANC's seminal document.
Mbeki appears to have been at ease with the Internet and willing to quote from it. For instance, in a column discussing Hurricane Katrina, he cited Wikipedia, quoted at length a discussion of Katrina's lessons on American inequality from the Native American publication "Indian Country Today", and then included excerpts from a David Brooks column in the "New York Times" in a discussion of why the events of Katrina illustrated the necessity for global development and redistribution of wealth.
His penchant for quoting diverse and sometimes obscure sources, both from the Internet and from a wide variety of books, made his column an interesting parallel to political blogs although the ANC does not describe it in these terms. His views on AIDS (see below) were supported by Internet searching which led him to so-called "AIDS denialist" websites; in this case, Mbeki's use of the Internet was roundly criticised and even ridiculed by opponents.
Mbeki has used his position on the world stage to call for an end to global apartheid, a term he uses to describe the disparity between a small minority of rich nations and a great number of impoverished states in the world, arguing that a "global human society based on poverty for many and prosperity for a few, characterised by islands of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty, is unsustainable".
South Africa's proximity, strong trade links, and similar struggle credentials place South Africa in a unique position to influence politics in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe's hyperinflation since 2000 was a matter of increasing concern to Britain (as the former colonial power) and other donors to that country. High-ranking diplomatic visits to South Africa repeatedly attempted to persuade Mbeki to take a harder line with Robert Mugabe over violent state-sponsored attacks on political opponents and opposition movements, expropriation of white-owned farms by ZANU-PF allied "war veterans", sanctioning against the press, and infringements on the independence of the judiciary.
Rather than publicly criticising Mugabe's government, Mbeki chose "quiet diplomacy" over "megaphone diplomacy" – his term for the West's increasingly forthright condemnation of Mugabe's rule. Mbeki is even quoted claiming "there is no crisis" in Zimbabwe, despite increased evidence of political violence and murders, hyperinflation, and the influx of political refugees into South Africa.
To quote Mbeki:
Mugabe faced a critical presidential election in 2002. Concerns over the conduct of the election in Zimbabwe prompted debate within the Commonwealth and led to a difficult decision to suspend Zimbabwe from the organisation. Mbeki supported Mugabe during this period. It is thought that Mbeki viewed Mugabe as "a victim of imperialist meddling and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as a Western stooge."
The full meeting of the Commonwealth had failed in a consensus to decide on the issue, and they tasked the previous, present (at the time), and future leaders of Commonwealth (respectively President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, John Howard of Australia, and Mbeki of South Africa) to come to a consensus between them over the issue. On 20 March 2002 (10 days after the elections, which Mugabe won) Howard announced that they had agreed to suspend Zimbabwe for a year.
A 50 person-strong South African Observer Mission found that the outcome of the 2002 Zimbabwe presidential elections "should be considered legitimate" despite condemnations over the conduct of the election by the Commonwealth, Norwegian observers, Zimbabwean opposition figures, and Western governments and media.
Mbeki also sent South African judges Sisi Khampepe and Dikgang Moseneke to observe and compile a report on the elections. The report was kept secret until 2014 when the Constitutional Court ordered that Khampepe's report should be made public after a long court case brought against the South African government by the Mail & Guardian newspaper. The Khampepe Report contradicted the South African Observer Mission and found that the election "cannot be considered to be free and fair" and documented 107 murders mostly committed against supporters of the opposition MDC by Zanu-PF militias in the weeks before the elections.
Mbeki's stance on the elections permanently soured relations between South Africa and Zimbabwe's opposition and negatively affected the credibility of South African diplomacy.
In the face of laws restricting public assembly and freedom of the media, restricting campaigning by the MDC for the 2005 Zimbabwe parliamentary elections, President Mbeki was quoted as saying: "I have no reason to think that anything will happen … that anybody in Zimbabwe will act in a way that will militate against the elections being free and fair. [...] As far as I know, things like an independent electoral commission, access to the public media, the absence of violence and intimidation … those matters have been addressed."
Minerals and Energy Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka led the largest foreign observer mission, the SADC Observer Mission, to oversee the Zimbabwe elections. Contrary to other international missions and parts of the SA Parliamentary Mission, the mission congratulated "the people of Zimbabwe for holding a peaceful, credible and well-mannered election which reflects the will of the people." The Democratic Alliance delegation (part SA Parliamentary Observer Mission) clashed with the minister and eventually submitted a separate report contradicting her findings. The elections were widely denounced and many accused Zanu-PF of massive and often violent intimidation, using food to buy votes, and large discrepancies in the tallying of votes.
Mbeki attempted to restore dialogue between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in the face of denials from both parties. A fact-finding mission in 2004 by Congress of South African Trade Unions to Zimbabwe led to their widely publicised deportation back to South Africa which reopened the debate, even within the ANC, as to whether Mbeki's policy of "quiet diplomacy" was constructive.
On 5 February 2006 Mbeki said in an interview with SABC television that Zimbabwe had missed a chance to resolve its political crisis in 2004 when secret talks to agree on a new constitution ended in failure. He claimed that he saw a copy of a new constitution signed by all parties. The job of promoting dialogue between the ruling party and the opposition was likely made more difficult by divisions within the MDC, splits to which the president alluded when he stated that the MDC were "sorting themselves out." In turn, the MDC unanimously rejected this assertion. (MDC-Mutambara Faction's) secretary general Welshman Ncube said "We never gave Mbeki a draft constitution – unless it was ZANU PF which did that. Mbeki has to tell the world what he was really talking about."
In May 2007 it was reported that Mbeki had been partisan and taken sides with Zanu-PF in his role as mediator. He had given pre-conditions to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change before the dialogue could resume while giving no conditions to the ZANU-PF government. He required that the MDC accept and recognise Robert Mugabe was the president of Zimbabwe, and the MDC accept the 2002 presidential election results despite widespread belief of being unfree, unfair, and fraudulent.
On 10 January 2006, businessman Warren Clewlow, on the board of four of the top-10 listed companies in SA, including Old Mutual, Sasol, Nedbank and Barloworld, said that government should stop its unsuccessful behind-the-scenes attempts to resolve the Zimbabwean crisis and start vociferously condemning what was happening in that country. Clewlow's sentiments reflected the South African private sector's increasing impatience with Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy" and were echoed by Business Unity South Africa (BUSA), the umbrella body for business organisations in South Africa.
As the company's chairman, he said in Barloworld's latest annual report that SA's efforts to date were fruitless and that the only means for a solution was for SA "to lead from the front. Our role and responsibility is not just to promote discussion... Our aim must be to achieve meaningful and sustainable change."
Mbeki was frequently criticised for not exerting pressure on Mugabe to relinquish power, although he chaired meetings in which the Zimbabwean leader's potential departure from power was negotiated. He rejected calls in May 2007 for tough action against Zimbabwe ahead of a visit by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He said on 29 July 2007 that Zimbabwe elections in March 2008 must be 'free and fair'. An article critical of Mbeki's handling of Mugabe appeared in "Forbes" and claimed a peaceful transfer of power in Zimbabwe "will not be because of [Mbeki], but in spite of him."
Ebrahim Fakir, a researcher at the Johannesburg-based Centre for Policy Studies, and Susan Booysen, political analyst at the University of the Witwatersrand, said that Mbeki botched his legacy due to his cautious approach to Mugabe. The media has been very critical: "The Washington Post" published a commentary describing Mbeki as a bankrupt democrat and accused him of complicity in "stealing" the Zimbabwean election, while "The Economist" called Mbeki's actions "unconscionable".
At the end of the fourth day of negotiations, South African President and mediator to Zimbabwe, Thabo Mbeki, announced in Harare that Robert Mugabe of ZANU-PF, professor Arthur Mutambara of MDC-M and Morgan Tsvangirai of MDC-T finally signed the power-sharing agreement – "memorandum of understanding." Mbeki stated: "An agreement has been reached on all items on the agenda ... all of them [Mugabe, Tsvangirai, Mutambara] endorsed the document tonight, and signed it. The formal signing will be done on Monday 10 am. The document will be released then. The ceremony will be attended by the SADC and other African regional and continental leaders. The leaders will spend the next few days constituting the inclusive government to be announced on Monday. The leaders will work very hard to mobilise support for the people to recover. We hope the world will assist so that this political agreement succeeds." In the signed historic power deal, Mugabe, on 11 September 2008, agreed to surrender day-to-day control of the government, and the deal was also expected to result in a de facto amnesty for the military and ZANU-PF party leaders. Opposition sources said that "Tsvangirai will become prime minister at the head of a council of ministers, the principal organ of government, drawn from his party and the president's ZANU-PF party; and Mugabe will remain president and continue to chair a cabinet that will be a largely consultative body, and the real power will lie with Tsvangirai." South Africa's "Business Day" reported, however, that Mugabe was refusing to sign a deal which would curtail his presidential powers. Nelson Chamisa, a spokesman for the MDC-T, announced that "this is an inclusive government" and that the executive power would be shared by the president, the prime minister, and the cabinet. According to "The New York Times", Mugabe, Tsvangirai, and Arthur Mutambara had still not decided how to divide the ministries, and Jendayi E. Frazer, the American Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, said: "We don't know what's on the table, and it's hard to rally for an agreement when no one knows the details or even the broad outlines".
On 15 September 2008, the leaders of the 14-member Southern African Development Community witnessed the signing of the power-sharing agreement, brokered by Mbeki. With a symbolic handshake and warm smiles at the Rainbow Towers hotel, in Harare, Mugabe and Tsvangirai signed the deal to end the violent political crisis. Mugabe was to remain president, Morgan Tsvangirai was to become prime minister, the MDC was to control the police, Mugabe's ZANU-PF was to command the Army, and Arthur Mutambara was to deputy prime minister.
Mbeki's views on the causes of AIDS, and in particular the link between HIV and AIDS, and the treatment of AIDS have been widely criticised.
In 1995 the International Conference for People Living with HIV and AIDS was held in South Africa, the first time that the annual conference had been held in Africa. At the time Mbeki was Deputy President and in his official capacity acknowledged the seriousness of the epidemic. The South African Ministry of Health announced that some 850,000 people – 2.1% of the total population – were believed to be HIV-positive. In 2000 the Department of Health outlined a five-year plan to combat AIDS, HIV and sexually transmitted infections. A National AIDS Council was established to oversee the implementation of the plan.
However, after becoming President, Mbeki changed tack and represented the views of a small minority of eminent scientists who claimed that AIDS was not caused by HIV. These included Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis, the U.S.A National Academy of Sciences member Peter Duesberg as well as others with varying degrees of prominence. Mbeki found their views compelling, although the overwhelming majority of scientists disagree with them. On 9 July 2000, at the International AIDS Conference in Durban, President Mbeki made a speech that attracted much criticism in that he avoided references to HIV and instead focused mainly on poverty as a powerful co-factor in AIDS diagnosis. His administration was repeatedly accused of failing to respond adequately to the AIDS epidemic, and including failing to authorise and implement an overall national treatment program for AIDS that included anti-retroviral medicines, and in particular an antiretroviral programme to prevent HIV transmission from pregnant mothers to babies while in the womb.
Mbeki's government did, however, introduce a law allowing cheaper locally produced generic medicines, and in April 2001 succeeded in defending a legal action brought by transnational pharmaceutical companies to set aside the law. AIDS activists, particularly the Treatment Action Campaign and its allies, thought that the law was intended to support a cheap antiretroviral drugs programme and applauded Mbeki's government. However, the Treatment Action Campaign and its allies were eventually forced to resort to the South African Courts which in 2002 ordered the government to make the drug nevirapine available to pregnant women to help prevent mother to child transmission of HIV. Notwithstanding and despite international drug companies offering free or cheap antiretroviral drugs, until 2003, South Africans with HIV who used the public sector health system could only get treatment for opportunistic infections they suffered because of their weakened immune systems, but could not get antiretrovirals designed to specifically target HIV. In November 2003, the government finally approved a plan to make antiretroviral treatment publicly available. It appears that this was only after the Cabinet had over-ruled the President.
In November 2008, "The New York Times" reported that due to Thabo Mbeki's rejection of scientific consensus on AIDS and his embrace of AIDS denialism, an estimated 365,000 people had perished in South Africa. A study in African Affairs in 2008 found that Mbeki's government could have prevented the deaths of 343,000 South Africans during his tenure, had it followed the more sensible public health policies then applied in the Western Cape province.
The South African Constitution allows the Cabinet to override the President. The secret ballot appears to have gone against the president when Cabinet policy declared that HIV is the cause of AIDS. Again in August 2003, Cabinet promised to formulate a national treatment plan that would include ARVs. At the time the Health Ministry was still headed by Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who had served as health minister since June 1999, and was promoting approaches to AIDS such as a diet of African potatoes and garlic, while highlighting the toxicities of antiretroviral drugs. This led critics to question whether the same leadership that opposed ARV treatment would effectively carry out the treatment plan. Implementation was slow requiring a court judgement to eventually force government to distribute ARV's. Delivery was further improved when Thabo Mbeki was ousted, Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang re-deployed as the Minister of the Presidency, and Barbara Hogan deployed to Minister of Health.
After he assumed the Presidency, he appears to have articulated more clearly his understanding that poverty is a significant factor in the prevalence of AIDS and other health problems. He urged political attention be directed to addressing poverty generally rather than only against AIDS specifically. Some speculate that the suspicion engendered by a life in exile and by the colonial domination and control of Africa led Mbeki to react against a portrayal of AIDS as another Western characterisation of Africans as promiscuous and Africa as a continent of disease and hopelessness. For example, speaking to a group of university students in 2001, he struck out against what he viewed as the racism underlying how many in the West characterised AIDS in Africa:
ANC rules and Mbeki's commitment to the idea of party discipline mean that he may not publicly criticise the current government policy that HIV causes AIDS and that antiretrovirals should be provided. Some critics of Mbeki continued to assert that notwithstanding he continued to influence AIDS policy through his personal views behind the scenes, a charge which his office regularly denies. However, in a 2007 published biography "Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred", author Mark Gevisser describes how the president, knowing that he was writing the biography, contacted him earlier in 2007. This was to ask whether the author had seen a 100-page paper secretly authored by Mr. Mbeki and distributed anonymously among the ANC leadership six years ago. This paper compared orthodox AIDS scientists to latter-day Nazi concentration camp doctors and portrayed black people who accepted orthodox AIDS science as "self-repressed" victims of a slave mentality. It described the "HIV/AIDS thesis" as entrenched in "centuries-old white racist beliefs and concepts about Africans". In the published biography Mr Gevisser describes the president's view of the disease as apparently shaped by an obsession with race, the legacy of colonialism and "sexual shame".
Since release of the biography, President Mbeki's defenders have tried hard to clarify his position as being an AIDS "dissident" as opposed to an AIDS "denier". That is, he accepts that HIV causes AIDS but is a dissident in that he is at odds with prevailing AIDS-focused public health policies, stating that it is only one of many immune deficiency diseases, many of which are associated with poverty, and that political attention and resources should be directed to poverty and immune deficiency diseases generally rather than AIDS specifically.
In January 2008 the South African government announced that it would introduce electricity rationing. On 25 January 2008 the country's deepening power crisis was such that South Africa's (and the world's) largest gold and platinum mining companies were forced to shut down operations. Eskom (the national power supplier) and the government both apologised for the blackouts and in his next-to-last State of the Nation speech Mbeki devoted nearly three pages to the electricity crisis, repeating the apologies of Eskom and the government. Mbeki blamed the power shortages on increased demand caused by years of economic growth and the provision of electricity to black townships that were not connected in the apartheid era. But Mbeki also admitted the government had failed to heed warnings from Eskom (the earliest 10 years previously) that without new power stations Eskom might not be able to meet demand by 2007. Each year over the preceding 10 years, Eskom had produced annual Integrated Strategic Electricity Plans each setting out scenarios of future investment requirements to cope with projected increased demand, but although projections of average demand growth in the period 2001–2005 had been accurate, no investment had been forthcoming. Mbeki failed to respond to allegations that the government's black empowerment strategy had been a root cause of the problem in that small and medium sized black entrepreneurs, in preference to large corporations, had been awarded coal supply tenders. The policy of giving preference to small suppliers had caused problems in securing reliable supplies of coal, and had also, because small suppliers did not have the capital to invest in rail or conveyor belts infrastructure but used coal trucks, accelerated the wear and tear damage to the roads around the power stations. Warnings highlighted in several of Eskom's annual reports, starting in 2003, had been ignored not only by the Eskom board but also its political masters, Mbeki's government.
The power problems were further exacerbated by Mbeki's government policy of attracting energy-intensive industry (such as Aluminium smelters) through the carrot of cheap electricity. This meant that, as Eskom's excess capacity ran out and became a deficit, the South African government finds itself contractually bound to provide power to energy-intensive industries, despite this meaning the rest of the country experienced traffic problems and business disruption due to the blackouts. For South Africa to remain a desirable foreign investment destination the country must be seen to honour its contractual obligations. To shut down the smelters is not a simple process, said one analyst. Government would be paying the cost of effects all through the relevant parties aluminium value chain – its aluminium refineries and bauxite ore mines in other countries.
In 2004 President Thabo Mbeki made an attack on commentators who argued that violent crime was out of control in South Africa, calling them white racists who want the country to fail. He alleged that crime was falling and some journalists were distorting reality by depicting black people as "barbaric savages" who liked to rape and kill. Annual statistics published in September 2004 showed that most categories of crime were down, but some had challenged the figures' credibility and said that South Africa remained extremely dangerous, especially for women. In a column for the African National Congress website, the president rebuked the doubters. Mr Mbeki did not name journalist Charlene Smith who had championed victims of sexual violence since writing about her own rape, but quoted a recent article in which she said South Africa had the highest rate of rape and referred (apparently sarcastically) to her as an "internationally recognised expert on sexual violence". He said: "She was saying our cultures, traditions and religions as Africans inherently make every African man a potential rapist ... [a] view which defines the African people as barbaric savages." Mr Mbeki also described the newspaper "The Citizen", and other commentators who challenged the apparent fall in crime, as pessimists who did not trust black rule.
In January 2007, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) "draft" report on South Africa was released. This noted that South Africa had the world's second-highest murder rate, with about 50 people a day being killed, and that although serious crime was reported as falling, security analysts said that the use of violence in robberies, and rape, were more common. Mbeki in response said in an interview that fears of crime were exaggerated.
In December 2007 the final African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) report on South Africa, again suggested that there was an unacceptably high level of violent crime in the country. President Mbeki said the suggestion of unacceptably high violent crime appeared to be an acceptance by the panel of what he called "a populist view". He challenged some of the statistics on crime, which he noted may have resulted from a weak information base, leading to wrong conclusions. Although rape statistics had been obtained from the South African Police Service, "this only denotes the incidents of rape that were reported, some of which could have resulted in acquittals" Mbeki indicated.
In May 2008 a series of riots took place in a number of townships, mainly in Gauteng Province, which left 42 dead, several hundred injured and several thousand displaced. The root cause of the riot was xenophobic attacks on foreigners, mainly Zimbabweans who had fled their country following the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy. The migrants were blamed for high levels of unemployment, housing shortages and crime.
Following the riots Mbeki was criticised for ignoring the scale of the problem and failing to deal with the causes of it. The Zimbabwe Exiles Group accused him of being "more concerned with appeasing Mr. Mugabe than recognising the scale of the problem caused by the flood of Zimbabweans into South Africa."
In response to the violence President Mbeki announced he would set up a panel of experts to investigate the riots, and authorised military force against rioters. This is the first time that such an authorisation of military force was used by the government since the end of apartheid.
It was Mbeki's vision and his African renaissance attitude that had undoubtedly brought the successful bid to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Acknowledging Mbeki's contribution, "Business Day" newspaper in Johannesburg said in its editorial opinion "The fact is that it was the former president's vision of an African renaissance, with South Africa leading the charge to prove to the rest of the world that the continent was not destined to disappoint in perpetuity, that resulted in us persisting in our bid to host the tournament." Similarly the same theme was mentioned by the "Citizen" newspaper in Johannesburg saying "Now we know he was correct in that assessment of South Africa's ability to stage the greatest show on earth." Mbeki always believed that Africans are capable of hosting the World Cup. President Mbeki worked to bring the 2010 World Cup to the African continent for the first time. He personally asked favours to some world leaders to support his World Cup bid. Among these leaders is the then-president of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Mbeki said "With your distinguished football record, the International Football Federation (FIFA) can hardly refuse if Brazil says the cup must go to South Africa".
In 2004 the Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, criticised President Mbeki for surrounding himself with "yes-men", not doing enough to improve the position of the poor and for promoting economic policies that only benefited a small black elite. He also accused Mbeki and the ANC of suppressing public debate. Mbeki responded that Tutu had never been an ANC member and defended the debates that took place within ANC branches and other public forums. He also asserted his belief in the value of democratic discussion by quoting the Chinese slogan "let a hundred flowers bloom", referring to the brief Hundred Flowers Campaign within the Chinese Communist Party in 1956–57.
The "ANC Today" newsletter featured several analyses of the debate, written by Mbeki and the ANC. The latter suggested that Tutu was an "icon" of "white elites", thereby suggesting that his political importance was overblown by the media; and while the article took pains to say that Tutu had not sought this status, it was described in the press as a particularly pointed and personal critique of Tutu. Tutu responded that he would pray for Mbeki as he had prayed for the officials of the apartheid government.
In 2005 Mbeki removed Jacob Zuma from his post as Deputy President of South Africa, after Zuma was implicated in a corruption scandal. In October 2005, some supporters of Zuma (who remained deputy president of the ANC) burned t-shirts portraying Mbeki's picture at a protest. In late 2005, Zuma faced new rape charges, which dimmed his political prospects. There was visible split between Zuma's supporters and Mbeki's allies in the ANC.
In February 2006, Mbeki told the SABC that he and the ANC had no intention to change the Constitution of the country to permit him a third term in office. He stated, "By the end of 2009, I will have been in a senior position in government for 15 years. I think that's too long."
Mbeki, although barred by the Constitution of South Africa from seeking a third term as president of the country, in 2007 entered the race to be President of the ANC (no term limit exists for the position of ANC president), for a third term, in a close battle with Jacob Zuma. He lost this vote against Jacob Zuma on 18 December 2007 at the ANC conference in Polokwane. Zuma went on to be the ANC's presidential candidate in the 2009 general election.
On 12 September 2008, Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Chris Nicholson ruled that Zuma's corruption charges were unlawful on procedural grounds, adding there was reason to believe the charges against Zuma had been politically motivated, thereby clearing the way for Zuma to run for president. Mbeki filed affidavit and applied to the Constitutional Court to appeal this ruling: "It was improper for the court to make such far-reaching 'vexatious, scandalous and prejudicial' findings concerning me, to be judged and condemned on the basis of the findings in the Zuma matter. The interests of justice, in my respectful submission would demand that the matter be rectified. These adverse findings have led to my being recalled by my political party, the ANC—a request I have acceded to as a committed and loyal member of the ANC for the past 52 years. I fear that if not rectified, I might suffer further prejudice." Tlali Tlali, National Prosecuting Authority spokesman, stated by phone from Pretoria, on 23 September: "We have received the papers. It's under consideration."
"Note: Unless otherwise specified, the terms "president" and "deputy president" refer to roles in government, whereas "ANC president" or "ANC deputy president" refer to roles in the ANC political party."
Having "made it a point not to contest this decision" of the ANC NEC that Mbeki was no longer fit to lead South Africa, he formally announced his resignation on 21 September 2008, at 19:30 South African time (17:30 UTC), as a result of the ANC National Executive Committee's decision no longer to support him in parliament. This came a few days after the dismissal of a trial against ANC President Jacob Zuma on charges of corruption due to procedural errors. Allusions were made in the ruling to possible political interference by Mbeki and others in his prosecution. Parliament convened on 22 September and accepted his resignation with effect from 25 September; however, because an MP for the Freedom Front opposition party declared his objection to the resignation, a debate was set to take place the following day.
In cases of such a void in the presidency, the constitution regulates the replacement to serve as the interim president: either the deputy president, the speaker of parliament or any MP (Member of Parliament), as chosen by parliament, can take the role of president of the country until the next election. ANC president Jacob Zuma, who was elected president after the next general election, was not eligible as he was at the time none of these.
The current deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka was unlikely to be chosen either, apparently due to her close ties to Mbeki and because her husband, Bulelani Ngcuka was involved in the decision to charge Zuma with corruption. As a result the Speaker of Parliament, Baleka Mbete, had been cited as the likely caretaker president; however, speaking on behalf of the ANC, Zuma strongly hinted at ANC Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, who is an MP, becoming Mbeki's replacement for the remainder of the current term of parliament, which ended in early 2009. Although Zuma could put pressure on the government and his party to choose Motlanthe, the replacement president had to be decided by parliament.
Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad and Minister of Science and Technology Mosibudi Mangena all announced their intentions of resigning.
Nathi Mthethwa, Chief Whip of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) stated that Mbeki's resignation would take effect on 25 September 2008. ANC President Jacob Zuma said that his deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe, would become acting president until 2009 general elections: "I am convinced – if given that responsibility – he (Motlanthe) would be equal to the task." The ANC confirmed that "Kgalema Motlanthe is to become caretaker president until 2009 elections, with Baleka Mbete being appointed deputy president."
The direction of Mbeki's vote in South Africa's 2009 general election was a matter of discussion among press and public alike. Although Mbeki had completely disassociated himself from party politics subsequent to his resignation, many suggested that Congress of the People (COPE), composed in large part of Mbeki loyalists, would secure his mark on the ballot paper. On Election Day, 22 April, having done the deed, Mbeki announced that his vote was a secret and called on the electorate to exercise its democratic right not out of fear or historical loyalty, but for a future that it desired and a party that would further its ends. These sentiments were widely interpreted as pro-COPE; indeed, the party's First Deputy President Mbhazima Shilowa confirmed on his "Facebook" page that "i liked TM's message". It was noted, though, that, despite having been invited, Mbeki had failed to attend a COPE rally the week before.
Mbeki has received many honorary degrees from South African and foreign universities. Mbeki received an honorary doctorate in business administration from the Arthur D Little Institute, Boston, in 1994. In 1995, he received honorary doctorate from the University of South Africa and an honorary doctorate of laws from Sussex University. Mbeki was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rand Afrikaans University in 1999. In 2000 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws from Glasgow Caledonian University. In 2004, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in commercial sciences by the University of Stellenbosch.
During Mbeki's official visit to Britain in 2001, he was made an honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB). The Mayor of Athens, Dora Bakoyannis, awarded Mbeki with the City of Athens Medal of Honour in 2005. During Mbeki's official visit to Sudan in 2005, he was awarded Sudan's Insignia of Honour in recognition of his role in resolving conflicts and working for development in the Continent. In 2007, Mbeki was made a Knight of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem at St George's Cathedral in Cape Town by the current grand prior, Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester.
Mbeki was awarded the Good Governance Award in 1997 by the US-based Corporate Council on Africa. He received the Newsmaker of the year award from Pretoria News Press Association in 2000 and repeated the honour in 2008, this time under the auspices of media research company Monitoring South Africa. In honour of his commitment to democracy in the new South Africa, Mbeki was awarded the Oliver Tambo/Johnny Makatini Freedom Award in 2000. Mbeki was awarded the Peace and Reconciliation Award at the Gandhi Awards for Reconciliation in Durban in 2003. In 2004, Mbeki was awarded the Good Brother Award by Washington, D.C.'s National Congress of Black Women for his commitment to gender equality and the emancipation of women in South Africa. In 2005, he was also awarded the Champion of the Earth Award by the United Nations. During the European-wide Action Week Against Racism in 2005, Mbeki was awarded the Rotterdamse Jongeren Raad (RJR) Antidiscrimination Award by the Netherlands. In 2006, he was awarded the Presidential Award for his outstanding service to economic growth and investor confidence in South Africa and Africa and for his role in the international arena by the South African Chambers of Commerce and Industry. In 2007 Mbeki was awarded the Confederation of African Football's Order of Merit for his contribution to football on the continent.
Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31350 |
The Straight Story
The Straight Story is a 1999 biographical road drama film directed by David Lynch. The film was edited and produced by Mary Sweeney, Lynch's longtime partner and collaborator. She also co-wrote the script with John E. Roach. The film is based on the true story of Alvin Straight's 1994 journey across Iowa and Wisconsin on a lawn mower. Alvin (Richard Farnsworth) is an elderly World War II veteran who lives with his daughter Rose (Sissy Spacek), a kind woman with an intellectual disability. When he hears that his estranged brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton) has suffered a stroke, Alvin makes up his mind to go visit him and hopefully make amends before he dies. Because Alvin's legs and eyes are too impaired for him to receive a driving license, he hitches a trailer to his recently purchased thirty-year-old John Deere 110 Lawn Tractor, having a maximum speed of about and sets off on the journey from Laurens, Iowa to Mount Zion, Wisconsin.
"The Straight Story" was released by Walt Disney Pictures in the United States, and was a critical success, although the overall gross proved less than expected. Reviewers praised the intensity of the character performances, particularly the realistic dialogue which film critic Roger Ebert compared to the works of Ernest Hemingway. It received a nomination for the Palme d'Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival and Farnsworth received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Alvin Straight has not shown up to his regular bar meeting with his friends. He is eventually found lying on his floor at home, although he insists that he "just needs a bit of help getting up". His daughter Rose takes her reluctant father to see a doctor, who sternly admonishes Alvin to give up tobacco. He also tells Alvin that he should start using a walker. Alvin refuses. Alvin then learns that his brother Lyle has suffered a stroke. Longing to visit him, but unable to drive, Alvin gradually develops a plan to travel to Mount Zion on his riding lawn-mower and towing a small homemade travel-trailer, to the consternation of his family and friends.
Alvin's first attempt fails: after experiencing difficulty starting the old mower's motor, he doesn't get far before the machine breaks down. Alvin arranges for his mower to be transported back home on a flatbed truck, where he takes out his frustrations on the mower with a shotgun blast. At the John Deere dealer, he purchases a newer lawn tractor from a salesman who is generous but describes Alvin as being a smart man, "until now."
Alvin continues on his quest. He passes a young female hitchhiker who later approaches his campfire and says that she could not get a ride. In conversation, Alvin deduces that she is pregnant (although this is not physically obvious) and has run away from home. Alvin tells her about the importance of family by describing a bundle of sticks that is hard to break. The next day Alvin emerges from the trailer to find that she has left him a bundle of sticks tied together.
Later, a huge group of RAGBRAI cyclists race past him. He later arrives at the cyclists' camp and he is greeted with applause. He speaks with them about growing old. When he is asked about the worst part of being old, he replies, "remembering when you was young."
The next day, Alvin is troubled by the massive trucks passing him. He then interacts with a distraught woman who has hit a deer, and is being driven to distraction by the fact that she continually hits deer while commuting, no matter how hard she tries to avoid them. She drives away in a tearful huff, and Alvin, who had started to run short of food, cooks and eats the deer, then mounts the antlers above the rear doorway of his trailer as a tribute to the deer and the sustenance it had provided.
Alvin's brakes fail as he travels down a steep hill; he struggles to maintain control of the speeding tractor and finally manages to bring the vehicle to a complete stop. Some people help get Alvin's mower and trailer off the road. They later discover that the mower also has transmission problems.
Now beginning to run low on cash, Alvin borrows a cordless phone from a homeowner – gently refusing an invitation to come indoors – and calls Rose to ask her to send him his Social Security check. He then leaves money on the doorstep to pay for his telephone call. A local motorist offers Alvin a ride the rest of the way to Lyle's, but Alvin declines, stating that he prefers to travel his own way. An elderly war veteran takes him into town for a drink, and Alvin tells a story about how he is haunted by a memory of accidentally shooting one of his military comrades.
Alvin's tractor is fixed and he is presented with an exorbitant bill by the mechanics, who are twins and are constantly bickering. Alvin successfully negotiates the price down, and explains his mission, which he calls "a hard swallow to [my] pride," but "a brother is a brother." The mechanic twins seem to relate to this.
Later, Alvin camps in a cemetery and chats with a priest who recognizes Lyle's name and is aware of his stroke. The priest says that Lyle did not mention he had a brother. Alvin replies that "neither one of us has had a brother for quite some time." Alvin wants to make peace with Lyle and is emphatic that what happened ten years ago does not matter. "I say, 'Amen' to that, brother," the priest replies.
The next obstacle Alvin must overcome is apparent engine trouble, just a few miles from Lyle's house. Alvin stops in the middle of the road, unsure of how to proceed. A large farm tractor driving by then stops to help, but this time the problem was evidently just a few drops of bad gas, because the lawn-tractor's engine sputters to life again after sitting for a few minutes. The gracious farmer then leads the way on his own tractor, to make sure Alvin gets there okay.
Lyle's house is dilapidated. Using two canes, Alvin makes his way to the door. He calls for his brother. Lyle invites Alvin to sit down. Lyle looks at Alvin's mower-tractor contraption and asks if Alvin had ridden that thing just to see him. Alvin responds simply, "I did, Lyle." The two men sit together silently and look up at the stars.
"The Straight Story" was independently shot along the actual route taken by Alvin Straight, and all scenes were shot in chronological order. Lynch would later call the film "my most experimental movie".
"The Straight Story" was acquired by Walt Disney Pictures in the United States after a successful debut at Cannes and was given a G-rating by the MPAA (the only Lynch film to receive such a rating). It is also the only Lynch film for which Lynch himself did not contribute to the screenplay (although it was co-written by his recurring associate, Mary Sweeney). As with many of Lynch's films, there are no chapter markers on the original North American DVD release, because Lynch wants the film to be watched as a whole.
During production, Richard Farnsworth was terminally ill with metastatic prostate cancer which had spread to his bones. The paralysis of his legs as shown in the film was, in fact real. He took the role out of admiration for Alvin Straight, and astonished his co-workers with his tenacity during production. Farnsworth committed suicide the following year, at the age of 80.
The musical score for "The Straight Story" was composed by Angelo Badalamenti, continuing a 13-plus year collaboration with Lynch that began with "Blue Velvet". A soundtrack album was released on October 12, 1999, by Windham Hill Records.
All music composed and conducted by Angelo Badalamenti.
"The Straight Story" was critically acclaimed upon its release, with critics lauding Lynch's uncharacteristic subject matter. "Entertainment Weekly" described it as a "celestial piece of Americana". "The Chicago Tribune" wrote of the film, "we see something American studio movies usually don't give us: the simple, unsentimentalized beauty of the rural American Midwestern landscape."
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 95% based on 102 reviews, with an average rating of 8.16/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "With strong performances and director David Lynch at the helm, "The Straight Story" steers past sentimental byways on its ambling journey across the American heartland." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 86 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". AllMovie wrote, "David Lynch offers an uncharacteristically straightforward and warmly sentimental approach to his material in this film", calling it "one of his best films".
Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars, the first positive review he had ever given for a film by Lynch. He wrote, "The movie isn't just about the old Alvin Straight's odyssey through the sleepy towns and rural districts of the Midwest, but about the people he finds to listen and care for him."
"The Straight Story" was the recipient of 12 awards and 29 nominations.
The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. Freddie Francis was nominated for the Golden Frog. Richard Farnsworth earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of Alvin Straight; the oldest person ever to be nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31351 |
Theophan the Recluse
Theophan the Recluse, also known as Theophan Zatvornik or Theophanes the Recluse (Russian: Феофа́н Затво́рник; January 10, 1815 – January 6, 1894) is a well-known saint in the Russian Orthodox Church.
Theophan the Recluse, also known as Theophan Zatvornik or Theophanes the Recluse or (in the Library of Congress Name Authority File, and therefore in many library catalogs) as "Ḟeofan, Saint, Bishop of Tambov and Shatsk, 1815-1894" (Russian: Феофа́н Затво́рник; January 10, 1815 – January 6, 1894) was born on January 10, 1815 as Georgy Vasilievich Govorov (Георгий Васильевич Говоров), in the village of Chernavsk, in the Oryol Governorate of the Russian Empire. His father was a Russian Orthodox priest. He was educated in the seminaries at Livny, Oryol and Kiev. In 1841 he was ordained, became a monk, and adopted the name Theophan. He later became the Bishop of Tambov.
He is especially well-known today through the many books he wrote concerning the spiritual life, especially on the subjects of the Christian life and the training of youth in the faith. He also played an important role in translating the "Philokalia" from Church Slavonic into Russian. The "Philokalia" is a classic of orthodox spirituality, composed of the collected works of a number of church fathers which were edited and placed in a four volume set in the 17th and 18th centuries. A persistent theme is developing an interior life of continuous prayer, learning to "pray without ceasing" as St. Paul teaches in his first letter to the Thessalonians.
He died on January 6, 1894 and lay in state for three days in his church. Even after that length of time there was no sign of decay in his unembalmed body. Theophan the Recluse was buried in the Kazan church of the Vysha Monastery.
"The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned To It" was originally written in response to Theophan's encounter with a young woman. While at a ball, this upper class Moscow woman began having irrational thoughts about the meaning of life and the immortality of man. After contacting Theophan, the two began corresponding through letters, the lady writing on her spiritual difficulties and Theophan responding with spiritual advice. This correspondence had a significant impact on the woman; she later became a nun. The Saint Herman Press, the publisher of the illustrated edition of "The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned To It," notes that it was of great importance to Theophan that the young woman should "be able to keenly hear the right "tone" of spiritual life."
Theophan was canonized by the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church of 1988. The act of canonization declared that his "deep theological understanding of the Christian teaching, as well as its performance in practice, and, as a consequence of this, the loftiness and holiness of the life of the "sviatitel"' allow for his writings to be regarded as a development of the teaching of the Holy Fathers, preserving the same Orthodox purity and Divine enlightenment." His feast day is celebrated January 6 or January 10. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31352 |
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (sometimes referred to as HG2G, HHGTTG, H2G2, or tHGttG) is a comedy science fiction series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, including stage shows, novels, comic books, a 1981 TV series, a 1984 video game, and 2005 feature film.
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" has become an international multi-media phenomenon; the novels are the most widely distributed, having been translated into more than 30 languages by 2005. The first novel, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (1979), was ranked fourth on the BBC’s The Big Read poll. The sixth novel, "And Another Thing", was written by Eoin Colfer with additional unpublished material by Douglas Adams. In 2017, BBC Radio 4 announced a 40th-anniversary celebration with Dirk Maggs, one of the original producers, in charge. The first of six new episodes was broadcast on 8 March 2018.
The broad narrative of "Hitchhiker" follows the misadventures of the last surviving man, Arthur Dent, following the demolition of the Earth by a Vogon constructor fleet to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Dent is rescued from Earth's destruction by Ford Prefect—a human-like alien writer for the eccentric, electronic travel guide "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"—by hitchhiking onto a passing Vogon spacecraft. Following his rescue, Dent explores the galaxy with Prefect and encounters Trillian, another human who had been taken from Earth (prior to its destruction) by the two-headed President of the Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox and the depressed Marvin, the Paranoid Android. Certain narrative details were changed among the various adaptations.
The different versions of the series spell the title differently−thus "Hitch-Hiker's Guide", "Hitch Hiker's Guide" and "Hitchhiker's Guide" are used in different editions (US or UK), formats (audio or print) and compilations of the book, with some omitting the apostrophe. Some editions used different spellings on the spine and title page. The h2g2's "English Usage in Approved Entries" claims that "Hitchhiker's Guide" is the spelling Adams preferred. At least two reference works make note of the inconsistency in the titles. Both, however, repeat the statement that Adams decided in 2000 that "everyone should spell it the same way [one word, no hyphen] from then on."
The various versions follow the same basic plot but they are in many places mutually contradictory, as Adams rewrote the story substantially for each new adaptation. Throughout all versions, the series follows the adventures of Arthur Dent, a hapless Englishman, following the destruction of the Earth by the Vogons, a race of unpleasant and bureaucratic aliens, to make way for an intergalactic bypass. Dent's adventures intersect with several other characters: Ford Prefect, an alien and a researcher for the eponymous guidebook, who rescues Dent from Earth's destruction; Zaphod Beeblebrox, Ford's eccentric semi-cousin and the Galactic President who has stolen the "Heart of Gold", a spacecraft equipped with the Infinite Improbability Drive; the depressed robot Marvin the Paranoid Android; and Trillian, formerly known as Tricia McMillan, a woman Arthur once met at a party in Islington and, thanks to Beeblebrox's intervention, the only other human survivor of Earth's destruction.
In their travels, Arthur comes to learn that the Earth was actually a giant supercomputer, created by another supercomputer, Deep Thought. Deep Thought had been built by its creators to give the answer to the "Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything", which, after eons of calculations, was given simply as "42". Deep Thought was then instructed to design the Earth supercomputer to determine what the Question actually is. The Earth was subsequently destroyed by the Vogons moments before its calculations were completed, and Arthur becomes the target of the descendants of the Deep Thought creators, believing his mind must hold the Question. With his friends' help, Arthur escapes and they decide to have lunch at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, before embarking on further adventures.
The first radio series comes from a proposal called "The Ends of the Earth": six self-contained episodes, all ending with Earth being destroyed in a different way. While writing the first episode, Adams realized that he needed someone on the planet who was an alien to provide some context, and that this alien needed a reason to be there. Adams finally settled on making the alien a roving researcher for a "wholly remarkable book" named "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". As the first radio episode's writing progressed, the "Guide" became the centre of his story, and he decided to focus the series on it, with the destruction of Earth being the only hold-over.
Adams claimed that the title came from a 1971 incident while he was hitchhiking around Europe as a young man with a copy of the "Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe" book: while lying drunk in a field near Innsbruck with a copy of the book and looking up at the stars, he thought it would be a good idea for someone to write a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy as well. However, he later claimed that he had forgotten the incident itself, and only knew of it because he'd told the story of it so many times. His friends are quoted as saying that Adams mentioned the idea of "hitch-hiking around the galaxy" to them while on holiday in Greece in 1973.
Adams's fictional "Guide" is an electronic guidebook to the entire universe, originally published by Megadodo Publications, one of the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor Beta. The narrative of the various versions of the story is frequently punctuated with excerpts from the "Guide". The voice of the "Guide" (Peter Jones in the first two radio series and TV versions, later William Franklyn in the third, fourth and fifth radio series, and Stephen Fry in the movie version), also provides general narration.
The first radio series of six episodes (called "Fits" after the names of the sections of Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem "The Hunting of the Snark") was broadcast in 1978 on BBC Radio 4. Despite a low-key launch of the series (the first episode was broadcast at 10:30 pm on Wednesday, 8 March 1978), it received generally good reviews and a tremendous audience reaction for radio. A one-off episode (a "Christmas special") was broadcast later in the year. The BBC had a practice at the time of commissioning "Christmas Special" episodes for popular radio series, and while an early draft of this episode of "The Hitchhiker's Guide" had a Christmas-related plotline, it was decided to be "in slightly poor taste" and the episode as transmitted served as a bridge between the two series. This episode was released as part of the second radio series and, later, "The Secondary Phase" on cassettes and CDs. The Primary and Secondary Phases were aired, in a slightly edited version, in the United States on "NPR Playhouse".
The first series was repeated twice in 1978 alone and many more times in the next few years. This led to an LP re-recording, produced independently of the BBC for sale, and a further adaptation of the series as a book. A second radio series, which consisted of a further five episodes, and bringing the total number of episodes to 12, was broadcast in 1980.
The radio series (and the LP and TV versions) were narrated by comedy actor Peter Jones as The Book. Jones was cast after a three-month-long casting search and after at least three actors (including Michael Palin) turning down the role.
The series was also notable for its use of sound, being the first comedy series to be produced in stereo. Adams said that he wanted the programme's production to be comparable to that of a modern rock album. Much of the programme's budget was spent on sound effects, which were largely the work of Paddy Kingsland (for the pilot episode and the complete second series) at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Dick Mills and Harry Parker (for the remaining episodes (2–6) of the first series). The fact that they were at the forefront of modern radio production in 1978 and 1980 was reflected when the three new series of "Hitchhiker's" became some of the first radio shows to be mixed into four-channel Dolby Surround. This mix was also featured on DVD releases of the third radio series.
The theme tune used for the radio, television, LP and film versions is "Journey of the Sorcerer", an instrumental piece composed by Bernie Leadon and recorded by The Eagles on their 1975 album "One of These Nights". Only the transmitted radio series used the original recording; a sound-alike cover by Tim Souster was used for the LP and TV series, another arrangement by Joby Talbot was used for the 2005 film, and still another arrangement, this time by Philip Pope, was recorded to be released with the CDs of the last three radio series. Apparently, Adams chose this song for its futuristic-sounding nature, but also for the fact that it had a banjo in it, which, as Geoffrey Perkins recalls, Adams said would give an "on the road, hitch-hiking feel" to it.
The twelve episodes were released (in a slightly edited form, removing the Pink Floyd music and two other tunes "hummed" by Marvin when the team land on Magrathea) on CD and cassette in 1988, becoming the first CD release in the BBC Radio Collection. They were re-released in 1992, and at this time Adams suggested that they could retitle Fits the First to Sixth as "The Primary Phase" and Fits the Seventh to Twelfth as "The Secondary Phase" instead of just "the first series" and "the second series". It was at about this time that a "Tertiary Phase" was first discussed with Dirk Maggs, adapting "Life, the Universe and Everything", but this series would not be recorded for another ten years.
On 21 June 2004, the BBC announced in a press release that a new series of "Hitchhiker's" based on the third novel would be broadcast as part of its autumn schedule, produced by Above the Title Productions Ltd. The episodes were recorded in late 2003, but actual transmission was delayed while an agreement was reached with The Walt Disney Company over Internet re-broadcasts, as Disney had begun pre-production on the film. This was followed by news that further series would be produced based on the fourth and fifth novels.
The third series was broadcast in September and October 2004. The fourth and fifth were broadcast in May and June 2005, with the fifth series following immediately after the fourth. CD releases accompanied the transmission of the final episode in each series.
The adaptation of the third novel followed the book very closely, which caused major structural issues in meshing with the preceding radio series in comparison to the second novel. Because many events from the radio series were omitted from the second novel, and those that did occur happened in a different order, the two series split in completely different directions. The last two adaptations vary somewhat—some events in "Mostly Harmless" are now foreshadowed in the adaptation of "So Long and Thanks For All The Fish", while both include some additional material that builds on incidents in the third series to tie all five (and their divergent plotlines) together, most especially including the character Zaphod more prominently in the final chapters and addressing his altered reality to include the events of the Secondary Phase. While "Mostly Harmless" originally contained a rather bleak ending, Dirk Maggs created a different ending for the transmitted radio version, ending it on a much more upbeat note, reuniting the cast one last time.
The core cast for the third to fifth radio series remained the same, except for the replacement of Peter Jones by William Franklyn as the Book, and Richard Vernon by Richard Griffiths as Slartibartfast, since both had died. (Homage to Jones' iconic portrayal of the Book was paid twice: the gradual shift of voices to a "new" version in episode 13, launching the new productions, and a blend of Jones and Franklyn's voices at the end of the final episode, the first part of Maggs' alternative ending.) Sandra Dickinson, who played Trillian in the TV series, here played Tricia McMillan, an English-born, American-accented alternate-universe version of Trillian, while David Dixon, the television series' Ford Prefect, made a cameo appearance as the "Ecological Man". Jane Horrocks appeared in the new semi-regular role of Fenchurch, Arthur's girlfriend, and Samantha Béart joined in the final series as Arthur and Trillian's daughter, Random Dent. Also reprising their roles from the original radio series were Jonathan Pryce as Zarniwoop (here blended with a character from the final novel to become Zarniwoop Vann Harl), Rula Lenska as Lintilla and her clones (and also as the Voice of the Bird), and Roy Hudd as Milliways compere Max Quordlepleen, as well as the original radio series' announcer, John Marsh.
The series also featured guest appearances by such noted personalities as Joanna Lumley as the Sydney Opera House Woman, Jackie Mason as the East River Creature, Miriam Margolyes as the Smelly Photocopier Woman, BBC Radio cricket legends Henry Blofeld and Fred Trueman as themselves, June Whitfield as the Raffle Woman, Leslie Phillips as Hactar, Saeed Jaffrey as the Man on the Pole, Sir Patrick Moore as himself, and Christian Slater as Wonko the Sane. Finally, Adams himself played the role of Agrajag, a performance adapted from his book-on-tape reading of the third novel, and edited into the series created some time after the author's death.
The first of six episodes in a sixth series, the "Hexagonal Phase", was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 8 March 2018 and featured Professor Stephen Hawking introducing himself as the voice of "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Mk II" by saying: "I have been quite popular in my time. Some even read my books."
The novels are described as "a trilogy in five parts", having been described as a trilogy on the release of the third book, and then a "trilogy in four parts" on the release of the fourth book. The US edition of the fifth book was originally released with the legend "The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy" on the cover. Subsequent re-releases of the other novels bore the legend "The [first, second, third, fourth] book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy". In addition, the blurb on the fifth book describes it as "the book that gives a whole new meaning to the word 'trilogy.
The plots of the television and radio series are more or less the same as that of the first two novels, though some of the events occur in a different order and many of the details are changed. Much of parts five and six of the radio series were written by John Lloyd, but his material did not make it into the other versions of the story and is not included here. Many consider the books' version of events to be definitive because they are the most readily accessible and widely distributed version of the story. However, they are not the final version that Adams produced.
Before his death from a heart attack on 11 May 2001, Adams was considering writing a sixth novel in the Hitchhiker's series. He was working on a third Dirk Gently novel, under the working title "The Salmon of Doubt", but felt that the book was not working and abandoned it. In an interview, he said some of the ideas in the book might fit better in the Hitchhiker's series, and suggested he might rework those ideas into a sixth book in that series. He described "Mostly Harmless" as "a very bleak book" and said he "would love to finish "Hitchhiker" on a slightly more upbeat note". Adams also remarked that if he were to write a sixth instalment, he would at least start with all the characters in the same place. Eoin Colfer, who wrote the sixth book in the Hitchhiker's series in 2008–09, used this latter concept but none of the plot ideas from "The Salmon of Doubt".
The first book was adapted from the first four radio episodes (the Primary Phase), with Arthur being rescued from Earth's destruction by Ford, meeting Zaphod and Trillian, coming to the planet of Magrathea to discover the true purpose of Earth, and ending with the group preparing to go to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It was first published in 1979, initially in paperback, by Pan Books, after BBC Publishing had turned down the offer of publishing a novelization, an action they would later regret. The book reached number one on the book charts in only its second week, and sold over 250,000 copies within three months of its release. A hardback edition was published by Harmony Books, a division of Random House in the United States in October 1980, and the 1981 US paperback edition was promoted by the give-away of 3,000 free copies in the magazine "Rolling Stone" to build word of mouth. In 2005, Del Rey Books re-released the Hitchhiker series with new covers for the release of the 2005 movie. To date, it has sold over 14 million copies.
A photo-illustrated edition of the first novel appeared in 1994.
In "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" (published in 1980), Zaphod is separated from the others and finds he is part of a conspiracy to uncover who really runs the Universe. Zaphod meets Zarniwoop, a conspirator and editor for "The Guide", who knows where to find the secret ruler. Zaphod becomes briefly reunited with the others for a trip to Milliways, the restaurant of the title. Zaphod and Ford decide to steal a ship from there, which turns out to be a stunt ship pre-programmed to plunge into a star as a special effect in a stage show. Unable to change course, the main characters get Marvin to run the teleporter they find in the ship, which is working other than having no automatic control (someone must remain behind to operate it), and Marvin seemingly sacrifices himself. Zaphod and Trillian discover that the Universe is in the safe hands of a simple man living on a remote planet in a wooden shack with his cat.
Ford and Arthur, meanwhile, end up on a spacecraft full of the outcasts of the Golgafrinchan civilization. The ship crashes on prehistoric Earth; Ford and Arthur are stranded, and it becomes clear that the inept Golgafrinchans are the ancestors of modern humans, having displaced the Earth's indigenous hominids. This has disrupted the Earth's programming so that when Ford and Arthur manage to extract the final readout from Arthur's subconscious mind by pulling lettered tiles from a Scrabble set, it is "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?" Arthur then comments, "I've always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe."
The book was adapted from the remaining material in the radio series—covering from the fifth episode to the twelfth episode, although the ordering was greatly changed (in particular, the events of Fit the Sixth, with Ford and Arthur being stranded on pre-historic Earth, end the book, and their rescue in Fit the Seventh is deleted), and most of the Brontitall incident was omitted, instead of the Haggunenon sequence, co-written by John Loyd, the Disaster Area stunt ship was substituted—this having first been introduced in the LP version. Adams himself considered "Restaurant" to be his best novel of the five.
In "Life, the Universe and Everything" (published in 1982), Ford and Arthur travel through the space-time continuum from prehistoric Earth to Lord's Cricket Ground. There they run into Slartibartfast, who enlists their aid in preventing galactic war. Long ago, the people of Krikkit attempted to wipe out all life in the Universe, but they were stopped and imprisoned on their home planet; now they are poised to escape. With the help of Marvin, Zaphod, and Trillian, our heroes prevent the destruction of life in the Universe and go their separate ways.
This was the first Hitchhiker's book originally written as a book and not adapted from radio. Its story was based on a treatment Adams had written for a "Doctor Who" theatrical release, with the Doctor role being split between Slartibartfast (to begin with), and later Trillian and Arthur.
In 2004 it was adapted for radio as the Tertiary Phase of the radio series.
In "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish" (published in 1984), Arthur returns home to Earth, rather surprisingly since it was destroyed when he left. He meets and falls in love with a girl named Fenchurch, and discovers this Earth is a replacement provided by the dolphins in their Save the Humans campaign. Eventually, he rejoins Ford, who claims to have saved the Universe in the meantime, to hitch-hike one last time and see God's Final Message to His Creation. Along the way, they are joined by Marvin, the Paranoid Android, who, although 37 times older than the universe itself (what with time travel and all), has just enough power left in his failing body to read the message and feel better about it all before expiring.
This was the first "Hitchhiker's" novel which was not an adaptation of any previously written story or script. In 2005 it was adapted for radio as the Quandary Phase of the radio series.
Finally, in "Mostly Harmless" (published in 1992), Vogons take over "The Hitchhiker's Guide" (under the name of InfiniDim Enterprises), to finish, once and for all, the task of obliterating the Earth. After abruptly losing Fenchurch and travelling around the galaxy despondently, Arthur's spaceship crashes on the planet Lamuella, where he settles in happily as the official sandwich-maker for a small village of simple, peaceful people. Meanwhile, Ford Prefect breaks into "The Guide's" offices, gets himself an infinite expense account from the computer system, and then meets "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Mark II", an artificially intelligent, multi-dimensional guide with vast power and a hidden purpose. After he declines this dangerously powerful machine's aid (which he receives anyway), he sends it to Arthur Dent for safety ("Oh yes, whose?"—Arthur).
Trillian uses DNA that Arthur donated for travelling money to have a daughter, and when she goes to cover a war, she leaves her daughter Random Frequent Flyer Dent with Arthur. Random, a more than typically troubled teenager, steals "The Guide Mark II" and uses it to get to Earth. Arthur, Ford, Trillian, and Tricia McMillan (Trillian in this alternate universe) follow her to a crowded club, where an anguished Random becomes startled by a noise and inadvertently fires her gun at Arthur. The shot misses Arthur and kills a man (the ever-unfortunate Agrajag). Immediately afterwards, "The Guide Mark II" causes the removal of all possible Earths from probability. All of the main characters, save Zaphod, were on Earth at the time and are apparently killed, bringing a good deal of satisfaction to the Vogons.
In 2005 it was adapted for radio as the Quintessential Phase of the radio series, with the final episode first transmitted on 21 June 2005.
It was announced in September 2008 that Eoin Colfer, author of "Artemis Fowl," had been commissioned to write the sixth instalment entitled "And Another Thing..." with the support of Jane Belson, Adams's widow. The book was published by Penguin Books in the UK and Hyperion in the US in October 2009.
The story begins as death rays bear down on Earth, and the characters awaken from a virtual reality. Zaphod picks them up shortly before they are killed, but completely fails to escape the death beams. They are then saved by Bowerick Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged, whom they agree to help kill. Zaphod travels to Asgard to get Thor's help. In the meantime, the Vogons are heading to destroy a colony of people who also escaped Earth's destruction, on the planet Nano. Arthur, Wowbagger, Trillian and Random head to Nano to try to stop the Vogons, and on the journey, Wowbagger and Trillian fall in love, making Wowbagger question whether or not he wants to be killed. Zaphod arrives with Thor, who then signs up to be the planet's God. With Random's help, Thor almost kills Wowbagger. Wowbagger, who merely loses his immortality, then marries Trillian.
Thor then stops the first Vogon attack and apparently dies. Meanwhile, Constant Mown, son of Prostetnic Jeltz, convinces his father that the people on the planet are not citizens of Earth, but are, in fact, citizens of Nano, which means that it would be illegal to kill them. As the book draws to a close, Arthur is on his way to check out a possible university for Random, when, during a hyperspace jump, he is flung across alternate universes, has a brief encounter with Fenchurch, and ends up exactly where he would want to be. And then the Vogons turn up again.
In 2017 it was adapted for radio as the "Hexagonal Phase" of the radio series, with its premiere episode first transmitted on 8 March 2018 (exactly forty years, to the day, from the first episode of the first series, the Primary Phase).
Two omnibus editions were created by Douglas Adams to combine the Hitchhiker series novels and to "set the record straight". The stories came in so many different formats that Adams stated that every time he told it he would contradict himself. Therefore, he stated in the introduction of "The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide" that "anything I put down wrong here is, as far as I'm concerned, wrong for good." The two omnibus editions were "The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide, Complete and Unabridged" (published in 1987) and "The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, Complete and Unabridged" (published in 1997).
Published in 1987, this 624-page leatherbound omnibus edition contains "wrong for good" versions of the four "Hitchhiker" series novels at the time, and also includes one short story:
Published in 1997, this 832-page leatherbound final omnibus edition contains five "Hitchhiker" series novels and one short story:
Also appearing in "The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide", at the end of Adams's introduction, is a list of instructions on "How to Leave the Planet", providing a humorous explanation of how one might replicate Arthur and Ford's feat at the beginning of "Hitchhiker's".
The popularity of the radio series gave rise to a six-episode television series, directed and produced by Alan J. W. Bell, which first aired on BBC 2 in January and February 1981. It employed many of the actors from the radio series and was based mainly on the radio versions of Fits the First to Sixth. A second series was at one point planned, with a storyline, according to Alan Bell and Mark Wing-Davey that would have come from Adams's abandoned "Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen" project (instead of simply making a TV version of the second radio series). However, Adams got into disputes with the BBC (accounts differ: problems with budget, scripts, and having Alan Bell involved are all offered as causes), and the second series was never made. Elements of "Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen" were instead used in the third novel, "Life, the Universe and Everything".
The main cast was the same as the original radio series, except for David Dixon as Ford Prefect instead of McGivern, and Sandra Dickinson as Trillian instead of Sheridan.
A new television series for Hulu was announced in July 2019. Carlton Cuse was named as the showrunner alongside Jason Fuchs, who will also be writing for the show. The show will be produced by ABC Signature and Genre Arts. The series is set to premiere in 2021. Production will begin in the summer of 2020 and air on Fox in international markets. It is expected to run for multiple seasons.
Segments of several of the books were adapted as part of the BBC's "The Big Read" survey and programme, broadcast in late 2003. The film, directed by Deep Sehgal, starred Sanjeev Bhaskar as Arthur Dent, alongside Spencer Brown as Ford Prefect, Nigel Planer as the voice of Marvin, Stephen Hawking as the voice of Deep Thought, Patrick Moore as the voice of the Guide, Roger Lloyd-Pack as Slartibartfast, and Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish as Loonquawl and Phouchg.
After several years of setbacks and renewed efforts to start production and a quarter of a century after the first book was published, the big-screen adaptation of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" was finally shot. Pre-production began in 2003, filming began on 19 April 2004 and post-production began in early September 2004. Adams died during the film's production but had still helped with early screenplays and concepts introduced with the film, as well as a brief cameo in the film itself.
After a London premiere on 20 April 2005, it was released on 28 April in the UK and Australia, 29 April in the United States and Canada, and 29 July in South Africa. (A full list of release dates is available at the IMDb.) The movie stars Martin Freeman as Arthur, Mos Def as Ford, Sam Rockwell as President of the Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox and Zooey Deschanel as Trillian, with Alan Rickman providing the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android (and Warwick Davis acting in Marvin's costume), and Stephen Fry as the voice of the Guide/Narrator.
The plot of the film adaptation of "Hitchhiker's Guide" differs widely from that of the radio show, book and television series. The romantic triangle between Arthur, Zaphod, and Trillian is more prominent in the film; and visits to Vogsphere, the homeworld of the Vogons (which, in the books, was already abandoned), and Viltvodle VI are inserted. The film covers roughly events in the first four radio episodes, and ends with the characters en route to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, leaving the opportunity for a sequel open. A unique appearance is made by the Point-of-View Gun, a device specifically created by Adams himself for the movie.
Commercially the film was a modest success, taking $21 million in its opening weekend in the United States, and nearly £3.3 million in its opening weekend in the United Kingdom.
The film was released on DVD (Region 2, PAL) in the UK on 5 September 2005. Both a standard double-disc edition and a UK-exclusive numbered limited edition "Giftpack" were released on this date. The "Giftpack" edition includes a copy of the novel with a "movie tie-in" cover, and collectible prints from the film, packaged in a replica of the film's version of the "Hitchhiker's Guide" prop. A single-disc widescreen or full-screen edition (Region 1, NTSC) were made available in the United States and Canada on 13 September 2005. Single-disc releases in the Blu-ray format and UMD format for the PlayStation Portable were also released on the respective dates in these three countries.
There have been multiple professional and amateur stage adaptations of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Three early professional productions were staged in 1979 and 1980.
The first of these was performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, between 1 and 19 May 1979, starring Chris Langham as Arthur Dent (Langham later returned to "Hitchhiker's" as Prak in the final episode of 2004's Tertiary Phase) and Richard Hope as Ford Prefect. This show was adapted from the first series' scripts and was directed by Ken Campbell, who went on to perform a character in the final episode of the second radio series. The show ran 90 minutes, but had an audience limited to eighty people per night. Actors performed on a variety of ledges and platforms, and the audience was pushed around in a hovercar, 1/2000th of an inch above the floor. This was the first time that Zaphod was represented by having two actors in one large costume. The narration of "The Book" was split between two usherettes, an adaptation that has appeared in no other version of "H2G2". One of these usherettes, Cindy Oswin, went on to voice Trillian for the LP adaptation.
The second stage show was performed throughout Wales between 15 January and 23 February 1980. This was a production of Theatr Clwyd, and was directed by Jonathan Petherbridge. The company performed adaptations of complete radio episodes, at times doing two episodes in a night, and at other times doing all six episodes of the first series in single three-hour sessions. This adaptation was performed again at the Oxford Playhouse in December 1981, the Bristol Hippodrome, Plymouth's Theatre Royal in May–June 1982, the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, in July 1983 and La Boite in Brisbane, November 1983.
The third and least successful stage show was held at the Rainbow Theatre in London, in July 1980. This was the second production directed by Ken Campbell. The Rainbow Theatre had been adapted for stagings of rock operas in the 1970s, and both reference books mentioned in footnotes indicate that this, coupled with incidental music throughout the performance, caused some reviewers to label it as a "musical". This was the first adaptation for which Adams wrote the "Dish of the Day" sequence. The production ran for over three hours, and was widely panned for this, as well as for the music, laser effects, and the acting. Despite attempts to shorten the script, and make other changes, it closed three or four weeks early (accounts differ), and lost a lot of money. Despite the bad reviews, there were at least two stand-out performances: Michael Cule and David Learner both went on from this production to appearances in the TV adaptation.
In December 2011 a new stage production was announced to begin touring in June 2012. This included members of the original radio and TV casts such as Simon Jones, Geoff McGivern, Susan Sheridan, Mark Wing-Davey and Stephen Moore with VIP guests playing the role of the Book. It was produced in the form of a radio show which could be downloaded when the tour was completed. This production was based on the first four Fits in the first act, with the second act covering material from the rest of the series. The show also featured a band, who performed the songs "Share and Enjoy", the Krikkit song "Under the Ink Black Sky", Marvin's song "How I Hate The Night", and "Marvin", which was a minor hit in 1981.
The production featured a series of "VIP guests" as the voice of The Book including Billy Boyd, Phill Jupitus, Rory McGrath, Roger McGough, Jon Culshaw, Christopher Timothy, Andrew Sachs, John Challis, Hugh Dennis, John Lloyd, Terry Jones and Neil Gaiman. The tour started on 8 June 2012 at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow and continued through the summer until 21 July when the final performance was at Playhouse Theatre, Edinburgh. The production started touring again in September 2013, but the remaining dates of the tour were cancelled due to poor ticket sales.
The first four radio episodes were adapted for a double LP, also entitled "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (appended with "Part One" for the subsequent Canadian release), first by mail-order only, and later into stores. The double LP and its sequel were originally released by Original Records in the United Kingdom in 1979 and 1980, with the catalogue numbers ORA042 and ORA054 respectively. They were first released by Hannibal Records in 1982 (as HNBL 2301 and HNBL 1307, respectively) in the United States and Canada, and later re-released in a slightly abridged edition by Simon & Schuster's Audioworks in the mid-1980s. Both were produced by Geoffrey Perkins and featured cover artwork by Hipgnosis.
The script in the first double LP very closely follows the first four radio episodes, although further cuts had to be made for reasons of timing. Despite this, other lines of dialogue that were indicated as having been cut when the original scripts from the radio series were eventually published can be heard in the LP version. The Simon & Schuster cassettes omit the Veet Voojagig narration, the cheerleader's speech as Deep Thought concludes its seven-and-one-half-million-year programme, and a few other lines from both sides of the second LP of the set.
Most of the original cast returned, except for Susan Sheridan, who was recording a voice for the character of Princess Eilonwy in "The Black Cauldron" for Walt Disney Pictures. Cindy Oswin voiced Trillian on all three LPs in her place. Other casting changes in the first double LP included Stephen Moore taking on the additional role of the barman, and Valentine Dyall as the voice of Deep Thought. Adams's voice can be heard making the public address announcements on Magrathea.
Because of copyright issues, the music used during the first radio series was either replaced, or in the case of the title it was re-recorded in a new arrangement. Composer Tim Souster did both duties (with Paddy Kingsland contributing music as well), and Souster's version of the theme was the version also used for the eventual television series.
The sequel LP was released, singly, as "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Part Two: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" in the UK, and simply as "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" in the USA. The script here mostly follows Fit the Fifth and Fit the Sixth, but includes a song by the backup band in the restaurant ("Reg Nullify and his Cataclysmic Combo"), and changes the Haggunenon sequence to "Disaster Area".
As the result of a misunderstanding, the second record was released before being cut down in a final edit that Douglas Adams and Geoffrey Perkins had both intended to make. Perkins has said, "[I]t is far too long on each side. It's just a rough cut. [...] I felt it was flabby, and I wanted to speed it up." The Simon & Schuster Audioworks re-release of this LP was also abridged slightly from its original release. The scene with Ford Prefect and Hotblack Desiato's bodyguard is omitted.
Sales for the first double-LP release were primarily through mail order. Total sales reached over 60,000 units, with half of those being mail order, and the other half through retail outlets. This is in spite of the facts that Original Records' warehouse ordered and stocked more copies than they were actually selling for quite some time, and that Paul Neil Milne Johnstone complained about his name and then-current address being included in the recording. This was corrected for a later pressing of the double-LP by "cut[ting] up that part of the master tape and reassembl[ing] it in the wrong order". The second LP release ("Part Two") also only sold a total of 60,000 units in the UK. The distribution deals for the United States and Canada with Hannibal Records and Simon and Schuster were later negotiated by Douglas Adams and his agent, Ed Victor, after gaining full rights to the recordings from Original Records, which went bankrupt.
There have been three audiobook recordings of the novel. The first was an abridged edition (), recorded in the mid-1980s for the EMI label Music For Pleasure by Stephen Moore, best known for playing the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in the radio series and in the TV series. In 1990, Adams himself recorded an unabridged edition for Dove Audiobooks (), later re-released by New Millennium Audio () in the United States and available from BBC Audiobooks in the United Kingdom. Also by arrangement with Dove, ISIS Publishing Ltd produced a numbered exclusive edition signed by Douglas Adams () in 1994. To tie-in with the 2005 film, actor Stephen Fry, the film's voice of the Guide, recorded a second unabridged edition ().
In addition, unabridged versions of books 2-5 of the series were recorded by Martin Freeman for Random House Audio. Freeman plays Arthur in the 2005 film adaptation. Audiobooks 2-5 follow in order and include: "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" (); "Life, the Universe, and Everything" (); "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish" (); and "Mostly Harmless" ().
Sometime between 1982 and 1984 (accounts differ), the British company Supersoft published a text-based adventure game based on the book, which was released in versions for the Commodore PET and Commodore 64. One account states that there was a dispute as to whether valid permission for publication had been granted, and following legal action the game was withdrawn and all remaining copies were destroyed. Another account states that the programmer, Bob Chappell, rewrote the game to remove all "Hitchhiker's" references, and republished it as "Cosmic Capers".
Officially, the TV series was followed in 1984 by a best-selling "interactive fiction", or text-based adventure game, distributed by Infocom. It was designed by Adams and Infocom regular Steve Meretzky and was one of Infocom's most successful games. As with many Infocom games, the box contained a number of "feelies" including a "Don't panic" badge, some "pocket fluff", a pair of peril-sensitive sunglasses (made of cardboard), an order for the destruction of the Earth, a small, clear plastic bag containing "a microscopic battle fleet" and an order for the destruction of Arthur Dent's house (signed by Adams and Meretzky).
In September 2004, it was revived by the BBC on the "Hitchhiker's" section of the Radio 4 website for the initial broadcast of the Tertiary Phase, and is still available to play online. This new version uses an original Infocom datafile with a custom-written interpreter, by Sean Sollé, and Flash programming by Shimon Young, both of whom used to work at The Digital Village (TDV). The new version includes illustrations by Rod Lord, who was head of Pearce Animation Studios in 1980, which produced the guide graphics for the TV series. On 2 March 2005 it won the Interactive BAFTA in the "best online entertainment" category.
A sequel to the original Infocom game was never made. An all-new, fully graphical game was designed and developed by a joint venture between The Digital Village and PAN Interactive (no connection to Pan Books / Pan MacMillan). This new game was planned and developed between 1998 and 2002, but like the sequel to the Infocom game, it also never materialised. In April 2005, Starwave Mobile released two mobile games to accompany the release of the film adaptation. The first, developed by Atatio, was called "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Vogon Planet Destructor". It was a typical top-down shooter and except for the title had little to do with the actual story. The second game, developed by TKO Software, was a graphical adventure game named "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Adventure Game". Despite its name, the newly designed puzzles by TKO Software's Ireland studio were different from the Infocom ones, and the game followed the movie's script closely and included the new characters and places. The "Adventure Game" won the IGN's "Editors' Choice Award" in May 2005.
On 25 May 2011, Hothead Games announced they were working on a new edition of The Guide. Along with the announcement, Hothead Games launched a teaser web site made to look like an announcement from Megadodo Publications that The Guide will soon be available on Earth. It has since been revealed that they are developing an iOS app in the style of the fictional Guide.
In 1993, DC Comics, in conjunction with Byron Preiss Visual Publications, published a three-part comic book adaptation of the novelisation of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". This was followed up with three-part adaptations of "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" in 1994, and "Life, the Universe and Everything" in 1996. There was also a series of collectors' cards with art from and inspired by the comic adaptations of the first book, and a graphic novelisation (or "collected edition") combining the three individual comic books from 1993, itself released in May 1997. Douglas Adams was deeply opposed to the use of American English spellings and idioms in what he felt was a very British story, and had to be talked into it by the American publishers, although he remained very unhappy with the compromise.
The adaptations were scripted by John Carnell. Steve Leialoha provided the art for "Hitchhiker's" and the layouts for "Restaurant". Shepherd Hendrix did the finished art for "Restaurant". Neil Vokes and John Nyberg did the finished artwork for "Life", based on breakdowns by Paris Cullins (Book 1) and Christopher Schenck (Books 2–3). The miniseries were edited by Howard Zimmerman and Ken Grobe.
On Saturday 29 March 2014, Radio 4 broadcast an adaptation in front of a live audience, featuring many members of the original cast including Stephen Moore, Susan Sheridan, Mark Wing-Davey, Simon Jones and Geoff McGivern, with John Lloyd as the book.
The adaptation was adapted by Dirk Maggs primarily from Fit the First, including material from the books and later radio Fits as well as some new jokes. It formed part of Radio 4's "Character Invasion" series.
While Adams' writing in "The Hitchhiker's Guide" was mostly to poke fun at scientific advance, such as through the artificial personalities built into the work's robots, Adams had predicted some concepts that have since come to be reality. The Guide itself, described as a small book-sized object that held a great volume of information, predated computer laptops and is comparable to tablet computers. The idea of being able to instantaneously translate between any language, a function provided by the Babel Fish, has since become possible with several software products that work in near real-time.
Many merchandising and spin-off items (or "Hitch-Hikeriana") were produced in the early 1980s, including towels in different colours, all bearing the Guide entry for towels. Later runs of towels include those made for promotions by Pan Books, Touchstone Pictures / Disney for the 2005 movie, and different towels made for ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, the official "Hitchhiker's" Appreciation society. Other items that first appeared in the mid-1980s were T-shirts, including those made for Infocom (such as one bearing the legend "I got the Babel Fish" for successfully completing one of that game's most difficult puzzles), and a Disaster Area tour T-shirt. Other official items have included "Beeblebears" (teddy bears with an extra head and arm, named after "Hitchhiker's" character Zaphod Beeblebrox, sold by the official Appreciation Society), an assortment of pin-on buttons and a number of novelty singles. Many of the above items are displayed throughout the 2004 "25th Anniversary Illustrated Edition" of the novel, which used items from the personal collections of fans of the series.
Stephen Moore recorded two novelty singles in character as Marvin, the Paranoid Android: "Marvin"/"Metal Man" and "Reasons To Be Miserable"/"Marvin I Love You". The last song has appeared on a Dr. Demento compilation. Another single featured the re-recorded "Journey of the Sorcerer" (arranged by Tim Souster) backed with "Reg Nullify In Concert" by Reg Nullify, and "Only the End of the World Again" by Disaster Area (including Douglas Adams on bass guitar) . These discs have since become collector's items.
The 2005 movie also added quite a few collectibles, mostly through the National Entertainment Collectibles Association. These included three prop replicas of objects seen on the Vogon ship and homeworld (a mug, a pen and a stapler), sets of "action figures" with a height of either 3 or 6 inches (76 or 150 mm), a gun—based on a prop used by Marvin, the Paranoid Android, that shoots foam darts—a crystal cube, shot glasses, a ten-inch (254 mm) high version of Marvin with eyes that light up green, and "yarn doll" versions of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian, Marvin and Zaphod Beeblebrox. Also, various audio tracks were released to coincide with the movie, notably re-recordings of "Marvin" and "Reasons To Be Miserable", sung by Stephen Fry, along with some of the "Guide Entries", newly written material read in-character by Fry.
Celebrated on 25 May, Towel Day is a fan-created event in which they carry a towel with them throughout the day, in reference to the importance of towels as a tool of a galactic hitchhiker described in the work. The annual event was started in 2001 two weeks after Adams' death.
In the works, the number 42 is given as The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything by the computer Deep Thought. The absurdly simple answer to a complex philosophical question became a frequent reference in popular culture in homage to "The Hitchhiker's Guide", particularly within works of science fiction and in video games, such as in "Doctor Who", "Lost", "Star Trek" and "The X-Files".
Two asteroids, "18610 Arthurdent"
and "25924 Douglasadams" were named after Arthur Dent and Douglas Adams, as both had been discovered in 2001 shortly after Adams' death. The fish species "Bidenichthys beeblebroxi" and moth species "Erechthias beeblebroxi" were both named after the character of Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Radiohead's song "Paranoid Android" was named after the character of Marvin the Paranoid Android. The band's singer Thom Yorke used the character's name jokingly, as the song was not about depression, but Yorke knew many of his fans felt that he should seem to be depressed. The album "OK Computer" which "Paranoid Android" appears on is also taken from "The Hitchhiker's Guide", referencing how Zaphod would address the Heart of Gold's onboard computer Eddie, and was selected by the band after listening to the radio plays while traveling on tour.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has stated that "The Hitchhikers's Guide" is one of his favorite works, and his "favorite philosopher is Douglas Adams". Musk said the attitude that Adams presented through "The Hitchhiker's Guide" had influenced the vision behind both SpaceX and Tesla Motors. When Musk launched his Tesla Roadster into an elliptical heliocentric orbit as part of the initial test launch of the Falcon Heavy, he had a copy of Douglas Adams' novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in the glovebox, along with references to the book in the form of a towel and a sign on the dashboard that reads "DON'T PANIC!", as a nod to the Hitchhiker's Guide.
A short story by Adams, "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe", first appeared in 1986, in "The Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book", a special large-print compilation of different stories and pictures that raised money for the then-new Comic Relief charity in the UK. The story also appears in some of the omnibus editions of the trilogy, and in "The Salmon of Doubt". There are two versions of this story, one of which is slightly more explicit in its political commentary.
A novel, "", written by Terry Jones, is based on Adams's computer game of the same name, "Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic", which in turn is based on an idea from "Life, the Universe and Everything". The idea concerns a luxury passenger starship that suffers "sudden and gratuitous total existence failure" on its maiden voyage.
Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, a character from "Life, the Universe and Everything", also appears in a short story by Adams titled "The Private Life of Genghis Khan" which appears in some early editions of "The Salmon of Doubt".
Douglas Adams and Geoffrey Perkins collaborated on "", first published in the United Kingdom and United States in 1985. A tenth-anniversary (of the script book publication) edition was printed in 1995, and a twenty-fifth-anniversary (of the first radio series broadcast) edition was printed in 2003.
The 2004 series was produced by Above The Title Productions and the scripts were published in July 2005, with production notes for each episode. This second radio script book is entitled "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Scripts: The Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases". Douglas Adams gets the primary writer's credit (as he wrote the original novels), and there is a foreword by Simon Jones, introductions by the producer and the director, and other introductory notes from other members of the cast.
Notes
Bibliography
Official sites
Other links | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31353 |
The Art of Computer Programming
The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP) is a comprehensive monograph written by computer scientist Donald Knuth that covers many kinds of programming algorithms and their analysis.
Knuth began the project, originally conceived as a single book with twelve chapters, in 1962. The first three volumes of what was then expected to be a seven-volume set were published in 1968, 1969, and 1973. Work began in earnest on Volume 4 in 1973, but was suspended in 1977 for work on typesetting. Writing of the final copy of Volume 4A began in longhand in 2001, and the first online pre-fascicle, 2A, appeared later in 2001. The first published installment of Volume 4 appeared in paperback as Fascicle 2 in 2005.
The hardback Volume 4A, combining Volume 4, Fascicles 0–4, was published in 2011. Volume 4, Fascicle 6 ("Satisfiability") was released in December 2015; Volume 4, Fascicle 5 ("Mathematical Preliminaries Redux; Backtracking; Dancing Links") was released in November 2019.
Fascicles 5 and 6 are expected to comprise the first two-thirds of Volume 4B. Knuth has not announced any estimated date for release of Volume 4B, although his method used for Volume 4A is to release the hardback volume sometime after release of the paperback fascicles that comprise it. Near-term publisher estimates put the release date at May or June of 2019, which proved to be incorrect.
After winning a Westinghouse Talent Search scholarship, Knuth enrolled at the Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University), where his performance was so outstanding that the faculty voted to award him a master of science upon his completion of the baccalaureate degree. During his summer vacations, Knuth was hired by the Burroughs Corporation to write compilers, earning more in his summer months than full professors did for an entire year. Such exploits made Knuth a topic of discussion among the mathematics department, which included Richard S. Varga.
In January 1962, when he was a graduate student in the mathematics department at Caltech, Knuth was approached by Addison-Wesley to write a book about compiler design, and he proposed a larger scope. He came up with a list of 12 chapter titles the same day. In the summer of 1962 he worked on a FORTRAN compiler for UNIVAC. During this time, he also came up with a mathematical analysis of linear probing, which convinced him to present the material with a quantitative approach. After receiving his PhD in June 1963, he began working on his manuscript, of which he finished his first draft in June 1965, at hand-written pages. He had assumed that about five hand-written pages would translate into one printed page, but his publisher said instead that about hand-written pages translated to one printed page. This meant he had approximately printed pages of material, which closely matches the size of the first three published volumes. The publisher was nervous about accepting such a project from a graduate student. At this point, Knuth received support from Richard S. Varga, who was the scientific adviser to the publisher. Varga was visiting Olga Taussky-Todd and John Todd at Caltech. With Varga's enthusiastic endorsement, the publisher accepted Knuth's expanded plans. In its expanded version, the book would be published in seven volumes, each with just one or two chapters. Due to the growth in the material, the plan for Volume 4 has since expanded to include Volumes 4A, 4B, 4C, 4D, and possibly more.
In 1976, Knuth prepared a second edition of Volume 2, requiring it to be typeset again, but the style of type used in the first edition (called hot type) was no longer available. In 1977, he decided to spend some time creating something more suitable. Eight years later, he returned with TEX, which is currently used for all volumes.
The offer of a so-called Knuth reward check worth "one hexadecimal dollar" (100HEX base 16 cents, in decimal, is $2.56) for any errors found, and the correction of these errors in subsequent printings, has contributed to the highly polished and still-authoritative nature of the work, long after its first publication. Another characteristic of the volumes is the variation in the difficulty of the exercises. The level of difficulty ranges from "warm-up" exercises to unsolved research problems.
Knuth's dedication reads:
This series of books is affectionately dedicatedto the Type 650 computer once installed atCase Institute of Technology,with whom I have spent many pleasant evenings.
All examples in the books use a language called "MIX assembly language", which runs on the hypothetical MIX computer. Currently, the MIX computer is being replaced by the MMIX computer, which is a RISC version. Software such as GNU MDK exists to provide emulation of the MIX architecture. Knuth considers the use of assembly language necessary for the speed and memory usage of algorithms to be judged.
Knuth was awarded the 1974 Turing Award "for his major contributions to the analysis of algorithms […], and in particular for his contributions to the 'art of computer programming' through his well-known books in a continuous series by this title." "American Scientist" has included this work among "100 or so Books that shaped a Century of Science", referring to the twentieth century, and within the computer science community it is regarded as the first and still the best comprehensive treatment of its subject. Covers of the third edition of Volume 1 quote Bill Gates as saying, "If you think you're a really good programmer… read (Knuth's) "Art of Computer Programming"… You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing." "The New York Times" referred to it as "the profession's defining treatise".
", estimated for release in 2025"
These are the current editions in order by volume number:
These volumes were superseded by newer editions and are in order by date.
Volume 4 fascicles 0–4 were revised and published as Volume 4A:
Volume 4 fascicles 5–6 will become part of Volume 4B:
Volume 4 pre-fascicles 5A, 5B, and 5C were revised and published as fascicle 5.
Volume 4 pre-fascicle 6A was revised and published as fascicle 6.
Notes
Citations
Sources | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31358 |
Tapas
A tapa () is an appetizer or snack in Spanish cuisine and translates to small portion of any kind of Spanish cuisine.
Tapas may be cold (such as mixed olives and cheese) or hot (such as "chopitos", which are battered, fried baby squid).
In some bars and restaurants in Spain and across the globe, tapas have evolved into a more sophisticated cuisine. Tapas can be combined to make a full meal. In some Central American countries, such snacks are known as "bocas". In parts of Mexico, similar dishes are called "botanas".
The word "tapas" is derived from the Spanish verb "tapar", "to cover", a cognate of the English "top".
In pre-19th-century Spain tapas were served by "posadas", "albergues" or "bodegas", offering meals and rooms for travellers. Since few innkeepers could write and few travellers read, inns offered their guests a sample of the dishes available, on a "tapa" (the word for pot cover in Spanish).
According to "The Joy of Cooking", the original tapas were thin slices of bread or meat which sherry drinkers in Andalusian taverns used to cover their glasses between sips. This was a practical measure meant to prevent fruit flies from hovering over the sweet sherry (see below for more explanations). The meat used to cover the sherry was normally ham or chorizo, which are both very salty and activate thirst. Because of this, bartenders and restaurant owners created a variety of snacks to serve with sherry, thus increasing their alcohol sales. The tapas eventually became as important as the sherry.
Tapas have evolved through Spanish history by incorporating new ingredients and influences. Most of the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by the Romans, who introduced more extensive cultivation of the olive following their invasion of Spain in 212 B.C. and irrigation methods. The discovery of the New World brought the introduction of tomatoes, sweet and chili peppers, maize (corn), and potatoes, which were readily accepted and easily grown in Spain's microclimates.
It has also been claimed that tapas originated in the south of Spain during the time of the Spanish Inquisition as a means of publicly identifying "conversos", Jews who had converted to Christianity. Since tapas often consist in part of ham or other non-kosher foodstuffs, the reluctance of the "conversos" to eat whatever tapas dish was offered to them could be taken as a tacit admission that they had not abandoned their Jewish faith, thus tapas were a tool of the Spanish Inquisition.
There are many tapas competitions throughout Spain, but there is only one National Tapas competition, which is celebrated every year in November. Since 2008, the City of Valladolid and the International School of Culinary Arts have celebrated the International Tapas Competition for Culinary Schools. Various schools from around the world come to Spain annually to compete for the best tapa concept.
Though the primary meaning of "tapa" is "cover" or "lid", it has in Spain also become a term for this style of food. The origin of this new meaning is uncertain but there are several theories:
In Spain, dinner is usually served between 9 and 11 p.m. (sometimes as late as midnight), leaving significant time between work and dinner. Therefore, Spaniards often go "bar hopping" () and eat tapas in the time between finishing work and having dinner. Since lunch is usually served between 1 and 4 p.m., another common time for tapas is weekend days around noon as a means of socializing before proper lunch at home.
In origin, a tapa was a free portion of food, generally small, served with any drink ordered. In Spain, tapas are traditional in Andalusia, Murcia, León, Extremadura, and Ciudad Real.
It is very common for a bar or a small local restaurant to have eight to 12 different kinds of tapas in warming trays with glass partitions covering the food. They are often very strongly flavored with garlic, chilies or paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, saffron and sometimes in plentiful amounts of olive oil. Often, one or more of the choices is seafood ("mariscos"), often including anchovies, sardines or mackerel in olive oil, squid or others in a tomato-based sauce, sometimes with the addition of red or green peppers or other seasonings. It is rare to see a tapas selection not include one or more types of olives, such as Manzanilla (olive) or Arbequina olives. One or more types of bread are usually available to eat with any of the sauce-based tapas.
In Andalusia and certain places in Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha, Castile and León, Asturias, and Extremadura, when one goes to a bar and orders a drink, often a tapa will be served with it free. As a drink, it is usual to ask for a "caña" (small beer), a "chato" (glass of wine) or a "mosto" (grape juice). In several cities, entire zones are dedicated to tapas bars, each one serving its own unique dish. In León, one can find the Barrio Húmedo, in Logroño "Calle Laurel" and in Burgos "Calle de la Sombrerería" and "Calle de San Lorenzo".
Sometimes, especially in northern Spain, they are also called "pinchos" ("pintxos" in Basque) in Asturias, in Navarre, in La Rioja (Spain), the Basque Country, Cantabria and in some provinces, such as Salamanca, because many of them have a "pincho" or toothpick through them. The toothpick is used to keep whatever the snack is made of from falling off the slice of bread and to keep track of the number of tapas the customer has eaten. Differently priced tapas have different shapes or have toothpicks of different sizes. The price of a single tapa ranges from one to two euros. Another name for them is "banderillas" (diminutive of "bandera" "flag"), in part because some of them resemble the colorful spears used in bullfighting.
Tapas can be "upgraded" to bigger portions, equivalent to half a dish ("media ración") or a whole one ("ración"). This is generally more economical when tapas are being ordered by more than one person. The portions are usually shared by diners, and a meal made up of "raciones" resembles a Chinese "dim sum", Korean "banchan" or Middle Eastern "mezze".
The term "tapas" narrowly refers to a type of Spanish cuisine. More broadly, a similar format of dining is referred to as “small plates”. Such dishes are traditionally common in many parts of the world, and have become increasingly popular in the English-speaking world since about 2000, particularly under the influence of Spanish tapas.
Upmarket tapas restaurants and tapas bars are common in many cities of the United States, Mexico, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. As with any cuisine exported from its original country, there can often be significant differences between the original Spanish dishes and the dishes as they are served abroad.
In Mexico, there are not many tapas bars. However, the "cantinas botaneras" come close to the Mexican version of a tapas bar, but they operate on a very different business model. The appetizers ("botanas") keep coming as long as the patron keeps ordering beer, liquor or mixed drinks. The more the patron drinks, the more they eat. These establishments, some over a hundred years old, such as La Opera, are particularly popular around the Centro Histórico in Mexico City, but there are similar cantinas farther out in other regions of the city (as in Coyoacán) and its metropolitan area, or even in other cities like Guadalajara, Jalisco and Xalapa, Veracruz.
Due the strong Spanish influence in the Philippines which was for 333 years a colony of Spain known as the Spanish East Indies. Tapas cuisine is usually served tapas-style to accompany liquor or beer. It is known locally as "Pica-Pica", meaning finger food among the middle and upper class markets; or the Tagalog pulutan term used by the masses which literally means to pick up.
"Picada" is a type of tapas eaten in Argentina and Uruguay, usually involving only cold dishes, such as olives, ham, salami, mortadella, bologna, different types of cheese, marinated eggplants and red pimentos, sardines, nuts, corn puffs, fried wheat flour sticks, potato chips, and sliced baguette. It may also include hot dishes such as french fries, pizza or milanesa.
() or () are served in the bars of Brazil and typical as tapas-like side dishes to accompany beer or other alcoholic drinks. The better bars tend to have a greater variety, and rarer, more traditional, dishes (using, for example, lamb or goat meat, which are relatively uncommon in the diet of urbanites in southern Brazil).
People from the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, which had the most Portuguese and the second-most Spanish immigration in Brazil, are among those who are most proud of their bar culture as a symbol of the city's nightlife, but bars that serve a variety of tapas-like side dishes are common in all state capitals and cities with more than 700,000 inhabitants.
Many tapas typical of Spanish cuisine that are rarer dishes in Portugal are more easily found in Brazil, due to the presence of the cultural heritage of the Spanish Brazilians as a result of immigration.
"Cicchetti" are small tapas-like dishes served in cicchetti bars in Venice, Italy. Venetians typically eat "cicchetti" for lunch or as late-afternoon snacks.
In Korea, drinking establishments often serve "anju" (안주) of various types, including meat, seafood, and vegetables. In Japan, "izakaya" are drinking establishments that serve accompaniments similar to tapas. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31359 |
Toledo, Spain
Toledo (, , ) is a city and municipality located in central Spain; it is the capital of the province of Toledo in the autonomous community of Castile–La Mancha. Toledo was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986 for its extensive monumental and cultural heritage.
Toledo is known as the "Imperial City" because it was the main venue of the court of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in Spain, and as the "City of the Three Cultures" for the cultural influences of Christians, Muslims, and Jews reflected in its history. It was the capital from 542 to 725 AD of the ancient Visigothic kingdom, which followed the fall of the Roman Empire, and the location of historic events such as the Visigothic Councils of Toledo. The city has a grand Gothic Cathedral, the "Catedral Primada de España" (The Primate Cathedral of Spain), and a long history in the production of bladed weapons, which are now common souvenirs of the city.
People who were born or have lived in Toledo include Brunhilda of Austrasia, Al-Zarqali, Garcilaso de la Vega, Eleanor of Toledo, Alfonso X, Israeli ben Joseph, Halevi, and El Greco. , the city had a population of 83,226 and an area of .
The town was granted arms in the 16th century, which by special royal privilege was based on the royal of arms of Spain.
Toledo (Latin: "Toletum") is mentioned by the Roman historian Livy (ca. 59 BC – 17 AD) as "urbs parva, sed loco munita" ("a small city, but fortified by location"). Roman general Marcus Fulvius Nobilior fought a battle near the city in 193 BC against a confederation of Celtic tribes including the Vaccaei, Vettones, and Celtiberi, defeating them and capturing a king called Hilermus. At that time, Toletum was a city of the Carpetani tribe, and part of the region of Carpetania. It was incorporated into the Roman Empire as a "civitas stipendiaria", that is, a tributary city of non-citizens, and by Flavian times it had achieved the status of municipium. With this status, city officials, even of Carpetani origin, obtained Roman citizenship for public service, and the forms of Roman law and politics were increasingly adopted. At approximately this time, a Roman circus, city walls, public baths, and a municipal water supply and storage system were constructed in Toletum.
The Roman circus in Toledo was one of the largest in Hispania, at long and wide, with a track dimension of long and wide. Chariot races were held on special holidays and were also commissioned by private citizens to celebrate career achievements. A fragmentary stone inscription records circus games paid for by a citizen of unknown name to celebrate his achieving the sevirate, a kind of priesthood conferring high status. Archaeologists have also identified portions of a special seat of the sort used by the city elites to attend circus games, called a "sella curulis". The circus could hold up to 15000 spectators.
During Roman times, Toledo was never a provincial capital nor a conventus iuridicus, but it started to gain importance in late antiquity. There are indications that large private houses ("domus") within the city walls were enlarged, while several large villas were built north of the city through the third and fourth centuries. Games were held in the circus into the late fourth and early fifth centuries C.E., also an indication of active city life and ongoing patronage by wealthy elites. A church council was held in Toledo in the year 400 to discuss the conflict with Priscillianism. A second council of Toledo was held in 527. The Visigothic king Theudis was in Toledo in 546, where he promulgated a law. This is strong though not certain evidence that Toledo was the chief residence for Theudis. King Athanagild died in Toledo, probably in 568. Although Theudis and Athangild based themselves in Toledo, Toledo was not yet the capital city of the Iberian peninsula, as Theudis and Athangild's power was limited in extent, the Suevi ruling Galicia and local elites dominating Lusitania, Betica, and Cantabria. This changed with Liuvigild (Leovigild), who brought the peninsula under his control. The Visigoths ruled from Toledo until the Moors conquered the Iberian peninsula in the early years of 8th century (711–719).
Today in the historic center basements, passages, wells, baths and ancient water pipes are preserved that since Roman times have been used in the city.
A series of church councils was held in Toledo under the Visigoths. A synod of Arian bishops was held in 580 to discuss theological reconciliation with Nicene Christianity. Liuvigild's successor, Reccared, hosted the Third Council of Toledo, at which the Visigothic kings abandoned Arianism and reconciled with the existing Hispano-Roman episcopate. A synod held in 610 transferred the metropolitanate of the old province of Carthaginensis from Cartagena to Toledo. At that time, Cartagena was ruled by the Byzantines, and this move ensured a closer relation between the bishops of Spain and the Visigothic kings. King Sisebut forced Jews in the Visigothic kingdom to convert to Christianity; this act was criticized and efforts were made to reverse it at the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633. The Fifth and Sixth Councils of Toledo placed church sanctions on anyone who would challenge the Visigothic kings. The Seventh Council of Toledo instituted a requirement that all bishops in the area of a royal city, that is, of Toledo, must reside for one month per year in Toledo. This was a stage in "the elevation of Toledo as the primatial see of the whole church of the Visgothic kingdom". In addition, the seventh council declared that any clergy fleeing the kingdom, assisting conspirators against the king, or aiding conspirators, would be excommunicated and no one should remove this sentence. The ban on lifting these sentences of excommunication was lifted at the Eighth Council of Toledo in 653, at which, for the first time, decisions were signed by palace officials as well as bishops.
The eighth council of Toledo took measures that enhanced Toledo's significance as the center of royal power in the Iberian peninsula. The council declared that the election of a new king following the death of the old one should only take place in the royal city, or wherever the old king died. In practice this handed the power to choose kings to only such palace officials and military commanders who were in regular attendance on the king. The decision also took king-making power away from the bishops, who would be in their own sees and would not have time to come together to attend the royal election. The decision did allow the bishop of Toledo, alone among bishops, to be involved in decisions concerning the royal Visigothic succession. The ninth and tenth councils were held in rapid succession in 655 and 656.
When Reccesuinth died in 672 at his villa in Gerticos, his successor Wamba was elected on the spot, then went to Toledo to be anointed king by the bishop of Toledo, according to the procedures laid out in prior church councils. In 673, Wamba defeated a rebel duke named Paul, and held his victory parade in Toledo. The parade included ritual humiliation and scalping of the defeated Paul. Wamba carried out renovation works in Toledo in 674–675, marking these with inscriptions above the city gates that are no longer extant but were recorded in the eighth century. The Eleventh Council of Toledo was held in 675 under king Wamba. Wamba weakened the power of the bishop of Toledo by creating a new bishopric outside Toledo at the church of Saints Peter and Paul. This was one of the main churches of Toledo and was the church where Wamba was anointed king, and the church from which Visigothic kings departed for war after special ceremonies in which they were presented with a relic of the True Cross. By creating a new bishopric there, Wamba removed power over royal succession from the bishop of Toledo and granted it to the new bishop. The Twelfth Council of Toledo was held in 681 after Wamba's removal from office. Convinced that he was dying, Wamba had accepted a state of penitence that according to the decision of a previous church council, made him ineligible to remain king. The Twelfth Council, led by newly installed bishop Julian confirmed the validity of Wamba's removal from office and his succession by Ervig. The Twelfth Council eliminated the new bishopric that Wamba had created and returned the powers over succession to the bishop of Toledo.
The Twelfth Council of Toledo approved 28 laws against the Jews. Julian of Toledo, despite a Jewish origin, was strongly anti-Semitic as reflected in his writings and activities. The leading Jews of Toledo were assembled in the church of Saint Mary on January 27, 681, where the new laws were read out to them.
The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Councils of Toledo were held in 683, 684, and 688. The Thirteenth Council restored property and legal rights to those who had rebelled against King Wamba in 673. The Thirteenth Council also approved laws protecting the king's family after the king's death. In 687, Ervig took the penitent state before dying, and the kingship passed to Egica, who was anointed king in Toledo on November 24. In 688, the Fifteenth Council lifted the ban on taking property from the families of former kings, whereupon Egica was able to plunder Ervig's family properties.
In the late seventh century, Toledo became a main center of literacy and writing in the Iberian peninsula. Toledo's development as a center of learning was influenced by Isidore of Seville, an author and advocate of literacy who attended several church councils in Toledo. King Chindasuinth had a royal library in Toledo, and at least one count called Laurentius had a private library. Sometime before 651, Chindasuinth sent the bishop of Zaragoza, Taio, to Rome to obtain books that were not available in Toledo. Taio obtained, at least, parts of pope Gregory's "Moralia". The library also contained a copy of a Hexameron by Dracontius, which Chindasuinth liked so much that he commissioned Eugenius II to revise it by adding a new part dealing with the seventh day of creation. Chindasuinth issued laws that were gathered together in a book called Liber Iudiciorum by his successor Reccesuinth in 654; this book was revised twice, widely copied, and was an important influence on medieval
Spanish law. Three bishops of Toledo wrote works that were widely copied and disseminated in western Europe and parts of which survive to this day: Eugenius II, Ildefonsus, and Julian. "In intellectual terms the leading Spanish churchmen of the seventh century had no equals before the appearance of Bede."
In 693, the Sixteenth Council of Toledo condemned Sisebert, Julian's successor as bishop of Toledo, for having rebelled against King Egica in alliance with Liuvigoto, the widow of king Ervig. A rebel king called Suniefred seized power in Toledo briefly at about this time. Whether or not Sisebert's and Suniefred's rebellions were the same or separate is unknown. Suniefred is known only from having minted coins in Toledo during what should have been Egica's reign. The Seventeenth Council of Toledo was held in 694. The Eighteenth Council of Toledo, the last one, took place shortly after Egica's death around 702 or 703.
By the end of the seventh century the bishop of Toledo was the leader of the Spanish bishops, a situation unusual in Europe: "The metropolitan bishops of Toledo had achieved by the last quarter of the seventh century an authority and a primacy that was unique in Western Europe. Not even the pope could count on such support from neighbouring metropolitans." Toledo "had been matched by no other city in western Europe outside Italy as the governmental and symbolic center of a powerful monarchy". Toledo had "emerged from relative obscurity to become the permanent governmental centre of the Visigothic monarchy; a true capital, whose only equivalent in western Europe was to be Lombard Pavia".
When Wittiza died around 710, Ruderic became Visigothic king in Toledo, but the kingdom was split, as a rival king Achila ruled Tarraconensis and Narbonensis. Meanwhile, Arabic and Berber troops under Musa ibn Nusayr had conquered Tangiers and Ceuta between 705 and 710, and commenced raids into the Visigothic kingdom in 711. Ruderic led an army to confront the raiders. He was defeated and killed in battle, apparently after being betrayed by Visigothic nobles who wished to replace him as king and did not consider the Arabs and Berbers a serious threat. The commander of the invading forces was Tariq bin Ziyad, a Luwata Berber freedman in the service of governor Musa. It is possible that a king called Oppa ruled in Toledo between Ruderic's death and the fall of Toledo. Tariq, seizing the opportunity presented by the death of Ruderic and the internal divisions of the Visigothic nobles, captured Toledo, in 711 or 712. Governor Musa disembarked in Cádiz and proceeded to Toledo, where he executed numerous Visigothic nobles, thus destroying much of the Visigothic power structure. Collins suggests that the Visigothic emphasis on Toledo as the center of royal ceremony became a weakness. Since the king was chosen in or around Toledo, by nobles based in Toledo, and had to be anointed king by the bishop of Toledo in a church in Toledo, when Tariq captured Toledo and executed the Visigothic nobles, having already killed the king, there was no way for the Visigoths to select a legitimate king.
Soon after the conquest, Musa and Tariq returned to Damascus. The Arab centre of administration was placed first in Seville, then moved to Córdoba. With most of the rest of the Iberian peninsula, Toledo was ruled from Córdoba by the governor of Al-Andalus, under the ultimate notional command of the Umayyad Caliph in Damascus. Arab conquerors had often replaced former capital cities with new ones to mark the change in political power, and they did so here: "Toledo suffered a period of profound decline throughout much of the earlier centuries of Arab dominance in the peninsula." The invaders were ethnically diverse, and available evidence suggests that in the area of Toledo, Berber settlement predominated over Arab.
In 742 the Berbers in Al-Andalus rebelled against the Arab Omeyyad governors. They took control of the north and marched south, laying siege to Toledo. After a siege of one month the Berber troops were defeated outside Toledo by troops sent from Cordoba by the governor Abd al-Malik ibn Katan and commanded by the governor's son. However, while Ibn Katan's troops were engaged with the Berbers, his Arab allies betrayed and killed him and took over Cordoba. After the Arabs' first leader, Talama ibn Salama, died, Yusuf al-Fihri became ruler of Al-Andalus. The Omeyyad dynasty in Damascus collapsed and Yusuf ruled independently with the support of his Syrian Arab forces. The Qays Arab commander As-Sumayl was made governor of Toledo under Yusuf around 753.
There is evidence that Toledo retained its importance as a literary and ecclesiastical centre into the middle 700s, in the Chronicle of 754, the life of Saint Ildefonsus by Cixila, and ecclesiastical letters sent from Toledo. The eighth century bishop of Toledo, Cixila, wrote a life of Saint Ildefonsus of Toledo, probably before 737. This life of Ildefonsus emphasised two episodes in the life of the bishop of Toledo. In the first episode the covering of the tomb of Saint Leocadia levitated while Ildefonsus was saying mass, with king Reccesuinth present. In the second episode Mary appears to Ildefonsus and Reccesuinth. These episodes are said to have resulted from Ildefonsus' devotion to Saint Leocadia, patroness saint of Toledo. Collins suggests that Cixila's life of Ildefonsus helped maintain Ildefonsus' appeal and helped the church in Toledo to retain some of its authority among Christian churches in the Iberian peninsula.
An archdeacon in Toledo called Evantius, who was active around 720 and died in 737, wrote a letter to address the existence of judaizing tendencies among the Christians of Zaragoza, specifically the belief that there are unclean forms of meat and the literal interpretation of Deuteronomic law. A deacon and cantor from Toledo called Peter wrote a second letter, to Seville, in about the year 750, to explain that they were celebrating Easter and a September liturgical fast incorrectly, again confusing them with Jewish feasts celebrated at the same time. These letters show that some of the primacy of the church of Toledo within the Iberian peninsula still existed in the 700s: "Not only were its clerics still well enough equipped in intellectual terms to provide authoritative guidance on a wide range of ecclesiastical discipline and doctrine, but this was also actively sought."
There is a strong possibility that the Chronicle of 754 was written in Toledo (though scholars have also proposed Cordoba and Guadix) based on the information available to the chronicler. The chronicler showed awareness of the Historia Gothorum, the Etymologiae, and the chronicle of Isidore of Seville, the work of Braulio of Zaragoza, the acts of the councils of Toledo, De Perpetua Virginitate by Ildefonsus, and De Comprobatione Sextae Aetatis and Historia Wambae by Julian of Toledo, all works that would have existed in the Visigothic libraries of seventh century Toledo and whose existence together "makes more sense in a Toledan context than in any other".
In 756 Abd ar-Rahman, a descendant of the fallen Omeyyad caliphs, came to Al-Andalus and initiated a revolt against Yusuf. He defeated Yusuf and forced him to reside in Cordoba, but Yusuf broke the agreement and raised a Berber army to fight Abd ar-Rahman. In this conflict, Toledo was held against Abd ar-Rahman by Yusuf's cousin Hisham ibn Urwa. Yusuf attempted to march on Seville, but was defeated and instead attempted to reach his cousin in Toledo. He was either killed on his way to Toledo, or he reached Toledo and held out there for as many as two or three years before being betrayed and killed by his own people. Whether or not Yusuf himself held out in Toledo, Hisham ibn Urwa did hold power in Toledo for several years, resisting the authority of Abd ar-Rahman. In 761 Hisham is reported as again being in rebellion in Toledo against Abd ar-Rahman. Abd ar-Rahman failed to take Toledo by force and instead signed a treaty allowing Hisham to remain in control of Toledo, but giving one of his sons as hostage to Abd ar-Rahman. Hisham continued to defy Abd ar-Rahman, who had Hisham's son executed and the head catapulted over the city walls into Toledo. Abd ar-Rahman attacked Toledo in 764, winning only when some of Hisham's own people betrayed him and turned him over to Abd ar-Rahman and his freedman Badr. Ibn al-Athir states that towards the end of Abd ar-Rahman's reign, a governor of Toledo raided in force into the Kingdom of Asturias during the reign of Mauregatus, though the Asturian chronicles do not record the event.
Under the Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba, Toledo was the centre of numerous insurrections dating from 761 to 857. Twenty years after the rebellion of Hisham ibn Urwa, the last of Yusuf's sons, Abu al-Aswad ibn Yusuf, rebelled in Toledo in 785. After the suppression of ibn Yusuf's revolt, Abd ar-Rahman's oldest son Sulayman was made governor of Toledo. However, Abd ar-Rahman designated as his successor a younger son, Hisham. On Hisham's accession to the Emirate in 788, Sulayman refused to make the oath of allegiance at the mosque, as succession custom would have dictated, and thus declared himself in rebellion. He was joined in Toledo by his brother Abdallah. Hisham laid siege to Toledo. While Abdallah held Toledo against Hisham, Sulayman escaped and attempted to find support elsewhere, but was unsuccessful. In 789, Abdallah submitted and Hisham took control of Toledo. The following year, Sulayman gave up the fight and went into exile. Hisham's son Al-Hakam was governor of Toledo from 792 to 796 when he succeeded his father as emir in Cordoba.
After Al-Hakam's accession and departure, a poet resident in Toledo named Girbib ibn-Abdallah wrote verses against the Omeyyads, helping to inspire a revolt in Toledo against the new emir in 797. Chroniclers disagree as to the leader of this revolt, though Ibn Hayyan states that it was led by Ibn Hamir. Al-Hakam sent Amrus ibn Yusuf to fight the rebellion. Amrus took control of the Berber troops in Talavera. From there, Amrus negotiated with a faction inside Toledo called the Banu Mahsa, promising to make them governors if they would betray Ibn Hamir. The Banu Mahsa brought Ibn Hamir's head to Amrus at Talavera, but instead of making them governors, Amrus executed them. Amrus now persuaded the remaining factions in Toledo to submit to him. Once he entered Toledo, he invited the leaders to a celebratory feast. As they entered Amrus' fortress, the guests were beheaded one by one and their bodies thrown in a specially dug ditch. The massacre was thus called "The Day of the Ditch". Amrus' soldiers killed about 700 people that day. Amrus was governor of Toledo until 802.
"In 785, Bishop Elipandus of Toledo wrote a letter condemning the teaching of a certain Migetius." In his letter, Elipandus asserted that Christ had adopted his humanity, a position that came to be known as Adoptionism. Two Asturian bishops, Beatus and Eterius, bishop of Osma, wrote a treatise condemning Elipandus' views. Pope Hadrian wrote a letter between 785 and 791 in which he condemned Migetius, but also the terminology used by Elipandus. The Frankish court of Charlemagne also condemned Adoptionism at the Synod of Frankfurt in 794. Although Ramon Abadals y de Vinyals argued that this controversy represented an ideological assertion of independence by the Asturian church against the Moslem-ruled church of Toledo, Collins believes this argument applies eleventh century ideology to the eighth century and is anachronistic. However, Collins notes that the controversy and the alliances formed during it between Asturias and the Franks broke the old unity of the Spanish church. The influence of the bishops of Toledo would be much more limited until the eleventh century.
By the end of the 700s, the Omeyyads had created three frontier districts stretching out from the southern core of their Iberian territories. These were called the Lower March (al-Tagr al-Adna), Central March (al-Tagr al-Awsat), and Upper March (al-Tagr al-A'la). Toledo became the administrative center of the Central March, while Merida became the centre of the Lower March and Zaragoza of the Upper March.
Following the death of Abd al-Rahman II, a new revolt broke out in Toledo. The Omeyyad governor was held hostage in order to secure the return of Toledan hostages held in Córdoba. Toledo now engaged in an inter-city feud with the nearby city of Calatrava la Vieja. Toledan soldiers attacked Calatrava, destroyed the walls, and massacred or expelled many inhabitants of Calatrava in 853. Soldiers from Cordoba came to restore the walls and protect Calatrava from Toledo. The new emir, Muhammad I, sent a second army to attack the Toledans, but was defeated. Toledo now made an alliance with King Ordoño I of Asturias. The Toledans and Asturians were defeated at the Battle of Guadacelete, with sources claiming 8000 Toledan and Asturian soldiers were killed and their heads sent back to Cordoba for display throughout Al-Andalus. Despite this defeat, Toledo did not surrender to Cordoba. The Omeyyads reinforced nearby fortresses with cavalry forces to try to contain the Toledans. Toledans attacked Talavera in 857, but were again defeated. In 858 emir Muhammad I personally led an expedition against Toledo and destroyed a bridge, but was unable to take the city. In 859, Muhammad I negotiated a truce with Toledo. Toledo became virtually independent for twenty years, though locked in conflict with neighboring cities. Muhammad I recovered control of Toledo in 873, when he successfully besieged the city and forced it to submit.
The Banu Qasi gained nominal control of the city until 920 and in 932 Abd-ar-Rahman III captured the city following an extensive siege. According to the Chronicle of Alfonso III, Musa ibn Musa of the Banu Qasi had, partly by war and partly by strategy, made himself master of Zaragoza, Tudela, Huesca, and Toledo. He had installed his son Lupus (Lubb) as governor of Toledo. King Ordoño I of Asturias fought a series of battles with Musa ibn Musa. According to the Chronicle, Musa ibn Musa allied with his brother-in-law Garcia, identified as Garcia Iñiquez, King of Pamplona. Ordoño defeated Musa's forces at the Battle of Monte Laturce. Musa died of injuries, and his son Lubb submitted to Ordoño's authority in 862 or 863, for the duration of Ordoño's reign (up to 866). Thus, according to the Chronicle of Alfonso III, Toledo was ruled by the Asturian kings. However, Arabic sources do not confirm these campaigns, instead stating that Musa ibn Musa was killed in a failed attack on Guadalajara, and that Andalusi forces repeatedly defeated Asturian forces in the area of Alava from 862 to 866.
By the 870s the Omeyyads had regained control over Toledo. In 878 Al-Mundhir led an expedition against Asturias, of which one of the main components was a force from Toledo. One source portrays this raid as an attack by the 'King of Toledo', but other sources portray it as an Omeyyad raid involving substantial Toledan forces. The forces from Toledo were defeated by Alfonso III of Asturias at the . Spanish chronicles state that twelve to thirteen thousand in the Toledo army were killed in the battle. Collins states that these figures are "totally unreliable" but demonstrate that Asturian chroniclers thought of this as an important and decisive battle.
In 920s and 930s, the governors of Toledo were in rebellion against the Umayyad regime in Cordoba, led by Abd al-Rahman III. In 930, Abd al-Rahman III, having now adopted the title of caliph, attacked Toledo. The governor of Toledo asked for help from King Ramiro II of Leon, but Ramiro was preocuppied with a civil war against his brother Alfonso IV and was unable to help. In 932, Abd al-Rahman III conquered Toledo, re-establishing control of al-Tagr al-Awsat, the Central March of the Omeyyad state.
In 1009 one of the last Umayyad caliphs, Muhammad II al-Mahdi, fled to Toledo after being expelled from Cordoba by Berber forces backing the rival claimant Sulayman. Al-Mahdi and his Saqaliba general Wadih formed an alliance with the Count of Barcelona and his brother the Count of Urgell. These Catalans joined with Wadih and al-Mahdi in Toledo in 1010 and marched on Cordoba. The combination of Wadih's army and the Catalans defeated the Berbers in a battle outside Cordoba in 1010.
After the fall of the Umayyad caliphate in the early 11th century, Toledo became an independent taifa kingdom. The population of Toledo at this time was about 28 thousand, including a Jewish population estimated at 4 thousand. The Mozarab community had its own Christian bishop, and after the Christian conquest of Toledo, the city was a destination for Mozarab immigration from the Muslim south. The taifa of Toledo was centered on the Tajo River. The border with the taifa of Badajoz was on the Tajo between Talavera de la Reina and Coria. North, the border was the Sierra de Guadarrama. Northeast, Toledo lands stretched past Guadalajara to Medinaceli. Southeast was the border with the taifa of Valencia, in La Mancha between Cuenca and Albacete. South were the borders with Badajoz around the Mountains of Toledo.
In 1062, Fernando I of Leon and Castile attacked the taifa of Toledo. He conquered Talamanca de Jarama and besieged Alcala de Henares. To secure Fernando's withdrawal, king al-Mamun of Toledo agreed to pay an annual tribute, or parias, to Fernando. Three years later in 1065, al-Mamun invaded the taifa of Valencia through La Mancha, successfully conquering it. Toledo controlled the taifa of Valencia until al-Mamun's death in 1075.
After the death of Fernando I in 1065, the kingdom of Leon and Castilla was divided in three: the kingdoms of Galicia, Leon, and Castilla. The parias that had been paid by Toledo to Fernando I were assigned to the Kingdom of León, which was inherited by Alfonso VI. However, in 1071, Alfonso's older brother Sancho II invaded Leon and defeated his younger brother. Alfonso VI was allowed to go into exile with al-Mamun in Toledo. Alfonso VI was in exile in Toledo approximately from June to October 1071, but after Sancho II was killed later in the same year, Alfonso left Toledo and returned to Leon. Some sources state that al-Mamun forced Alfonso to swear support for al-Mamun and his heirs before allowing him to leave.
In 1074, Alfonso VI campaigned against the taifa of Granada with the assistance of al-Mamun of Toledo. Alfonso received troops from al-Mamun in addition to the parias payment, facilitating his military campaigns. The campaign was successful, and Granada was forced to begin parias payments to Alfonso VI. After this, al-Mamun proceeded to attack Cordoba, which was then under the control of his enemy al-Mutamid, taifa king of Sevilla. He conquered Cordoba in January 1075.
The parias of Toledo to Alfonso VI in the 1070s amounted to approximately 12 thousand gold dinars. This money contributed strongly to Alfonso VI's ability to project military strength throughout the Iberian peninsula.
In 1076, al-Mamun of Toledo was killed in the city of Cordoba, which he had conquered only the year before. The taifa king of Sevilla took the opportunity to reconquer Cordoba and seize other territory on the borderlands between the taifas of Sevilla and Toledo. Al-Mamun was succeeded by his son, al-Qadir, the last taifa king of Toledo. Possibly keeping an earlier promise to al-Mamun, Alfonso VI at first supported the succession of al-Qadir. The taifa of Valencia, which had been conquered by al-Mamun, revolted against al-Qadir and ceased parias payments to Toledo.
Taking advantage of al-Qadir's weakness, al-Mutamid of Sevilla took lands in La Mancha from the taifa of Toledo, and from there conquered the taifas of Valencia and Denia in 1078. After this, al-Qadir lost popularity in Toledo. There was a revolt against him, and he was forced to flee the city and appeal to Alfonso VI for help. The rebels invited the king of Badajoz, al-Mutawakkil, to rule Toledo. The king of Badajoz occupied Toledo in 1079, but Alfonso VI sent forces to help al-Qadir recover Toledo. Alfonso captured the fortress town of Coria, which controlled a pass from Castilian lands into the lands of the taifa of Badajoz. Since Alfonso now threatened him through Coria, al-Mutawakkil withdrew from Toledo and al-Qadir was able to return to Toledo. As the price of his help, Alfonso obtained the right to station two garrisons of his soldiers on the lands of Toledo, at al-Qadir's expense.
A second revolt against al-Qadir took place in 1082. This time al-Qadir defeated the rebels in Toledo, chased them to Madrid, and defeated them there. It was about this time at the latest that Alfonso VI decided to seize Toledo for himself, though some authors have argued that the plan to conquer Toledo existed by 1078. In 1083, Alfonso VI campaigned against al-Mutamid, bringing his forces right up against Sevilla and reaching the city of Tarifa, with the intention of dissuading al-Mutamid from any resistance against the coming seizure of Toledo. In 1084, Alfonso set siege to Toledo, preventing the city from being supplied and also preventing agricultural work in the area. Over the winter of 1084 to 1085 the siege was maintained, while the king spent the winter north in Leon and Sahagun. In spring 1085 Alfonso personally rejoined the siege with new forces. The city soon fell and Alfonso made his triumphant entry to the city on May 24, 1085.
Under Islamic Arab rule, Toledo was called "Ṭulayṭulah". After the fall of the caliphate, Toledo was the capital city of one of the richest Taifas of Al-Andalus. Its population was overwhelmingly Muladi, and, because of its central location in the Iberian Peninsula, Toledo took a central position in the struggles between the Muslim and Christian rulers of northern Spain. The conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI of Castile in 1085 marked the first time a major city in Al-Andalus was captured by Christian forces; it served to sharpen the religious aspect of the Christian reconquest.
On May 25, 1085, Alfonso VI of Castile took Toledo and established direct personal control over the Moorish city from which he had been exacting tribute, ending the medieval Taifa's Kingdom of Toledo. This was the first concrete step taken by the combined kingdom of Leon-Castile in the Reconquista by Christian forces. After Castilian conquest, Toledo continued to be a major cultural centre; its Arab libraries were not pillaged, and a tag-team translation centre was established in which books in Arabic or Hebrew would be translated into Castilian by Muslim and Jewish scholars, and from Castilian into Latin by Castilian scholars, thus letting long-lost knowledge spread through Christian Europe again. Toledo served as the capital city of Castile intermittently (Castile did not have a permanent capital) from 1085, and the city flourished. Under the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toledo multiple persecutions (633, 653, 693) and stake burnings of Jews (638 CE) occurred; the Kingdom of Toledo followed up on this tradition (1368, 1391, 1449, 1486–1490 CE) including forced conversions and mass murder and the rioting and blood bath against the Jews of Toledo (1212 CE).
During the persecution of the Jews in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, members of the Jewish community of Toledo produced texts on their long history in Toledo. It was at this time that Don Isaac Abrabanel, a prominent Jewish figure in Spain in the 15th century and one of the king's trusted courtiers who witnessed the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, wrote that Toledo was named "Ṭulayṭulah" by its first Jewish inhabitants who, he stated, settled there in the 5th century BCE, and which name – by way of conjecture – may have been related to its Hebrew cognate טלטול (= wandering), on account of their wandering from Jerusalem. He says, furthermore, that the original name of the city was Pirisvalle, so-called by its early pagan inhabitants. However, there is no archaeological or historical evidence for Jewish presence in this region prior to the time of the Roman Empire; when the Romans first wrote about Toledo it was a Celtic city.
After the crushing of the Revolt of the Comuneros, Charles V's court was installed in Toledo, with the monarch choosing the city as his residence at least 15 times from 1525 on. Charles granted the city a coat of arms. From 1528 to 1561 the population increased from 31,930 to 56,270. In 1561, during the first years of his son Philip II of Spain's reign, the Royal Court was set in Madrid, thus letting the city's importance dwindle until the late 20th century, when it became the capital of the autonomous community of Castile–La Mancha. Nevertheless, the economic decline of the city helped to preserve its cultural and architectural heritage. Today, because of this rich heritage, Toledo is one of Spain's foremost cities, receiving thousands of visitors yearly.
Toledo's Alcázar (Latinized Arabic word for palace-castle, from the Arabic القصر, al-qasr) became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.
Toledo has a typical cold semi-arid climate (Köppen: "BSk"). Winters are cool while summers are hot and dry. Precipitation is low and mainly concentrated in the period mid autumn through to mid spring. The highest temperature ever recorded in Toledo was on 10 August 2012; the lowest was on 27 January 2005.
The metal-working industry has historically been Toledo's economic base, with a great tradition in the manufacturing of swords and knives and a significant production of razor blades, medical devices and electrical products. ("The Toledo Blade", the American newspaper in Toledo's Ohio namesake city, is named in honor of the sword-making tradition.) Soap and toothpaste industries, flour milling, glass and ceramics have also been important. Goya Foods has its Madrid offices in Toledo.
The manufacture of swords in the city of Toledo goes back to Roman times, but it was under Moorish rule and during the Reconquista that Toledo and its guild of sword-makers played a key role. Between the 15th and 17th centuries the Toledo sword-making industry enjoyed a great boom, to the point where its products came to be regarded as the best in Europe. Swords and daggers were made by individual craftsmen, although the sword-makers guild oversaw their quality. In the late 17th and early 18th century production began to decline, prompting the creation of the Royal Arms Factory in 1761 by order of King Carlos III. The Royal Factory brought together all the sword-makers guilds of the city and it was located in the former mint. In 1777, recognizing the need to expand the space, Carlos III commissioned the architect Sabatini to construct a new building on the outskirts of the city. This was the beginning of several phases of expansion. Its importance was such that it eventually developed into a city within the city of Toledo.
In the 20th century, the production of knives and swords for the army was reduced to cavalry weapons only, and after the Spanish Civil War, to the supply of swords to the officers and NCOs of the various military units. Following the closure of the factory in the 1980s, the building was renovated to house the campus of the Technological University of Castilla-La Mancha in Toledo. According to the Statistical Institute of Castilla-La Mancha, in 2007 the recent distribution of employment by sectors of occupation was as follows: 86.5% of the population engaged in the services, 6.6% in construction, 5.4% in industry and 1.5% in agriculture and livestock.
In the decade to 2008, unemployment in absolute terms remained fairly stable in the city of Toledo, but in 2009 this figure increased significantly: nearly 62% compared to 2008, with the number of unemployed rising from 2,515 to 4,074 (figures at 31 March each year), according to the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla La Mancha. Of this 62%, one third of the increase took place in the first quarter.
According to other statistics from the same source, almost half the unemployed in the city of Toledo (1,970 persons) are among those whose education does not go beyond the compulsory secondary level. However, there are groups whose level of studies is such that they have not been registered as unemployed, such as those who have completed class 1 professional training, or those with virtually nonexistent unemployment rates (less than 0.1%), which is the case of unemployed with high school degrees or professional expertise.
The largest group among the unemployed is those who have no qualifications (27.27%).
Toledo has a 25-member City Council, elected by closed lists every four years. The 2011 election saw a pact made between the 11 members of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and the 2 members of the United Left, to retain the position of the PSOE's Emiliano García-Page Sánchez as mayor, which he has been since 2007.
The old city is located on a mountaintop with a 150-degree view, surrounded on three sides by a bend in the Tagus River, and contains many historical sites, including the Alcázar, the cathedral (the primate church of Spain), and the Zocodover, a central market place.
From the 4th century to the 16th century about thirty synods were held at Toledo. The earliest, directed against Priscillian, assembled in 400. At the synod of 589 the Visigothic King Reccared declared his conversion from Arianism to Catholicism; the synod of 633 decreed uniformity of catholic liturgy throughout the Visigothic kingdom and took stringent measures against baptized Jews who had relapsed into their former faith. Other councils forbade circumcision, Jewish rites and observance of the Sabbath and festivals. Throughout the seventh century, Jews were flogged, executed, had their property confiscated, were subjected to ruinous taxes, forbidden to trade and, at times, dragged to the baptismal font. The council of 681 assured to the archbishop of Toledo the primacy of Spain. At Guadamur, very close to Toledo, was dug in 1858 the Treasure of Guarrazar, the best example of Visigothic art in Spain.
As nearly one hundred early canons of Toledo found a place in the "Decretum Gratiani", they exerted an important influence on the development of ecclesiastical law. The synod of 1565–1566 concerned itself with the execution of the decrees of the Council of Trent; and the last council held at Toledo, 1582–1583, was guided in detail by Philip II.
Toledo had large communities of Muslims and Jews until they were expelled from Spain in 1492 (Jews) and 1502 (Mudéjars). Today's city contains the religious monuments the Synagogue of Santa María la Blanca, the Synagogue of El Transito, Mosque of Cristo de la Luz and the church of San Sebastián dating from before the expulsion, still maintained in good condition. Among Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jews, in their various diasporas, the family name Toledano is still prevalent – indicating an ancestry traced back to this city (the name is also attested among non-Jews in various Spanish-speaking countries).
In the 13th century, Toledo was a major cultural centre under the guidance of Alfonso X, called "El Sabio" ("the Wise") for his love of learning. The Toledo School of Translators, that had commenced under Archbishop Raymond of Toledo, continued to bring vast stores of knowledge to Europe by rendering great academic and philosophical works in Arabic into Latin. The Palacio de Galiana, built in the Mudéjar style, is one of the monuments that remain from that period.
The Cathedral of Toledo ("Catedral de Toledo") was built between 1226 and 1493 and modeled after the Bourges Cathedral, though it also combines some characteristics of the Mudéjar style. It is remarkable for its incorporation of light and features the Baroque altar called "El Transparente", several stories high, with fantastic figures of stucco, paintings, bronze castings, and multiple colors of marble, a masterpiece of medieval mixed media by Narciso Tomé topped by the daily effect for just a few minutes of a shaft of light from which this feature of the cathedral derives its name. Two notable bridges secured access to Toledo across the Tajo, the Alcántara bridge and the later built San Martín bridge.
The Monasterio de San Juan de los Reyes is a Franciscan monastery, built 1477–1504, in a remarkable combination of Gothic-Spanish-Flemish style with Mudéjar ornamentation.
Toledo was home to El Greco for the latter part of his life, and is the subject of some of his most famous paintings, including "The Burial of the Count of Orgaz", exhibited in the Church of Santo Tomé.
When Philip II moved the royal court from Toledo to Madrid in 1561, the old city went into a slow decline from which it never recovered.
Toledo has been a traditional sword-making, steel-working centre since about 500 BC, and came to the attention of Rome when used by Hannibal in the Punic Wars. Soon, it became a standard source of weaponry for Roman legions.
Toledo steel was famed for its very high quality alloy, whereas Damascene steel, a competitor from the Middle Ages on, was famed for a specific metal-working technique.
Today there is a significant trade, and many shops offer all kinds of swords to their customers, whether historical or modern films swords, as well as medieval armors and from other times, which are also exported to other countries.
Toledo's cuisine is grouped with that of Castile–La Mancha, well-set in its traditions and closely linked to hunting and grazing. A good number of recipes are the result of a combination of Moorish and Christian influences.
Some of its specialties include lamb roast or stew, "cochifrito", "alubias con perdiz" (beans with partridge) and "perdiz estofoda" (partridge stew), "carcamusa", "migas", "gachas manchegas", and "tortilla a la magra". Two of the city's most famous food productions are Manchego cheese and marzipan, which has a Protected Geographical Indication ("mazapán de Toledo").
Apart from these festivals should be noted that patrons of Toledo are:
The city of Toledo was declared a Historic-Artistic Site in 1940, UNESCO later given the title of World Heritage in 1987. Sights include:
To mark the fourth centenary of the publication of the first part of "Don Quixote", the Council of Communities of Castile–La Mancha designed a series of routes through the region crossing the various points cited in the novel. Known as the Route of Don Quixote, two of the pathways designated, sections 1 and 8, are based in Toledo; those linking the city with La Mancha Castile and Montes de Toledo exploit the natural route which passes through the Cigarrales and heads to Cobisa, Nambroca Burguillos of Toledo, where it takes the Camino Real from Sevilla to suddenly turn towards Mascaraque Almonacid de Toledo, deep into their surroundings, near Mora, in La Mancha.
This stretch, Mascaraque-Toledo, of the Route of Don Quixote has recently been included in an official way on the Camino de Santiago in Levantine branch with origins in Cartagena, Alicante and Valencia, as both routes are declared a European Cultural Route on this stretch.
Toledo has long been an obligatory stop in the centre of the peninsula. The roads leading to historic Toledo are still used and in many cases have provided the basis to existing roads leading into the city.
From Toledo part of N-400, which links this city with Cuenca by Ocaña and Tarancón. It is currently in the process of transformation in the future A-40 motorway Castilla La Mancha, which will link Maqueda (where it joins the motorway Extremadura), Toledo, Ocaña (where it attaches to the Motorway of Andalusia), Tarancón (where connects with the motorway Levante), Cuenca and Teruel.
The old National Road 401 Madrid-Toledo-Ciudad Real was transformed in the late 1980s in the current A-42 as a result of splitting and deleting the path that the various crossings counted (Illescas, Yuncos, etc.. ).
The split path can take south of Toledo, in effect Ciudad Real, where it continues as conventional road. At this point, the A-42 connects with the Highway of the Vineyard that reaches Tomelloso. It is planned to extend the A-42, by a toll road, to Ciudad Real and Jaén.
In the early twenty-first century was built, in order to decongest the traffic between Toledo and Madrid, the toll motorway AP-41.
Another way of State Highway Network that Toledo is part of the N-403, Toledo-Maqueda – Ávila – Adanero. Part of the route of this road will be replaced by that of the aforementioned Highway of Castilla La Mancha.
In addition to these roads, from Toledo depart several regional and provincial-level linking the capital with the regions of Montes de Toledo, La Jara and La Mancha.
In the mid-nineteenth century Toledo was one of the first Spanish cities to receive rail service, with the arrival of the Madrid – Aranjuez line, which was inaugurated by Isabella II on June 12 of 1858. The current station, Toledo Railway Station (built in Neo-Mudéjar style), was opened on April 24 of 1919.
The line suffered some technical issues and service disruptions, but continued to serve as the main intercity route until the early twenty-first century. On 2 July, 2003 the last conventional train service between the two capitals ended and work began on a high-speed link to Madrid, which entered service on November 16 of 2005. The new line reduced the travel time to Madrid to just under 30 minutes.
In the early 1960s began the construction of the Residence Health Social Security "Virgen de la Salud". The original building still remains in use, although successive extensions were added (maternity, outpatient clinics, operating rooms, etc.) into the existing complex. The complex was also extended to move the clinic to a new nearby building, now converted into Specialty Centre San Ildefonso.
The , inaugurated on 7 October 1974, became a centre of reference at the national level in the treatment of spinal cord injuries. It also focuses on the social integration of their patients.
The transfer of powers from the state health at the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla La Mancha will give new impetus to the health infrastructure, manifested in 2007 with the commencement of construction of the new General Hospital of Toledo in Santa María de Benquerencia. Also have been provided to the different parts of the relevant health centres.
In the Toledo Hospital Complex [36] is also integrated Geriatric Hospital Virgen del Valle, a result of reform and modernization of old tuberculosis hospital built in the mid twentieth century. The centre is located outside the city, near the Parador Nacional de Turismo Conde de Orgaz.
With regard to private health, at present the city of Toledo has several centres: Hospital de las Tres Culturas, Clínica Nuestra Señora del Rosario, and so on.
Toledo suffered from a shortage of sports facilities. Much of this problem was resolved when the Central School of Physical Education of the Army moved its headquarters to the premises of the Academy of Infantry. In the 1990s, the city council took over the old facilities of the military centre, which now include an athletics track, Olympic swimming pool and an indoor sports hall, from the former military installations, and numerous outdoor courts built in the area of the former runway of application, having been demolished and the old gym complex pools (indoor and outdoor).
Besides these facilities, the city of Toledo has covered sports pavilions in the districts of Santa María de Benquerencia, Santa Bárbara, San Antón (Complejo Deportivo "Leaping Horse"), outdoor pools in sugar, Palomarejos, Santa María de Benquerencia, Santa Barbara, Santa Teresa and indoor swimming pools in the gardens of the Alcazar (old town), Santa María de Benquerencia and San Antonio.
Toledo has a football team, CD Toledo, founded on 24 April 1928. Their home turf is the Estadio Salto del Caballo, inaugurated on 23 November 1973. The team played for 7 seasons in the Segunda División, during which it reached the play-off final for promotion to La Liga at the end of the 1993–94 season, losing 4–1 on aggregate to Real Valladolid. Toledo players have included Abel Resino, Luis Garcia, Arsenal coach Unai Emery, Rufete and Casquero.
Toledo also has teams of handball. The Toledo Handball, after five years in the Division de Honor B, start the 2009–2010 season as ASOBAL new club for the first time in its history. A refurbished town hall "Javier Lozano Cid ', with capacity for around 1,500 spectators, is its new headquarters. Moreover, the city has two other Division II team in the National, the Toledo Handball Lábaro-B and Club Deportivo Amibal.
Toledo has two basketball teams: the CIS Toledo, with a long history that has gone through ups and downs in both regional and in national leagues (EBA) and has just promoted to 1st Autonomic, and CB Polígono, currently the most representative, whose team has promoted male, seven years after leaving, to EBA League to start the 2009/10 season. This club based in the Santa María de Benquerencia district and has one of the largest youth systems of Castilla-La Mancha.
Toledo has been represented in athletics since 2 April 1979 by the Toledo Athletic Club, that is characterised by its actions, mainly in cross-country, where he managed a large number of medals in the championships team Spain's specialty, in addition to their combined male and female military in the late 1990s in the 1st division league national track. Among the athletes who have passed through its lanes are great athletes as Julio Rey, Roberto Parra, Chema Martinez and Julia Lobato.
Cycling, meanwhile, after the victory in the Tour de France in 1959 by Federico Bahamontes, 'The Eagle of Toledo', has been one of the sports with more followers in the city, although, at present, no school despite having a velodrome in Santa María de Benquerencia. Other leading professional cyclists from the city have been Nemesio Jiménez (Mexico Olympics 1968) and Ángel de las Heras.
The FS and Volleyball Toledo Toledo Association Toledo complete representation in the National League of First and Second Division, after a brief journey in Fantasy, respectively, while the Toledo Rugby Club, with manyfans, is immersed in the League Madrid's Primera Liga.
At the individual level, the swimmer Javier Noriega and Julio Rey marathon athletes are more representative of the city, both in Athens Olympics 2004 and Beijing Olympics 2008, in recent years. Rey, Spanish current marathon record holder, with 2h.06:52, announced his retirement in October 2009.
Various local and provincial newspapers are published in the city. In addition, national newspapers such as the daily ABC publish unique local editions. Among the local newspapers are the subscription-based La Tribuna de Toledo, and Toledo Day, as well as the free Global Castilla la Mancha and Toledo News. The general information weekly magazines Echoes and Here are also published.
There is also local media in television, radio, and Internet. The regional public television headquarters, CMT, are in Toledo. In addition, there are several local television stations, as well as local fare: the diocesan Popular TV, Teletoledo, Canal Regional de Noticia and La Tribuna TV.
For radio stations, there is the dean of radio Radio Toledo (Onda Cero), as well as COPE, Cadena SER, RNE, RCM and Radio Aquí, and the local fare Onda Polígono and the diocesan station Radio Santa Maria. Within the digital and social media, Onda Toledo, Toledo Magic, Toledo Digital, and La Cerca.
Toledo is twinned with: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31360 |
Tristan da Cunha
Tristan da Cunha (), colloquially Tristan, is a remote group of volcanic islands in the south Atlantic Ocean. It is the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world, lying approximately off the coast of Cape Town in South Africa, from Saint Helena and off the coast of the Falkland Islands.
The territory consists of the inhabited island, Tristan da Cunha, which has a diameter of roughly and an area of , and the wildlife reserves of Gough Island and Inaccessible Island and the smaller, uninhabited Nightingale Islands. , the main island has 250 permanent inhabitants who all carry British Overseas Territories citizenship. The other islands are uninhabited, except for the South African personnel of a weather station on Gough Island.
Tristan da Cunha is a British Overseas Territory with its own constitution. There is no airstrip of any kind on the main island; the only way of travelling in and out of Tristan is by boat, a six-day trip from South Africa.
The islands were first recorded as sighted in 1506 by Portuguese explorer Tristão da Cunha, though rough seas prevented a landing. He named the main island after himself, "Ilha de Tristão da Cunha." It was later anglicised from its earliest mention on British Admiralty charts to Tristan da Cunha Island. Some sources state that the Portuguese made the first landing in 1520, when the "Lás Rafael" captained by Ruy Vaz Pereira called at Tristan for water.
The first undisputed landing was made on 7 February 1643 by the crew of the Dutch East India Company ship "Heemstede," captained by Claes Gerritsz Bierenbroodspot. The Dutch stopped at the island four more times in the next 25 years, and in 1656 created the first rough charts of the archipelago.
The first full survey of the archipelago was made by crew of the French corvette "Heure du Berger" in 1767. The first scientific exploration was conducted by French naturalist Louis-Marie Aubert du Petit-Thouars, who stayed on the island for three days in January 1793, during a French mercantile expedition from Brest, France to Mauritius. Thouars made botanical collections and reported traces of human habitation, including fireplaces and overgrown gardens, probably left by Dutch explorers in the 17th century.
On his voyage out from Europe to East Africa and India in command of the Imperial Asiatic Company of Trieste and Antwerp ship, "Joseph et Therese", William Bolts sighted Tristan da Cunha, put a landing party ashore on 2 February 1777 and hoisted the Imperial flag, naming it and its neighboring islets the Isles de Brabant. In fact, no settlement or facilities were ever set up there by the company.
After the British Government announced in September 1786 that it would proceed with the settlement of New South Wales, Alexander Dalrymple, presumably goaded by Bolts's actions, published a pamphlet with an alternative proposal of his own for settlements on Tristan da Cunha, St. Paul and Amsterdam islands in the Southern Ocean.
Captain John Blankett, R.N., also suggested independently to his superiors in August 1786 that convicts be used to establish an English settlement on Tristan. In consequence, the Admiralty received orders from Government in October 1789 to examine the island as part of a general survey of the South Atlantic and the coasts of southern Africa. That did not happen, but an investigation of Tristan, Amsterdam and St. Paul was undertaken in December 1792 and January 1793 by George Macartney, Britain's first ambassador to China: During his voyage to China he established that none of the islands was suitable for settlement.
The first permanent settler was Jonathan Lambert of Salem, Massachusetts, United States, who moved to the island in December 1810 with two other men, and later a third. Lambert publicly declared the islands his property and named them the Islands of Refreshment. Three of the four men died in 1812; however, the survivor among the original three permanent settlers, Thomas Currie (or Tommaso Corri) remained as a farmer on the island.
On 14 August 1816, the United Kingdom annexed the islands, making them a dependency of the Cape Colony in South Africa. This was explained as a measure to prevent the islands' use as a base for any attempt to free Napoleon Bonaparte from his prison on Saint Helena. The occupation also prevented the United States from using Tristan da Cunha as a base for naval cruisers, as it had during the War of 1812. Possession was abandoned in November 1817, although some members of the garrison, notably William Glass, stayed and formed the nucleus of a permanent population.
The islands were occupied by a garrison of British Marines, and a civilian population gradually grew. stopped there on 25 March 1824 and reported that it had a population of twenty-two men and three women. The barque "South Australia" stayed there on 18–20 February 1836 when a certain Glass was Governor, as reported in a chapter on the island by W. H. Leigh.
Whalers set up bases on the islands for operations in the Southern Atlantic. However, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, together with the gradual transition from sailing ships to coal-fired steam ships, increased the isolation of the islands, which were no longer needed as a stopping port for lengthy sail voyages, or for shelter for journeys from Europe to East Asia. A parson arrived in February 1851, the Bishop of Cape Town visited in March 1856 and the island was included within the diocese of Cape Town.
In 1867, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and second son of Queen Victoria, visited the islands. The main settlement, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, was named in honour of his visit. On 15 October 1873, the Royal Navy scientific survey vessel HMS "Challenger" docked at Tristan to conduct geographic and zoological surveys on Tristan, Inaccessible Island and the Nightingale Islands. In his log, Captain George Nares recorded a total of fifteen families and eighty-six individuals living on the island. Tristan became a dependency of the British Crown in October 1875.
After years of hardship since the 1880s and an especially difficult winter in 1906, the British government offered to evacuate the island in 1907. The Tristanians held a meeting and decided to refuse, despite the crown's warning that it could not promise further help in the future. No ships called at the islands from 1909 until 1919, when HMS "Yarmouth" finally stopped to inform the islanders of the outcome of World War I. The Shackleton–Rowett Expedition stopped in Tristan for five days in May 1922, collecting geological and botanical samples before returning to Cape Town. Among the few ships that visited in the coming years were the RMS "Asturias", a Royal Mail Steam Packet Company passenger liner, in 1927, and the ocean liners RMS "Empress of France" in 1928, in 1929, and RMS "Empress of Australia" in 1935. In 1936, "The Daily Telegraph" of London reported the population of the island was 167 people, with 185 cattle and 42 horses.
From December 1937 to March 1938, a Norwegian party made a dedicated scientific expedition to Tristan da Cunha, and sociologist Peter A. Munch extensively documented island culture — he would later revisit the island in 1964–1965. The island was also visited in 1938 by W. Robert Foran, reporting for the National Geographic Society. Foran's account was published that same year. On 12 January 1938 by letters patent, Britain declared the islands a dependency of Saint Helena, creating the British Crown Colony of Saint Helena and Dependencies, which also included Ascension Island.
During the Second World War, Tristan was commissioned by the Royal Navy as the stone frigate and used as a secret signals intelligence station to monitor Nazi U-boats (which were required to maintain radio contact) and shipping movements in the South Atlantic Ocean. This weather and radio station led to extensive new infrastructure being built on the island, including a school, a hospital, and a cash-based general store. After the war, development continued, as the island's first canning factory expanding the availability of paid employment in 1949. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen's consort, visited the islands in 1957 as part of a world tour on board the royal yacht HMY "Britannia".
On 2 January 1954 Tristan da Cunha was visited by the M.V. Ruys, a civilian freighter carrying science fiction writer Robert A Heinlein, his wife Ginny and other passengers. The Ruys was traveling from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil to Cape Town South Africa. The visit is described in Heinlein's book Tramp Royal. The captain told Heinlein the island was the most isolated inhabited spot on Earth and ships rarely visited. Heinlein mailed a letter there to L. Ron Hubbard a friend who also liked to travel, "for the curiosity value of the postmark." Biographer William H Patterson, Jr. in his two volume "Robert A Heinlein In Dialogue with his Century," wrote that lack of "cultural context" made it "nearly impossible to converse" with the islanders, "a stark contrast with the way they had managed to chat with strangers" while traveling in South America. Members of the crew bought penguins during their brief visit to the island.
On 10 October 1961, the eruption of Queen Mary's Peak forced the evacuation of the entire population of 264 individuals. Evacuees took to the water in open boats and sailed to uninhabited Nightingale Island, where they were picked up by a Dutch passenger ship that took them via Cape Town to Britain. The islanders arrived in the UK to a big press reception, and were settled in an old Royal Air Force camp near Calshot, Hampshire. The following year a Royal Society expedition reported that Edinburgh of the Seven Seas had survived the eruption. Most families returned in 1963.
Gough Island was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995, then named "Gough Island Wildlife Reserve". The site was extended in 2004 to include the neighbouring Inaccessible Island and renamed Gough and Inaccessible Islands, with its marine zone extended from 3 to 12 nautical miles. The Gough and Inaccessible Islands were declared as separate Ramsar sites — wetland sites designated to be of international importance — on 20 November 2008.
On 23 May 2001, the islands were hit by an extratropical cyclone that generated winds up to . A number of structures were severely damaged, and numerous cattle were killed, prompting emergency aid provided by the British government. In 2005, the islands were given a United Kingdom post code (TDCU 1ZZ), to make it easier for the residents to order goods online.
On 13 February 2008, a fire destroyed the island's four power generators and fish canning factory, severely disrupting the economy. On 14 March 2008, new generators were installed and power restored, and a new factory opened in July 2009. While the replacement factory was built, M/V "Kelso" came to the island as a factory ship. The St. Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha Constitution Order 2009 reorganized Tristan da Cunha as a constituent of the new British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, giving Tristan and Ascension equal status with Saint Helena.
On 16 March 2011, the freighter ran aground on Nightingale Island, spilling tons of heavy fuel oil into the ocean. The resulting oil slick threatened the island's population of rockhopper penguins. Nightingale Island has no fresh water, so the penguins were transported to Tristan da Cunha for cleaning.
A total solar eclipse will pass over the island on 5 December 2048. The island is calculated to be on the centre line of the umbra's path for nearly three and a half minutes of totality.
Tristan da Cunha is thought to have been formed by a long-lived centre of upwelling mantle called the Tristan hotspot. Tristan da Cunha is the main island of the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, which consists of the following islands:
Inaccessible Island and the Nightingale Islands are SW by W and SSW away from the main island, respectively, whereas Gough Island is SSE.
The main island is generally mountainous. The only flat area is on the north-west coast, which is the location of the only settlement, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas. The highest point is the summit of a volcano called Queen Mary's Peak at an elevation of , high enough to develop snow cover in winter. The other islands of the group are uninhabited, except for a weather station with a staff of six on Gough Island, which has been operated by South Africa since 1956 and has been at its present location at Transvaal Bay on the southeast coast since 1963.
The archipelago has a Cfb, wet oceanic climate, under the Köppen system, with mild temperatures and very limited sunshine but consistent moderate-to-heavy rainfall due to the persistent westerly winds. Under the Trewartha classification, Tristan da Cunha has a humid subtropical climate due to the lack of cold weather. The number of rainy days is comparable to the Aleutian Islands at a much higher latitude in the northern hemisphere, while sunshine hours are comparable to Juneau, Alaska, 20° farther from the equator. Frost is unknown below elevations of , and summer temperatures are similarly mild, never reaching . Sandy Point on the east coast is reputed to be the warmest and driest place on the island, being in the lee of the prevailing winds.
Many of the flora and fauna of the archipelago have a broad circumpolar distribution in the South Atlantic and South Pacific Oceans. For example, the plant species "Nertera depressa" was first collected in Tristan da Cunha, but has since been recorded as far away as New Zealand.
Tristan is primarily known for its wildlife. The island has been identified as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International because there are 13 known species of breeding seabirds on the island and two species of resident land birds. The seabirds include northern rockhopper penguins, Atlantic yellow-nosed albatrosses, sooty albatrosses, Atlantic petrels, great-winged petrels, soft-plumaged petrels, broad-billed prions, grey petrels, great shearwaters, sooty shearwaters, Tristan skuas, Antarctic terns and brown noddies. Tristan and Gough Islands are the only known breeding sites in the world for the Atlantic petrel. Inaccessible Island is also the only known breeding ground of the spectacled petrel. The Tristan albatross is known to breed only on Gough and Inaccessible Islands: all nest on Gough, except for one or two pairs which nest on Inaccessible Island.
The endemic Tristan thrush, also known as the "starchy", occurs on all of the northern islands and each has its own subspecies, with Tristan birds being slightly smaller and duller than those on Nightingale and Inaccessible. The endemic Inaccessible Island rail, the smallest extant flightless bird in the world, is found only on Inaccessible Island. In 1956, eight Gough moorhens were released at Sandy Point on Tristan, and have subsequently colonised the island. No birds of prey breed on Tristan da Cunha, but the Amur falcon occasionally passes through the area on its migrations, thus putting it on the island's bird list.
Various species of whales and dolphins can be seen around Tristan from time to time with increasing sighting rates, although recovery of baleen whales, especially the southern right whale, were severely hindered by illegal whaling by the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the 1960 volcanic eruption. The subantarctic fur seal "Arctocephalus tropicalis" can also be found in the Tristan archipelago, mostly on Gough Island.
The islands of Tristan da Cunha has a high significance of global biodiversity as the island is considered a natural World Heritage Site. This designation is largely due to the seabird population found on the archipelago. The biodiversity of the island is on the decline because of the introduction of invasive species. Due to Tristan da Cunha's isolated archipelago ecology, and increase of tourism with cruise ships and research vessels, more invasive species are set to be introduced to Tristan da Cunha. The islands' vegetation and mammal species are not equipped to defend against or control introduced species, increasing island vulnerability, due to lack of defensive behavioral mechanisms, slow generational output rates. Efforts to decrease and eradicate invasive flora, fauna, and marine species are in the works and have yet to show any successful outcomes. The following described invasive species have been known to have harmful effects on the islands' vegetation and native species.
A combination of the list on Kew's "Plants of the World Online" site with information from a paper by Wace and Holdgate yields the following list (by no means exhaustive) of plant species recorded as native to Tristan da Cunha.
Eudicots
Commelinids
Ferns, Mosses and Clubmosses
The remote island of Tristan da Cunha acquired an estimated 137 non-native vascular plants that can be categorized into four species types; weeds (trees, shrubs, agricultural weeds), grassland species (grasses), garden escapes (vegetables), and other ruderal species. Vascular plants were accidentally introduced in a variety of ways including; impurities in flower or vegetable seeds, seeds or plant fragments from other imported plants and in soil, attached to containers, cars or people. The majority of invasive weed species that has been introduced to the island are spread by seed and cover 50% of arable land in widely distributed patches. These species include prickly sow-thistle ("Sonchus asper"), smooth sow-thistle ("Sonchus oleraceus"), smooth hawksbeard ("Crepis capillaris"), scrambling fumitory ("Fumaria muralis"), green field speedwell ("Veronica agrestis"), groundsel ("Senecio vulgaris"), and nutgrass ("Cyperus esculentus"). Other invasive weed species that have a more localized distribution in plots include prickly sow-thistle ("Sonchus asper"), smooth sow-thistle ("Sonchus oleraceus"), smooth hawksbeard ("Crepis capillaris"), and groundsel ("Senecio vulgaris"). Whether a species is distributed locally or widely depends on the seed's dispersal mechanisms; larger seeds that have not adapted to wind dispersal will be distributed locally, while smaller seeds have adapted to wind dispersal will be widely distributed.
The invasive plants have had several negative impacts on native island plant species, including the competitive exclusion of many such species. The out-competition will and can alter the structure of plant communities and the quality of the islands' soil. Introduced vegetation has altered long-term carbon storage as well as the reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere. Native plants such as fern bushes, "Phylica" bushes, fern brakes, mires, and bogs, contain high organic content matter which functions as storage for carbon. With the introduction of harmful species, the islands will see a decrease in carbon storage of both the soil and vegetation. With multiple changes occurring within the soil due to invasive plant species, the nutrient cycle is bound to be negatively influenced. Invasive plants are also affecting the human population of Tristan da Cunha by being disease carriers and becoming agricultural pests in gardens and pastures.
The alien plants are able to survive and continue to grow and spread successfully on the islands because they have the ability to naturalize in temperate regions and have limited necessities needed to survive. The islands' isolation increases archipelago ecology uniqueness which increases susceptibility for foreign invaders. A small human population with minimal development encourages flora and fauna development within a limited food web which increases the invasive species abilities for self-defense.
Plants are being controlled by taking surveys of the invasive species, evaluating their impact on biodiversity, and evaluating the feasibility of their eradication. It would be nearly impossible to try and eradicate all invasive plant species so scientists are narrowing down to control particular species based on their impact and feasibility to eradicate. Mitigation plans that are taking place on Tristan are time-consuming and labor-intensive that will take several years using mechanical and chemical procedures.
A non-native species of house mice that have evolved to be 50% larger than the average house mice have adapted to Tristan da Cunha as they are thought to have been accidentally introduced by 19th century seal hunters who would dock on the islands. These mice have adapted by consuming sea bird eggs and chicks (as they nest on the ground), killing an estimated 2 million chicks annually pushing the species to extinction. Gathering at night in groups of 9 or 10, the mice gather at the bird's nest to feast. The invasive mice were introduced to the Gough Islands by sailors in the 19th century. With no natural predators, the invasive mice population is able to expand by producing new generations twice a year. With no natural predators and a high generational output rate, there is no way to control the growth of the invasive mice population. The native bird species has a slower generational output and exposure to the islands. Albatross, a specific native bird species, spends their first 10 years out at sea which extends the time it takes for behavioral mechanisms to react to the invasive mice. There are only about 2,000 Tristan albatross birds left within the world and 99% of their population lives on the Tristan da Cunha islands. There are over twenty seabird species on the islands with a total breeding population estimated over 10 million breeding pairs; five of these species are threatened, while the Albatross seabird species is endangered.
Mitigation plans in order to eradicate or decrease the invasive rodent population on the islands was seriously discussed in March 2008 taking into consideration the islands' community. Discussion of aerial bait drop on Tristan brought up concerns of health and safety of the children, livestock and the security of the water supply. Because the proposed plans for mitigation were not fully agreed upon by the Tristan community, eradication methods were shelved until 2019.
In order to prevent the growth of the invasive mice population and extinction of the Albatross bird species, a 2019 Gough Island mouse eradication project was announced (Grundy, 2018). The RSPB and Tristan da Cunha Government have partnered to spread cereal pellets with rodenticide bait across the Gough Island's, in hopes to eradicate the invasive mice population. This solution plan may seem simple but can become complex when discussing dispersal methods, which is predicted to be by helicopter, because of the island's remote location and harsh weather conditions. In areas that are hard to reach by helicopter, pellets will be scattered by hand. The goal of this operation is to restore Tristan da Cunha back to its natural state, ensuring it will still be one of the world's most important seabird nesting sites. Other methods that may be more simple, such as reintroducing cats, would pose a greater threat to the fragile bird populations as they would likely to prey on the birds as well and cats have already been eradicated from the islands.
The biodiversity of marine life is limited given the islands isolation, making identifying the impacts of invasion difficult. While much of the marine life is unknown there has been an invasive species identified in the waters around the islands. This species includes the South American silver porgy ("Diplodus argenteus argenteus") which is thought to have seek refuge in the area due to the wreck of an oil platform off the coast of Tristan in 2006. The silver porgy is omnivorous but is not linked to the consumption of the valued lobster populations that the islanders fish. The silver porgy is however suspected to be consuming components of the islands’ fragile kelp forest. The kelp forest is extremely limited in biodiversity and has a simple, short-chain food web. While this species is considered non-native and invasive, removal efforts are currently not prioritized. Continued monitoring is suggested and expedition research for all invasive marine species are ongoing.
The island has a unique social and economic structure in which all resident families farm and all land is communally owned. Outsiders are prohibited from buying land or settling on Tristan. Besides subsistence agriculture, major industries are commercial fishing and government. Major export industries are the Tristan rock lobster ("Jasus") fishery, the sale of the island's postage stamps and coins, and limited tourism. Like most British Overseas Territories, it was never a part of the European Union, but was a member of the EU's Overseas Countries and Territories Association.
The Bank of Saint Helena was established on Saint Helena and Ascension Island in 2004. This bank does not have a physical presence on Tristan da Cunha, but residents of Tristan are entitled to its services. Although Tristan da Cunha is part of the same overseas territory as Saint Helena, it does not use the local Saint Helena pound, instead using the United Kingdom issue of the pound sterling.
The island is located in the South Atlantic Anomaly, an area of the Earth with an abnormally weak magnetic field. On 14 November 2008 a geomagnetic observatory was inaugurated on the island as part of a joint venture between the Danish Meteorological Institute and DTU Space.
The remote location of the islands makes transport to the outside world difficult. Tristan da Cunha has no airstrip and is not generally accessible to air travel, though the wider territory is served by Saint Helena Airport and RAF Ascension Island. Fishing boats from South Africa service the islands eight or nine times per year.
The RMS "Saint Helena" used to connect the main island to St Helena and South Africa once each year during its January voyage, but has done so only a few times in the last years, in 2006, in 2011, and most recently in 2018. In the same year the RMS St. Helena was withdrawn from service. Three ships regularly service Tristan da Cunha, with typically fewer than a dozen visits a year. Other vessels may occasionally visit the island. The harbour at Edinburgh of the Seven Seas is called Calshot Harbour, named after the place in Hampshire, England where the islanders temporarily stayed during the volcanic eruption.
Although Tristan da Cunha shares the +290 code with St. Helena, residents have access to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Telecommunications Network, provided by Global Crossing. This uses a London 020 numbering range, meaning that numbers are accessed via the UK telephone numbering plan. Internet access was available in Tristan da Cunha from 1998 to 2006, but its high cost made it almost unaffordable for the local population, who primarily used it only to send email. The connection was also extremely unreliable, connecting through a 64 kbit/s satellite phone connection provided by Inmarsat.
Since 2006, a very-small-aperture terminal has provided 3072 kbit/s of publicly accessible bandwidth via an internet cafe. As of 2016, there is not yet any mobile telephone coverage on the islands.
Amateur radio operator groups sometimes conduct DX-peditions on the island. One group operated as station ZD9ZS in September–October 2014.
There are no political parties or trade unions on Tristan. Executive authority is vested in the Queen, who is represented in the territory by the Governor of Saint Helena. As the Governor resides permanently in Saint Helena, an Administrator is appointed to represent the Governor in the islands. The Administrator is a career civil servant in the Foreign Office, selected by London, who acts as the local head of government and takes advice from the Tristan da Cunha Island Council. Since 1998, each Administrator has served a three-year term (which begins in September, upon arrival of the supply ship from Cape Town). Sean Burns began a second term as Administrator in November 2016.
The Administrator and Island Council work from the Government Building, which is the only two-storey building on the island. The building is sometimes referred to as "Whitehall" or the "H'admin Building" and contains the Administrator's Office, Treasury Department, Administration Offices, and the Council Chamber where Island Council meetings are held. Policing is undertaken by one full-time police inspector and three special constables. Tristan da Cunha has some legislation of its own, but the law of Saint Helena applies generally to the extent that it is not inconsistent with local law, insofar as it is suitable for local circumstances and subject to such modifications as local circumstances make necessary.
The Island Council is made up of eight elected and three appointed members, who serve a three-year term which begins in February or March. A separate but simultaneous vote is held to select the Chief Islander, who is the community's political leader. James Glass was elected to the position in March 2019, returning after sixteen years to commence a record-breaking fourth term in the role.
Tristan da Cunha recorded a population of 251 in the September 2018 census. The only settlement is Edinburgh of the Seven Seas (known locally as "The Settlement"). The current residents are thought to have descended from fifteen outside ancestors, eight male and seven female, who arrived on the island at various dates between 1816 and 1908. The men were European, and the women were mixed race and African. Now all of the population has mixed ancestry. In addition, a male contributor of eastern European / Russian descent arrived in the early 1900s. In 1963, when families returned after the evacuation due to the 1961 volcanic eruption, the 200 settlers included four Tristan da Cunha women who brought with them new English husbands.
The female descendants have been traced by genetic study to five female founders, believed to be mixed-race (African, Asian and European descent) and from Saint Helena. The historical data recounted that there were two pairs of sisters, but the mtDNA evidence showed only one pair of sisters.
The early male founders originated from Scotland, England, the Netherlands, the United States, and Italy, who belonged to three Y-haplogroups: I (M170), R-SRY10831.2, and R (M207) (xSRY10831.2). The male founders shared nine surnames: Collins, Glass, Green, Hagan, Lavarello, Repetto, Rogers, Squibb, and Swain. In addition, a new haplotype was found that is associated with men of eastern Europe and Russia. It entered the population in the early 1900s, at a time when the island was visited by Russian sailing ships. There is "evidence for the contribution of a hidden ancestor who left his genes, but not his name, on the island." Another four instances of non-paternity were found among male descendants, but researchers believed their fathers were probably among the early island population.
There are eighty families on the island.
Tristan da Cunha's isolation has led to development of its own dialect of English. In popular writing, it has been described by the writer Simon Winchester as "a sonorous amalgam of Home Counties lockjaw and 19th century idiom, Afrikaans slang and Italian."
Education is fairly rudimentary; children leave school at age 16, and although they can take GCSEs a year later, few do. The school on the island is St. Mary's School, which serves children from ages 4 to 16. The Naval Station had established a school building during World War II. The current facility opened in 1975 and has five classrooms, a kitchen, a stage, a computer room, and a craft and science room. Tristan students doing post-16 education receive assistance from the Tristan da Cunha Association Education Trust Fund and typically do so in the United Kingdom and South Africa.
The Tristan Song Project was a collaboration between St. Mary's School and amateur composers in Britain, led by music teacher Tony Triggs. It began in 2010 and involved St. Mary's pupils writing poems and Tony Triggs providing musical settings by himself and his pupils. A desktop publication entitled "Rockhopper Penguins and Other Songs" (2010) embraced most of the songs completed that year and funded a consignment of guitars to the school. In February 2013, the Tristan Post Office issued a set of four Song Project stamps featuring island musical instruments and lyrics from Song Project songs about Tristan's volcano and wildlife. In 2014, the project broadened its scope and continues as the International Song Project.
The only religion is Christianity, with the only denominations being Anglican and Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic population is served by the Mission Sui Iuris of Saint Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha, which is administratively a part of the Apostolic Prefecture of the Falkland Islands
Healthcare is funded by the government, undertaken at most times by one resident doctor. Surgery or facilities for complex childbirth are therefore limited, and emergencies can necessitate communicating with passing fishing vessels so the injured person can be ferried to Cape Town. As of late 2007, IBM and Beacon Equity Partners, co-operating with Medweb, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the island's government on "Project Tristan", has supplied the island's doctor with access to long distance tele-medical help, making it possible to send EKG and X-ray pictures to doctors in other countries for instant consultation.
There are instances of health problems attributed to endogamy, including glaucoma. In addition, there is a very high (42%) incidence of asthma among the population and research by Noe Zamel of the University of Toronto has led to discoveries about the genetic nature of the disease. Three of the original settlers of the island were asthma sufferers.
Local television began in 1984 using taped programming on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings. Live television did not arrive on the island until 2001, with the introduction of the British Forces Broadcasting Service, which now provides BBC One, BBC Two, Channel 4, ITV and BFBS Extra, relayed to islanders via local transmitters. Recently the service was upgraded to digital, most TV screens are modern while some older CRT equipments still are in use and there is at least one TV set per house. BFBS Radio 2 is the locally available radio station. An official website is provided by the island government and the Tristan da Cunha Association, which maintains it from the UK. A community newsletter, "Village Voice", is produced each week.
The island holds an annual break from government and factory work which begins before Christmas and lasts for three weeks. The beginning of the holiday, called Break-Up Day, is usually marked with parties and celebrations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31361 |
Thomas R. Marshall
Thomas Riley Marshall (March 14, 1854 – June 1, 1925) was an American politician who served as the 28th vice president of the United States from 1913 to 1921 under President Woodrow Wilson. A prominent lawyer in Indiana, he became an active and well known member of the Democratic Party by stumping across the state for other candidates and organizing party rallies that later helped him win election as the 27th governor of Indiana. In office, he proposed controversial changes to the Constitution of Indiana; the state courts blocked his attempts.
Marshall's popularity as Indiana governor, and the state's status as a critical swing state, helped him secure the Democratic vice presidential nomination on a ticket with Wilson in 1912 and win the subsequent general election. An ideological rift developed between the two men during their first term, leading Wilson to limit Marshall's influence in the administration, and his brand of humor caused Wilson to move Marshall's office away from the White House. During Marshall's second term he delivered morale-boosting speeches across the nation during World War I and became the first U.S. vice president to hold cabinet meetings, which he did while Wilson was in Europe. As he was president of the United States Senate, a small number of anti-war Senators kept it deadlocked by refusing to end debate. To enable critical wartime legislation to be passed, Marshall had the body adopt its first procedural rule allowing filibusters to be ended by a two-thirds majority vote—a variation of this rule remains in effect.
Marshall's vice presidency is most remembered for a leadership crisis following a stroke that incapacitated Wilson in October 1919. Because of their personal dislike for Marshall, Wilson's advisers and wife Edith sought to keep him uninformed about the president's condition to prevent him from assuming presidential powers and duties. Many people, including cabinet officials and Congressional leaders, urged Marshall to become acting president, but he refused to forcibly assume Wilson's powers and duties to avoid setting a precedent. Without strong leadership in the executive branch, the administration's opponents defeated the ratification of the League of Nations treaty and effectively returned the United States to an isolationist foreign policy. Marshall is also the only known Vice President of the United States to have been exclusively targeted in an assassination attempt while in office. Marshall was the first Vice President since Daniel D. Tompkins, nearly a century earlier, to serve two full terms.
Marshall was known for his wit and sense of humor; one of his most enduring jokes, which provoked widespread laughter from his colleagues, came during a Senate debate. Responding to Senator Joseph Bristow's catalog of the nation's needs, Marshall quipped that, "What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar." After his terms as vice president, he opened an Indianapolis law practice, where he authored several legal books and his memoir, "Recollections". He continued to travel and speak publicly. Marshall died while on a trip after suffering a heart attack in 1925.
Thomas Marshall's paternal grandfather, Riley Marshall, immigrated to Indiana in 1817 and settled on a farm in present-day Whitley County. He became wealthy when a moderate deposit of oil and natural gas was discovered on his farm; when he sold the property in 1827 it earned $25,000, $ in 2015 chained dollars. The money allowed him to purchase a modest estate and spend the rest of his life as an active member of the Indiana Democratic Party, serving as an Indiana State Senator, party chairman, and financial contributor. He was also able to send his only child, Daniel, to medical school.
Marshall's mother, Martha Patterson, was orphaned at age thirteen while living in Ohio and moved to Indiana to live with her sister on a farm near the Marshalls' home. Martha was known for her wit and humor, as her son later would be. Martha and Daniel met and married in 1848.
Thomas Riley Marshall was born in North Manchester, Indiana, on March 14, 1854. Two years later, a sister was born, but she died in infancy. Martha had contracted tuberculosis, which Daniel believed to be the cause of their infant daughter's poor health. While Marshall was still a young boy, his family moved several times searching a good climate for Daniel to attempt different "outdoor cures" on Martha. They moved first to Quincy, Illinois in 1857. While the family was living in Illinois, Daniel Marshall, a supporter of the American Union and a staunch Democrat, took his four-year-old son, Thomas, to the Lincoln and Douglas debate in Freeport in 1858. Marshall later recalled that during the rally he sat on the laps of Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, alternating between the two candidates when they were not speaking, and remembered it as one of his earliest and most cherished memories.
The family moved to Osawatomie, Kansas, in 1859, but the frontier violence caused them to move to Missouri in 1860. Eventually, Daniel succeeded in curing Martha's disease. As the American Civil War neared, violence spread into Missouri during the Bleeding Kansas incidents. In October 1860 several men led by Duff Green demanded that Daniel Marshall provide medical assistance to the pro-slavery faction, but he refused, and the men left. When the Marshalls' neighbors warned that Green was planning to return and murder them, the family quickly packed their belongings and escaped by steamboat to Illinois. The Marshalls remained in Illinois only briefly, before relocating to Indiana, which was even farther from the volatile border region.
On settling in Pierceton, Indiana, Marshall began to attend public school. His father and grandfather became embroiled in a dispute with their Methodist minister when they refused to vote Republican in the 1862 election. The minister threatened to expel them from the church, to which Marshall's grandfather replied that he would "take his risk on hell, but not the Republican Party". The dispute prompted the family to move again, to Fort Wayne, and convert to the Presbyterian church. In Fort Wayne, Marshall attended high school, graduating in 1869. At age fifteen his parents sent him to Wabash College, in Crawfordsville, where he received a classical education. His father advised him to study medicine or become a minister, but neither interested him; he entered the school without knowing which profession he would take upon graduation.
During college Marshall joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, participated in literary and debating societies, and founded a Democratic Club. He secured a position on the staff of the college newspaper, the "Geyser", and began writing political columns defending Democratic policies. In 1872 he wrote an unfavorable column about a female lecturer at the school, accusing her of "seeking liberties" with the young boys in their boarding house. She hired lawyer Lew Wallace, the author of "", and filed a suit demanding that Marshall pay her $20,000 for libel. Marshall traveled to Indianapolis to find a defense lawyer and employed future United States President Benjamin Harrison, then a prominent lawyer in the area. Harrison had the suit dropped by showing that the charges made by Marshall were probably true. In Marshall's memoir, he wrote that when he approached Harrison to pay his bill, his lawyer informed him that he would not charge him for the service, but instead gave him a lecture on ethics.
Marshall was elected to Phi Beta Kappa during his final year at college. He graduated in June 1873, receiving the top grade in fourteen of his thirty-six courses in a class of twenty-one students. Because of his libel case, he had become increasingly interested in law and began seeking someone to teach him. At that time, the only way to become a lawyer in Indiana was to apprentice under a member of the Indiana bar association. His great-uncle Woodson Marshall began to help him, but the younger Marshall soon moved to Columbia City, Indiana, to live with his parents. Marshall read law in the Columbia City law office of Walter Olds, a future member of the Indiana Supreme Court, for more than a year and was admitted to the Indiana bar on April 26, 1875.
Marshall opened a law practice in Columbia City in 1876, taking on many minor cases. After gaining prominence, he accepted William F. McNagny as a partner in 1879 and began taking many criminal defense cases. The two men functioned well as partners. McNagny was better educated in law and worked out their legal arguments. Marshall, the superior orator, argued the cases before the judge and jury. Their firm became well known in the region after they handled a number of high-profile cases. In 1880 Marshall ran for public office for the first time as the Democratic candidate for his district's prosecuting attorney. The district was a Republican stronghold, and he was defeated. About the same time, he met and began to court Kate Hooper, and the two became engaged to marry. Kate died of an illness in 1882, one day before they were to be wed. Her death was a major emotional blow to Marshall, leading him to become an alcoholic.
Marshall lived with his parents into his thirties. His father died in the late 1880s and his mother died in 1894, leaving him with the family estate and business. In 1895, while working on a case, Marshall met Lois Kimsey who was working as a clerk in her father's law firm. Despite their nineteen-year age difference, the couple fell in love and married on October 2. The Marshalls had a close marriage and were nearly inseparable, and spent only two nights apart during their nearly thirty-year marriage.
Marshall's alcoholism had begun to interfere with his busy life before his marriage. He arrived at court hung-over on several occasions and was unable to keep his addiction secret in his small hometown. His wife helped him to overcome his drinking problem and give up liquor after she locked him in their home for two weeks to undergo a treatment regimen. Thereafter, he became active in temperance organizations and delivered several speeches about the dangers of liquor. Although he had stopped drinking, his past alcoholism was later raised by opponents during his gubernatorial election campaign.
Marshall remained active in the Democratic party after his 1880 defeat and began stumping for other candidates and helping to organize party rallies across the state. His speeches were noted for their partisanship, but his rhetoric gradually shifted away from a conservative viewpoint in the 1890s as he began to identify himself with the growing progressive movement. He became a member of the state Democratic Central Committee in 1904, a position that raised his popularity and influence in the party.
Marshall and his wife were involved in several private organizations. He was active in the Presbyterian Church, taught Sunday school, and served on the county fair board. As he grew wealthy from his law firm he became involved in local charities. An enthusiastic Mason in Columbia City Lodge No. 189 in the Grand Lodge of Indiana, he was a governing member of the state's York Rite bodies, awarded the thirty-third degree of the Scottish Rite in 1898, and became an Active member of the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction's Supreme Council in 1911. He remained a passionate Freemason until his death and served on several Masonic charitable boards. After his death, the $25,000 cost of erecting his mausoleum in Indianapolis' Crown Hill Cemetery was gratefully paid for by the Scottish Rite NMJ Supreme Council.
In 1906, Marshall declined his party's nomination to run for Congress. He hinted, however, to state party leaders that he would be interested in running for Indiana governor in the 1908 election. He soon gained the support of several key labor unions, and was endorsed by Louis Ludlow, a reporter for the "Indianapolis Star". Despite this support, Marshall was a dark horse candidate at the state convention. Initially, Thomas Taggart, Indiana Democratic Party boss, did not support him because of Marshall's support of prohibition. Taggart wanted the party to nominate anti-prohibitionist Samuel Ralston, but the prohibitionist and anti-Taggart factions united with Marshall's supporters. To oppose L. Ert Slack, a temperance candidate, Taggart persuaded Ralston's delegates to support Marshall and give him the votes he needed to win the nomination.
Marshall's opponent in the general election was Republican Congressman James E. Watson, and the campaign focused on temperance and prohibition. Just as it began, the Republican-controlled state government passed a local-option law that allowed counties to ban the sale of liquor. The law became the central point of debate between the parties and their gubernatorial candidates. The Democrats proposed that the local-option law be changed so that the decision to ban liquor sales could be made at the city and township level. This drew support from anti-prohibitionists, who saw it as an opportunity to roll back prohibition in some areas, and as the only alternative available to the total prohibition which the Republican Party advocated. The Democratic position also helped to retain prohibitionists' support by allowing prohibition to remain enacted in communities where a majority supported it. The Republican Party was in the midst of a period of instability, splitting along progressive and conservative lines. Their internal problems proved to be the deciding factor in the election, giving Marshall a narrow victory: he received 48.1 percent of the vote to Watson's 48.0 percent. He was the first Democratic governor in two decades. Democrats also came to power in the Indiana House of Representatives by a small margin, though Republicans retained control of the Indiana Senate.
Marshall was inaugurated as Governor of Indiana on January 11, 1909. Since his party had been out of power for many years, its initial objective was to appoint as many Democrats as possible to patronage positions. Marshall tried to avoid becoming directly involved in the patronage system. He allowed the party's different factions to have positions and appointed very few of his own choices. He allowed Taggart to manage the process and pick the candidates, but signed off on the official appointments. Although his position on patronage kept peace in his party, it prevented him from building a strong political base.
During his term, Marshall focused primarily on advancing the progressive agenda. He successfully advocated the passage of a child labor law and anti-corruption legislation. He supported popular election of U.S. Senators, and the constitutional amendment to allow it was ratified by the Indiana General Assembly during his term. He also overhauled the state auditing agencies and claimed to have saved the government millions of dollars. He was unsuccessful in passing the rest of the progressive platform agenda items or persuading the legislature to call a convention to rewrite the state constitution to expand the government's regulatory powers.
Marshall was a strong opponent of Indiana's recently passed eugenics and sterilization laws, and ordered state institutions not to follow them. He was an early, high-profile opponent of eugenics laws, and he carried his opposition into the vice-presidency. His governorship was the first in which no state executions took place, due to his opposition to capital punishment and his practice of pardoning and commuting the sentences of people condemned to execution. He regularly attacked corporations and used recently created antitrust laws to attempt to break several large businesses. He participated in a number of ceremonial events, including laying the final golden brick to complete the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1909.
Rewriting the state constitution became Marshall's central focus as governor, and after the General Assembly refused to call a constitutional convention he sought other ways to have a new constitution adopted. He and Jacob Piatt Dunn, a close friend and civic leader, wrote a new constitution that increased the state's regulatory powers considerably, set minimum wages, and gave constitutional protections to unions. Many of these reforms were also in the Socialist Party platform under its leader, Terre Haute native Eugene V. Debs. Republicans believed Marshall's constitution was an attempt to win over Debs' supporters, who had a strong presence in Indiana. The constitution also allowed direct-democracy initiatives and referendums to be held. The Democratic controlled assembly agreed to the request and put the measure on the ballot. His opponents attacked the direct-democracy provisions, claiming they were a violation of the United States Constitution, which required states to operate republican forms of government. The 1910 midterm elections gave the Democrats control of the Indiana Senate, increasing the constitution's chances of adoption. Marshall presented it to the General Assembly in 1911 and recommended that they submit it to voters in the 1912 election.
Republicans opposed the ratification process, and were infuriated that the Democrats were attempting to revise the entire constitution without calling a constitutional convention, as had been called for in the state's two previous constitutions. Marshall argued that no convention was needed because the existing constitution did not call for one. Republicans took the issue to court and the Marion County Circuit Court granted an injunction removing the constitution from the 1912 ballot. Marshall appealed, but the Indiana Supreme Court upheld the decision in a judgment which stated that the Constitution of Indiana could not be replaced in total without a constitutional convention, based on the precedent set by Indiana's first two constitutions. Marshall was angry with the decision and delivered a speech attacking the court and accusing it of overstepping its authority. He launched a final appeal to the United States Supreme Court but left office in January 1913 while the case was still pending. Later that year, the court declined the appeal, finding that the issue was within the sole jurisdiction of the state courts. Marshall was disappointed with the outcome. Subsequent scholars such as Linda Gugin and legal expert James St. Claire have called the process and the document "seriously flawed" and argued that had the constitution been adopted, large parts would probably have been ruled unconstitutional by the federal courts.
The Indiana constitution prevented Marshall from serving a consecutive term as governor. He made plans to run for a United States Senate seat after his term ended, but another opportunity presented itself during his last months as governor. Although he did not attend the 1912 Democratic National Convention in Baltimore, his name was put forward as Indiana's choice for president. He was suggested as a compromise nominee, but William Jennings Bryan and his delegates endorsed Woodrow Wilson over Champ Clark, securing the nomination for Wilson. Indiana's delegates lobbied to have Marshall named the vice presidential candidate in exchange for supporting Wilson. Indiana was an important swing state, and Wilson hoped that Marshall's popularity would help him carry it in the general election. He had his delegates support Marshall, giving him the vice presidential nomination. Marshall privately turned down the nomination, assuming the job would be boring given its limited role. He changed his mind after Wilson assured him that he would be given plenty of responsibilities. During the campaign, Marshall traveled across the United States delivering speeches. The Wilson–Marshall ticket easily won the 1912 election because of the division between the Republican Party and the Progressive Party.
Marshall was not fond of Wilson, as he disagreed with him on a number of issues. Although Wilson invited Marshall to cabinet meetings, Marshall's ideas were rarely considered for implementation, and Marshall eventually stopped attending them regularly. In 1913, Wilson broke with longstanding tradition and met with senators to discuss policy. Previous presidents had used the vice president as an intermediary, but Wilson did not trust Marshall with delicate business. In his memoir, Marshall's only negative comment towards Wilson was, "I have sometimes thought that great men are the bane of civilization, they are the real cause of all the bitterness and contention which amounts to anything in the world". Their relationship was described as one of "functioning animosity".
Marshall was not offended by Wilson's lack of interest in his ideas, and considered his primary constitutional duty to be in the Senate. He viewed the vice presidency as a legislative role, not an executive one. When he presided over the Senate, emotions sometimes ran high. During a debate on the Mexican border crisis in 1916, Marshall threatened to expel certain senators from the chamber for their raucous behavior, but did not carry through on the threat. On several occasions, he ordered the Senate gallery cleared. He voted eight times to break tie votes.
In the debates leading up to World War I, a number of isolationist senators filibustered bills that Wilson considered important. The filibusters lasted for weeks and twice lasted for over three months. Wilson and the bills' supporters requested that Marshall put a gag-order in place to cut off debate, but he refused on ethical grounds, allowing a number of bills to be defeated in hopes that opposition would eventually end their filibuster. Among the defeated bills was one allowing merchant ships to arm themselves, and another allowing the US government to make direct arms sales to the Allies. Despite their victories, the small group of senators continued to lock up the senate to prevent any pro-war legislation from passing. In response, Marshall led the Senate to adopt a new rule on March 8, 1917, allowing filibusters to be broken by two-thirds of voting Senators. This replaced the previous rule that allowed any senator to prolong debate as long as he desired. The rule has been modified several times, most prominently that the current rule requires three-fifths of "all" Senators, not only the ones voting.
As Marshall made little news and was viewed as a somewhat comic figure in Washington because of his sense of humor, a number of Democratic party leaders wanted him removed from the 1916 reelection ticket. Wilson, after deliberating, decided keeping Marshall on would demonstrate party unity; thus in 1916 Marshall won reelection over the still divided Republican Party and became the first vice president re-elected since John C. Calhoun in 1828, and Wilson and Marshall became the first president and vice president team to be re-elected since Monroe and Tompkins in 1820.
On the evening of July 2, 1915, Eric Muenter, a one time German professor at Harvard and Cornell universities, who opposed American support of the Allied war effort, broke into the U.S. Senate and, finding the door to the Senate chamber locked, laid dynamite outside the reception room, which happened to be next to Marshall's office door. Although the bomb was set with a timer, it exploded prematurely just before midnight, while no one was in the office. (Muenter may not have been specifically targeting the vice president.).
On July 3, Muenter (who went under the pseudonym Frank Holt) burst into the Glen Cove, New York home of Jack Morgan, son of financier J.P. Morgan, demanding that he stop the sale of weapons to the Allies. Morgan told the man he was in no position to comply with his demand; Muenter shot him twice non-fatally and escaped. Muenter was later apprehended and confessed to attempted assassination of the vice president. Marshall was offered a personal security detachment after the incident, but declined it. Marshall had been receiving written death threats from numerous "cranks" for several weeks. "Some of them were signed," Marshall told the press, "but most were anonymous. I threw them all into the waste basket." Marshall added that he was "more or less a fatalist" and did not notify the Secret Service about the letters, "but that he naturally was startled when he heard of the explosion at the Capitol."
During Marshall's second term, the United States entered World War I. Marshall was a reluctant supporter of the war, believing the country to be unprepared and feared it would be necessary to enact conscription. He was pleased with Wilson's strategy to begin a military buildup before the declaration of war, and fully supported the war effort once it had begun. Shortly after the first troops began to assemble for transport to Europe, Wilson and Marshall hosted a delegation from the United Kingdom in which Marshall. During their meetings, he became privy to the primary war strategy. However, he was largely excluded from war planning and rarely received official updates on the progress of military campaigns. He usually received news of the war through the newspapers.
Wilson sent Marshall around the nation to deliver morale-boosting speeches and encourage Americans to buy Liberty Bonds to support the war effort. Marshall was well suited for the job, as he had been earning extra money as a public speaker while vice president, and gladly accepted the responsibility. In his speeches, he cast the war as a "moral crusade to preserve the dignity of the state for the rights of individuals". In his memoir, he recalled that the war seemed to drag on "with leaden feet", and that he was relieved when it finally ended. As the war neared its end, Marshall became the first vice president to conduct cabinet meetings; Wilson left him with this responsibility while traveling in Europe to sign the Versailles treaty and to work on gathering support for his League of Nations idea. Wilson became the first president to deliver a treaty to the Senate in person when he presented it to Marshall during a morning session.
Marshall's wife, Lois, was heavily involved in charitable activities in Washington and spent considerable time working at the Diet Kitchen Welfare Center providing free meals to impoverished children. In 1917 she became acquainted with a mother of newborn twins, one of whom was chronically ill. The child's parents were unable to get adequate treatment for their son's condition. Lois formed a close bond with the baby, named Clarence Ignatius Morrison, and offered to take him and help him find treatment. She and Marshall had been unable to have children, and when she brought the baby home, Marshall told her that she could "keep him, provided he did not squall". Marshall grew to love the boy and wrote that he "never walked the streets of Washington with as sure a certainty as he walked into my heart", and, as the boy grew older, that he was "beautiful as an angel; brilliant beyond his years; lovable from every standpoint".
The Marshalls never officially adopted Morrison because they believed that to go through the procedure while his parents were still living would appear unusual to the public. Wanting to keep the situation private, they instead made a special arrangement with his parents. President Wilson felt obliged to acknowledge the boy as theirs and sent the couple a note that simply said, "With congratulations to the baby. Wilson". Morrison lived with the Marshalls for the rest of his life. In correspondence they referred to him as Morrison Marshall, but in person they called him Izzy. Lois took him to see many doctors and spent all her available time trying to nurse him back to health, but his condition worsened and he died in February 1920, just before his fourth birthday. His death devastated Marshall, who wrote in his memoir that Izzy "was and is and ever will be so sacred to me".
President Wilson experienced a mild stroke in September 1919. On October 2, he was struck by a much more severe stroke that left him partially paralyzed and almost certainly incapacitated. Wilson's closest adviser, Joseph Tumulty, did not believe Marshall would be a suitable acting president and took precautions to prevent him from assuming presidential powers and duties. Wilson's wife Edith strongly disliked Marshall because of what she called his "uncouthed" disposition, and also opposed his assumption of presidential powers and duties. Tumulty and the First Lady believed that an official communication from Wilson's staff on his condition would allow Marshall to trigger the constitutional mechanism allowing him to become acting president, and made sure no such communication occurred. After Marshall demanded to know Wilson's status so that he could prepare for the possibility of becoming president, they had a reporter from the "Baltimore Sun" brief Marshall and inform him that Wilson was near death. Marshall later said that "it was the first great shock of my life", but without an official communication on Wilson's condition, he didn't believe he could constitutionally assume presidential powers and duties.
On October 5, Secretary of State Robert Lansing was the first official to propose that Marshall forcibly assume presidential powers and duties. Other cabinet secretaries backed Lansing's request. Congressional leaders of both parties also sent private communications to Marshall, who was cautious in accepting their support. After consulting with his wife and his long-time personal adviser, Mark Thistlethwaite, he privately refused to assume Wilson's duties and become acting president. The process for declaring a president incapacitated was unclear at that time, and he feared the precedent that might be set if he forcibly removed Wilson from his powers and duties. Marshall wanted the president to voluntarily allow his powers to devolve to the vice president, but that was impossible given his condition and unlikely given Wilson's dislike for Marshall. The vice president informed the cabinet that he would assume Wilson's powers and duties only in response to a joint resolution of Congress calling on him to do so or an official communication from Wilson or his staff asserting his inability to perform his duties.
Wilson was kept secluded by his wife and personal physician and only his close advisers were allowed to see him; none would divulge official information on his condition. Although Marshall sought to meet with Wilson to determine his condition, he was unable to do so. He instead relied on vague updates received through bulletins published by Wilson's physician. Believing that Wilson and his advisers would not voluntarily transfer power to the vice president, a group of Congressional leaders initiated Marshall's requested joint resolution. However, senators opposed to the League of Nations treaty blocked the joint resolution in hopes of preventing the treaty's ratification. These senators believed that as acting president Marshall would make several key concessions that would allow the treaty to win ratification. Wilson, in his present condition, was either unwilling or unable to make the concessions, and debate on the bill had resulted in a deadlock.
On December 4, Lansing announced in a Senate committee hearing that no one in the cabinet had spoken with or seen Wilson in over sixty days. The senators seeking to elevate Marshall requested that a committee be sent to check on Wilson's condition, hoping to gain evidence to support their cause. Dubbed the "smelling committee" by several newspapers, the group discovered Wilson was in very poor health, but seemed to have recovered enough of his faculties to make decisions. Their report ended the perceived need for the joint resolution.
At a Sunday church service in mid-December, in what Marshall believed was an attempt by other officials to force him to assume the presidency, a courier brought a message informing him that Wilson had died. Marshall was shocked, and rose to announce the news to the congregation. The ministers held a prayer, the congregation began singing hymns, and many people wept. Marshall and his wife exited the building, and made a call to the White House to determine his next course of action, only to find that he had been the victim of a hoax, and that Wilson was still alive.
Marshall performed a few ceremonial functions for the remainder of Wilson's term, such as hosting foreign dignitaries. Among these was Albert I, King of the Belgians, the first European monarch to visit the United States. Edward, Prince of Wales, the future monarch of the United Kingdom, spent two days with Marshall and received a personal tour of Washington from him. First Lady Edith Wilson performed most routine duties of government. She reviewed Wilson's communications and decided what to share with him and what to delegate to others. The resulting lack of leadership allowed the administration's opponents to prevent ratification of the League of Nations treaty. They attacked the treaty's tenth article, which they believed would allow the United States to be bound in an alliance to European countries that could force the country to return to war without an act of Congress. Marshall personally supported the treaty's adoption, but recommended several changes, including the requirement that all parties to it acknowledge the Monroe Doctrine and the United States' sphere of influence, and that the tenth article be made non-binding.
Wilson began to recover by the end of 1919, but remained secluded for the remainder of his term, steadfast in his refusal or inability to accept changes to the treaty. Marshall was prevented from meeting with him to ascertain his true condition until his final day in office. It remains unclear who made executive decisions during Wilson's incapacity, but it was likely the first lady with the help of the presidential advisers.
Marshall had his name entered as a candidate for the presidential nomination at the 1920 Democratic National Convention. He made arrangements with Thomas Taggart to have a delegation sent from Indiana to support his bid, but was unable to garner support outside of the Hoosier delegation. Ultimately he endorsed the Democratic nominees, James M. Cox for president and Franklin D. Roosevelt for vice president, but they were defeated by the Republican ticket of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. On their election, Marshall sent a note to Coolidge offering him his "sincere condolences" for his misfortune of having been elected vice president.
Marshall considered returning to Columbia City after leaving office, but instead bought a home and opened a law practice in Indianapolis, where he believed there would be better business opportunities. Harding nominated him to serve on the Lincoln Memorial Commission in 1921, and then to a more lucrative position on the Federal Coal Commission in 1922; Marshall resigned from both commissions in 1923. He spent over a year writing books on the law and his "Recollections", a humorous memoir. The latter book was completed in May 1925 and subsequent historians have noted it as unusual, even for its time, for not disclosing any secrets or attacking any of Marshall's enemies. Marshall remained a popular public speaker, and continued to travel to give speeches. The last he delivered was to high school students in the town of his birth.
While on a trip to Washington D.C., Marshall was struck by a heart attack while reading his Bible in bed on the night of June 1, 1925. His wife called for medical assistance, but he died before it arrived. A service and viewing was held in Washington two days later and was attended by many dignitaries. Marshall's remains were returned to Indianapolis, where he lay in state for two days; thousands visited his bier. His funeral service was held June 9, and he was interred in Crown Hill Cemetery, next to the grave of his adopted son Morrison "Izzy" Marshall. Lois Marshall moved to Arizona and remained widowed the rest of her life, living on her husband's pension and the $50,000 she earned by selling his memoir to the Bobbs-Merrill publishing company. She died in 1958 and was interred next to her husband.
Marshall was known for his quick wit and good sense of humor. On hearing of his nomination as vice president, he announced that he was not surprised, as "Indiana is the mother of Vice Presidents; home of more second-class men than any other state". One of his favorite jokes, which he delivered in a speech before his departure for Washington, D.C., to become vice president, recounted a story of a man with two sons. One of the sons went to sea and drowned and the other was elected vice president; neither son was ever heard from again. On his election as vice president, he sent Woodrow Wilson a book, inscribed "From your only Vice".
Marshall's humor caused him trouble during his time in Washington. He was known to greet citizens walking by his office on the White House tour by saying to them, "If you look on me as a wild animal, be kind enough to throw peanuts at me." This prompted Wilson to move Marshall's office to the Senate Office building, where the Vice President would not be disturbed by visitors. In response to Alexander Graham Bell's proposal to the board of the Smithsonian Institution to send a team to excavate for ruins in Guatemala, Marshall suggested that the team instead excavate around Washington. When asked why, he replied that, judging by the looks of the people walking on the street, they should be able to find buried cave-men no more than six feet down. The joke was not well received, and he was shut out of board meetings for nearly a year.
Marshall's wit is best remembered for a phrase he introduced to the American lexicon. While presiding over a Senate session in 1914, Marshall responded to earlier comments from Senator Joseph L. Bristow that provided a long list of what he felt the country needed. Marshall reportedly leaned over and muttered to one of his clerks, "What this country needs is more of this; what this country needs is more of that" and quipped loudly enough for others to overhear, "What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar." Marshall's remark was popularized and widely circulated among a network of newspapers. Other accounts later embellished the story, including the exact situation that prompted his comment. In 1922 Marshall explained that the five-cent cigar was a metaphor for simpler times and "buckling down to thrift and work."
The situation that arose after the incapacity of Wilson, for which Marshall's vice-presidency is most remembered, revived the national debate on the process of presidential succession. The topic was already being discussed when Wilson left for Europe, which influenced him to allow Marshall to conduct cabinet meetings in his absence. Wilson's incapacity during 1919 and the lack of action by Marshall made it a major issue. The lack of a clear process for presidential succession had first become an issue when President William Henry Harrison died in office in 1841, but little progress had been made passing a constitutional amendment to remedy the problem. Nearly fifty years later, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed, allowing the vice president to assume the presidential powers and duties any time the president was rendered incapable of carrying out the powers and duties of the office.
Historians have varied interpretations of Marshall's vice presidency. Claire Suddath rated Marshall as one of the worst vice presidents in American history in a 2008 "Time" magazine article. Samuel Eliot Morison wrote that had Marshall carried out his constitutional duties, assumed the presidential powers and duties, and made the concessions necessary for the passage of the League of Nations treaty in late 1920, the United States would have been much more involved in European affairs and could have helped prevent the rise of Adolf Hitler, which began in the following year. Morison and a number of other historians claim that Marshall's decision was an indirect cause of the Second World War. Charles Thomas, one of Marshall's biographers, wrote that although Marshall's assumption of presidential powers and duties would have made World War II much less likely, modern hypothetical speculation on the subject was unfair to Marshall, who made the correct decision in not forcibly removing Wilson from his duties, even temporarily.
1912 United States presidential election
1916 United States presidential election | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31362 |
Physiologus
The Physiologus is a didactic Christian text written or compiled in Greek by an unknown author, in Alexandria; its composition has been traditionally dated to the 2nd century AD by readers who saw parallels with writings of Clement of Alexandria, who is asserted to have known the text, though Alan Scott has made a case for a date at the end of the 3rd or in the 4th century. The "Physiologus" consists of descriptions of animals, birds, and fantastic creatures, sometimes stones and plants, provided with moral content. Each animal is described, and an anecdote follows, from which the moral and symbolic qualities of the animal are derived. Manuscripts are often, but not always, given illustrations, often lavish.
The book was translated into Armenian in 5th century, into Latin by the early 6th century or possibly even by the mid-4th century and into Ethiopic and Syriac, then into many European and Middle-Eastern languages, and many illuminated manuscript copies such as the Bern Physiologus survive. It retained its influence over ideas of the "meaning" of animals in Europe for over a thousand years. It was a predecessor of bestiaries (books of beasts). Medieval poetical literature is full of allusions that can be traced to the "Physiologus" tradition; the text also exerted great influence on the symbolism of medieval ecclesiastical art: symbols like those of the phoenix rising from its ashes and the pelican feeding her young with her own blood are still well-known.
The story is told of the lion whose cubs are born dead and receive life when the old lion breathes upon them, and of the phoenix which burns itself to death and rises on the third day from the ashes; both are taken as types of Christ. The unicorn also which only permits itself to be captured in the lap of a pure virgin is a type of the Incarnation; the pelican that sheds its own blood in order to sprinkle its dead young, so that they may live again, is a type of the salvation of mankind by the death of Christ on the Cross.
Some allegories set forth the deceptive enticements of the Devil and his defeat by Christ; others present qualities as examples to be imitated or avoided.
The conventional title "Physiologus" was because the author introduces his stories from natural history with the phrase: "the physiologus says", that is, "the naturalist says", "the natural philosophers, the authorities for natural history say".
In later centuries it was ascribed to various celebrated Fathers, especially Epiphanius, Basil of Caesarea, and St. Peter of Alexandria.
The assertion that the method of the "Physiologus" presupposes the allegorical exegesis developed by Origen is not correct; the so-called "Letter of Barnabas" offers, before Origen, a sufficient model, not only for the general character of the "Physiologus" but also for many of its details. It can hardly be asserted that the later recensions, in which the Greek text has been preserved, present even in the best and oldest manuscripts a perfectly reliable transcription of the original, especially as this was an anonymous and popular treatise.
About the year 400 the "Physiologus" was translated into Latin; from Greek, the original language that it was written in. In the 5th century into Ethiopic [edited by Fritz Hommel with a German translation (Leipzig, 1877), revised German translation in "Romanische Forschungen", V, 13-36]; into Armenian [edited by Pitra in "Spicilegium Solesmense", III, 374–90; French translation by Cahier in "Nouveaux Mélanges d'archéologie, d'histoire et de littérature" (Paris, 1874)] (see also the recent edition: Gohar Muradyan, Physiologus. The Greek And Armenian Versions With a Study of Translation Technique, Leuven–Dudley MA: Peeters, 2005 [Hebrew University Armenian Studies 6]); into Syriac [edited by Tychsen, "Physiologus Syrus" (Rostock, 1795), a later Syriac and an Arabic version edited by Land in "Anecdota Syriaca", IV (Leyden, 1875)]. An Old Slavic (Old Bulgarian) translation was made in the 10th century [edited by Karneyev, , Sankt Peterburg, 1890].
Epiphanius used "Physiologus" in his "Panarion" and from his time numerous further quotations and references to the "Physiologus" in the Greek and the Latin Church fathers show that it was one of the most generally known works of Christian Late Antiquity. Various translations and revisions were current in the Middle Ages. The earliest translation into Latin was followed by various recensions, among them the "Sayings of St. John Chrysostom on the natures of beasts", A metrical Latin "Physiologus" was written in the 11th century by a certain Theobaldus, and printed by Morris in "An Old English Miscellany" (1872), 201 sqq.; it also appears among the works of Hildebertus Cenomanensis in "Pat.Lat.", CLXXI, 1217–24. To these should be added the literature of the bestiaries, in which the material of the "Physiologus" was used; the "Tractatus de bestiis et alius rebus", often misattributed to Hugo of St. Victor, and the "Speculum naturale" of Vincent of Beauvais.
The "Physiologus" had an impact on neighboring literatures: medieval translations into Latin, Armenian, Georgian, Slavic, Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopic are known.
Translations and adaptations from the Latin introduced the "Physiologus" into almost all the languages of Western Europe. An Old High German (Alemannic) translation was written in Hirsau in ca. 1070 (ed. Müllenhoff and Scherer in "Denkmäler deutscher Poesie und Prosa" No. LXXXI); a later translation (12th century) has been edited by Lauchert in "Geschichte des Physiologus" (pp. 280–99); and a rhymed version appears in Karajan, "Deutsche Sprachdenkmale des XII. Jahrhunderts" (pp. 73–106), both based on the Latin text known as "Dicta Chrysostomi."
Fragments of a 9th-century metrical Anglo-Saxon "Physiologus" are extant (ed. Thorpe in "Codex Exoniensis" pp. 335–67, Grein in "Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Poesie" I, 223-8).
About the middle of the 13th century there appeared a Middle English metrical "Bestiary", an adaptation of the Latin "Physiologus Theobaldi"; this has been edited by Wright and Halliwell in "Reliquiæ antiquæ" (I, 208-27), also by Morris in "An Old English Miscellany" (1-25). There is an "Icelandic" "Physiologus" preserved in two fragmentary redactions from around 1200.
In the 12th and 13th centuries there appeared the "Bestiaires" of Philippe de Thaun, a metrical Old French version, edited by Thomas Wright in "Popular Treatises on Science Written during the Middle Ages" (74-131), and by Walberg (Lund and Paris, 1900); that by Guillaume, clerk of Normandy, called "Bestiare divin", and edited by Cahier in his "Mélanges d'archéologie" (II-IV), also edited by Hippeau (Caen, 1852), and by Reinsch (Leipzig, 1890); the "", edited by Paul Meyer in "Romania" (I, 420-42); the "Bestiare" in prose of Pierre le Picard, edited by Cahier in "Mélanges" (II-IV).
An adaptation is found in the old Waldensian literature, and has been edited by Alfons Mayer in "Romanische Forschungen" (V, 392 sqq.). As to the Italian bestiaries, a Tuscan-Venetian "Bestiarius" has been edited (Goldstaub and Wendriner, "Ein tosco-venezianischer Bestiarius", Halle, 1892). Extracts from the "Physiologus" in Provençal have been edited by Bartsch, "Provenzalisches Lesebuch" (162-66). The "Physiologus" survived in the literatures of Eastern Europe in books on animals written in Middle Greek, among the Slavs to whom it came from the Byzantine (translations of the so-called Byzantinian redaction were made in Middle Bulgarian in the 13th-14th century; they were edited in 2011 by Ana Stoykova in an electronic edition, see reference), and in a Romanian translation from a Slavic original (edited by Moses Gaster with an Italian translation in "Archivio glottologico italiano", X, 273-304).
Modern study of "Physiologus" can be said to have begun with Francesco Sbordone's edition, 1936, which established three traditions in the surviving manuscripts of the text, a "primitive" tradition, a Byzantine one and a pseudo-Basil tradition. Ben Perry showed that a manuscript Sbordone had missed, at the Morgan Library, was the oldest extant Greek version, a late 10th-century manuscript from Grottaferrata. Anna Dorofeeva has argued that the numerous early Latin Physiologus manuscripts can be seen as evidence for an 'encyclopedic drive' amongst early medieval monastic writing centres. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31364 |
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Started as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is now published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the cultural life of New York City, "The New Yorker" has a wide audience outside New York and is read internationally. It is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric Americana, its attention to modern fiction by the inclusion of short stories and literary reviews, its rigorous fact checking and copy editing, its journalism on politics and social issues, and its single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue.
"The New Yorker" was founded by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a "New York Times" reporter, and debuted on February 21, 1925. Ross wanted to create a sophisticated humor magazine that would be different from perceivably "corny" humor publications such as "Judge", where he had worked, or the old "Life". Ross partnered with entrepreneur Raoul H. Fleischmann (who founded the General Baking Company) to establish the F-R Publishing Company. The magazine's first offices were at 25 West 45th Street in Manhattan. Ross edited the magazine until his death in 1951. During the early, occasionally precarious years of its existence, the magazine prided itself on its cosmopolitan sophistication. Ross famously declared in a 1925 prospectus for the magazine: "It has announced that it is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque."
Although the magazine never lost its touches of humor, it soon established itself as a pre-eminent forum for serious fiction, essays and journalism. Shortly after the end of World War II, John Hersey's essay "Hiroshima" filled an entire issue. In subsequent decades the magazine published short stories by many of the most respected writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including Ann Beattie, Sally Benson, Truman Capote, John Cheever, Roald Dahl, Mavis Gallant, Geoffrey Hellman, Ruth McKenney, John McNulty, Joseph Mitchell, Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami, Vladimir Nabokov, John O'Hara, Dorothy Parker, S.J. Perelman, Philip Roth, J. D. Salinger, Irwin Shaw, James Thurber, John Updike, Eudora Welty, Stephen King, and E. B. White. Publication of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" drew more mail than any other story in the magazine's history.
In its early decades, the magazine sometimes published two or even three short stories a week, but in recent years the pace has remained steady at one story per issue. While some styles and themes recur more often than others in its fiction, the stories are marked less by uniformity than by variety, and they have ranged from Updike's introspective domestic narratives to the surrealism of Donald Barthelme, and from parochial accounts of the lives of neurotic New Yorkers to stories set in a wide range of locations and eras and translated from many languages. Kurt Vonnegut said that "The New Yorker" has been an effective instrument for getting a large audience to appreciate modern literature. Vonnegut's 1974 interview with Joe David Bellamy and John Casey contained a discussion of "The New Yorker"s influence:
The non-fiction feature articles (which usually make up the bulk of the magazine's content) cover an eclectic array of topics. Recent subjects have included eccentric evangelist Creflo Dollar, the different ways in which humans perceive the passage of time, and Münchausen syndrome by proxy.
The magazine is notable for its editorial traditions. Under the rubric "Profiles", it publishes articles about notable people such as Ernest Hemingway, Henry R. Luce and Marlon Brando, Hollywood restaurateur Michael Romanoff, magician Ricky Jay and mathematicians David and Gregory Chudnovsky. Other enduring features have been "Goings on About Town", a listing of cultural and entertainment events in New York, and "The Talk of the Town", a miscellany of brief pieces—frequently humorous, whimsical or eccentric vignettes of life in New York—written in a breezily light style, or feuilleton, although in recent years the section often begins with a serious commentary. For many years, newspaper snippets containing amusing errors, unintended meanings or badly mixed metaphors ("Block That Metaphor") have been used as filler items, accompanied by a witty retort. There is no masthead listing the editors and staff. Despite some changes, the magazine has kept much of its traditional appearance over the decades in typography, layout, covers and artwork. The magazine was acquired by Advance Publications, the media company owned by Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr, in 1985, for $200 million when it was earning less than $6 million a year.
Ross was succeeded as editor by William Shawn (1951–87), followed by Robert Gottlieb (1987–92) and Tina Brown (1992–98). Among the important nonfiction authors who began writing for the magazine during Shawn's editorship were Dwight Macdonald, Kenneth Tynan, and Hannah Arendt; to a certain extent all three authors were controversial, Arendt the most obviously so (her "Eichmann in Jerusalem" reportage appeared in the magazine before it was published as a book), but in each case Shawn proved an active champion.
Brown's nearly six-year tenure attracted more controversy than Gottlieb's or even Shawn's, thanks to her high profile (Shawn, by contrast, had been an extremely shy, introverted figure) and the changes which she made to a magazine that had retained a similar look and feel for the previous half-century. She introduced color to the editorial pages (several years before "The New York Times") and photography, with less type on each page and a generally more modern layout. More substantively, she increased the coverage of current events and hot topics such as celebrities and business tycoons, and placed short pieces throughout "Goings on About Town", including a racy column about nightlife in Manhattan. A new letters-to-the-editor page and the addition of authors' bylines to their "Talk of the Town" pieces had the effect of making the magazine more personal. The current editor of "The New Yorker" is David Remnick, who succeeded Brown in July 1998.
Tom Wolfe wrote about the magazine: "The "New Yorker" style was one of leisurely meandering understatement, droll when in the humorous mode, tautological and litotical when in the serious mode, constantly amplified, qualified, adumbrated upon, nuanced and renuanced, until the magazine's pale-gray pages became High Baroque triumphs of the relative clause and appository modifier".
Joseph Rosenblum, reviewing Ben Yagoda's "About Town", a history of the magazine from 1925 to 1985, wrote, "..."The New Yorker" did create its own universe. As one longtime reader wrote to Yagoda, this was a place 'where Peter DeVries ... was forever lifting a glass of Piesporter, where Niccolò Tucci (in a plum velvet dinner jacket) flirted in Italian with Muriel Spark, where Nabokov sipped tawny port from a prismatic goblet (while a Red Admirable perched on his pinky), and where John Updike tripped over the master's Swiss shoes, excusing himself charmingly.
As far back as the 1940s, the magazine's commitment to fact-checking was already well-known. However, the magazine played a role in a literary scandal and defamation lawsuit over two articles written by Janet Malcolm in the 1990s, who wrote about Sigmund Freud's legacy. Questions were raised about the magazine's fact-checking process. As of 2010, "The New Yorker" employs sixteen fact checkers. In July 2011, the magazine was sued for defamation in United States district court for an article written by David Grann on July 12, 2010, but the case was summarily dismissed. Today, the magazine is often identified as the leading publication for rigorous fact checking.
Since the late 1990s, "The New Yorker" has used the Internet to publish current and archived material, and maintains a website with some content from the current issue (plus exclusive web-only content). Subscribers have access to the full current issue online, as well as a complete archive of back issues viewable as they were originally printed. In addition, "The New Yorker"s cartoons are available for purchase online. A digital archive of back issues from 1925 to April 2008 (representing more than 4,000 issues and half a million pages) has also been issued on DVD-ROMs and on a small portable hard drive. More recently, an iPad version of the current issue of the magazine has been released.
In its issue dated November 1, 2004, the magazine endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time, choosing to endorse Democrat John Kerry over incumbent Republican George W. Bush. This was continued in 2008, when the magazine endorsed Barack Obama over John McCain, in 2012, when it endorsed Obama over Mitt Romney, and in 2016, when it endorsed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.
"The New Yorker" influenced a number of similar magazines, including "The Brooklynite" (1926 to 1930), "The Chicagoan" (1926 to 1935), and Paris's "The Boulevardier" (1927 to 1932).
"The New Yorker" has featured cartoons (usually gag cartoons) since it began publication in 1925. The cartoon editor of "The New Yorker" for years was Lee Lorenz, who first began cartooning in 1956 and became a "New Yorker" contract contributor in 1958. After serving as the magazine's art editor from 1973 to 1993 (when he was replaced by Françoise Mouly), he continued in the position of cartoon editor until 1998. His book "The Art of the New Yorker: 1925–1995" (Knopf, 1995) was the first comprehensive survey of all aspects of the magazine's graphics. In 1998, Robert Mankoff took over as cartoon editor and edited at least 14 collections of "New Yorker" cartoons. In addition, Mankoff usually contributed a short article to each book, describing some aspect of the cartooning process or the methods used to select cartoons for the magazine. Mankoff left the magazine in 2017.
"The New Yorker"s stable of cartoonists has included many important talents in American humor, including Charles Addams, Peter Arno, Charles Barsotti, George Booth, Roz Chast, Tom Cheney, Sam Cobean, Leo Cullum, Richard Decker, Pia Guerra, J. B. Handelsman, Helen E. Hokinson, Ed Koren, Reginald Marsh, Mary Petty, George Price, Charles Saxon, David Snell, Otto Soglow, Saul Steinberg, William Steig, James Stevenson, Richard Taylor, James Thurber, Pete Holmes, Barney Tobey, and Gahan Wilson.
Many early "New Yorker" cartoonists did not caption their own cartoons. In his book "The Years with Ross", Thurber describes the newspaper's weekly art meeting, where cartoons submitted over the previous week would be brought up from the mail room to be gone over by Ross, the editorial department, and a number of staff writers. Cartoons often would be rejected or sent back to artists with requested amendments, while others would be accepted and captions written for them. Some artists hired their own writers; Helen Hokinson hired James Reid Parker in 1931. (Brendan Gill relates in his book "Here at The New Yorker" that at one point in the early 1940s, the quality of the artwork submitted to the magazine seemed to improve. It later was found out that the office boy (a teen-aged Truman Capote) had been acting as a volunteer art editor, dropping pieces he didn't like down the far edge of his desk.)
Several of the magazine's cartoons have climbed to a higher plateau of fame. One 1928 cartoon drawn by Carl Rose and captioned by E. B. White shows a mother telling her daughter, "It's broccoli, dear." The daughter responds, "I say it's spinach and I say the hell with it." The phrase "I say it's spinach" entered the vernacular (and three years later, the Broadway musical "Face the Music" included Irving Berlin's musical number entitled "I Say It's Spinach (And the Hell with It)"). The catchphrase "back to the drawing board" originated with the 1941 Peter Arno cartoon showing an engineer walking away from a crashed plane, saying, "Well, back to the old drawing board."
The most reprinted is Peter Steiner's 1993 drawing of two dogs at a computer, with one saying, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog". According to Mankoff, Steiner and the magazine have split more than $100,000 in fees paid for the licensing and reprinting of this single cartoon, with more than half going to Steiner.
Over seven decades, many hardcover compilations of cartoons from "The New Yorker" have been published, and in 2004, Mankoff edited "The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker", a 656-page collection with 2004 of the magazine's best cartoons published during 80 years, plus a double CD set with all 68,647 cartoons ever published in the magazine. This features a search function allowing readers to search for cartoons by a cartoonist's name or by year of publication. The newer group of cartoonists in recent years includes Pat Byrnes, Frank Cotham, Michael Crawford, Joe Dator, Drew Dernavich, J. C. Duffy, Carolita Johnson, Zachary Kanin, Farley Katz, Robert Leighton, Glen Le Lievre, Michael Maslin, Ariel Molvig, Paul Noth, Barbara Smaller, David Sipress, Mick Stevens, Julia Suits, Christopher Weyant, P. C. Vey, and Jack Ziegler. The notion that some "New Yorker" cartoons have punchlines so "non sequitur" that they are impossible to understand became a subplot in the "Seinfeld" episode "The Cartoon", as well as a playful jab in an episode of "The Simpsons", "The Sweetest Apu".
In April 2005, the magazine began using the last page of each issue for "The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest". Captionless cartoons by "The New Yorker"s regular cartoonists are printed each week. Captions are submitted by readers, and three are chosen as finalists. Readers then vote on the winner. Anyone age thirteen or older can enter or vote. Each contest winner receives a print of the cartoon (with the winning caption), signed by the artist who drew the cartoon.
The New Yorker launched a crossword puzzle series in April 2018 with a weekday crossword published every Monday. Subsequently, it launched a second, weekend crossword that appears on Fridays and relaunched cryptic puzzles that were run in the magazine in the late 1990s. The puzzles are written by a rotating stable of seven constructors. The crosswords integrate cartoons into the puzzle playing experience. The Christmas 2019 issue featured a crossword puzzle by Patrick Berry that had cartoons as clues, and the answers were captions for the cartoons. In December 2019, Liz Maynes-Aminzade was named the first puzzles and games editor of The New Yorker.
"The New Yorker" has been the source of a number of movies. Both fiction and non-fiction pieces have been adapted for the big screen, including "Flash of Genius" (2008), based on a true account of the invention of the intermittent windshield wiper by John Seabrook; "Away From Her", adapted from Alice Munro's short story "The Bear Came over the Mountain", which debuted at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival; "The Namesake" (2007), similarly based on Jhumpa Lahiri's novel, which originated as a short story in the magazine; "The Bridge" (2006), based on Tad Friend's 2003 non-fiction piece "Jumpers"; "Brokeback Mountain" (2005), an adaptation of the short story by Annie Proulx that first appeared in the October 13, 1997, issue of "The New Yorker"; Jonathan Safran Foer's 2001 debut in "The New Yorker", which later came to theaters in Liev Schreiber's debut as both screenwriter and director, "Everything Is Illuminated" (2005); Michael Cunningham's" The Hours", which appeared in the pages of "The New Yorker" before becoming the film that garnered the 2002 Best Actress Academy Award for Nicole Kidman; "Adaptation" (2002), which Charlie Kaufman based on Susan Orlean's "The Orchid Thief", written for "The New Yorker"; Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes", which also appeared, in part, in "The New Yorker" in 1996 before its film adaptation was released in 1999; "The Addams Family" (1991) and its sequel, "Addams Family Values" (1993), both inspired by the work of famed "New Yorker" cartoonist Charles Addams; Brian De Palma's "Casualties of War" (1989), which began as a "New Yorker" article by Daniel Lang; "Boys Don't Cry" (1999), starring Hilary Swank, began as an article in the magazine, and "Iris" (2001), about the life of Iris Murdoch and John Bayley, the article written by John Bayley for "The New Yorker", before he completed his full memoir, the film starring Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent; "The Swimmer" (1968), starring Burt Lancaster, based on a John Cheever short story from "The New Yorker"; "In Cold Blood" (1967), the widely nominated adaptation of the 1965 non-fiction serial written for "The New Yorker" by Truman Capote; "Pal Joey" (1957), based on a series of stories by John O'Hara; "Mister 880" (1950), starring Edmund Gwenn, based on a story by longtime editor St. Clair McKelway; "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1947), which began as a story by longtime "New Yorker" contributor James Thurber; and "Junior Miss" (1941) and "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944), both adapted from Sally Benson's short stories.
The history of "The New Yorker" has also been portrayed in film: In "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle", a film about the celebrated Algonquin Round Table starring Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dorothy Parker, Sam Robards portrays founding editor Harold Ross trying to drum up support for his fledgling publication. The magazine's former editor, William Shawn, is portrayed in "Capote" (2005), "Infamous" (2006) and "Hannah Arendt" (2012).
The 2015 documentary "Very Semi-Serious", produced by Redora Films, presents a behind-the-scenes look at the cartoons of "The New Yorker".
"The New Yorker"s signature display typeface, used for its nameplate and headlines and the masthead above "The Talk of the Town" section, is Irvin, named after its creator, the designer-illustrator Rea Irvin. The body text of all articles in "The New Yorker" is set in Adobe Caslon.
One uncommonly formal feature of the magazine's in-house style is the placement of diaeresis marks in words with repeating vowels—such as "reëlected", "preëminent", and "coöperate"—in which the two vowel letters indicate separate vowel sounds. The magazine also continues to use a few spellings that are otherwise little used in American English, such as "fuelled", "focussed", "venders", "teen-ager", "traveller", "marvellous", "carrousel", and "cannister".
The magazine also spells out the names of numerical amounts, such as "two million three hundred thousand dollars" instead of "$2.3 million", even for very large figures.
Despite its title, "The New Yorker" is read nationwide, with 53 percent of its circulation in the top 10 U.S. metropolitan areas. According to Mediamark Research Inc., the average age of "The New Yorker" reader in 2009 was 47 (compared to 43 in 1980 and 46 in 1990). The average household income of "The New Yorker" readers in 2009 was $109,877 (the average income in 1980 was $62,788 and the average income in 1990 was $70,233).
According to Pew Research, 77 percent of "The New Yorker's" audience hold left-of-center political values, while 52 percent of those readers hold "consistently liberal" political values.
The magazine's first cover illustration, a dandy peering at a butterfly through a monocle, was drawn by Rea Irvin, the magazine's first art editor, based on an 1834 caricature of the then Count d'Orsay which appeared as an illustration in the 11th edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica". The gentleman on the original cover, now referred to as "Eustace Tilley", is a character created by Corey Ford (1902–1969) for "The New Yorker". The hero of a series entitled "The Making of a Magazine", which began on the inside front cover of the August 8 issue that first summer, Tilley was a younger man than the figure on the original cover. His top hat was of a newer style, without the curved brim. He wore a morning coat and striped formal trousers. Ford borrowed Eustace Tilley's last name from an aunt—he had always found it vaguely humorous. "Eustace" was selected by Ford for euphony.
The character has become a kind of mascot for "The New Yorker", frequently appearing in its pages and on promotional materials. Traditionally, Rea Irvin's original Tilley cover illustration is used every year on the issue closest to the anniversary date of February 21, though on several occasions a newly drawn variation has been substituted.
The magazine is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers.
Saul Steinberg created 85 covers and 642 internal drawings and illustrations for the magazine. His most famous work is probably its March 29, 1976, cover, an illustration most often referred to as "View of the World from 9th Avenue", sometimes referred to as "A Parochial New Yorker's View of the World" or "A New Yorker's View of the World", which depicts a map of the world as seen by self-absorbed New Yorkers.
The illustration is split in two, with the bottom half of the image showing Manhattan's 9th Avenue, 10th Avenue, and the Hudson River (appropriately labeled), and the top half depicting the rest of the world. The rest of the United States is the size of the three New York City blocks and is drawn as a square, with a thin brown strip along the Hudson representing "Jersey", the names of five cities (Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; Las Vegas; Kansas City; and Chicago) and three states (Texas, Utah, and Nebraska) scattered among a few rocks for the United States beyond New Jersey. The Pacific Ocean, perhaps half again as wide as the Hudson, separates the United States from three flattened land masses labeled China, Japan and Russia.
The illustration—humorously depicting New Yorkers' self-image of their place in the world, or perhaps outsiders' view of New Yorkers' self-image—inspired many similar works, including the poster for the 1984 film "Moscow on the Hudson"; that movie poster led to a lawsuit, "Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.", 663 F. Supp. 706 (S.D.N.Y. 1987), which held that Columbia Pictures violated the copyright that Steinberg held on his work.
The cover was later satirized by Barry Blitt for the cover of "The New Yorker" on October 6, 2008. The cover featured Sarah Palin looking out of her window seeing only Alaska, with Russia in the far background.
The March 21, 2009, cover of "The Economist", "How China sees the World", is also an homage to the original image, depicting the viewpoint from Beijing's Chang'an Avenue instead of Manhattan.
Hired by Tina Brown in 1992, Art Spiegelman worked for "The New Yorker" for ten years but resigned a few months after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The cover created by Françoise Mouly and Spiegelman for the September 24, 2001, issue of "The New Yorker" received wide acclaim and was voted as being among the top ten magazine covers of the past 40 years by the American Society of Magazine Editors, which commented:
At first glance, the cover appears to be totally black, but upon close examination it reveals the silhouettes of the World Trade Center towers in a slightly darker shade of black. In some situations, the ghost images become visible only when the magazine is tilted toward a light source. In September 2004, Spiegelman reprised the image on the cover of his book "In the Shadow of No Towers", in which he relates his experience of the Twin Towers attack and the psychological after-effects.
In the December 2001 issue, the magazine printed a cover by Maira Kalman and Rick Meyerowitz showing a map of New York in which various neighborhoods were labeled with humorous names reminiscent of Middle Eastern and Central Asian place names and referencing the neighborhood's real name or characteristics (e.g., "Fuhgeddabouditstan", "Botoxia"). The cover had some cultural resonance in the wake of September 11, and became a popular print and poster.
For the 1993 Valentine's Day issue, the magazine cover by Art Spiegelman depicted a black woman and a Hasidic Jewish man kissing, referencing the Crown Heights riot of 1991. The cover was criticized by both black and Jewish observers. Jack Salzman and Cornel West describe the reaction to the cover as the magazine's "first national controversy".
"The Politics of Fear", a cartoon by Barry Blitt featured on the cover of the July 21, 2008, issue, depicts then presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama in the turban and salwar kameez typical of many Muslims, fist bumping with his wife, Michelle, portrayed with an Afro and wearing camouflage trousers with an assault rifle slung over her back. They are standing in the Oval Office, with a portrait of Osama Bin Laden hanging on the wall and an American flag burning in the fireplace in the background.
Many "New Yorker" readers saw the image as a lampoon of "The Politics of Fear", as was its title. Some of Obama's supporters as well as his presumptive Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, accused the magazine of publishing an incendiary cartoon whose irony could be lost on some readers. However, editor David Remnick felt the image's obvious excesses rebuffed the concern that it could be misunderstood, even by those unfamiliar with the magazine. "The intent of the cover", he said, "is to satirize the vicious and racist attacks and rumors and misconceptions about the Obamas that have been floating around in the blogosphere and are reflected in public opinion polls. What we set out to do was to throw all these images together, which are all over the top and to shine a kind of harsh light on them, to satirize them."
In an interview on "Larry King Live" shortly after the magazine issue began circulating, Obama said, "Well, I know it was "The New Yorker"s attempt at satire... I don't think they were entirely successful with it". Obama also pointed to his own efforts to debunk the allegations portrayed in "The New Yorker" cover through a web site his campaign set up, stating that the allegations were "actually an insult against Muslim-Americans".
Later that week, "The Daily Show"s Jon Stewart continued "The New Yorker" cover's argument about Obama stereotypes with a piece showcasing a montage of clips containing such stereotypes culled from various legitimate news sources. The "New Yorker" Obama cover was later parodied by Stewart and Stephen Colbert on the October 3, 2008, cover of "Entertainment Weekly" magazine, with Stewart as Obama and Colbert as Michelle, photographed for the magazine in New York City on September 18.
"New Yorker" covers are not always related to the contents of the magazine or are only tangentially so. In this case, the article in the July 21, 2008, issue about Obama did not discuss the attacks and rumors but rather Obama's political career. The magazine later endorsed Obama for president.
This parody was most likely inspired by Fox News host E. D. Hill's paraphrasing of an anonymous internet comment in asking whether a gesture made by Obama and his wife Michelle was a "terrorist fist jab". Later, Hill's contract was not renewed.
"The New Yorker" chose an image of Bert and Ernie by artist Jack Hunter, entitled "Moment of Joy", as the cover of their July 8, 2013, publication, which covers the Supreme Court decisions on the Defense of Marriage Act and California Proposition 8. The "Sesame Street" characters have long been rumored in popular culture and urban legend to be homosexual partners, though Sesame Workshop has repeatedly denied this, saying they are merely "puppets" and have no sexual orientation. Reaction was mixed. Online magazine "Slate" criticized the cover, which shows Ernie leaning on Bert's shoulder as they watch a television with the Supreme Court justices on the screen, saying "it's a terrible way to commemorate a major civil-rights victory for gay and lesbian couples." "The Huffington Post", meanwhile, said it was "one of [the magazine's] most awesome covers of all time". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31365 |
T. H. White
Terence Hanbury "Tim" White (29 May 1906 – 17 January 1964) was an English author best known for his Arthurian novels, "The Once and Future King", first published together in 1958. One of his most memorable is the first of the series, "The Sword in the Stone", published as a stand-alone book in 1938.
He was born in Bombay, British India, to English parents Garrick Hanbury White, a superintendent in the Indian police, and Constance Edith Southcote Aston. White had a troubled childhood, with an alcoholic father and an emotionally cold mother, and his parents separated when he was 14.
White went to Cheltenham College in Gloucestershire, a public school, and Queens' College, Cambridge, where he was tutored by the scholar and occasional author L. J. (Leonard) Potts. Potts became a lifelong friend and correspondent, and White later referred to him as "the great literary influence in my life." While at Queens' College, White wrote a thesis on Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur", and graduated in 1928 with a first-class degree in English.
White then taught at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire for four years. In 1936 he published "England Have My Bones", a well-received memoir about a year spent in England. The same year, he left Stowe School and lived in a workman's cottage nearby, where he wrote and "revert[ed] to a feral state", engaging in falconry, hunting, and fishing. White also became interested in aviation, partly to conquer his fear of heights.
White's novel "Earth Stopped" (1934) and its sequel "Gone to Ground" (1935) are science fiction novels about a disaster that devastates the world. "Gone to Ground" contains several fantasy stories told by the survivors that were later reprinted in "The Maharajah and Other Stories".
White wrote to a friend that in autumn 1937, "I got desperate among my books and picked [Malory] up in lack of anything else. Then I was thrilled and astonished to find that (a) The thing was a perfect tragedy, with a beginning, a middle and an end implicit in the beginning and (b) the characters were real people with recognizable reactions which could be forecast... Anyway, I somehow started writing a book."
The novel, which White described as "a preface to Malory", was titled "The Sword in the Stone". Published in 1938, it tells the story of the boyhood of King Arthur. White was also influenced by Freudian psychology and his lifelong involvement in natural history. "The Sword in the Stone" was critically well-received and was a Book of the Month Club selection in 1939.
In February 1939, White moved to Doolistown in County Meath, Ireland, where he lived out the Second World War as a "de facto" conscientious objector. In Ireland, he wrote most of what would later become "The Once and Future King"; two sequels to "The Sword in the Stone" were published during this time: "The Witch in the Wood" (later cut and rewritten as "The Queen of Air and Darkness") in 1939, and "The Ill-Made Knight" in 1940. The version of "The Sword in the Stone" included in "The Once and Future King" differs in several respects from the earlier version. It is darker, and some critics prefer the earlier version. The war had a profound effect on these tales of King Arthur, which include commentaries on war and human nature in the form of a heroic narrative.
In 1946, White settled in Alderney, the third-largest Channel Island, where he lived for the rest of his life. The same year, White published "Mistress Masham's Repose", a children's book in which a young girl discovers a group of Lilliputians (the tiny people in Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels") living near her house. "Mistress Masham's Repose" was influenced by John Masefield's book "The Midnight Folk".
In 1947, he published "The Elephant and the Kangaroo" in which a repetition of Noah's Flood
occurs in Ireland.
In the early 1950s, White published two non-fiction books. "The Age of Scandal" (1950) is a collection of essays about 18th-century England. "The Goshawk" (1951) is an account of White's attempt to train a northern goshawk using traditional, rather than modern, falconry techniques. Written at his cottage in the mid-1930s, it was published only after its chance discovery by and at the insistence of White's agent, David Garnett. In 1954 White translated and edited "The Book of Beasts", an English translation of a medieval bestiary, originally written in Latin.
In 1958, White completed the fourth book of "The Once and Future King" sequence, "The Candle in the Wind", which was first published with the other three parts and has never been published separately. White lived to see his work adapted as the Broadway musical "Camelot" (1960) and the animated film "The Sword in the Stone" (1963), both based on "The Once and Future King".
White died of heart failure on 17 January 1964 aboard ship in Piraeus, Athens, Greece, en route to Alderney from a lecture tour in the United States. He is buried in First Cemetery of Athens. In 1977 "The Book of Merlyn", a conclusion to "The Once and Future King", was published posthumously. His papers are held by the University of Texas at Austin.
According to Sylvia Townsend Warner's 1967 biography, White was "a homosexual and a sado-masochist." He came close to marrying several times but had no enduring romantic relationships. In his diaries of Zed, a young boy, he wrote: "I have fallen in love with Zed [...] the whole situation is an impossible one. All I can do is behave like a gentleman. It has been my hideous fate to be born with an infinite capacity for love and joy with no hope of using them."
Broadcaster Robert Robinson published an account of a conversation with White, in which he claimed to be attracted to small girls. Robinson concluded that this was really a cover for homosexuality. Julie Andrews wrote in her autobiography, "I believe Tim may have been an unfulfilled homosexual, and he suffered a lot because of it."
However, White's long-time friend and literary agent, David Higham, wrote, "Tim was no homosexual, though I think at one time he had feared he was (and in his ethos fear would have been the word)." Higham gave Warner the address of one of White's lovers "so that she could get in touch with someone so important in Tim's story. But she never, the girl told me, took that step. So she was able to present Tim in such a light that a reviewer could call him a raging homosexual. Perhaps a heterosexual affair would have made her blush."
Lin Carter in his book "Imaginary Worlds" portrayed White as a man who felt deeply but was unable to form close human relationships due to his unfortunate childhood: "He was a man with an enormous capacity for loving. It shows in his prodigious correspondence and in his affection for dogs and in the bewildered and inarticulate loves his characters experience in his books; but he had few close friends, and no genuine relationship with a woman."
White was agnostic, and towards the end of his life a heavy drinker. Warner wrote of him, "Notably free from fearing God, he was basically afraid of the human race."
Fantasy writer Michael Moorcock enjoyed White's "The Once and Future King", and was especially influenced by the underpinnings of realism in his work. Moorcock eventually engaged in a "wonderful correspondence" with White, and later recalled that "White [gave] me some very good advice on how to write".
J. K. Rowling has said that White's writing strongly influenced the "Harry Potter" books; several critics have compared Rowling's character Albus Dumbledore to White's absent-minded Merlyn, and Rowling herself has described White's Wart as "Harry's spiritual ancestor." Author Neil Gaiman was asked about the similarities between Harry Potter and Gaiman's character Timothy Hunter, and he stated that he did not think Rowling had based her character on Hunter. "I said to [the reporter] that I thought we were both just stealing from T. H. White: very straightforward."
Gregory Maguire was influenced by "White's ability to be intellectually broadminded, to be comic, to be poetic, and to be fantastic" in the writing of his 1995 novel "Wicked", and crime fiction writer Ed McBain also cited White as an influence.
White features extensively in Helen Macdonald's "H is for Hawk", winner of the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. One of the components of the book is a biographical account of White and also "The Goshawk", an account of his own failed attempt to train a hawk. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31368 |
The Lizard
The Lizard () is a peninsula in southern Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The most southerly point of the British mainland is near Lizard Point at SW 701115; Lizard village, also known as The Lizard, is the most southerly on the British mainland, and is in the civil parish of Landewednack, the most southerly parish. The valleys of the River Helford and Loe Pool form the northern boundary, with the rest of the peninsula surrounded by sea. The area measures about . The Lizard is one of England's natural regions and has been designated as national character area 157 by Natural England. The peninsula is known for its geology and for its rare plants and lies within the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).
The name "Lizard" is most probably a corruption of the Cornish name "Lys Ardh", meaning "high court"; it is purely coincidental that much of the peninsula is composed of serpentinite-bearing rock. The Lizard peninsula's original name may have been the Celtic name "Predannack" ("British one"); during the Iron Age (Pytheas c. 325 BC) and Roman period, Britain was known as Pretannike (in Greek) and as Albion (and Britons the "Pretani").
The Lizard's coast is particularly hazardous to shipping and the seaways round the peninsula were historically known as the "Graveyard of Ships" ("see below"). The Lizard Lighthouse was built at Lizard Point in 1752 and the RNLI operates The Lizard lifeboat station.
There is evidence of early habitation with several burial mounds and stones. Part of the peninsula is known as the Meneage (land of the monks).
Helston, the nearest town to the Lizard peninsula, is said to have once headed the estuary of the River Cober, before it was cut off from the sea by Loe Bar in the 13th century. It is a matter of debate as to whether Helston was once a port, albeit no actual records still exist. Geomorphologists believe the bar was most likely formed by rising sea levels, after the last ice age, blocking the river and creating a barrier beach. The beach is formed mostly of flint and the nearest source is found offshore under the drowned terraces of the former river that flowed between England and France, and now under the English Channel. The medieval port of Helston was at Gweek, possibly from around 1260 onwards, on the Helford river which exported tin and copper. Helston was believed to be in existence in the sixth century, around the "Dowr Kohar".
The name comes from the Cornish "hen lis" or "old court" and "ton" added later to denote a Saxon manor; the Domesday Book refers to it as Henliston (which survives as the name of a road in the town). It was granted its charter by King John in 1201. It was here that tin ingots were weighed to determine the duty due to the Duke of Cornwall when a number of stannary towns were authorised by royal decree.
The royal manor of Winnianton, which was held by King William I at the time of the Domesday Book (1086), was also the head manor of the hundred of Kerrier and the largest estate in Cornwall. It was assessed as having fifteen hides before 1066. At the time of Domesday there was land for sixty ploughs, but in the lord's land there were two ploughs and in the lands held by villeins twenty-four ploughs. There were twenty-four villeins, forty-one freedmen, thirty-three smallholders and fourteen slaves. There was , eight square leagues of pasture and half a square league of woodland. The livestock was fourteen unbroken mares, three cattle and one hundred and twenty-eight sheep (in total 145 beasts); its value was £12 annually. 11 of the hides were held by the Count of Mortain and there is more arable and pasture and 13 more persons are recorded: Rinsey, Trelowarren, Mawgan-in-Meneage and seventeen other lands are also recorded under Winnianton.
Mullion has the 15th century church of St Mellanus, and the Old Inn from the 16th century. The harbour was completed in 1895 and financed by Lord Robartes of Lanhydrock as a recompense to the fishermen for several disastrous pilchard seasons.
The small church of St Peter in Coverack, built in 1885 for £500, has a serpentinite pulpit.
The Great Western Railway operated a road motor service to The Lizard from Helston railway station. Commencing on 17 August 1903, it was the first successful British railway-run bus service and was initially provided as a cheaper alternative to a proposed light railway.
The Solar eclipse of 11 August 1999 departed the UK mainland from the Lizard.
The transatlantic record run of the unaccompanied one hand sailor Thomas Coville within less than 5 days in his sailboat "Sodebo Ultim" from New York, USA, to Europe landed here on 15 July 2017.
The Lizard has been the site of many maritime disasters. It forms a natural obstacle to entry and exit of Falmouth and its naturally deep estuary.
At Lizard Point stands the Lizard Lighthouse. In fact, the light was erected by Sir John Killigrew by his own expense: It was built at the cost of "20 nobles a year" for 30 years, but it caused an uproar over the following years, as King James I considered charging vessels to pass. This caused so many problems that the lighthouse was demolished, but was successfully rebuilt in 1751 by order of Thomas Fonnereau and remains almost unchanged today. Further east lie The Manacles, near Porthoustock: of jagged rocks just beneath the waves.
The biggest rescue in the RNLI's history was 17 March 1907 when the 12,000 tonne liner SS "Suevic" hit the Maenheere Reef near Lizard Point in Cornwall. In a strong gale and dense fog RNLI lifeboat volunteers rescued 456 passengers, including 70 babies. Crews from the Lizard, Cadgwith, Coverack and Porthleven rowed out repeatedly for 16 hours to rescue all of the people on board. Six silver RNLI medals were later awarded, two to "Suevic" crew members.
The Battle at the Lizard, a naval battle, took place off The Lizard on 21 October 1707.
Smuggling was a regular, and often necessary, way of life in these parts, despite the efforts of coastguards or "Preventive men". In 1801, the king's pardon was offered to any smuggler giving information on the Mullion musket men involved in a gunfight with the crew of HM Gun Vessel "Hecate".
In the First World War a Naval Air Station was established at Bonython, flying mainly blimps used for spotting U boats. One was sunk and several probably damaged by bombs dropped by the blimps. The airfield site is now occupied by the wind farm.
RAF Predannack Down (see Predannack Airfield) was a Second World War airbase, from which Coastal Command squadrons flew anti-submarine sorties into the Bay of Biscay as well as convoy support in the western English Channel. The runways still exist and the site is used by a local Air Cadet Volunteergliding Squadron 626VGS and as an emergency/relief base for RNAS "Culdrose" (HMS "Seahawk").
RNAS Culdrose is Europe's largest helicopter base, and currently hosts the Training and Operational Conversion Unit operating the EH101 "Merlin" helicopter. It is also the home base for Merlin Squadrons embarked upon Royal Navy warships, the Westland Sea King airborne early warning (AEW) variant helicopter, a Search And Rescue (Sea King, again) helicopter flight, and some BAe Hawk T.1 trainer jets used for training purposes by the Royal Navy. The base also operates some other types of fixed wing aircraft for calibration and other training purposes. As befits the base's name, a non-flying example of a Hawker Sea Hawk forms the main gate guardian static display. RNAS Culdrose is a major contributor to the economy of The Lizard area.
The Lizard peninsula is in the St Ives parliamentary constituency (which comprises the whole of the former district of Penwith and the southern part of the former district of Kerrier). However, the parishes northeast of the Helford River are in Camborne and Redruth parliamentary constituency
To the north, The Lizard peninsula is bordered by the civil parishes of Breage, Porthleven, Sithney, Helston, Wendron, Gweek and — across the Helford River — by Constantine, Kerrier and Mawnan.
The parishes on the peninsula proper are (west to east):
The Lizard's political history includes the 1497 Cornish rebellion which began in St Keverne. The village blacksmith Michael Joseph (Michael "An Gof" in Cornish, meaning blacksmith) led the uprising, protesting against the punitive taxes levied by Henry VII to pay for the war against the Scots. The uprising was routed on its march to London and the two leaders, Michael Joseph and Thomas Flamank, were subsequently hanged, drawn and quartered.
Titanium was discovered here by the Reverend William Gregor in 1791.
In 1869, John Pender formed the Falmouth Gibraltar and Malta Telegraph company, intending to connect India to England with an undersea cable. Although intended to land at Falmouth, the final landing point was Porthcurno near Land's End.
In 1900 Guglielmo Marconi stayed the Housel Bay Hotel in his quest to locate a coastal radio station to receive signals from ships equipped with his apparatus. He leased a plot "in the wheat field adjoining the hotel" where the Lizard Wireless Telegraph Station still stands today. Recently restored by the National Trust, it looks as it did in January 1901, when Marconi received the distance record signals of from his transmitter station at Niton, Isle of Wight. The Lizard Wireless Station is the oldest Marconi station to survive in its original state, and is located to the west of the Lloyds Signal Station in what appears to be a wooden hut. On 12 December 1901 Poldhu Point was the site of the first trans Atlantic, wireless signal radio communication when Marconi sent a signal to St John's, Newfoundland. The technology is one of the key advances to the development of radio, television, satellites and the internet.
A radar station called RAF Drytree was built during World War II. The site was later chosen for the Telstar project in 1962; its rocky foundations, clear atmosphere and extreme southerly location being uniquely suitable. This became the Goonhilly satellite earth station, now owned by Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd. Some important developments in television satellite transmission were made at Goonhilly station.
A wind farm exists near to the Goonhilly station site.
Known as the Lizard complex, the peninsula's geology is the best preserved example of an exposed ophiolite in the United Kingdom.
An ophiolite is a suite of geological formations which represent a slice through a section of ocean crust (including the upper level of the mantle) thrust onto the continental crust.
The Lizard formations comprise three main units; the serpentinites, the "oceanic complex" and the metamorphic basement. The serpentinite contains significant samples of the serpentine polymorph lizardite, which were named after the Lizard complex in 1955.
Several nature sites exist on the Lizard Peninsula; Predannack nature reserve, Mullion Island, Goonhilly Downs, and the Cornish Seal Sanctuary at Gweek. An area of the Lizard covering is designated a national nature reserve because of its coastal grasslands and heaths and inland heaths. The peninsula contains 3 main Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), both noted for their endangered insects and plants, as well as their geology. The first is East Lizard Heathlands SSSI, the second is "Caerthillian to Kennack SSSI" and the third is West Lizard SSSI, of which the important wetland, Hayle Kimbro Pool, forms a part of.
The area is also home to one of England's rarest breeding birds — the Cornish chough. This species of corvid is distinctive due to its red beak and legs and haunting "chee-aw" call. Chough began breeding on Lizard in 2002 following a concerted effort by the Cornish Chough Project in conjunction with DEFRA and the RSPB.
The Lizard contains some of the most specialised flora of any area in Britain, including many Red Data Book plant species. Of particular note is the Cornish heath, "Erica vagans", that occurs in abundance here, but which is found nowhere else in Britain. There are more than 600 species of flowering plants on the Lizard, nearly a quarter of all UK species. The reason for this richness is partly because of the many different and unusual Lizard rocks on the Lizard Peninsula. But above all, it is a coming together of multiple factors: a very mild maritime climate, but one prone to gales and salt winds; waterlogged and boggy soils, but ones that often parch and dry out in the summer; soils of greatly contrasting fertility and pH; and lastly man's influence. Any single factor taken on its own would influence the flora; taken together, they combine, overlap and interact. Contrasting plant communities grow side-by-side in a mosaic that changes within a few metres but also changes markedly over time with the cycle of heath fires. It's not so much that conditions are ideal for growth, but that there is such a variety of different, difficult conditions. Each habitat, with its own combination of factors, attracts its own specialist plants. It is also one of the few places where the rare formicine ant, "Formica exsecta", (the narrow-headed ant), can be found.
Daphne du Maurier based many novels on this part of Cornwall, including "Frenchman's Creek".
The Lizard was featured on the BBC television programme "Seven Natural Wonders" as one of the wonders of the South West, and on the BBC series "Coast".
In James Clavell's novel "Shōgun", ship's pilot Vasco Rodrigues challenges John Blackthorne to recite the latitude of the Lizard to verify that Blackthorne is the Pilot of the Dutch vessel "Erasmus".
The Jennifer McQuiston 2015 novel "The Spinster's Guide to Scandalous Behavior" is set primarily in the fictional village Lizard Bay on the Lizard in the mid-nineteenth century.
In the television adaptation of "Horatio Hornblower", an order is given to "Weather the Lizard" in the episode "Hornblower:Mutiny".
"Lizard Point" is also a track on the 1982 album "" released by Brian Eno. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31369 |
Seven Samurai
Since its release, "Seven Samurai" has consistently ranked highly in critics' lists of the greatest films, such as the BFI's "Sight & Sound" and Rotten Tomatoes polls. It was also voted the greatest foreign-language film in BBC's 2018 international critics' poll. It has remained highly influential, often seen as one of the most "remade, reworked, referenced" films in cinema.
Bandits discuss raiding a mountain village, but their chief decides to wait until after the harvest as they had raided it fairly recently. They are overheard by a farmer, whereupon the villagers ask Gisaku, the village elder and miller, for advice. He states that he once saw a village that hired samurai and remained untouched by raiders, and declares they should also hire samurai to defend them. Since they have no money and can only offer food as payment, Gisaku advises them to find "hungry" samurai.
After having little initial success, the scouting party watches Kambei, an aging but experienced rōnin, rescue a young boy who had been held hostage by a cornered thief. A young samurai named Katsushirō asks to become Kambei's disciple. The villagers then ask for help, and after initial reluctance, Kambei agrees. He recruits his old friend Shichirōji and, with Katsushirō's assistance, three other samurai: the friendly, wily Gorobei; the good-natured Heihachi; and Kyūzō, a taciturn master swordsman whom Katsushirō regards with awe. Although inexperienced, Katsushirō is accepted because time is short. Kikuchiyo, a wild and unpredictable man who carries a family scroll that he claims proves he is a samurai (though the birth date on it is for a teenager), follows the group despite attempts to drive him away.
On arrival, the samurai find the villagers cowering in their homes, refusing to greet them. Feeling insulted by such a cold reception, Kikuchiyo rings the village alarm, prompting the villagers to come out of hiding and beg for protection. The samurai are both pleased and amused by this, and accept him as a comrade-in-arms. Slowly the samurai and farmers begin to trust each other as they train together. Katsushirō forms a relationship with Shino, a farmer's daughter, who is masquerading at her father’s insistence as a boy for protection from the supposedly lustful samurai. However, the six professional samurai are angered when Kikuchiyo brings them armor and weapons, which the villagers most likely acquired by killing injured or dying samurai. Kikuchiyo retorts in a rage that samurai are responsible for battles, raids, taxation and forced labor that devastate the villagers' lives. By so doing, he reveals his origin as an orphaned farmer's son. The samurai's anger turns to shame.
Three bandit scouts are spotted. Two are killed, while another reveals the location of their camp. Against the wishes of the samurai, the villagers kill the prisoner. The samurai burn down the bandits' camp in a pre-emptive strike. Rikichi, a troubled villager who helps the samurai, breaks down when he sees his wife, who had apparently been kidnapped and made a concubine in a previous raid. On seeing Rikichi, she walks back into the burning hut. Heihachi is accidentally killed trying to save Rikichi, whose grief is compounded.
When the bandits finally attack, they are confounded by new fortifications, including a moat and wooden fence. Several bandits are killed following Kambei's plan of allowing single horse-mounted bandits to enter the village, where they are trapped and killed by groups of farmers armed with bamboo spears. Gisaku’s family tries to save the old man when he refuses to abandon his mill on the outskirts of the village. All perish but a lone baby rescued by Kikuchiyo, who breaks down in tears, as it reminds him how he was orphaned.
The bandits possess three matchlock firearms. Kyūzō ventures out alone and returns with one. An envious Kikuchiyo abandons his post—and his contingent of farmers—to bring back another. He is chastised by Kambei because, while he was gone, the bandits killed some of his farmers. The bandits attack again, and Gorobei is slain. That night, Kambei predicts that, due to their dwindling numbers, the bandits will make one last all-out attack. Meanwhile, Katsushirō and Shino's relationship is discovered by her father. He beats her until Kambei and the villagers intervene. Shichirōji calms everyone down by saying the couple should be forgiven because they are young and that passions can run high before any battle.
The next morning in a torrential downpour, Kambei orders that the remaining thirteen bandits be allowed into the village. As the battle winds down, their leader, armed with a gun, hides in the women's hut and shoots Kyūzō. An enraged Kikuchiyo charges in and is shot, but kills the bandit chief before dying. The rest of the invaders are slain.
The three surviving samurai later watch from the funeral mounds of their comrades as the joyful villagers sing whilst planting their crops. Kambei reflects that it is another pyrrhic victory for the warriors: "In the end we lost this battle too. The victory belongs to the peasants, not to us."
Akira Kurosawa had originally wanted to direct a film about a single day in the life of a samurai. Later, in the course of his research, he discovered a story about samurai defending farmers. According to actor Toshiro Mifune, the film was originally going to be called "Six Samurai", with Mifune playing the role of Kyuzo. During the six-week scriptwriting process, Kurosawa and his screenwriters realized that "six sober samurai were a bore—they needed a character that was more off-the-wall". Kurosawa recast Mifune as Kikuchiyo and gave him creative license to improvise actions in his performance.
Long before it was released, the film had already become a topic of wide discussion. After three months of pre-production it had 148 shooting days spread out over a year—four times the span covered in the original budget, which eventually came to almost half a million dollars. Toho Studios closed down production at least twice. Each time, Kurosawa calmly went fishing, reasoning that the studio had already heavily invested in the production and would allow him to complete the picture. The film's final battle scene, originally scheduled to be shot at the end of summer, was shot in February in near-freezing temperatures. Mifune later recalled that he had never been so cold in his life.
Kurosawa and the writers were innovative in refining the theme of the assembly of heroic characters to perform a mission. According to Michael Jeck's DVD commentary, "Seven Samurai" was among the first films to use the now-common plot element of the recruiting and gathering of heroes into a team to accomplish a specific goal, a device used in later films such as "The Guns of Navarone", "Sholay", the western remake "The Magnificent Seven", and Pixar's animated film "A Bug's Life". Film critic Roger Ebert speculates in his review that the sequence introducing the leader Kambei (in which the samurai shaves off his topknot, a sign of honor among samurai, in order to pose as a monk to rescue a boy from a kidnapper) could be the origin of the practice, now common in action movies, of introducing the main hero with an undertaking unrelated to the main plot. Other plot devices such as the reluctant hero, romance between a local woman and the youngest hero, and the nervousness of the common citizenry, had appeared in other films before this but were combined in this film.
Kurosawa refused to shoot the peasant village at Toho Studios and had a complete set constructed at Tagata on the Izu Peninsula, Shizuoka. Although the studio protested the increased production costs, Kurosawa was adamant that "the quality of the set influences the quality of the actors' performances... For this reason, I have the sets made exactly like the real thing. It restricts the shooting but encourages that feeling of authenticity."
He also spoke of 'intense labour' of making the film: "It rained all the time, we didn't have enough horses. It was just the kind of picture that is impossible to make in this country."
Through the creative freedom provided by the studio, Kurosawa made use of telephoto lenses, which were rare in 1954, as well as multiple cameras which allowed the action to fill the screen and place the audience right in the middle of it. "If I had filmed it in the traditional shot-by-shot method, there was no guarantee that any action could be repeated in exactly the same way twice." He found it to be very effective and he later used it in movies that were less action-oriented. His method was to put one camera in the most orthodox shooting position, another camera for quick shots and a third camera "as a kind of guerrilla unit". This method made for very complicated shoots, for which Kurosawa choreographed the movement of all three cameras by using diagrams.
The martial arts choreography for the film was led by Yoshio Sugino of the Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū. Initially Junzo Sasamori of the Ono-ha Itto-ryu was working along with Sugino, but he was asked by the Ministry of Education to teach in Europe during production.
During filming Kurosawa quickly earned a reputation with his crew as the "world's greatest editor" because of his practice of editing late at night throughout the shooting. He described this as a practical necessity that is incomprehensible to most directors, who on major production spent at least several months with their editors assembling and cutting the film after shooting is completed.
Kurosawa had a heightened interest in the soundtracks of his films. For "The Seven Samurai", he collaborated for the seventh and penultimate time with friend and composer Fumio Hayasaka. Hayasaka was already seriously ill when Kurosawa visited him during the filming of the "Seven Samurai" and he died prematurely of tuberculosis on October 15, 1955, at the age of 41, while Kurosawa was filming "I Live in Fear", Kurosawa's next film, which Hayasaka was unable to complete.
At 207 minutes, including a five-minute intermission with music, "Seven Samurai" would be the longest picture of Kurosawa's career. Fearing that American audiences would be unwilling to sit through the entire picture, Toho Studios originally removed 50 minutes from the film for U.S. distribution. Similar edits were distributed around the world until the 1990s; since then the complete version is usually seen.
Prior to the advent of DVD, various edited versions were distributed on video, but most DVDs and Blu-rays contain Kurosawa's complete original version, including its five-minute intermission. Since 2006, the Criterion Collection's US releases have featured their own exclusive 2K restoration, whereas most others, including all non-US Blu-rays, have an older HD transfer from Toho in Japan.
In 2016, Toho carried out a six-month-long 4K restoration, along with Kurosawa's "Ikiru" (1952). As the whereabouts of "Seven Samurai"'s original negative is unknown, second generation fine grain positive and third generation duplicate negative elements were used. As of 2020, this version has not been released anywhere on home video.
"Seven Samurai" was well-received by Japanese audiences, earning a distribution rental income of , within the first twelve months of its release. It was Japan's third highest-grossing film of 1954, exceeding the ticket sales of "Godzilla" the same year. Japanese ticket sales are equivalent to gross receipts of at an average 1955 ticket price, or equivalent to an inflation-adjusted at an average 2014 Japanese ticket price.
Overseas, the box office income for the film's 1956 North American release is currently unknown. The film's 2002 re-release grossed $271,841 in the United States and $4,124 in France. At the 2002 Kurosawa & Mifune Festival in the United States, the film grossed $561,692. This adds up to at least $833,533 grossed in the United States.
Other European re-releases between 1997 and 2018 sold 27,627 tickets.
As of 2017, "Seven Samurai" is the best-selling home video title ever released by the British Film Institute.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a perfect approval rating of 100% based on 60 reviews, with an average rating of 9.34/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Arguably Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece, "The Seven Samurai" is an epic adventure classic with an engrossing story, memorable characters, and stunning action sequences that make it one of the most influential films ever made". It currently ranks 18th on their action/adventure voting list, and seventh on their top 100 art house and international films.
In 1982, it was voted number three in the "Sight & Sound" critics' poll of greatest films. In the "Sight & Sound" directors' poll, it was voted at number ten in 1992 and number nine in 2002. It also ranked number seventeen on the 2012 "Sight & Sound" critics' poll, in both cases being tied with Kurosawa's own "Rashomon" (1950). "Seven Samurai" has also been ranked number one on "Empire" magazine's list of "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010.
Kurosawa both directed and edited many of his films, including "Seven Samurai". In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed "Seven Samurai" as the 33rd best-edited film of all time based on a survey of its members. In 2018, it was voted the greatest foreign-language film of all time in BBC's poll of 209 critics in 43 countries.
"Seven Samurai" was a technical and creative watershed that became Japan's highest-grossing movie and set a new standard for the industry. It is largely touted as what made the "assembling the team" trope popular in movies and other media. This has since become a common trope in many action movies and heist films.
It has remained highly influential, often seen as one of the most "remade, reworked, referenced" films in cinema. The visuals, plot and dialogue of "Seven Samurai" have inspired a wide range of filmmakers, ranging from George Lucas to Quentin Tarantino. Elements from "Seven Samurai" have been borrowed by many films. Examples include plot elements in films such as "Three Amigos" (1986) by John Landis, visual elements in the large-scale battle scenes of films such as "" (2002) and "The Matrix Revolutions" (2003), and borrowed scenes in George Miller's "" (2015).
"Sholay" (1975), a "Curry Western" Indian film written by Salim–Javed (Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar) and directed by Ramesh Sippy, has a plot that was loosely styled after "Seven Samurai". "Sholay" became the most commercially successful Indian film and revolutionized Bollywood.
There have been pachinko machines based on "Seven Samurai" in Japan. "Seven Samurai" pachinko machines have sold 94,000 units in Japan , grossing an estimated .
Director Zack Snyder said, "Bruce [Wayne] is having to go out and sort of ‘Seven Samurai’ the Justice League together” in the 2017 film "Justice League". According to Bryan Young of "Syfy Wire", the Marvel Cinematic Universe films "Avengers" (2012) and "Infinity War" (2018) also owe "a great debt to" "Seven Samurai", noting a number of similar plot and visual elements.
One of the visual elements from "Seven Samurai" that has inspired a number of films is the use of rain to set the tone for action scenes. Examples of this include "Blade Runner" (1982), "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers", and "The Matrix Revolutions". Other examples of films that reference "Seven Samurai" include the Australian science fiction film "" (1981), Mani Ratnam's Indian films such as "Thalapathi" (1991), the Bollywood film "China Gate" (1998), the American comedy film "Galaxy Quest" (1999), and the 2016 remake of "The Magnificent Seven".
Its influence can be most strongly felt in the Western "The Magnificent Seven" (1960), a film specifically adapted from "Seven Samurai". Director John Sturges took "Seven Samurai" and adapted it to the Old West, with the samurai replaced by gunslingers. Many of "The Magnificent Seven"s scenes mirror those of "Seven Samurai". However, in an interview with R. B. Gadi, Kurosawa expressed how "the American copy of "The Magnificent Seven" is a disappointment, although entertaining. It is not a version of "Seven Samurai"". Stephen Prince argues that considering samurai films and Westerns respond to different cultures and contexts, what Kurosawa found useful was not their content but rather he was inspired by their levels of syntactic movement, framing, form and grammar.
"The Invincible Six" (1970), an American action film directed by Jean Negulesco, has been described as "a knockoff of the "Seven Samurai"/"Magnificent Seven" genre set in 1960s Iran."
"Battle Beyond the Stars" (1980) is an American science fiction film directed by Jimmy T. Murakami and produced by Roger Corman. The film, intended as a ""Magnificent Seven" in outer space", is based on the plots of "The Magnificent Seven" and "Seven Samurai". The movie acknowledges its debt to "Seven Samurai" by calling the protagonist's homeworld "Akir" and its inhabitants the "Akira".
The plot of "Seven Samurai" was re-worked for "The Seven Magnificent Gladiators" (1983), an Italian sword-and-sandal film.
The steampunk anime series "Samurai 7" (2004) is based on "Seven Samurai".
Some film critics have noted similarities between Pixar's "A Bug's Life" (1998) and "Seven Samurai".
Several elements from "The Seven Samurai" are also argued to have been adapted for "Star Wars" (1977). Plot elements of "Seven Samurai" are also used in the Star Wars Anthology film "Rogue One" (2016). The "" episode "Bounty Hunters" (2008) pays direct homage to Akira Kurosawa by adapting the film's plot, as does "" episode "" (2019).
"Seven Swords" (2005), a Hong Kong "wuxia" film produced and directed by Tsui Hark has a plot revolving around seven warriors helping villagers to defend against mercenaries, in homage to "Seven Samurai". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31371 |
Theodosius Dobzhansky
Theodosius Grygorovych Dobzhansky (; ; January 25, 1900 – December 18, 1975) was a prominent Russian-American geneticist and evolutionary biologist, and a central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work in shaping the modern synthesis. Dobzhansky was born in Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, and became an immigrant to the United States in 1927, aged 27.
His 1937 work "Genetics and the Origin of Species" became a major influence on the modern synthesis. He was awarded the US National Medal of Science in 1964, and the Franklin Medal in 1973.
Dobzhansky was born on January 25, 1900 in Nemyriv, Russian Empire, currently Ukraine, an only child. He was given a rare name Theodosius because he was born after his middle-aged parents prayed for a child to St. . His father, Grigory Dobzhansky, was a mathematics teacher, and his mother was Sophia Voinarsky. In 1910 the family moved to Kiev, Russian Empire. At high school, Dobzhansky collected butterflies and decided to become a biologist. In 1915, he met Victor Luchnik who convinced him to specialize in beetles instead. Dobzhansky attended the Kiev State University between 1917 and 1921, where he then studied until 1924 specializing in entomology. He then moved to Saint Petersburg, Russia, to study under Yuri Filipchenko, where a "Drosophila melanogaster" lab had been established.
On August 8, 1924, Dobzhansky married geneticist Natalia "Natasha" Sivertzeva who was working with I. I. Schmalhausen in Kiev, Ukraine. The Dobzhanskys had one daughter, Sophie, who later married the American archaeologist and anthropologist Michael D. Coe.
Before moving to the United States, Dobzhansky published 35 scientific works on entomology and genetics.
Dobzhansky immigrated to the United States in 1927 on a scholarship from the International Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation to work and study in the United States. Upon arriving in New York City on December 27, he joined the Drosophila Group at Columbia University working alongside Thomas Hunt Morgan and Alfred Sturtevant. Their work provided crucial information on Drosophila cytogenetics. Additionally, Dobzhansky and his team helped establish "Drosophila subobscura", within the genus "Drosophila", as a favorable model organism in evolutionary-biological studies ever since they published their influential works. Dobzhansky’s original mindset (after studying alongside Yuri Filipchenko), was that there were serious doubts on using data obtained from phenomena happening in local populations (microevolution) and phenomena happening on a global scale (macroevolution). Filipchenko also believed that there were only two types of inheritance: Mendelian inheritance of variation within species, and Non-Mendelian inheritance of variation in a macroevolutionary sense. Dobzhansky later stated that Filipchenko “bet on the wrong horse”.
He followed Morgan to the California Institute of Technology from 1930 to 1940. On the basis of his experiments, he articulated the idea that reproductive isolation can be caused by differences in presence of microbial symbionts between populations.
In 1937, he published one of the major works of the modern evolutionary synthesis, the synthesis of evolutionary biology with genetics, titled "Genetics and the Origin of Species", which amongst other things, defined evolution as "a change in the frequency of an allele within a gene pool". Dobzhansky's work was instrumental in spreading the idea that it is through mutations in genes that natural selection takes place. Also in 1937, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. During this time, he had a very public falling out with one of his "Drosophila" collaborators, Alfred Sturtevant, based primarily in professional competition.
In 1941, Dobzhansky was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. In 1943, the University of Sao Paulo awarded him an honorary doctorate. He returned to Columbia University from 1940 to 1962. He was one of the signatories of the 1950 UNESCO statement "The Race Question". He then moved to the Rockefeller Institute (shortly to become Rockefeller University) until his retirement in 1971. In 1972 he was elected the first president of the BGA (Behavior Genetics Association), and was recognized by the society for his role in behavior genetics, and the founding of the society by the creation of the Dobzhansky Award (for a lifetime of outstanding scholarship in behavior genetics).
Dobzhansky’s work in the field of evolutionary genetics, with the help of Sewall Wright, integrated standards of the theoretical, natural historical, and experimental work.
Dobzhansky was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1965. In 1970, he published "Genetics of the evolutionary process".
Dobzhansky was a renowned biologist having been the president of the Genetics Society of America in 1941, president of the American Society of Naturalists in 1950, president of the Society for the Study of Evolution in 1951, president of the American Society of Zoologists in 1963, a member of the Board of Directors of the American Eugenics Society in 1964, and president of the American Teilhard de Chardin Association in 1969.
Dobzhansky’s research and studies allowed him to travel the world and receive honorary degrees in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Sweden.
Theodosius Dobzhansky had three editions of his book "Genetics and the Origin of Species". Although his book was directed towards people with a background in biology, it was to be simply understood. In regards to the subjects of Genetics and Evolution, Dobzhansky’s book is widely recognized as one of the most important books ever written. With each revision of "Genetics and the Origin of Species", Dobzhansky added new material with respect to crucial, up to date topics, and removed material he deemed to be no longer crucial. His book sparked trends in genetic research and theory.
At the time, Dobzhansky first edition of "Genetics and the Origin of Species" (1937) tried to highlight the most recent discoveries in genetics and how they applied to the concept of evolution. The book starts by addressing the problem of evolution and how modern discoveries in genetics could help find a solution. The main topics covered in the book are on: the chromosomal basis of Mendelian Inheritance, how the effects from changes in chromosomes greater than gene mutations are common and acceptable, and how mutations form racial and specific differences. Dobzhansky explained how three levels could describe the processes of evolutionary population genetics: (1) the origin of raw materials by mutations of genes and chromosomes, (2) the changes in populations by changes in frequencies and combinations of mutations, (3) the fixation of changes by reproductive isolation. To support his writing and research, the bibliography was twenty-eight pages long with around six hundred sources.
In Dobzhansky’s second edition of "Genetics and the Origin of Species" (1941), four years had gone by and he was able to add more research and advancements made in genetics. Around half of the new research he found was added to the last two chapters in his book: Patterns of Evolution, and Species as Natural Units. In the second to last chapter, Patterns of Evolution, Dobzhansky explained how on the path to a new adaptation, a method could be used to where a species could go through a less adaptive stage. The last chapter, Species as Natural Units, Dobzhansky explained some of the contributions made in genetics to what was called “the new systematics.” Dobzhansky’s second edition of the book also had twice as many sources in the bibliography than the first edition.
In Dobzhansky’s third revision of "Genetics and the Origin of Species" (1951), he rewrote all ten chapters on: Isolating Mechanisms, Mutation in Populations, Organic Diversity, Heredity and Mutation, Race Formation, Selection, Adaptive Polymorphism, Hybrid Sterility, Species as Natural Units, and Patterns of Evolution. Dobzhansky decided to remove the chapter on Polyploidy in his third edition of the book. The new chapter on Adaptive Polymorphism highlighted Dobzhansky’s research focus since the second edition. Dobzhansky included precise, quantitative evidence on effective natural selection in laboratory and free populations.
Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ashley Montagu debated the use and validity of the term "race" over a period of many years without reaching an agreement, and the debate has continued to the present day. Montagu argued that "race" was so laden with toxic associations that it was a word best eliminated from science completely, whereas Dobzhansky strongly disagreed. He argued that science should not give in to the misuses to which it had been subjected. The two men never reached an agreement, which led Dobzhansky to say in 1961, while commenting on Montagu's autobiography, "The chapter on 'Ethnic group and race' is, of course, deplorable, but let us say that it is good that in a democratic country any opinion, no matter how deplorable, can be published" (Farber 2015 p. 3). The concept of "race" has been important in many life science disciplines; the modern synthesis revolutionized the concept of race, moving it from a strictly morphological definition based on "racial types" in humans, to a definition focused on populations differing in gene frequencies. This was done in hopes that its foundation in population genetics would undermine the deeply ingrained social prejudices associated with "race".
Dobzhansky was confident that mixing races created no serious medical issues. Dobzhansky's experience with breeding fruit flies came into play when he made this conclusion. The only medical issue Dobzhansky found in this breeding was when certain crosses could lead to having infertile offspring. However, Dobzhansky noticed no such problems when humans from different populations reproduced. When anthropologists at the time were trying to compare the means of physical measurements of people from different races Dobzhansky argued that these means had no value because there was more variation between the individuals of each population than there was among the groups (Farber 2011 p. 63). However, Dobzhansky's work and beliefs on genetics and evolution created opposition with his views on race mixing. First, that race has to do with groups and not individuals and so in this instance it is not races that mix, it is individuals. Second, if races do not mix then they will become different species, so therefore they have to mix. All of the races that currently exist are products of past mixed races, so according to Dobzhansky there is no pure race. Third, when race had been discussed in the past it was all about comparing means of trait to which this made no sense to Dobzhansky (Farber 2011 p. 65-67).
His concern with the interface between humans and biology may have come from different factors. The main factor would be the race prejudice that contributed in Europe that triggered WWII. His concern also dealt with religion in human life which he speaks about in his book "The Biology of Ultimate Concern" in 1967. "The pervasiveness of genetic variation provides the biological foundation of human individuality". Dobzhansky talks about in great detail that "human nature has 2 dimensions: the biological, which mankind shares with the rest of life, and the cultural, which is exclusive to humans." Both of these are believed to have come from "biological evolution and cultural evolution".
Dobzhansky sought to put an end to the so-called science that purports one's genetic makeup determines their race and furthermore, their rank in society. Harrison E. Salisbury wrote in a New York Times article regarding his book "Heredity and the Future of Man" that Dobzhansky could not, alongside other scientists, agree upon what defines a race. Dobzhansky stated that a true bloodline for man could not be identified. He did not believe that a man's genetic makeup decided whether or not he would be a great man but rather that man "has the rare opportunity 'to direct his evolution'".
Dobzhansky's wife Natasha died of coronary thrombosis on February 22, 1969. Earlier (on June 1, 1968) Theodosius had been diagnosed with lymphocytic leukemia (a chronic form of leukemia), and had been given a few months to a few years to live. He retired in 1971, moving to the University of California, Davis where his student Francisco J. Ayala had been made assistant professor, and where he continued working as an emeritus professor. He published one of his most famous essays "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" at this time, influenced by the paleontologist and priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
By 1975, his leukemia had become more severe, and on November 11 he traveled to San Jacinto, California for treatment and care. Working till his last day as a Professor of Genetics, Dobzhansky died (from heart failure) on December 18, 1975 in Davis, California. He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in the Californian wilderness.
Ernst Mayr stated: "On the other hand, famous evolutionists such as Dobzhansky were firm believers in a personal God." Dobzhansky himself spoke of God as creating through evolution, and considered himself a communicant of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Although Dobzhansky came from a long line of Eastern Orthodox priests, later in life, he had his doubts on a conventional afterlife. He stated that if a Heaven did exist, it would not be a place where one could find all the answers about life in an instant. It would rather be a place where performing experiments would give rise to precise and explicit results.
During his career, Dobzhansky published widely in books and peer reviewed scientific journals: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31372 |
Tor (rock formation)
A tor, which is also known by geomorphologists as either a castle koppie or kopje, is a large, free-standing rock outcrop that rises abruptly from the surrounding smooth and gentle slopes of a rounded hill summit or ridge crest. In the South West of England, the term is commonly also used for the hills themselves – particularly the high points of Dartmoor in Devon and Bodmin Moor in Cornwall.
The word "tor" is an English word referring to "a bare rock mass surmounted and surrounded by blocks and boulders", deriving from the Old English "torr".
Tors are landforms created by the erosion and weathering of rock; most commonly granites, but also schists, dacites, dolerites, ignimbrites, coarse sandstones and others. Tors are mostly less than high. Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain their origin and this remains a topic of discussion among geologists and geomorphologists, and physical geographers. It is considered likely that tors were created by geomorphic processes that differed widely in type and duration according to regional and local differences in climate and rock types.
For example, the Dartmoor granite was emplaced around 280 million years ago, with the cover rocks eroded away soon afterwards, exposing it to chemical and physical weathering processes. Where joints are closely spaced, the large crystals in the granite readily disintegrate to form a sandy regolith known locally as "growan". This is readily stripped off by solifluction or surface wash when not protected by vegetation, notably during prolonged cold phases during the Quaternary ice ages - periglaciation.
Where joints happen to be unusually widely spaced, core blocks can survive and escape above the weathering surface, developing into tors. These can be monolithic, as at Haytor and Blackingstone Rock, but are more usually subdivided into stacks, often arranged in avenues. Each stack can comprise several tiers or pillows, which may become separated: rocking pillows are called logan stones. These stacks are vulnerable to frost action and often collapse leaving trails of blocks down the slopes called "clitter" or "clatter". Weathering has also given rise to circular "rock basins" formed by the accumulation of water and repeated freezing and thawing. An example is found at Kes Tor on Dartmoor.
Dating of 28 tors on Dartmoor showed that most are surprisingly young, less than 100,000 years old, with none over 200,000 years old. They probably emerged at the start of the last major ice age (Devensian). By contrast, in the Scottish Cairngorms which is the other classic granite tor concentration in Britain, the oldest tors dated are between 200 and 675,000 years old, with even glacially-modified ones having dates of 100–150,000 years. This may reflect a dryer, more arctic climate. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31373 |
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. It traces Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium. Volume I was published in 1776 and went through six printings. Volumes II and III were published in 1781; volumes IV, V, and VI in 1788–1789.
The six volumes cover the history, from 98 to 1590, of the Roman Empire, the history of early Christianity and then of the Roman State Church, and the history of Europe, and discusses the decline of the Roman Empire among other things.
Gibbon offers an explanation for the fall of the Roman Empire, a task made difficult by a lack of comprehensive written sources, though he was not the only historian to attempt it.
According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions in large part due to the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizens.
He began an ongoing controversy about the role of Christianity, but he gave great weight to other causes of internal decline and to attacks from outside the Empire.
Like other Enlightenment thinkers and British citizens of the age steeped in institutional anti-Catholicism, Gibbon held in contempt the Middle Ages as a priest-ridden, superstitious Dark Age. It was not until his own era, the "Age of Reason", with its emphasis on rational thought, it was believed, that human history could resume its progress.
Gibbon's tone was detached, dispassionate, and yet critical. He can lapse into moralisation and aphorism:
Gibbon provides the reader with a glimpse of his thought process with extensive notes along the body of the text, a precursor to the modern use of footnotes. Gibbon's footnotes are famous for their idiosyncratic and often humorous style, and have been called "Gibbon's table talk." They provide an entertaining moral commentary on both ancient Rome and 18th century Great Britain. This technique enabled Gibbon to compare ancient Rome to his own contemporary world. Gibbon's work advocates a rationalist and progressive view of history.
Gibbon's citations provide in-depth detail regarding his use of sources for his work, which included documents dating back to ancient Rome. The detail within his asides and his care in noting the importance of each document is a precursor to modern-day historical footnoting methodology.
The work is notable for its erratic but exhaustively documented notes and research. John Bury, following him 113 years later with his own "History of the Later Roman Empire", commended the depth and accuracy of Gibbon's work. Unusually for 18th century historians, Gibbon was not content with second-hand accounts when primary sources were accessible. "I have always endeavoured", Gibbon wrote, "to draw from the fountain-head; that my curiosity, as well as a sense of duty, has always urged me to study the originals; and that, if they have sometimes eluded my search, I have carefully marked the secondary evidence, on whose faith a passage or a fact were reduced to depend." The "Decline and Fall" is a literary monument and a massive step forward in historical method.
Numerous tracts were published criticising his work. In response, Gibbon defended his work with the 1779 publication of "A Vindication ... of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". His remarks on Christianity aroused particularly vigorous attacks, but in the mid-twentieth century, at least one author claimed that "church historians allow the substantial justness of [Gibbon's] main positions."
Some historians such as John Julius Norwich, despite their admiration for his furthering of historical methodology, consider Gibbon's hostile views on the Byzantine Empire flawed and blame him somewhat for the lack of interest shown in the subject throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. This view might well be admitted by Gibbon himself: "But it is not my intention to expatiate with the same minuteness on the whole series of the Byzantine history." However, the Russian historian George Ostrogorsky writes, "Gibbon and Lebeau were genuine historians – and Gibbon a very great one – and their works, in spite of factual inadequacy, rank high for their presentation of their material."
Gibbon's comments on the Quran and Muhammad reflected his view of the secular origin of the text. He outlined in chapter 33 the widespread tale of the Seven Sleepers, and remarked "This popular tale, which Mahomet might learn when he drove his camels to the fairs of Syria, is introduced, as a divine revelation, into the Quran." His presentation of Muhammad's life again reflected his secular approach: "in his private conduct, Mahomet indulged the appetites of a man, and abused the claims of a prophet. A special revelation dispensed him from the laws which he had imposed on his nation: the female sex, without reserve, was abandoned to his desires; and this singular prerogative excited the envy, rather than the scandal, the veneration, rather than the envy, of the devout Mussulmans."
Gibbon has been accused of antisemitism. He has described the Jews as ""a race of fanatics, whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them the implacable enemies not only of the Roman government, but also of humankind"".
Gibbon challenged Church history by estimating far smaller numbers of Christian martyrs than had been traditionally accepted. The Church's version of its early history had rarely been questioned before. Gibbon, however, knew that modern Church writings were secondary sources, and he shunned them in favor of primary sources.
Historian S. P. Foster says that Gibbon:
Volume I was originally published in sections, as was common for large works at the time. The first two were well received and widely praised. The last quarto in Volume I, especially Chapters XV and XVI, was highly controversial, and Gibbon was attacked as a "paganist". Gibbon thought that Christianity had hastened the Fall, but also ameliorated the results:
Voltaire was deemed to have influenced Gibbon's claim that Christianity was a contributor to the fall of the Roman Empire. As one pro-Christian commenter put it in 1840:
Gibbon wrote:
Gibbon's initial plan was to write a history ""of the decline and fall of the "city" of Rome"", and only later expanded his scope to the whole Roman Empire: If I prosecute this "History", I shall not be unmindful of the decline and fall of the "city" of Rome; an interesting object, to which my plan was originally confined.
Although he published other books, Gibbon devoted much of his life to this one work (1772–1789). His autobiography "Memoirs of My Life and Writings" is devoted largely to his reflections on how the book virtually "became" his life. He compared the publication of each succeeding volume to a newborn child.
Gibbon continued to revise and change his work even after publication. The complexities of the problem are addressed in Womersley's introduction and appendices to his complete edition.
Many writers have used variations on the series title (including using "Rise and Fall" in place of "Decline and Fall"), especially when dealing with large nations or empires. Piers Brendon notes that Gibbon's work "became the essential guide for Britons anxious to plot their own imperial trajectory. They found the key to understanding the British Empire in the ruins of Rome."
and in film:
and in television:
and in video games:
The title and author are also cited in Noël Coward's comedic poem "I Went to a Marvellous Party". And in the poem "The Foundation of Science Fiction Success", Isaac Asimov acknowledged that his Foundation series – an epic tale of the fall and rebuilding of a galactic empire – was written ""with a tiny bit of cribbin' / from the works of Edward Gibbon"". Feminist Science Fiction author Sheri S. Tepper gave one of her novels the title "Gibbon's Decline and Fall".
In 1995, an established journal of classical scholarship, "Classics Ireland", published punk musician's Iggy Pop's reflections on the applicability of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" to the modern world in a short article, "Caesar Lives", (vol. 2, 1995) in which he notedAmerica is Rome. Of course, why shouldn't it be? We are all Roman children, for better or worse ... I learn much about the way our society really works, because the system-origins – military, religious, political, colonial, agricultural, financial – are all there to be scrutinised in their infancy. I have gained perspective. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31375 |
Der Ring des Nibelungen
' (The Ring of the Nibelung), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the "Nibelungenlied". The composer termed the cycle a "Bühnenfestspiel" (stage festival play), structured in three days preceded by a ("preliminary evening"). It is often referred to as the Ring" cycle, Wagner's "Ring, or simply The Ring""'.
Wagner wrote the libretto and music over the course of about twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874. The four parts that constitute the "Ring" cycle are, in sequence:
Individual works of the sequence have occasionally been performed separately, and indeed the operas contain dialogues that mention events in the previous operas, so that a viewer could watch any of them without having watched the previous parts and still understand the plot. However, Wagner intended them to be performed in series. The first performance as a cycle opened the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, beginning with "Das Rheingold" on 13 August and ending with "Götterdämmerung" on 17 August. Opera stage director Anthony Freud stated that "Der Ring des Nibelungen" "marks the high-water mark of our art form, the most massive challenge any opera company can undertake."
Wagner's title is most literally rendered in English as "The Ring of the Nibelung". The Nibelung of the title is the dwarf Alberich, and the ring in question is the one he fashions from the Rhine Gold. The title therefore denotes "Alberich's Ring". The "-en" suffix in "Nibelungen" can occur in a genitive singular, accusative singular, dative singular, or a plural in any case (in weak masculine German nouns), but the article "des" immediately preceding makes it clear that the genitive singular is intended here. "Nibelungen" is occasionally mistaken as a plural, but "the Ring of the Nibelungs" (in German "Der Ring der Nibelungen") is incorrect.
The cycle is a work of extraordinary scale. Perhaps the most outstanding facet of the monumental work is its sheer length: a full performance of the cycle takes place over four nights at the opera, with a total playing time of about 15 hours, depending on the conductor's pacing. The first and shortest work, "Das Rheingold", has no interval and is one continuous piece of music typically lasting around two and a half hours, while the final and longest, "Götterdämmerung", takes up to five hours, excluding intervals.
The cycle is modelled after ancient Greek dramas that were presented as three tragedies and one satyr play. The "Ring" proper begins with "Die Walküre" and ends with "Götterdämmerung", with "Rheingold" as a prelude. Wagner called "Das Rheingold" a "Vorabend" or "Preliminary Evening", and "Die Walküre", "Siegfried" and "Götterdämmerung" were subtitled First Day, Second Day and Third Day, respectively, of the trilogy proper.
The scale and scope of the story is epic. It follows the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over the eponymous magic ring that grants domination over the entire world. The drama and intrigue continue through three generations of protagonists, until the final cataclysm at the end of "Götterdämmerung".
The music of the cycle is thick and richly textured, and grows in complexity as the cycle proceeds. Wagner wrote for an orchestra of gargantuan proportions, including a greatly enlarged brass section with new instruments such as the Wagner tuba, bass trumpet and contrabass trombone. Remarkably, he uses a chorus only relatively briefly, in acts 2 and 3 of "Götterdämmerung", and then mostly of men with just a few women. He eventually had a purpose-built theatre constructed, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, in which to perform this work. The theatre has a special stage that blends the huge orchestra with the singers' voices, allowing them to sing at a natural volume. The result was that the singers did not have to strain themselves vocally during the long performances.
The plot revolves around a magic ring that grants the power to rule the world, forged by the Nibelung dwarf Alberich from gold he stole from the Rhine maidens in the river Rhine. Wagner described the Ring itself as a Rune-magic taufr ("tine", or "talisman") intended to rule the feminine multiplicative power by a fearful magical act termed "denial of love" ("Liebesverzicht"). With the assistance of the god Loge, Wotan – the chief of the gods – steals the ring from Alberich, but is forced to hand it over to the giants, Fafner and Fasolt in payment for building the home of the gods, Valhalla, or they will take Freia, who provides the gods with the golden apples that keep them young. Wotan's schemes to regain the ring, spanning generations, drive much of the action in the story. His grandson, the mortal Siegfried, wins the ring by slaying Fafner (who slew Fasolt for the ring) – as Wotan intended – but is eventually betrayed and slain as a result of the intrigues of Alberich's son Hagen, who wants the ring for himself. Finally, the Valkyrie Brünnhilde – Siegfried's lover and Wotan's daughter who lost her immortality for defying her father in an attempt to save Siegfried's father Sigmund – returns the ring to the Rhine maidens as she commits suicide on Siegfried's funeral pyre. Hagen is drowned as he attempts to recover the ring. In the process, the gods and Valhalla are destroyed.
Details of the storylines can be found in the articles on each music drama.
Wagner created the story of the "Ring" by fusing elements from many German and Scandinavian myths and folk-tales. The Old Norse "Edda" supplied much of the material for "Das Rheingold", while "Die Walküre" was largely based on the "Völsunga saga". "Siegfried" contains elements from the Eddur, the "Völsunga saga" and "Thidrekssaga". The final "Götterdämmerung" draws from the 12th-century German poem, the "Nibelungenlied", which appears to have been the original inspiration for the "Ring".
"The Ring" has been the subject of myriad interpretations. For example, George Bernard Shaw, in "The Perfect Wagnerite", argues for a view of "The Ring" as an essentially socialist critique of industrial society and its abuses. Robert Donington in "Wagner's Ring And Its Symbols" interprets it in terms of Jungian psychology, as an account of the development of unconscious archetypes in the mind, leading towards individuation.
In his earlier operas (up to and including "Lohengrin") Wagner's style had been based, rather than on the Italian style of opera, on the German style as developed by Carl Maria von Weber, with elements of the grand opera style of Giacomo Meyerbeer. However he came to be dissatisfied with such a format as a means of artistic expression. He expressed this clearly in his essay 'A Communication to My Friends', (1851) in which he condemned the majority of modern artists, in painting and in music, as "feminine ... the world of art close fenced from Life, in which Art plays with herself.' Where however the impressions of Life produce an overwhelming 'poetic force', we find the 'masculine, the generative path of Art'.
Wagner unfortunately found that his audiences were not willing to follow where he led them:
Finally Wagner announces:
This is his first public announcement of the form of what would become the "Ring" cycle.
In accordance with the ideas expressed in his essays of the period 1849–51 (including the "Communication" but also "Opera and Drama" and "The Artwork of the Future"), the four parts of the "Ring" were originally conceived by Wagner to be free of the traditional operatic concepts of aria and operatic chorus. The Wagner scholar Curt von Westernhagen identified three important problems discussed in "Opera and Drama" which were particularly relevant to the "Ring" cycle: the problem of unifying verse stress with melody; the disjunctions caused by formal arias in dramatic structure, and the way in which opera music could be organised on a different basis of organic growth and modulation; and the function of musical motifs in linking elements of the plot whose connections might otherwise be inexplicit. This became known as the leitmotif technique (see below), although Wagner himself did not use this word.
However, Wagner relaxed some aspects of his self-imposed restrictions somewhat as the work progressed. As George Bernard Shaw sardonically (and slightly unfairly) noted of the last opera "Götterdämmerung":
As a significant element in the "Ring" and his subsequent works, Wagner adopted the use of leitmotifs, which are recurring themes or harmonic progressions. They musically denote an action, object, emotion, character, or other subject mentioned in the text or presented onstage. Wagner referred to them in "Opera and Drama" as "guides-to-feeling", describing how they could be used to inform the listener of a musical or dramatic subtext to the action onstage in the same way as a Greek chorus did for the theatre of ancient Greece.
Wagner made significant innovations in orchestration in this work. He wrote for a very large orchestra, using the whole range of instruments used singly or in combination to express the great range of emotion and events of the drama. Wagner even commissioned the production of new instruments, including the Wagner tuba, invented to fill a gap he found between the tone qualities of the horn and the trombone, as well as variations of existing instruments, such as the bass trumpet and a contrabass trombone with a double slide. He also developed the "Wagner bell", enabling the bassoon to reach the low A-natural, whereas normally B-flat is the instrument's lowest note. If such a bell is not to be used, then a contrabassoon should be employed.
All four parts have a very similar instrumentation. The core ensemble of instruments are one piccolo, three flutes (third doubling second piccolo), three oboes, cor anglais (doubling fourth oboe), three soprano clarinets, one bass clarinet, three bassoons; eight horns (fifth through eight doubling Wagner tubas), three trumpets, one bass trumpet, three tenor trombones, one contrabass trombone (doubling bass trombone), one contrabass tuba; a percussion section with 4 timpani (requiring two players), triangle, cymbals, glockenspiel; six harps and a string section consisting of 16 first and second violins, 12 violas, 12 violoncellos, and 8 double basses.
"Das Rheingold" requires one bass drum, one tam-tam, one onstage harp and 18 onstage anvils. "Die Walküre" requires one snare drum, tam-tam, and an on-stage steerhorn. "Siegfried" requires one onstage cor anglais and one onstage horn. "Götterdämmerung" requires five onstage horns and four onstage steerhorns, one of them to be blown by Hagen.
Much of the "Ring", especially from "Siegfried" act 3 onwards, cannot be said to be in traditional, clearly defined keys for long stretches, but rather in 'key regions', each of which flows smoothly into the following. This fluidity avoided the musical equivalent of clearly defined musical paragraphs, and assisted Wagner in building the work's huge structures. Tonal indeterminacy was heightened by the increased freedom with which he used dissonance and chromaticism. Chromatically altered chords are used very liberally in the "Ring", and this feature, which is also prominent in "Tristan und Isolde", is often cited as a milestone on the way to Arnold Schoenberg's revolutionary break with the traditional concept of key and his dissolution of consonance as the basis of an organising principle in music.
In summer 1848 Wagner wrote "The Nibelung Myth as Sketch for a Drama", combining the medieval sources previously mentioned into a single narrative, very similar to the plot of the eventual "Ring" cycle, but nevertheless with substantial differences. Later that year he began writing a libretto entitled "Siegfrieds Tod" ("Siegfried's Death"). He was possibly stimulated by a series of articles in the "Neue Zeitschrift für Musik", inviting composers to write a 'national opera' based on the Nibelungenlied, a 12th-century High German poem which, since its rediscovery in 1755, had been hailed by the German Romantics as the "German national epic". "Siegfrieds Tod" dealt with the death of Siegfried, the central heroic figure of the Nibelungenlied. The idea had occurred to others – the correspondence of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn in 1840/41 reveals that they were both outlining scenarios on the subject: Fanny wrote 'The hunt with Siegfried's death provides a splendid finale to the second act'.
In November 1853, Wagner began the composition draft of "Das Rheingold". Unlike the verses, which were written as it were in reverse order, the music would be composed in the same order as the narrative. Composition proceeded until 1857, when the final score up to the end of act 2 of "Siegfried" was completed. Wagner then laid the work aside for twelve years, during which he wrote "Tristan und Isolde" and "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg".
By 1869, Wagner was living at Tribschen on Lake Lucerne, sponsored by King Ludwig II of Bavaria. He returned to "Siegfried", and, remarkably, was able to pick up where he left off. In October, he completed the final work in the cycle. He chose the title "Götterdämmerung" instead of "Siegfrieds Tod". In the completed work the gods are destroyed in accordance with the new pessimistic thrust of the cycle, not redeemed as in the more optimistic originally planned ending. Wagner also decided to show onstage the events of "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walküre", which had hitherto only been presented as back-narration in the other two parts. These changes resulted in some discrepancies in the cycle, but these do not diminish the value of the work.
On King Ludwig's insistence, and over Wagner's objections, "special previews" of "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walküre" were given at the National Theatre in Munich, before the rest of the "Ring". Thus, "Das Rheingold" premiered on 22 September 1869, and "Die Walküre" on 26 June 1870. Wagner subsequently delayed announcing his completion of "Siegfried" to prevent this work also being premiered against his wishes.
Wagner had long desired to have a special festival opera house, designed by himself, for the performance of the "Ring". In 1871, he decided on a location in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth. In 1872, he moved to Bayreuth, and the foundation stone was laid. Wagner would spend the next two years attempting to raise capital for the construction, with scant success; King Ludwig finally rescued the project in 1874 by donating the needed funds. The Bayreuth Festspielhaus opened in 1876 with the first complete performance of the "Ring", which took place from 13 to 17 August.
In 1882, London impresario Alfred Schulz-Curtius organized the first staging in the United Kingdom of the "Ring" cycle, conducted by Anton Seidl and directed by Angelo Neumann.
The first production of the "Ring" in Italy was in Venice (the place where Wagner died), just two months after his 1883 death, at La Fenice.
The first Australasian "Ring" (and "The Mastersingers of Nuremberg") was presented by the Thomas Quinlan company Melbourne and Sydney in 1913.
The "Ring" is a major undertaking for any opera company: staging four interlinked operas requires a huge commitment both artistically and financially; hence, in most opera houses, production of a new "Ring" cycle will happen over a number of years, with one or two operas in the cycle being added each year. The Bayreuth Festival, where the complete cycle is performed most years, is unusual in that a new cycle is almost always created within a single year.
Early productions of the "Ring" cycle stayed close to Wagner's original Bayreuth staging. Trends set at Bayreuth have continued to be influential. Following the closure of the Festspielhaus during the Second World War, the 1950s saw productions by Wagner's grandsons Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner (known as the 'New Bayreuth' style), which emphasised the human aspects of the drama in a more abstract setting.
Perhaps the most famous modern production was the centennial production of 1976, the "Jahrhundertring", directed by Patrice Chéreau and conducted by Pierre Boulez. Set in the industrial revolution, it replaced the depths of the Rhine with a hydroelectric power dam and featured grimy sets populated by men and gods in 19th and 20th century business suits. This drew heavily on the reading of the "Ring" as a revolutionary drama and critique of the modern world, famously expounded by George Bernard Shaw in "The Perfect Wagnerite". Early performances were booed but the audience of 1980 gave it a 45-minute ovation in its final year.
Seattle Opera has created three different productions of the tetralogy: "Ring 1", 1975 to 1984: Originally directed by George London, with designs by John Naccarato following the famous illustrations by Arthur Rackham. It was performed twice each summer, once in German, once in Andrew Porter's English adaptation. Henry Holt conducted all performances. "Ring 2", 1985–1995: Directed by Francois Rochaix, with sets and costumes designed by Robert Israel, lighting by Joan Sullivan, and supertitles (the first ever created for the "Ring") by Sonya Friedman. The production set the action in a world of nineteenth-century theatricality; it was initially controversial in 1985, it sold out its final performances in 1995. Conductors included Armin Jordan ("Die Walküre" in 1985), Manuel Rosenthal (1986), and Hermann Michael (1987, 1991, and 1995). "Ring 3", 2000–2013: the production, which became known as the "Green" "Ring", was in part inspired by the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. Directed by Stephen Wadsworth, set designer Thomas Lynch, costume designer Martin Pakledinaz, lighting designer Peter Kaczorowski; Armin Jordan conducted in 2000, Franz Vote in 2001, and Robert Spano in 2005 and 2009. The 2013 performances, conducted by Asher Fisch, were released as a commercial recording on compact disc and on iTunes.
In 2003 the first production of the cycle in Russia in modern times was conducted by Valery Gergiev at the Mariinsky Opera, Saint Petersburg, designed by George Tsypin. The production drew parallels with Ossetian mythology.
The Royal Danish Opera performed a complete "Ring" cycle in May 2006 in its new waterfront home, the Copenhagen Opera House. This version of the "Ring" tells the story from the viewpoint of Brünnhilde and has a distinct feminist angle. For example, in a key scene in "Die Walküre", it is Sieglinde and not Siegmund who manages to pull the sword Nothung out of a tree. At the end of the cycle, Brünnhilde does not die, but instead gives birth to Siegfried's child.
San Francisco Opera and Washington National Opera began a co-production of a new cycle in 2006 directed by Francesca Zambello. The production uses imagery from various eras of American history and has a feminist and environmentalist viewpoint. Recent performances of this production took place at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. in April/May 2016, featuring Catherine Foster and Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde, Daniel Brenna as Siegfried, and Alan Held as Wotan.
Los Angeles Opera presented its first "Ring" cycle in 2010 directed by Achim Freyer. Freyer staged an abstract production that was praised by many critics but criticized by some of its own stars. The production featured a raked stage, flying props, screen projections and special effects.
The Metropolitan Opera began a new "Ring" cycle directed by French-Canadian theater director Robert Lepage in 2010. Premiering with "Das Rheingold" on opening night of the 2010/2011 Season conducted by James Levine with Bryn Terfel as Wotan. This was followed by "Die Walküre" in April 2011 starring Deborah Voigt. The 2011/12 Season introduced "Siegfried" and "Götterdämmerung" with Voigt, Terfel, and Jay Hunter Morris before the entire cycle was given in the Spring of 2012 conducted by Fabio Luisi (who stepped in for Levine due to health issues). Lepage's staging was dominated by a 90,000 pound structure which consisted of 24 identical aluminium planks able to rotate independently on a horizontal axis across the stage, providing level, sloping, angled or moving surfaces facing the audience. Bubbles, falling stones and fire are projected on to these surfaces, linked by computer with the music and movement of the characters. The subsequent HD recordings in 2013 won The Met's orchestra and chorus the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for their performance. In 2019, The Metropolitan Opera revived the Lepage staging for the first time since 2013 with Philippe Jordan conducting, Greer Grimsley and Michael Volle rotating as Wotan, and Andreas Schager rotating as Siegfried, and Met homegrown Christine Goerke as Brünnhilde. Lepage's "Machine", as it affectionately became known, underwent major reconfiguration for the revival in order to dampen the creaking that it had produced in the past (to the annoyance of audience members and critics) and to improve its reliability, as it had been known to break down during earlier runs including its famous stoppage on opening night of "Reingold".
Opera Australia presented the "Ring" cycle at the State Theatre in Melbourne, Australia, in November 2013, directed by Neil Armfield and conducted by Pietari Inkinen. "Classical Voice America" heralded the production as "one of the best Rings anywhere in a long time." The production was presented again in Melbourne from 21 November to 16 December 2016 starring Lise Lindstrom, Stefan Vinke, Amber Wagner and Jacqueline Dark.
It is possible to perform "The Ring" with fewer resources than usual. In 1990, the City of Birmingham Touring Opera (now Birmingham Opera Company), presented a two-evening adaptation (by Jonathan Dove) for a limited number of solo singers, each doubling several roles, and 18 orchestral players. This version was subsequently given productions in the USA. A heavily cut-down version (7 hours plus intervals) was performed at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires on 26 November 2012 to mark the 200th anniversary of Wagner's birth.
In a different approach, "Der Ring in Minden" staged the cycle on the small stage of the Stadttheater Minden, beginning in 2015 with "Das Rheingold", followed by the other parts in the succeeding years, and culminating with the complete cycle performed twice in 2019. The stage director was Gerd Heinz, and Frank Beermann conducted the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, playing at the back of the stage. The singers acted in front of the orchestra, making an intimate approach to the dramatic situations possible. The project received international recognition.
Orchestral versions of the "Ring" cycle, summarizing the work in a single movement of an hour or so, have been made by Leopold Stokowski, Lorin Maazel ("Der Ring ohne Worte") (1988) and Henk de Vlieger ("The Ring: an Orchestral Adventure"), (1991).
English-Canadian comedian and singer Anna Russell recorded a twenty-two minute version of the Ring for her album "Anna Russell Sings! Again?" in 1953, characterized by camp humour and sharp wit.
Produced by the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, Charles Ludlam's 1977 play "Der Ring Gott Farblonjet" was a spoof of Wagner's operas. The show received a well-reviewed 1990 revival in New York at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31381 |
True BASIC
True BASIC is a variant of the BASIC programming language descended from Dartmouth BASIC—the original BASIC. Both were created by college professors John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz.
True BASIC traces its history to an offshoot of Dartmouth BASIC called Structured BASIC, or SBASIC for short. This was released sometime in 1975 or 1976, but was not installed as the mainline version of BASIC on the Dartmouth Time Sharing System (DTSS) that supported the campus. Shortly after, Kemeny became involved in an effort to produce an ANSI standard BASIC in an attempt to bring together the many small variations of the language that had developed through the late 1960s and early 1970s. This effort initially focused on a system known as "Minimal BASIC" that was similar to early Dartmouth BASIC but with string variables added, while later work was aimed at a "Standard BASIC" that was essentially SBASIC.
By the early 1980s, tens of millions of home computers were running some variation of Microsoft BASIC, which had become the "de facto" standard. The ANSI efforts eventually became pointless, as it became clear that these versions were not going to have any market impact in a world dominated by MS. Both versions were eventually ratified, but saw little or no adoption and the standards were later withdrawn. Kemeny and Kurtz, however, decided to continue their efforts to introduce the concepts from SBASIC and the ANSI Standard BASIC efforts. This became True BASIC.
Initially based on Dartmouth BASIC 7—otherwise known as ANSI BASIC—True BASIC was introduced in 1985. There are versions of the True BASIC compiler for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, and Classic Mac OS. At one time, versions for TRS-80 Color Computer, Amiga and Atari ST computers were offered, as well as a UNIX command-line compiler.
Being a structured programming implementation of the language, it dispenses with the need for line numbers and GOTO statements, although these can still be used.
True BASIC provides statements for matrix arithmetic, a feature that had been present in Dartmouth BASIC since early times, but had been dropped in almost all microcomputer versions of BASIC interpreters. It supports global and local variables, which permits recursive functions and subroutines to be written.
The designers wanted to make the language hardware-independent, to allow True BASIC source code to run equally well on any version of their compiler. For the most part they succeed in this endeavor. The drawback for users was that direct access to some features of their machines was not available, but this could be remedied with callable functions and subroutines specially written in assembly language.
Using newer versions of True BASIC, some of the older functions are blocked out. An example of the recent code would be more like this:
This simple program plots the text "Welcome To ..." at the top left-hand corner of the screen, and then continues into a never-ending loop plotting "Fabulous Wikipedia!" at random coordinates.
An example of simple animation could be like this:
Jerry Pournelle in 1985 asked, "why do we need True BASIC at all? [It] doesn't seem to do anything regular BASIC doesn't do, and what it does do isn't attacked in a logical or intuitive manner." He criticized the lack of output when encountering an error, preventing interactive debugging by "inserting print statements as diagnostics". Pournelle concluded, "I think I'll pass up the opportunity to become a born-again True BASIC believer. I'll enjoy my Microsoft and CBASIC heresies."
Some users have complained about their programs and the editor using up 100% of their CPU (or core). This appears to be caused by the editor and user's programs using a loop which constantly polls the keyboard and mouse for events. The problem has been known since at least the end of 2010, yet as of early 2014 is still being worked on. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31382 |
Osmotic pressure
Osmotic Pressure is the minimum pressure which needs to be applied to a solution to prevent the inward flow of its pure solvent across a semipermeable membrane.
It is also defined as the measure of the tendency of a solution to take in pure solvent by osmosis. Potential osmotic pressure is the maximum osmotic pressure that could develop in a solution if it were separated from its pure solvent by a semipermeable membrane.
Osmosis occurs when two solutions containing different concentrations of solute are separated by a selectively permeable membrane. Solvent molecules pass preferentially through the membrane from the low-concentration solution to the solution with higher solute concentration. The transfer of solvent molecules will continue until equilibrium is attained.
Jacobus van 't Hoff found a quantitative relationship between osmotic pressure and solute concentration, expressed in the following equation:
where formula_2 is osmotic pressure, "i" is the dimensionless van 't Hoff index, "c" is the molar concentration of solute, R is the ideal gas constant, and "T" is the temperature in kelvins. This formula applies when the solute concentration is sufficiently low that the solution can be treated as an ideal solution. The proportionality to concentration means that osmotic pressure is a colligative property. Note the similarity of this formula to the ideal gas law in the form formula_3 where n is the total number of moles of gas molecules in the volume "V", and "n"/"V" is the molar concentration of gas molecules. Harmon Northrop Morse and Frazer showed that the equation applied to more concentrated solutions if the unit of concentration was molal rather than molar; so when the molality is used this equation has been called the Morse equation.
For more concentrated solutions the van 't Hoff equation can be extended as a power series in solute concentration, "c". To a first approximation,
where formula_5 is the ideal pressure and A is an empirical parameter. The value of the parameter A (and of parameters from higher-order approximations) can be used to calculate Pitzer parameters. Empirical parameters are used to quantify the behaviour of solutions of ionic and non-ionic solutes which are not ideal solutions in the thermodynamic sense.
The Pfeffer cell was developed for the measurement of osmotic pressure.
Osmotic pressure measurement may be used for the determination of molecular weights.
Osmotic pressure is an important factor affecting cells. Osmoregulation is the homeostasis mechanism of an organism to reach balance in osmotic pressure.
When a biological cell is in a hypotonic environment, the cell interior accumulates water, water flows across the cell membrane into the cell, causing it to expand. In plant cells, the cell wall restricts the expansion, resulting in pressure on the cell wall from within called turgor pressure. Turgor pressure allows herbaceous plants to stand upright. It is also the determining factor for how plants regulate the aperture of their stomata. In animal cells excessive osmotic pressure can result in cytolysis.
Osmotic pressure is the basis of filtering ("reverse osmosis"), a process commonly used in water purification. The water to be purified is placed in a chamber and put under an amount of pressure greater than the osmotic pressure exerted by the water and the solutes dissolved in it. Part of the chamber opens to a differentially permeable membrane that lets water molecules through, but not the solute particles. The osmotic pressure of ocean water is about 27 atm. Reverse osmosis desalinates fresh water from ocean salt water.
Consider the system at the point when it has reached equilibrium. The condition for this is that the chemical potential of the "solvent" (since only it is free to flow toward equilibrium) on both sides of the membrane is equal. The compartment containing the pure solvent has a chemical potential of formula_6, where formula_7 is the pressure. On the other side, in the compartment containing the solute, the chemical potential of the solvent depends on the mole fraction of the solvent, formula_8. Besides, this compartment can assume a different pressure, formula_9. We can therefore write the chemical potential of the solvent as formula_10. If we write formula_11, the balance of the chemical potential is therefore:
Here, the difference in pressure of the two compartments formula_13 is defined as the osmotic pressure exerted by the solutes. Holding the pressure, the addition of solute decreases the chemical potential (an entropic effect). Thus, the pressure of the solution has to be increased in an effort to compensate the loss of the chemical potential.
In order to find formula_2, the osmotic pressure, we consider equilibrium between a solution containing solute and pure water.
We can write the left hand side as:
where formula_17 is the activity coefficient of the solvent. The product formula_18 is also known as the activity of the solvent, which for water is the water activity formula_19. The addition to the pressure is expressed through the expression for the energy of expansion:
where formula_21 is the molar volume (m³/mol). Inserting the expression presented above into the chemical potential equation for the entire system and rearranging will arrive at:
If the liquid is incompressible the molar volume is constant, formula_23, and the integral becomes formula_24. Thus, we get
The activity coefficient is a function of concentration and temperature, but in the case of dilute mixtures, it is often very close to 1.0, so
The mole fraction of solute, formula_27, is formula_28, so formula_29can be replaced with formula_30, which, when formula_27 is small, can be approximated by formula_32.
The mole fraction formula_27is formula_35. When formula_27is small, it may be approximated by formula_37, Also, the molar volume, formula_21, may be written as volume per mole, formula_39. Combining these gives the following.
For aqueous solutions of salts, ionisation must be taken into account. For example, 1 mole of NaCl ionises to 2 moles of ions. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31383 |
Twilight: 2000
Twilight 2000 is a role-playing game set in the aftermath of World War III (the "Twilight War"). The premise is that the United States/NATO and the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact have fought a lengthy conventional war, followed by a (limited) nuclear war with all its consequences. Characters in the game are survivors of the war.
The adventures in "Twilight 2000" typically involve a military unit which was stranded in Central Europe after the nuclear war and places emphasis on attempting to realistically depict military and social systems after a nuclear war. The war, as it continues on from 1997, has aspects of the Broken-Backed War Theory, wherein a catastrophic nuclear exchange occurs between two belligerents, and is then followed by a continuation of conventional war.
The game was first published in 1984 during the Cold War and was intended to be an accurate depiction of a possible future, but events in the world have rendered the premise of the game an alternate history.
In 1995, a series of Sino-Soviet border conflicts expanded into general war between the Soviet Union and China. The Sino-Soviet war rapidly escalated from conventional warfare into exchanges of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In 1996 a cabal of East German and West German military officers seek to reunify their country. Unified German forces stage a coup d'état against the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. The US and NATO allies initially attempt to stay out of the war, but are quickly drawn into the European conflict. France withdraws its troops from Germany and then withdraws entirely from NATO, declaring its neutrality in the conflict.
Between 1996 and 1997, a largely conventional war is fought between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces throughout Europe. There are limited exchanges of battlefield nuclear weapons, and chemical and biological weapons. During Thanksgiving 1997, the Soviet Union launches a surprise first strike against targets in the United States and Europe. The US and Great Britain launch retaliatory nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union. France, because of its neutrality, largely escapes direct damage.
In the aftermath of the nuclear exchanges, both blocs struggle to recover from the damage. The war continues - despite increasing shortages of men, equipment, and fuel. In the United States, there is a breach between the civilian government and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. An open rift develops between "Civgov" (the civilian government) and "Milgov" (the military government), which leads to a low-intensity civil war.
By the summer of 2000, the European theater of operations had been fought to a near stalemate. In one final effort to break the deadlock and end the war, NATO forces planned a summer offensive across Northern Poland and into the Baltics, but the offensive ground to a halt in the face of a Warsaw Pact counterattack. Several divisions and corps on each side were virtually eliminated. In the chaotic aftermath, supply lines are lost, high level command breaks down and armies in the European theater lose cohesion beyond the platoon unit. Some go “native’ and integrated with the militias of independent “free cities", others turned into gangs of marauding bandits and some small groups of surviving soldiers sought to find their way home.
To create 300 years of background history for their science-fiction RPG "2300 AD", GDW staff members participated in an in-house simulation called "The Great Game", with Frank Chadwick as referee. Starting with the world situation in 2000 following the Twilight War, players controlled one or more countries and guided them through 300 years of development, including the discovery of faster-than-light space travel, colonization of other Earthlike planets, and contact with a variety of sentient aliens. The staff member playing France, John Harshman, did exceptionally well, leading to France being the supreme superpower in 2300.
The Second Edition (published in 1990) and subsequent editions featured a reworked background intended to be an alternate history closer to 1990s real-world history. Version 2.2, GDW's final edition of the game, was published in 1993 and featured a background in which the KGB's Alpha Group obeyed the coup leaders in the August 1991 Soviet coup attempt and stormed the Russian White House, killing Boris Yeltsin and effectively preserving communist control. This also had the effect of basically future-proofing the game, as anything that happened in reality after that period could be ignored as the event basically wiped out history after that.
In 2017 and 2018 there were three new official modules for Twilight 2000 released at www.drivethrurpg.com including a source book for East Africa/Kenya, a new standalone adventure played during the same time as the "Going Home" module and a Korean source book. These three releases were all officially approved by Marc Miller who is the current owner of the Twilight 2000 game and were the first new releases for the 1st and 2nd edition since the mid-1990s.
"Merc 2000" is an alternative setting for the "Twilight 2000" role-playing game by Game Designers' Workshop. Whereas "Twilight 2000" was set in the immediate post-World War III era, with characters representing soldiers trying to survive, characters in "Merc 2000" are mercenaries working for or against government forces in a world where the "Twilight War" involving nuclear weapons did not occur.
"Merc 2000" must be used with "Twilight 2000" versions 2.0 through 2.2; the earlier first-edition "Twilight 2000" rules differ too much to be easily usable without extensive adaptation. The "Merc 2000" rulebook details the game world, gives additional rules and equipment that will be more useful in mercenary campaigns than "Twilight 2000" ones. It also supplies some basic adventures to play. Game Designers' Workshop also published a number of separate adventures for use with "Merc 2000".
"Merc 2000" also has a supplemental rulebook called "Special Forces" that gives guidance for those wishing to play as members of a Special Forces unit. Additional equipment is described and there are more sample adventures.
In GDW's own gaming magazine "Challenge", they close the gaps between the setting of "Merc 2000" and their future role-playing game "Dark Conspiracy". "Merc 2000"-characters are confronted there with aliens as the world turns into the near-future setting of Dark Conspiracy.
"Cadillacs and Dinosaurs" used the "Twilight 2000" rules and was set in Mark Schultz's underground comic book series "Xenozoic Tales". ()
"Dark Conspiracy" used the same set of rules to present a setting in which characters in a near future dystopia fought monsters which hunted human beings.
Characters in "Twilight 2000" games are typically representative of US and NATO military forces. Within the T2K gaming community, games that are centered on a group of Soviet/Warsaw Pact characters are referred to as "OPFOR games" for opposing force. There are no full OPFOR games as published adventures, but the concept is a popular PBEM scenario.
The manufacturer of the game, Game Designers' Workshop (GDW), which is now owned by Tantalus, extended the timeline of "Twilight 2000" to create the background history for the science fiction game "2300 AD"; by doing so the rather depressing post-nuclear environment of "Twilight 2000" is mitigated by the outcome in which the Earth rebuilds itself and begins to colonize space.
Far Future Enterprises has reprinted the first edition of "Twilight 2000" in hardcopy (paper) format, and both the first edition and version 2.2 are available in CD-ROM format. Versions 2.0 and 2.2, both using the system that became standard for GDW's games, are currently available in watermarked PDF format from DriveThruRPG.com (as are the first edition rules).
"Twilight 2000"'s success as a game can be attributed in part to its manner of presenting a military background and setting, without hemming the players into a military's command structure. The civilian governments of most countries in the game have been shattered (France and Belgium quit NATO and thus largely escaped war damage) with the US government splitting into the civilian and military governments, as has the military chain of command, supply lines, etc. The various military forces are presented as being much weaker than their stated sizes, occupying civilian territories and relying on civilians for food and small-scale manufacturing, and recruiting from civilian populations to some extent. This all means that the players can feel they are part of a military of some sort, without their characters being forced to submit to higher military authority. Players generally can choose whether they want their characters to try to continue the war, get back home (wherever that may be), join one of the new power groups wherever they are, simply survive as mercenaries or marauders, or some combination.
In 1990, realizing that the game's background was in danger of becoming obsolete, GDW published "Merc 2000", an alternative campaign setting which revolved around mercenaries fighting brushfire wars in a time in which the Twilight War never occurred. After "Merc 2000" was released, many supplements and articles printed in GDW's "Challenge Magazine" featured "Twilight 2000" with equipment and background conversions to "Merc 2000" or were "Merc 2000"-only.
In 1991, GDW licensees Paragon developed the "Twilight 2000" computer game adaptation (complete with expansion, "the Colonel") depicting a squad of 20 soldiers stranded behind enemy lines in Poland, struggling against the despot Baron Czarny.
In 2006, 93 Games Studio announced that they had acquired the license to produce the official "Twilight 2000" Version 3.0, and planned for a 2008 release with the title "". According to the developers, the timeline leading to the Twilight War was completely re-written, and no longer focused on a Cold War confrontation between NATO, the Soviet Union and China.
The "Twilight: 2013" core rules were released on 8 November 2008 as a PDF. The hard-copy edition is now in print.
In December 2010, 93 Games Studio announced it was going out of business.
In 2020, Free League Publishing announced they had been licensed to publish a 4th edition of the Twilight: 2000 setting. The game will have a new ruleset, different from previous editions, and is scheduled to be released in early 2021.
Rick Swan and Greg Porter reviewed "Twilight: 2000" in "Space Gamer" No. 74. Swan commented that "Whether or not "Twilight: 2000" becomes a standard remains to be seen, but it certainly fills a niche and does so successfully, I hope it finds an audience with roleplayers and wargamers alike. As a design, it's nothing spectacular, but as a concept, it's an innovation." Porter commented that "All told, "Twilight: 2000" is a tragic waste of [money]. The nice concept and character generation system are completely overrun by innumerable flaws and hopeless violations of the laws of physics."
Chris Felton reviewed "Twilight 2000" for "Imagine" magazine, and stated that "Overall, this is a good game, well worth clubbing together for if you belong to a group of experienced players who like free-running games and whose referee can run a scenario from minimal notes. If your referee has no experience of 'winging it' and needs all the details worked out in advance, this is not the game for you."
"Twilight 2000" was awarded the Charles S. Roberts Award for "Best Roleplaying Rules of 1984".
"Twilight 2000" was ranked 35th in the 1996 reader poll of "Arcane" magazine to determine the 50 most popular roleplaying games of all time. The UK magazine's editor Paul Pettengale commented: "Pretty much all the previous 'post-apocalyptic' RPGs had been fairly fantastical, and had been set some time after the apocalypse. "Twilight 2000" is realistic and set in the middle of the breakdown of European society. Involving, but not exactly cheerful." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31384 |
Technical and further education
In Australia, technical and further education or TAFE () institutions provide a wide range of predominantly vocational courses, mostly qualifying courses under the National Training System/Australian Qualifications Framework/Australian Quality Training Framework. Fields covered include business, finance, hospitality, tourism, construction, engineering, visual arts, information technology and community work.
Individual TAFE institutions (usually with numerous campuses) are known as either colleges or institutes, depending on the state or territory. TAFE colleges are owned, operated and financed by the various state and territory governments. This is in contrast to the university sector, whose funding is predominantly the domain of the federal government and whose universities are predominantly owned by the state governments.
TAFE colleges award Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) qualifications accredited in the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector that align to Certificate I, Certificate II, Certificate III, Certificate IV, Diploma, Advanced Diploma, Graduate Certificate and Graduate Diploma qualifications. In many instances, TAFE study at a Diploma or above level can be used as partial credit towards bachelor's degree-level university programs.
From 2002 the TAFE education sector has been able to offer bachelor's degrees and post-graduate diploma courses to fill niche areas, particularly vocationally focused areas of study based on industry needs. As at June 2009 10 TAFE colleges (mainly in New South Wales, Victoria, but also Western Australia, ACT, and Queensland) now confer their own degree-level awards and post graduate diplomas, though initially not beyond the level of bachelor's degree. However Melbourne Polytechnic has been accredited in 2015 to offer two master's degree courses. Similarly, some universities, e.g. Charles Darwin University and Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, offer vocational education courses (traditionally the domain of TAFE); these are funded by the local state and territory governments. Some high schools also deliver courses developed and accredited by TAFEs.
Students who enrol in these undergraduate degree courses at TAFE are required to pay full fees and are not entitled to Commonwealth Government supported student fee loans, known as HECS loans, but may access a FEE-HELP loan scheme. While Universities have the ability and power to design and offer their own degree courses, each TAFE degree course must be assessed and approved by the Higher Education Accreditation Committee (HEAC).
TAFEs in some states can also teach senior high school qualifications, like the Victorian Certificate of Education, Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning, and the Higher School Certificate. Some universities, e.g. Charles Darwin University and Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, offer TAFE courses; these are funded by the local state and territory governments. Some high schools also deliver courses developed and accredited by TAFEs.
Some private institutions also offer courses from TAFEs, however they more commonly offer other vocational education and training courses. Many Australians refer to all sub-degree courses as "TAFE" courses, no matter what institution creates or delivers the course. Before the 1990s, the TAFEs had a near monopoly in the sector. TAFE courses provide students an opportunity for certificate, diploma, and advanced diploma qualifications in a wide range of areas.
In most cases, TAFE campuses are grouped into TAFE institutions along geographic lines. Most TAFEs are given a locally recognised region of the country where they exclusively operate covering a wide range of subjects.
A few TAFEs specialise in a single area of study. These are usually found near the middle of the capital cities, and service the whole state or territory. For example, the Trade and Technician Skills Institute in Brisbane, (from 1 July 2006), specialises in automotive, building and construction, manufacturing and engineering, and electrical/electronic studies for students throughout Queensland. Or the William Angliss Institute of TAFE in Melbourne which specialises in food, hospitality and tourism courses for Victoria.
In the Australian Capital Territory these include:
There are ten TAFE NSW Institutes in NSW which include:
In the Northern Territory these include:
In Queensland, "TAFE Queensland" includes:
As of May 2014, the TAFE institutes have amalgamated into six regions of the central TAFE Queensland (parent body). The regions of "TAFE Queensland" are:
In South Australia:
In Tasmania, there are two government TAFE organisations:
In Victoria these include:
In Western Australia, this includes: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31386 |
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (also known as the Treaty of Brest in Russia) was a peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, between the new Bolshevik government of Russia and the Central Powers (German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), that ended Russia's participation in World War I. The treaty was signed at German-controlled Brest-Litovsk (; since 1945, Brest, nowadays in Belarus), after two months of negotiations. The treaty was agreed upon by the Russians to stop further invasion. According to the treaty, Soviet Russia defaulted on all of Imperial Russia's commitments to the Allies and eleven nations became independent in Eastern Europe and western Asia.
In the treaty, Russia ceded hegemony over the Baltic states to Germany; they were meant to become German vassal states under German princelings. Russia also ceded its province of Kars Oblast in the South Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire and recognized the independence of Ukraine. According to historian Spencer Tucker, "The German General Staff had formulated extraordinarily harsh terms that shocked even the German negotiator." Congress Poland was not mentioned in the treaty, as Germans refused to recognize the existence of any Polish representatives, which in turn led to Polish protests. When Germans later complained that the later Treaty of Versailles in the West of 1919 was too harsh on them, the Allied Powers responded that it was more benign than the terms imposed by the Brest-Litovsk treaty.
The treaty was annulled by the Armistice of 11 November 1918, when Germany surrendered to the western Allies. However, in the meantime it did provide some relief to the Bolsheviks, already fighting the Russian Civil War (1917–1922) following the Russian Revolutions of 1917, by the renunciation of Russia's claims on modern-day Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine and Lithuania.
It is considered the first diplomatic treaty ever filmed.
By 1917, Germany and Imperial Russia were stuck in a stalemate on the Eastern Front of World War I and the Russian economy had nearly collapsed under the strain of the war effort. The large numbers of war casualties and persistent food shortages in the major urban centers brought about civil unrest, known as the February Revolution, that forced Emperor (Tsar/Czar) Nicholas II to abdicate. The Russian Provisional Government that replaced the Tsar in early 1917 continued the war. Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov sent the Entente Powers a telegram, known as Milyukov note, affirming to them that the Provisional Government would continue the war with the same war aims that the former Russian Empire had. The pro-war Provisional Government was opposed by the self-proclaimed Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, dominated by leftist parties. Its Order No. 1 called for an overriding mandate to soldier committees rather than army officers. The Soviet started to form its own paramilitary power, the Red Guards, in March 1917.
The continuing war led the German Government to agree to a suggestion that they should favor the opposition Communist Party (Bolsheviks), who were proponents of Russia's withdrawal from the war. Therefore, in April 1917, Germany transported Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin and thirty-one supporters in a sealed train from exile in Switzerland to Finland Station, Petrograd. Upon his arrival in Petrograd, Lenin proclaimed his April Theses, which included a call for turning all political power over to workers' and soldiers' soviets (councils) and an immediate withdrawal of Russia from the war. At around the same time, the United States entered the war, potentially shifting the balance of the war against the Central Powers. Throughout 1917, Bolsheviks called for the overthrow of the Provisional Government and an end to the war. Following the disastrous failure of the Kerensky Offensive, discipline in the Russian army deteriorated completely. Soldiers would disobey orders, often under the influence of Bolshevik agitation, and set up soldiers' committees to take control of their units after deposing the officers.
The defeat and ongoing hardships of war led to anti-government riots in Petrograd, the "July Days" of 1917. Several months later, on 7 November (25 October old style), Red Guards seized the Winter Palace and arrested the Provisional Government in what is known as the October Revolution.
A top priority of the newly established Soviet government was to end the war. On 8 November 1917 (26 October 1917 O.S) Vladimir Lenin signed the Decree on Peace, which was approved by the Second Congress of the Soviet of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies. The Decree called "upon all the belligerent nations and their governments to start immediate negotiations for peace" and proposed an immediate withdrawal of Russia from World War I. Leon Trotsky was appointed Commissar of Foreign Affairs in the new Bolshevik government. In preparation for peace talks with the representatives of the German government and the representatives of the other Central Powers, Leon Trotsky appointed his good friend Adolph Joffe to represent the Bolsheviks at the peace conference.
On 15 December 1917, an armistice between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers was concluded. On 22 December, peace negotiations began in Brest-Litovsk.
Arrangements for the conference were the responsibility of General Max Hoffmann, chief of staff of the Central Powers' forces on their Eastern Front ("Oberkommando-Ostfront"). The delegations that had negotiated the armistice were made stronger. Prominent additions on the Central Powers’ side were the foreign ministers of Germany Richard von Kühlmann and of Austria-Hungary Count Ottokar Czernin, both the Ottoman grand vizier Talaat Pasha and Foreign Minister Nassimy Bey. The Bulgarians were headed by Minister of Justice Popoff, who was later joined by Prime Minister Vasil Radoslavov.
The Soviet delegation was led by Adolph Joffe who had already led their armistice negotiators, but his group was made more cohesive by eliminating most of the representatives of social groups, like peasants and sailors, and the addition of tsarist general Aleksandr Samoilo and the noted Marxist historian Mikhail Pokrovsky. It still included Anastasia Bitsenko, a former assassin, representing the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries who were at odds with the Bolsheviks. Again the negotiators met in the fortress in Brest Litovsk, while the delegates were housed in temporary wooden structure in its courtyards, because the city had been burnt to the ground in 1915 by the retreating Russian army. They were cordially welcomed by the commander of the Eastern Front, Prince Leopold of Bavaria, who sat with Joffe on the head table at the opening banquet with one hundred guests. As they had during the armistice negotiations both sides continued to eat dinner and supper together amicably intermingled in the officers' mess.
When the conference convened Kühlmann asked Joffe to present the Russian conditions for peace. He made six points, all variations of the Bolshevik slogan of peace with "no annexations or indemnities". The Central Powers accepted these principles "but only in case all belligerents [including the nations of the Entente] without exception pledge themselves to do the same". They did not intend to annex territories occupied by force. Joffe telegraphed this marvelous news to Petrograd. Thanks to informal chatting in the mess, one of Hoffmann's aides, Colonel Friedrich Brinckmann, realized that the Russians had optimistically misinterpreted the Central Power's meaning. It fell to Hoffmann to set matters straight at dinner on 27 December: Poland, Lithuania and Courland, already occupied by the Central Powers, were determined to separate from Russia, on the principle of self-determination that the Bolsheviks themselves espoused. Joffe "looked as if he had received a blow on the head". Pokrovsky wept as he asked how they could speak of "peace without annexations when Germany was tearing eighteen provinces away from the Russian state". The Germans and Austro-Hungarian planned to annex slices of Polish territory and to set up a rump Polish state with what remained, while the Baltic provinces were to become client states ruled by German princes. Czernin was beside himself with this hitch that was slowing the negotiations; self-determination was anathema to his government and they urgently needed grain from the east because Vienna was on the verge of starvation. He proposed to make a separate peace. Kühlmann warned that if they negotiated separately Germany would immediately withdraw all its divisions from the Austrian front; Czernin dropped that threat. The food crisis in Vienna was eventually eased by "forced drafts of grain from Hungary, Poland, and Romania and by a last moment contribution from Germany of 450 truck-loads of flour". At the Russian request they agreed to recess the talks for twelve days.
The Soviets' only hopes were that given time their allies would agree to join the negotiations or that the western European proletariat would revolt, so their best strategy was to prolong the negotiations. As Foreign Minister Leon Trotsky wrote, "To delay negotiations, there must be someone to do the delaying". Therefore Trotsky replaced Joffe as the leader.
On the other side there were significant political realignments. On New Year's Day in Berlin the Kaiser insisted that Hoffmann reveal his views on the future German-Polish border. He advocated taking a small slice of Poland; Hindenburg and Ludendorff wanted much more. They were furious with Hoffmann for breaching the chain of command and wanted him dismissed and sent to command a division. The Kaiser refused, but Ludendorff no longer spoke with Hoffmann on the telephone, now communication was through an intermediary. The German Supreme Commanders were also furious at ruling out of annexations, contending that the peace "must increase Germany's material power". They denigrated Kühlmann and pressed for additional territorial acquisitions. When Hindenburg was asked why they needed the Baltic states he replied, "To secure my left flank for when the next war happens." However, the most profound transformation was that a delegation from the Ukrainian Rada, which had declared independence from Russia, had arrived at Brest-Litovsk. They would make peace if they were given the Polish city of Cholm and its surroundings, and then would provide desperately needed grain. Czernin no longer was desperate for a prompt settlement with the Russians.
When they reconvened Trotsky declined the invitation to meet Prince Leopold and terminated shared meals and other sociable interactions with the representatives of the Central Powers. Day after day Trotsky "engaged Kühlmann in debate, rising to subtle discussion of first principles that ranged far beyond the concrete territorial issues that divided them". The Central Powers signed a peace treaty with Ukraine during the night of 8–9 February, even though the Russians had retaken Kiev. German and Austro-Hungarian troops entered Ukraine to prop up the Rada. Finally Hoffmann broke the impasse with the Russians by focusing the discussion on maps of the future boundaries. Trotsky summarized their situation "Germany and Austria-Hungary are cutting off from the domains of the former Russian Empire territories more than 150,000 square kilometers in size." He was granted a nine day recess for the Russians to decide whether to sign.
In Petrograd, Trotsky argued passionately against signing, proposing that instead "they should announce the termination of the war and demobilization without signing any peace." Lenin was for signing rather than having an even more ruinous treaty forced on them after a few more weeks of military humiliation. The "Left Communists", led by Nikolai Bukharin and Karl Radek, were sure that Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria were all on the verge of revolution. They wanted to continue the war with a newly-raised revolutionary force while awaiting for these upheavals. Consequently Lenin agreed to Trotsky's formula—a position summed up as "no war – no peace"—which was announced when the negotiators reconvened on 10 February 1918. The Soviets thought their stalling was succeeding until 16 February when Hoffmann notified them that the war would resume in two days, when fifty-three divisions advanced against the near-empty Soviet trenches. On the night of 18 February the Central Committee supported Lenin's resolution that they sign the treaty by a margin of seven to five. Hoffmann kept advancing until 23 February when he presented new terms that included the withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Ukraine and Finland. They were given 48 hours to decide. Lenin told the Central Committee that "you must sign this shameful peace in order to save the world revolution". If they did not agree he would resign. He was supported by six Central Committee members, opposed by three, with Trotsky and three others abstaining. Trotsky resigned as foreign minister and was replaced by Georgy Chicherin.
When Sokolnikov arrived at Brest-Litovsk he declared "we are going to sign immediately the treaty presented to us as an ultimatum but at the same time refuse to enter into any discussion of its terms". The treaty was signed at 17:50 on 3 March 1918.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on 3 March 1918. The signatories were Soviet Russia signed by Grigori Sokolnikov on the one side and the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Ottoman Empire on the other.
The treaty marked Russia's final withdrawal from World War I as an enemy of her co-signatories, on severe terms. In all, the treaty took away territory that included a quarter of the population and industry of the former Russian Empire and nine-tenths of its coal mines.
Russia renounced all territorial claims in Finland (which it had already acknowledged), Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), most of Belarus, and Ukraine.
The territory of the Kingdom of Poland was not mentioned in the treaty, because Russian Poland had been a possession of the white movement, not the Bolsheviks.
The treaty stated that "Germany and Austria-Hungary intend to determine the future fate of these territories in agreement with their populations." Most of these territories were in effect ceded to Germany, which intended to have them become economic and political dependencies. The many ethnic German residents ("volksdeutsch") would be the ruling elite. New monarchies were created in Lithuania and the United Baltic Duchy (which comprised the modern countries of Latvia and Estonia). The German aristocrats Wilhelm Karl, Duke of Urach (in Lithuania), and Adolf Friedrich, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (in the United Baltic Duchy), were appointed as rulers.
This plan was detailed by German Colonel General Erich Ludendorff, who wrote, "German prestige demands that we should hold a strong protecting hand, not only over German citizens, but over all Germans."
The occupation of Western Russia ultimately proved a costly blunder for Berlin as over one million German troops lay sprawled out from Poland nearly to the Caspian Sea, all idle and depriving Germany of badly needed manpower in France. The hopes of utilizing Ukraine's grain and coal proved abortive and in addition, the local population became increasingly upset at the occupation. Revolts and guerrilla warfare began breaking out all over the occupied territory, many of them inspired by Bolshevik agents. German troops also had to intervene in the Finnish Civil War, and Ludendorff became increasingly paranoid about his troops being affected by propaganda emanating from Moscow; this was one of the reasons he was reluctant to transfer divisions to the Western Front. The attempt at establishing an independent Ukrainian state under German guidance was unsuccessful as well. Despite all this, Ludendorff completely ruled out the idea of marching on Moscow and Petrograd to remove the Bolshevik government from power.
Germany transferred hundreds of thousands of veteran troops to the Western Front for the 1918 Spring Offensive, which shocked the Allied Powers, but ultimately failed. Some Germans later blamed the occupation for significantly weakening the Spring Offensive.
Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine became independent, while Bessarabia united with Romania.
Russia lost 34% of its population, 54% of its industrial land, 89% of its coalfields, and 26% of its railways. Russia was also fined 300 million gold marks.
At the insistence of Talaat Pasha, the treaty declared that the territory Russia took from the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), specifically Ardahan, Kars, and Batumi, were to be returned. At the time of the treaty, this territory was under the effective control of Armenian and Georgian forces.
Paragraph 3 of Article IV of the treaty stated that:
Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia rejected the treaty and instead declared independence. They formed the short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic.
In the wake of Soviet repudiation of Tsarist bonds, nationalisation of foreign-owned property and confiscation of foreign assets, the Soviets and Germany signed an additional agreement on 27 August 1918. The Soviets agreed to pay six billion marks in compensation for German losses.
The treaty meant that Russia now was helping Germany win the war by freeing up a million German soldiers for the Western Front and by "relinquishing much of Russia's food supply, industrial base, fuel supplies, and communications with Western Europe". According to historian Spencer Tucker, the Allied Powers felt that "The treaty was the ultimate betrayal of the Allied cause and sowed the seeds for the Cold War. With Brest-Litovsk the spectre of German domination in Eastern Europe threatened to become reality, and the Allies now began to think seriously about military intervention [in Russia]."
Immediately after the signing of the treaty, Lenin moved the Soviet government from Petrograd to Moscow. Trotsky blamed the peace treaty on the bourgeoisie, the social revolutionaries, Tsarist diplomats, Tsarist bureaucrats, "the Kerenskys, Tseretelis and Chernovs" the Tsarist regime, and the "petty-bourgeois compromisers".
Relations between Russia and the Central Powers did not go smoothly. The Ottoman Empire broke the treaty by invading the newly created First Republic of Armenia in May 1918. Joffe became the Soviet ambassador to Germany. His priority was distributing propaganda to trigger the German revolution. On 4 November 1918 "the Soviet courier's packing-case had 'come to pieces'" in a Berlin railway station; it was filled with insurrectionary documents. Joffe and his staff were ejected from Germany in a sealed train on 5 November 1918. In the Armistice of 11 November 1918 that ended World War I, one clause abrogated the Brest-Litovsk treaty. Next the Bolshevik legislature (VTsIK) annulled the treaty on 13 November 1918, and the text of the VTsIK Decision was printed in "Pravda" newspaper the next day. In the year after the armistice following a timetable set by the victors the German Army withdrew its occupying forces from the lands gained in Brest-Litovsk. The fate of the region, and the location of the eventual western border of the Soviet Union, was settled in violent and chaotic struggles over the course of the next three and a half years. The Polish–Soviet War was particularly bitter; it ended with the Treaty of Riga in 1921. Although most of Ukraine fell under Bolshevik control and eventually became one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union, Poland and the Baltic states re-emerged as independent nations. In the Treaty of Rapallo, concluded in April 1922, Germany accepted the Treaty's nullification, and the two powers agreed to abandon all war-related territorial and financial claims against each other. This state of affairs lasted until 1939. As a consequence of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union advanced its borders westward by invading Poland in September 1939 and taking a small part of Finland in November 1939 and annexing the Baltic States, and Romania (Bessarabia) in 1940. It thus overturned almost all the territorial losses incurred at Brest-Litovsk, except for the main part of Finland, western Congress Poland, and western Armenia.
The treaty marked a significant contraction of the territory controlled by the Bolsheviks or that they could lay claim to as effective successors of the Russian Empire. While the independence of Finland and Poland was already accepted by them in principle, the loss of Ukraine and the Baltics created, from the Bolshevik perspective, dangerous bases of anti-Bolshevik military activity in the subsequent Russian Civil War (1918–1922). However, Bolshevik control of Ukraine and Transcaucasia was at the time fragile or non existent. Many Russian nationalists and some revolutionaries were furious at the Bolsheviks' acceptance of the treaty and joined forces to fight them. Non-Russians who inhabited the lands lost by Bolshevik Russia in the treaty saw the changes as an opportunity to set up independent states.
For the Western Allied Powers, the terms that Germany had imposed on Russia were interpreted as a warning of what to expect if the Central Powers won the war. Between Brest-Litovsk and the point when the situation in the Western Front became dire, some officials in the German government and the high command began to favor offering more lenient terms to the Allied Powers in exchange for their recognition of German gains in the east.
Emil Orlik, the Viennese Secessionist artist, attended the conference, at the invitation of Richard von Kühlmann. He drew portraits of all the participants, along with a series of smaller caricatures. These were gathered together into a book, "Brest-Litovsk," a copy of which was given to each of the participants. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31388 |
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment center, and neighborhood in the Midtown Manhattan section of New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue. Brightly lit by numerous billboards and advertisements, it stretches from West 42nd to West 47th Streets, and is sometimes referred to as "the Crossroads of the World", "the Center of the Universe", "the heart of the Great White Way", and "the heart of the world". One of the world's busiest pedestrian areas, it is also the hub of the Broadway Theater District and a major center of the world's entertainment industry. Times Square is one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, drawing an estimated 50 million visitors annually. Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square daily, many of them tourists, while over 460,000 pedestrians walk through Times Square on its busiest days.
Formerly known as Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed in 1904 after "The New York Times" moved its headquarters to the then newly erected Times Building, now One Times Square. It is the site of the annual New Year's Eve ball drop, which began on December 31, 1907 and continues to attract over a million visitors to Times Square every year.
Times Square functions as a town square, but is not geometrically a square; it is closer in shape to a bowtie, with two triangles emanating roughly north and south from 45th Street, where Seventh Avenue intersects Broadway. Broadway runs diagonally, crossing through the horizontal and vertical street grid of Manhattan laid down by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, and that intersection creates the "bowtie" shape of Times Square.
The southern triangle of Times Square has no specific name, but the northern triangle is called Father Duffy Square. It was dedicated in 1937 to Chaplain Francis P. Duffy of New York City's U.S. 69th Infantry Regiment and is the site of a memorial to him, along with a statue of George M. Cohan, and the TKTS ticket booth.
When Manhattan Island was first settled by the Dutch, three small streams united near what is now 10th Avenue and 40th Street. These three streams formed the "Great Kill" (Dutch: "Grote Kil"). From there the Great Kill wound through the low-lying Reed Valley, known for fish and waterfowl and emptied into a deep bay in the Hudson River at the present 42nd Street. The name was retained in a tiny hamlet, Great Kill, that became a center for carriage-making, as the upland to the south and east became known as Longacre.
Before and after the American Revolution, the area belonged to John Morin Scott, a general of the New York militia, in which he served under George Washington. Scott's manor house was at what is currently 43rd Street, surrounded by countryside used for farming and breeding horses. In the first half of the 19th century, it became one of the prized possessions of John Jacob Astor, who made a second fortune selling off lots to hotels and other real estate concerns as the city rapidly spread uptown.
By 1872, the area had become the center of New York's horse carriage industry. The locality had not previously been given a name, and city authorities called it Longacre Square after Long Acre in London, where the horse and carriage trade was centered in that city. William Henry Vanderbilt owned and ran the American Horse Exchange there. In 1910 it became the Winter Garden Theatre.
As more profitable commerce and industrialization of Lower Manhattan pushed homes, theaters, and prostitution northward from the Tenderloin District, Longacre Square became nicknamed the "Thieves Lair" for its rollicking reputation as a low entertainment district. The first theater on the square, the Olympia, was built by cigar manufacturer and impresario Oscar Hammerstein I. According to "Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898", "By the early 1890s this once sparsely settled stretch of Broadway was ablaze with electric light and thronged by crowds of middle- and upper-class theatre, restaurant and cafe patrons."
In 1904, "New York Times" publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved the newspaper's operations to a new skyscraper on 42nd Street at Longacre Square, on the site of the former Pabst Hotel, which had existed on the site for less than a decade since it opened in November 1899. Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. to construct a subway station there, and the area was renamed "Times Square" on April 8, 1904. Just three weeks later, the first electrified advertisement appeared on the side of a bank at the corner of 46th Street and Broadway. The north end later became Duffy Square, and the former Horse Exchange became the Winter Garden Theatre, constructed in 1911.
"The New York Times" moved to more spacious offices one block west of the square in 1913 and sold the building in 1961. The old Times Building was later named the Allied Chemical Building in 1963. Now known simply as One Times Square, it is famed for the Times Square Ball drop on its roof every New Year's Eve.
In 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association, headed by entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, chose the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway (at the southeast corner of Times Square) to be the Eastern Terminus of the Lincoln Highway. This was the first road across the United States, which originally spanned coast-to-coast through 13 states to its western terminus in Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California.
Times Square grew dramatically after World War I. It became a cultural hub full of theatres, music halls, and upscale hotels.
Advertising also grew significantly in the 1920s, growing from $25 million to $85 million over the decade. For example, the Wrigley Spearmint Gum sign, possibly the biggest electric sign "in the world," cost $9,000 per month to rent. Some contemporary critics, such as Thorstein Veblen and G. K. Chesterton, disliked the advertising at Times Square. Fritz Lang, after seeing Times Square in 1923, used it as inspiration for his dark industrial film "Metropolis".
Entertainment icons such as Irving Berlin, Charlie Chaplin, and Fred Astaire were closely associated with Times Square in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. However, it was also during this period that the area began to be besieged by crime and corruption, in the form of gambling and prostitution; one case that garnered huge attention was the arrest and subsequent execution of police officer Charles Becker.
The general atmosphere of Times Square changed with the onset of the Great Depression in the early 1930s. City residents moved uptown to cheaper neighborhoods, and many popular theaters closed, replaced by saloons, brothels, "burlesque halls, vaudeville stages, and dime houses". The area acquired a reputation as a dangerous and seedy neighborhood in the following decades.
Nevertheless, Times Square continued to be the site of the annual ball drop on New Year's Eve. The ball drop was placed on hiatus for New Year's Eve in 1942 and 1943 due to lighting restrictions during World War II. Instead, a moment of silence was observed at midnight in Times Square, accompanied by the sound of chimes played from sound trucks.
On May 8, 1945, a massive crowd celebrated Victory in Europe Day in Times Square; and on August 15, 1945, the largest crowd in the history of Times Square gathered to celebrate Victory over Japan Day. The victory itself was announced by a headline on the "zipper" news ticker at One Times Square, which read "*** OFFICIAL TRUMAN ANNOUNCES JAPANESE SURRENDER ***", the six asterisks representing the branches of the U.S. Armed Forces.
From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the seediness of the area, especially due to its go-go bars, sex shops, peep shows and adult theaters, became an infamous symbol of the city's decline.
As early as 1960, 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue was described by "The New York Times" as "the 'worst' [block] in town". Later that decade, Times Square was depicted in "Midnight Cowboy" as gritty, dark and desperate, and conditions only worsened in the 1970s and 1980s, as did the crime in the rest of the city. By 1984, an unprecedented 2,300 annual crimes occurred on that single block, of which 460 were serious felonies such as murder and rape.
At the time, police morale was low and petty criminals who committed misdemeanors were not being arrested. William Bratton, who was appointed New York City Police Commissioner in 1994 and again in 2014, stated, "The [NYPD] didn't want high performance; it wanted to stay out of trouble, to avoid corruption scandals and conflicts in the community. For years, therefore, the key to career success in the NYPD, as in many bureaucratic leviathans, was to shun risk and avoid failure. Accordingly, cops became more cautious as they rose in rank, right up to the highest levels." The city government did not implement broken windows theory at first, and the allowance of low-profile crime was thought by some at the time to have caused more high-profile crimes to occur. Formerly elegant movie theaters began to show porn, and hustlers were common. The area was so abandoned at one point during the time that the entire Times Square area paid the city only $6 million in property taxes, which is less than what a medium-sized office building in Manhattan typically would produce in tax revenue today in 1984 dollars.
In the 1980s, a commercial building boom began in the western parts of Midtown as part of a long-term development plan developed under Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins.
In 1990, the State of New York took possession of six of the nine historic theatres on 42nd Street, and the New 42nd Street non-profit organization was appointed to oversee their restoration and maintenance. The theatres underwent renovation for Broadway shows, conversion for commercial purposes, or demolition.
In 1992, the Times Square Alliance (formerly the Times Square Business Improvement District, or "BID" for short), a coalition of city government and local businesses dedicated to improving the quality of commerce and cleanliness in the district, started operations in the area.
In the mid-1990s, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani led an effort to clean up the area, an effort that is described by Steve Macek in "Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, and the Moral Panic Over the City": Security was increased, pornographic theatres were closed, and "undesirable" low-rent residents were pressured to relocate, and then more tourist-friendly attractions and upscale establishments were opened. Advocates of the remodeling claim that the neighborhood is safer and cleaner. Detractors have countered that the changes have homogenized or "Disneyfied" the character of Times Square and have unfairly targeted lower-income New Yorkers from nearby neighborhoods such as Hell's Kitchen. The changes were shaped in large part by the actions of The Walt Disney Company, which bought and restored the New Amsterdam Theatre after several attempts at redevelopment had failed. As part of a contract with Disney, officials from the city and state evicted the pornographic theaters and contracted with Madame Tussauds and AMC Theatres to move onto 42nd Street. This spurred the construction of new office towers, hotels, and tourist attractions in the area.
Times Square now boasts attractions such as ABC's Times Square Studios, where "Good Morning America" is broadcast live; competing Hershey's and M&M's stores across the street from each other; and multiple multiplex movie theaters. Additionally, the area contains restaurants such as Ruby Foo's, a Chinese eatery; the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, a seafood establishment; Planet Hollywood Restaurant and Bar, a theme restaurant; and Carmine's, serving Italian cuisine. It has also attracted a number of large financial, publishing, and media firms to set up headquarters in the area. A larger presence of police has improved the safety of the area.
The theatres of Broadway and the huge number of animated neon and LED signs have been one of New York's iconic images as well as a symbol of the intensely urban aspects of Manhattan. Such signage is mandated by zoning ordinances that require building owners to display illuminated signs, the only district in New York City with this requirement. The neighborhood actually has a minimum limit for lighting instead of the standard maximum limit. The density of illuminated signs in Times Square rivals that in Las Vegas. Officially, signs in Times Square are called "spectaculars", and the largest of them are called "jumbotrons". This signage ordinance was implemented in accordance with guidelines set in a revitalization program that New York Governor Mario Cuomo implemented in 1993.
Notable signage includes the Toshiba billboard directly under the NYE ball drop, the curved seven-story NASDAQ sign at the NASDAQ MarketSite at 4 Times Square on 43rd Street, and the curved Coca-Cola sign located underneath another large LED display owned and operated by Samsung. Both the Coca-Cola sign and Samsung LED displays were built by LED display manufacturer Daktronics. Times Square's first environmentally friendly billboard powered by wind and solar energy was first lit on December 4, 2008. On completion, the 20 Times Square development will host the largest LED signage in Times Square at 18,000 square feet. The display will be 1,000 square feet larger than the Times Square Walgreens display and one of the largest video-capable screens in the world.
In 2002, New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani administered the oath of office to the city's next mayor, Michael Bloomberg, at Times Square after midnight on January 1 as part of the 2001–2002 New Year's celebration. Approximately 500,000 revelers attended. Security was high following the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, with more than 7,000 New York City police officers on duty in the Square, twice the number for an ordinary year.
Times Square started hosting other major annual events in the 2000s. Since 2002, the summer solstice has been marked by "Mind over Madness", a mass yoga event involving up to 15,000 people. Tim Tompkins, co-founder of the event, said part of its appeal was "finding stillness and calm amid the city rush on the longest day of the year". Architect Mark Foster Gage proposed and designed the original Times Square Valentine's Day heart in 2009. Since then, designing the heart has become an annual competition.
In February 2011, Times Square became smoke-free as New York extended the outdoors smoking ban to the area. The measure imposed a $50 fine for any person caught smoking within the area.
From January 29 to February 1, 2014, a "Super Bowl Boulevard" was held on Broadway, especially in Times Square, between 34th and 47th Streets, as part of Super Bowl XLVIII. The boulevard contained activities such as autographs, a -high toboggan run, and photographs with the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The area was under increased security and saw over 400,000 people during the period.
On February 26, 2009, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that traffic lanes along Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street would be de-mapped starting Memorial Day 2009 and transformed into pedestrian plazas as a trial until at least the end of the year. The same was done in Herald Square from 33rd to 35th Street. The goal was to ease traffic congestion throughout the midtown grid. The results were to be closely monitored to determine if the project was successful and should be extended. Bloomberg also stated that he believed the street shutdown would make New York more livable by reducing pollution, cutting down on pedestrian-vehicle accidents and helping traffic flow more smoothly.
The pedestrian plaza project was originally opposed by local businesses, who thought that closing the street to cars would hurt business. The original seats put out for pedestrians were inexpensive multicolored plastic lawn chairs, a source of amusement to many New Yorkers; they lasted from the onset of the plaza transformation until August 14, 2009, when they were ceremoniously bundled together in an installation christened "Now You See It, Now You Don't" by the artist Jason Peters, and shortly afterward were replaced by sturdier metal furniture. Although the plaza had mixed results on traffic in the area, injuries to motorists and pedestrians decreased, fewer pedestrians were walking in the road, and the number of pedestrians in Times Square increased. On February 11, 2010, Bloomberg announced that the pedestrian plazas would become permanent.
The city started rebuilding the plaza in 2010, hiring the design and landscaping firm Snøhetta to permanently replace Broadway's roadway with custom-made granite pavers and benches. By December 2013, the first phase of the Times Square pedestrian plaza had been completed at the southern end of the square in time for the Times Square Ball drop on New Year's Eve. The project was originally intended to be completed by the end of 2015. The entire project was finally completed just before New Year's Eve 2016. Some safety bollards were also installed as part of the renovation in order to prevent vehicular attacks or collisions on the sidewalk. After a fatal 2017 car crash, there were calls to install more bollards along Times Square.
Times Square's pedestrian plaza is frequented by topless women (with painted breasts) called "desnudas", as well as costumed characters, who typically panhandle for tips. The pedestrian plaza became a source of controversy in the summer of 2015 because of a large number of complaints about the topless women and panhandling characters. Although neither of these activities was illegal, opponents believed that the panhandlers' presence was detrimental to quality of life in the area. There were calls from Police Commissioner Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio to remove the plaza, although Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer opposed the proposal. In June 2016, work started on "pedestrian flow zones" where no one was allowed to loiter, as well as "activity zones" where costumed characters were allowed to perform.
There have been several incidents in Times Square:
Times Square is the most visited place globally with 360,000 pedestrian visitors a day, amounting to over 131 million a year. , it had a greater attendance than do each of the Disney theme parks worldwide, with 128,794,000 visitors between March 2012 and February 2013, versus 126,479,000 for the Walt Disney World theme parks in Bay Lake, Florida, in 2012.
Even excluding residents from the visitor count, Times Square is the world's second most visited tourist attraction, behind the Las Vegas Strip. The high level of pedestrian traffic has resulted in $4.8 billion in annual retail, entertainment and hotel sales, with 22 cents out of every dollar spent by visitors in New York City being spent within Times Square.
Times Square is the site of the annual New Year's Eve ball drop. About one million revelers crowd Times Square for the New Year's Eve celebrations, more than twice the usual number of visitors the area usually receives daily. However, for the millennium celebration on December 31, 1999, published reports stated approximately two million people overflowed Times Square, flowing from 6th Avenue to 8th Avenue and all the way back on Broadway and Seventh Avenues to 59th Street, making it the largest gathering in Times Square since August 1945 during celebrations marking the end of World War II.
On December 31, 1907, a ball signifying New Year's Day was first dropped at Times Square, and the Square has held the main New Year's celebration in New York City ever since. On that night, hundreds of thousands of people congregate to watch the Waterford Crystal ball being lowered on a pole atop the building, marking the start of the new year. It replaced a lavish fireworks display from the top of the building that was held from 1904 to 1906, but stopped by city officials because of the danger of fire. Beginning in 1908, and for more than eighty years thereafter, Times Square sign maker Artkraft Strauss was responsible for the ball-lowering. During World War II, a minute of silence, followed by a recording of church bells pealing, replaced the ball drop because of wartime blackout restrictions. Today, Countdown Entertainment and One Times Square handle the New Year's Eve event in conjunction with the Times Square Alliance.
A new energy-efficient LED ball debuted for the arrival of 2008, which was the centennial of the Times Square ball drop. The 2008/2009 ball is larger and has become a permanent installation as a year-round attraction, being used for celebrations on days such as Valentine's Day and Halloween.
The New York City Department of Sanitation estimated that by 8 a.m. on New Year's Day 2014, it had cleared over 50 tons of refuse from the New Year's celebration, using 190 workers from their own crews and the Times Square Alliance.
Times Square is a busy intersection of art and commerce, where scores of advertisements – electric, neon and illuminated signs and "zipper" news crawls – vie for viewers' attention. Notable examples include:
Major buildings on or near Times Square
"Numbered" Times Square buildings
Hotels
Corporate presence
The following companies have corporate presences in the area:
An immediately recognizable location, Times Square has been featured countless times in literature, on television, in films, in video games, and in music videos.
The seediness of the area was featured prominently in such films as "Midnight Cowboy" (1969), "Born to Win" (1971), and "Taxi Driver" (1976). The area was shown in the 1980 film "Times Square", which featured a punk rock/new wave soundtrack. It was also depicted in the 2011 movie "New Year's Eve". The area also appeared on "The Amazing Race" as the starting location in a race around the world in the first episode of the show's 25th season, as well as on the sixth season of the Israeli edition of "The Amazing Race" with teams finishing their second leg in Times Square.
Times Square has been fictionally attacked and destroyed in a number of movies, including "Knowing", when a solar flare destroys New York City; "Deep Impact", when a tsunami created from a meteor impact destroys New York City; the 1998 film "Godzilla", where Godzilla is chased through the square; the "Ghostbusters" movies; Stephen King's "The Stand", where the intersection is overcome by total anarchy; the ending of ""; and "". It was also seen in the festival battle scene in the 2002 film "Spider-Man", and a stand-off in the later film "The Amazing Spider-Man 2".
Films and TV shows have also employed the opposite tactic, depicting the typically bustling area as eerily still, such as in "Vanilla Sky," as well as the post-apocalyptic "I Am Legend", in which Will Smith and his dog go hunting for deer in the deserted urban canyon. In the pilot episode of the TV series "Blindspot", Times Square is completely emptied due to an abandoned bag being suspected to be a bomb.
Times Square also has featured prominently in video games. For instance, in "Grand Theft Auto IV", a recreation of the Times Square area, referred to in-game as "Star Junction", is included in the game's fictional "Liberty City" setting. Times Square is also shown in "Battlefield 3", where the final fight with the main antagonist takes place, where the player must stop him from detonating a nuclear bomb in the square; and "Crysis 2", in which player must fight off attacking alien forces in order to assist U.S. Marines in evacuating the area. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31389 |
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his music became notable for its innovative use of repetition, tape music techniques, and delay systems.
Riley is best known for his 1964 composition "In C" and 1969 album "A Rainbow in Curved Air", both considered landmarks of minimalism and important influences on experimental, rock, and electronic music. Since the 1970s, he has collaborated extensively with chamber ensemble the Kronos Quartet.
Born in Colfax, California in 1935, Riley began performing as a solo pianist during the 1950s. During that decade, he studied composition at San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Conservatory, and University of California, Berkeley, studying with Seymour Shifrin and Robert Erickson. He was involved in the experimental San Francisco Tape Music Center, working with Morton Subotnick, Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros, and Ramon Sender. Throughout the 1960s he also traveled frequently in Europe, taking in musical influences and supporting himself by playing in piano bars.
His most influential teacher was Pandit Pran Nath (1918–1996), a master of Indian classical voice who also taught La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, and Michael Harrison. Riley made numerous trips to India over the course of their association to study and accompany him on tabla, tambura, and voice. In 1971 he joined the Mills College faculty to teach Indian classical music. Riley also cites John Cage and "the really great chamber music groups of John Coltrane and Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, and Gil Evans" as influences on his work. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree in Music at Chapman University in 2007.
Riley began his long-lasting association with the Kronos Quartet when he met their founder David Harrington while at Mills. Over the course of his career, Riley composed 13 string quartets for the ensemble, in addition to other works. He wrote his first orchestral piece, "Jade Palace", in 1991, and has continued to pursue that avenue, with several commissioned orchestral compositions following. He is also currently performing and teaching both as an Indian raga vocalist and as a solo pianist.
Riley continues to perform live, and was part of the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in May 2011.
Riley's music is usually based on improvising through a series of modal figures of different lengths. Works such as "In C" (1964) and the "Keyboard Studies" demonstrate this technique. The first performance of "In C" was given by Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Pauline Oliveros and Morton Subotnick. Its form was an innovation: The piece consists of 53 separate modules of roughly one measure apiece, each containing a different musical pattern but each, as the title implies, in the key of C. One performer beats a steady pulse of "C"s on the piano to keep tempo. The others, in any number and on any instrument, perform these musical modules following a few loose guidelines, with the different musical modules interlocking in various ways as time goes on.
In the 1950s Riley was already working with tape loops, a technology still in its infancy at the time; he would later, with the help of a sound engineer, create what he called a "time-lag accumulator". He has continued manipulating tapes to musical effect, in the studio and in live performances throughout his career. An early tape loop piece titled "Music for the Gift" (1963) featured the trumpet playing of Chet Baker. It was during Riley's time in Paris, while composing this piece, that he conceived of and created the time-lag accumulator technique. He has composed using just intonation as well as microtones. In New York City in the mid-1960s he played with his longtime friend La Monte Young, as well as with John Cale and tabla player Angus MacLise, who were founding members of The Velvet Underground. Riley is credited as inspiring Cale's keyboard part on Lou Reed's composition "All Tomorrow's Parties", which was sung by German actress Nico and included on the album "The Velvet Underground and Nico", recorded in 1966.
Riley's famous overdubbed electronic album "A Rainbow in Curved Air" (recorded 1968, released 1969) inspired many later developments in electronic music. These include Pete Townshend's organ parts on The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Baba O'Riley", the latter named in tribute to Riley as well as to Meher Baba. Charles Hazlewood, in his BBC documentary on Minimalism (Part 1) suggests that the album 'Tubular Bells' by Mike Oldfield was also inspired by Riley's example.
Riley's collaborators have included the Rova Saxophone Quartet, Pauline Oliveros, the ARTE Quartett, and, as mentioned, the Kronos Quartet. His 1995 "Lisbon Concert" recording features him in a solo piano format, improvising on his own works. In the liner notes Riley cites Art Tatum, Bud Powell and Bill Evans as his piano "heroes", illustrating the importance of jazz to his conceptions.
He has three children: one daughter, Colleen, and two sons, Gyan, who is a guitarist, and Shahn. He was married to Ann Riley until her death in 2015. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31390 |
Tasmanian devil
The Tasmanian devil ("Sarcophilus harrisii") is a carnivorous marsupial of the family Dasyuridae. It was once native to mainland Australia and is now found in the wild only on the island state of Tasmania, including tiny east-coast Maria Island where there is a conservation project with disease-free animals.
The size of a small dog, the Tasmanian devil became the largest carnivorous marsupial in the world following the extinction of the thylacine in 1936. It is related to quolls and distantly related to the thylacine. It is characterised by its stocky and muscular build, black fur, pungent odour, extremely loud and disturbing screech, keen sense of smell, and ferocity when feeding. The Tasmanian devil's large head and neck allow it to generate among the strongest bites per unit body mass of any extant predatory land mammal, and it hunts prey and scavenges carrion as well as eating household products if humans are living nearby.
Although it is usually solitary, it sometimes eats with other devils and defecates in a communal location. Unlike most other dasyurids, the devil thermoregulates effectively and is active during the middle of the day without overheating. Despite its rotund appearance, the devil is capable of surprising speed and endurance, and can climb trees and swim across rivers.
It is believed that ancient marsupials migrated from what is now South America to Australia tens of millions of years ago during the time of Gondwana, and that they evolved as Australia became more arid. Fossils of species similar to modern devils have been found, but it is not known whether they were ancestors of the contemporary species, or whether the current devils co-existed with these species. The date that the Tasmanian devil became locally extinct from the Australian mainland is unclear; most evidence suggests they had contracted to three relict populations around 3000 years ago. A tooth found in Augusta, Western Australia has been dated to 430 years ago, but archaeologist Oliver Brown disputes this and considers the devil's mainland extinction to have occurred around 3000 years ago. This disappearance is usually blamed on dingoes, which are absent from Tasmania.
Devils were hunted and became endangered in Tasmania because they were seen as a threat to livestock and animals that humans hunted for fur. In 1941, the devils, which were originally seen as implacably vicious, became officially protected. Since then, scientists have contended that earlier concerns that the devils were the most significant threat to livestock were overestimated and misplaced.
Devils are not monogamous, and their reproductive process is very robust and competitive. Males fight one another for the females, and then guard their partners to prevent female infidelity. Females can ovulate three times in as many weeks during the mating season, and 80% of two-year-old females are seen to be pregnant during the annual mating season. Females average four breeding seasons in their life and give birth to 20–30 live young after three weeks' gestation. The newborn are pink, lack fur, have indistinct facial features and weigh around at birth. As there are only four nipples in the pouch, competition is fierce and few newborns survive. The young grow rapidly and are ejected from the pouch after around 100 days, weighing roughly . The young become independent after around nine months, so the female spends most of her year in activities related to birth and rearing.
Since the late 1990s, the devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) has drastically reduced the devil population and now threatens the survival of the species, which in 2008 was declared to be endangered. Programs are currently being undertaken by the Government of Tasmania to reduce the impact of the disease, including an initiative to build up a group of healthy devils in captivity, isolated from the disease. While the thylacine was extant it preyed on the devil, which targeted young and unattended thylacine cubs in their dens. Localised populations of devils have also been severely reduced by collisions with motor vehicles, particularly when they are eating roadkill.
The devil is an iconic symbol of Tasmania and many organisations, groups and products associated with the state use the animal in their logos. It is seen as an important attractor of tourists to Tasmania and has come to worldwide attention through the "Looney Tunes" character of the same name. Starting in 2013, Tasmanian devils are again being sent to zoos around the world as part of the Australian government's Save the Tasmanian Devil Program.
Believing it to be a type of opossum, naturalist George Harris wrote the first published description of the Tasmanian devil in 1807, naming it "Didelphis ursina", due to its bearlike characteristics such as the round ear. He had earlier made a presentation on the topic at the Zoological Society of London. However, that particular binomial name had been given to the common wombat (later reclassified as "Vombatus ursinus") by George Shaw in 1800, and was hence unavailable. In 1838, a specimen was named "Dasyurus laniarius" by Richard Owen, but by 1877 he had relegated it to "Sarcophilus". The modern Tasmanian devil was named "Sarcophilus harrisii" ("Harris's flesh-lover") by French naturalist Pierre Boitard in 1841.
A later revision of the devil's taxonomy, published in 1987, attempted to change the species name to "Sarcophilus laniarius" based on mainland fossil records of only a few animals. However, this was not accepted by the taxonomic community at large; the name "S. harrisii" has been retained and "S. laniarius" relegated to a fossil species. "Beelzebub's pup" was an early vernacular name given to it by the explorers of Tasmania, in reference to a religious figure who is a prince of hell and an assistant of Satan; the explorers first encountered the animal by hearing its far-reaching vocalisations at night. Related names that were used in the 19th century were "Sarcophilus satanicus" ("Satanic flesh-lover") and "Diabolus ursinus" ("bear devil"), all due to early misconceptions of the species as implacably vicious.
The Tasmanian devil ("Sarcophilus harrisii") belongs to the family Dasyuridae. The genus "Sarcophilus" contains two other species, known only from Pleistocene fossils: "S. laniarius" and "S. moomaensis". Phylogenetic analysis shows that the Tasmanian devil is most closely related to quolls.
The roots of Australian marsupials are thought to trace back tens of millions of years to when much of the current Southern Hemisphere was part of the supercontinent of Gondwana; marsupials are believed to have originated in what is now South America and migrated across Antarctica, which had a temperate climate at the time. As soil degradation took hold, it is believed that the marsupials adapted to the more basic flora of Australia. According to Pemberton, the possible ancestors of the devil may have needed to climb trees to acquire food, leading to a growth in size and the hopping gait of many marsupials. He speculated that these adaptations may have caused the contemporary devil's peculiar gait. The specific lineage of the Tasmanian devil is theorised to have emerged during the Miocene, molecular evidence suggesting a split from the ancestors of quolls between 10 and 15 million years ago, when severe climate change came to bear in Australia, transforming the climate from warm and moist to an arid, dry ice age, resulting in mass extinctions. As most of their prey died of the cold, only a few carnivores survived, including the ancestors of the quoll and thylacine. It is speculated that the devil lineage may have arisen at this time to fill a niche in the ecosystem, as a scavenger that disposed of carrion left behind by the selective-eating thylacine. The extinct "Glaucodon ballaratensis" of the Pliocene age has been dubbed an intermediate species between the quoll and devil. Fossil deposits in limestone caves at Naracoorte, South Australia, dating to the Miocene include specimens of "S. laniarius", which were around 15% larger and 50% heavier than modern devils. Older specimens believed to be 50–70,000 years old were found in Darling Downs in Queensland and in Western Australia. It is not clear whether the modern devil evolved from "S. laniarius", or whether they coexisted at the time. Richard Owen argued for the latter hypothesis in the 19th century, based on fossils found in 1877 in New South Wales. Large bones attributed to "S. moornaensis" have been found in New South Wales, and it has been conjectured that these two extinct larger species may have hunted and scavenged. It is known that there were several genera of thylacine millions of years ago, and that they ranged in size, the smaller being more reliant on foraging. As the devil and thylacine are similar, the extinction of the co-existing thylacine genera has been cited as evidence for an analogous history for the devils. It has been speculated that the smaller size of "S. laniarius" and "S. moornaensis" allowed them to adapt to the changing conditions more effectively and survive longer than the corresponding thylacines. As the extinction of these two species came at a similar time to human habitation of Australia, hunting by humans and land clearance have been mooted as possible causes. Critics of this theory point out that as indigenous Australians only developed boomerangs and spears for hunting around 10,000 years ago, a critical fall in numbers due to systematic hunting is unlikely. They also point out that caves inhabited by Aborigines have a low proportion of bones and rock paintings of devils, and suggest that this is an indication that it was not a large part of indigenous lifestyle. A scientific report in 1910 claimed that Aborigines preferred the meat of herbivores rather than carnivores. The other main theory for the extinction was that it was due to the climate change brought on by the most recent ice age.
While dingoes are seen as the main reason for the disappearance of devils from the mainland, another theory is that the increasing aridity of the mainland caused it, while the population in Tasmania has been largely unaffected as the climate remains cool and moist. According to this theory, the dingo was only a secondary cause.
As the devil is the thylacine's closest relative, there has been speculation that the thylacine could be revived by combining DNA from museum samples of thylacines with ova of the devil.
The Tasmanian devil's genome was sequenced in 2010 by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Like all dasyurids, the devil has 14 chromosomes. Devils have a low genetic diversity compared to other Australian marsupials and placental carnivores; this is consistent with a founder effect as allelic size ranges were low and nearly continuous throughout all subpopulations measured. Allelic diversity was measured at 2.7–3.3 in the subpopulations sampled, and heterozygosity was in the range 0.386–0.467. According to a study by Menna Jones, "gene flow appears extensive up to ", meaning a high assignment rate to source or close neighbour populations "in agreement with movement data. At larger scales (), gene flow is reduced but there is no evidence for isolation by distance". Island effects may also have contributed to their low genetic diversity. Periods of low population density may also have created moderate population bottlenecks, reducing genetic diversity. Low genetic diversity is thought to have been a feature in the Tasmanian devil population since the mid-Holocene. Outbreaks of devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) cause an increase in inbreeding. A sub-population of devils in the north-west of the state is genetically distinct from other devils, but there is some exchange between the two groups.
One strand conformation polymorphism analysis (OSCP) on the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I domain taken from various locations across Tasmania showed 25 different types, and showed a different pattern of MHC types in north-western Tasmania to eastern Tasmania. Those devils in the east of the state have less MHC diversity; 30% are of the same type as the tumour (type 1), and 24% are of type A. Seven of every ten devils in the east are of type A, D, G or 1, which are linked to DFTD; whereas only 55% of the western devils fall into these MHC categories. Of the 25 MHC types, 40% are exclusive to the western devils. Although the north-west population is less genetically diverse overall, it has higher MHC gene diversity, which allows them to mount an immune response to DFTD. According to this research, mixing the devils may increase the chance of disease. Of the fifteen different regions in Tasmania surveyed in this research, six were in the eastern half of the island. In the eastern half, Epping Forest had only two different types, 75% being type O. In the Buckland-Nugent area, only three types were present, and there were an average of 5.33 different types per location. In contrast, in the west, Cape Sorell yielded three types, and Togari North-Christmas Hills yielded six, but the other seven sites all had at least eight MHC types, and West Pencil Pine had 15 types. There was an average of 10.11 MHC types per site in the west. Recent research has suggested that the wild population of devils are rapidly evolving a resistance to DFTD.
The Tasmanian devil is the largest surviving carnivorous marsupial. It has a squat, thick build, with a large head and a tail which is about half its body length. Unusually for a marsupial, its forelegs are slightly longer than its hind legs, and devils can run up to for short distances. The fur is usually black, often with irregular white patches on the chest and rump (although approximately 16% of wild devils do not have white patches). These markings suggest that the devil is most active at dawn and dusk, and they are thought to draw biting attacks toward less important areas of the body, as fighting between devils often leads to a concentration of scars in that region. Males are usually larger than females, having an average head and body length of , a tail and an average weight of . Females have an average head and body length of , a tail and an average weight of , although devils in western Tasmania tend to be smaller. Devils have five long toes on their forefeet, four pointing to the front and one coming out from the side, which gives the devil the ability to hold food. The hind feet have four toes, and the devils have non-retractable claws. The stocky devils have a relatively low centre of mass.
Devils are fully grown at two years of age, and few devils live longer than five years in the wild. Possibly the longest-lived Tasmanian devil recorded was Coolah, a male devil which lived in captivity for more than seven years. Born in January 1997 at the Cincinnati Zoo, Coolah died in May 2004 at the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo.
The devil stores body fat in its tail, and healthy devils have fat tails. The tail is largely non-prehensile and is important to its physiology, social behaviour and locomotion. It acts as a counterbalance to aid stability when the devil is moving quickly. An ano-genital scent gland at the base of its tail is used to mark the ground behind the animal with its strong, pungent scent.
The male has external testes in a pouch-like structure formed by lateral ventrocrural folds of the abdomen, which partially hides and protects them. The testes are subovoid in shape and the mean dimensions of 30 testes of adult males was . The female's pouch opens backwards, and is present throughout its life, unlike some other dasyurids.
The Tasmanian devil has the most powerful bite relative to body size of any living mammalian carnivore, exerting a force of . The jaw can open to 75–80 degrees, allowing the devil to generate the large amount of power to tear meat and crush bones—sufficient force to allow it to bite through thick metal wire. The power of the jaws is in part due to its comparatively large head. The teeth and jaws of Tasmanian devils resemble those of hyenas, an example of convergent evolution. Dasyurid teeth resemble those of primitive marsupials. Like all dasyurids, the devil has prominent canines and cheek teeth. It has three pairs of lower incisors and four pairs of upper incisors. These are located at the top of the front of the devil's mouth. Like dogs, it has 42 teeth, however, unlike dogs, its teeth are not replaced after birth but grow continuously throughout life at a slow rate. It has a "highly carnivorous dentition and trophic adaptations for bone consumption". The devil has long claws that allow it to dig burrows and seek subterranean food easily and grip prey or mates strongly. The teeth and claw strength allow the devil to attack wombats up to in weight. The large neck and forebody that give the devil its strength also cause this strength to be biased towards the front half of the body; the lopsided, awkward, shuffling gait of the devil is attributed to this.
The devil has long whiskers on its face and in clumps on the top of the head. These help the devil locate prey when foraging in the dark, and aid in detecting when other devils are close during feeding. The whiskers can extend from the tip of the chin to the rear of the jaw and can cover the span of its shoulder. Hearing is its dominant sense, and it also has an excellent sense of smell, which has a range of . The devil, unlike other marsupials, has a "well-defined, saddle-shaped ectotympanic". Since devils hunt at night, their vision seems to be strongest in black and white. In these conditions they can detect moving objects readily, but have difficulty seeing stationary objects.
Devils are found in all habitats on the island of Tasmania, including the outskirts of urban areas, and are distributed throughout the Tasmanian mainland and on Robbins Island (which is connected to mainland Tasmania at low tide). The north-western population is located west of the Forth River and as far south as Macquarie Heads. Previously, they were present on Bruny Island from the 19th century, but there have been no records of them after 1900, and they were introduced to Badger Island in the mid-1990s but are thought to have died out by 2005. A study has modelled the reintroduction of DFTD-free Tasmanian devils to the mainland in areas where dingoes are sparse. It is proposed that devils would have fewer impacts on both livestock and native fauna than dingoes, and that the mainland population could act as an additional insurance population. In September 2015, 20 immunised captive-bred devils were released into Narawntapu National Park, Tasmania. Two later died from being hit by cars.
The "core habitat" of the devils is considered to be within the "low to moderate annual rainfall zone of eastern and north-western Tasmania". Tasmanian devils particularly like dry sclerophyll forests and coastal woodlands. Although they are not found at the highest altitudes of Tasmania, and their population density is low in the button grass plains in the south-west of the state, their population is high in dry or mixed sclerophyll forests and coastal heaths. Devils prefer open forest to tall forest, and dry rather than wet forests. They are also found near roads where roadkill is prevalent, although the devils themselves are often killed by vehicles while retrieving the carrion. According to the Threatened Species Scientific Committee, their versatility means that habitat modification from destruction is not seen as a major threat to the species.
The devil is directly linked to the "Dasyurotaenia robusta", a tapeworm which is classified as Rare under the Tasmanian Threatened Species Protection Act 1995. This tapeworm is found only in devils.
The Tasmanian devil is a nocturnal and crepuscular hunter, spending the days in dense bush or in a hole. It has been speculated that nocturnalism may have been adopted to avoid predation by eagles and humans. Young devils are predominantly crepuscular. There is no evidence of torpor.
Young devils can climb trees, but this becomes more difficult as they grow larger. Devils can scale trees of trunk diameter larger than , which tend to have no small side branches to hang onto, up to a height of around . Devils that are yet to reach maturity can climb shrubs to a height of , and can climb a tree to if it is not vertical. Adult devils may eat young devils if they are very hungry, so this climbing behaviour may be an adaptation to allow young devils to escape. Devils can also swim and have been observed crossing rivers that are in width, including icy cold waterways, apparently enthusiastically.
Tasmanian devils do not form packs, but rather spend most of their time alone once weaned. Classically considered as solitary animals, their social interactions were poorly understood. However, a field study published in 2009 shed some light on this. Tasmanian devils in Narawntapu National Park were fitted with proximity sensing radio collars which recorded their interactions with other devils over several months from February to June 2006. This revealed that all devils were part of a single huge contact network, characterised by male-female interactions during mating season, while female–female interactions were the most common at other times, although frequency and patterns of contact did not vary markedly between seasons. Previously thought to fight over food, males only rarely interacted with other males. Hence, all devils in a region are part of a single social network. They are considered to be non-territorial in general, but females are territorial around their dens. This allows a higher total mass of devils to occupy a given area than territorial animals, without conflict. Tasmanian devils instead occupy a home range. In a period of between two and four weeks, devils' home ranges are estimated to vary between , with an average of . The location and geometry of these areas depend on the distribution of food, particularly wallabies and pademelons nearby.
Devils use three or four dens regularly. Dens formerly owned by wombats are especially prized as maternity dens because of their security. Dense vegetation near creeks, thick grass tussocks, and caves are also used as dens. Adult devils use the same dens for life. It is believed that, as a secure den is highly prized, some may have been used for several centuries by generations of animals. Studies have suggested that food security is less important than den security, as habitat destruction that affects the latter has had more effect on mortality rates. Young pups remain in one den with their mother, and other devils are mobile, changing dens every 1–3 days and travelling a mean distance of every night. However, there are also reports that an upper bound can be per night. They choose to travel through lowlands, saddles and along the banks of creeks, particularly preferring carved-out tracks and livestock paths and eschewing steep slopes and rocky terrain. The amount of movement is believed to be similar throughout the year, except for mothers who have given birth recently. The similarity in travel distances for males and females is unusual for sexually dimorphic, solitary carnivores. As a male needs more food, he will spend more time eating than travelling. Devils typically make circuits of their home range during their hunts. In areas near human habitation, they are known to steal clothes, blankets and pillows and take them for use in dens in wooden buildings.
While the dasyurids have similar diet and anatomy, differing body sizes affect thermoregulation and thus behaviour. In ambient temperatures between , the devil was able to maintain a body temperature between . When the temperature was raised to , and the humidity to 50%, the devil's body temperature spiked upwards by within 60 minutes, but then steadily decreased back to the starting temperature after a further two hours, and remained there for two more hours. During this time, the devil drank water and showed no visible signs of discomfort, leading scientists to believe that sweating and evaporative cooling is its primary means of heat dissipation. A later study found that devils pant but do not sweat to release heat. In contrast, many other marsupials were unable to keep their body temperatures down. As the smaller animals have to live in hotter and more arid conditions to which they are less well-adapted, they take up a nocturnal lifestyle and drop their body temperatures during the day, whereas the devil is active in the day and its body temperature varies by from its minimum at night to the maximum in the middle of the day.
The standard metabolic rate of a Tasmanian devil is 141 kJ/kg (15.3 kcal/lb) per day, many times lower than smaller marsupials. A devil uses per day. The field metabolic rate is 407 kJ/kg (44.1 kcal/lb). Along with quolls, Tasmanian devils have a metabolic rate comparable to non-carnivorous marsupials of a similar size. This differs from placental carnivores, which have comparatively high basal metabolic rates. A study of devils showed a loss of weight from from summer to winter, but in the same time, daily energy consumption increased from . This is equivalent to an increase in food consumption from . The diet is protein-based with 70% water content. For every of insects consumed, of energy are produced, while a corresponding amount of wallaby meat generated . In terms of its body mass, the devil eats only a quarter of the eastern quoll's intake, allowing it to survive longer during food shortages.
The devil is a keystone species in the ecosystem of Tasmania.
Tasmanian devils can take prey up to the size of a small kangaroo, but in practice they are opportunistic and eat carrion more often than they hunt live prey. Although the devil favours wombats because of the ease of predation and high fat content, it will eat all small native mammals such as bettong and potoroos, domestic mammals (including sheep), birds, fish, fruit, vegetable matter, insects, tadpoles, frogs and reptiles. Their diet is widely varied and depends on the food available. Before the extinction of the thylacine, the Tasmanian devil ate thylacine joeys left alone in dens when their parents were away. This may have helped to hasten the extinction of the thylacine, which also ate devils. They are known to hunt water rats by the sea and forage on dead fish that have been washed ashore. Near human habitation, they can also steal shoes and chew on them, and eat the legs of otherwise robust sheep when they have slipped in wooden shearing sheds, leaving their legs dangling below. Other unusual matter observed in devil scats includes collars and tags of devoured animals, intact echidna spines, pencil, plastic and jeans. Devils can bite through metal traps, and tend to reserve their strong jaws for escaping captivity rather than breaking into food storage. Due to their relative lack of speed, they can not run down a wallaby or a rabbit, but they can attack animals that have become slow due to illness. They survey flocks of sheep by sniffing them from away and attack if the prey is ill. The sheep stamp their feet in a show of strength.
Despite their lack of extreme speed, there have been reports that devils can run at for , and it has been conjectured that, before European immigration and the introduction of livestock, vehicles and roadkill, they would have had to chase other native animals at a reasonable pace to find food. Pemberton has reported that they can average for "extended periods" on several nights per week, and that they run for long distances before sitting still for up to half an hour, something that has been interpreted as evidence of ambush predation.
Devils can dig to forage corpses, in one case digging down to eat the corpse of a buried horse that had died due to illness. They are known to eat animal cadavers by first ripping out the digestive system, which is the softest part of the anatomy, and they often reside in the resulting cavity while they are eating.
On average, devils eat about 15% of their body weight each day, although they can eat up to 40% of their body weight in 30 minutes if the opportunity arises. This means they can become very heavy and lethargic after a large meal; in this state they tend to waddle away slowly and lie down, becoming easy to approach. This has led to a belief that such eating habits became possible due to the lack of a predator to attack such bloated individuals.
Tasmanian devils can eliminate all traces of a carcass of a smaller animal, devouring the bones and fur if desired. In this respect, devils have earned the gratitude of Tasmanian farmers, as the speed at which they clean a carcass helps prevent the spread of insects that might otherwise harm livestock. Some of these dead animals are disposed of when the devils haul off the excess feed back to their residence to continue eating at a later time.
The diet of a devil can vary substantially for males and females, and seasonally, according to studies at Cradle Mountain. In winter, males prefer medium mammals over larger ones, with a ratio of 4:5, but in summer, they prefer larger prey in a 7:2 ratio. These two categories accounted for more than 95% of the diet. Females are less inclined to target large prey, but have the same seasonal bias. In winter, large and medium mammals account for 25% and 58% each, with 7% small mammals and 10% birds. In summer, the first two categories account for 61% and 37% respectively.
Juvenile devils are sometimes known to climb trees; in addition to small vertebrates and invertebrates, juveniles climb trees to eat grubs and birds' eggs. Juveniles have also been observed climbing into nests and capturing birds. Throughout the year, adult devils derive 16.2% of their biomass intake from arboreal species, almost all of which is possum meat, just 1.0% being large birds. From February to July, subadult devils derive 35.8% of their biomass intake from arboreal life, 12.2% being small birds and 23.2% being possums. Female devils in winter source 40.0% of their intake from arboreal species, including 26.7% from possums and 8.9% from various birds. Not all of these animals were caught while they were in trees, but this high figure for females, which is higher than for male spotted-tailed quolls during the same season, is unusual, as the devil has inferior tree climbing skills.
Although they hunt alone, there have been unsubstantiated claims of communal hunting, where one devil drives prey out of its habitat and an accomplice attacks. Eating is a social event for the Tasmanian devil. This combination of a solitary animal that eats communally makes the devil unique among carnivores. Much of the noise attributed to the animal is a result of raucous communal eating, at which up to 12 individuals can gather, although groups of two to five are common; it can often be heard several kilometres away. This has been interpreted as notifications to colleagues to share in the meal, so that food is not wasted by rot and energy is saved. The amount of noise is correlated to the size of the carcass. The devils eat in accordance with a system. Juveniles are active at dusk, so they tend to reach the source before the adults. Typically, the dominant animal eats until it is satiated and leaves, fighting off any challengers in the meantime. Defeated animals run into the bush with their hair and tail erect, their conqueror in pursuit and biting their victim's rear where possible. Disputes are less common as the food source increases as the motive appears to be getting sufficient food rather than oppressing other devils. When quolls are eating a carcass, devils will tend to chase them away. This is a substantial problem for spotted-tailed quolls, as they kill relatively large possums and cannot finish their meal before devils arrive. In contrast, the smaller eastern quolls prey on much smaller victims, and can complete feeding before devils turn up. This is seen as a possible reason for the relatively small population of spotted-tailed quolls.
A study of feeding devils identified twenty physical postures, including their characteristic vicious yawn, and eleven different vocal sounds that devils use to communicate as they feed. They usually establish dominance by sound and physical posturing, although fighting does occur. The white patches on the devil are visible to the night-vision of its colleagues. Chemical gestures are also used. Adult males are the most aggressive, and scarring is common. They can also stand on their hind legs and push each other's shoulders with their front legs and heads, similar to sumo wrestling. Torn flesh around the mouth and teeth, as well as punctures in the rump, can sometimes be observed, although these can also be inflicted during breeding fights.
Digestion is very fast in dasyurids and, for the Tasmanian devil, the few hours taken for food to pass through the small gut is a long period in comparison to some other dasyuridae. Devils are known to return to the same places to defecate, and to do so at a communal location, called a "devil latrine". It is believed that the communal defecation may be a means of communication that is not well understood. Devil scats are very large compared to body size; they are on average long, but there have been samples that are in length. They are characteristically grey in colour due to digested bones, or have bone fragments included.
Owen and Pemberton believe that the relationship between Tasmanian devils and thylacines was "close and complex", as they competed directly for prey and probably also for shelter. The thylacines preyed on the devils, the devils scavenged from the thylacine's kills, and the devils ate thylacine young. Menna Jones hypothesises that the two species shared the role of apex predator in Tasmania. Wedge-tailed eagles have a similar carrion-based diet to the devils and are regarded as competitors. Quolls and devils are also seen as being in direct competition in Tasmania. Jones believed that the quoll has evolved into its current state in just 100–200 generations of around two years as determined by the equal spacing effect on the devil, the largest species, the spotted-tail quoll, and the smallest species, the eastern quoll. Both the Tasmanian devil and the quolls appears to have evolved up to 50 times faster than the average evolutionary rate amongst mammals.
Females start to breed when they reach sexual maturity, typically in their second year. At this point, they become fertile once a year, producing multiple ova while in heat. As prey is most abundant in spring and early summer, the devil's reproductive cycle starts in March or April so that the end of the weaning period coincides with the maximisation of food supplies in the wild for the newly roaming young devils. Occurring in March, mating takes places in sheltered locations during both day and night. Males fight over females in the breeding season, and female devils will mate with the dominant male. Females can ovulate up to three times in a 21-day period, and copulation can take five days; one instance of a couple being in the mating den for eight days has been recorded. Devils are not monogamous, and females will mate with several males if not guarded after mating; males also reproduce with several females during a season. Females have been shown to be selective in an attempt to ensure the best genetic offspring, for example, fighting off the advances of smaller males. Males often keep their mates in custody in the den, or take them along if they need to drink, lest they engage in infidelity. Males can produce up to 16 offspring over their lifetime, while females average four mating seasons and 12 offspring. Theoretically this means that a devil population can double on an annual basis and make the species insulated against high mortality. The pregnancy rate is high; 80% of two-year-old females were observed with newborns in their pouches during the mating season. More recent studies of breeding place the mating season between February and June, as opposed to between February and March.
Gestation lasts 21 days, and devils give birth to 20–30 young standing up, each weighing approximately . At birth, the front limb has well-developed digits with claws; unlike many marsupials, the claws of baby devils are not deciduous. As with most other marsupials, the forelimb is longer () than the rear limb (), the eyes are spots, and the body is pink. There are no external ears or openings. Unusually, the gender can be determined at birth, with an external scrotum present.
Tasmanian devil young are variously called "pups", "joeys", or "imps". When the young are born, competition is fierce as they move from the vagina in a sticky flow of mucus to the pouch. Once inside the pouch, they each remain attached to a nipple for the next 100 days. The female Tasmanian devil's pouch, like that of the wombat, opens to the rear, so it is physically difficult for the female to interact with young inside the pouch. Despite the large litter at birth, the female has only four nipples, so there are never more than four babies nursing in the pouch, and the older a female devil gets, the smaller her litters will become. Once the young have made contact with the nipple, it expands, resulting in the oversized nipple being firmly clamped inside the newborn and ensuring that the newborn does not fall out of the pouch. On average, more females survive than males, and up to 60% of young do not survive to maturity.
Milk replacements are often used for devils that have been bred in captivity, for orphaned devils or young who are born to diseased mothers. Little is known about the composition of the devil's milk compared to other marsupials.
Inside the pouch, the nourished young develop quickly. In the second week, the rhinarium becomes distinctive and heavily pigmented. At 15 days, the external parts of the ear are visible, although these are attached to the head and do not open out until the devil is around 10 weeks old. The ear begins blackening after around 40 days, when it is less than long, and by the time the ear becomes erect, it is between . Eyelids are apparent at 16 days, whiskers at 17 days, and the lips at 20 days. The devils can make squeaking noises after eight weeks, and after around 10–11 weeks, the lips can open. Despite the formation of eyelids, they do not open for three months, although eyelashes form at around 50 days. The young—up to this point they are pink—start to grow fur at 49 days and have a full coat by 90 days. The fur growing process starts at the snout and proceeds back through the body, although the tail attains fur before the rump, which is the last part of the body to become covered. Just before the start of the furring process, the colour of the bare devil's skin will darken and become black or dark grey in the tail.
The devils have a complete set of facial vibrissae and ulnar carpels, although it is devoid of anconeal vibrissae. During the third week, the mystacials and ulnarcarpals are the first to form. Subsequently, the infraorbital, interramal, supraorbital and submental vibrissae form. The last four typically occur between the 26th and 39th day.
Their eyes open shortly after their fur coat develops—between 87 and 93 days—and their mouths can relax their hold of the nipple at 100 days. They leave the pouch 105 days after birth, appearing as small copies of the parent and weighing around . Zoologist Eric Guiler recorded its size at this time as follows: a crown-snout length of , tail length of , pes length , manus , shank , forearm and crown-rump length is . During this period, the devils lengthen at a roughly linear rate.
After being ejected, the devils stay outside the pouch, but they remain in the den for around another three months, first venturing outside the den between October and December before becoming independent in January. During this transitional phase out of the pouch, the young devils are relatively safe from predation as they are generally accompanied. When the mother is hunting they can stay inside a shelter or come along, often riding on their mother's back. During this time they continue to drink their mother's milk. Female devils are occupied with raising their young for all but approximately six weeks of the year. The milk contains a higher amount of iron than the milk of placental mammals. In Guiler's 1970 study, no females died while rearing their offspring in the pouch. After leaving the pouch, the devils grow by around a month until they are six months old. While most pups will survive to be weaned, Guiler reported that up to three fifths of devils do not reach maturity. As juveniles are more crepuscular than adults, their appearance in the open during summer gives the impression to humans of a population boom. A study into the success of translocated devils that were orphaned and raised in captivity found that young devils who had consistently engaged with new experiences while they were in captivity survived better than young who had not.
Embryonic diapause does not occur.
Guiler has reported that consecutive hermaphroditism (sex change) has occurred in captured devils, while Pemberton and Mooney recorded in 2004 the case of an animal with a scrotum and a non-functional pouch.
In an apparent response to reduced competition caused by devil facial tumour disease, female devils in regions with the disease are now more likely to begin breeding at the age of one year. The disease has also led to the reproductive season being less well-defined, with births more spread out throughout the year. Litters born to mothers with DFTD have more female pups than male pups.
A slow-release hormonal contraceptive implant for female devils is being developed and tested in a joint program between the Save the Tasmanian Devil program, the Zoo and Aquarium Association, the Taronga Conservation Society and the University of Sydney. This wildlife contraceptive program is aimed to help the devils continue with their wild behaviour by mating freely, but without certain females contributing too much to the next generation, which "can have long-term genetic consequences for the insurance population". Contraceptive trials in male devils showed that their testosterone increased, instead of decreasing as other male mammals' testosterone does. Early studies suggest that the female contraception has been successful, and the female contraceptive implants will be tested in the Maria Island insurance population.
Widespread across Australia in the Pleistocene, the Tasmanian devil had declined and become restricted to three relict populations during the mid-Holocene period around 3,000 years ago. Rock art and a single fossil near Darwin point to a northern population, and remains in the southeast signify a southeastern population ranging from the mouth of the Murray River eastwards to the vicinity of Port Phillip in Victoria. This population had contracted from northern Victoria and New South Wales. The rising sea levels in the Holocene also cut it off from Tasmanian populations. The third population was from southwest Western Australia. Fossil evidence from this last location has proven controversial. As with many native animals, ancient devils were larger than their contemporary descendants. In 1972, Mike Archer and Alex Baynes found a devil tooth at the foot of a cliff near Augusta in Western Australia and dated it to 430±160 years of age, a figure widely circulated and cited. Australian archaeologist Oliver Brown has disputed this, stating that the authors' uncertainty about the origins of the tooth casts doubts on its age, especially as other remains all date to around 3,000 years ago.
The cause of their disappearance from the mainland is unclear, but their decline seems to coincide with the expansion across the mainland of indigenous Australians and dingoes. However, whether it was direct hunting by people, competition with dingoes, changes brought about by the increasing human population, who by 3000 years ago were using all habitat types across the continent, or a combination of all three, is unknown; devils had coexisted with dingoes on the mainland for around 3000 years. Brown has also proposed that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) grew stronger during the Holocene, and that the devil, as a scavenger with a short life span, was highly sensitive to this. In dingo-free Tasmania, carnivorous marsupials were still active when Europeans arrived. The extermination of the thylacine after the arrival of the Europeans is well known, but the Tasmanian devil was threatened as well.
Thylacines preyed on devils, and devils attacked thylacine young; devils may have hastened the thylacine's extinction. While the thylacine was extant, apart from hunting devils, it may also have put pressure on the devil for survival, by competing for scarce food and dens; both animals sought caves and burrows. It has been speculated that devils may have become more predacious and presided over larger home ranges to fill in the vacancy left by the thylacine.
Habitat disruption can expose dens where mothers raise their young. This increases mortality, as the mother leaves the disturbed den with her pups clinging to her back, making them more vulnerable.
Cancer in general is a common cause of death in devils. In 2008, high levels of potentially carcinogenic flame retardant chemicals were found in Tasmanian devils. Preliminary results of tests ordered by the Tasmanian government on chemicals found in fat tissue from 16 devils have revealed high levels of hexabromobiphenyl (BB153) and "reasonably high" levels of decabromodiphenyl ether (BDE209). The Save the Tasmanian Devil Appeal is the official fundraising entity for the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program. The priority is to ensure the survival of the Tasmanian devil in the wild.
Since 1999, all devils caught in the field have had ear biopsies taken, providing samples of DNA. As of September 2010, there are 5,642 samples in this collection.
At least two major population declines, possibly due to disease epidemics, have occurred in recorded history: in 1909 and 1950. The devil was also reported as scarce in the 1850s. It is difficult to estimate the size of the devil population. In the mid-1990s, the population was estimated at 130,000–150,000 animals, but this is likely to have been an overestimate. The Tasmanian devil's population has been calculated in 2008 by Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries and Water as being in the range of 10,000 to 100,000 individuals, with 20,000 to 50,000 mature individuals being likely. Experts estimate that the devil has suffered a more than 80% decline in its population since the mid-1990s and that only around 10,000–15,000 remain in the wild as of 2008.
The species was listed as vulnerable under the Tasmanian "Threatened Species Protection Act 1995" in 2005 and the Australian "Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999" in 2006, which means that it is at risk of extinction in the "medium term". The IUCN classified the Tasmanian devil in the lower risk/least concern category in 1996, but in 2009 they reclassified it as endangered. Appropriate wildlife refuges such as Savage River National Park in North west Tasmania provide hope for their survival.
The first European Tasmanian settlers ate Tasmanian devil, which they described as tasting like veal. As it was believed devils would hunt and kill livestock, possibly due to strong imagery of packs of devils eating weak sheep, a bounty scheme to remove the devil from rural properties was introduced as early as 1830. However, Guiler's research contended that the real cause of livestock losses was poor land management policies and feral dogs. In areas where the devil is now absent, poultry has continued to be killed by quolls. In earlier times, hunting possums and wallabies for fur was a big business—more than 900,000 animals were hunted in 1923—and this resulted in a continuation of bounty hunting of devils as they were thought to be a major threat to the fur industry, even though quolls were more adept at hunting the animals in question. Over the next 100 years, trapping and poisoning brought them to the brink of extinction.
After the death of the last thylacine in 1936, the Tasmanian devil was protected by law in June 1941 and the population slowly recovered. In the 1950s, with reports of increasing numbers, some permits to capture devils were granted after complaints of livestock damage. In 1966, poisoning permits were issued although attempts to have the animal unprotected failed. During this time environmentalists also became more outspoken, particularly as scientific studies provided new data suggesting the threat of devils to livestock had been vastly exaggerated. Numbers may have peaked in the early 1970s after a population boom; in 1975 they were reported to be lower, possibly due to overpopulation and consequent lack of food. Another report of overpopulation and livestock damage was reported in 1987. The following year, "Trichinella spiralis", a parasite which kills animals and can infect humans, was found in devils and minor panic broke out before scientists assured the public that 30% of devils had it but that they could not transmit it to other species. Control permits were ended in the 1990s, but illegal killing continues to a limited extent, albeit "locally intense". This is not considered a substantial problem for the survival of the devil. Approximately 10,000 devils were killed per year in the mid-1990s. A selective culling program has taken place to remove individuals affected with DFTD, and has been shown to not slow the rate of disease progression or reduced the number of animals dying. A model has been tested to find out whether culling devils infected with DFTD would assist in the survival of the species, and it has found that culling would not be a suitable strategy to employ.
Motor vehicles are a threat to localised populations of non-abundant Tasmanian mammals, and a 2010 study showed that devils were particularly vulnerable. A study of nine species, mostly marsupials of a similar size, showed that devils were more difficult for drivers to detect and avoid. At high beam, devils had the lowest detection distance, 40% closer than the median. This requires a 20% reduction in speed for a motorist to avoid the devil. For low beam, the devils are the seventh worst in terms of detection distance, 16% below the median. For avoidance of roadkill to be feasible, motorists would have to drive at around half the current speed limit in rural areas. A study in the 1990s on a localised population of devils in a national park in Tasmania recorded a halving of the population after a hitherto gravel access road was upgraded, surfaced with bitumen and widened. At the same time, there was a large increase in deaths caused by vehicles along the new road; there had been none in the preceding six months. The vast majority of deaths occurred in the sealed portion of the road, believed to be due to an increase in speeds. It was also conjectured that the animals were harder to see against the dark bitumen instead of the light gravel. The devil and quoll are especially vulnerable as they often try to retrieve roadkill for food and travel along the road. To alleviate the problem, traffic slowing measures, man-made pathways that offer alternative routes for devils, education campaigns, and the installation of light reflectors to indicate oncoming vehicles have been implemented. They are credited with decreases in roadkill. Devils have often been victims of roadkill when they are retrieving other roadkill. Work by scientist Menna Jones and a group of conservation volunteers to remove dead animals from the road resulted in a significant reduction in devil traffic deaths. It was estimated that 3,392 devils, or between 3.8 and 5.7% of the population, were being killed annually by vehicles in 2001–04. In 2009, the Save the Tasmanian Devil group launched the "Roadkill Project", which allowed members of the public to report sightings of devils which had been killed on the road. On 25 September 2015, 20 immunised devils were microchipped and released in Narawntapu National Park. By 5 October 4 had been hit by cars, prompting Samantha Fox, leader of Save the Tasmanian Devil, to describe roadkill as being the biggest threat to the Tasmanian devil after DFTD. A series of solar-powered alarms have been trialled that make noises and flash lights when cars are approaching, warning the animals. The trial ran for 18 months and the trial area had two-thirds less deaths than the control.
First seen in 1996 in Mount William in northeastern Tasmania, devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) has ravaged Tasmania's wild devils, and estimates of the impact range from 20% to as much as an 80% decline in the devil population, with over 65% of the state affected. The state's west coast area and far north-west are the only places where devils are tumour free. Individual devils die within months of infection.
The disease is an example of transmissible cancer, which means that it is contagious and passed from one animal to another. However, this tumour is not native to Tasmanian devils and is also characterised as a tissue graft that is able to pass between hosts without inducing a response from the host's immune system. Dominant devils who engage in more biting behaviour are more exposed to the disease. Short of a cure, scientists are removing the sick animals and quarantining healthy devils in case the wild population dies out. Because Tasmanian devils have extremely low levels of genetic diversity and a chromosomal mutation unique among carnivorous mammals, they are more prone to the infectious cancer.
The Tasmanian devil's major histocompatibility complex, or MHC, is particularly important in the mechanism of the cancer. MHC molecules are integral proteins in an immune system's arsenal to fight diseases. In normal circumstances, the tumour graft should be recognised by these MHC proteins and induce an immune response. Because of the lack of diversity in these MHC's, however, these molecules cannot recognise the tumour as foreign. This allows the disease to be able to spread throughout a population without being threatened by the host's own immune system, further facilitating its transmission. The loss of this diversity is thought to be due to the several population fluctuations of the Tasmanian devils that have occurred in the last several decades. When the population is reduced to a very low number, genetic variation can decrease, resulting in MHC molecules that are very similar in make up.
Wild Tasmanian devil populations are being monitored to track the spread of the disease and to identify changes in disease prevalence. Field monitoring involves trapping devils within a defined area to check for the presence of the disease and determine the number of affected animals. The same area is visited repeatedly to characterise the spread of the disease over time. So far, it has been established that the short-term effects of the disease in an area can be severe. Long-term monitoring at replicated sites will be essential to assess whether these effects remain, or whether populations can recover. Field workers are also testing the effectiveness of disease suppression by trapping and removing diseased devils. It is hoped that the removal of diseased devils from wild populations should decrease disease prevalence and allow more devils to survive beyond their juvenile years and breed.
Research published in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" in 2011, suggests picking a genetically diverse breeding stock, defined by the genome sequence, for conservation efforts. In 2011, it was estimated that it would cost $11 million to preserve the Tasmanian devil species.
Research by Professor Greg Woods from the University of Tasmania's Menzies Institute for Medical Research has shown encouraging evidence for the potential development of a vaccine using dead devil facial tumour disease cells to trigger an immune response in healthy devils. Field testing of the vaccine is being undertaken as a collaborative project between the Menzies Institute for Medical Research and the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program under the Wild Devil Recovery program, and aims to test the immunisation protocol as a tool in ensuring the devil's long term survival in the wild.
In March 2017 it was reported that scientists have for the first time successfully treated Tasmanian devils suffering from the disease, by injecting live cancer cells into the infected devils to make their immune system recognise the disease and fight it off, in a breakthrough which is hoped to speed-up development of an effective vaccine that can be administered to devils in the wild.
At Lake Nitchie in western New South Wales in 1970, a male human skeleton wearing a necklace of 178 teeth from 49 different devils was found. The skeleton is estimated to be 7000 years old, and the necklace is believed to be much older than the skeleton. Archaeologist Josephine Flood believes the devil was hunted for its teeth and that this contributed to its extinction on mainland Australia. Owen and Pemberton note that few such necklaces have been found. Middens that contain devil bones are rare—two notable examples are Devil's Lair in the south-western part of Western Australia and Tower Hill in Victoria.
In Tasmania, local Indigenous Australians and devils sheltered in the same caves. Tasmanian Aboriginal names for the devil recorded by Europeans include "tarrabah", "poirinnah", and "par-loo-mer-rer". According to Fritz Noetling, the Secretary of the Royal Society of Tasmania in 1910, there was no evidence that Tasmanian Aborigines ate any carnivorous animals. Owen and Pemberton feel this may have contributed to the devil's survival prior to European settlement. Convicts at the time when Hobart was being settled in made a meal of Tasmanian devils and it was claimed to be not unlike veal.
It is a common belief that devils will eat humans. While they are known to eat the bodies of murder victims or people who have committed suicide, there are prevalent myths that they eat living humans who wander into the bush. Despite outdated beliefs and exaggerations regarding their disposition, many, although not all, devils will remain still when in the presence of a human; some will also shake nervously. They can bite and scratch out of fear when held by a human, but a firm grip will cause them to remain still. Although they can be tamed, they are asocial and are not considered appropriate as pets; they have an unpleasant odour and neither demonstrate nor respond to affection.
Until recently, the devil was not studied much by academics and naturalists. At the start of the 20th century, Hobart zoo operator Mary Roberts, who was not a trained scientist, was credited for changing people's attitudes and encouraging scientific interest in native animals such as the devil that were seen as fearsome and abhorrent, and the human perception of the animal changed. Theodore Thomson Flynn was the first professor of biology in Tasmania and carried out some research during the period around World War I. In the mid-1960s Professor Guiler assembled a team of researchers and started a decade of systematic fieldwork on the devil. This is seen as the start of modern scientific study of it. However, the devil was still negatively depicted, including in tourism material. The first doctorate awarded for research into the devil came in 1991.
Tasmanian devil milk is being researched for its potential to resist superbugs.
Early attempts to breed Tasmanian devils in captivity had limited success. Mary Roberts bred a pair at Beaumaris Zoo which she named Billy and Truganini in 1913. However, although advised to remove Billy, Roberts found Truganini too distressed by his absence, and returned him. The first litter was presumed eaten by Billy, but a second litter in 1914 survived after Billy was removed. Roberts wrote an article on keeping and breeding the devils for the London Zoological Society. Even by 1934, successful breeding of the devil was rare. In a study on the growth of young devils in captivity, some developmental stages were very different from those reported by Guiler. The pinnae were free on day 36, and eyes opened later, on days 115–121.
In general, females tend to retain more stress after being taken into captivity than males.
A plan to create "insurance populations" of disease-free devils has been ongoing since 2005. As of June 2012, the insurance population has reached a combined total of 500 animals and representing over 98% of the genetic diversity of this species. Most of these devils are living in Australian zoos and wildlife reserves. Beginning in November 2012 however, in an effort to create a population that is both wild and disease-free, Tasmanian devils have been relocated to Maria Island, a mountainous island off the east coast of Tasmania. The Maria Island population has grown from a starting population of twenty-eight to 90 and experts will soon begin transferring healthy devils back to the mainland population. A study on the survival rates of the Maria Island population found that in contrast to other carnivores raised in captivity, the Tasmanian devils were not adversely affected by being born in captivity when released on Maria Island.
Tasmanian devils were displayed in various zoos around the world from the 1850s onwards. In the 1950s several animals were given to European zoos. In October 2005 the Tasmanian government sent four devils, two male and two female, to the Copenhagen Zoo, following the birth of the first son of Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark and his Tasmanian-born wife Mary. Due to restrictions on their export by the Australian government, at the time these were the only devils known to be living outside Australia. In June 2013, due to the successes of the insurance population program, it was planned to send devils to other zoos around the world in a pilot program. San Diego Zoo Global and Albuquerque Biopark were selected to participate in the program, and Wellington Zoo and Auckland Zoo soon followed. In the United States, four additional zoos have since been selected as part of the Australian government's Save the Tasmanian Devil program, the zoos selected were: the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo, the Los Angeles Zoo, the Saint Louis Zoo, and the Toledo Zoo. Captive devils are usually forced to stay awake during the day to cater to visitors, rather than following their natural nocturnal style.
There have been reports and suspicions of illegal trading in the past. In 1997, a devil turned up in Western Australia; it had not escaped from any licensed keeper. During the 1990s there were internet sites in the US that were advertising devil sales, and rumours that some US Navy personnel had tried to buy them illegally during a visit to Tasmania.
The devil is an iconic animal within Australia, and particularly associated with Tasmania. The animal is used as the emblem of the Tasmanian National Parks and Wildlife Service, and the former Tasmanian Australian rules football team which played in the Victorian Football League was known as the Devils. The Hobart Devils were once part of the National Basketball League. The devil has appeared on several commemorative coins in Australia over the years. Cascade Brewery in Tasmania sells a ginger beer with a Tasmanian devil on the label. In 2015, the Tasmanian devil was chosen as Tasmania's state emblem.
Tasmanian devils are popular with tourists, and the director of the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park has described their possible extinction as "a really significant blow for Australian and Tasmanian tourism". There has also been a multimillion-dollar proposal to build a giant 19 m-high, 35 m-long devil in Launceston in northern Tasmania as a tourist attraction. Devils began to be used in tourism from the 1970s, when studies showed that the animals were often the only things known about Tasmania overseas and suggested that they should therefore be the centrepiece of marketing efforts, resulting in some devils being taken on promotional tours.
With its unique personality, the Tasmanian devil has been the subject of numerous documentaries, fiction and non-fiction children's books. Royalties from Margaret Wild's "Ruby Roars", about a Tasmanian devil, are going to research into DFTD. A 2005 Australian documentary on the Tasmanian devil, "Terrors of Tasmania", directed and produced by David Parer and Elizabeth Parer-Cook, follows a female devil called "Manganinnie" through breeding season and the birth and rearing of her young. The documentary also looks at the effect of devil facial tumour disease and the conservation measures being taken to ensure survival of the Tasmanian devil. It has screened on television in Australia and in the United States on the National Geographic Channel.
The Tasmanian devil is probably best known internationally as the inspiration for the "Looney Tunes" cartoon character the Tasmanian Devil, or "Taz" in 1954. Little known at the time, the loud hyperactive cartoon character has little in common with the real life animal. After a few shorts between 1957 and 1964, the character was retired until the 1990s, when he gained his own show, "Taz-Mania", and again became popular. In 1997, a newspaper report noted that Warner Bros. had "trademarked the character and registered the name Tasmanian Devil", and that this trademark "was policed", including an eight-year legal case to allow a Tasmanian company to call a fishing lure "Tasmanian Devil". Debate followed, and a delegation from the Tasmanian government met with Warner Bros. Ray Groom, the Tourism Minister, later announced that a "verbal agreement" had been reached. An annual fee would be paid to Warner Bros. in return for the Government of Tasmania being able to use the image of Taz for "marketing purposes". This agreement later disappeared. In 2006, Warner Bros. permitted the Government of Tasmania to sell stuffed toys of Taz with profits funnelled into research on DFTD.
There is a DC Comics superhero called Tasmanian Devil who is a member of the Global Guardians team. Snarl, a character in the Transformers "Beast Wars" storyline, had the alternate form of a Tasmanian devil. Tasmanian Kid from "Beast Wars II" could also transform into a Tasmanian devil.
In 2002, researchers named a genetically mutant mouse "Tasmanian Devil", as its developmentally defective sensory-hair cells of the ear results in abnormal behaviours such as circling and head-tossing, which are reminiscent of "Looney Tunes" Taz.
The 2006 American horror film "Cemetery Gates" features a hostile, genetically mutated Tasmanian devil as an antagonist.
For the 2.6.29 release of the Linux kernel in 2009, programmer Linus Torvalds temporarily replaced the Tux mascot with a Tasmanian devil named "Tuz", in support of a "Save the Tasmanian Devil" campaign.
In December 2017, an exhibit titled "Remarkable Tasmanian Devil" opened at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31392 |
Tantra
Tantra (; Sanskrit: तन्त्र, literally "loom, weave, system") denotes the esoteric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism that co-developed most likely about the middle of the 1st millennium AD. The term "tantra", in the Indian traditions, also means any systematic broadly applicable "text, theory, system, method, instrument, technique or practice".
Starting in the early centuries of common era, newly revealed Tantras centering on Vishnu, Shiva or Shakti emerged. In Buddhism, the Vajrayana tradition is known for its extensive tantra ideas and practices. Tantric Hindu and Buddhist traditions have influenced other Eastern religious traditions such as Jainism, the Tibetan Bön tradition, Daoism and the Japanese Shintō tradition.
Certain modes of non-Vedic worship such as Puja are considered tantric in their conception and rituals. Hindu temple building also generally conforms to the iconography of tantra. Hindu texts describing these topics are called Tantras, Āgamas or Samhitās. In Buddhism, its tantra-genre literature has influenced the artworks in Tibet, historic cave temples of India and imagery in Southeast Asia.
Tantra () literally means "loom, warp, weave".
The connotation of the word "tantra" to mean an esoteric practice or religious ritualism is a colonial era European invention. This term is based on the metaphor of weaving, states Ron Barrett, where the Sanskrit root "tan" means the warping of threads on a loom. It implies "interweaving of traditions and teachings as threads" into a text, technique or practice.
The word appears in the hymns of the "Rigveda" such as in 10.71, with the meaning of "warp (weaving)". It is found in many other Vedic era texts, such as in section 10.7.42 of the "Atharvaveda" and many Brahmanas. In these and post-Vedic texts, the contextual meaning of "Tantra" is that which is "principal or essential part, main point, model, framework, feature". In the Smritis and epics of Hinduism (and Jainism), the term means "doctrine, rule, theory, method, technique or chapter" and the word appears both as a separate word and as a common suffix, such as "atma-tantra" meaning "doctrine or theory of Atman (soul, self)".
The term "Tantra" after about 500 BC, in Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism is a bibliographic category, just like the word Sutra (which means "sewing together", mirroring the metaphor of "weaving together" in "Tantra"). The same Buddhist texts are sometimes referred to as tantra or sutra; for example, "Vairocabhisambodhi-tantra" is also referred to as "Vairocabhisambodhi-sutra". The various contextual meanings of the word Tantra vary with the Indian text and are summarized in the appended table.
The 5th-century BC scholar Pāṇini in his Sutra 1.4.54–55 of Sanskrit grammar, cryptically explains tantra through the example of "Sva-tantra" (Sanskrit: स्वतन्त्र), which he states means "independent" or a person who is his own "warp, cloth, weaver, promoter, karta (actor)". Patanjali in his "Mahābhāṣya" quotes and accepts Panini's definition, then discusses or mentions it at a greater length, in 18 instances, stating that its metaphorical definition of "warp (weaving), extended cloth" is relevant to many contexts. The word "tantra", states Patanjali, means "principal, main".
He uses the same example of "svatantra" as a composite word of "sva" (self) and tantra, then stating "svatantra" means "one who is self-dependent, one who is his own master, the principal thing for whom is himself", thereby interpreting the definition of tantra. Patanjali also offers a semantic definition of Tantra, stating that it is structural rules, standard procedures, centralized guide or knowledge in any field that applies to many elements.
The ancient Mimamsa school of Hinduism uses the term tantra extensively, and its scholars offer various definitions. For example:
Medieval texts present their own definitions of Tantra. "", for example, gives the following explanation of the term "tantra":
The occultist and businessman Pierre Bernard (1875–1955) is widely credited with introducing the philosophy and practices of tantra to the American people, at the same time creating a misleading impression of its connection to sex.
In modern scholarship, Tantra has been studied as an esoteric practice and ritualistic religion, sometimes referred to as Tantrism. There is a wide gap between what Tantra means to its followers, and what Tantra has been represented or perceived as since colonial era writers began commenting on Tantra. Many definitions of Tantra have been proposed since, and there is no universally accepted definition. André Padoux, in his review of Tantra definitions offers two, then rejects both. One definition, due to Padoux, is found among Tantra practitioners — it is any "system of observances" about the vision of man and the cosmos where correspondences between the inner world of the person and the macrocosmic reality play an essential role. Another definition, more common among observers and non-practitioners, is some "set of mechanistic rituals, omitting entirely the ideological side".
Tantric traditions have been studied mostly from textual and historical perspectives. Anthropological work on living Tantric tradition is scarce, and ethnography has rarely engaged with the study of Tantra. This is arguably a result of the modern construction of Tantrism as occult, esoteric and secret. Some scholars have tried to demystify the myth of secrecy in contemporary Tantric traditions, suggesting new methodological avenues to overcome the ethical and epistemological problems in the study of living Tantric traditions.
According to David N. Lorenzen, two different kinds of definitions of Tantra exist, narrow and broad. According to the narrow definition, Tantrism, or "Tantric religion", is the elite traditions directly based on the Sanskrit texts called the Tantras, Samhitas, and Agamas. Lorenzen's "broad definition" extends this by including a broad range of "magical beliefs and practices" such as Yoga and Shaktism.
Richard Payne states that Tantra has been commonly but incorrectly associated with sex, given popular culture's prurient obsession with intimacy. Tantra has been labelled as the "yoga of ecstasy", driven by senseless ritualistic libertinism. This is far from the diverse and complex understanding of what Tantra means to those Buddhists, Hindu and Jains who practice it.
David Gray disagrees with broad generalizations and states that defining Tantra is a difficult task because "Tantra traditions are manifold, spanning several religious traditions and cultural worlds. As a result they are also diverse, which makes it a significant challenge to come up with an adequate definition". The challenge of defining Tantra is compounded by the fact that it has been a historically significant part of major Indian religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism, both in and outside South Asia and East Asia. To its practitioners, Tantra is defined as a combination of texts, techniques, rituals, monastic practices, meditation, yoga, and ideology.
According to Georg Feuerstein, "The scope of topics discussed in the Tantras is considerable. They deal with the creation and history of the world; the names and functions of a great variety of male and female deities and other higher beings; the types of ritual worship (especially of Goddesses); magic, sorcery, and divination; esoteric "physiology" (the mapping of the subtle or psychic body); the awakening of the mysterious serpent power (kundalinî-shakti); techniques of bodily and mental purification; the nature of enlightenment; and not least, sacred sexuality." Hindu puja, temples and iconography all show tantric influence. These texts, states Gavin Flood, contain representation of "the body in philosophy, in ritual and in art", which are linked to "techniques of the body, methods or technologies developed within the tantric traditions intended to transform body and self".
The term "tantrism" is a 19th-century European invention not present in any Asian language; compare "Sufism", of similar Orientalist origin. According to Padoux, "Tantrism" is a Western term and notion, not a category that is used by the "Tantrists" themselves. The term was introduced by 19th-century Indologists, with limited knowledge of India and in whose view Tantrism was a particular, unusual and minority practice in contrast to Indian traditions they believed to be mainstream.
Robert Brown similarly notes that "tantrism" is a construct of Western scholarship, not a concept of the religious system itself. He defines Tantrism as an apologetic label of Westerners for a system that they little understand that is "not coherent" and which is "an accumulated set of practices and ideas from various sources, that has varied between its practitioners within a group, varied across groups, across geography and over its history". It is a system, adds Brown, that gives each follower the freedom to mix Tantric elements with non-Tantric aspects, to challenge and transgress any and all norms, experiment with "the mundane to reach the supramundane".
Teun Goudriaan in his 1981 review of Hindu Tantrism, states that Tantrism usually means a "systematic quest for salvation or spiritual excellence" by realizing and fostering the divine within one's own body, one that is simultaneous union of the masculine-feminine and spirit-matter, and has the ultimate goal of realizing the "primal blissful state of non-duality". It is typically a methodically striven system, consisting of voluntarily chosen specific practices which may include Tantric items such as mantras ("bijas"), geometric patterns and symbols ("mandala"), gestures ("mudra"), mapping of the microcosm within one's body to the macrocosmic elements outside as the subtle body ("kundalini yoga"), assignments of icons and sounds ("nyasa"), meditation ("dhyana"), ritual worship ("puja"), initiation ("diksha") and others. Tantrism, adds Goudriaan, is a living system that is decidedly monistic, but with wide variations, and it is impossible to be dogmatic about a simple or fixed definition.
Tantrism is an overarching term for "Tantric traditions", states David Gray in a 2016 review, that combine Vedic, yogic and meditative traditions from ancient Hinduism as well as rival Buddhist and Jain traditions. it is a neologism of western scholars and does not reflect the self-understanding of any particular tantric tradition. While Goudriaan's description is useful, adds Gray, there is no single defining universal characteristic common to all Tantra traditions, being an open evolving system. Tantrism, whether Buddhist or Hindu, can best be characterized as practices, a set of techniques, with a strong focus on rituals and meditation, by those who believe that it is a path to liberation that is characterized by both knowledge and freedom.
According to Padoux, the term "Tantrika" is based on a comment by Kulluka Bhatta on "Manava Dharmasastra 2.1", who contrasted "vaidika" and "tantrika" forms of Sruti (canonical texts). The Tantrika, to Bhatta, is that literature which forms a parallel part of the Hindu tradition, independent of the Vedic corpus. The Vedic and non-Vedic (Tantric) paths are seen as two different approaches to ultimate reality, the Vedic approach based on Brahman, and Tantrika being based on the non-Vedic Āgama texts. Despite Bhatta attempt to clarify, states Padoux, in reality Hindus and Buddhists have historically felt free to borrow and blend ideas from all sources, Vedic, non-Vedic and in the case of Buddhism, its own canonical works.
One of the key differences between the Tantric and non-Tantric traditions – whether it be orthodox Buddhism, Hinduism or Jainism – is their assumptions about the need for monastic or ascetic life. Non-Tantrika, or orthodox traditions in all three major ancient Indian religions, hold that the worldly life of a householder is one driven by desires and greeds which are a serious impediment to spiritual liberation (moksha, nirvana, kaivalya). These orthodox traditions teach renunciation of householder life, a mendicant's life of simplicity and leaving all attachments to become a monk or nun. In contrast, the Tantrika traditions hold, states Robert Brown, that "both enlightenment and worldly success" are achievable, and that "this world need not be shunned to achieve enlightenment".
The Keśin hymn of the "Rig Veda" (10.136) describes the "wild loner" who, states Karel Werner, "carrying within oneself fire and poison, heaven and earth, ranging from enthusiasm and creativity to depression and agony, from the heights of spiritual bliss to the heaviness of earth-bound labor". The Rigveda uses words of admiration for these loners, and whether it is related to Tantra or not, has been variously interpreted. According to David Lorenzen, it describes "munis" (sages) experiencing Tantra-like "ecstatic, altered states of consciousness" and gaining the ability "to fly on the wind". In contrast, Werner suggests that these are early Yoga pioneers and accomplished yogis of the ancient pre-Buddhist Indian tradition, and that this Vedic hymn is speaking of those "lost in thoughts" whose "personalities are not bound to earth, for they follow the path of the mysterious wind".
The two oldest Upanishadic scriptures of Hinduism, the "Brihadaranyaka Upanishad" in section 4.2 and "Chandogya Upanishad" in section 8.6, refer to nadis ("hati") in presenting their theory on how the Atman (soul) and the body are connected and interdependent through energy carrying arteries when one is awake or sleeping, but they do not mention anything related to Tantric practices. The "Shvetashvatara Upanishad" describes breath control that became a standard part of Yoga, but Tantric practices do not appear in it. The "Yoga Sutras of Patanjali" are an early codification of Yogic practices. Later, according to Lorenzen, these early Yoga-related ideas develop into Hatha Yoga, and then diversify into the "mystical anatomy" of "nadis" and "chakras" of Tantric practices. The 7th-century shamanic-yogic component of Tantrism appears clearly in Tantric form in Bāṇabhaṭṭa's "Harshacharita" and Daṇḍin's "Dashakumaracharita". In contrast to this theory of Lorenzen, other scholars such as Mircea Eliade consider Yoga and the evolution of Yogic practices to be separate and distinct from the evolution of Tantra and Tantric practices.
David Gordon White views Yogini cults as foundational to early tantra but disputes scholars who see their roots in an "autochthonous non-Vedic source" such indigenous tribes or the Indus Valley Civilization. Instead, White suggests Vedic Srauta texts mention offerings to goddesses Rākā, Sinīvālī, and Kuhū in a manner similar to a tantric ritual. Frederick Smith – a professor of Sanskrit and Classical Indian Religions, views Tantra to be a parallel religious movement to Bhakti movement of the 1st millennium AD. Tantra along with Ayurveda, states Smith, has traditionally been attributed to "Atharvaveda", but this attribution is one of respect not of historicity. Ayurveda has primarily been an empirical practice with Vedic roots, but Tantra has been an esoteric, folk movement without grounding that can be traced to anything in "Atharvaveda" or any other vedic text.
A series of artwork discovered in Gandhara, in modern-day Pakistan, dated to be from about 1st century AD, show Buddhist and Hindu monks holding skulls. One of them shows the Buddha sitting in the center; on one side sits a Buddhist monk and on the other side sits a Hindu monk. The legend corresponding to these artworks is found in Buddhist texts, and describes monks "who tap skulls and forecast the future rebirths of the person to whom that skull belonged". According to Robert Brown, these Buddhist skull-tapping reliefs suggest tantric practices may have been vogue by the 1st century AD to appear prominently in Buddhist art and its texts.
The "Mahabharata", the "Harivamsa", the "Devi Mahatmya" in the "Markandeya Purana" all contain references to the fierce, demon-killing manifestations of the Great Goddess, Mahishamardini, who is identified with Durga-Parvati. These suggest reverence and worship for Goddess in the India culture was an established tradition (Shaktism), by the early centuries of the 1st millennium. However, this does not mean Tantric rituals and practices were as yet a part of either Hindu or Buddhist traditions. "Apart from the somewhat dubious reference to Tantra in the Gangadhar inscription of 423 CE", states David Lorenzen, it is only 7th-century Banabhatta's "Kadambari" which provide convincing proof of Tantra and Tantric texts.
According to Flood, the earliest date for the Tantra texts related to Tantric practices is AD 600, though most of them were probably composed after the 8th century onwards. By the 10th century an extensive corpus existed. Regionally, the tantric texts were mostly composed during this period in Kashmir and Nepal. They were also called agamas in Shaivism, samhita or "Pancaratra" in Vaishnavism, and as tantras in Shaktism. The Buddhists developed their own corpus of Tantras, which became the textual basis of Vajrayana. In Jainism, secondary texts suggest a substantial Tantra corpus based on the Surya tradition developed in the western regions of India, but complete manuscripts of these have not survived into the modern era. Among the Hindus, those belonging to the Vedic orthodox traditions rejected the Tantra texts, the Tantric followers incorporated the Vedic ideas within their own systems considering the Tantras as the higher, refined understanding of older ideas. Some considered the Tantra texts to be superior to the Vedas, while others considered them complementary:
According to Flood, very little is known about who created the Tantras, nor much is known about the social status of these and medieval era Tantrikas. The Tantra pioneers may have been ascetics who lived at the cremation grounds, possibly from "above low-caste groups" states Flood, and these were probably non-Brahmanical. These Hindu renouncers and ascetics trace back to far more ancient traditions, and they are mentioned in the Buddhist Pali canon. By the early medieval times, their practices may have included the imitation of the deities such as goddess Kali and god Bhairava, with offerings of non-vegetarian food, alcohol and sexual substances. According to this theory, these practitioners would have invited their deities to "avesha mam" (enter me), then reverted the role in order to control that deity and gain its power. These ascetics would have been supported by low castes living at the cremation places.
The early Tantric practices in Indian history are sometimes attributed to the Kapalikas (literally, "skull men", also called "Somasiddhatins" or "Mahavartins"). Little, however, is reliably known about them, and there is a paucity of primary sources on Kapalikas. The historical information about them is primarily available from dubious fictional works and the disparaging remarks made about them in the Buddhist, Hindu and Jain texts of the 1st millennium AD.
In Hāla’s "Gatha-saptasati" (composed by the 5th century AD), for example, the story calls a female character Kapalika, whose lover dies, he is cremated, she takes his cremation ashes and smears her body with it. The 6th-century Varāhamihira mentions Kapalikas in his literary works. Some of the Kāpālika practices mentioned in these texts are those found in Shaiva Hinduism and Vajrayana Buddhism, and scholars disagree on who influenced whom.
These early historical mentions are in passing and appear to be Tantra-like practices, they are not detailed nor comprehensive presentation of Tantric beliefs and practices. Epigraphic references to the "Kaulas" Tantric practices are rare. Reference is made in the early 9th century to "vama" (left-hand) Tantras of the Kaulas. Literary evidence suggests Tantric Buddhism was probably flourishing by the 7th-century. Matrikas, or fierce mother goddesses that later are closely linked to Tantra practices, appear both in Buddhist and Hindu arts and literature between the 7th and 10th centuries.
Tantra probably gained traction after 6th century, post-Gupta Empire era. Tantric practices were known by the 7th century, flourished between the 8th or 9th century and the 14th century.
Major Tantric texts had been written by the 10th century, particularly in Kashmir, Nepal and Bengal. By the 10th or 11th century, Tantric texts had been translated into regional languages such as Tamil, and Tantric practices probably had spread across South Asia. It was broadly influential, with Flood describing it as follows:
The 13th-century Dvaita Vedanta philosopher Madhvacharya wrote copious commentaries on then existing major schools of Indian philosophies and practices, and cited the works of the 10th century Abhinavagupta considered as a major and influential Tantra scholar. However, Madhvacharya does not mention Tantra as a separate, distinct religious or ritual-driven practice. The early 20th-century Indian scholar Pandurang Vaman Kane conjectured that Madhvacharya ignored Tantra because it may have been considered scandalous. In contrast, Padoux suggests that Tantra may have been so pervasive by the 13th century that "it was not regarded as being a distinct system."
Tantrism further spread with the silk road transmission of Buddhism to East and Southeast Asia, and also influenced the Bön tradition of Tibet.
The Tantra texts and tantric practices involve a wide range of topics, mostly focused on spiritual topics, and not of a sexual nature. However, states Gavin Flood, Tantrism is more known in the West as being notorious for its antinomian elements, stereotypically portrayed as a practice that is esoteric eroticism and ritualized sex in the name of religion, one imbued with alcohol and offering of meat to fierce deities. This portrayal is not limited to the Western imagination, however. Jayanta Bhatta, the 9th-century scholar of the Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy and who commented on Tantra literature, stated that the Tantric ideas and spiritual practices are mostly well placed, but it also has "immoral teachings" such as by the so-called "Nilambara" sect where its practitioners "wear simply one blue garment, and then as a group engage in unconstrained public sex" on festivals. He wrote, this practice is unnecessary and it threatens fundamental values of society.
Sexuality has been a part of Tantric practices, sexual fluids have been viewed as "power substances" and used ritualistically. Some extreme texts, states Flood, go further such as the Buddhist text "Candamaharosana-tantra" advocating consumption of bodily waste products as "power substances", teaching the waste should be consumed as a diet "eaten by all the Buddhas" without slightest disgust. However, such esoteric practices are exceptional and extreme, they are not found in much of Buddhist and Hindu Tantric literature or practices. In the Kaula tradition and others where sexual fluids as power substances and ritual sex are mentioned, scholars disagree in their translations, interpretations and practical significance.
Douglas Renfrew Brooks, for example, states that the antinomian elements such as the use of intoxicating substances and sex were not animistic, but were adopted in some Kaula traditions to challenge the Tantric devotee to break down the "distinctions between the ultimate reality of Brahman and the mundane physical and mundane world". By combining erotic and ascetic techniques, states Brooks, the Tantric broke down all social and internal assumptions, became Shiva-like. In Kashmir Shaivism, states David Gray, the antinomian transgressive ideas were internalized, for meditation and reflection, and as a means to "realize a transcendent subjectivity".
In most Hindu and Buddhist Tantra texts, extreme forms of sexual ritualism is absent. In Jain tantric text, this is entirely absent. Yet, emotions, eroticism and sex are universally regarded in Tantric literature as natural, desirable, a means of transformation of the deity within, to "reflect and recapitulate the bliss of Shiva and Shakti". "Kama" and sex is another aspect of life and a "root of the universe", in the Tantric view, whose purpose extends beyond procreation and is another means to spiritual journey and fulfillment. This idea flowers with the inclusion of kama art in Hindu temple arts, and its various temple architecture and design manuals such as the "Shilpa-prakasha" by the Hindu scholar Ramachandra Kulacara.
Rituals are the main focus of the "Tantras". Rather than one coherent system, Tantra is an accumulation of practices and ideas. Because of the wide range of communities covered by the term, it is problematic to describe tantric practices definitively.
André Padoux notes that there is no consensus among scholars as to which elements are characteristic for Tantra, nor is there any text that contains all those elements. Also, most of those elements can also be found in non-Tantric traditions. According to Anthony Tribe, a scholar of Buddhist Tantra, Tantra has the following defining features:
According to David N. Lorenzen, Tantra practices include the following:
A number of techniques (sadhana) are used as aids for meditation and achieving spiritual power:
According to David Gordon White, mandalas are a key element of Tantra. They represent the constant flow and interaction of both divine, demonic, human and animal energy or impulses ("kleshas", "cetanā", "taṇhā") in the universe. The mandala is a mesocosm, which mediates between the "transcendent-yet-immanent" macrocosm and the microcosm of mundane human experience. The godhead is at the center of the mandala, while all other beings, including the practitioner, are located at various distances from this center. Mandalas also reflected the medieval feudal system, with the king at its centre.
The godhead is both transcendent and immanent, and the world is regarded as real, and not as an illusion. The goal is not to transcend the world, but to realize that the world is the manifestation of the godhead, while the "I" is "the supreme egoity of the godhead." The world is to be seen with the eyes of the godhead, realizing that it is a manifestation as oneself. The totality of all that is a "realm of Dharma" which shares a common principle. The supreme is manifest in everyone, which is to be realized through Tantric practice.
The words "mantram", "tantram" and "yantram" are rooted linguistically and phonologically in ancient Indian traditions. "Mantram" denotes the chant, or "knowledge." "Tantram" denotes philosophy, or ritual actions. "Yantram" denotes the means by which a person is expected to lead their life.
The mantra and yantra are instruments to invoke higher qualities, often associated with specific Hindu deities such as Shiva, Shakti, or Kali. Similarly, "puja" may involve focusing on a "yantra" or "mandala" associated with a deity.
Each mantra is associated with a specific Nyasa. Nyasa involves touching various parts of the body at specific parts of the mantra, thought to invoke the deity in the body. There are several types of Nyasas; the most important are "Kara Nyasa" and "Anga Nyasa".
The deities are internalised as attributes of "Ishta devata" meditations, with practitioners visualizing themselves as the deity or experiencing the "darshan" (vision) of the deity. During meditation the initiate identifies with any of the Hindu gods and goddesses, visualising and internalising them in a process similar to sexual courtship and consummation. The "Tantrika" practitioner may use visualizations of deities, identifying with a deity to the degree that the aspirant "becomes" the "Ishta-deva" (or meditational deity).
In Hindu Tantra, uniting the deity and the devotee uses meditation and ritual practices. These practices are divided among three classes of devotees: the animal, heroic, and the divine. In the divine devotee, the rituals are internal. The divine devotee is the only one who can attain the object of the rituals (awakening energy).
In Hinduism, the tantric traditions are found in Shaivism's Shaiva Siddhanta and the Mantrapīṭha (Bhairava-centred), and in Shaktism's Vidyāpīṭha and the Kulamārga traditions.
The Tantra texts of the Vaishnava tradition are the Pancharatra, and typically called the Agamas in the Vaishnava traditions. The term "Tantra" in Hindu genre of literature is usually used specifically to refer to Shakta Agamas. The Agamas literature is voluminous, and includes 28 Shaiva Agamas, 77 Shakta Agamas (also called Tantras), and 108 Vaishnava Agamas (also called Pancharatra Samhitas), and numerous Upa-Agamas.
Some Tantra texts in Hinduism are Vedic and others non-Vedic. Agama traditions include Yoga and Self Realization concepts, some include Kundalini Yoga, asceticism, and philosophies ranging from "Dvaita" (dualism) to "Advaita" (monism).
The means of worship in the Hindu Tantric practice differs from the Vedic form. While the Vedic practice of yajna there are no idols and shrines, in its Tantric traditions, idols and symbolic icons with puja are the means of worship. Temples, symbolism, icons that remind the devotee of attributes and values are a necessary part of the Agamic practice, while non-theistic paths are one of the many alternative means in the Vedic practice. This, however, does not necessarily mean that Tantra-Agamas and Vedas are opposed, according to medieval era Hindu theologians. Tirumular, for example, explained their link as, "the Vedas are the path, and the Agamas are the horse".
Each Tantra-Agama text consists of four parts:
The Tantra-Agama texts of Hinduism present a diverse range of philosophies, ranging from theistic dualism to absolute monism. This diversity of views was acknowledged in Chapter 36 of Tantraloka, the 10th century scholar Abhinavagupta. In Shaivism alone, there are ten dualistic (dvaita) Agama texts, eighteen qualified monism-cum-dualism (bhedabheda) Agama texts, and sixty four monism (advaita) Agama texts. The Bhairava Shastras are monistic Tantra texts, while Shiva Shastras are dualistic.
Many tantric traditions developed within Buddhism, over its history in South Asia and East Asia. These are also called the Vajrayana traditions. The tradition has been particularly prevalent in Tibet and Nepal. The Buddhist Tantric practices and texts, states Jacob Dalton, developed between the 5th and the 7th centuries and this is evidenced by Chinese Buddhist translations of Indian texts from that period preserved in Dunhuang. Ryan Overbey too affirms this, stating that Buddhist Tantric spells and ritual texts were translated by Chinese Buddhist scholars six times and these spells appear in multiple texts between the 5th and 8th centuries.
According to Alexis Sanderson, various classes of Vajrayana literature developed as a result of royal courts sponsoring both Buddhism and Saivism. The Mañjusrimulakalpa, which later came to classified under Kriyatantra, states that mantras taught in the Shaiva, Garuda and Vaishnava tantras will be effective if applied by Buddhists since they were all taught originally by Manjushri. The Guhyasiddhi of Padmavajra, a work associated with the Guhyasamaja tradition, prescribes acting as a Shaiva guru and initiating members into Saiva Siddhanta scriptures and mandalas. The Samvara tantra texts adopted the pitha list from the Shaiva text "Tantrasadbhava", introducing a copying error where a deity was mistaken for a place.
The Tantric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism spread rapidly within India and Tibet, and from there to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia. They significantly influenced many other religious traditions such Jainism, Sikhism, the Tibetan Bön tradition, Daoism, and the Japanese Shintō tradition. In the Sikh literature, the ideas related to Shakti and goddess reverence attributed to Guru Gobind Singh, particularly in the "Dasam Granth", are related to tantra ideas found in Buddhism and Hinduism.
The Jain worship methods, states Ellen Gough, were likely influenced by Shaktism ideas, and this is attested by the tantric diagrams of the "Rishi-mandala" where the Tirthankaras are portrayed. The Tantric traditions within Jainism use verbal spells or mantra, and rituals that are believed to accrue merit for rebirth realms.
The first Western scholar to seriously study Tantra was John Woodroffe (1865–1936), who wrote about Tantra under the pen name Arthur Avalon and is known as the "founding father of Tantric studies". Unlike previous Western scholars Woodroffe advocated for Tantra, defending and presenting it as an ethical and philosophical system in accord with the Vedas and Vedanta. Woodroffe practised Tantra and, while trying to maintain scholastic objectivity, was a student of Hindu Tantra (the "Shiva-Shakta" tradition).
Following Woodroffe, a number of scholars began investigating Tantric teachings, including scholars of comparative religion and Indology such as Agehananda Bharati, Mircea Eliade, Julius Evola, Carl Jung, Alexandra David-Néel, Giuseppe Tucci and Heinrich Zimmer. According to Hugh Urban, Zimmer, Evola and Eliade viewed Tantra as "the culmination of all Indian thought: the most radical form of spirituality and the archaic heart of aboriginal India", regarding it as the ideal religion for the modern era. All three saw Tantra as "the most transgressive and violent path to the sacred". Practitioners such as Jaya Yogacharya (Reunion island, Indian Ocean) asserts that the practice of tantra yoga transforms oneself and therefore invites to change one's positioning in life. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31395 |
Twelve-step program
A twelve-step program is a set of guiding principles outlining a course of action for recovery from addiction, compulsion, or other behavioral problems. Originally proposed by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) as a method of recovery from alcoholism, the Twelve Steps were first published in the 1939 book "Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism." The method was adapted and became the foundation of other twelve-step programs.
As summarized by the American Psychological Association, the process involves the following:
Twelve-step methods have been adapted to address a wide range of alcoholism, substance-abuse and dependency problems. Over 200 self-help organizations—often known as fellowships—with a worldwide membership of millions—now employ twelve-step principles for recovery. Narcotics Anonymous was formed by addicts who did not relate to the specifics of alcohol dependency.
Demographic preferences related to the addicts' drug of choice has led to the creation of Cocaine Anonymous, Crystal Meth Anonymous and Marijuana Anonymous. Behavioral issues such as compulsion for, and/or addiction to, gambling, crime, food, sex, hoarding, getting into debt and work are addressed in fellowships such as Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous and Debtors Anonymous.
Auxiliary groups such as Al-Anon and Nar-Anon, for friends and family members of alcoholics and addicts, respectively, are part of a response to treating addiction as a disease that is enabled by family systems. Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA or ACOA) addresses the effects of growing up in an alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional family. Co-Dependents Anonymous () addresses compulsions related to relationships, referred to as codependency.
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), the first twelve-step fellowship, was founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith, known to AA members as "Bill W." and "Dr. Bob", in Akron, Ohio. In 1946 they formally established the twelve traditions to help deal with the issues of how various groups could relate and function as membership grew. The practice of remaining anonymous (using only one's first names) when interacting with the general public was published in the first edition of the AA Big Book.
As AA chapters were increasing in number during the 1930s and 1940s, the guiding principles were gradually defined as the Twelve Traditions. A singleness of purpose emerged as Tradition Five: "Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers". Consequently, drug addicts who do not suffer from the specifics of alcoholism involved in AA hoping for recovery technically are not welcome in "closed" meetings unless they have a desire to stop drinking alcohol.
The principles of AA have been used to form many numbers of other fellowships specifically designed for those recovering from various pathologies; each emphasizes recovery from the specific malady which brought the sufferer into the fellowship.
The following are the original twelve steps as published by Alcoholics Anonymous:
In some cases, where other twelve-step groups have adapted the AA steps as guiding principles, step one is uniquely different for each organization, for example in Overeaters Anonymous, the first step reads, "We admitted we were powerless over compulsive overeating- that our lives had become unmanageable." The first step is also sometimes altered to emphasize principles important to those particular fellowships, or to remove gender-specific pronouns language.
The Twelve Traditions accompany the Twelve Steps. The Traditions provide guidelines for group governance. They were developed in AA in order to help resolve conflicts in the areas of publicity, politics, religion and finances. Alcoholics Anonymous' Twelve Traditions are:
In the twelve-step program, the human structure is symbolically represented in three dimensions: physical, mental, and spiritual. The problems the groups deal with are understood to manifest themselves in each dimension. For addicts and alcoholics, the physical dimension is best described by the allergy-like bodily reaction resulting in the compulsion to continue using substances after the initial use. The statement in the First Step that the individual is "powerless" over the substance-abuse related behavior at issue refers to the lack of control over this compulsion, which persists despite any negative consequences that may be endured as a result.
The mental obsession is described as the cognitive processes that cause the individual to repeat the compulsive behavior after some period of abstinence, either knowing that the result will be an inability to stop or operating under the delusion that the result will be different. The description in the First Step of the life of the alcoholic or addict as "unmanageable" refers to the lack of choice that the mind of the addict or alcoholic affords concerning whether to drink or use again.
The illness of the spiritual dimension, or "spiritual malady," is considered in all twelve-step groups to be self-centeredness. The process of working the steps is intended to replace self-centeredness with a growing moral consciousness and a willingness for self-sacrifice and unselfish constructive action. In twelve-step groups, this is known as a spiritual awakening. This should neither be confused with abreaction, which produces dramatic, but ephemeral, changes, nor with a religious experience. In twelve-step fellowships, "spiritual awakening" is believed to most frequently develop slowly over a period of time.
In accordance with the First Step, twelve-step groups emphasize self-admission by members of the problem they are recovering from. It is in this spirit that members often identify themselves along with an admission of their problem, often as "Hi, I’m , and I’m an alcoholic".
A sponsor is a more experienced person in recovery who guides the less-experienced aspirant ("sponsee") through the program's twelve steps. New members in twelve-step programs are encouraged to secure a relationship with at least one sponsor who both has a sponsor and has taken the twelve steps themselves. Publications from twelve-step fellowships emphasize that sponsorship is a "one on one" nonhierarchical relationship of shared experiences focused on working the Twelve Steps. According to Narcotics Anonymous:
Sponsors share their experience, strength, and hope with their sponsees... A sponsor's role is not that of a legal adviser, a banker, a parent, a marriage counselor, or a social worker. Nor is a sponsor a therapist offering some sort of professional advice. A sponsor is simply another addict in recovery who is willing to share his or her journey through the Twelve Steps.
Sponsors and sponsees participate in activities that lead to spiritual growth. Experiences in the program are often shared by outgoing members with incoming members. This rotation of experience is often considered to have a great spiritual reward. These may include practices such as literature discussion and study, meditation, and writing. Completing the program usually implies competency to guide newcomers which is often encouraged. Sponsees typically do their Fifth Step, review their moral inventory written as part of the Fourth Step, with their sponsor. The Fifth Step, as well as the Ninth Step, have been compared to confession and penitence. Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, noted such practices produce intrinsic modifications in the person—exonerating, redeeming and purifying them; relieves them of their burden of wrong, liberating them and promising salvation.
The personal nature of the behavioral issues that lead to seeking help in twelve-step fellowships results in a strong relationship between sponsee and sponsor. As the relationship is based on spiritual principles, it is unique and not generally characterized as "friendship". Fundamentally, the sponsor has the single purpose of helping the sponsee recover from the behavioral problem that brought the sufferer into twelve-step work, which reflexively helps the sponsor recover.
A study of sponsorship as practiced in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous found that providing direction and support to other alcoholics and addicts is associated with sustained abstinence for the sponsor, but suggested that there were few short-term benefits for the sponsee's one-year sustained abstinence rate.
Alcoholics Anonymous is the largest of all the twelve-step programs (from which all other twelve-steps programs are derived), followed by Narcotics Anonymous; the majority of twelve-step members are recovering from addiction to alcohol or other drugs. The majority of twelve-step programs, however, address illnesses other than substance addiction. For example, the third-largest twelve-step program, Al-Anon, assists family members and friends of people who have alcoholism and other addictions. About twenty percent of twelve-step programs are for substance addiction recovery, the other eighty percent address a variety of problems from debt to depression. It would be an error to assume the effectiveness of twelve-step methods at treating problems in one domain translates to all or to another domain, therefore, readers are directed to relevant sections in each group's
Wikipedia article.
The criticisms of twelve-step groups are as varied as the pathologies they address. People have attended twelve-step meetings, only to find success eluded them. Their varied success rate and the belief in a Higher Power suggested in them, are common criticisms of their universal applicability and efficacy.
The Twelve Traditions encourage members to practice the spiritual principle of anonymity in the public media and members are also asked to respect each other's confidentiality. This is a group norm, however, and not legally mandated; there are no legal consequences to discourage those attending twelve-step groups from revealing information disclosed during meetings. Statutes on group therapy do not encompass those associations that lack a professional therapist or clergyman to whom confidentiality and privilege might apply. Professionals and paraprofessionals who refer patients to these groups, to avoid both civil liability and licensure problems, have been advised that they should alert their patients that, at any time, their statements made in meetings may be disclosed.
One review warned of detrimental iatrogenic effects of twelve-step philosophy and labeled the organizations as cults, while another review asserts that these programs bore little semblance to religious cults and that the techniques used appeared beneficial to some. Another study found that a twelve-step program's focus on self-admission of having a problem increases deviant stigma and strips members of their previous cultural identity, replacing it with the deviant identity. Another study asserts that the prior cultural identity may not be replaced entirely, but rather members found adapted a bicultural identity. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31398 |
Tietze extension theorem
In topology, the Tietze extension theorem (also known as the Tietze–Urysohn–Brouwer extension theorem) states that continuous functions on a closed subset of a normal topological space can be extended to the entire space, preserving boundedness if necessary.
If "X" is a normal topological space and
is a continuous map from a closed subset "A" of "X" into the real numbers carrying the standard topology, then there exists a continuous map
with "F"("a") = "f"("a") for all "a" in "A". Moreover, "F" may be chosen such that formula_3, i.e., if "f" is bounded, "F" may be chosen to be bounded (with the same bound as "f"). "F" is called a "continuous extension" of "f".
L. E. J. Brouwer and Henri Lebesgue proved a special case of the theorem, when "X" is a finite-dimensional real vector space. Heinrich Tietze extended it to all metric spaces, and Paul Urysohn proved the theorem as stated here, for normal topological spaces.
This theorem is equivalent to Urysohn's lemma (which is also equivalent to the normality of the space) and is widely applicable, since all metric spaces and all compact Hausdorff spaces are normal. It can be generalized by replacing R with R"J" for some indexing set "J", any retract of R"J", or any normal absolute retract whatsoever.
If "X" is a metric space, "A" a non-empty subset of "X" and formula_1 is a Lipschitz continuous function with Lipschitz constant "K", then "f" can be extended to a Lipschitz continuous function formula_2 with same constant "K".
This theorem is also valid for Hölder continuous functions, that is, if formula_1 is Hölder continuous function, "f" can be extended to a Hölder continuous function formula_2 with the same constant.
Another variant (in fact, generalization) of Tietze's theorem is due to Z. Ercan:
Let "A" be a closed subset of a topological space "X". If formula_8 is an upper-semicontinuous function, formula_9, is a lower-semicontinuous function, and formula_10 a continuous function such that "f"("x") ≤ "g"("x") for each "x" in "X" and "f"("a") ≤ "h"("a") ≤ "g"("a") for each "a" in "A", then there is a continuous
extension formula_11 of "h" such that "f"("x") ≤ "H"("x") ≤ "g"("x") for each "x" in "X".
This theorem is also valid with some additional hypothesis if R is replaced by a general locally solid Riesz space. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31404 |
Thomas J. Watson
Thomas John Watson Sr. (February 17, 1874 – June 19, 1956) was an American businessman. He served as the chairman and CEO of International Business Machines (IBM). He oversaw the company's growth into an international force from 1914 to 1956. Watson developed IBM's management style and corporate culture from John Henry Patterson's training at NCR. He turned the company into a highly-effective selling organization, based largely on punched card tabulating machines. A leading self-made industrialist, he was one of the richest men of his time and was called the world's greatest salesman when he died in 1956.
Thomas J. Watson was born in Campbell, New York, the fifth child and only son of Thomas and Jane Fulton White Watson. His four older siblings were Jennie, Effie, Loua, and Emma. His father farmed and owned a modest lumber business located near Painted Post, a few miles west of Elmira, in the Southern Tier region of New York. Thomas worked on the family farm in East Campbell, New York and attended the District School Number Five in the late 1870s. As Watson entered his teen years he attended Addison Academy In Addison, New York.
Having given up his first job—teaching—after just one day, Watson took a year's course in accounting and business at the Miller School of Commerce in Elmira. He left the school in 1891, taking a job at $6 a week as bookkeeper for Clarence Risley's Market in Painted Post. One year later he joined a traveling salesman, George Cornwell, peddling organs and pianos around the farms for William Bronson's local hardware store, Watson's first sales job. When Cornwell left, Watson continued alone, earning $10 per week. After two years of this life, he realized he would be earning $70 per week if he were on a commission. His indignation on making this discovery was such that he quit and moved from his familiar surroundings to the relative metropolis of Buffalo.
Watson then spent a very brief period selling sewing machines for Wheeler and Wilson. According to Tom Watson, Jr., in his autobiography: One day my dad went into a roadside saloon to celebrate a sale and had too much to drink. When the bar closed, he found that his entire rig—horse, buggy, and samples—had been stolen. Wheeler and Wilson fired him and dunned him for the lost property. Word got around, of course, and it took Dad more than a year to find another steady job. Watson would later enforce strict rules at IBM against alcohol consumption, even off the job. According to Tom Jr.: This anecdote never made it into IBM lore, which is too bad, because it would have helped explain Father to the tens of thousands of people who had to follow his rules.
Watson's next job was peddling shares of the Buffalo Building and Loan Company for a huckster named C. B. Barron, a showman renowned for his disreputable conduct, which Watson deplored. Barron absconded with the commission and the loan funds. Next Watson opened a butcher shop in Buffalo, which soon failed, leaving Watson with no money, no investment, and no job.
Watson had a newly acquired NCR cash register in his butcher shop, for which he had to arrange transfer of the installment payments to the new owner of the butcher shop. On visiting NCR, he met John J. Range and asked him for a job. Determined to join the company, he repeatedly called on Range until, after a number of abortive attempts, he finally was hired in November 1896, as sales apprentice to Range.
Led by John Patterson, NCR was then one of the leading selling organizations, and John J. Range, its Buffalo branch manager, became almost a father figure for Watson and was a model for his sales and management style. Certainly in later years, in a 1952 interview, he claimed he learned more from Range than anyone else. But at first, he was a poor salesman, until Range took him personally in hand. Then he became the most successful salesman in the East, earning $100 per week.
Four years later, NCR assigned Watson to run the struggling NCR agency in Rochester, New York. As an agent, he got 35% commission and reported directly to Hugh Chalmers, the second-in-command at NCR. In four years Watson made Rochester effectively an NCR monopoly by using the technique of knocking the main competitor, Hallwood, out of business, sometimes resorting to sabotage of the competitor's machines. As a reward he was called to the NCR head office in Dayton, Ohio.
In 1912, the company was found guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. Patterson, Watson, and 26 other NCR executives and managers were convicted for illegal anti-competitive sales practices and were sentenced to one year of imprisonment. Their convictions were unpopular with the public because of the efforts of Patterson and Watson to help those affected by the Dayton, Ohio floods of 1913, but efforts to have them pardoned by President Woodrow Wilson were unsuccessful. However, their convictions were overturned on appeal in 1915 on the grounds that important defense evidence should have been admitted.
Charles Ranlett Flint who had engineered the amalgamation (via stock acquisition) forming the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) found it difficult to manage the five companies. He hired Watson as general manager on May 1, 1914, when the five companies had about 1,300 employees. Eleven months later he was made President when court cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Within four years revenues had been doubled to $9 million. In 1924, he renamed CTR to International Business Machines. Watson built IBM into such a dominant company that the federal government filed a civil antitrust suit against it in 1952. IBM owned and leased to its customers more than 90 percent of all tabulating machines in the United States at the time. When Watson died in 1956, IBM's revenues were $897 million, and the company had 72,500 employees.
Throughout his life, Watson maintained a deep interest in international relations, from both a diplomatic and a business perspective. He was known as President Roosevelt's unofficial ambassador in New York and often entertained foreign statesmen. In 1937, he was elected president of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and at that year's biennial congress in Berlin stated the conference keynote to be "World Peace Through World Trade". That phrase became the slogan of both the ICC and IBM.
Watson's merger of diplomacy and business was not always lauded. In 1937 Watson met Adolf Hitler in his capacity as President of the International Chamber of Commerce. During the 1930s, IBM's German subsidiary was its most profitable foreign operation, and a 2001 book by Edwin Black, "IBM and the Holocaust", proves that Watson's pursuit of profit led him to personally approve and spearhead IBM's strategic technological relationship with Nazi Germany. It describes how IBM provided the tabulating equipment Hitler used to round up the Jews. His Hollerith punch-card machines are in the Holocaust Museum today. The book describes IBM's punch cards as "a card with standardized holes", each representing a different trait of the individual. The card was fed into a "reader" and sorted. Punch cards identified Jews by name. Each one served as "a nineteenth-century bar code for human beings". In particular, critics point to the Order of the German Eagle medal that Watson received at the Berlin ICC meeting in 1937, as evidence that he was being honored for the help that IBM's German subsidiary Dehomag (Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft mbH) and its punch card machines provided the Nazi regime, particularly in the tabulation of census data (i.e. location of Jews). Another study argues that Watson believed, perhaps naively, that the medal was in recognition of his years of labor on behalf of global commerce and international peace. Within a year of the Berlin congress though, where Watson's hopes had run high, he found himself strongly protesting the German policy toward the Jews.
Because of his strong feelings about the issue, Watson wanted to return his German citation shortly after receiving it. When Secretary of State Hull advised him against that course of action, he gave up the idea until the spring of 1940. Then Hull refused advice, and Watson sent the medal back in June 1940. Dehomag's management disapproved of Watson's action and considered separating from IBM. This occurred when Germany declared war on the United States in December 1941, and the German shareholders took custody of the Dehomag operation. But during World War II, IBM subsidiaries in occupied Europe never stopped delivery of punch cards to Dehomag, and documents uncovered show that senior executives at IBM world headquarters in New York took great pains to maintain legal authority over Dehomag's operations and assets through the personal intervention of IBM managers in neutral Switzerland, directed via personal communications and private letters.
During this same period, IBM became more deeply involved in the war effort for the U.S., focusing on producing large quantities of data processing equipment for the military and experimenting with analog computers. Watson, Sr. also developed the "1% doctrine" for war profits which mandated that IBM receive no more than 1% profit from the sales of military equipment to U.S. Government. Watson was one of the few CEOs to develop such a policy.
In 1941, Watson received the third highest salary and compensation package in the U.S., $517,221, on which he paid 69% in tax.
Watson had a personal interest in the progress of the war. His eldest son, Thomas J. Watson Jr., joined the United States Army Air Corps and became a bomber pilot. He was soon hand-picked to become the assistant and personal pilot for General Follet Bradley, who was in charge of all Lend-Lease equipment supplied to the Soviet Union from the United States. Watson, Sr.'s youngest son, Arthur K. Watson, also joined the military during the conflict.
Watson worked with local leaders to create a college in the Binghamton area, where IBM was founded and had major plants. In 1946, IBM provided land and funding for Triple Cities College, an extension of Syracuse University. Later it became known as Harpur College, and eventually evolved into Binghamton University. Its School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is named the Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The IBM plant in the neighboring city of Endicott has since downsized drastically, however.
After World War II, Watson began work to further the extent of IBM's influence abroad and in 1949, he created the IBM World Trade Corporation in order to oversee IBM's foreign business.
On May 8, 1956 Watson retired and his oldest son, Thomas J. Watson Jr., assumed the position of CEO. He died on June 19, 1956 in Manhattan, New York City. He was interred in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
Watson married Jeanette Kittredge, from a prominent Dayton, Ohio railroad family, on April 17, 1913. They had two sons and two daughters.
As a Democrat (after his criminal indictment by the Taft Administration), Watson was an ardent supporter of Roosevelt. He was one of the most prominent businessmen in the Democratic Party. He was considered Roosevelt's strongest supporter in the business community.
Watson served as a powerful trustee of Columbia University from June 6, 1933, until his death. He engineered the selection of Dwight D. Eisenhower as its president and played the central role in convincing Eisenhower to become president of the university. Additionally, he served as a trustee of Lafayette College and is the namesake of Watson Hall, a campus residence hall.
In 1936 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that IBM, together with Remington Rand, should cease its practice of requiring its customers to buy their punch cards from it alone. The ruling made little difference because IBM was the only effective supplier to the market, and profits continued undiminished.
In 1937, Watson was awarded the Order of the German Eagle by Adolf Hitler. Watson was also president of the International Chamber of Commerce in 1937; the medal was awarded while the ICC was meeting in Germany that year.
In 1939, he received an honorary degree in Doctor of Commercial Science from Oglethorpe University.
In the 1940s, Watson was on the national executive board of the Boy Scouts of America and served for a time as an international Scout commissioner. E. Urner Goodman recounts that the elderly Watson attended an international Scout commissioners' meeting in Switzerland, where the IBM founder asked not to be put on a pedestal. Before the conference was over, Goodman relates, Watson "... sat by that campfire, in Scout uniform, 'chewing the fat' like the rest of the boys". He received the Silver Buffalo Award in 1944. His son, Thomas Jr., later served as national president of the Boy Scouts of America from 1964 to 1968. He was also inducted into the Steuben County (NY) Hall of Fame. Throughout his life Watson continued to own and enjoy the family farm on which he was born. In 1955 he and his wife gifted it, along with one million dollars, to the Methodist Church for use as a retreat and conference center, to be named Watson Homestead in memory of his parents. Watson Homestead became independent of he church in 1995, and continues as a conference and retreat center. The one-room school that Watson attended as a child is still on the grounds.
Watson was chairman of the Elmira College centennial committee in 1955 and donated Watson Hall, primarily a music and mathematics academic building.
He was posthumously inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1990.
Although Watson is well known for his alleged 1943 statement, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers," there is scant evidence he said it. Author Kevin Maney tried to find the origin of the quote, but has been unable to locate any speeches or documents of Watson's that contain this, nor are the words present in any contemporary articles about IBM.
One of the very first attributions is in the German Magazine Der Spiegel of May 22, 1965, stating that IBM-boss Thomas Watson had not been interested in the new machines initially, and when the first commercial calculation behemoths appeared in the early 1950s, filling whole floors with thousands of heat generating vacuum tubes, he estimated the demand by the US economy at a maximum of five.
Later attributions may be found in "The Experts Speak", a book written by Christopher Cerf and Victor S. Navasky in 1984, however Cerf and Navasky just quote from a book written by Morgan and Langford, "Facts and Fallacies". Another early article source (May 15, 1985) is a column by Neil Morgan, a San Diego Evening Tribune writer who wrote: "Forrest Shumway, chairman of The Signal Cos., doesn't make predictions. His role model is Tom Watson, then IBM chairman, who said in 1958: 'I think there is a world market for about five computers. The earliest known citation on the Internet is from 1986 on Usenet in the signature of a poster from Convex Computer Corporation as I think there is a world market for about five computers' —Remark attributed to Thomas J. Watson (Chairman of the Board of International Business Machines), 1943". All these early quotes are questioned by Eric Weiss, an editor of the "Annals of the History of Computing" in ACS letters in 1985.
There are documented versions of similar quotes by other people in the early history of the computer. In 1946 Sir Charles Darwin (grandson of the famous naturalist), head of Britain's NPL (National Physical Laboratory), where research into computers was taking place, wrote: it is very possible that ... one machine would suffice to solve all the problems that are demanded of it from the whole country.
In 1985 the story was discussed on Usenet (in net.misc), without Watson's name being attached. The original discussion has not survived, but an explanation has; it attributes a very similar quote to the Cambridge mathematician Professor Douglas Hartree, around 1951:
I went to see Professor Douglas Hartree, who had built the first differential analyzers in England and had more experience in using these very specialized computers than anyone else. He told me that, in his opinion, all the calculations that would ever be needed in this country could be done on the three digital computers which were then being built—one in Cambridge, one in Teddington, and one in Manchester. No one else, he said, would ever need machines of their own, or would be able to afford to buy them.
Howard H. Aiken made a similar statement in 1952:
Originally one thought that if there were a half dozen large computers in this country, hidden away in research laboratories, this would take care of all requirements we had throughout the country.
The story already had been described as a myth in 1973; the "Economist" quoted a Mr. Maney as "revealing that Watson never made his oft-quoted prediction that there was 'a world market for maybe five computers.
Since the attribution typically is used to demonstrate the fallacy of predictions, if Watson had made such a prediction in 1943, then, as Gordon Bell pointed out in his ACM 50 years celebration keynote, it would have held true for some ten years.
The IBM archives of Frequently Asked Questions notes an inquiry about whether he said in the 1950s that he foresaw a market potential for only five electronic computers. The document says no, but quotes his son and then IBM President Thomas J. Watson, Jr., at the annual IBM stockholders meeting, April 28, 1953, as speaking about the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, which it identifies as "the company's first production computer designed for scientific calculations". He said that "IBM had developed a paper plan for such a machine and took this paper plan across the country to some 20 concerns that we thought could use such a machine. I would like to tell you that the machine rents for between $12,000 and $18,000 a month, so it was not the type of thing that could be sold from place to place. But, as a result of our trip, on which we expected to get orders for five machines, we came home with orders for 18." Watson, Jr., later gave a slightly different version of the story in his autobiography, where he said the initial market sampling indicated 11 firm takers and 10 more prospective orders.
"THINK" – Watson began using "THINK" to motivate, or inspire, staff while at NCR and continued to use it at CTR. International Business Machines's first U.S. trademark was for the name "THINK" filed as a U.S. trademark on June 6, 1935, with the description "periodical publications". This trademark was filed fourteen years before the company filed for a U.S. trademark on the name IBM. A biographical article in 1940 noted that "This word is on the most conspicuous wall of every room in every IBM building. Each employee carries a THINK notebook in which to record inspirations. The company stationery, matches, scratch pads all bear the inscription, THINK. A monthly magazine called 'Think' is distributed to the employees." THINK remains a part of IBM's corporate culture; it was the inspiration behind naming IBM's successful line of notebook computers, IBM ThinkPad. In 2007, IBM Mid America Employees Federal Credit Union changed its name to Think Mutual Bank. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31408 |
The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck
The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck (Lo) is a serial of 12 comic book stories written and drawn by Don Rosa, lettered by Todd Klein (American editions), first published by the Danish publisher Egmont in the magazine "Anders And & Co." from 1992–94 and later in English in "Uncle Scrooge" #285 through #296 (1994–96). The stories chronicle the in-universe biography of Scrooge McDuck before his introduction in 1947. The stories were later collected and published together in a single volume. Rosa later published additional stories which expanded on Scrooge's biography. These were released as "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion".
The story follows the main events of Scrooge's life between 1877 and 1947, including almost all references found in Carl Barks stories about Scrooge's life until 1947 but leaving some room for Rosa and other creators to add more details later. The comic also provides information on the backgrounds and origins of many characters related to Scrooge.
Don Rosa earned the Will Eisner Award in 1997 for this work. The trade paperback collection was also a top vote-getter for the Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Award for Favorite Reprint Graphic Novel/Album for 1997.
After being out of print for several years with high demand, the book was reprinted under the BOOM! Studios label in two deluxe hardcover volumes.
The Finnish composer Tuomas Holopainen released a concept album based on the book, titled "Music Inspired by the Life and Times of Scrooge". Don Rosa illustrated the cover artwork for the album.
Note: Chapters Zero, and all "in-between" chapters with "B" or "C" added to the numbers are not included in the softcover collection in North America. These chapters were later reprinted in a separate book published by Gemstone, titled "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion".
Several notable historical figures appear in the series: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31409 |
Clan McDuck
File:Glasgow 1877 by Don Rosa.jpg|thumb|right|329px|"Glasgow 1877", Clan McDuck portrait by Don Rosa; left to right: Jake, Matilda, Downy, Fergus, Hortense, Scrooge (age 10), and Angus; wall portraits: Malcolm, Eider, Quackly, Roast, and Hugh (Clicking on a character will take you to their section.)
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rect 248 18 310 85 Eider McDuck
poly 112 98 120 65 147 39 178 40 205 56 217 87 213 118 203 144 185 156 163 160 133 147 116 121 Quackly McDuck
poly 19 122 15 205 42 178 55 171 69 170 69 124 Roast McDuck
poly 239 188 237 146 262 123 291 115 310 118 308 211 297 212 295 193 287 182 275 175 246 181 Hugh McDuck
poly 22 385 19 239 31 191 48 172 69 169 77 178 81 208 92 212 97 230 84 247 82 254 83 276 52 280 42 287 46 301 41 327 53 343 41 384 Jake McDuck
poly 42 405 50 381 49 355 63 336 47 326 48 290 54 281 88 276 99 285 107 302 109 314 100 328 107 335 107 357 104 388 114 398 112 407 98 409 84 400 54 408 Matilda McDuck
poly 99 169 112 168 138 184 143 214 132 236 135 240 128 268 138 281 116 300 108 296 99 281 85 269 84 268 90 244 100 229 94 210 85 205 87 183 Downy O'Drake
poly 153 218 181 219 193 241 202 258 198 272 188 282 209 295 214 303 210 314 194 323 190 344 162 345 146 360 137 377 135 394 129 388 130 355 134 345 132 318 120 311 121 301 144 281 130 265 137 246 Fergus McDuck
poly 137 436 159 398 142 386 151 358 165 343 195 349 205 365 210 383 197 403 214 420 213 443 196 449 155 447 Hortense McDuck
poly 226 265 243 261 259 271 269 289 261 308 250 325 270 346 282 351 279 356 262 363 240 377 241 404 231 399 204 399 214 382 201 349 197 329 219 316 213 292 213 276 Scrooge McDuck
poly 222 231 232 213 245 209 246 181 283 174 293 204 295 224 304 228 299 249 292 251 284 282 303 275 305 309 289 347 275 345 255 324 271 289 258 266 237 257 218 260 229 240 Angus "Pothole" McDuck
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The Clan McDuck is a fictional Scottish clan of cartoon ducks from which Disney character Scrooge McDuck is descended. Within the Donald Duck universe, the clan is related to the American Duck family through the marriage of Hortense McDuck and Quackmore Duck, Donald's parents.
Clan McDuck was created by American comic book author Carl Barks, who also created the character of Scrooge McDuck. Barks' 1948 story "The Old Castle's Secret," in which Scrooge and his nephews search for hidden treasure in McDuck Castle, introduced the backstory of the clan. Other authors built on Barks' work, most notably Don Rosa in his 12-part comic saga "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" (1992–94) which introduced Scrooge's immediate family.
In the early 1950s, Carl Barks was in his second decade of creating comic book stories starring Donald Duck and his various relatives. He had personally created several of the latter, including cousin Gladstone Gander and uncle Scrooge McDuck, although the specific relationships between them were still uncertain. To better define these relationships, Barks created a version of the McDuck/Duck/Coot family tree for his own personal benefit, incidentally creating several additional characters.
During his retirement, Barks' stories remained popular and gained him unexpected fame. Barks gave several interviews during which he answered questions about his stories and the characters he had created. In 1981, Barks described his personal version of Donald's family tree, which was used by amateur artist Mark Worden in drawing the family tree and including portraits of the characters mentioned. Worden's tree was first published in several fanzines, and later in the Disney-licensed "Carl Barks Library", a ten-volume hardcover collection of Barks' stories in black-and-white.
In 1987, Don Rosa, a long-time fan of Carl Barks and a personal friend of Mark Worden, started creating his own stories featuring Scrooge McDuck. His stories contained numerous references to older stories by Barks as well as several original ideas. After several years he gained a fan base of his own. In the early 1990s, the Egmont Group, the publishing house employing Rosa, offered him an ambitious assignment: he was to create the definitive version of Scrooge's biography and a family tree to accompany it. The project was intended to end decades of contradictions between stories which caused confusion to readers. The project was to become "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck". The family tree accompanying it was first published in Norway on July 3, 1993.
In the process of working on Scrooge's biography, Rosa studied Barks' old stories in detail. Rosa made note of as many clues as he could of Scrooge's past given by Barks – which Rosa dubbed "Barksian facts" – and used them to write new stories. Despite the ambitious nature of the project, Rosa himself stressed in the introduction to the book "...this version of Scrooge's life is not the 'official' version – there's no particular reason why I (or anyone else) should expect other Duck writers to adhere to my vision of Scrooge's history. As carefully and authentically as I sought to construct it, it was never intended to be anything but my personal telling of the life of Scrooge McDuck."
The family tree below shows the McDuck portion of Donald's family tree according to Carl Barks. The chart is based on a 1950s sketch made by Barks for personal use, which was later illustrated by artist Mark Worden in 1981. According to Barks, Matilda McDuck is married to Goosetail Gander, and the couple adopts Donald's cousin Gladstone. The character Old "Scotty" McDuck does not appear in any stories, but eventually became Fergus McDuck in Don Rosa's stories.
This family tree is based on the work of Don Rosa.
The seat of Clan McDuck is McDuck Castle (alternately called Castle McDuck) which is located in Dismal Downs, somewhere in Rannoch Moor, a non-fictional location within Scotland. The nearest village is the fictional MacDuich. The castle usually appears in good condition considering its great age. However, in the Barks story "Hound of the Whiskervilles" (1960) the castle is in ruins.
The comics continuity does not establish when McDuck Castle was built, but it first appears (on the fictional timeline) in 946 when the Saxons laid siege to it. For many centuries the castle served as the home of the clan chief. In 1675, the McDucks were run out of the castle due to the depredations of a "monstrous devil dog" in Dismal Downs, later discovered to be a plot by the rival Clan Whiskerville. At this time, many of the McDucks moved to the village of MacDuich and to Glasgow. Even after their departure, the clan still owned the castle and continued to pay the taxes by pooling their incomes. By 1885, only Fergus and Jake McDuck remain to pay the taxes, but their combined income is not enough, causing the Crown to auction it off. Scrooge then buys the estate, allowing his family to reoccupy the castle. He also hires local dogface Scottie McTerrier as caretaker. Sometime after Scottie's death, Scrooge's sister Matilda becomes caretaker.
In the "DuckTales" continuity, Castle McDuck was built by Scrooge's great-great grandfather Silas who incorporated the castle into an existing Druid stone circle to save on construction costs. This story would date the castle itself to about the 18th century. The Druids, seeking revenge on the McDucks for taking away their sacred meeting place, scared the clan away using trained phosphorescent hounds. Years later, Scrooge returns with Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Webby and uncovers the mystery. Scrooge befriends the Druids and partners with them to turn Castle McDuck into a tourist attraction. Scrooge plans to give a share of the profit to the Druids as reparations for desecrating their stone circle. The story is loosely based on the Barks story "Hound of the Whiskervilles", which was in turn loosely based on "The Hound of the Baskervilles". In the 2017 "DuckTales" series, the castle is Clan McDuck's ancestral home, as in the comics, and is protected by the spirits of the McDuck ancestors buried there. Scrooge used part of his fortune to purchase and restore the castle as a home for his parents, but because he used discount druid stones, his parents were cursed with immortality and bound to the castle, which appears only once every five years.
The castle appears in the Carl Barks stories "The Old Castle's Secret" (1948) and "Hound of the Whiskervilles" (1960) and in the Don Rosa stories "The Last of the Clan McDuck" (1992), "The New Laird of Castle McDuck" (1993), "The Billionaire of Dismal Downs" (1993) and "The Old Castle's Other Secret or A Letter from Home" (2004). Other comic book authors have also used the castle, such as Andrew Galton, Dave Angus, and Vicar in "The Crying Monster" (1982). In the 1987 TV series "DuckTales", McDuck Castle appears in the episode "The Curse of Castle McDuck". In the 2017 "DuckTales" series, the castle is the setting of the episode "The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck!".
The fictional McDuck tartan first appears in 1960 in "Hound of the Whiskervilles". However, the coloring of the tartan was not Barks' decision but that of colorists working for Dell Comics, which first published the story; subsequent publications showed the tartan having differing colors. When Don Rosa decided to include the tartan in his stories, he used the original coloring of green and orange. Nevertheless, some European publications have still shown variations in Rosa's color scheme. (See Sir Roast McDuck's tam o' shanter cap in the illustration at the top of the page, which was first published in France.) The old clansmen seen on "DuckTales" wear a green and orange tartan, but of a slightly different design from that of the comics.
Scrooge Shah was the last king of Sagbad and the earliest known ancestor of Scrooge McDuck. A young King Khan Khan (2050 BC-1967 AD) sacked the city of Sagbad in 2033 BC, but Scrooge Shah and Prince Donduk, his heir apparent, managed to escape. Khan Khan lost their tracks, but would much later locate their distant descendants. Scrooge Shah features in the story "King Scrooge the First" (1967) by Carl Barks and Tony Strobl.
Sir Eider McDuck (880-946; from earlier Eider MacDuich) was the chief of Clan McDuck during an Anglo-Saxon invasion in 946 (despite England and Scotland signing a peace treaty in 945). Eider was killed during the Anglo-Saxons' siege of McDuck Castle after his serfs abandoned him. He had refused to buy them arrows because they were too expensive, and only paid his serfs, collectively, 30 copper pieces an hour. Eider McDuck is first mentioned in Barks' "The Old Castle's Secret" (1948).
Friar Juicy McDuck (910-971) and Sir Smokt McDuck (b. 931) are buried in the McDuck cemetery as seen in the Carl Barks painting "Dubious Doings at Dismal Downs".
He makes a cameo appearance in the 2017 "DuckTales" series episode, "The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck!", both as a statue in front of the titular Castle McDuck and as a ghost.
Sir Quackly McDuck (1010-1057; from earlier Quackly MacDuich) was clan chief when King Macbeth was killed in 1057. That same year, Macbeth offered Quackly a treasure chest in exchange for his support in the ongoing war for the throne. Quackly agreed and served the king during the war, but became obsessed with protecting the treasure, eventually trapping himself inside the castle walls with it. Quackly and his treasure became a McDuck legend, and it is believed that his ghost continues to protect the treasure and the castle.
In 1877, Quackly's ghost saves a young Scrooge McDuck from the Whiskervilles of Dismal Downs. Without revealing his true identity, he suggests to Scrooge that he travel to America and work for his Uncle Pothole, thus serving as the catalyst for all of Scrooge's adventures. In 1885, Quackly again tries to save Scrooge, but his action unintentionally brings about Scrooge's temporary death. In heaven, Quackly is reprimanded by his relatives for interfering in earthly events. Quackly McDuck is first mentioned in "The Old Castle's Secret" (1948) by Carl Barks, and first appears in "The Last of the Clan McDuck" (1994) by Don Rosa.
Sir Murdoch McDuck (?-1066; from earlier Murdoch MacDuich) was a businessman who patented the longbow. Most notably in 1066, when the Normans invaded England, he had the latter sign a contract with him so they would have enough longbows to fight off the invaders. However, they did not have enough arrows as Sir Murdoch charged extra for them. He is also the last of the Dark Ages McDucks and the one who modernized their family name "MacDuich" to the more familiar "McDuck". He only appears in the unfinished sketch-only story "The History of the Clan McDuck" (written and drawn approx. in 1992 by Don Rosa, but not released until December 2011), which was meant to serve as a prologue to "The Last of the Clan McDuck" before it was scrapped.
In the 2017 "DuckTales" series episode, "The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck!", Downy McDuck relates Murdoch's history (which remains intact) to Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck, and Webby Vanderquack. His longbow is later used as a clue that the boys use to uncover the mystery behind their mother, Della's, disappearance.
Sir Stuft McDuck (1110-1175) was a successful chief of Clan McDuck who oversaw a period of prosperity.
Sir Roast McDuck (1159-1205) succeeded his father, Stuft McDuck, as clan chief, while Clan McDuck was one of the richest clans in Scotland. However, in 1189, Roast offered much of the clan's wealth to the king of Scotland, William the Lion, after William asked for his help in paying tribute to Richard I of England. This act of patriotic generosity led to financial ruin for the clan. Aside from this imprudence, Roast is primarily remembered for his gluttony. In 1205, he raided the king's pantry and ate himself to death. Roast's memorial suit of armor displayed in Castle McDuck holds a knife and fork in its hands. The character is first mentioned in "The Old Castle's Secret" (1948) by Carl Barks. He has a small speaking role in "The Last of the Clan McDuck" (1994), but makes his first appearance in "The New Laird of Castle McDuck".
His ghost makes a cameo appearance in the 2017 "DuckTales" series episode, "The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck!"
Sir Swamphole McDuck (1190-1260) succeeded his father, Roast McDuck, as clan chief and inherited its financial problems. In 1220, Swamphole sealed the dungeon of Castle McDuck, which he claimed was an attempt to decrease maintenance costs. He did, however, create secret passageways in the castle leading to the dungeons. (These passageways would later be useful during subsequent sieges.) After his death in 1260, Swamphole was not buried in the clan cemetery; rather, his skeleton was placed inside his memorial suit of armor, which was placed in Castle McDuck. Swamphole McDuck is first mentioned in "The Old Castle's Secret" by Carl Barks. In "The Old Castle's Other Secret or A Letter from Home" (2004) by Don Rosa, it is revealed that Swamphole sealed the dungeons not to reduce maintenance costs, but to conceal a treasure.
In the 2017 "DuckTales" series episode, "The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck!", he is stated to be a treasure hunter (like Scrooge) who constructed secret passageways underneath Castle McDuck and let loose a demon dog to protect his treasure. His ghost later appears to ward off said demon dog alongside the ghosts of several of his family members.
Sir Donald McDuck, nicknamed "Black Donald" because of his foul temper, is said to have invented golf, the hammer throw, and the caber toss in 1440. His temper while playing golf resulted in James II of Scotland outlawing the sport. Black Donald is mentioned in "The History of the Clan McDuck" by Don Rosa.
In the 2017 "DuckTales" series episode "The Missing Links of Moorshire!", Scrooge McDuck relates the story of how "Black Donald" McDuck invented golf and subsequently got it banned due to his temper to Dewey, Louie, and Webby before participating in a golf tournament in Scotland.
Sir Simon McDuck (1437-1509) was the treasurer of the Knights Templar and hid their treasure beneath McDuck Castle. He is mentioned in "The Old Castle's Other Secret or A Letter from Home" (2004) by Don Rosa.
In the 2017 "DuckTales" series episode, "The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck", Scrooge McDuck states Simon was the "accountant" to the Knights Templar who had stolen and hidden their treasure somewhere underneath Castle McDuck, and he had returned to his father Fergus to reluctantly ask for his help in finding it since he knows where it is. His ghost appears later in the episode to stop a ghost hound from attacking Scrooge's grandnephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
Malcolm "Matey" McDuck (1530-1564?) was a McDuck relative who settled in England and is suggested to be a previous incarnation of Scrooge McDuck. Malcolm served in the English Navy, and in 1563 he became first mate of the frigate HMS "Falcon Rover", serving under Captain Loyal Hawk. The "Falcon Rover" raided Spanish targets in the Caribbean Sea between 1563 and 1564. Also serving on the "Falcon Rover" was the boatswain, Pintail Duck, an ancestor of Donald Duck.
Malcolm is said to have lost his life on 9 December 1564 when the Spanish fleet sunk the HMS "Falcon Rover". However, in 1579, Malcolm was also said to have commanded the newly founded Fort Drakeborough, an establishment that in 1818 was taken over by Cornelius Coot and renamed Fort Duckburg. Malcolm first appears in "Back to Long Ago!" (1956) by Carl Barks.
He is mentioned on Webby Vanderquack's family chart in the 2017 "DuckTales" series.
Locksley McDuck was an 18th-century McDuck relative. Sometime after 1707, he became an associate of Scottish outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor who is characterized as a noble thief who would "rob from the rich to give to the poor". Locksley's alliance with MacGregor would come to an end after Locksley was unable to "give to the poor" after having robbed the rich. He is mentioned in "The History of The Clan McDuck" by Don Rosa. His name is derived from the English village of Loxley, the traditional birthplace of Robin Hood.
Captain Hugh "Seafoam" McDuck (1710-1776) was a McDuck relative who settled in Glasgow in 1727, as the clan had been driven from their ancestral home of Dismal Downs in 1675. Hugh turned to the sea for a living and became a successful merchant. He obtained his own ship, the "Golden Goose", and became known by the nickname "Seafoam".
In 1753, Seafoam McDuck signed a contract with Swindle McSue to deliver a cargo of horseradish to Jamaica. But McSue sabotaged the "Golden Goose" and the ship sank before reaching Jamaica. Upon returning to Scotland, Seafoam McDuck learned that his contract with McSue contained fine print stating that if the shipment was not completed, McDuck would forfeit all his possessions to McSue. Seafoam escaped with nothing but the clothes on his back, a silver pocket watch, and the golden dentures in his mouth. It is later presumed that Seafoam was involved in the American Revolutionary War and died in 1776. His descendant Quagmire McDuck inherited the silver pocket watch. Seafoam McDuck first appears in "The Horseradish Story" (1953) by Carl Barks.
His ghost makes a cameo appearance in the 2017 "DuckTales" series episode, "The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck".
"Dirty" Dingus McDuck, was Scrooge's grandfather. He worked as a coal miner, married Molly Mallard, and had three sons – Angus, Fergus, and Jake. He appeared in Don Rosa's illustrated family tree, but has not appeared in any comic book stories. A 1960s story by Bob Gregory and Tony Strobl identifies Scrooge's grandfather as Titus McDuck.
In the 2017 "DuckTales" series episode, "The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck", Dingus is revealed to have had an antagonistic relationship with his son, Fergus (not unlike that of the latter and his son, Scrooge). In fact, knowing he would seek out Simon McDuck's treasure, he left his son a note telling him to work hard and not accept hand-outs inside a hidden chamber underneath Castle McDuck.
Molly Mallard was the wife of Dingus McDuck and the mother of Angus, Fergus, and Jake McDuck. Her first and only appearance was in an illustrated family tree created by Don Rosa; she has not appeared in any stories. Coincidentally, her maiden name is the same as the title character of "Darkwing Duck."
Her ghost makes a cameo appearance in the 2017 "DuckTales" series' episode, "The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck!"
Quagmire McDuck was Dingus McDuck's brother and Scrooge McDuck's great uncle. He inherited a silver watch from his ancestor Hugh "Seafoam" McDuck and passed it on to his nephew Fergus. After his death, Quagmire's estate remained unclaimed. Quagmire appears in the Carl Barks story "The Heirloom Watch" (1955).
His ghost makes a cameo appearance in the 2017 "DuckTales" series episode, "The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck".
Angus "Pothole" McDuck (born 1829) is the first child of Dingus and Molly McDuck, and is Scrooge's uncle. Angus was born in Glasgow in 1829. He was first mentioned in "The Great Steamboat Race" by Carl Barks and later appeared in person in a handful of stories by Don Rosa.
Angus migrated to the United States during the late 1840s. In 1850 he was working as a cabin boy in the Mississippi riverboat "Drennan Whyte" when it sunk. He was the only survivor. He continued working on Mississippi riverboats and he had obtained his own by 1861, named "Cotton Queen". Around the time of the American Civil War (1861–1865) he became quite successful as a river boater. Soon after the end of the war in 1865 he and fellow river boater Porker Hogg became the co-owners of Cornpone Gables, a Southern plantation that had gone bankrupt. The two were unable to settle their differences and they decided to have a riverboat race in 1870 to decide who would be the owner. Both riverboats sank. Porker had two more riverboats but Angus spent the next ten years as a professional card player.
In 1880, in a poker game with Porker, Angus won the rights to one of his rival's riverboats, named "Dilly Dollar". Porker soon lost his other riverboat to Blackheart Beagle and his sons, the first generation of the Beagle Boys, a family of outlaws, and retired. Angus on the other hand hired his nephew Scrooge McDuck and a penniless inventor named Ratchet Gearloose as his crew. Business wasn't going well and Angus decided to retire in 1882. He left his riverboat to his nephew and settled down in New Orleans.
He became the writer of a series of dime novels under the title "The Master of Mississippi", based on a highly exaggerated description of his life. His dime novels became very popular and to have more material to add he occasionally traveled through the country. In the story "The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff" by Don Rosa, he is seen appearing at Buffalo Bill's Wild West. After the show's money is stolen by the Dalton Gang, Angus rides out with Bill, Scrooge, P. T. Barnum, Annie Oakley, and Geronimo to stop the bandits.
Angus' exact date of death is unknown.
In 1955, Porker's nephew, Horseshoe Hogg, and Scrooge McDuck would bring their uncles' steamboats back to the surface to finish the race for Cornpone Gables. Scrooge won, only to learn that 85 years of disuse made the mansion so fragile that he accidentally destroyed it with a sneeze.
A character obviously based on Angus, but called "Catfish" McDuck and voiced by Peter Renaday, appears in the 1987 "DuckTales" episode, "Once Upon a Dime."
Fergus McDuck (1835–1902) is the second child of Dingus and Molly McDuck and the father of Scrooge McDuck. As such he is a prominent character in "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck".
He was born in Glasgow in 1835 to Dingus McDuck and Molly Mallard, who were both working as coal miners at the time. He spent most of his life as a mill worker.
According to a story by William Van Horn, Fergus at some point had a short marriage with an unidentified woman, with whom he had the son Rumpus McFowl. He later married Downy O'Drake, his wife in Rosa's stories, who became the mother of three of his children – Scrooge, Matilda, and Hortense.
The rest of Fergus' biography is shown in "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck". In 1877 he encouraged his son to work to have his own money. Scrooge's obvious intelligence, skill at hard work and ambition made his father believe that Scrooge would be able to restore Clan McDuck to its former glory. In the story "Of Ducks, Dimes, and Destinies", it is revealed that Scrooge's Number One Dime came from Fergus, who gave it to the man who used it to pay Scrooge for shining his shoes.
In 1885 the Clan's hereditary lands would have been seized due to Fergus' inability to pay his taxes. But Scrooge spent his savings at the time ($10,000) to pay the taxes and become the new owner of their lands. While Scrooge was away, Fergus and his family moved back to Castle McDuck, abandoned for centuries in Dismal Downs. The family continued to work to pay for the taxes and Scrooge sent them most all of the money he earned while traveling. Fergus became a widower in 1897.
Scrooge became rich in the Klondike and returned to Scotland in 1902 as a billionaire. Scrooge's intention was originally to settle in Dismal Downs but he quickly changed his mind and decided to settle in the United States. He wanted to take his family with him. His sisters accepted but Fergus decided to stay. He died during the night, aged 72, and was re-united with his wife Downy and the rest of the McDuck Clan as his three children left Scotland.
In Don Rosa's "The Old Castle's Other Secret or A Letter from Home", it's revealed that Fergus tried to find the Knights Templar treasure hidden in the castle McDuck by one of his ancestors, a Knight himself. Even though Fergus decided not to tell Scrooge about the treasure, he learns about it through other ways and, like Matilda McDuck, thinks Fergus kept the secret from him because he disapproved of Scrooge. In the middle of their way to the treasure, Scrooge, Matilda and Scrooge's nephews find a letter from Fergus, who believed Scrooge would eventually find it, revealing the reason he hid the secret from Scrooge is that Scrooge would feel better building his own fortune instead of inheriting one.
Fergus appears in the classic 1987 "DuckTales" episode, "Once Upon a Dime", which explores Scrooge's history. Here he is referred to as "McPapa." Fergus' name and image are also present in the 2017 "DuckTales" series, which draws heavily from the comics. He later appears (voiced by Graham McTavish) in the episode, "The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck!", having survived to the present day due to Scrooge rebuilding Castle McDuck using magic stones that granted his parents (and possibly Scrooge himself) immortality. Scrooge and Fergus' relationship is initially tense, with the latter expressing apparent disapproval of the former; though in reality, he was upset because Scrooge hadn't been a part of his life. They later reconcile after Fergus reveals he was the one who gave Scrooge his Number One Dime, via Burt the Ditch Digger, in order to give him the gift of "self-reliance" since he couldn't afford to buy him a proper gift.
In the 1993 NES game "DuckTales 2", Scrooge and his nephews found a piece of a treasure map that led to the lost treasure of a character named Fergus McDuck. However, this Fergus is not Scrooge's father but Scrooge's great-great-uncle.
Downy McDuck (née O'Drake; 1840–1897) is Scrooge McDuck's mother. She was created by Don Rosa and first appears in "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck". She is of Irish origin and was born in 1840.
She was a very devoted housewife and mother. She settled in Castle McDuck at Dismal Downs, Clan McDuck's old castle, along with her family in 1885. She died in 1897, and was buried in the McDucks' cemetery. She later appeared to her husband Fergus at his own passing, and together they joined various McDuck ancestors.
Downy's image and name are also present in the 2017 incarnation of "DuckTales", usually alongside those of her husband. Alongside Fergus, she makes a physical appearance in the episode, "The Secret(s) of Castle McDuck!", voiced by Ashley Jensen.
Jake McDuck (1832–?) is Scrooge McDuck's uncle. He was mentioned in the story "A Christmas for Shacktown" (1952) by Carl Barks, in which Donald Duck dresses up as Jake in an attempt to trick Scrooge into giving money to charity.
The character was later used by Don Rosa, and appears in three of twelve original chapters of Rosa's "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck". He lived in the same house as his brother Fergus McDuck and helped Fergus and his wife Downy O'Drake to raise their children. He settled in McDuck castle along with his brother in 1885. However, it appears that by 1902, Jake was no longer living there.
According to Rosa's sketches and timelines, Jake was born in 1832 to coal miners Dingus McDuck and Molly Mallard, and grew up to become a stockyard hand in Glasgow. His date of death is unknown, but it appears that both Scrooge and Donald believed him to be alive in 1952.
Rumpus McFowl was created by William Van Horn and introduced as a lazy and greedy cousin of Scrooge McDuck. It was soon revealed that he was in fact Scrooge's half-brother, born during his mother's brief marriage to Fergus McDuck.
Scrooge McDuck (1867, according to Don Rosa) is the first child of Fergus and Downy McDuck and is the protagonist of most stories involving the Clan McDuck. He does not marry and has no offspring of his own, although he does come to maintain close relationships with his nephew Donald Duck and his grandnephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck.
Gideon McDuck ("Gedeone de' Paperoni" in original Italian) is Scrooge McDuck's moralistic brother, and is a recurring character in Italian comic stories; in those stories, Gideon is the editor of the newspaper "The County Conscience", the most credible newspaper in Duckburg. The newspaper is originally known as "Il Grillo Parlante", which is the Italian name of the Pinocchio character The Talking Cricket and its Disney version Jiminy Cricket; a statue of Jiminy is therefore present in Gideon's office. Gideon also has an antagonistic relationship with his brother Scrooge.
The character was created by Romano Scarpa, and first appeared in the story "Paperino e i gamberi in salmì" (1956). The character's debut story is the only one that was printed in the United States, as it was published in 2015 under the title "Shellfish Motives".
Gideon's existence is inconsistent with a statement made in Carl Barks's "The Old Castle's Secret". In this story, Scrooge states that he is the last of the Clan McDuck, which would mean that he couldn't have a living sibling. However, Gideon is not the only living relative of Scrooge to carry the surname "McDuck", and therefore cause the same inconsistency with Barks's story; others include his sister Matilda and first cousin Douglas. In the American translation of "Shellfish Motives" Gideon is said to be younger than Scrooge, while the original version doesn't specify which one of them is younger.
Matilda McDuck (born 1871) is one of Scrooge McDuck's two sisters. She was first mentioned in Carl Barks' 1950s sketch for a Duck family tree, where she was shown to have adopted Gladstone Gander. The Matilda McDuck character was dropped in Barks' 1991 Duck Family Tree sketch (where Gladstone Gander is the biological grandson of Grandma Duck and not related to Scrooge), but Don Rosa picked up the name, and used Matilda McDuck as a prominent character in "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck".
Matilda McDuck was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1871 to Fergus McDuck and Downy O'Drake. She is the younger sister of Scrooge McDuck. She has a younger sister named Hortense.
In contrast to Scrooge and Hortense's fiery tempers, she usually had a calm demeanor. In 1902 Scrooge returned to Scotland and took both of his sisters with him to go to America. When he established his base in Duckburg, Calisota, United States he left Matilda and Hortense to run his empire from 1902 to 1930. In the meantime he traveled the world expanding his financial empire. In 1930, a conflict with Scrooge ended all relationships between him and his family, and his sisters are believed to have left Duckburg.
In the story "The Old Castle's Other Secret or A Letter from Home" (2004), Don Rosa used Matilda McDuck in a non-"Life and Times" story for the first time. In this story, it is shown that she was hired by her nephew Donald Duck (son of Hortense) to tend the McDuck castle in Scotland. The story shows the reconciliation between Matilda and Scrooge. It is suggested that Donald deliberately set them up for a reunion. Unfortunately, he did not get the thanks he expected. This is the first time Huey, Dewey, and Louie met their great aunt. In that story, Scrooge returns to McDuck Castle for another treasure and learns from Matilda that his family already knew about the treasure but their father Fergus decided not to tell Scrooge about it. Both Scrooge and Matilda thought that was because of Fergus' disapproval of Scrooge's greedy ways but after finding a letter on the way for the treasure (hence the other title "A Letter from Home") they learn Fergus's real motive was that he thought Scrooge would feel better building his own fortune instead of simply inheriting one.
Matilda, while trying to leave the castle, mentions Hortense. However, in the commentary in the American printing of the story, Don Rosa states that he was prevented from using Hortense because he would have had to explain why she had abandoned her family. So Hortense's fate remains a mystery. In the notes to the Danish publication of the story (Hall of Fame - Don Rosa Book 10), it is stated that the publisher decided that Hortense was "officially dead".
Matilda is usually drawn with a flower on her hat, which loses a petal in each panel in which she appears.
Don Rosa has suggested that Matilda McDuck could have married the well-known Disney character Ludwig Von Drake.
A picture of Matilda appears in the 2017 DuckTales series pilot episode, "Woo-oo!", as part of Webby's research on Scrooge's family.
Hortense Duck (née "McDuck"; b. 1876) was introduced as a relatively well-connected member of her family. A daughter-in-law to Grandma Duck, a sister to Matilda McDuck and Scrooge McDuck, wife to Quackmore Duck, sister-in-law of Goosetave Gander and Daphne Duck, aunt to Gladstone Gander, mother to Della Duck and Donald Duck, and finally grandmother to Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
Hortense was born in 1876 in Glasgow, Scotland as the youngest child of Fergus McDuck and Downy O'Drake. In Barks' tree, her oldest brother was Scrooge McDuck and her older sister Matilda McDuck. Some non-Barks writers gave Scrooge two half-brothers, Rumpus McFowl and Gideon McDuck, though these do not appear in Barks' conception of the family. De' Paperoni is a twin of Scrooge in a story. Jake McDuck, her paternal uncle, was also living with them.
Hortense was born in a working class family living in relative poverty. In 1877 her ten-year-old brother Scrooge started working as a shoe polisher in an effort to help support his family. At the time Hortense was merely an infant sucking on her thumb. She observed from a distance with her father and sister while her brother earned the number one dime. Scrooge would spend some of his leisure time with his younger sisters, and occasionally repaired their dolls. Otherwise Hortense spent most of her time clinging to her older sister.
By 1880, Scrooge came to realise that his earnings were not enough despite his hard work and efforts. He emigrated to the United States in hopes of earning his own fortune. He was hired as a cabin boy on a merchant ship heading to New Orleans. Scrooge noted that Hortense's "Bye, Scroogey" were her first spoken words. Before that, all she could say was "glxblt".
From an early age it was obvious Hortense had a fairly nasty temper combined with considerable strength, and on at least one occasion (in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, Chapter 10) she has been called a spitfire. In 1882, Scrooge was hired as a cowboy by Murdo MacKenzie. To do this he had to ride Widow Maker, a mare who had already managed to dispose of five other cowboys. Scrooge soon managed to become her rider although he never really managed to tame her. He renamed the horse Hortense after his spirited six-year-old sister. The latter found this idea unflattering at best.
In 1885, the Clan McDuck's hereditary lands were in danger of being seized due to her father being unable to pay taxes. The lands also included Dismal Downs, the Clan's castle which had been abandoned since 1675. The Whiskervilles, traditional enemies of the McDucks since the 15th century, planned to gain ownership of the lands and were already trying to plunder the castle and its graveyard in search of old relics and treasure. Fergus and Jake guarded the Castle in order to stop them. Nine-year-old Hortense offered to help them and proved more effective in conflict than either of the elder McDucks. The Whiskervilles came to fear her.
In 1902 Scrooge McDuck returned to Scotland to fetch Hortense and their sister Matilda McDuck. When Scrooge established Duckburg, Calisota as his home base he started journeying the world trying to expand his financial empire. One of her proudest moments was when she single-handedly caused the entire US military to flee Killmotor Hill armed only with a broom and her bad temper, much to the shame of the current president, Theodore Roosevelt, and the fear of the soldiers. From 1902 until 1930, she and Matilda ran Scrooge's empire from his home base while he was away. During these years Hortense met her boyfriend, Quackmore Duck, whom she married in 1920. Later the same year she gave birth to twins. Her son was named Donald Duck and her daughter Della Duck. Of the two only the boy inherited his mother's temper. A fight with Scrooge in 1930 ended all relationships between Scrooge and his family and she retired.
Scrooge may have claimed that he is the last McDuck, as he is the only male left. Hortense and Matilda changed their names to Duck after marriage, so, technically, Scrooge is the last McDuck.
Hortense is mentioned and pictured in the "DuckTales" 2017 premier "Woo-oo!", where Webby Vanderquack cites her as a connecting link between the triplets and Scrooge.
Douglas McDuck is a cousin of Scrooge who has appeared in several Danish Disney comic stories. He looks like Scrooge not only in appearance but also in temperament. He is so incredibly stingy that he considers Scrooge a spendthrift, often criticizing a frustrated Scrooge for not being "McDuck-like" enough. Douglas is, however, hopeless at finding and identifying gold; he generally lives a rustic life in mining country, locating only fool's gold and earning a modest living. In the story "Smarter Than The Toughies", Douglas was portrayed as being the uncle of Whitewater Duck.
Moocher McDuck is the beggar cousin of Scrooge who appeared for the first time in the story "Too Many McDucks" by Tony Strobl. Moocher's look is very similar to Scrooge's, except for the fact that he wears tattered clothes, but unlike his very rich cousin, Moocher is a sweetheart. He was used in some Brazilian comic stories in the 1970s.
The Duck family are Scrooge's American relatives and include his nephew Donald, niece Della and grandnephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie. They are related through Hortense's marriage to Quackmore Duck, Donald's father.
Aunt Eider is the aunt of both Scrooge McDuck and John D. Rockerduck. The Italian story "La Stella di Burbank", where she is portrayed as a myopic old woman who doesn't realize she needs to wear glasses, is presumably her first comic book appearance. But Aunt Eider appears wearing glasses in her next three comic book appearances. Dick Kinney wrote the last three comic stories where this character was used, and three famous cartoonists respectively drew those ones. Al Hubbard, Marco Rota and Giorgio Cavazzano. Neither of these stories was published in America. The story "Most Helpful Aunt Eider" is the only one where Aunt Eider doesn't meet her wealthy nephews. It's a Junior Woodchucks story.
Since there isn't any clue on how the tireless and slightly bossy Aunt Eider could be the aunt of both Scrooge and Rockerduck in the comic stories with her, some fans of this universe have invented their own explanations for this fact. It really seems she never had a surname, so she has been connected to Scrooge's family through his paternal grandmother, Molly Mallard, who would be an aunt of Eider. This wouldmake Eider a "Mallard" too, but, of course, this is not a widely accepted explanation at all. According to this same invented explanation, Aunt Eider would be a sister of Rockerduck's mother.
The first version of Scrooge's grandmother, Nonna Jenny, looks like Aunt Eider. She was created by the Italian comic artists Guido Martina and Giovan Battista Carpi especially for the handbook "I pensieri di Paperone", first published in 1973.
Ludwig Von Drake is Donald Duck's uncle whose relationship has never been consistently described. Don Rosa fans have speculated that Ludwig is married to Matilda McDuck, but the Disney company has portrayed him as a bachelor.
In the Dutch and Finnish languages, Scrooge personally drops the "Mac/Mc" from his last name while other members of his family retain it.
Donald Duck universe:
Real-life: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31411 |
Topaz
Topaz is a silicate mineral of aluminium and fluorine with the chemical formula Al2SiO4(F, OH)2. Topaz crystallizes in the orthorhombic system, and its crystals are mostly prismatic terminated by pyramidal and other faces. It is one of the hardest naturally occurring minerals (Mohs hardness of 8) and is the hardest of any silicate mineral. This hardness combined with its usual transparency and variety of colors means that it has acquired wide use in jewellery as a cut gemstone as well as for intaglios and other gemstone carvings.
Topaz in its natural state is a golden brown to yellow – a characteristic which means it is sometimes confused with citrine, a less valuable gemstone. A variety of impurities and treatments may make topaz wine red, pale gray, reddish-orange, pale green, or pink (rare), and opaque to translucent/transparent. The pink and red varieties come from chromium replacing aluminium in its crystalline structure.
Orange topaz, also known as precious topaz, is the conventional birthstone for November, the symbol of friendship, and the state gemstone of the U.S. state of Utah.
Imperial topaz is yellow, pink (rare, if natural) or pink-orange. Brazilian imperial topaz can often have a bright yellow to deep golden brown hue, sometimes even violet. Many brown or pale topazes are treated to make them bright yellow, gold, pink, or violet colored. Some imperial topaz stones can fade on exposure to sunlight for an extended period of time.
Blue topaz is the state gemstone of the US state of Texas. Naturally occurring blue topaz is quite rare. Typically, colorless, gray, or pale yellow and blue material is heat treated and irradiated to produce a more desired darker blue.
Mystic topaz is colorless topaz which has been artificially coated via a vapor deposition process giving it a rainbow effect on its surface.
Although very hard, topaz must be treated with greater care than some other minerals of similar hardness (such as corundum) because of a weakness of atomic bonding of the stone's molecules along one or another axial plane (whereas diamonds, for example, are composed of carbon atoms bonded to each other with equal strength along all of its planes). This gives topaz a tendency to break along such a cleavage plane if struck with sufficient force.
Topaz has a relatively low index of refraction for a gemstone, and so stones with large facets or tables do not sparkle as readily as stones cut from minerals with higher refractive indices, though quality colorless topaz sparkles and shows more "life" than similarly cut quartz. When given a typical "brilliant" cut, topaz may either show a sparkling table facet surrounded by dead-looking crown facets or a ring of sparkling crown facets with a dull well-like table.
Topaz is commonly associated with silicic igneous rocks of the granite and rhyolite type. It typically crystallizes in granitic pegmatites or in vapor cavities in rhyolite lava flows including those at Topaz Mountain in western Utah and Chivinar in South America. It can be found with fluorite and cassiterite in various areas including the Ural and Ilmensky Mountains of Russia, in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Czech Republic, Germany, Norway, Pakistan, Italy, Sweden, Japan, Brazil, Mexico; Flinders Island, Australia; Nigeria and the United States.
Brazil is one of the largest producers of topaz, some clear topaz crystals from Brazilian pegmatites can reach boulder size and weigh hundreds of pounds. The Topaz of Aurangzeb, observed by Jean Baptiste Tavernier weighed 157.75 carats. The American Golden Topaz, a more recent gem, weighed a massive 22,892.5 carats. Large, vivid blue topaz specimens from the St. Anns mine in Zimbabwe were found in the late 1980s.
Colorless and light-blue varieties of topaz are found in Precambrian granite in Mason County, Texas within the Llano Uplift. There is no commercial mining of topaz in that area.
It is possible to synthesize topaz. However, naturally occurring topaz is so abundant that this is probably not economically viable.
The name "topaz" is usually derived (via Old French: Topace and Latin: Topazus) from the Greek "Τοπάζιος" (Τοpáziοs) or "Τοπάζιον" (Τοpáziοn), from Τοπαζος, the ancient name of St. John's Island in the Red Sea which was difficult to find and from which a yellow stone (now believed to be chrysolite: yellowish olivine) was mined in ancient times; topaz itself (rather than "topazios") was not really known before the classical era. Ancient Sri Lanka (Tamraparni) exported native oriental topazes to Greece and ancient Egypt, which led to the etymologically related names of the island by Alexander Polyhistor ("Topazius") and the early Egyptians ("Topapwene") – "land of the Topaz". Pliny said that Topazos is a "legendary" island in the Red Sea and the mineral "topaz" was first mined there. Alternatively, the word "topaz" may be related to the Sanskrit word तपस् "tapas", meaning "heat" or "fire".
Nicols, the author of one of the first systematic treatises on minerals and gemstones, dedicated two chapters to the topic in 1652. In the Middle Ages, the name topaz was used to refer to any yellow gemstone, but in modern times it denotes only the silicate described above.
Many English translations of the Bible, including the King James Version, mention "topaz". However, because these translations as "topaz" all derive from the Septuagint translation "topazi[os]", which referred to a yellow stone that was not topaz, but probably "chrysolite" (chrysoberyl or peridot), topaz is likely not meant here.
An English superstition also held that topaz cured lunacy. The ancient Romans believed that topaz provided protection from danger while traveling. During the Middle Ages, it was believed that attaching the topaz to the left arm protected the owner from any curse and warded off the evil eye. It was also believed that wearing increased body heat, which would enable people to relieve a cold or fever. In Europe in the Middle Ages, topaz was believed to enhance mental powers. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31415 |
Ted Raimi
Theodore Raimi (born December 14, 1965) is an American actor, director, comedian, and writer. He is known for his roles in the works of his brother Sam Raimi, including a fake Shemp in "The Evil Dead", possessed Henrietta in "Evil Dead II", and Ted Hoffman in the "Spider-Man" trilogy. He later reprised his role as Henrietta in the television series "Ash vs. Evil Dead", in which he also played the character Chet Kaminski. He is also known for his roles as Lieutenant JG Tim O'Neill in "seaQuest DSV" and Joxer the Mighty in "" and "".
Raimi has appeared in minor roles in a number of other films and television series, including the films "Crimewave", "Intruder", "Shocker", "Darkman", "Candyman", "Army of Darkness", "Clear and Present Danger", "The Grudge", "Drag Me to Hell", and "Oz the Great and Powerful", as well as the television series "ALF", "Twin Peaks", "Baywatch", and "Supernatural". He has had voice roles in the television series "Invader Zim" and "Code Monkeys", and in the video game "".
Raimi was born to a Jewish family in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Celia (née Abrams), a lingerie store proprietor, and Leonard Raimi, a furniture store proprietor. Ted was raised in Conservative Judaism; his ancestors immigrated from Russia and Hungary. He attended Wylie E. Groves High School in Birmingham, Michigan where he was a popular DJ on WGHS, a blues harp prodigy, and an active member of the Groves Cinema Society. At seventeen he began his professional acting career doing industrial films in Detroit for Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. He attended University of Michigan, New York University, then finally University of Detroit. Raimi's older brothers are director Sam Raimi and screenwriter Ivan Raimi.
Raimi's motion picture acting credits include Wes Craven's "Shocker", "Born Yesterday", "Patriot Games", "Clear and Present Danger", "The Evil Dead", "Evil Dead II", "Army of Darkness", "Darkman" and the "Spider-Man" series, as well as roles in such features as "Stuart Saves His Family", "The Grudge", "Midnight Meat Train" and "Oz the Great and Powerful".
On television, he has been seen on shows such as "Twin Peaks", "", "Supernatural" and "Legend of the Seeker" but is best known for his roles as the communication officer Lt. Tim O'Neill on the science fiction television series "seaQuest DSV" (later "seaQuest 2032") and starring as the warrior wannabe Joxer on "".
Raimi wrote the original "Joxer the Mighty" song with help from director Josh Becker for "". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=31416 |
Panentheism
Panentheism (meaning "all-in-God", from the Greek "pân", "all", "en", "in" and "Theós", "God") is the belief that the divine pervades and interpenetrates every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time. The term was coined by the German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828 to distinguish the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) about the relation of God and the universe from the supposed pantheism of Baruch Spinoza. Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are identical, panentheism maintains an ontological distinction between the divine and the non-divine and the significance of both.
The religious beliefs of Neoplatonism can be regarded as panentheistic. Plotinus taught that there was an ineffable transcendent God ("the One", "to En", τὸ Ἕν) of which subsequent realities were emanations. From "the One" emanates the Divine Mind ("Nous", Νοῦς) and the Cosmic Soul ("Psyche", Ψυχή). In Neoplatonism the world itself is God (according to Plato's Timaeus 37). This concept of divinity is associated with that of the "Logos" (Λόγος), which had originated centuries earlier with Heraclitus (c. 535–475 BC). The "Logos" pervades the cosmos, whereby all thoughts and all things originate, or as Heraclitus said: "He who hears not me but the Logos will say: All is one." Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus attempted to reconcile this perspective by adding another hypostasis above the original monad of force or "Dunamis" (Δύναμις). This new all-pervasive monad encompassed all creation and its original uncreated emanations.
Baruch Spinoza later claimed that "Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived." "Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner." Though Spinoza has been called the "prophet" and "prince" of pantheism, in a letter to Henry Oldenburg Spinoza states that: "as to the view of certain people that I identify god with nature (taken as a kind of mass or corporeal matter), they are quite mistaken". For Spinoza, our universe (cosmos) is a mode under two attributes of Thought and Extension. God has infinitely many other attributes which are not present in our world.
According to German philosopher Karl Jaspers, when Spinoza wrote "Deus sive Natura" (God or Nature) Spinoza did not mean to say that God and Nature are interchangeable terms, but rather that God's transcendence was attested by his infinitely many attributes, and that two attributes known by humans, namely Thought and Extension, signified God's immanence. Furthermore, Martial Guéroult suggested the term "panentheism", rather than "pantheism" to describe Spinoza's view of the relation between God and the world. The world is not God, but it is, in a strong sense, "in" God. Yet, American philosopher and self-described panentheist Charles Hartshorne referred to Spinoza's philosophy as "classical pantheism" and distinguished Spinoza's philosophy from panentheism.
In 1828, the German philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832) seeking to reconcile monotheism and pantheism, coined the term "panentheism" (from the Ancient Greek expression πᾶν ἐν θεῷ, "pān en theṓ", literally "all in god"). This conception of God influenced New England transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. The term was popularized by Charles Hartshorne in his development of process theology and has also been closely identified with the New Thought. The formalization of this term in the West in the 19th century was not new; philosophical treatises had been written on it in the context of Hinduism for millennia.
Philosophers who embraced panentheism have included Thomas Hill Green (1839–1882), James Ward (1843–1925), Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (1856–1931) and Samuel Alexander (1859–1938). Beginning in the 1940s, Hartshorne examined numerous conceptions of God. He reviewed and discarded pantheism, deism, and pandeism in favor of panentheism, finding that such a "doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations". Hartshorne formulated God as a being who could become "more perfect": He has absolute perfection in categories for which absolute perfection is possible, and relative perfection (i. e., is superior to all others) in categories for which perfection cannot be precisely determined.
The earliest reference to panentheistic thought in Hindu philosophy is in a creation myth contained in the later section of Rig Veda called the Purusha Sukta, which was compiled before 1100 BCE. The Purusha Sukta gives a description of the spiritual unity of the cosmos. It presents the nature of Purusha or the cosmic being as both immanent in the manifested world and yet transcendent to it. From this being the sukta holds, the original creative will proceeds, by which this vast universe is projected in space and time.
The most influential and dominant school of Indian philosophy, Advaita Vedanta, rejects theism and dualism by insisting that "Brahman [ultimate reality] is without parts or attributes...one without a second." Since Brahman has no properties, contains no internal diversity and is identical with the whole reality it cannot be understood as an anthropomorphic personal God. The relationship between Brahman and the creation is often thought to be panentheistic.
Panentheism is also expressed in the Bhagavad Gita. In verse IX.4, Krishna states:
Many schools of Hindu thought espouse monistic theism, which is thought to be similar to a panentheistic viewpoint. Nimbarka's school of differential monism (Dvaitadvaita), Ramanuja's school of qualified monism (Vishistadvaita) and Saiva Siddhanta and Kashmir Shaivism are all considered to be panentheistic. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's Gaudiya Vaishnavism, which elucidates the doctrine of Achintya Bheda Abheda (inconceivable oneness and difference), is also thought to be panentheistic. In Kashmir Shaivism, all things are believed to be a manifestation of Universal Consciousness (Cit or Brahman). So from the point of view of this school, the phenomenal world ("Śakti") is real, and it exists and has its being in Consciousness ("Cit"). Thus, Kashmir Shaivism is also propounding of theistic monism or panentheism.
Shaktism, or Tantra, is regarded as an Indian prototype of Panentheism. Shakti is considered to be the cosmos itself – she is the embodiment of energy and dynamism, and the motivating force behind all action and existence in the material universe. Shiva is her transcendent masculine aspect, providing the divine ground of all being. "There is no Shiva without Shakti, or Shakti without Shiva. The two ... in themselves are One." Thus, it is She who becomes the time and space, the cosmos, it is She who becomes the five elements, and thus all animate life and inanimate forms. She is the primordial energy that holds all creation and destruction, all cycles of birth and death, all laws of cause and effect within Herself, and yet is greater than the sum total of all these. She is transcendent, but becomes immanent as the cosmos (Mula Prakriti). She, the Primordial Energy, directly becomes Matter.
Taoism says that all is part of the eternal tao, and that all interact through qi. Chapter 6 of the Tao Te Ching describes the Tao thus: ""The heart of Tao is immortal, the mysterious fertile mother of us all, of heaven and earth, of every thing and not-thing.""
Panentheism is also a feature of some Christian philosophical theologies and resonates strongly within the theological tradition of the Orthodox Church. It also appears in process theology. Process theological thinkers are generally regarded in the Christian West as unorthodox. Furthermore, process philosophical thought is widely believed to have paved the way for open theism, a movement that tends to associate itself primarily with the Evangelical branch of Protestantism, but is also generally considered unorthodox by most Evangelicals.
In Christianity, creation is not considered a literal "part of" God, and divinity is essentially distinct from creation (i.e., transcendent). There is, in other words, an irradicable difference between the uncreated (i.e., God) and the created (i.e., everything else). This does not mean, however, that the creation is wholly separated from God, because the creation exists in and from the divine energies. In Eastern Orthodoxy, these energies or operations are the natural activity of God and are in some sense identifiable with God, but at the same time the creation is wholly distinct from the divine essence. God creates the universe by His will and from His energies. It is, however, not an imprint or emanation of God's own essence ("ousia"), the essence He shares pre-eternally with His Word and Holy Spirit. Neither is it a directly literal outworking or effulgence of the divine, nor any other process which implies that creation is essentially God or a necessary part of God. The use of the term "panentheism" to describe the divine concept in Orthodox Christian theology is problematic for those who would insist that panentheism requires creation to be "part of" God.
God is not merely Creator of the universe, as His dynamic presence is necessary to sustain the existence of every created thing, small and great, visible and invisible. That is, God's energies maintain the existence of the created order and all created beings, even if those agencies have explicitly rejected him. His love for creation is such that He will not withdraw His presence, which would be the ultimate form of annihilation, not merely imposing death, but ending existence altogether. By this token, the entirety of creation is fundamentally "good" in its very being, and is not innately evil either in whole or in part. This does not deny the existence of spiritual or moral evil in a fallen universe, only the claim that it is an intrinsic property of creation. Sin results from the essential freedom of creatures to operate outside the divine order, not as a "necessary" consequence of having inherited human nature.
Many Christians who believe in universalism – mainly expressed in the Universalist Church of America, originating, as a fusion of Pietist and Anabaptist influences, from the American colonies of the 18th century – hold panentheistic views of God in conjunction with their belief in "apocatastasis", also called universal reconciliation. Panentheistic Christian Universalists often believe that all creation's subsistence in God renders untenable the notion of final and permanent alienation from Him, citing Scriptural passages such as Ephesians 4:6 ("[God] is over all and through all and in all") and Romans 11:36 ("from [God] and through him and to him are all things") to justify both panentheism and universalism. Panentheism was also a major force in the Unitarian church for a long time, based in part on Ralph Waldo Emerson's concept of the Over-soul (from the synonymous essay of 1841).
Panentheistic conceptions of God occur amongst some modern theologians. Process theology and Creation Spirituality, two recent developments in Christian theology, contain panentheistic ideas. Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), who conjoined process theology with panentheism, maintained a lifelong membership in the Methodist church but was also a Unitarian. In later years he joined the Austin, Texas, Unitarian Universalist congregation and was an active participant in that church. Referring to the ideas such as Thomas Oord's ‘theocosmocentrism’ (2010), the soft panentheism of open theism, Keith Ward's comparative theology and John Polkinghorne's critical realism (2009), Raymond Potgieter observes distinctions such as dipolar and bipolar:
The former suggests two poles separated such as God influencing creation and it in turn its creator (Bangert 2006:168), whereas bipolarity completes God’s being implying interdependence between temporal and eternal poles. (Marbaniang 2011:133), in dealing with Whitehead’s approach, does not make this distinction. I use the term bipolar as a generic term to include suggestions of the structural definition of God’s transcendence and immanence; to for instance accommodate a present and future reality into which deity must reasonably fit and function, and yet maintain separation from this world and evil whilst remaining within it.
Some argue that panentheism should also include the notion that God has always been related to some world or another, which denies the idea of creation out of nothing ("creatio ex nihilo"). Nazarene Methodist theologian Thomas Jay Oord (* 1965) advocates panentheism, but he uses the word "theocosmocentrism" to highlight the notion that God and some world or another are the primary conceptual starting blocks for eminently fruitful theology. This form of panentheism helps in overcoming the problem of evil and in proposing that God's love for the world is essential to who God is.
The Christian Church International also holds to a panentheist doctrine. The Latter Day Saint movement teaches that the Light of Christ "proceeds from God through Christ and gives life and light to all things."
"Gnosticism" is a modern name for a variety of ancient religious ideas and systems prevalent in the first and second century AD. The teachings of the various gnostic groups were very diverse. In his "Dictionary of Gnosticism", Andrew Phillip Smith has written that some branches of Gnosticism taught a panentheistic view of reality, and held to the belief that God exists in the visible world only as sparks of spiritual "light". The goal of human existence is to know the sparks within oneself in order to return to God, who is in the Fullness (or Pleroma).
Gnosticism was panentheistic, believing that the true God is simultaneously both separate from the physical universe and present within it. As Jesus states in the Gospel of Thomas, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all ... . Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there." This seemingly contradictory interpretation of gnostic theology is not without controversy, since one interpretation of dualistic theology holds that a perfect God of pure spirit would not manifest himself through the fallen world of matter.
Manichaeism, being another gnostic sect, preached a very different doctrine in positioning the true Manichaean God against matter as well as other deities, that it described as enmeshed with the world, namely the gods of Jews, Christians and pagans. Nevertheless, this dualistic teaching included an elaborate cosmological myth that narrates the defeat of primal man by the powers of darkness that devoured and imprisoned the particles of light.
Valentinian Gnosticism taught that matter came about through emanations of the supreme being, even if to some this event is held to be more accidental than intentional. To other gnostics, these emanations were akin to the Sephirot of the Kabbalists and deliberate manifestations of a transcendent God through a complex system of intermediaries.
While mainstream Rabbinic Judaism is classically monotheistic, and follows in the footsteps of Maimonides (c. 1135–1204), the panentheistic conception of God can be found among certain mystical Jewish traditions. A leading scholar of Kabbalah, Moshe Idel ascribes this doctrine to the kabbalistic system of Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (1522–1570) and in the eighteenth century to the Baal Shem Tov (c. 1700–1760), founder of the Hasidic movement, as well as his contemporaries, Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch (died 1772), and Menahem Mendel, the Maggid of Bar. This may be said of many, if not most, subsequent Hasidic masters. There is some debate as to whether Isaac Luria (1534–1572) and Lurianic Kabbalah, with its doctrine of tzimtzum, can be regarded as panentheistic.
According to Hasidism, the infinite Ein Sof is incorporeal and exists in a state that is both transcendent and immanent. This appears to be the view of non-Hasidic Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, as well. Hasidic Judaism merges the elite ideal of nullification to a transcendent God, via the intellectual articulation of inner dimensions through Kabbalah and with emphasis on the panentheistic divine immanence in everything.
Many scholars would argue that "panentheism" is the best single-word description of the philosophical theology of Baruch Spinoza. It is therefore no surprise, that aspects of panentheism are also evident in the theology of Reconstructionist Judaism as presented in the writings of Mordecai Kaplan (1881–1983), who was strongly influenced by Spinoza.
Several Sufi saints and thinkers, primarily Ibn Arabi, held beliefs that have been considered panentheistic. These notions later took shape in the theory of wahdat ul-wujud (the Unity of All Things). Some Sufi Orders, notably the Bektashis and the Universal Sufi movement, continue to espouse panentheistic beliefs. Nizari Ismaili follow panentheism according to Ismaili doctrine. Nevertheless, some Shia Muslims also do believe in different degrees of Panentheism.
Al-Qayyuum is a Name of God in the Qur'an which translates to "The Self-Existing by Whom all subsist". In Islam the universe can not exist if Allah doesn't exist, and it is only by His power which encompasses everything and which is everywhere that the universe can exist. In Ayaẗ al-Kursii God's throne is described as "extending over the heavens and the earth" and "He feels no fatigue in guarding and preserving them". This does not mean though that the universe is God, or that a creature (like a tree or an animal) is God, because those would be respectively pantheism, which is a heresy in traditional Islam, and the worst heresy in Islam, shirk (polytheism). God is separated by His creation but His creation can not survive without Him.
The Mesoamerican empires of the Mayas, Aztecs as well as the South American Incas (Tahuatinsuyu) have typically been characterized as polytheistic, with strong male and female deities. According to Charles C. Mann's history book "", only the lower classes of Aztec society were polytheistic. Philosopher James Maffie has argued that Aztec metaphysics was pantheistic rather than panentheistic, since Teotl was considered by Aztec philosophers to be the ultimate all-encompassing yet all-transcending force defined by its inherit duality.
Native American beliefs in North America have been characterized as panentheistic in that there is an emphasis on a single, unified divine spirit that is manifest in each individual entity. (North American Native writers have also translated the word for God as the Great Mystery or as the Sacred Other) This concept is referred to by many as the Great Spirit. Philosopher J. Baird Callicott has described Lakota theology as panentheistic, in that the divine both transcends and is immanent in everything.
One exception can be modern Cherokee who are predominantly monotheistic but apparently not panentheistic; yet in older Cherokee traditions many observe both aspects of pantheism and panentheism, and are often not beholden to exclusivity, encompassing other spiritual traditions without contradiction, a common trait among some tribes in the Americas. In the stories of Keetoowah storytellers Sequoyah Guess and Dennis Sixkiller, God is known as ᎤᏁᎳᏅᎯ, commonly pronounced "unehlanv," and visited earth in prehistoric times, but then left earth and her people to rely on themselves. This shows a parallel to Vaishnava cosmology.
The Sikh gurus have described God in numerous ways in their hymns included in the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture of Sikhism, but the oneness of the deity is consistently emphasized throughout. God is described in the Mool Mantar, the first passage in the Guru Granth Sahib, and the basic formula of the faith is:
(Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1) in Punjabi
— ੴ ਸਤਿ ਨਾਮੁ ਕਰਤਾ ਪੁਰਖੁ ਨਿਰਭਉ ਨਿਰਵੈਰੁ ਅਕਾਲ ਮੂਰਤਿ ਅਜੂਨੀ ਸੈਭੰ ਗੁਰਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ ॥
"Ik Oankar Satnaam KartaaPurakh Nirbhau Nirvair AkaalMoorat Ajooni Saibhan GurPrasad"
One primal being who made the sound (oan) that expanded and created the world. Truth is the name. Creative being personified. Without fear, without hate. Image of the undying. Beyond birth, self existent. By Guru's grace~
Guru Arjan, the fifth guru of Sikhs, says, "God is beyond colour and form, yet His/Her presence is clearly visible" (Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 74), and "Nanak's Lord transcends the world as well as the scriptures of the east and the west, and yet He/She is clearly manifest" (Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 397).
Knowledge of the ultimate Reality is not a matter for reason; it comes by revelation of the ultimate reality through nadar (grace) and by anubhava (mystical experience). Says Guru Nanak; ""budhi pathi na paiai bahu chaturaiai bhai milai mani bhane."" This translates to "He/She is not accessible through intellect, or through mere scholarship or cleverness at argument; He/She is met, when He/She pleases, through devotion" (GG, 436).
Guru Nanak prefixed the numeral one (ik) to it, making it Ik Oankar or Ek Oankar to stress God's oneness. God is named and known only through his Own immanent nature. The only name which can be said to truly fit God's transcendent state is SatNam ( Sat Sanskrit, Truth), the changeless and timeless Reality. God is transcendent and all-pervasive at the same time. Transcendence and immanence are two aspects of the same single Supreme Reality. The Reality is immanent in the entire creation, but the creation as a whole fails to contain God fully. As says Guru Tegh Bahadur, Nanak IX, "He has himself spread out His/Her Own “maya” (worldly illusion) which He oversees; many different forms He assumes in many colours, yet He stays independent of all" (GG, 537).
In the Bahá'í Faith, God is described as a single, imperishable God, the creator of all things, including all the creatures and forces in the universe. The connection between God and the world is that of the creator to his creation. God is understood to be independent of his creation, and that creation is dependent and contingent on God. Accordingly, the Bahá'í Faith is much more closely aligned with traditions of monotheism than panentheism. God is not seen to be part of creation as he cannot be divided and does not descend to the condition of his creatures. Instead, in the Bahá'í understanding, the world of creation emanates from God, in that all things have been realized by him and have attained to existence. Creation is seen as the expression of God's will in the contingent world, and every created thing is seen as a sign of God's sovereignty, and leading to knowledge of him; the signs of God are most particularly revealed in human beings.
In Konkōkyō, God is named “Tenchi Kane no Kami-Sama” which can mean “Golden spirit of the universe.” Kami (God) is also seen as infinitely loving and powerful.
People associated with panentheism: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23591 |
Paraphilia
Paraphilia (previously known as sexual perversion and sexual deviation) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals.
No consensus has been found for any precise border between unusual sexual interests and paraphilic ones. There is debate over which, if any, of the paraphilias should be listed in diagnostic manuals, such as the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM) or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
The number and taxonomy of paraphilia is under debate; one source lists as many as 549 types of paraphilia. The DSM-5 has specific listings for eight paraphilic disorders. Several sub-classifications of the paraphilias have been proposed, and some argue that a fully dimensional, spectrum or complaint-oriented approach would better reflect the evidence.
Many terms have been used to describe atypical sexual interests, and there remains debate regarding technical accuracy and perceptions of stigma. Sexologist John Money popularized the term "paraphilia" as a non-pejorative designation for unusual sexual interests. Money described paraphilia as "a sexuoerotic embellishment of, or alternative to the official, ideological norm." Psychiatrist Glen Gabbard writes that despite efforts by Stekel and Money, "the term "paraphilia" remains pejorative in most circumstances."
Coinage of the term "paraphilia" ("paraphilie") has been credited to Friedrich Salomon Krauss in 1903, and it entered the English language in 1913, in reference to Krauss by urologist William J. Robinson. It was used with some regularity by Wilhelm Stekel in the 1920s. The term comes from the Greek παρά ("para") "beside" and φιλία ("-philia") "friendship, love".
In the late 19th century, psychologists and psychiatrists started to categorize various paraphilias as they wanted a more descriptive system than the legal and religious constructs of sodomy and perversion. Before the introduction of the term "paraphilia" in the DSM-III (1980), the term "sexual deviation" was used to refer to paraphilias in the first two editions of the manual. In 1981, an article published in "American Journal of Psychiatry" described paraphilia as "recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors generally involving:
Homosexuality, now widely accepted to be a normal variant of human sexuality, was at one time discussed as a sexual deviation. Sigmund Freud and subsequent psychoanalytic thinkers considered homosexuality and paraphilias to result from psychosexual non-normative relations to the Oedipal complex. As such, the term "sexual perversion" or the epithet "pervert" have historically referred to gay men, as well as other non-heterosexuals (people who fall out of the perceived norms of sexual orientation).
By the mid-20th century, mental health practitioners began formalizing "deviant sexuality" classifications into categories. Originally coded as 000-x63, homosexuality was the top of the classification list (Code 302.0) until the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM in 1973. Martin Kafka writes, "Sexual disorders once considered paraphilias (e.g., homosexuality) are now regarded as variants of normal sexuality."
A 2012 literature study by clinical psychologist James Cantor, when comparing homosexuality with paraphilias, found that both share "the features of onset and course (both homosexuality and paraphilia being life-long), but they appear to differ on sex ratio, fraternal birth order, handedness, IQ and cognitive profile, and neuroanatomy". The research then concluded that the data seemed to suggest paraphilias and homosexuality as two distinct categories, but regarded the conclusion as "quite tentative" given the current limited understanding of paraphilias.
The causes of paraphilic sexual preferences in people are unclear, although a growing body of research points to a possible prenatal neurodevelopmental correlation. A 2008 study analyzing the sexual fantasies of 200 heterosexual men by using the Wilson Sex Fantasy Questionnaire exam determined that males with a pronounced degree of fetish interest had a greater number of older brothers, a high 2D:4D digit ratio (which would indicate excessive prenatal estrogen exposure), and an elevated probability of being left-handed, suggesting that disturbed hemispheric brain lateralization may play a role in deviant attractions.
Behavioral explanations propose that paraphilias are conditioned early in life, during an experience that pairs the paraphilic stimulus with intense sexual arousal. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema suggests that, once established, masturbatory fantasies about the stimulus reinforce and broaden the paraphilic arousal.
There is scientific and political controversy regarding the continued inclusion of sex-related diagnoses such as the paraphilias in the DSM, due to the stigma of being classified as a mental illness.
Some groups, seeking greater understanding and acceptance of sexual diversity, have lobbied for changes to the legal and medical status of unusual sexual interests and practices. Charles Allen Moser, a physician and advocate for sexual minorities, has argued that the diagnoses should be eliminated from diagnostic manuals.
Albert Eulenburg (1914) noted a commonality across the paraphilias, using the terminology of his time, "All the forms of sexual perversion...have one thing in common: their roots reach down into the matrix of natural and normal sex life; there they are somehow closely connected with the feelings and expressions of our physiological erotism. They are...hyperbolic intensifications, distortions, monstrous fruits of certain partial and secondary expressions of this erotism which is considered 'normal' or at least within the limits of healthy sex feeling."
The clinical literature contains reports of many paraphilias, only some of which receive their own entries in the diagnostic taxonomies of the American Psychiatric Association or the World Health Organization. There is disagreement regarding which sexual interests should be deemed paraphilic disorders versus normal variants of sexual interest. For example, as of May 2000, per DSM-IV-TR, "Because some cases of Sexual Sadism may not involve harm to a victim (e.g., inflicting humiliation on a consenting partner), the wording for sexual sadism involves a hybrid of the DSM-III-R and DSM-IV wording (i.e., "the person has acted on these urges with a non-consenting person, or the urges, sexual fantasies, or behaviors cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty").
The DSM-IV-TR also acknowledges that the diagnosis and classification of paraphilias across cultures or religions "is complicated by the fact that what is considered deviant in one cultural setting may be more acceptable in another setting”. Some argue that cultural relativism is important to consider when discussing paraphilias, because there is wide variance concerning what is sexually acceptable across cultures.
Consensual adult activities and adult entertainment involving sexual roleplay, novel, superficial, or trivial aspects of sexual fetishism, or incorporating the use of sex toys are not necessarily paraphilic. Paraphilial psychopathology is not the same as psychologically normative adult human sexual behaviors, sexual fantasy, and sex play.
Clinicians distinguish between optional, preferred and exclusive paraphilias, though the terminology is not completely standardized. An "optional" paraphilia is an alternative route to sexual arousal. In preferred paraphilias, a person prefers the paraphilia to conventional sexual activities, but also engages in conventional sexual activities.
The literature includes single-case studies of exceedingly rare and idiosyncratic paraphilias. These include an adolescent male who had a strong fetishistic interest in the exhaust pipes of cars, a young man with a similar interest in a specific type of car, and a man who had a paraphilic interest in sneezing (both his own and the sneezing of others).
In American psychiatry, prior to the publication of the DSM-I, paraphilias were classified as cases of "psychopathic personality with pathologic sexuality". The DSM-I (1952) included sexual deviation as a personality disorder of sociopathic subtype. The only diagnostic guidance was that sexual deviation should have been "reserved for deviant sexuality which [was] not symptomatic of more extensive syndromes, such as schizophrenic or obsessional reactions". The specifics of the disorder were to be provided by the clinician as a "supplementary term" to the sexual deviation diagnosis; there were no restrictions in the DSM-I on what this supplementary term could be. Researcher Anil Aggrawal writes that the now-obsolete DSM-I listed examples of supplementary terms for pathological behavior to include "homosexuality, transvestism, pedophilia, fetishism, and sexual sadism, including rape, sexual assault, mutilation."
The DSM-II (1968) continued to use the term "sexual deviations", but no longer ascribed them under personality disorders, but rather alongside them in a broad category titled "personality disorders and certain other nonpsychotic mental disorders". The types of sexual deviations listed in the DSM-II were: sexual orientation disturbance (homosexuality), fetishism, pedophilia, transvestitism (sic), exhibitionism, voyeurism, sadism, masochism, and "other sexual deviation". No definition or examples were provided for "other sexual deviation", but the general category of sexual deviation was meant to describe the sexual preference of individuals that was "directed primarily toward objects other than people of opposite sex, toward sexual acts not usually associated with coitus, or toward coitus performed under bizarre circumstances, as in necrophilia, pedophilia, sexual sadism, and fetishism." Except for the removal of homosexuality from the DSM-III onwards, this definition provided a general standard that has guided specific definitions of paraphilias in subsequent DSM editions, up to DSM-IV-TR.
The term "paraphilia" was introduced in the DSM-III (1980) as a subset of the new category of "psychosexual disorders."
The DSM-III-R (1987) renamed the broad category to sexual disorders, renamed atypical paraphilia to paraphilia NOS (not otherwise specified), renamed transvestism as transvestic fetishism, added frotteurism, and moved zoophilia to the NOS category. It also provided seven nonexhaustive examples of NOS paraphilias, which besides zoophilia included telephone scatologia, necrophilia, partialism, coprophilia, klismaphilia, and urophilia.
The DSM-IV (1994) retained the sexual disorders classification for paraphilias, but added an even broader category, "sexual and gender identity disorders," which includes them. The DSM-IV retained the same types of paraphilias listed in DSM-III-R, including the NOS examples, but introduced some changes to the definitions of some specific types.
The DSM-IV-TR describes paraphilias as "recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges or behaviors generally involving nonhuman objects, the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one's partner, or children or other nonconsenting persons that occur over a period of six months" (criterion A), which "cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning" (criterion B). DSM-IV-TR names eight specific paraphilic disorders (exhibitionism, fetishism, frotteurism, pedophilia, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, voyeurism, and transvestic fetishism, plus a residual category, paraphilia—not otherwise specified). Criterion B differs for exhibitionism, frotteurism, and pedophilia to include acting on these urges, and for sadism, acting on these urges with a nonconsenting person. Sexual arousal in association with objects that were designed for sexual purposes is not diagnosable.
Some paraphilias may interfere with the capacity for sexual activity with consenting adult partners.
In the current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), a paraphilia is not diagnosable as a psychiatric disorder unless it causes distress to the individual or harm to others.
The DSM-5 adds a distinction between "paraphilias" and "paraphilic disorders", stating that paraphilias do not require or justify psychiatric treatment in themselves, and defining "paraphilic disorder" as "a paraphilia that is currently causing distress or impairment to the individual or a paraphilia whose satisfaction has entailed personal harm, or risk of harm, to others".
The DSM-5 Paraphilias Subworkgroup reached a "consensus that paraphilias are not "ipso facto" psychiatric disorders", and proposed "that the DSM-V make a distinction between "paraphilias" and paraphilic "disorders". [...] One would "ascertain" a paraphilia (according to the nature of the urges, fantasies, or behaviors) but "diagnose" a paraphilic disorder (on the basis of distress and impairment). In this conception, having a paraphilia would be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for having a paraphilic disorder." The 'Rationale' page of any paraphilia in the electronic DSM-5 draft continues: "This approach leaves intact the distinction between normative and non-normative sexual behavior, which could be important to researchers, but without automatically labeling non-normative sexual behavior as psychopathological. It also eliminates certain logical absurdities in the DSM-IV-TR. In that version, for example, a man cannot be classified as a transvestite—however much he cross-dresses and however sexually exciting that is to him—unless he is unhappy about this activity or impaired by it. This change in viewpoint would be reflected in the diagnostic criteria sets by the addition of the word 'Disorder' to all the paraphilias. Thus, Sexual Sadism would become Sexual Sadism Disorder; Sexual Masochism would become Sexual Masochism Disorder, and so on."
Bioethics professor Alice Dreger interpreted these changes as "a subtle way of saying sexual kinks are basically okay – so okay, the sub-work group doesn't actually bother to define paraphilia. But a paraphilic disorder is defined: that's when an atypical sexual interest causes distress or impairment to the individual or harm to others." Interviewed by Dreger, Ray Blanchard, the Chair of the Paraphilias Sub-Work Group, stated, "We tried to go as far as we could in depathologizing mild and harmless paraphilias, while recognizing that severe paraphilias that distress or impair people or cause them to do harm to others are validly regarded as disorders."
Charles Allen Moser stated that this change is not really substantive, as the DSM-IV already acknowledged a difference between paraphilias and non-pathological but unusual sexual interests, a distinction that is virtually identical to what was being proposed for DSM-5, and it is a distinction that, in practice, has often been ignored. Linguist Andrew Clinton Hinderliter argued that "including some sexual interests—but not others—in the DSM creates a fundamental asymmetry and communicates a negative value judgment against the sexual interests included," and leaves the paraphilias in a situation similar to ego-dystonic homosexuality, which was removed from the DSM because it was realized not to be a mental disorder.
The DSM-5 acknowledges that many dozens of paraphilias exist, but only has specific listings for eight that are forensically important and relatively common. These are voyeuristic disorder, exhibitionistic disorder, frotteuristic disorder, sexual masochism disorder, sexual sadism disorder, pedophilic disorder, fetishistic disorder, and transvestic disorder. Other paraphilias can be diagnosed under the Other Specified Paraphilic Disorder or Unspecified Paraphilic Disorder listings, if accompanied by distress or impairment.
Most clinicians and researchers believe that paraphilic sexual interests cannot be altered, although evidence is needed to support this. Instead, the goal of therapy is normally to reduce the person's discomfort with their paraphilia and limit any criminal behavior. Both psychotherapeutic and pharmacological methods are available to these ends.
Cognitive behavioral therapy, at times, can help people with paraphilias develop strategies to avoid acting on their interests. Patients are taught to identify and cope with factors that make acting on their interests more likely, such as stress. It is currently the only form of psychotherapy for paraphilias supported by randomized double-blind trials, as opposed to case studies and consensus of expert opinion.
Pharmacological treatments can help people control their sexual behaviors, but do not change the content of the paraphilia. They are typically combined with cognitive behavioral therapy for best effect.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are used, especially with exhibitionists, non-offending pedophiles, and compulsive masturbators. They are proposed to work by reducing sexual arousal, compulsivity, and depressive symptoms. They have been well received and are considered an important pharmacological treatment of paraphilia.
Antiandrogens are used in more severe cases. Similar to physical castration, they work by reducing androgen levels, and have thus been described as chemical castration. The antiandrogen cyproterone acetate has been shown to substantially reduce sexual fantasies and offending behaviors. Medroxyprogesterone acetate and gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists (such as leuprorelin) have also been used to lower sex drive. Due to the side effects, the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry recommends that hormonal treatments only be used when there is a serious risk of sexual violence, or when other methods have failed. Surgical castration has largely been abandoned because these pharmacological alternatives are similarly effective and less invasive.
Research has shown that paraphilias are rarely observed in women. However, there have been some studies on females with paraphilias. Sexual masochism has been found to be the most commonly observed paraphilia in women, with approximately 1 in 20 cases of sexual masochism being female.
Many acknowledge the scarcity of research on female paraphilias. The majority of paraphilia studies are conducted on people who have been convicted of sex crimes. Since the number of male convicted sex offenders far exceeds the number of female convicted sex offenders, research on paraphilic behavior in women is consequently lacking. Some researchers argue that an underrepresentation exists concerning pedophilia in females. Due to the low number of women in studies on pedophilia, most studies are based from "exclusively male samples". This likely underrepresentation may also be attributable to a "societal tendency to dismiss the negative impact of sexual relationships between young boys and adult women". Michele Elliott has done extensive research on child sexual abuse committed by females, publishing the book "Female Sexual Abuse of Children: The Last Taboo" in an attempt to challenge the gender-biased discourse surrounding sex crimes. John Hunsley states that physiological limitations in the study of female sexuality must also be acknowledged when considering research on paraphilias. He states that while a man's sexual arousal can be directly measured from his erection (see penile plethysmograph), a woman's sexual arousal cannot be measured as clearly (see vaginal photoplethysmograph), and therefore research concerning female sexuality is rarely as conclusive as research on men.
In the United States, since 1990 a significant number of states have passed sexually violent predator laws. Following a series of landmark cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, persons diagnosed with paraphilias, particularly pedophilia ("Kansas v. Hendricks", 1997) and exhibitionism ("Kansas v. Crane", 2002), with a history of anti-social behavior and related criminal history, can be held indefinitely in civil confinement under various state legislation generically known as sexually violent predator laws and the federal Adam Walsh Act ("United States v. Comstock", 2010). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23592 |
Pediatrics
Pediatrics (also spelled paediatrics or pædiatrics) is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, and adolescents. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends people be under pediatric care up to the age of 21 (though usually only minors are required to be under pediatric care). A medical doctor who specializes in this area is known as a pediatrician, or paediatrician. The word "pediatrics" and its cognates mean "healer of children"; they derive from two Greek words: ("pais" "child") and ("iatros" "doctor, healer"). Pediatricians work in hospitals, particularly those working in its subspecialties (e.g. neonatology), and as outpatient primary care physicians.
Already Hippocrates, Aristotle, Celsus, Soranus, and Galen understood the differences in growing and maturing organisms that necessitated different treatment: "" ("In general, boys should not be treated in the same way as men").
Some of the oldest traces of pediatrics can be discovered in Ancient India where children's doctors were called "kumara bhrtya". "Sushruta Samhita" an ayurvedic text, composed during the sixth century BC contains the text about pediatrics. Another ayurvedic text from this period is "Kashyapa Samhita".
A second century AD manuscript by the Greek physician and gynecologist Soranus of Ephesus dealt with neonatal pediatrics. Byzantine physicians Oribasius, Aëtius of Amida, Alexander Trallianus, and Paulus Aegineta contributed to the field. The Byzantines also built "brephotrophia" (crêches). Islamic writers served as a bridge for Greco-Roman and Byzantine medicine and added ideas of their own, especially Haly Abbas, Serapion, Avicenna, and Averroes. The Persian philosopher and physician al-Razi (865–925) published a monograph on pediatrics titled "Diseases in Children" as well as the first definite description of smallpox as a clinical entity. Also among the first books about pediatrics was "Libellus [Opusculum] de aegritudinibus et remediis infantium" 1472 ("Little Book on Children Diseases and Treatment"), by the Italian pediatrician Paolo Bagellardo. In sequence came Bartholomäus Metlinger's "Ein Regiment der Jungerkinder" 1473, Cornelius Roelans (1450–1525) no title Buchlein, or Latin compendium, 1483, and Heinrich von Louffenburg (1391–1460) "Versehung des Leibs" written in 1429 (published 1491), together form the "Pediatric Incunabula", four great medical treatises on children's physiology and pathology.
The Swedish physician Nils Rosén von Rosenstein (1706–1773) is considered to be the founder of modern pediatrics as a medical specialty, while his work "The diseases of children, and their remedies" (1764) is considered to be "the first modern textbook on the subject". Pediatrics as a specialized field of medicine continued to develop in the mid-19th century; German physician Abraham Jacobi (1830–1919) is known as the "father of American pediatrics" because of his many contributions to the field. He received his medical training in Germany and later practiced in New York City.
The first generally accepted pediatric hospital is the "Hôpital des Enfants Malades" (), which opened in Paris in June 1802 on the site of a previous orphanage. From its beginning, this famous hospital accepted patients up to the age of fifteen years, and it continues to this day as the pediatric division of the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital, created in 1920 by merging with the physically contiguous "Necker Hospital", founded in 1778.
In other European countries, the Charité (a hospital founded in 1710) in Berlin established a separate Pediatric Pavilion in 1830, followed by similar institutions at Saint Petersburg in 1834, and at Vienna and Breslau (now Wrocław), both in 1837. In 1852 Britain's first pediatric hospital, the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street was founded by Charles West. The first Children's hospital in Scotland opened in 1860 in Edinburgh. In the US, the first similar institutions were the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, which opened in 1855, and then Boston Children's Hospital (1869). Subspecialties in pediatrics were created at the Harriet Lane Home at Johns Hopkins by Edwards A. Park.
The body size differences are paralleled by maturation changes. The smaller body of an infant or neonate is substantially different physiologically from that of an adult. Congenital defects, genetic variance, and developmental issues are of greater concern to pediatricians than they often are to adult physicians. A common adage is that children are not simply "little adults". The clinician must take into account the immature physiology of the infant or child when considering symptoms, prescribing medications, and diagnosing illnesses.
Pediatric physiology directly impacts the pharmacokinetic properties of drugs that enter the body. The absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination of medications differ between developing children and grown adults. Despite completed studies and reviews, continual research is needed to better understand how these factors should affect the decisions of healthcare providers when prescribing and administering medications to the pediatric population.
Many drug absorption differences between pediatric and adult populations revolve around the stomach. Neonates and young infants have increased stomach pH due to decreased acid secretion, thereby creating a more basic environment for drugs that are taken by mouth. Acid is essential to degrading certain oral drugs before systemic absorption. Therefore, the absorption of these drugs in children is greater than in adults due to decreased breakdown and increased preservation in a less acidic gastric space.
Children also have an extended rate of gastric emptying, which slows the rate of drug absorption.
Drug absorption also depends on specific enzymes that come in contact with the oral drug as it travels through the body. Supply of these enzymes increase as children continue to develop their gastrointestinal tract. Pediatric patients have underdeveloped proteins, which leads to decreased metabolism and increased serum concentrations of specific drugs. However, prodrugs experience the opposite effect because enzymes are necessary in allowing their active form to enter systemic circulation.
Percentage of total body water and extracellular fluid volume both decrease as children grow and develop with time. Pediatric patients thus have a larger volume of distribution than adults, which directly affects the dosing of hydrophilic drugs such as beta-lactam antibiotics like ampicillin. Thus, these drugs are administered at greater weight-based doses or with adjusted dosing intervals in children to account for this key difference in body composition.
Infants and neonates also have less plasma proteins. Thus, highly protein-bound drugs have fewer opportunities for protein binding, leading to increased distribution.
Drug metabolism primarily occurs via enzymes in the liver and can vary according to which specific enzymes are affected in a specific stage of development. Phase I and Phase II enzymes have different rates of maturation and development, depending on their specific mechanism of action (i.e. oxidation, hydrolysis, acetylation, methylation, etc.). Enzyme capacity, clearance, and half-life are all factors that contribute to metabolism differences between children and adults. Drug metabolism can even differ within the pediatric population, separating neonates and infants from young children.
Drug elimination is primarily facilitated via the liver and kidneys. In infants and young children, the larger relative size of their kidneys leads to increased renal clearance of medications that are eliminated through urine. In preterm neonates and infants, their kidneys are slower to mature and thus are unable to clear as much drug as fully developed kidneys. This can cause unwanted drug build-up, which is why it is important to consider lower doses and greater dosing intervals for this population. Diseases that negatively affect kidney function can also have the same effect and thus warrant similar considerations.
A major difference between the practice of pediatric and adult medicine is that children, in most jurisdictions and with certain exceptions, cannot make decisions for themselves. The issues of guardianship, privacy, legal responsibility and informed consent must always be considered in every pediatric procedure. Pediatricians often have to treat the parents and sometimes, the family, rather than just the child. Adolescents are in their own legal class, having rights to their own health care decisions in certain circumstances. The concept of legal consent combined with the non-legal consent (assent) of the child when considering treatment options, especially in the face of conditions with poor prognosis or complicated and painful procedures/surgeries, means the pediatrician must take into account the desires of many people, in addition to those of the patient.
Aspiring medical students will need 4 years of undergraduate courses at a college or university, which will get them a BS, BA or other bachelor's degree. After completing college future pediatricians will need to attend 4 years of medical school (MD/MBBS) and later do 3 more years of residency training, the first year of which is called "internship." After completing the 3 years of residency, physicians are eligible to become certified in pediatrics by passing a rigorous test that deals with medical conditions related to young children.
In high school, future pediatricians are required to take basic science classes such as biology, chemistry, physics, algebra, geometry, and calculus. It is also advisable to learn a foreign language (preferably Spanish in the United States) and be involved in high school organizations and extracurricular activities. After high school, college students simply need to fulfill the basic science course requirements that most medical schools recommend and will need to prepare to take the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test) in their junior or early senior year in college. Once attending medical school, student courses will focus on basic medical sciences like human anatomy, physiology, chemistry, etc., for the first three years, the second year of which is when medical students start to get hands-on experience with actual patients.
The training of pediatricians varies considerably across the world. Depending on jurisdiction and university, a medical degree course may be either undergraduate-entry or graduate-entry. The former commonly takes five or six years, and has been usual in the Commonwealth. Entrants to graduate-entry courses (as in the US), usually lasting four or five years, have previously completed a three- or four-year university degree, commonly but by no means always in sciences. Medical graduates hold a degree specific to the country and university in and from which they graduated. This degree qualifies that medical practitioner to become licensed or registered under the laws of that particular country, and sometimes of several countries, subject to requirements for "internship" or "conditional registration".
Pediatricians must undertake further training in their chosen field. This may take from four to eleven or more years depending on jurisdiction and the degree of specialization.
In the United States, a medical school graduate wishing to specialize in pediatrics must undergo a three-year residency composed of outpatient, inpatient, and critical care rotations. Specialties within pediatrics require further training in the form of 3-year fellowships. Specialties include critical care, gastroenterology, neurology, infectious disease, hematology/oncology, rheumatology, pulmonology, child abuse, emergency medicine, endocrinology, neonatology, and others.
In most jurisdictions, entry-level degrees are common to all branches of the medical profession, but in some jurisdictions, specialization in pediatrics may begin before completion of this degree. In some jurisdictions, pediatric training is begun immediately following completion of entry-level training. In other jurisdictions, junior medical doctors must undertake generalist (unstreamed) training for a number of years before commencing pediatric (or any other) specialization. Specialist training is often largely under the control of pediatric organizations (see below) rather than universities, and depend on jurisdiction.
Subspecialties of pediatrics include: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23593 |
Physiology
Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical and physical functions in a living system. According to the classes of organisms, the field can be divided into medical physiology, animal physiology, plant physiology, cell physiology, and comparative physiology.
Central to physiological functioning are biophysical and biochemical processes, homeostatic control mechanisms, and communication between cells. "Physiological state" is the condition of normal function, while "pathological state" refers to abnormal conditions, including human diseases.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for exceptional scientific achievements in physiology related to the field of medicine.
Human physiology seeks to understand the mechanisms that work to keep the human body alive and functioning, through scientific enquiry into the nature of mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions of humans, their organs, and the cells of which they are composed. The principal level of focus of physiology is at the level of organs and systems within systems. The endocrine and nervous systems play major roles in the reception and transmission of signals that integrate function in animals. Homeostasis is a major aspect with regard to such interactions within plants as well as animals. The biological basis of the study of physiology, integration refers to the overlap of many functions of the systems of the human body, as well as its accompanied form. It is achieved through communication that occurs in a variety of ways, both electrical and chemical.
Changes in physiology can impact the mental functions of individuals. Examples of this would be the effects of certain medications or toxic levels of substances. Change in behavior as a result of these substances is often used to assess the health of individuals.
Much of the foundation of knowledge in human physiology was provided by animal experimentation. Due to the frequent connection between form and function, physiology and anatomy are intrinsically linked and are studied in tandem as part of a medical curriculum.
Plant physiology is a subdiscipline of botany concerned with the functioning of plants. Closely related fields include plant morphology, plant ecology, phytochemistry, cell biology, genetics, biophysics, and molecular biology. Fundamental processes of plant physiology include photosynthesis, respiration, plant nutrition, tropisms, nastic movements, photoperiodism, photomorphogenesis, circadian rhythms, seed germination, dormancy, and stomata function and transpiration. Absorption of water by roots, production of food in the leaves, and growth of shoots towards light are examples of plant physiology.
Although there are differences between animal, plant, and microbial cells, the basic physiological functions of cells can be divided into the processes of cell division, cell signaling, cell growth, and cell metabolism.
Involving evolutionary physiology and environmental physiology, comparative physiology considers the diversity of functional characteristics across organisms.
The study of human physiology as a medical field originates in classical Greece, at the time of Hippocrates (late 5th century BC).
Outside of Western tradition, early forms of physiology or anatomy can be reconstructed as having been present at around the same time in China, India and elsewhere.
Hippocrates incorporated his belief system called the theory of humours, which consisted of four basic substance: earth, water, air and fire. Each substance is known for having a corresponding humour: black bile, phlegm, blood and yellow bile, respectively. Hippocrates also noted some emotional connections to the four humours, which Claudius Galenus would later expand on. The critical thinking of Aristotle and his emphasis on the relationship between structure and function marked the beginning of physiology in Ancient Greece. Like Hippocrates, Aristotle took to the humoral theory of disease, which also consisted of four primary qualities in life: hot, cold, wet and dry. Claudius Galenus (c. 130–200 AD), known as Galen of Pergamum, was the first to use experiments to probe the functions of the body. Unlike Hippocrates, Galen argued that humoral imbalances can be located in specific organs, including the entire body. His modification of this theory better equipped doctors to make more precise diagnoses. Galen also played off of Hippocrates idea that emotions were also tied to the humours, and added the notion of temperaments: sanguine corresponds with blood; phlegmatic is tied to phlegm; yellow bile is connected to choleric; and black bile corresponds with melancholy. Galen also saw the human body consisting of three connected systems: the brain and nerves, which are responsible for thoughts and sensations; the heart and arteries, which give life; and the liver and veins, which can be attributed to nutrition and growth. Galen was also the founder of experimental physiology. And for the next 1,400 years, Galenic physiology was a powerful and influential tool in medicine.
Jean Fernel (1497–1558), a French physician, introduced the term "physiology". Galen, Ibn al-Nafis, Michael Servetus, Realdo Colombo, Amato Lusitano and William Harvey, are credited as making important discoveries in the circulation of the blood. Santorio Santorio in 1610s was the first to use a device to measure the pulse rate (the "pulsilogium"), and a thermoscope to measure temperature.
In 1791 Luigi Galvani described the role of electricity in nerves of dissected frogs. In 1811, César Julien Jean Legallois studied respiration in animal dissection and lesions and found the center of respiration in the medulla oblongata. In the same year, Charles Bell finished work on what would later become known as the Bell-Magendie law, which compared functional differences between dorsal and ventral roots of the spinal cord. In 1824, François Magendie described the sensory roots and produced the first evidence of the cerebellum's role in equilibration to complete the Bell-Magendie law.
In the 1820s, the French physiologist Henri Milne-Edwards introduced the notion of physiological division of labor, which allowed to "compare and study living things as if they were machines created by the industry of man." Inspired in the work of Adam Smith, Milne-Edwards wrote that the "body of all living beings, whether animal or plant, resembles a factory ... where the organs, comparable to workers, work incessantly to produce the phenomena that constitute the life of the individual." In more differentiated organisms, the functional labor could be apportioned between different instruments or systems (called by him as "appareils").
In 1858, Joseph Lister studied the cause of blood coagulation and inflammation that resulted after previous injuries and surgical wounds. He later discovered and implemented antiseptics in the operating room, and as a result, decreased death rate from surgery by a substantial amount.
The Physiological Society was founded in London in 1876 as a dining club. The American Physiological Society (APS) is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1887. The Society is, "devoted to fostering education, scientific research, and dissemination of information in the physiological sciences."
In 1891, Ivan Pavlov performed research on "conditional responses" that involved dogs' saliva production in response to a bell and visual stimuli.
In the 19th century, physiological knowledge began to accumulate at a rapid rate, in particular with the 1838 appearance of the Cell theory of Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann. It radically stated that organisms are made up of units called cells. Claude Bernard's (1813–1878) further discoveries ultimately led to his concept of "milieu interieur" (internal environment), which would later be taken up and championed as "homeostasis" by American physiologist Walter B. Cannon in 1929. By homeostasis, Cannon meant "the maintenance of steady states in the body and the physiological processes through which they are regulated." In other words, the body's ability to regulate its internal environment. William Beaumont was the first American to utilize the practical application of physiology.
Nineteenth-century physiologists such as Michael Foster, Max Verworn, and Alfred Binet, based on Haeckel's ideas, elaborated what came to be called "general physiology", a unified science of life based on the cell actions, later renamed in the 20th century as cell biology.
In the 20th century, biologists became interested in how organisms other than human beings function, eventually spawning the fields of comparative physiology and ecophysiology. Major figures in these fields include Knut Schmidt-Nielsen and George Bartholomew. Most recently, evolutionary physiology has become a distinct subdiscipline.
In 1920, August Krogh won the Nobel Prize for discovering how, in capillaries, blood flow is regulated.
In 1954, Andrew Huxley and Hugh Huxley, alongside their research team, discovered the sliding filaments in skeletal muscle, known today as the sliding filament theory.
Recently, there have been intense debates about the vitality of physiology as a discipline (Is it dead or alive?). If physiology is perhaps less visible nowadays than during the golden age of the 19th century, it is in large part because the field has given birth to some of the most active domains of today's biological sciences, such as neuroscience, endocrinology, and immunology. Furthermore, physiology is still often seen as an integrative discipline, which can put together into a coherent framework data coming from various different domains.
Initially, women were largely excluded from official involvement in any physiological society. The American Physiological Society, for example, was founded in 1887 and included only men in its ranks. In 1902, the American Physiological Society elected Ida Hyde as the first female member of the society. Hyde, a representative of the American Association of University Women and a global advocate for gender equality in education, attempted to promote gender equality in every aspect of science and medicine.
Soon thereafter, in 1913, J.S. Haldane proposed that women be allowed to formally join The Physiological Society, which had been founded in 1876. On 3 July 1915, six women were officially admitted: Florence Buchanan, Winifred Cullis, Ruth C. Skelton, Sarah C. M. Sowton, Constance Leetham Terry, and Enid M. Tribe. The centenary of the election of women was celebrated in 2015 with the publication of the book "Women Physiologists: Centenary Celebrations And Beyond For The Physiological Society." ()
Prominent women physiologists include:
There are many ways to categorize the subdisciplines of physiology:
Transnational physiological societies include:
National physiological societies include:
Human physiology
Animal physiology
Plant physiology
Fungal physiology
Protistan physiology
Algal physiology
Bacterial physiology | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23597 |
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