postbicameral

death the kid

2009-04-07T01:45:00.000-07:00

Death the Kid is Shinigami's son and the meister of Patti and Liz. He is called Kid by his friends and family. He refers to Shinigami as 'honorable father' and seems to be named after him, as it has been shown that Shinigami's name was "Death" when he was younger. Kid suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is represented as a complete obsession about everything being symmetrical. To him, anything symmetrical is beautiful and if something is off by even the slightest measurement he will try to correct it right away. While Kid himself tries to look as symmetrical as possible, his hair causes him problems as one side is completely black while the other has three white strips going across it. Showing him anything that is too asymmetrical or mentioning his hair will send Kid into a state of massive depression, make him feel ill, or cause him to cough up blood and faint in the most extreme of cases. This behaviour sometimes results in Kid being unable to fight because he is distracted by his enemy's symmetry, or by the lack of symmetry in his surroundings. When this happens it usually requires some encouragement from Patti or Liz to get Kid to focus again.

2007-12-05T07:44:00.001-08:00

The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra (HRO) is a collegiate symphony orchestra comprised of Harvard students and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in March of 1808 as the Pierian Sodality, the orchestra is considered by some to be the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States. This is disputed by others because of the organization's somewhat informal beginnings (the original charter states that the intent of the Pierian Sodality is to "perform music for the enjoyment of others as well as serenade young women in the square"), and as a result, some consider the New York Philharmonic to be the oldest American orchestra. The HRO assumed its current form as a modern symphony orchestra during the first half of the 20th century, and was, for a brief time, the nation's largest collegiate orchestra.
The orchestra currently contains over 100 members, and is the largest of the orchestras at Harvard University (though at one point during its history, the orchestra contained only one member, a flutist named Henry Gassett). In general, only students of Harvard College are eligible for membership, though this rule is not absolute and has occasionally been waived when necessary. The orchestra plays four concerts every year in Sanders Theater on Harvard's campus. Its alumni board is still known as the Pierian Sodality of 1808.
The orchestra has been led since 1964 by James Yannatos, a composer and member of the music faculty at Harvard.
The HRO has toured various places throughout its history, including Brazil, Washington, D.C., Mexico, Canada, Carnegie Hall, Italy, Soviet Union, Asia, and Europe. In 1978, the HRO placed third in the International Festival of Student Orchestras.

2007-12-04T09:09:00.001-08:00

Integration is a core concept of advanced mathematics, specifically, in the fields of calculus and mathematical analysis. Given a function f(x) of a real variable x and an interval [a,b] of the real line, the integral

represents the area of a region in the xy-plane bounded by the graph of f, the x-axis, and the vertical lines x=a and x=b.
The term "integral" may also refer to the notion of antiderivative, a function F whose derivative is the given function f. In this case it is called an indefinite integral, while the integrals discussed in this article are termed definite integrals. Some authors maintain a distinction between antiderivatives and indefinite integrals.
The principles of integration were formulated by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the late seventeenth century. Through the fundamental theorem of calculus, that they independently developed, integration is connected with differentiation, and the definite integral of a function can be easily computed once an antiderivative is known. Integrals and derivatives became the basic tools of calculus, with numerous applications in science and engineering.
A rigorous mathematical definition of the integral was given by Bernhard Riemann. It is based on a limiting procedure which approximates the area of a curvilinear region by breaking the region into thin vertical slabs. Beginning in the nineteenth century, more sophisticated notions of integral began to appear, where the type of the function as well as the domain over which the integration is performed has been generalised. A line integral is defined for functions of two or three variables, and the interval of integration [a,b] is replaced by a certain curve connecting two points on the plane or in the space. In a surface integral, the curve is replaced by a piece of a surface in the three-dimensional space. Integrals of differential forms play a fundamental role in modern differential geometry. These generalizations of integral first arose from the needs of physics, and they play an important role in the formulation of many physical laws, notably those of electrodynamics. Modern concepts of integration are based on the abstract mathematical theory known as Lebesgue integration, developed by Henri Lebesgue.

History
Integration can be traced as far back as ancient Egypt, circa 1800 BC, with the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus demonstrating knowledge of a formula for the volume of a pyramidal frustum. The first documented systematic technique capable of determining integrals is the method of exhaustion of Eudoxus (circa 370 BC), which sought to find areas and volumes by breaking them up into an infinite number of shapes for which the area or volume was known. This method was further developed and employed by Archimedes and used to calculate areas for parabolas and an approximation to the area of a circle. Similar methods were independently developed in China around the 3rd Century AD by Liu Hui, who used it to find the area of the circle. This method was later used by Zu Chongzhi to find the volume of a sphere.
Significant advances on techniques such as the method of exhaustion did not begin to appear until the 16th Century AD. At this time the work of Cavalieri with his method of indivisibles, and work by Fermat, began to lay the foundations of modern calculus. Further steps were made in the early 17th Century by Barrow and Torricelli, who provided the first hints of a connection between integration and differentiation.

Pre-calculus integration
The major advance in integration came in the 17th Century with the independent discovery of the fundamental theorem of calculus by Newton and Leibniz. The theorem demonstrates a connection between integration and differentiation. This connection, combined with the comparative ease of differentiation, can be exploited to calculate integrals. In particular, the fundamental theorem of calculus allows one to solve a much broader class of problems. Equal in importance is the comprehensive mathematical framework that both Newton and Leibniz developed. Given the name infinitesimal calculus, it allowed for precise analysis of functions within continuous domains. This framework eventually became modern Calculus, whose notation for integrals is drawn directly from the work of Leibniz.

Newton and Leibniz
While Newton and Leibniz provided systematic approach to integration, their work lacked a degree of rigour. Bishop Berkeley memorably attacked infinitesimals as "the ghosts of departed quantity". Calculus acquired a firmer footing with the development of limits and was given a suitable foundation by Cauchy in the first half of the 19th century. Integration was first rigorously formalised, using limits, by Riemann. Although all piecewise continuous and bounded functions are Riemann integrable on a bounded interval, subsequently more general functions were considered, to which Riemann's definition does not apply, and Lebesgue formulated a different definition of integral, founded in measure theory. Other definitions of integral, extending Riemann's and Lebesgue's approaches, were proposed.

Formalising integrals
Isaac Newton used a small vertical bar above a variable to indicate integration, or placed the variable inside a box. The vertical bar was easily confused with or , which Newton used to indicate differentiation, and the box notation was difficult for printers to reproduce, so these notations were not widely adopted.
The modern notation for the indefinite integral was introduced by Gottfried Leibniz in 1675 (Burton 1988, p. 359; Leibniz 1899, p. 154). He derived the integral symbol, "∫", from an elongated letter S, standing for summa (Latin for "sum" or "total"). The modern notation for the definite integral, with limits above and below the integral sign, was first used by Joseph Fourier in Mémoires of the French Academy around 1819–20, reprinted in his book of 1822 (Cajori 1929, pp. 249–250; Fourier 1822, §231). In Arabic mathematical notation which is written from right to left, an inverted integral symbol is used (W3C 2006).

Notation
If a function has an integral, it is said to be integrable. The function for which the integral is calculated is called the integrand. The region over which a function is being integrated is called the domain of integration. In general, the integrand may be a function of more than one variable, and the domain of integration may be an area, volume, a higher dimensional region, or even an abstract space that does not have a geometric structure in any usual sense.
The simplest case, the integral of a real-valued function f of one real variable x on the interval [a, b], is denoted by

The ∫ sign, an elongated "S", represents integration; a and b are the lower limit and upper limit of integration, defining the domain of integration; f is the integrand, to be evaluated as x varies over the interval [a,b]; and dx can have different interpretations depending on the theory being used. For example, it can be seen as merely a notation indicating that x is the 'dummy variable' of integration, as a reflection of the weights in the Riemann sum, a measure (in Lebesgue integration and its extensions), an infinitesimal (in non-standard analysis) or as an independent mathematical quantity: a differential form. More complicated cases may vary the notation slightly.

Terminology and notation
Integrals appear in many practical situations. Consider a swimming pool. If it is rectangular, then from its length, width, and depth we can easily determine the volume of water it can contain (to fill it), the area of its surface (to cover it), and the length of its edge (to rope it). But if it is oval with a rounded bottom, all of these quantities call for integrals. Practical approximations may suffice at first, but eventually we demand exact and rigorous answers to such problems.
To start off, consider the curve y = f(x) between x = 0 and x = 1, with f(x) = √x. We ask:
What is the area under the function f, in the interval from 0 to 1?
and call this (yet unknown) area the integral of f. The notation for this integral will be
.
As a first approximation, look at the unit square given by the sides x=0 to x=1 and y=f(0)=0 and y=f(1)=1. Its area is exactly 1. As it is, the true value of the integral must be somewhat less. Decreasing the width of the approximation rectangles shall give a better result; so cross the interval in five steps, using the approximation points 0, )/(q+1).)
Historically, after the failure of early efforts to rigorously define infinitesimals, Riemann formally defined integrals as a limit of ordinary weighted sums, so that the dx suggested the limit of a difference (namely, the interval width). Shortcomings of Riemann's dependence on intervals and continuity motivated newer definitions, especially the Lebesgue integral, which is founded on an ability to extend the idea of "measure" in much more flexible ways. Thus the notation

refers to a weighted sum in which the function values are partitioned, with μ measuring the weight to be assigned to each value. (Here A denotes the region of integration.) Differential geometry, with its "calculus on manifolds", gives the familiar notation yet another interpretation. Now f(x) and dx become a differential form, ω = f(x)dx, a new differential operator d, known as the exterior derivative appears, and the fundamental theorem becomes the more general Stokes' theorem,

from which Green's Theorem, the divergence theorem, and the fundamental theorem of calculus follow.
More recently, infinitesimals have reappeared with rigor, through modern innovations such as non-standard analysis. Not only do these methods vindicate the intuitions of the pioneers, they also lead to new mathematics.
Although there are differences between these conceptions of integral, there is considerable overlap. Thus the area of the surface of the oval swimming pool can be handled as a geometric ellipse, as a sum of infinitesimals, as a Riemann integral, as a Lebesgue integral, or as a manifold with a differential form. The calculated result will be the same for all.

Introduction
There are many ways of formally defining an integral, not all of which are equivalent. The differences exist mostly to deal with differing special cases which may not be integrable under other definitions, but also occasionally for pedagogical reasons. The most commonly used definitions of integral are Riemann integrals and Lebesgue integrals.

Formal definitions

Main article: Riemann integral Riemann integral

Main article: Lebesgue integral Lebesgue integral
Although the Riemann and Lebesgue integrals are the most important definitions of the integral, a number of others exist, including:

The Riemann-Stieltjes integral, an extension of the Riemann integral.
The Lebesgue-Stieltjes integral, further developed by Johann Radon, which generalizes the Riemann-Stieltjes and Lebesgue integrals.
The Daniell integral, which subsumes the Lebesgue integral and Lebesgue-Stieltjes integral without the dependence on measures.
The Henstock-Kurzweil integral, variously defined by Arnaud Denjoy, Oskar Perron, and (most elegantly, as the gauge integral) Jaroslav Kurzweil, and developed by Ralph Henstock. Other integrals

Linearity
A number of general inequalities hold for Riemann-integrable functions defined on a closed and bounded interval [a, b] and can be generalized to other notions of integral (Lebesgue and Daniell).

This is a generalization of the above inequalities, as M(b − a) is the integral of the constant function with value M over [a, b].

(fg)(x)= f(x) g(x), ; f^2 (x) = (f(x))^2, ; |f| (x) = |f(x)|.," src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/1/b/8/1b8418f6efc192c886fd8df342cab4fd.png" />
If f is Riemann-integrable on [a, b] then the same is true for |f|, and

Moreover, if f and g are both Riemann-integrable then f are also Riemann integrable and the following Minkowski inequality holds: Inequalities for integrals
In this section f is a real-valued Riemann-integrable function. The integral

over an interval [a, b] is defined if a < b. This means that the upper and lower sums of the function f are evaluated on a partition a = x₀ ≤ x₁ ≤ . . . ≤ x_n = b whose values x_i are increasing. Geometrically, this signifies that integration takes place "left to right", evaluating f within intervals [x_i , x_i +1] where an interval with a higher index lies to the right of one with a lower index. The values a and b, the end-points of the interval, are called the limits of integration of f. Integrals can also be defined if a > b:

This, with a = b, implies:

The first convention is necessary in consideration of taking integrals over subintervals of [a, b]; the second says that an integral taken over a degenerate interval, or a point, should be zero. One reason for the first convention is that the integrability of f on an interval [a, b] implies that f is integrable on any subinterval [c, d], but in particular integrals have the property that:

With the first convention the resulting relation
int_a^c f(x) , dx &{}= int_a^b f(x) , dx - int_c^b f(x) , dx
&{} = int_a^b f(x) , dx + int_b^c f(x) , dx
end{align}" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/7/a/b/7ab6fa3aabb83fc4b65f710bb22ad6e4.png" />
is then well-defined for any cyclic permutation of a, b, and c.
Instead of viewing the above as conventions, one can also adopt the point of view that integration is performed on oriented manifolds only. If M is such an oriented m-dimensional manifold, and M' is the same manifold with opposed orientation and ω is an m-form, then one has (see below for integration of differential forms):

Reversing limits of integration. If a > b then define
Integrals over intervals of length zero. If a is a real number then
Additivity of integration on intervals. If c is any element of [a, b], then Conventions

Main article: Fundamental theorem of calculus Fundamental theorem of calculus

then F is continuous on [a, b]. If f is continuous at x in [a, b], then F is differentiable at x, and F ′(x) = f(x).

is an anti-derivative of f on [a, b]. Moreover,

Fundamental theorem of calculus. Let f be a real-valued integrable function defined on a closed interval [a, b]. If F is defined for x in [a, b] by
Second fundamental theorem of calculus. Let f be a real-valued integrable function defined on a closed interval [a, b]. If F is a function such that F ′(x) = f(x) for all x in [a, b] (that is, F is an antiderivative of f), then
Corollary. If f is a continuous function on [a, b], then f is integrable on [a, b], and F, defined by Statements of theorems

Extensions

Main article: Improper integral Improper integrals

Main article: Multiple integral Multiple integration

Main article: Line integral Line integrals

Main article: Surface integral Surface integrals

Main article: differential form Integrals of differential forms

Methods and applications
The most basic technique for computing integrals of one real variable is based on the fundamental theorem of calculus. It proceeds like this:

Note that the integral is not actually the antiderivative, but the fundamental theorem allows us to use antiderivatives to evaluate definite integrals.
The difficult step is often finding an antiderivative of f. It is rarely possible to glance at a function and write down its antiderivative. More often, it is necessary to use one of the many techniques that have been developed to evaluate integrals. Most of these techniques rewrite one integral as a different one which is hopefully more tractable. Techniques include:
Even if these techniques fail, it may still be possible to evaluate a given integral. The next most common technique is residue calculus, whilst for nonelementary integrals Taylor series can sometimes be used to find the antiderivative. There are also many less common ways of calculating definite integrals; for instance, Parseval's identity can be used to transform an integral over a rectangular region into an infinite sum. Occasionally, an integral can be evaluated by a trick; for an example of this, see Gaussian integral.
Computations of volumes of solids of revolution can usually be done with disk integration or shell integration.
Specific results which have been worked out by various techniques are collected in the list of integrals.

Choose a function f(x) and an interval [a, b].
Find an antiderivative of f, that is, a function F such that F' = f.
By the fundamental theorem of calculus, provided the integrand and integral have no singularities on the path of integration,

Therefore the value of the integral is F(b) − F(a).
Integration by substitution
Integration by parts
Integration by trigonometric substitution
Integration by partial fractions Computing integrals

Main article: Symbolic integration Numerical quadrature

Table of integrals - integrals of the most common functions.
Lists of integrals
Multiple integral
Antiderivative
Numerical integration
Integral equation
Riemann integral
Riemann sum
Differentiation under the integral sign
Product integral

2007-12-03T08:51:00.001-08:00

Growth capital is a very flexible type of financing. The money borrowed under a growth capital line of credit can be used for any corporate purposes. There are no requirements to provide invoices or other backup material when borrowing under this type of facility, so administration is simplified as well.
Growth capital can be a beneficial way to extend a company's runway between rounds of financing. The extra time can be used to complete additional milestones that will raise the company's valuation, or as insurance to ensure that all intended milestones are successfully accomplished.

2007-12-02T10:22:00.001-08:00

The Court system of Canada is made up of many courts differing in levels of legal superiority and separated by jurisdiction. Some of the courts are federal in nature while others are provincial or territorial.
The Canadian constitution gives the federal government the exclusive right to legislate criminal law while the provinces have exclusive control over civil law. The provinces have jurisdiction over the administration of justice in their territory. Almost all cases, whether criminal or civil, start in provincial courts and may be eventually appealed to higher level courts. The quite small system of federal courts only hear cases concerned with matters which are under exclusive federal control, such as immigration. The federal government appoints and pays for both the judges of the federal courts and the judges of the superior-level court of each province. The provincial governments are responsible for appointing judges of the lower provincial ("inferior-level") courts.
This intricate interweaving of federal and provincial powers is typical of the Canadian constitution.

Outline of the Court system
Although created by an Act of the Parliament of Canada in 1875, its decisions could be reviewed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council until 1949 when the Supreme Court of Canada truly became the final and highest court in the country. The court currently consists of nine justices, which include the Chief Justice of Canada, and its duties include hearing appeals of decisions from the appellate courts (to be discussed next) and, on occasion, delivering references (i.e., the court's opinion) on constitutional questions raised by the federal government. By law, three of the nine justices are appointed from Quebec; because of Quebec's use of civil law.

Supreme Court of Canada
These courts of appeal (as listed below by province and territory in alphabetical order) exist at the provincial and territorial levels and were separately constituted in the early decades of the 20th century, replacing the former Full Courts of the old Supreme Courts of the provinces, many of which were then re-named Courts of Queens Bench. Their function is to review decisions rendered by the superior-level courts and to do references (i.e., deliver a judicial opinion) when requested by a provincial or territorial government. These appellate courts do not normally conduct trials and hear witnesses.
These courts are Canada's equivalent of the Court of Appeal in England and the various State Supreme Courts and US Courts of Appeals in the United States. Each of the above-listed appellate courts is the highest court from its respective province or territory. A province's chief justice (i.e., highest ranking judge) sits in the appellate court of that province.

Alberta Court of Appeal
British Columbia Court of Appeal
Manitoba Court of Appeal
New Brunswick Court of Appeal
Supreme Court of Newfoundland (Court of Appeal)
Court of Appeal for the Northwest Territories
Nova Scotia Court of Appeal
Nunavut Court of Appeal
Ontario Court of Appeal
Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island - Appeal Division
Quebec Court of Appeal
Saskatchewan Court of Appeal
Court of Appeal of the Yukon Territory Appellate courts of the provinces and territories
These courts (as listed below by province and territory in alphabetical order) exist at the provincial and territorial levels. The superior courts are the courts of first instance for divorce petitions, civil lawsuits involving claims greater than small claims, and criminal prosecutions for "indictable offences" (i.e., "felonies" in American legal terminology). They also perform a reviewing function for judgements from the local "inferior" courts and administrative decisions by provincial or territorial government entities such as labour boards, human rights tribunals and licensing authorities.
Furthermore, some of these superior courts (like the one in Ontario) have specialized branches that deal only with certain matters such as family law or small claims. To complicate things further, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has a branch called the Divisional Court that hears only appeals and judicial reviews of administrative tribunals and whose decisions have greater binding authority than those from the "regular" branch of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. Although a court, like the Supreme Court of British Columbia, may have the word "supreme" in its name, it is not necessarily the highest court from its respective province or territory.

Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta
Supreme Court of British Columbia
Court of Queen's Bench of Manitoba
Court of Queen's Bench of New Brunswick
Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador (Trial Division)
Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories
Supreme Court of Nova Scotia
Nunavut Court of Justice
Ontario Superior Court of Justice
Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island - Trial Division
Quebec Superior Court
Court of Queen's Bench for Saskatchewan
Supreme Court of the Yukon Territory Superior-level courts of the provinces and territories

Main article: Provincial Court Provincial and territorial ("inferior") courts
The Federal Court and the more specialized Tax Court of Canada exists primarily to review administrative decisions by federal government bodies such as the immigration board and hear lawsuits under the federal government's jurisdiction such as intellectual property and maritime law.
The Federal Court of Appeal hears appeals from decisions rendered by the Federal Court, the Tax Court of Canada and a certain group of federal administrative tribunals like the National Energy Board and the federal labour board. All judges of the Federal Court are ex officio judges of the Federal Court of Appeal, and vice versa, although it is rare that a judge of one court will sit as a member of the other.
Before 2003, the Federal Court was known as the Federal Court of Canada - Trial Division while the Federal Court of Appeal was known as the Federal Court of Canada - Appeal Division. In turn, the Federal Court of Canada is descended from the old Exchequer Court of Canada created back in 1875.
Although the federal type courts can be said to have the same prestige as the superior courts from the provinces and territories, the federal ones lack the "inherent jurisdiction" (to be explained later) possessed by superior courts such as the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

Federal Court
Tax Court of Canada
Federal Court of Appeal Courts of the federal level
The "courts martial" are conducted and presided over by military personnel and exist for the prosecution of military personnel, as well as civilian personnel who accompany military personnel, accused of violating the Code of Service Discipline, which is found in the National Defence Act (R.S.C. 1985, Chapter N-5) and constitutes a complete code of military law applicable to persons under military jurisdiction.
The decisions of the courts martial can be appealed to the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada which, in contrast, exists outside the military and is made up of civilian judges. This appellate court is the successor of the Court Martial Appeal Board which was created in 1950, presided over by civilian judges and lawyers, and was the first ever civilian-based adjudicating body with authority to review decisions by a military court. The Court Martial Appeal Court is made up of civilian judges from the Federal Court, Federal Court of Appeal, and the superiour courts of the provinces. The current Chief Justice of the Court Martial Appeal Court (as of September 17, 2004) is Edmond P. Blanchard.

Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada
various military courts called "courts martial"

General Court Martial
Disciplinary Court Martial
Standing Court Martial
Special General Court Martial Courts of military law
Known in Canada as simply "tribunals", these are non-judicial adjudicative bodies, which means that they adjudicate (hear evidence and render decisions) like the courts do BUT are not presided over by judges. Instead, the adjudicators may be experts of the very specific legal field handled by the tribunal (e.g., labour law, human rights law, immigration law, energy law, liquor licensing law, etc.) who hear arguments and evidence provided by lawyers before making a written decision on record. Its decisions can be reviewed by a court through an appeal or a process called "judicial review". The reviewing court may be required to show some deference to the tribunal if the tribunal possesses some highly specialized expertise or knowledge that the court does not have. The degree of deference will also depend on such factors as the specific wording of the legislation creating the tribunal.
Tribunals may take into consideration the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is part of Canada's constitution. The extent to which tribunals may use the Charter in their decisions is a source of ongoing legal debate.
Appearing before some administrative tribunals may feel like appearing in a court, but the tribunal's procedure is relatively less formal than that of the court, and more importantly, the rules of evidence are not as strictly observed. In other words, some evidence that would be inadmissible in a court hearing could be allowed in a tribunal hearing. The presiding adjudicator is normally called "Mister/Madam Chair", and lawyers routinely appear in tribunals advocating a matter for their clients. A person does not require a lawyer to appear before an administrative tribunal. Indeed, many of these tribunals are specifically designed to be less formal than courts. Furthermore, some of these tribunals are part of a comprehensive dispute-resolution system, which may emphasize mediation rather than litigation. For example, provincial human rights commissions routinely use mediation to resolve many human rights complaints without the need for a hearing.
What tribunals all have in common is that they are created by statute, their adjudicators are appointed by government, and they focus on very particular and specialized areas of law. Because some subject matters (e.g., immigration) fall within federal jurisdiction while others (e.g., liquor licensing) in provincial jurisdiction, some tribunals are created by federal law while others are created by provincial law. Yet, there are both federal and provincial tribunals for some subject matters such as unionized labour and "human rights" (in American legal parlance, the "civil rights" of marginalized or/and disadvantaged social groups such as women, racial minorities, the disabled, homosexuals, certain religious groups, etc.).
Most importantly, from a lawyer's perspective, is the fact that the principle of stare decisis does not apply to tribunals. In other words, a tribunal adjudicative could legally make a decision that differs from a past decision, on the same subject and issues, delivered by the highest court in the land. Because a tribunal is not bound by legal precedent, established by itself or by a reviewing court, A tribunal is not court even though it performs an important adjudicative function and contributes to the development of law like a court would do. Although stare decisis does not apply to tribunals, their adjudicators will nonetheless find a prior court decision on a similar subject to be highly persuasive and will likely follow the courts in order to ensure consistency in the law and to prevent the embarrassment of having their decisions overturned by the courts.
Among the federal tribunals, there is a small group of tribunals whose decisions must be appealed directly to the Federal Court of Appeal rather than to the Federal Court Trial Division. These so-called "super tribunals" are listed in Subsection 28(1) of the Federal Court Act (R.S.C. 1985, Chapter F-7) and some examples include the National Energy Board, Canadian International Trade Tribunal, the Competition Tribunal, the Canada Industrial Relations Board (i.e. federal labour board), the Copyright Board, and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ("CRTC").

Federal and provincial administrative tribunals
These are the superior courts from the provinces and territories as discussed above. The words "inherent jurisdiction" refers to the fact that the jurisdiction of the superior courts is more than just what is conferred by statute. Following the principles of English common law, because the superior courts derive their authority from the Constitution, they can hear any matter unless there is a federal or provincial statute that says otherwise or that gives exclusive jurisdiction to some other court or tribunal. The doctrine of "inherent jurisdiction" gives superior courts greater freedom than statutory courts (to be explained next) to be flexible and creative in the delivering of legal remedies and relief.

Courts of inherent jurisdiction
These courts include the Supreme Court of Canada, the different types of federal courts, the various appellate courts from the provinces and territories, and the numerous low level "provincial" courts. Their decision-making power is granted by either the federal parliament or a provincial legislature.
The word "statutory" refers to the fact that these courts' powers are derived from a type of legislation called a statute and is defined and limited by a statute. A statutory court cannot try cases in areas of law that are not mentioned or suggested in the statute. In this sense, statutory courts are similar to non-judicial adjudicative bodies such as administrative tribunals, boards, commissions, etc. which are created and given limited power by legislation. The practical implication of this is that a statutory court cannot provide a type of legal remedy or relief that is not expressly or implicitly referred to in its enabling or empowering statute.

Statutory courts

Main article: Judicial appointments in Canada

2007-12-01T08:41:00.001-08:00

Purity is the state of being pure; the opposite of purity is impurity.
Purity may refer to:

Morality, the concept of human ethics
Black Oil virus, codenamed Purity in The X-files
Purity Supermarkets, a brand formerly used for a supermarket chain by Woolworths Limited in Tasmania, Australia
Purity Distilling Company, the company responsible for the Boston molasses disaster
"Purity", a song by the band Slipknot on their self-titled album Slipknot

2007-11-30T08:21:00.001-08:00

In Hinduism, Durga (Sanskrit: "the inaccessible"
Durga is depicted as a warrior woman riding a lion or a tiger with multiple hands carrying weapons and assuming mudras, or symbolic hand gestures. This form of the Goddess is the embodiment of feminine and creative energy (Shakti).

Durga in the Hindu tradition
The 4 day Durga Puja is the biggest annual festival in Bengal and other parts of Eastern India, but it is celebrated in various forms throughout the Hindu universe.
The day of Durga's victory is celebrated as Vijaya Dashami (East and South India), Dashain (Nepal) or Dussehra (North India) - these words literally mean "the tenth" (day), vijaya means "of-victory". In Kashmir she is worshipped as shaarika (the main temple is in Hari Parbat in Srinagar).
The actual period of the worship however may be on the preceding nine days followed by the last day called Vijayadashami in North India or five days in Bengal, (from the sixth to tenth day of the waxing-moon fortnight). Nine aspects of Durga known as Navadurga are meditated upon, one by one during the nine-day festival by devout shakti worshippers.
In North India, this tenth day, signifying Rama's victory in his battle against the demon Ravana, is celebrated as Dussehra - gigantic straw effigies of Ravana are burnt in designated open spaces (e.g. Delhi's Ram Lila grounds), watched by thousands of families and little children.
In Gujarat it is celebrated as the last day of Navaratri, during which the Garba dance is performed to celebrate the vigorous victory of Mahishasura-mardini Durga.
The Goddess Durga worshipped in her peaceful form as Shree Shantadurga also known as santeri , is the patron Goddess of Goa. She is worshipped by all Goan Hindus irrespective of caste and even by some Christians in Goa.
Goddess Durga is worshipped in many temples of Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka.

See also

2007-11-29T08:46:00.001-08:00

The European Patent Organisation (EPO or EPOrg
The European Patent Organisation is not legally bound to the European Union and has several members which are not themselves EU states.
The evolution of the Organisation is inherently linked to the European Patent Convention. See European Patent Convention for the history of the European Patent system as set up by the European Patent Convention and operated by the European Patent Office.

European Patent Convention
Biotech directive
Community patent
Brussels Regime
European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA)
London Agreement Organs
The European Patent Office (EPO or EPOff.

European Patent Office
The European Patent Office is directed by a president, who is responsible for its activities to the Administrative Council.
Presidents of the European Patent Office:

Johannes Bob van Benthem (1 November 1977 - 30 April 1985), Dutch
Paul Brändli (1 May 1985 - 31 December 1995), Swiss
Ingo Kober (1 January 1996 - 30 June 2004), German
Alain Pompidou (1 July 2004 - 30 June 2007), French
Alison Brimelow (1 July 2007 - 30 June 2010), British President
The official languages of the European Patent Office are English, French and German. However, other languages than these three are not all considered on the same footing. Non-admissible languages, such as Japanese or Chinese, should be distinguished from the "admissible non-EPO languages", such as Spanish, Italian, Dutch and any language that is at least an official language in one Contracting State. European patent applications can be validly filed by some applicants in an admissible non-EPO language provided that a translation is filed thereafter, while they cannot be validly filed in Chinese or Japanese whether a translation is filed thereafter or not.

Languages
The European Patent Office includes the following departments, pursuant to Art. 15 EPC: a Receiving Section, responsible for the examination on filing and the examination as to formal requirements of European patent applications, Examining Divisions, responsible for prior art searches and the examination of European patent applications, Opposition Divisions, responsible for the examination of oppositions against any European patent, a Legal Division, Boards of Appeal, responsible for the examination of appeals, and an Enlarged Board of Appeal (see also: Appeal procedure before the European Patent Office). In practice, the above departments of European Patent Office are organized into five "Directorates-General" (DG), each being directed by a Vice-President: DG 1 Operations, DG 2 Operational Support, DG 3 Appeals, DG 4 Administration, and DG 5 Legal/International Affairs.
The European Patent Office does not include any court which can take decisions on infringement matter. National jurisdictions are competent for infringement matter regarding European patents.

Departments and Directorates-General
The European Patent Office acts as a Receiving Office, an International Searching Authority and an International Preliminary Examining Authority in the international procedure according to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). The Patent Cooperation Treaty provides an international procedure for dealing with patent applications, called international applications, during the first 30 months after their first filing in any country. The European Patent Office does not grant international patents - which do not exist. After 30 months an international application must be converted into national or regional patent applications, and then are subject to national/regional grant procedures.

Other activities
The Administrative Council is made up of members of the contracting states and is responsible for overseeing the work of the European Patent Office,

Administrative Council
There are, as of June 15, 2007, 32 Contracting States to the EPC, also called member states of the European Patent Organisation: Slovenia, Romania, Lithuania and Latvia were all extension states prior to joining the EPC.

Statistics

2007-11-28T10:20:00.001-08:00

Montevideo (IPA: [monteβi'deo]) is the largest city, capital and chief port of Uruguay. Montevideo is the primate city in Uruguay, the only city in country with a population over 100,000. Montevideo has a privileged harbour, one of the most important in the Americas. Also, it has beautiful beaches, like Pocitos, Buceo, Malvin, Playa de los Ingleses, Playa Verde, Punta Gorda and Carrasco. Many monuments and museums cover the city, as well as historic buildings and squares. The city's mayor is Ricardo Ehrlich. According to the Mercer Human Resource Consulting, Montevideo is the Latin American city with the highest quality of life (followed by Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile).

Population
Montevideo is situated in the south of the country, The geographic coordinates are 34.5° S, 56°W.
18 de Julio is the city's main avenue and extends from the Plaza Independencia, which is the junction between the Ciudad Vieja (the historical quarter) and the rest of the city, to the neighbourhood of Cordón.

Geography

History
There are at least two explanations for the name Montevideo: The first states that it comes from the Portuguese "Monte vide eu" which means "I see a mountain". The second is that the Spaniards recorded the location of a mountain in a map as "Monte VI De Este a Oeste" meaning "The sixth mountain from east to west". The city's full original name is San Felipe y Santiago de Montevideo.

Origin of Name
Montevideo was first found by Juan Diaz De Solis. He arrived in 1516. He encountered the natives living there, and was killed by them, along with the rest of his group of travelers. The Portuguese founded Colonia del Sacramento in the 17th century despite Spanish claims to the area due to the Treaty of Tordesillas. The Spanish chased the Portuguese out of a fort in the area in 1724. Then, Bruno Mauricio de Zabala – governor of Buenos Aires – founded the city on December 24, 1726 to prevent further incursions.
In 1828, the town became the capital of Uruguay.
The city fell under heavy British influence from the early 19th century until the early 20th century as a way to circumvent Argentine and Brazilian commercial control. It was repeatedly besieged by Argentinean dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas between 1838 and 1851. Between 1860 and 1911, British Owned Railway companies built an extensive railroad network linking the city to the surrounding countryside.

Early History
During World War II, a famous incident involving the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee took place in Punta del Este, 200 km from Montevideo. After the Battle of the River Plate with the British navy on December 13, 1939, the Graf Spee retreated to Montevideo's port, which was considered neutral then. To avoid risking the crew in what he thought would be a losing battle, Captain Hans Langsdorff scuttled the ship on December 17. Langsdorff committed suicide two days later. On 10 February 2006, the eagle figurehead of the Admiral Graf Spee was recovered. To protect the feelings of those still sensitive to Nazi Germany, the swastika on the figurehead was covered as it was pulled from the water.
Since 2005 the Mayor of Montevideo (styled Intendente Municipal in Spanish) has been Ricardo Ehrlich, of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front), gaining 61% of the vote in the Mayoral elections, beating Pedro Bordaberry of the Partido Colorado, who scored 27%.

20th Century
Montevideo began as a minor settlement. In 1860, Montevideo had a population of 37,787. By 1884, the population had grown to 104,472, including many immigrants.
During the mid-20th century, military dictatorship and economic stagnation caused a decline whose residual effects are still seen today. Many rural poor flooded the city, with a large concentration in Ciudad Vieja.
Recently, economic recovery and stronger trade ties with Uruguay's neighbours have led to renewed agricultural development and hopes for greater future prosperity.
As of 2004, the city has a population of 1.35 million out of a total of 3.43 million in the country as a whole.[1] The greater metropolitan area has 1.8 million people.
Montevideo is served by Carrasco International Airport.
Template:Panorama2

Growth/economy
The city shows some evidence of world city formation. The past lives on in style, though. Back in 1870, the average living standards were similar to those in the United States.

Neighbourhoods

Instituto Preuniversitario JUAN XXIII
Stella Maris College (Montevideo)
The British Schools of Montevideo
University of the Republic, Uruguay
ORT Uruguay
Lycée Français
Scuola Italiana
Deutsche Schule
Public Primary School
Public Secondary School
Catholic University, Uruguay
Instituto Preuniversitario de Montevideo - PRE/U Education
Montevideo hosted all the matches of the 1 FIFA World Cup in 1930. Uruguay won the tournament by defeating Argentina 4-2, and later in 1950 defeated heavy favored hosts Brazil 2-1, achieving its second World Cup Championship. Uruguay also won several olympic medals in soccer including 2 gold medals, and has won the most "Copa America" tournaments, the world's second most prestigious tournament after the World Cup (tied with Argentina at 14 wins). Its Estadio Centenario is considered a temple of world football. The city is home to two of the most important South American football clubs: Nacional and Peñarol. Consistently since its early successes, Uruguayan footballers have been among the worlds best, recently producing such soccer greats as Diego Forlan, Paulo Montero and Alvaro Recoba, and currently boasts the highest number of world class exports to the European leagues out of any country in South America including fellow soccer powerhouses Argentina and Brazil, a surprising feat when considering the population of just over 3 million is a small fraction of most other South American countries.
There is strong world-wide sentiment that the centennial anniversary Fifa World Cup tournament to be held in 2030, be played at least in part in Uruguay, namely in the Centenario Stadium which was built specifically as the innagurational stadium for the tournament of 1930, and fittingly translates to "The Centennial Stadium".

Sites of interest

Québec City, Canada
Barcelona, Spain
Montevideo, USA
Miami, USA
Curitiba, Brazil

2007-11-27T11:08:00.001-08:00

Wenzhou (Simplified Chinese: 温州; Traditional Chinese: 溫州; pinyin: Wēnzhōu) is a prefecture-level city (or provincial subregion) in southeastern Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. It has a population of 7,777,000 in 2006, with 1,336,000 residents in the 3 districts (区) of the city with the same name. It also contains 2 more cities and 6 counties. It borders Lishui to the west, Taizhou to the north, and looks out to the East China Sea to the east.
Wenzhou was a prosperous foreign treaty port, which remains well-preserved today. It is also known for its emigrants who leave their native land for Europe and the United States, with a reputation for being enterprising folk who start restaurants, retail and wholesale businesses in their adopted countries.

Administration
Wenzhou, also known as Yongjia (or Yung-chia) has a history which goes back to about 2000 BC, when it became known for its pottery production. In the 2nd century BC it was called the Kingdom of Dong'ou. Under the Tang Dynasty, it was promoted to prefecture status and given its current name in 675 AD.
Throughout its history, Wenzhou's traditional economic role has been as a port giving access to the mountainous interior of southern Zhejiang Province. In 1876 Wenzhou was opened to the foreign tea trade, but no foreign settlement was ever made there. In 1937–1942 during the war with Japan, Wenzhou became an important port due to its being one of the few Chinese ports still under Chinese control. It declined in the later years of the war but began to recover after coastal trade along the Zhejiang coast was re-established in 1955.
Wenzhou derives its present name from its mild climate. With jurisdiction over three districts, two county-level cities and six counties, Wenzhou covers a land area of 11,784 square kilometers and sea area of 11,000 square kilometers. The population of the prefectural level city is 7.7 million including 2 million urban residents, divided among 2 "county level" cities and 3 wards.
As a coastal city, Wenzhou is rich in natural resources. The 339-kilometer long coastline gives the city abundant marine resources and many beautiful islands. Dongtou, one of the counties in Wenzhou, is also called the "County of one hundred islands". Wenzhou also boasts wonderful landscapes with rugged mountains and tranquil waters, including three state-level scenic spots, namely the Yandang Mountain, the Nanxi River and the Baizhangji Fall-Feiyun Lake, and two national nature reserves, namely the Wuyanling Ridge and the Nanji Islands, among which Yandang Mountain has been named as World Geopark, while Nanji Islands listed as UNESCO's Marine Nature Reserve of World Biosphere Reserves. Scenic area accounts for 25% of the city's land space, which is a perfect integration of exotic mountains, tender water and charming sea.

History
Wenzhou exports food, tea, wine, jute, timber, paper, Alunite (a non-metallic mineral used to make alum and fertilizer). Alunite is quite abundant here and sometimes Wenzhou claims to be the "Alunite Capital of the World". Its main industries are food processing, papermaking, and building materials, with some engineering works producing mostly farm machinery. From the 1990s, low-voltage electric appliances manufacturing became a major industry in Wenzhou, with some of the large private enterprises setting up joint ventures with GE and Schneider. Since 1994, exploration for oil and natural gas has commenced in the East China Sea 100 km off the coast of Wenzhou. Companies such as Texaco, Chevron, Shell and Japex have started to drill for oil but the operations have been largely unsuccessful.
Since the new government term started in 2004, the local government has initiated a brand-new development strategy of inviting investment from international market, which is dubbed as "Number 1 Project" of the city. It is a particularly bold endeavour for Wenzhou, especially with the backdrop of declining FDI in the national level.
Wenzhou is a city full of vitality, with creativity as the source of its vitality. Since China adopted the opening up and reform policy, Wenzhou has been the first to set up individual and private enterprises as well as shareholding cooperative economy in China. It has also taken the lead in carrying out the financial system reform and the structural reform in townships. Being a pioneer in utilizing marketing mechanism to develop urban constructions, Wenzhou has won a number of firsts in China and set many national records.
Vitality comes from Wenzhou natives. Without much dependence in state investments, the development of the city really lies on the efforts of the natives. Vitality results from business culture, which is the top feature of Wenzhou's economy. Wenzhou businessmen have set their feet on the way of accumulating capital and also made themselves one of the important forces of the overseas Chinese businessmen. "Big market with small commodities, small money with high capital intensity" has become the prominent character of Wenzhou's economy. Vitality also originates from opening up of market. In recent years, Wenzhou has continuously deregulated to embrace foreign investment and opened more widely to the outside world, encouraging the aspiring spirit of the local people to start-up businesses. With enduring vitality and sustained innovation, the economy of Wenzhou has always enjoyed healthy development. From 1978 through 2005, the GDP of the city has increased from 1.32 billion RMB to 160 billion RMB with the gross fiscal revenue increasing from 0.135 billion RMB to 20.49 billion RMB, and the net per capita income for rural residents increasing from 113.5 RMB to 6,845 RMB. What's more, the per capita disposable income for urban residents increased from 422.6 RMB in 1981 to 19,805 RMB in 2005.
Wenzhou is the birthplace of the China private economy. In the early days of opening up and reform, the people of Wenzhou took the lead in developing commodity economy, household industries and specialized markets. Thousands upon thousands of people and families were engaged in household manufacturing to develop individual and private economy. Up till now, Wenzhou has a total of 240,000 individually-owned commercial and industrial units and 130,000 private enterprises of which 180 are group companies, 4 among China's top 500 enterprises and 36 among national 500 top private enterprises. The quantity, industrial output, tax, export and number of employees of the private enterprises account for 99%, 96%, 75%, 95% and 80% of the whole city respectively. There are 27 national production bases such as "China's Shoes Capital" and "China's Capital of Electrical Equipment", 40 China's famous trademarks and China's famous-brand products and 67 national inspection-exempt products in the city. The development of private economy in Wenzhou has created the "Wenzhou Economic Model", which gives great inspiration to the modernization drive in China.

2007-11-26T09:13:00.001-08:00

Habitat destruction is a process of land use change in which one habitat-type is removed and replaced with another habitat-type. In the process of land-use change, plants and animals which previously used the site are displaced or destroyed, reducing biodiversity. Urban Sprawl is one cause of habitat destruction. Other important causes of habitat destruction include mining, trawling, and agriculture. Habitat destruction is currently ranked as the most important cause of species extinction worldwide.

2007-11-25T08:35:00.001-08:00

The High School of Dundee, informally Dundee High School, is one of Scotland's leading private, or independent schools, and the only such school in Dundee. Its foundation is dated to 1239. The Rector is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference.

History
The School has its origins in the Grammar School of Dundee founded by the abbot and monks of Lindores Abbey after they were granted a charter by Gilbert, Bishop of Brechin, in the early 1220s to "plant schools wherever they please in the burgh". Their rights were confirmed by a Papal Bull conferred by Pope Gregory IX on 14th February 1239. It is from this Bull that the School's Latin motto "Prestante Domino", translated as "Under the Leadership of God", is taken.
Little information survives about the early Grammar School: it would have taught a Latin curriculum to boys from Dundee and the surrounding area. However, in 1434, the teaching methods of the Master, Gilbert Knight, were challenged by John, Bishop of Brechin, who conferred Laurence Lownan as the new Master in his place.
Dundee was a hotbed of the Reformation, and St Mary's Church had, according to John Knox, the first truly reformed congregation in Scotland. The School itself was the earliest reformed school in the country, having adopted the new religion in 1554 under the master, Thomas Makgibbon, with the assistance of the (by-now Protestant) Town Council. However, John, the Abbot of Lindores stepped in to take control of the School which his predecessors had founded, replacing Makgibbon nominally with the Vicar of St. Mary's, John Rolland, who was given the power to appoint substitutes. This he did, his substitutes opening schools in opposition to the Grammar School, poaching its pupils. In the ensuing furore the Town Council, which approved of Makgibbon's methods, intervened to prevent rival schools.
Among other early Masters was John Fethy, who left Scotland for Wittenberg from Dundee, having come into contact with Lutheran influences. He returned to Scotland in around 1532 "the first Organist that ever brought to Scotland the curious new fingering", that is, playing the organ with five fingers.
Early scholars included Hector Boece, historian and first Principal of the University of Aberdeen; William Wallace; and James, John and Robert Wedderburn, authors of The Gude and Godlie Ballatis, one of the most important literary works of the Scots Reformation.
After the Reformation, the Grammar School came under the auspices of the Town council. Greek was added to the curriculum shortly after 1562, under the Master Alexander Hepburn, who would author Grammaticae Artis Rudimenta Breviter et Dilucide Explicata, a Latin primer, in Dundee, and go on to teach the James Crichton, known as "The Admirable Crichton", at Dunkeld. Mary, Queen of Scots also made an annual grant to the School in 1563, from the revenues of the church.
The School moved into its first permanent home in 1589, a building in St Clement's Lane demolished to make way for the City Square in the 1930s. Pupils were expected to enter the School at the age of eight, and to stay for seven years, two years longer than in other Scottish schools: in 1773, this was reduced to the customary five, at which point the boy could go on to university. He had probably had only two teachers in all this time: each of the three assistants, known as doctors, taught one class for three years, after which the Rector would teach for two years.

The English School and Dundee Academy
For some years it had become apparent that the educational needs of the rapidly expanding Burgh were inadequately met by the three Burgh schools. In April 1829, a public meeting was held to consider the situation, where it was proposed to combine the schools within one building. The Town Council had also been reviewing the position: following deliberations, it was decided that "the Magistrates and Town Council and all classes of the community shall unite in joint efforts for enlarging and improving the means of education in Dundee". The schools hitherto under the patronage of the Council were to be reconstituted and handed over to a new body of Directors, of whom ten were chosen by the Council, and ten by the subscribers to the new buildings. Thus, the three schools were united in 1829 to form the Dundee Public Seminaries, and in 1832-4 the present School, to the design of Edinburgh architect George Angus, was built, a neo-classical building designed as part of the civic improvements in Dundee. The School was opened on the 1st October 1834. The total cost of the building, including the playground and enclosure (not completed until 1837) was £10,000, the greater portion of which was raised by public subscription. Though it had one building and one management, the three schools remained more or less distinct; conflicting claims for precedence led to no Rector being appointed. The centre was assigned to the Academy, the west wing to the Grammar School, and the east wing to the English School; the eight or nine Headmasters acted independently, but presided in rotation over a Censor's Court, which dealt with matters of common concern. In 1840, one of the Directors was to exercise general supervision over the School as Governor, or Superintending Director, with powers to "reform all abuses and irregularities".

Dundee Public Seminaries
In 1859, a Royal Charter granted by Queen Victoria changed the name of the school to the High School of Dundee. In 1877, a new curriculum for the School was introduced, and an inclusive fee charged: prior to this, pupils had attended such classes as they chose. The independent future of the School was threatened by the Education (Scotland) Act 1872, which made education compulsory and took over the running of parish schools from the Church of Scotland. Burgh as well as parish schools now came under School Boards run by local committees, and similarly ancient schools in Edinburgh and Glasgow were taken over by their respective Town councils. The situation was worsened by a similar Act in 1878, until an alumnus of the High School, William Harris, offered, in February 1881, to donate £30,000 for the purposes of Higher Education in Dundee on condition that the Board give up all claim to the School. This agreement was incorporated in an Act of Parliament, the William Harris Endowment and Dundee Education Act, 1882. This act led to the appointment of a single Rector of the High School, and the foundation of Harris Academy. Thanks to Miss Margaret Harris, who waived her right to a life-rent in her brother's estate, the Girls' School was built across Euclid Crescent in two stages between 1886 and 1890. A further act was passed in 1922, and the School's current constitution is enshrined in the High School of Dundee Scheme passed before the Court of Session in 1989.
The School church is Dundee Parish Church (St Mary's), continuing a tradition that has existed since the foundation of the Grammar School in the thirteenth century, and services and concerts are regularly held in the church.
The school has a total of 1052 pupils in prep-school and senior school. Fees for the 2006/2007 session range from £5841 to £8304 GBP. The School was recently among the first Scottish charities investigated by the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator for the public benefit derived from their tax-exempt status, and was judged to have demonstrated its charitable aims and "local and national benefit".

The High School of Dundee
The High School of Dundee is situated in seven buildings in the city centre: the Main Building (traditionally the Boys School); the Margaret Harris Building (the Girls School); the Robert Fergusson Building, housing the English department; Trinity Meadowside, a former church housing the hall, library and recording studio; Bonar House; Baxter House; and The Lodge.
There are also two main playing grounds, Dalnacraig and Mayfield in which sports such as hockey, tennis, rugby, football, cricket and athletics are played. Mayfield has undergone massive investment in recent years with new sports facilities, and is the home of Dundee High School Former Pupils' RFC. The school also holds an annual sports day at the Mayfield playing grounds in June where the four school houses compete against each other throughout the day.

Houses

William Wallace, (c.1270-1305), Scottish patriot
Hector Boece, (c.1465–1536), Historian, first Principal of the University of Aberdeen, (1500-1536)
William Hay c.1465-1542, Principal of the University of Aberdeen, (1536-1542)
James, John and Robert Wedderburn, James (c. 1495–1533), John (c. 1505–1556) and Robert Wedderburn (c. 1510–c.1555) religious reformers
Henry Scrimgeour (Scrymgeour), (1505?–1572), diplomat and book collector, Professor of Philosophy and Civil Law in the University of Geneva.
Sir Peter Young, (1544–1628), royal tutor and diplomat
Hercules Rollock, (c.1546–1599), lawyer and poet
George Gledstanes (Gladstanes), (c.1562–1615), archbishop of St Andrews
Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh (1636–1691), Lord Advocate, writer, founder of the Advocates' Library, the precursor to the National Library of Scotland
Rev Robert Kirk, (1644-1692), minister of Aberfoyle, translator of the Psalms into Gaelic, alleged to have been abducted by fairies
Adam Duncan, 1st Viscount Duncan of Camperdown, (1731-1804) Admiral of the Royal Navy
George Dempster (1732–1818), lawyer and politician
Robert Fergusson, (1750–1774), poet
Robert Haldane (1764–1842), theological writer and evangelical patron
Sir James Ivory FRS (1765–1842)
James Haldane (1768–1851), Baptist minister and author
Sir Hugh Lyon Playfair, (1786–1861), army officer and Provost of St Andrews
James Ivory, Lord Ivory (1792–1866), judge
Thomas James Henderson (1798–1844), astronomer
Sir William Aitken (1825–1892), pathologist
William Edward Baxter, (1825–1890), politician and author
Sir Andrew Clark, first baronet (1826–1893), physician
Bruce James Talbert, (1838–1881), architect and designer
Robert Fleming, (1845–1933), financier
John Mitchell Keiller, (1851–1899), preserves and confectionery manufacturer
George Saunders, (1859–1922), journalist
David Coupar Thomson, (1861–1954), newspaper proprietor
Fred Miller, (1863-1924), editor of The Daily Telegraph, 1923-1924
Sir James Walker, (1863–1935), Professor of Chemistry at University College, Dundee, and the University of Edinburgh
Millar Patrick, (1868–1951), hymnologist and liturgist
William Thomas Calman, (1871–1952), zoologist, Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum
Norman Kemp Smith, (1872–1958), Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh
H. N. Brailsford, (1873- 1958) journalist and author
(Elizabeth) Hilda Lockhart Lorimer, (1873–1954), classical scholar
Colonel George Waterston Millar DSO, 1874-1955, army medic
Charles Coupar Barrie, 1st Baron Abertay, (1875–1940) politician
David Lockhart Robertson Lorimer, (1876–1962), diplomat and linguist
Preston Watson, (1880-1915), pioneer of aviation, argued to have made the world's first powered flight
Robert William Chapman (1881–1960), literary scholar and publisher
Sir Alexander Gray, (1882–1968), Jaffrey Professor of Political Economy at the University of Aberdeen and poet
William Laughton Lorimer (1885–1967), classical scholar and translator
John Scott Fulton, Baron Fulton (1902–1986), first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex and public servant
Walter Perry, (1921 - 2003) Lord Perry of Walton, first Vice-Chancellor of the Open University
Sir Alan Peacock (1922-), economist, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, (1983-1984)
Dave Duncan, (1933-) author
William Cullen, Baron Cullen of Whitekirk, (1935-), Lord President of the Court of Session, 2001-2005
Donald MacArthur Ross, Lord Ross, Lord Justice Clerk (1985–1997)
Iain MacMillan, (1938-2006), photographer
Finlay MacDonald, (1945-) Principal Clerk to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Moderator of the General Assembly (2002-2003)
Frank Hadden, (1954-), Scottish rugby coach
Andrew Marr, (1959-), journalist
A. L. Kennedy, (1965-) author
Andy Nicol, (1971-) Scottish rugby international
KT Tunstall, (1975), singer-songwriter
Jon Petrie, (1976-) Scottish rugby international

2007-11-24T08:15:00.001-08:00

Founding
Director D.W. Griffith joined Biograph in 1908 as a writer and actor, but within months became their principal director, and helped establish many of the conventions of narrative film, including cross-cutting to show events occurring simultaneously in different places, the flashback, the fade-in/fade-out, the interposition of closeups within a scene, and a moderated acting style more suitable for film. Although Griffith did not invent these techniques, he made them a regular part of the film vocabulary. Griffith's prolific output, often one new film a week, and willingness to experiment in many different genres helped the company become a major commercial success. Many early movie stars were Biograph performers, including Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Robert Harron, Florence Auer, Carol Dempster, Alan Hale, Sr., Blanche Sweet, Harry Carey, Mabel Normand, Henry B. Walthall and Dorothy Davenport. Mack Sennett honed his craft as an actor and director of comedies at Biograph.
In January of 1910, D.W. Griffith, and Lee Dougherty with the rest of the Biograph acting company, traveled to Los Angeles. While the purpose of the trip was to shoot the film Ramona in authentic locations, it was also to determine the suitability of the West Coast as a place for a permanent studio. The group set up a small facility at Washington Street and Grand Avenue (where the Los Angeles Convention Center now stands). After this, Griffith and his players decided to go a little further north to a small village they had heard about that was friendly, and had beautiful floral scenery. They decided to travel there, and fell in love with this little place called Hollywood. Biograph then made the first film ever in Hollywood called In Old California, a Latino melodrama about the early days of Mexico-owned California.

D.W. Griffith
In December 1908, Biograph joined Edison in forming the Motion Picture Patents Company in an attempt to control the industry and shut out smaller producers.

Decline
Producer Thomas R. Bond II and his father, the late Tommy Bond (1926–2005), who played "Butch" in Our Gang (also known as "The Little Rascals"), started the new California corporation,

See also

2007-11-23T07:44:00.001-08:00

Belgrave is an area in northern Leicester, England. The old Belgrave Village is on the Loughborough Road, to the west of the A46, known at that point as 'Melton Road'.

History
The settlement has been meant in Domesday Book as Merdegrave (from Old English mearð 'marten' + grāf 'grove'). However, after the Norman Conquest the first part of the name merde was taken to be Old French 'dung' or 'shit', hence the people changed it to Old French beu, bel 'fair', 'lovely', in order to remove that unpleasant association.

2007-11-22T09:25:00.001-08:00

Gil Scott-Heron (born April 1, 1949) is an American poet and musician known primarily for his late 1960s and early 1970s work as a spoken word performer. He is associated with African American militant activism, and is best known for his poem and song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". He is the son of Jamaican footballer Gil Heron, who was one of the first black professionals to play in the UK.

History/overview

Discography

Books

Black Wax (1982). Directed by Robert Mugge.

2007-11-21T07:24:00.001-08:00

Palenque is a Maya archeological site near the Usumacinta River in the Mexican state of Chiapas, located at 17°29′0″N, 92°2′59″W about 130 km south of Ciudad del Carmen (see map). It is a medium-sized site, much smaller than such huge sites as Tikal or Copán, but it contains some of the finest architecture, sculpture, roof comb and bas-relief carvings the Maya produced.

Name and etymology
Other important locations and Emblem Glyphs that occur in Palenque texts include the following:

Mat or Matal- Often spelled with the head of a cormorant, the Mat Emblem Glyph is used by mythological entities as well as rulers. Toponyms and associated Emblem Glyphs in Palenque texts
Much of the Early Classic history of the city still awaits the archaeologist's trowel. However, from the extent of the surveyed site and the reference to Early Classic rulers in the inscriptional record of the Late Classic, it is clear Palenque's history is much longer than we currently know. The fact that early ajaw (king or lord) and mythological beings used a variety of emblem glyphs in their titles indeed suggests a complex early history. For instance, K'uk' B'ahlam the supposed founder of the Palenque dynasty is called a Toktan Ajaw in the text of the Temple of the Foliated Cross.
The famous structures that we know today probably represent a rebuilding effort in response to the attacks by the city of Calakmul and its client states in 599 and 611.

History
A list of known Maya rulers of the city, with dates of their reigns:

K'uk B'alam I 11 March, 431 - 435
"Casper" (nickname; ancient name not translated; also known as "11 Rabbit") 10 August, 435 - 487
B'utz Aj Sak Chiik 29 July, 487 - 501
Ahkal Mo' Naab' I 5 June, 501 - 1 December, 524
vacant ?
K'an Joy Chitam I 25 February, 529 - 8 February, 565
Ahkal Mo' Naab' II 4 May, 565 - 23 July, 570
vacant ?
Kan B'alam I 8 April, 572 - 3 February, 583
Yohl Ik'nal (female ruler) 583-604
Aj Ne' Yohl Mat 605-612
Pacal I 612
Sac-Kuk (female) 612-615 d. 640
K'inich Janaab' Pakal ("Pacal II"; "Pacal the Great") 615-683
K'inich Kan B'alam II ("Chan Bahlam II") 683-702
K'inich K'an Joy Chitam II ("Kan Xul II") 702-711 d. 722?
Xoc (regent for Kan-Joy Chitam II) 711?-c. 722
K'inich Ahkal Mo' Naab' III ("Chaacal III") 3 January, 722 - after 729
K'inich Janaab' Pakal ("Pacal III") fl. c. 742
K'inich K'uk B'alam II 8 March, 765 - ?
Wak Kimi Janhb' Pakal ("Pacal IV") 17 November, 799-? Dynastic list
The first ajaw, or king, of B'aakal that we know of was K'uk Balam (Quetzal Jaguar), who governed for four years starting in the year 431. After him, a king came to power, nicknamed Gasparín by archeologists. The two next kings were probably Gasparín's sons. Little was known about the first of these, B'utz Aj Sak Chiik, until 1994, when a tablet was found describing a ritual for the king. The first tablet mentioned his successor Ahkal Mo' Naab I as a teenage prince, and therefore it is believed that there was a family relation between them. For unknown reasons, Akhal Mo' Naab I had great prestige, so the Kings who succeeded him were proud to be his descendants.
When Ahkal Mo' Naab I died in 524, there was an interregnum of four years, before the following king was crowned en Toktán in 529. K'an Joy Chitam I governed for 36 years. His sons Ahkal Mo' Naab II and K'an B'alam I were the first kings who used the title Kinich, which means the great son. This word was used also by later kings. B'alam I was succeeded in 583 by Yok Iknal, who is supposedly his daughter. The inscriptions found in Palenque document a battle that occurred under her government in which troops from Calakmul invaded and sacked Palenque, a military feat without known precedents. These events took place on April 21, 599.
A second victory by Calakmul occurred some twelve years later, in 611, under the government of Aj Ne'Ohl Mat, son of Yol Iknal. In this occasion, the king of Calakmul entered Palenque in person, consolidating a significant military disaster, the which was followed by an epoch of political disorder. Aj Ne'Ohl Mat was to die in 612.

Early Classic period
B'aakal began the Late Classic period in the throes of the disorder created by the defeats before Calakmul. The texts written in 680s are pessimistic: "Lost is the divine lady, lost is the king." These sources also tell of some fundamental rites that were not actually done. Mentions of the government at the time have not been found.
It is believed that after the death of Aj Ne'Ohl Mat, Janaab Pakal, sometimes called Pakal I, took power thanks to a political agreement. Janaab Pakal assumed the functions of the ajaw (king) but never was crowned; and he was succeeded in 612 by his daughter, the queen Sak K'uk, who governed for only three years. (see citation hereof in Spanish wikipedia). It is considered that the dynasty was reestablished from then on, so B'aakal retook the path of glory and splendor.
The son of Janaab Pakal is the most famous of the Mayan Kings, K'inich Janaab' Pakal, also known as Pakal the Great. Starting at twelve years of age, he reigned in Palenque from 615-683. Known as the favorite of the gods, he carried Palenque to new levels of splendor, in spite of having come to power when the city was at a low point. Pakal married the princess of Oktán in 624 and had two children.
During his government, most of the palaces and temples of Palenque were constructed; the city flourished as never before, eclipsing Tikal. The central complex, known as The Palace, was enlarged and remodeled on various occasions, notably in the years 654, 661, and 668. In this structure, is a text describing how in that epoch Palenque was newly allied with Tikal, and also with Yaxchilan, and that they were able to capture the six enemy kings of the alliance. Not much more had been translated from the text.
After the death of Pakal in 683, his older son K'inich Kan B'alam assumed the kingship of B'aakal, who in turn was succeeded in 702 by his brother K'inich K'an Joy Chitam II. The first continued the architectural and sculptural works that were began by his father, as well as finishing the construction of the famous tomb of Pakal. Furthermore, he began ambitious projects, like the Group of the Crosses. Thanks to numerous works began during his government, now we have portraits of this king, found in various sculptures. His brother succeeded him continuing with the same enthusiasm of construction and art, reconstructing and enlarging the north side of the Palace. Thanks to the reign of these three kings, B'aakal had a century of growing and splendor.
In 711, Palanque was sacked by the realm of Toniná, and the old king K'inich K'an Joy Chitam II was taken prisoner. It is not known what the final destination of the king was, and it is presumed that he was executed in Toniná. For ten years there was no king. Finally, K'inich Ahkal Mo' Nab' III was crowned in 722. Although the new king belonged to the royalty, there is no reason to be sure that he was the direct inheritor direct of K'inich K'an Joy Chitam II. It is believed, therefore, that this coronation was a break in the dynastic line; and probably K'inich Ahkal Nab' arrived to power after years of maneuvering and forging political alliances. This king, his son and grandson, governed until the end of the century. Little is known about this time period, except that, among other events, the war with Toniná continued, where there are hieroglyphics that record a new defeat of Palenque.

Late Classic period
During the 8th century, B'aakal came under increasing stress, in concert with most other Classic Mayan city-states, and there was no new elite construction in the ceremonial center sometime after 800. An agricultural population continued to live here for a few generations, then the site was abandoned and was slowly grown over by the forest. The district was very sparsely populated when the Spanish first arrived in the 1520s.

Abandonment
Important structures at Palenque include:

Art and architecture
The Palace, actually a complex of several connected and adjacent buildings and courtyards built up over several generations on a wide artificial terrace. The Palace houses many fine sculptures and bas-relief carvings in addition to the distinctive four-story tower.

Palace
The Temple of Inscriptions was begun perhaps as early as 675 A similar scene of emergence is seen on the San Francisco Capstone which depicts an enthroned Maize God sprouting from the portal maw.

Temple of Inscriptions
The Temple of the Cross, Temple of the Sun, and Temple of the Foliated Cross. This is a set of graceful temples atop step pyramids, each with an elaborately carved relief in the inner chamber depicting two figures presenting ritual objects and effigies to a central icon. Earlier interpretations had argued that the smaller figure was that of K'inich Janaab' Pakal while the larger figure was K'inich Kan B'ahlam. However, it is now known based on a better understanding of the iconography and epigraphy that the central tablet depicts two images of Kan B'ahlam. The smaller figure shows K'inich Kan B'ahlam during a rite of passage ritual at the age of six (9.10.8.9.3 9 Akbal 6 Xul) while the larger is of his accession to kingship at the age of 48. These temples were named by early explorers; the cross-like images in two of the reliefs actually depict the tree of creation at the center of the world in Maya mythology.

Temples of the Cross group
The site also has a number of other temples, tombs, and elite residences, some a good distance from the center of the site, a court for playing the Mesoamerican Ballgame, and an interesting stone bridge over the Otulum River some distance below the Aqueduct.

The Aqueduct constructed with great stone blocks with a three-meter-high vault to make the Otulum River flow underneath the floor of Palenque's main plaza.
The Temple of The Lion at a distance of some 200 meters south of the main group of temples; its name came from the elaborate bas-relief carving of a king seated on a throne in the form of a jaguar.
Structure XII with a bas-relief carving of the God of Death.
Temple of the Count another elegant Classic Palenque temple, which got its name from the fact that early explorer Jean Frederic Waldeck lived in the building for some time, and Waldeck claimed to be a Count.

2007-11-20T09:50:00.000-08:00

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (Николай Александрович Бердяев) (March 18 [O.S. March 6] 1874 – March 24, 1948) was a Russian religious and political philosopher.

Biography
Berdyaev was born in Kiev into an aristocratic military family. He spent a solitary childhood at home, where his father's library allowed him to read widely. He read Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Kant when only fourteen years old and excelled at languages.

Early Life and Education
Berdyaev decided on an intellectual career and entered the Kiev University in 1894. This was a time of revolutionary fervor among the students and the intelligentsia. Berdyaev became a Marxist and in 1898 was arrested in a student demonstration and expelled from the University. Later his involvement in illegal activities led to three years of internal exile in central Russia – a mild sentence compared to that faced by many other revolutionaries.
In 1904 Berdyaev married Lydia Trusheff and the couple moved to St. Petersburg, the Russian capital and centre of intellectual and revolutionary activity. Berdyaev participated fully in intellectual and spiritual debate, eventually departing from radical Marxism to focus his attention on philosophy and spirituality. Berdyaev and Trusheff remained deeply committed to each other until the latter's death in 1945.
Berdyaev was a believer in orthodox Christianity, but was often critical of the institutional church. A fiery 1913 article criticising the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church caused him to be charged with the crime of blasphemy, the punishment for which was exile to Siberia for life. The World War and the Bolshevik Revolution prevented the matter coming to trial.
He was a Christian universalist.

Revolutionary Activities
Berdyaev could not accept the Bolshevik regime, because of its authoritarianism and the domination of the state over the freedom of the individual. Yet, he accepted the hardships of the revolutionary period, as he was permitted for the time being to continue to lecture and write.
His philosophy has been characterised as Christian existentialist. He was preoccupied with creativity and in particular freedom from anything that inhibited said creativity, whence his opposition against a "collectivized and mechanized society".
In September, 1922, the Bolshevik government expelled a carefully selected group of some 160 prominent writers, intellectuals and scholars whose ideas the Bolshevik regime found objectionable, Berdyaev among them on the so-called "philosophers' ship" . Overall, they were supporters neither of the Czarist régime nor of the Bolsheviks, preferring less autocratic forms of government. They included those who argued for personal liberty, spiritual development, Christian ethics, and a pathway informed by reason and guided by faith.

Exile in France
The first date is of the Russian edition, the second date is of the first English edition The list is compiled from '"Bibliographie des Oeuvres de Nicolas Berdiaev" établie par Tamara Klépinine' published by the Institut d'études Slaves, Paris 1978

The Meaning of the Creative Act (1916) 1955
Dostoevsky (1923) 1934
The Meaning of History (1923) 1936
The End of Our Time (1924) 1933
Leontiev (1926) 1940
Freedom and the Spirit (1927-8) 1935
The Russian Revolution (1931)(anthology)
The Destiny of Man 1931 (1937)
Christianity and Class War 1931 (1933)
The Fate of Man in the Modern World (1934) 1938
Solitude and Society (1934) 1938
The Bourgeois Mind 1934 (anthology)
The Origin of Russian Communism (1937) 1955
Christianity and Anti-semitism (1938) 1952
Slavery and Freedom (1939)
The Russian Idea (1946) 1947
Spirit and Reality (1946) 1957
The Beginning and the End(1947) 1952
Towards a New Epoch" (1949) (anthology)
Dream and Reality: An Essay in Autobiography (1949) 1950
The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar (1949) 1952
The Divine and the Human (1949) 1952
Truth and Revelation (n.p.) 1953 Works cited

Christian existentialism
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Nikolai Lossky
sobornost
Russian philosophy
Philosophers' ship

2007-11-19T09:09:00.001-08:00

The Battle of Saint Gotthard (Hungarian: Szentgotthárd) was fought on August 1, 1664 between an Austrian army led by Raimondo Montecuccoli and an Ottoman army under the command of Ahmed Köprülü. The battle took place at Szentgotthárd in Western Hungary, near the present-day Austro-Hungarian border. The Turks were militarily defeated but were able to negotiate the Peace of Vasvár, which was highly favorable to them.

Preparations
More so than military power, the Austrian victory was achieved due to diplomatic efforts. Although Leopold personally objected to Protestantism, he had to rely on his Protestant German princes to provide military aid. Even worse was the military aid from France, which was (and continued to be until the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756) Austria's arch-nemesis. Despite numerous objections from some Protestant princes, help was not short in coming. The League of the Rhine - a French dominated group of German princes - agreed to send a corps of 6,000 men independently commanded by Count Coligny of France and Prince Johann Philipp of Mainz. By September 1663, Brandenburg and Saxony had also agreed to contingents of their own. In January 1664, the Imperial Diet agreed to raise 21,000 men, although this army did not yet exist other than on paper. Meanwhile, the Turks had declared war in April 1663, although they were slow in executing their invasion plans.

Diplomatic efforts
Köprülü's army might have numbered 120-160,000 Probably included some 60,000 Janissaries and spahis, 100,000 azaps, akincis, silidars,tatars and vassals.
Montecuccoli's army consists of Austrian, Hungarian and German forces, French brigades and approx. 2000 Croatians.
The Turkish invasion began in the spring of 1664, a full year after their declaration of war. This delay was key to the defense of Austria, as Montecuccoli was waiting for help to arrive. Finally in July 1664 the Imperial forces were assembled and they set out for the River Rába, which separated the Turkish forces from the Austrian duchy itself. If they were allowed to cross, the Turks could threaten both Vienna and Graz. Montecuccoli intercepted the Turks before they crossed the river but the division of command made effective deployment of troops impossible. On 1 August 1664 Turkish forces crossed the river near the monastery of Saint Gotthard and beat the Austrians back. Although initially plagued by disunity, Montecuccoli was finally able to convince Coligny and Leopold Wilhelm of Baden-Baden (commander of the Imperial detachment) to mass their forces and attack the Turkish troops, who were reorganizing in a nearby forest. The attack stunned the Turks, who fled in confusion back to the river, with a large number of them drowning. Due to the confusion of the panicked troops, Ahmed Köprülü (Vizier 1661-1676) was not able to send the rest of his army across the river and instead retired from the field.
Casualties were heavy on the Ottoman side and significantly, most of the casualties were in the elite corps of the army. Köprülü was left with an army of ill-trained irregulars and auxiliaries while Montecuccoli's casualties were light and mostly in the Imperial contingent. Despite the victory, the Austrians were still outnumbered nearly three to one.
In his work THE OTTOMAN CENTURIES, Lord Kinross reported that the Turks took huge casualties from the French bayonetmen in the Austrian ranks. This was the first Turkish experience at fighting soldiers using the bayonet and musket in disciplined ranks. But the Turks, in their conservatism, were slow to adopt new economic, military, and social methods, and thus were becoming at this time gradually outclassed by Western European states.

Battle
Although many in Europe, especially the Croat and Magyar nobility, expected the Austrians to finally liberate Hungary once and for all, Leopold abandoned the campaign. Many have criticized him for this decision (both in the past and the present). Although Montecuccoli's army was largely intact, there was no interest among the allies to liberate Hungary. Any invasion of Hungary would undoubtedly have to be done without the help of the French and German troops. Leopold noticed that the French officers had begun to fraternize with the Magyar nobles and encouraged them to rebel against Austrian rule.
In addition, Leopold had always been a member of the "Spanish faction" in Vienna. With the last Spanish Habsburg, Carlos II, about to die at any given moment, Leopold wanted to ensure that his hands were free for the inevitable struggle against Louis XIV of France. Although the liberation of Hungary was a strategic interest of the Habsburgs, it would have to wait until later. Throughout his reign, Leopold had always been more interested in the struggle against France rather than the Ottomans. Therefore, he signed the humiliating Peace of Vasvar, which did not take into account the Battle of Saint Gotthard. The Battle of Saint Gotthard is still significant, however, for it stopped any Turkish invasion of Austria, which certainly would have prolonged the war and led to an even more disastrous resolution. The Austrians would also use the twenty-year truce to build up their forces and begin the liberation of Hungary in 1683.

2007-11-18T10:04:00.001-08:00

For a high school academic guidance plan, see 4-year plan.
The Four Year Plan was a series of economic reforms created by the Nazi Party. The Four Year Plan included: increased synthetic fibre production; public works projects, headed by Fritz Todt; called for increased automobile production; initiated numerous building and architectural projects; and further developed the Autobahn system. The plan also placed an emphasis on building up the nation's military defenses, which was a direct violation of the terms set up by the Allies of World War I at the Treaty of Versailles, which stated:
The German army was to be restricted to 100,000 men, there was to be no conscription, no tanks or heavy artillery and no general staff. The German navy was restricted to 15,000 men and no submarines while the fleet was limited to six battleships (of less than 10,000 tonnes), six cruisers and 12 destroyers. Germany was not permitted an air force. Finally, Germany was explicitly required to retain all enlisted men for 12 years and all officers for 25 years, so that only a limited number of men would have military training.

Global reaction
The Four Year Plan favoured both the protection of agriculture and economic independence. Hermann Göring was put in charge of the Four Year Plan on October 18, 1936 and was given extraordinary powers for an extraordinary situation. In short, Goering had complete control over the economy including the private sector, especially after the Minister of Economics, Hjalmar Schacht, began to lose favour with Hitler because of his opposition to growing military expenditures. During the following years, Germany began building refineries, aluminium plants, and factories for the development of synthetic-materials. The four year plan technically expired in 1940, but the "Office of the Four Year Plan" (considered a cabinet level agency) had grown to such a power base that the Four year plan was extended indefinitely. Indeed, much of the Four Year Plan's goals relating to economic production were accomplished between 1941 and 1944.

2007-11-17T07:45:00.001-08:00

The Cracovia Marathon is an annual marathon held in the city of Kraków, Poland; usually in May. It was established in 2002 and has been run every year since.
Aside from the main marathon, a half marathon is also run.

2007-11-16T08:01:00.001-08:00

An airship or dirigible is a buoyant lighter-than-air aircraft that can be steered and propelled through the air. Unlike aerodynamic vehicles such as fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters which stay aloft by moving an airfoil through the air in order to produce lift, aerostatic craft such as airships and balloons stay aloft by filling a large cavity with lighter than air gas.
Airships were the first aircraft to make controlled, powered flight. They were widely used prior to the 1940s. Their use decreased over time as their capabilities were surpassed by those of airplanes. A series of high-profile accidents, including the 1937 burning of the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New Jersey, furthered their decline. Airships are still used today in certain niche applications however, such as advertising.

Terminology

Rigid airships (for example, Zeppelins) had rigid frames containing multiple, non-pressurized gas cells or balloons to provide lift. Rigid airships did not depend on internal pressure to maintain their shape.
Non-rigid airships (blimps) use a pressure level in excess of the surrounding air pressure in order to retain their shape.
Semi-rigid airships, like blimps, require internal pressure to maintain their shape, but have extended, usually articulated keel frames running along the bottom of the envelope to distribute suspension loads into the envelope and allow lower envelope pressures.
Metal-clad airships had characteristics of both rigid and non-rigid airships, utilizing a very thin, airtight metal envelope, rather than the usual rubber-coated fabric envelope. Only four ships of this type, Schwarz's aluminum ships of 1893 and 189 the ZMC-2 and the Slate "City of Glendale", have been built to date with only the ZMC-2 a success.
Hybrid airship is a general term for an aircraft that combines characteristics of heavier-than-air (airplane or helicopter) and lighter than air technology. Examples include helicopter/airship hybrids intended for heavy lift applications and dynamic lift airships intended for long-range cruising. It should be noted that most airships, when fully loaded with cargo and fuel, are typically heavier than air, and thus must use their propulsion system and shape to generate aerodynamic lift, necessary to stay aloft; technically making them hybrid airships. However, the term "hybrid airship" refers to craft that obtain a significant portion of their lift from aerodynamic lift and often require substantial take-off rolls before becoming airborne. Types
Any gas that is lighter than air can be used to create buoyant lift, however many such gases are either toxic, flammable, corrosive, or a combination of these, limiting their use in airships. Historically, hydrogen and helium have been used in large airships.
In the early days of airships, the primary lifting gas was hydrogen. Ships called thermal airships utilize heated air, in a fashion similar to hot air balloons, as their lifting gas.

Lifting gas
With hydrogen gas being approximately half the density of helium gas, one may erroneously assume that it has twice the buoyant force of helium. In fact, the theory of buoyancy indicates the force is related to the density of the air which the gas displaces more than the density of the gas itself.
The density at sea-level and 0°C for air and each of the gases:
Utilizing the buoyancy equation
As such, hydrogen's additional buoyancy compared to helium is:
However due to the fact that hydrogen is highly flammable heilum is usually used.

Air (ρ_air) = 1.292 grams per liter (g/l).
Hydrogen (ρ_H2) = 0.08988 g/l
Helium (ρ_He) = 0.1786 g/l
Buoyancy = mass × (1 - ρ_air/ρ_gas)
Therefore the buoyancy for one liter of hydrogen in air as:

0.08988 grams * (1 - (1.292 / 0.08988) ) = -1.202 grams
And the buoyancy for one liter of helium in air as:
- 0.1786 grams * (1 - (1.292 / 0.1786) ) = -1.113 grams
  1.202 / 1.113 = 1.080, or approximately 8.0% Hydrogen versus helium
  
  History
  Airships were among the first aircraft to fly, with various designs flying throughout the 19th century. They were largely attempts to make relatively small balloons more steerable, and often contained features found on later airships. These early airships set many of the earliest aviation records.
  In 1784 Jean-Pierre Blanchard fitted a hand-powered propeller to a balloon, the first recorded means of propulsion carried aloft. In 1785, he crossed the English Channel with a balloon equipped with flapping wings for propulsion, and a bird-like tail for steerage. The beginning of the "Golden Age of Airships" was also marked with the launch of the Luftschiff Zeppelin LZ1 in July 1900 which would lead to the most successful airships of all time. These Zeppelins were named after the Count von Zeppelin. Von Zeppelin began experimenting with rigid airship designs in the 1890s leading to the badly flawed LZ1 (1900) and the more successful LZ2 (1906). At the beginning of World War I the Zeppelin airships had a framework composed of triangular lattice girders, covered with fabric. and containing separate gas cells. Multi-plane, later cruciform, tail fins were used for control and stability, and two engine/crew cars hung beneath the hull driving propellers attached to the sides of the frame by means of long drive shafts. Additionally there was a passenger compartment (later a bomb bay) located halfway between the two cars.
  
  Pioneers
  The prospect of using airships as bomb carriers had been recognised in Europe well before the airships themselves were up to the task. H. G. Wells described the obliteration of entire fleets and cities by airship attack in The War in the Air (1908), and scores of less famous British writers declared in print that the airship had altered the face of world affairs forever. On 5 March 1912, Italian forces became the first to use dirigibles for a military purpose during reconnaissance west of Tripoli behind Turkish lines. It was World War I, however, that marked the airship's real debut as a weapon.
  Albert Caquot designed an Observation Balloon for the French army in 1914. The Type R Observation balloon was used by all the allied forces, including the British and United States Armies, at the end of the World War. In 1919, Japan equipped the Imperial Army with several "Caquot dirigeables".
  The Germans, French and Italians all operated airships in the scouting and tactical bombing roles early in the war, and all learned that the airship was too vulnerable for operations over the front. The decision to end operations in direct support of armies was made by all in 1917.
  Airplanes had essentially replaced airships as bombers by the end of the war, and Germany's remaining zeppelins were scuttled by their crews, scrapped or handed over to the Allied powers as spoils of war. The British rigid airship program, meanwhile, had been largely a reaction to the potential threat of the German one and was largely, though not entirely, based on imitations of the German ships.
  
  First World War
  Airships were operated in a number of nations between the two world wars. The major operators of rigid airships were Britain, the United States and Germany, with Italy and France operating a few. Italy the Soviet Union and United States and Japan operated semi-rigid airships, while blimps were operated in many nations.
  The British R33 and R34, for example, were near identical copies of the German L 33, which crashed virtually intact in Yorkshire on September 24, 1916. The Hindenburg completed a very successful 1936 season carrying passengers between Lakehurst, NJ and Germany. The Hindenburg's 1937 started with the most spectacular and widely remembered airship accident. While approaching the mooring mast just minutes from landing on 6 May 1937 the Hindenburg burst into flames and crashed. Of the 97 people on board, there were 36 deaths: 13 passengers, 22 aircrew, and one American ground-crewman. The disaster happened before a large crowd, was filmed and a radio news reporter was cutting a recording of his coverage of the arrival. This was a disaster which theater goers could see and hear the next day. On that same next day, the Graf Zeppelin landed at the end of it's flight from Brazil, ending intercontinental passenger airship travel.
  There was no possibility of flying the Hindenburg's sister ship, the Graf Zeppelin II without Helium and the United States refused to sell it. The Graf Zeppelin flew some test flights and conducted electronic espionage until 1939 when it was grounded due to the start of the war. The last two Zeppelins were scrapped in 1940.
  Development of airships continued only in the United States, and in a small way, the Soviet Union.
  
  Inter-war period
  While Germany determined that airships were obsolete for military purposes in the coming war and concentrated on the development of airplanes, the United States pursued a program of military airship construction even though it had not developed a clear military doctrine for airship use. At the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 that brought the United States into World War II, it had 10 non-rigid airships:
  Only K and TC class airships were actually suitable for combat purposes and they were quickly pressed into service against Japanese and German submarines which at that time were sinking US shipping in visual range of the US coast. US Navy command, remembering the airship anti-submarine success from World War I, immediately requested new modern anti-submarine airships and on 2 January 1942 formed the ZP-12 patrol unit based in Lakehurst from the 4 K airships. The ZP-32 patrol unit was formed from two TC and two L airships a month later, based at US Navy (Moffet Field) in Sunnyvale, California. An airship training base was created there as well. In December 1941 and the first months of 1942, the Goodyear blimp "Resolute" operating from Los Angeles, was operated as an anti-submarine privateer. The only US craft to operate under a Letter of Marque as a privateer since the war of 1812 the Resolute, armed with a rifle and flown by its Goodyear crew, patrolled the seas for submarines.
  The Soviet Union used a single airship during the war. The W-12, built in 1939, entered service in 1942 for paratrooper training and equipment transport. It made 1432 runs with 300 metric tons of cargo until 1945. On 1 February 1945 the Soviets constructed a second airship, a Pobieda-class (Victory-class) unit (used for mine-sweeping and wreckage clearing in the Black Sea) which later crashed on 21 January 1947. Another W-class — W-12bis Patriot was commissioned in 1947 and was mostly used for crew training, parades and propaganda.
  
  4 K-class: K-2, K-3, K-4 and K-5 designed as a patrol ships built from 1938.
  3 L-class: L-1, L-2 and L-3 as small training ships, produced from 1938.
  1 G-class built in 1936 for training.
  2 TC-class that were older patrol ships designed for land forces, built in 1933. The US Navy acquired them from Army in 1938. Continued use
  There are two primary focuses of current research on airships: 1) high altitude, long duration, sensor and/or communications platforms and 2) long distance transport of very large payloads.
  The US government is funding two major projects in the high altitude arena. The first is sponsored by U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command and is called the Composite Hull High Altitude Powered Platform (CHHAPP). This aircraft is also sometimes referred to as the HiSentinel High-Altitude Airship. This prototype ship made a 5 hour test flight in September 2005. The second project is being sponsored by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and is called the high-altitude airship (HAA). In 2005, DARPA awarded a contract for nearly $150 million to Lockheed-Martin for prototype development. First flight of the HAA is planned for 2008.
  There are also three private companies funding working on high altitude airships. Sanswire is developing high altitude airships they call "Stratellites" and Techsphere is developing a high altitude version of their spherically shaped airships. JP Aerospace has discussed its long-range plans that include not only high altitude communications and sensor applications but also an "orbital airship" capable of lifting cargo into low earth orbit with a marginal transportation cost of $1 per short ton per mile of altitude.
  On January 31, 2006 Lockheed-Martin made the first flight of their secretly built hybrid-airship designated the P-791 at the company's flight test facility on the Palmdale Air Force Plant 42. The P-791 aircraft is very similar in design to the SkyCat design unsuccessfully promoted for many years by the now financially troubled British company Advanced Technology Group. Although Lockheed-Martin is developing a design for the DARPA WALRUS project (see below), the company claimed that the P-791 is unrelated to WALRUS. Nonetheless, the design represents an approach that may well be applicable to WALRUS. Some believe that Lockheed-Martin had used the secret P-791 program as a way to get a "head-start" on the other WALRUS competitor, Aeros.
  A privately funded effort to build a heavy-lift aerostatic/aerodynamic hybrid craft, called the Dynalifter, is being carried out by Ohio Airships. The company has stated that they expect to begin test flight of the Dynalifter in Spring of 2006.
  21st Century Airships Inc. is a research and development company for airship technologies. Projects have included the development of a spherical shaped airship, as well as airships for high altitude, environmental research, surveillance and military applications, heavy lift and sightseeing. The company's airships have set numerous world records.
  
  Present-day research
  The proposed Aeroscraft is Aeros Corporation's continuation of the now canceled WALRUS project (see below.) This proposed craft is a hybrid airship that, while cruising, obtains two thirds of its lift from helium and the remaining third aerodynamic lift. Jets would be used during take-off and landing.
  There is a case for the airship or zeppelin as a medium to long distance air 'cruise ship' using helium as a lifting agent. Airship passengers could have spacious decks inside the hull to give ample room for sitting, sleeping and recreation. There would be ample room for restaurants and similar facilities. The potential exists for a market in more leisurely journeys, such as cruises over scenic terrain.
  
  Proposed designs and applications
  The advantage of airships over airplanes is that static lift sufficient for flight is generated by the lifting gas and requires no engine power. This was an immense advantage before the middle of WW I and remained an advantage for long distance, or long duration operations until WW II.
  The disadvantages come from the nature of the airship itself. All things being equal, the power required to propel an aircraft will rise as the square of the speed. Given the large flat plate area and wetted surface of the airship, a practical limit is reached somewhere between 80 and 100 mph. The altitude an airship can fly at is largely a function of how much lifting gas it can lose due to expansion before stasis is reached. The ultimate altitude record for a rigid airship was set in 1917 by the L-55 under the command of Kurt Flemming (who later died in the Hindenburg) when he forced the airship to 24,000 feet (7,300 meters) attempting to cross France after the "Silent Raid" on London. The L-55 lost lift as the descent to lower altitudes over Germany compressed the gas left in the cells, and weight of air displaced. L-55 crashed due to loss of lift.
  So long as the horsepower to weight ratios of aircraft engines remained low and specific fuel consumption remained high, the airship had an edge for long range or duration operations. As those figures changed, the balance shifted rapidly in the airplane's favor. By mid-1917 the airship could no longer survive in a combat situation where the threat was airplanes. By the late 1930s, the airship barely had an advantage over the airplane on intercontinental over-water flights, and that advantage had vanished by the end of WW II. The blimp remained a viable military system only until the conventional submarine was replaced by the nuclear submarine. Today, airships are used primarily for advertising where their size and novelty have an advantage.
  
  Practical comparison to fixed-wing aircraft
  Hybrid designs such as the Heli-Stat airship/helicopter, the Aereon aerostatic/aerodynamic craft, and the Cyclocrane was a hybrid aerostatic/rotorcraft, have struggled to take flight. The Cyclocrane was also interesting in that the airship's envelope rotated along its longitudinal axis.
  CL160 was a very large semi-rigid airship to be built in Germany by the start-up Cargolifter, but funding ran out in 2002 after a massive hangar was built. The hangar, built just outside Berlin, has since been converted into a resort called "Tropical Islands".
  In 2005, there was a short-lived project focused on long distance and heavy lift was the WALRUS HULA The primary goal of the research program was to determine the feasibility of building an airship capable of carrying 500 short tons (450 metric tons) of payload a distance of 12,000 miles (20,000 km) and land on an unimproved location without the use of external ballast or ground equipment (e.g. masts.) In 2005, two contractors, Lockheed-Martin and US Aeros Airships were each awarded approximately $3 million to do feasibility studies of designs for WALRUS. In late March 2006, DARPA announced the termination of work on WALRUS after completion of the current Phase I contracts.
  
  See also

2007-11-15T07:50:00.001-08:00

Guardian First Book Award issued before 1999 as Guardian Fiction Prize or Guardian Fiction Award is awarded to new writing in fiction and non-fiction.

History
The process begins with book reviewers from the Guardian recommending a certain number of first books they think worthy of the prize. The books with the most nominations make up the longlist. Then, through adverts placed in the Guardian newspaper, reading groups consisting of members of the general public are assembled. There are eight of these groups, each one comprising eight people, and they meet at various Waterstone's bookshops throughout the UK. After roughly eight weekly meetings in which they discuss the books on the longlist, each group puts forward a list of their five favourite books. The results are collated to produce a list of the five overall favourite books, which is the shortlist. A panel of celebrity judges then decides the winner.

Judging

1965 Clive Barry, Crumb Borne
1966 Archie Hind, The Dear Green Place
1967 Eva Figes, Winter Journey
1968 P. J. Kavanagh, A Song and a Dance
1969 Maurice Leitch, Poor Lazarus
1970 Margaret Blount, When Did You Last See your Father?
1971 Thomas Kilroy, The Big Chapel
1972 John Berger, G
1973 Peter Redgrove, In the Country of the Skin
1974 Beryl Bainbridge, The Bottle Factory Outing
1975 Sylvia Clayton, Friends and Romans
1976 Robert Nye, Falstaff
1977 Michael Moorcock, The Condition of Muzak
1978 Neil Jordan, Night in Tunisia
1979 Dambudzo Merechera, The House of Hunger
1980 J. L. Carr, A Month in the Country
1981 John Banville, Kepler
1982 Glyn Hughes, Where I Used to Play on the Green
1983 Graham Swift, Waterland
1984 J. G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun
1985 Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
1986 Jim Crace, Continent
1987 Peter Benson, The Levels
1988 Lucy Ellman, Sweet Desserts
1989 Carol Lake, Rosehill: Portrait from a Midlands City
1990 Pauline Melville, Shape-Shifter
1991 Alan Judd, The Devil's Own Work
1992 Alasdair Gray, Poor Things
1993 Pat Barker, The Eye in the Door
1994 Candia McWilliam, Debatable Land
1995 James Buchan, Heart's Journey in Winter
1996 Seamus Deane, Reading in the Dark
1997 Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces
1998 Jackie Kay, Trumpet

2007-11-14T09:23:00.001-08:00

This article is part of the series: Politics and government of Senegal
Democratic Rally (in French: Rassemblement Démocratique) was a small political party in Senegal led by the CGT leader and former member of the National Assembly Abbas Gueye. On February 2- February 3, 1957 RD merged into the newly formed Senegalese Party of Socialist Action (PSAS).
President

Abdoulaye Wade Prime Minister
- Cheikh Hadjibou Soumaré National Assembly Political parties Elections:
  - Pres.: 2007
    Parl.: 2007
    Regions
    Departments
    Arrondissements
    Casamance Conflict
    Foreign relations

2007-11-13T08:29:00.001-08:00

Wu Zetian (Simplified Chinese: 武则天; Traditional Chinese: 武則天; pinyin: Wǔ Zétiān) (625 – December 16, 705), personal name Wu Zhao (武曌), was the only woman in the history of China to assume the title of Emperor. Ruling China first through puppet emperors from 665 to 690, not unprecedented in Chinese history, she then broke all precedents when she founded her own dynasty in 690, the Zhou (周) (interrupting the Tang Dynasty), and ruled personally under the name Emperor Shengshen (聖神皇帝) from 690 to 705. Her rise and reign has been criticized harshly by Confucian historians but has been viewed under a different light after the 1950s.

Road to power
After Emperor Gaozong started to suffer from strokes from November 660 on, she began to govern China from behind the scenes. She was even more in absolute control of power after she had Shangguan Yi (上官儀) executed and the demoted crown prince Li Zhong (李忠) forced to commit suicide in January 665, and henceforth she sat behind to the now silent emperor during court audiences (most probably, she sat behind a screen at the rear of the throne) and took decisions. She reigned in his name and then, after his death, in the name of subsequent puppet emperors (her son Emperor Zhongzong and then her younger son Emperor Ruizong), only assuming power herself in October 690, when she proclaimed the Zhou Dynasty, named after her father's nominal posthumous fief as well as in reference to the illustrious Zhou Dynasty of ancient Chinese history from which she claimed the Wu family was descended. In December 689, ten months before she officially ascended the throne, she had the government create the character Zhao (曌), an entirely new invention, created along with 11 other characters in order to show her absolute power, and she chose this new character as her given name, which became her taboo name when she ascended the throne ten months later. The character is made up of 2 pre-existing characters: "Ming" up top meaning "light" or "clearness"; and "kong" on the bottom meaning "sky". The idea behind this is the implication that she is like the light shining from the sky. Even the pronunciation of the new character is exactly the same as "shine" in Chinese. On ascending the throne, she proclaimed herself Emperor Shengshen, the first woman ever to use the title emperor (皇帝) which had been created 900 years before by the first emperor of China Qin Shi Huang. Indeed she was the only woman in the 2100 years of imperial China ever to ascend the Dragon Throne, and this again utterly shocked Confucian elites.
Traditional Chinese political theory (see the similar Salic law) did not allow a woman to ascend the throne, and Empress Wu was determined to quash the opposition and promote loyal officials within the bureaucracy. Her regime was characterized by Machiavellian cleverness and brutal despotism. During her reign, she formed her own Secret Police to deal with any opposition that might arise. She was also supported by her two lovers, the Zhang brothers (Zhang Yizhi, 張易之, and his younger brother Zhang Changzong 張昌宗). She gained popular support by advocating Buddhism but ruthlessly persecuted her opponents within the royal family and the nobility. In October 695, after several additions of characters, her imperial name was definitely set as Emperor Tiance Jinlun Shengshen (天冊金輪聖神皇帝), a name which did not undergo further changes until the end of her reign.
Republic of China (on Taiwan)
On February 20, 705, now in her early 80s and ailing, Empress Wu was unable to thwart a coup, during which the Zhang brothers were executed. Her power ended that day, and she had to step down while Emperor Zhongzong was restored, allowing the Tang Dynasty to resume on March 3, 705. Empress Wu died nine months later, perhaps consoled by the fact that her nephew Wu Sansi (武三思), son of her half-brother and as ambitious and intriguing as she, had managed to become the real master behind the scenes, controlling the restored emperor through his empress consort with whom he was having an affair.

Evaluation
Tiānshòu (天授): Oct. 16, 690 - Apr. 21, 692 (18 months) Rúyì (如意): Apr. 22 - Oct. 22, 692 (6 months) Chángshòu (長壽): Oct. 23, 692 - Jun. 8, 694 (19 ½ months) Yánzài (延載): Jun. 9, 694 - Jan. 21, 695 (7 ½ months) Zhèngshèng (證聖): Jan. 22 - Oct. 21, 695 (9 months) Tiāncèwànsuì (天冊萬歲): Oct. 22, 695 - Jan. 19, 696 (3 months) Wànsuìdēngfēng (萬歲登封): Jan. 20 - Apr. 21, 696 (3 months) Wànsuìtōngtiān (萬歲通天): Apr. 22, 696 - Sept. 28, 697 (17 months) Shéngōng (神功): Sept. 29 - Dec. 19, 697 (2 ½ months) Shènglì (聖曆): Dec. 20, 697 - May 26, 700 (29 months) Jiǔshì (久視): May 27, 700 - Feb. 14, 701 (8 ½ months) Dàzú (大足): Feb. 15 - Nov. 25, 701 (9 months ½) Cháng'ān (長安): Nov. 26, 701 - Jan. 29, 705 (38 months) Shénlóng (神龍): Jan. 30 - Mar. 3, 705 (Zhou dynasty was abolished on March 3, 705, and the Tang Dynasty was restored that same day, but the Shenlong era continued to be used until 707)

2007-11-12T08:26:00.001-08:00

Infosphere is a neologism coined by Luciano Floridi, on the basis of biosphere, a term referring to that limited region on our planet that supports life. The infosphere denotes the whole informational environment constituted by all informational entities (thus including informational agents as well), their properties, interactions, processes and mutual relations. It is an environment comparable to, but different from cyberspace (which is only one of its sub-regions, as it were), since it also includes off-line and analogue spaces of information. According to Floridi, it is possible to equate the Infosphere to the totality of Being. This equation leads to an informational ontology.
According to Floridi, in the close future there will be "a reconceptualization of our ontology in informational terms. It will become normal to consider the world as part of the infosphere, not so much in the dystopian sense expressed by a Matrix-like scenario, where the "real reality" is still as hard as the metal of the machines that inhabit it; but in the evolutionary, hybrid sense represented by an environment such as New Port City, the fictional, post-cybernetic metropolis of Ghost in the Shell. The infosphere will not be a virtual environment supported by a genuinely 'material' world behind; rather, it will be the world itself that will be increasingly interpreted and understood informationally, as part of the infosphere. At the end of this shift, the infosphere will have moved from being a way to refer to the space of information to being synonymous with Being. This is the sort of informational metaphysics I suspect we shall find increasingly easy to embrace."
Emerging from what French philosopher-priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called the shared noosphere of collective human thought, invention and spiritual seeking, the Infosphere is now a field that engulfs our physical, mental and etheric bodies; it affects our dreaming and our cultural life. Our evolving nervous system has been extended, as media sage Marshall McLuhan predicted in the early 1960s, into a global embrace.

2007-11-11T09:09:00.001-08:00

The Vicksburg Campaign was a series of battles and maneuvers in the Western Theater of the American Civil War directed against Vicksburg, Mississippi, a fortress city that dominated the last Confederate-controlled section of the Mississippi River. The Union Army of the Tennessee under Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant gained control of the Mississippi River by capturing this stronghold and defeating Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton's forces stationed there.
The campaign consisted of many important naval operations, troop maneuvers, failed initiatives, and eleven distinct battles over the period December 26, 1862, to July 4, 1863. Military historians divide the campaign into two formal phases: Operations Against Vicksburg (December 1862 – January 1863) and Grant's Operations Against Vicksburg (March – July 1863).
After Pemberton's army surrendered (one day after the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg), and when Nathaniel P. Banks captured Port Hudson, the entire Mississippi River belonged to the Union. These events are widely considered the turning point of the war. Grant's Vicksburg Campaign is considered one of the masterpieces of American military history.

Prelude
The following battles comprise the "Operations against Vicksburg" phase of the Vicksburg Campaign:
Sherman disembarked at the Yazoo River to approach the Vicksburg defenses from the northeast. On December 27, the Federals pushed their lines forward through the swamps toward Walnut Hills, which were strongly defended. On December 29, Sherman ordered a frontal assault, which was repulsed with heavy casualties, and then withdrew.
During this period, Grant's half of the offensive was failing. His lines of communication were disrupted by raids by Van Dorn and Nathan Bedford Forrest, who destroyed his advance base at Holly Springs, forcing him to live off the country. Grant abandoned his overland advance.
In early January, McClernand arrived on the scene with the corps he had recruited. He sought to achieve military glory by launching a combined land and naval movement against Fort Hindman, on the Arkansas River at Arkansas Post. On January 4, he ordered Sherman to attach his corps to the operation, under McClernand's command, calling his 32,000-man force the Army of the Mississippi. This was a direct provocation against Grant, but Sherman acceded to the senior officer. The combined efforts of Sherman's XV Corps, McClernand's XIII Corps, and gunboats under Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter forced the Confederates to surrender on January 11. Union losses were high, and the victory did not contribute to the capture of Vicksburg. Grant was furious; he ordered McClernand back to the Mississippi and assumed personal command of the campaign at Milliken's Bend.

Battles in the Operations against Vicksburg, December 1862 – January 1863
That winter, Grant conducted a series of initiatives to approach and capture Vicksburg, termed "Grant's Bayou Operations". Their general theme was to use or construct alternative waterways so that troops could be positioned within striking distance of Vicksburg, without requiring a direct approach on the Mississippi under the Confederate guns.

The efforts to complete the Williams Canal across DeSoto Peninsula, bypassing Vicksburg's guns, were stepped up by adding Sherman's soldiers to the labor force, although the Confederates could have simply moved their guns to attack the canal's mouth downstream. The river was not cooperative either; Sherman's troops risked drowning as they dug.
Grant attempted to connect Lake Providence, northwest of the city, to the Red River, which would have allowed him to deposit troops south of the city, near Port Hudson. James B. McPherson's troops worked on this, despite constant harassment from Confederate guerrillas, but the effort was abandoned when it was realized that the waterways were too constricted with fallen trees for transports.
McClernand and several gunboats destroyed some dikes in late January outside Helena, Arkansas, some 400 miles (640 km) above Vicksburg, hoping to float gunboats down the flooded Yazoo Delta, in what was called the Yazoo Pass Expedition. But low-hanging trees destroyed anything above deck. Confederates felled more trees in the way. Confederates fired on the Union boats from a quickly constructed "Fort Pemberton" on the Tallahatchie River near Greenwood, Mississippi, and the Union effort collapsed in mid-March 1863.
Admiral Porter started an effort on March 16 to go up the Yazoo Delta via Steele's Bayou, just north of Vicksburg, to Deer Creek. This would outflank Fort Pemberton and allow landing troops between Vicksburg and Yazoo City. Animals attacked their boats from the trees, and Confederates felled trees in their path. This time the Union forces became immobilized, and the Confederates were intent on capturing the lot of them. Sherman's command sent infantry assistance to repel the Confederate cavalry and guerrillas bedeviling Porter, but this approach was abandoned as too difficult.
Grant's final attempt was to dig another canal from Duckport Landing to Walnut Bayou, aimed at getting lighter boats past Vicksburg. By the time the canal was almost finished, on April 6, water levels were declining, and none but the lightest of flatboats could get through. Grant abandoned this canal and started planning anew. Grant's Bayou Operations, January – March 1863
All of the Bayou Operations were failures, but Grant was known for his stubborn determination and would not quit. His final option was bold but risky: March the army down the west side of the Mississippi, cross the river south of Vicksburg, and attack from the south and the east. Porter would have to sneak past the guns to get sufficient gunboats and transport ships south of the city. Once they had completed the downstream passage, they would not be able to return because of the river current. And maintaining supply lines across the river might be difficult, forcing his army to subsist off the land for a long period.
On March 29, McClernand set his troops to work building bridges and corduroy roads. They filled in the swamps in their way as well, and by April 17 they had a 70-mile (110 km) long road from Milliken's Bend to the proposed river crossing at Hard Times, Louisiana, below Vicksburg.
On April 16, a clear night with no moon, Porter sent seven gunboats and three empty troop transports loaded with stores to run the bluff, taking care to minimize noise and lights. But the preparations were ineffective. Confederate sentries sighted the boats, and the bluff exploded in massive artillery fire. Fires were set along the banks to improve visibility. The Union gunboats answered back. Porter observed that the Confederates mainly hit the high parts of his boats, reasoned that they could not depress their guns, and had them hug the east shore, right under Confederate cannon, so close he could hear rebel commanders giving orders, shells flying overhead. The fleet survived with little damage; thirteen men were wounded and none killed. The Henry Clay was disabled and burned at the water's edge. On April 22, six more boats loaded with supplies made the run; one boat did not make it, though no one was killed—the crew floated downstream on the boat's remnants.
The final piece of the strategy was to divert Pemberton's attention from the river crossing site that the Union troops would use. Grant chose two operations: a feint by Sherman against Snyder's Bluff, Mississippi, north of Vicksburg (see the Battle of Snyder's Bluff below), and a daring cavalry raid through central Mississippi by Colonel Benjamin Grierson, known as Grierson's Raid. The former was inconclusive, but the latter was a success. Grierson was able to draw out significant Confederate forces to chase him, and Pemberton's defenses were dispersed too far around the state. (Pemberton was also wary of Nathaniel Banks's impending advance up the river from Baton Rouge to threaten Port Hudson.)

Plan for the campaign and initial movements
Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee started the campaign with about 44,000 men, which grew by July to 75,000. The army was composed of five corps:
Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton's Army of Mississippi, approximately 30,000 men, consisted of five divisions, under Maj. Gen. William W. Loring, Maj. Gen. Carter L. Stevenson, Maj. Gen. John H. Forney, Maj. Gen. Martin L. Smith, and Maj. Gen. John S. Bowen.
General Joseph E. Johnston's forces in Raymond and Jackson, Mississippi, about 6,000 men, were elements of the Department of the West, including the brigades of Brig. Gen. John Gray, Col. Peyton H. Colquitt, and Brig. Gen. William H. T. Walker.

IX Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. John G. Parke (corps joined the army in mid-June)
XIII Corps, Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand
XV Corps, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman
Detachment of the XVI Corps, Cadwallader C. Washburn
XVII Corps, Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson
Detachment from the District of Northeast Louisiana, Brig. Gen. Elias S. Dennis Aftermath

Ballard, Michael B., Vicksburg, The Campaign that Opened the Mississippi, University of North Carolina Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8078-2893-9.
Bearss, Edwin C., The Vicksburg Campaign, 3 volumes, Morningside Press, 1991, ISBN 0-89029-308-2.
Catton, Bruce, Never Call Retreat, Doubleday, 1965, ISBN 0-671-46990-8.
Eicher, David J., The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War, Simon & Schuster, 2001, ISBN 0-684-84944-5.
Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian, Random House, 1958, ISBN 0-394-49517-9.
McPherson, James M., Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States), Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-19-503863-0.

2007-11-10T08:43:00.001-08:00

The Tao (Traditional Chinese: 達悟族), commonly known by the misnomer Yami (雅美), are a Taiwanese aboriginal people, native to tiny outlying Orchid Island. The Tao are an Austronesian people linguistically and culturally closer to the Ivatan peoples of the Batanes islands of Luzon in the Philippines than to other aboriginal peoples of mainland Taiwan. The word "Tao" (pronounced Ta-Oh) means "person" or "people" in the Tao language. The Tao people are traditionally good at making canoes, which is a symbol of their tribe.
In the year 2000 the Yami numbered 3,872. This was approximately 1% of Taiwan's total indigenous population.

2007-11-09T08:29:00.001-08:00

The Ronettes were a girl group of the 1960s from New York City, best known for their work with producer Phil Spector. They consisted of lead singer Veronica Bennett (a.k.a. Ronnie Spector), her sister Estelle Bennett, and their cousin Nedra Talley. Their most famous songs include "Be My Baby", "Baby I Love You", "(The Best Part Of) Breakin' Up", and "{Walking} in the Rain". After a hiatus in the middle of the 60s, the Ronettes (and Spector) re-emerged without much of a popular reaction; musical tastes had moved beyond the girl group sound, and the Ronettes were unable to maintain their relevance. They disbanded in 1966 after criss-crossing the United States and Canada that summer as one of the opening acts for the final concert tour of The Beatles.
Ronnie Spector married Phil Spector in 1968, then launched a solo career after divorcing him in 1973.

Awards & Recognition
The Ronettes were inducted into The Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2004.
It was believed that Phil Spector, in his capacity as a member of the Board of Governors, deliberately prevented the Ronettes (and Darlene Love) from being nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, although they had been eligible for a considerable period. The alleged reasons included the acrimonious divorce of Ronnie and Spector, in addition to the group having (unsuccessfully) sued Spector for back royalties. While Spector was awaiting trial on a murder charge and out on $1 million bail, the Ronettes were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the March 12, 2007, induction ceremony held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. Keith Richards, a self-confessed longtime fan, inducted the trio. Ronnie Bennett (Spector) and Nedra Talley performed "Baby I Love You," "Walking in the Rain" and "Be My Baby." Estelle Bennett was present to accept her award but did not perform.

2007-11-08T09:03:00.001-08:00

Arms of the AHS (emblazoned by Alexander Kurov)
The American Heraldry Society is a learned society that promotes the study of heraldry and education of U.S. citizens about heraldry. The organization also advocates the legal protection of armorial bearings in the U.S. and the development of a distinctly American heraldic tradition.

Organization History
The coat of arms of the American Heraldry Society are blazoned Gules an American Bald Eagle proper displayed on a Chief Azure three Escutcheons Argent. The eagle on the red field alludes to the Society's purpose of promoting heraldry in the U.S. and the escutcheons refer to heraldry; the tinctures gules, argent, and azure also allude to the U.S. For a short time after the adoption of the arms, an argent fimbriation was included on the chief, but this has since been removed.

Society Mission
The Society's education mission is headed by Joseph McMillan, the Director of Education. The Society undertakes an education program to increase the heraldic knowledge of Americans. One of its primary concerns is to combat popular misconceptions about heraldry. These misconceptions include:
The last fallacy–that there are family-name coat of arms–is the most destructive to heraldic practice in America. The false pairing of coats of arms with surnames is aggressively promoted by hundreds of American heraldry bucket shops, i.e., businessmen who, for profit, provide unsuspecting people with bogus armorial bearings. For example, bucket shops will sell arms borne by someone named "Smith" to thousands of Smiths who have no direct ancestral relation.
The Society publishes educational material on its website, and is currently conducting a survey of all personal coats of arms used by former U.S. Presidents; the presidential series articles were alluded to in a 2006 New York Times article on the Army Institute of Heraldry.
After extensive discussion and debate, the Society's directors recently approved and published Guidelines for Heraldic Practice in the United States on its website. This work outlines a uniquely American standard for creating and displaying coats of arms.

Heraldry is snobby, pretentious and anti-egalitarian;
The study of heraldry and its use belong to an "old world" sensibility that was shrugged off during the War of Independence; and
There are such things as "family-name coat of arms" (i.e. a coat of arms which may be borne by anyone who has a particular surname). Legal Goals

2007-11-07T08:22:00.001-08:00

Crew

M. Scott Carpenter Backup crew

Mass: 1,352 kg
Perigee: 159 km
Apogee: 265 km
Inclination: 32.5°
Period: 88.5 min Mission parameters
The Mercury 6 mission was the first attempt by the U.S. and Mercury program to place an astronaut in orbit. The MA-6 mission was launched on February 20, 1962, from Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The flight used Atlas # 109-D and Mercury spacecraft # 13. The spacecraft was named Friendship 7. It made three earth orbits, piloted by astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth. (The Soviets had already placed a cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, in orbit on Vostok 1 in April 12, 1961 and Gherman Titov in August 6, 1961)
After the successful completion of the Mercury 5 flight that carried Enos the Chimp in late November, 1961, a press conference was held in early December, 1961. Reporters asked NASA's Robert Gilruth who would be the first U.S. astronaut in orbit, piloting Mercury 6. He then announced the team members for the next two Mercury missions. John H. Glenn was the selected as prime pilot for the first mission (Mercury 6), with M. Scott Carpenter as his backup. Donald K. Slayton and Walter M. Schirra were pilot and backup, respectively, for the second mission, Mercury 7.
The Mercury 6 launch vehicle, Atlas #109-D, arrived at Cape Canaveral the evening of November 30, 1961. NASA had wanted to launch Mercury 6 in 1961 (hoping to orbit an astronaut in the same calendar year as the Soviets did), but by early December it was apparent that the mission hardware would not be ready for launch until early 1962.
Mercury spacecraft # 13 began taking form on McDonnell's St. Louis, Missouri assembly line in May 1960. It was chosen for the MA-6 mission in October, 1960 and delivered to Cape Canaveral on August 27, 1961. Mercury spacecraft # 13 and Atlas # 109-D were stacked on the pad at Launch Complex 14 on January 2, 1962.
The launch date was first announced as January 16, 1962, then postponed to January 23 because of problems with the Atlas rocket fuel tanks. The launch then slipped day by day to January 27 because of weather. On January 27, 1962, John Glenn had been onboard Mercury 6 and ready to launch, when at T-20 minutes, the flight directory called off the launch because of the heavy overcast. The heavy cloud cover would have prevented the necessary photo coverage of the launch.
The launch was postponed until February 1, 1962. When technicians began to fuel the Atlas on January 30, they discovered a fuel leak had soaked an internal insulation blanket between the fuel and oxidizer tanks of the rocket. This caused a two week delay while necessary repairs were made. On February 15, the launch was again postponed due to weather. Finally on February 19, the weather started to break. It appeared that February 20, 1962 would be a favorable day to attempt a launch.
John Glenn boarded the Friendship 7 spacecraft at 11:03 UTC on February 20, 1962. The hatch was bolted in place at 12:10 UTC. Most of the 70 hatch bolts had been secured, when one was discovered to be broken. This caused a 40 minute delay while all the bolts were removed, the defective bolt was replaced and the hatch was re-bolted in place.
At 14:47 UTC, after two hours and 17 minutes of holds and three hours and 44 minutes after Glenn entered Friendship 7, it was finally launched. At liftoff Glenn's pulse rate climbed to 110.
Thirty seconds after liftoff the General Electric-Burroughs guidance system locked onto a radio transponder in the booster to guide the vehicle to orbit. As the Atlas and Friendship 7 passed through Max Q Glenn reported, "It's a little bumpy about here." After Max Q the flight smoothed out. At two minutes and 14 seconds after launch, the booster engines cut off and dropped away. Then at two minutes and twenty-four seconds, the escape tower was jettisoned, right on schedule.
After the tower was jettisoned, the Atlas and spacecraft pitched over still further, giving Glenn his first view of the horizon. He described the view as "a beautiful sight, looking eastward across the Atlantic." Vibration increased as the last of the fuel supply was used up. At SECO it was found that the Atlas had accelerated the capsule to a velocity only 7 ft/s (2 m/s) below nominal. At 14:52 UTC, Friendship 7 was in orbit. Glenn received word that the Atlas had boosted the MA-6 into a trajectory that would stay up for at least seven orbits. Meanwhile, computers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland indicated that the MA-6 orbital parameters appeared good enough for almost 100 orbits.
When the posigrade rockets fired and separated the capsule from the booster, the five-second rate-damping operation started two and a half seconds late. This caused a substantial roll error as the capsule began its turnaround. The automatic attitude control system took 38 seconds to place the Friendship 7 into its proper orbital attitude. The turnaround maneuver used 5.4 pounds (2.4 kg) of fuel from a total supply of 60.4 pounds (27.4 kg) (36 lb (16.3 kg) for automatic and 24.4 lb (11.1 kg) for manual control system). The spacecraft then settled into orbital flight with a velocity of 17,544 mph (7,843 m/s).
Friendship 7 began its first orbit with all systems go. It crossed the Atlantic and passed over the Canary Islands. Controllers there reported all capsule systems in perfect working order. Looking at the African coastline, and later the interior over Kano, Nigeria, Glenn told the tracking station team that he could see a dust storm. Kano flight communicators replied that the winds had been quite heavy for the past week.
Over Kano, Nigeria, Glenn took control of the spacecraft and started a major yaw adjustment. He allowed the spacecraft to continue the yaw maneuver until it was facing into its flight path. Glenn noticed that the attitude indicators disagreed with what he observed were the true spacecraft attitudes. Even with the incorrect instrument readouts, he was pleased to be facing forward instead of backward on his orbital path.
Over the Indian Ocean on his first orbit, Glenn observed his first sunset from orbit. He described the moment of twilight as "beautiful." Space sky was very black, he said, with a thin band of blue along the horizon. Glenn described the sunset. The sun went down fast but not as quickly as he had expected. For five or six minutes there was a slow reduction in light intensity. Brilliant orange and blue layers spread out 45 to 60 degrees on either side of the sun, tapering gradually toward the horizon. Clouds prevented him from seeing a mortar flare fired by the Indian Ocean tracking ship as part of a pilot observation experiment.
Continuing his journey on the night side of Earth, nearing the Australian coastline, Glenn made star, weather, and landmark observations. He failed to see the dim light phenomenon known as zodiacal light. His eyes had not had sufficient time to adapt to the darkness.
The spacecraft came into radio range of Muchea, Australia. At the Mercury Tracking Station there, Gordon Cooper was the capsule communicator. Glenn reported that he felt fine and had no problems. He saw a very bright light and what appeared to be the outline of a city. Cooper said that he probably was looking at the lights of Perth and Rockingham. This turned out to be correct; many people in Perth turned on their lights so as to be visible to Glenn as he passed over. "That sure was a short day," he excitedly told Cooper. "That was about the shortest day I've ever run into."
The spacecraft moved across Australia and across the Pacific to Canton Island. Glenn experienced a short 45 minute night and prepared the periscope for viewing his first sunrise in orbit. As the sun rose over Canton Island, he saw thousands of "little specks, brilliant specks, floating around outside the capsule." Glenn had the impression that the spacecraft was tumbling or that he was looking into a star field. A quick hard look out of the spacecraft window corrected this momentary illusion. He definitely thought the "fireflies," as he called the small objects, were streaming past his spacecraft from ahead. They seemed to flow by slowly but did not seem to be coming from any part of the spacecraft. As Friendship 7 moved into brighter sunlight, the "fireflies" disappeared. They were probably small ice crystals venting from onboard spacecraft systems.
As the spacecraft crossed the Kauai, Hawaii tracking station, Glenn noticed a lot of interference on the HF radio band. As he crossed the Pacific coast of North America the tracking station at Guaymas, Mexico, informed Mercury Control in Florida that a yaw thruster was causing attitude control problems. Glenn later recalled, this problem "was to stick with me for the rest of the flight."
Glenn noticed the control problem when the automatic stabilization and control system allowed the spacecraft to drift about a degree and a half per second to the right. Glenn switched control to manual-proportional control mode and moved Friendship 7 back to the proper attitude. He tried different control modes to see which used the least fuel to maintain attitude. The manual fly-by-wire combination used the least fuel. After about twenty minutes the yaw thruster began working again and Glenn switched back to the automatic control system. It worked for a short time and then began having problems again, this time with the opposite yaw thruster. He then switched back to the manual fly-by-wire system and flew the spacecraft in that mode for the remainder of the flight.
As Friendship 7 crossed Cape Canaveral at the start of its second orbit, a flight controller noticed that "Segment 51", a sensor providing data on the spacecraft landing system, was giving a strange reading. According to the reading, the heat shield and landing bag were no longer locked in position. If this were the case, the heat shield was only being held against the spacecraft by the straps of the retro package. Mercury Control ordered all tracking sites to monitor "Segment 51" closely and advise Glenn that the landing-bag deploy switch should be in the "off" position.
Glenn was not immediately aware of the problem, but he became suspicious when site after site asked him to make sure that the landing-bag deploy switch was off. Meanwhile Friendship 7 was crossing the Atlantic for the second time. Glenn was busy manually keeping the spacecraft attitude correct and also trying to accomplish as many of the flight plan tasks as he could.
Crossing over the Canary Islands, Glenn observed that the "fireflies" outside the spacecraft had no connection with gas from the reaction control jets. His suit temperature felt too warm, but he didn't take time to adjust it. The Kano, Nigeria and Zanzibar sites suddenly noticed a 12 percent drop in the spacecraft secondary oxygen supply.
During his second pass over the Indian Ocean, Glenn found that the Indian Ocean tracking ship was in heavy weather. Instead of releasing balloons for a pilot observation experiment, the ship fired star-shell parachute flares as Friendship 7 passed overhead. Glenn only was able to observe the flashes of lightning from storms in the area.
The temperature in Glenn's spacesuit was too warm. It had been since he passed over the Canary Islands, earlier in the second orbit. As he crossed the Indian Ocean he tried to adjust the suit temperature. Coming up on Woomera, Australia, a signal light came on warning him of excess cabin humidity. For the rest of the flight Glenn had to carefully balance suit cooling against the cabin humidity.
While still over Australia, another warning light came on, indicating that the fuel supply for the automatic control system was down to 62 percent. Mercury Control recommended that Glenn let the spacecraft attitude drift to conserve fuel.
There were no more problems for Friendship 7 during the remainder of the second orbit. He continued to manually control the spacecraft attitude, not allowing it too drift too far out of alignment. In doing so, he consumed more fuel than a functioning automatic system would have used. Fuel consumption was 6 pounds (2.7 kg) from the automatic tank and 11.8 pounds (5.4 kg) from the manual tank, during the second orbit. This amounted to almost 30 percent of the total fuel supply.
On the third orbit of Friendship 7, the Indian Ocean tracking ship did not attempt to launch any objects for pilot observation experiments. The cloud coverage was still too thick. When the spacecraft came across Australia for the third time, Glenn joked with Cooper at the Muchea Tracking Station. Glenn asked Cooper to notify General Shoup, Commandant of the Marine Corps, that three orbits should meet the minimum monthly requirement of four hours' flying time. He also asked to be certified as eligible for his regular flight pay.
Meanwhile, Mercury Control had been monitoring the "Segment 51", situation. The Hawaiian tracking station asked Glenn to toggle the landing bag deploy switch into the automatic position. If a light came on, reentry should take place while retaining the retro pack. Adding this to past questions about the landing bag switch, Glenn realized there was a possible problem with a loose heat shield. The test was run but no light appeared. Glenn also reported there were no bumping noises during spacecraft maneuvers.
Mercury Control was still undecided on the course of action to take. Some controllers thought the retro pack should be jettisoned after retrofire, while other controllers thought the retro pack should be retained, as added assurance that the heat shield would stay in place.
Flight Director Chris Kraft and Mission Director Walter C. Williams, decided to keep the retro pack in place during reentry. Walter Schirra, the California communicator at Point Arguello, relayed the instructions to Glenn. The retro pack should be retained until the spacecraft was over the Texas tracking station.
Glenn was now preparing for reentry. Retaining the retro package would mean he had to retract the periscope manually. He would also have to activate the .05-g sequence by pushing the override switch. Friendship 7 neared the California coast. It had been four hours and 33 minutes since launch. The spacecraft was maneuvered into retrofire attitude and the first retrorocket fired. "Boy, feels like I'm going halfway back to Hawaii," Glenn radioed. The second and then the third retros fired at five second intervals. The spacecraft attitude was steady during retrofire. Six minutes after retrofire; Glenn maneuvered the spacecraft into a 14 degree nose up, pitch attitude for reentry.
Friendship 7 lost altitude in its reentry glide over the continental United States, headed toward splashdown in the Atlantic. The Texas tracking station told Glenn to retain the retro pack until the accelerometer read 1.5 g (14.7 m/s²). Glenn reported as he crossed Cape Canaveral he had been controlling the spacecraft manually and would use the fly-by–wire mode as a backup. Mercury Control then gave him the 0.05 g (0.49 m/s²) mark, and he pressed the override button. About the same time, Glenn heard noises that sounded like "small things brushing against the capsule." "That's a real fireball outside," he radioed Mercury Control. A strap from the retro package broke partially loose and hung over the spacecraft window as it was consumed in the reentry plasma stream. The spacecraft control system was working well but the manual fuel supply was down to 15 percent. The peak of reentry deceleration was still to come. Glenn switched to fly-by-wire and the automatic tank supply. This combination had more available fuel.
The spacecraft now experienced peak reentry heating. Glenn later reported, "I thought the retro pack had jettisoned and saw chunks coming off and flying by the window." He feared the chunks were pieces of his heatshield that might be disintegrating. The chunks were pieces of the retro package breaking up in the reentry fireball.
After passing the peak g region, the Friendship 7 began oscillating severely. The astronaut could not control the ship manually. The spacecraft was oscillating past 10 degrees on both sides of the vertical zero-degree point. "I felt like a falling leaf," Glenn later said. He activated the auxiliary damping system, this helped stabilize the large yaw and roll rates. Fuel in the automatic tanks was getting low. Glenn wondered if the spacecraft would retain stability until it was low enough to deploy the drogue parachute.
The automatic fuel supply ran out at 1 minute and 51 seconds, and manual fuel ran out at 51 seconds, before drogue chute deployment. The oscillations resumed, at 35,000 feet (10 km) Glenn decided to deploy the drogue chute manually to regain attitude stability. Just before he reached the switch, the drogue chute opened automatically at 28,000 feet (8.5 km) instead of the programmed 21,000 feet (6.4 km). The spacecraft regained stability and Glenn reported, "everything was in good shape."
At 17,000 feet (5 km) the periscope opened and was available for the astronaut to use. Glenn tried to look out the overhead window instead, but it was coated with so much smoke and film that he could see very little. The spacecraft continued to descend on the drogue chute. The antenna section jettisoned and the main chute deployed and opened to its full diameter. Mercury Control reminded Glenn to manually deploy the landing bag. He toggled the switch and the green light confirmation came on. A "clunk" could be heard as the heat shield and landing bag dropped into place, four feet (1.2 m) below the capsule.
Friendship 7 had splashed down in the Atlantic about 40 miles (60 km) short of the planned landing zone. Retrofire calculations had not taken into account spacecraft weight loss due to use of onboard consumables. The USS Noa, a destroyer code-named Steelhead, had spotted the spacecraft when it was descending on its parachute. The destroyer was about six miles (10 km) away when it radioed Glenn that it would reach him shortly. The Noa came alongside Friendship 7 seventeen minutes later.
One crewman cleared the spacecraft antenna and another crewman attached a line to hoist Friendship 7 aboard. After being pulled from the water the spacecraft bumped against the side of the destroyer. Once Friendship 7 was on deck, Glenn intended to leave the capsule through the upper hatch, but it was too hot in the spacecraft and Glenn decided to blow the side hatch instead. He told the ship's crew to stand clear and hit the hatch detonator plunger with the back of his hand. The detonator plunger recoiled, and slightly cut the astronaut's knuckles through his glove. With a loud bang, the hatch was off. A smiling John Glenn got out of Friendship 7 and stood on the deck of the Noa. His first words were, "It was hot in there."
According to a chart printed in the NASA publication, "Results of the First United States Manned Orbital Space Flight, Feb. 20, 1962", the landing coordinates are near 21°20′N, 68°40′W.
The astronaut and spacecraft came through the mission in good shape. America had taken its first step on the way to the moon.
The "Segment 51" warning light problem was later determined to be a faulty sensor switch. The heat shield and landing bag were in fact secure during reentry.
February 21, 1962, a metal fragment was recovered on a farm in South Africa. It was identified as coming from the MA-6 Atlas launch vehicle by numbers stamped on it. The fragment had landed on the farm after about 8 hours in orbit.
Mercury spacecraft # 13 - Friendship 7, used in the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission, is currently displayed at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C. Mercury spacecraft #13 Friendship 7 display page on A Field Guide to American Spacecraft website.

Mercury-Atlas Three Orbit Flight Events

Splashdown

2007-11-06T07:40:00.001-08:00

A software bug (or "bug") is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from behaving as intended (e.g., producing an incorrect result). Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's source code or its design, and a few are caused by compilers producing incorrect code. A program that contains a large number of bugs, and/or bugs that seriously interfere with its functionality, is said to be buggy. Reports detailing bugs in a program are commonly known as bug reports, fault reports, problem reports, trouble reports, change requests, and so forth.
Bugs can have a wide variety of effects, with varying levels of inconvenience to the user of the program. Some bugs have only a subtle effect on the program's functionality, and may thus lie undetected for a long time. More serious bugs may cause the program to crash or freeze leading to a denial of service. Others qualify as security bugs and might for example enable a malicious user to bypass access controls in order to obtain unauthorized privileges.
The results of bugs may be extremely serious. A bug in the code controlling the Therac-25 radiation therapy machine was directly responsible for some patient deaths in the 1980s. In 1996, the European Space Agency's US$1 billion prototype Ariane 5 rocket was destroyed less than a minute after launch, due to a bug in the on-board guidance computer program. In June 1994, a Royal Air Force Chinook crashed into the Mull of Kintyre, killing 29. This was initially dismissed as pilot error, but an investigation by Computer Weekly uncovered sufficient evidence to convince a House of Lords inquiry that it may have been caused by a software bug in the aircraft's FADEC. [2] [3]

Etymology
Bugs are a consequence of the nature of the programming task. Some bugs arise from simple oversights made when computer programmers write source code carelessly or transcribe data incorrectly. Many off-by-one errors fall into this category. Other bugs arise from unintended interactions between different parts of a computer program. This happens because computer programs are often complex, often having been programmed by several different people over a great length of time, so that programmers are unable to mentally keep track of every possible way in which different parts can interact. Many race condition bugs fall into this category.
The computer software industry has put a great deal of effort into finding methods for preventing programmers from inadvertently introducing bugs while writing software. These include:
Bugs are often created by typos that are not caught by the compiler. Various innovations in programming style and defensive programming are designed to make these bugs less likely, or easier to spot.
Bugs often create inconsistencies in the internal data of a running program. Programs can be written to check the consistency of their own internal data while running. If an inconsistency is encountered, the program can immediately halt, so that the bug can be located and fixed. Alternatively, the program can simply inform the user, attempt to correct the inconsistency, and continue running.
There are several schemes for managing programmer activity, so that fewer bugs are produced. Many of these fall under the discipline of software engineering (which addresses software design issues as well.) For example, formal program specifications are used to state the exact behavior of programs, so that design bugs can be eliminated.
Programming languages often include features which help programmers deal with bugs, such as exception handling. In addition, many recently-invented languages have deliberately excluded features which can easily lead to bugs. For example, the Java programming language does not support pointer arithmetic.

Prevention

Main article: Debugging Debugging
It is common practice for software to be released with known bugs that are considered non-critical. While software products contain an unknown number of unknown bugs when shipped, measurements during the testing may provide a statistically reliable estimate of the number of likely bugs remaining. Most big software projects maintain a list of "known bugs". This list inform users about bugs that are not fixed in the current release, or not fixed at all, and often a workaround is offered additionally.
There are various reasons for such a list:
Given the above, it is often considered impossible to write completely bug-free software of any real complexity. So bugs are categorized by severity, and low-severity non-critical bugs are tolerated, as they do not impact the proper operation of the system, for the majority of users. NASA's SATC managed to reduce number of errors to fewer than 0.1 per 1000 lines of code (SLOC) but this was not felt to be feasible for any real world projects.
One school of thought, popularized by Eric S. Raymond as Linus's Law, holds that popular open-source software holds a better chance of being bug-free than other software, because "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". This assertion has been disputed, however.

The developers often don't have time to fix all non-severe bugs.
The bug could be fixed in a new version or patch that is not yet released.
The changes to the code required to fix the bug would be large, and would bring with them the chance of introducing other bugs into the system. Managing bugs

Famous computer bugs

NASA Mariner 1 went off-course during launch, due to a missing 'bar' in its FORTRAN software (July 22, 1962).[7]
NASA Apollo 11 landing problem (July 20, 1969).
NASA Voyager 2 (January 25, 1986).
Phobos 1 lost (September 10, 1988).
ESA Ariane 5 Flight 501 self-destruction 40 seconds after takeoff (June 4, 1996).
NASA Mars Climate Orbiter destroyed due to entry of momentum data in imperial units instead of the metric system (September 23, 1999).
Mars Polar Lander lost (December 3, 1999).
NASA Mars Rover freezes due to too many open files in flash memory (January 21, 2004).
NASA Mars Global Surveyor battery failure was the result of a series of events linked to a computer error made five months before (November 2, 2006).[8] Space exploration

The Therac-25 accidents (1985-1987), which caused at least five deaths.
A misuse of medical diagnosis software created by Multidata Systems International, at the National Cancer Society in Panama City, caused, by different estimates, between five and eight cancer patients to die of over-radiation. (2000) Medical

The year 2000 problem, popularly known as the "Y2K bug", spawned fears of worldwide economic collapse and an industry of consultants providing last-minute fixes.
The Pentium FDIV bug. Computing

The 2003 North America blackout was triggered by a local outage that went undetected due to a race condition in General Electric Energy's XA/21 monitoring software. Electric power transmission

AT&T long distance network crash (January 15, 1990), documented in Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown. Telecommunications

The software error of a MIM-104 Patriot, which ultimately contributed to the deaths of 28 Americans in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia (February 25, 1991).
Chinook crash on Mull of Kintyre: the cause of this event remains a mystery, but strong suspicions have been raised that software problems were a contributory factor. Military

The Missingno. and Glitch City bugs, found in the Pokémon series
The Minus World in NES version of Super Mario Brothers Video games
Malicious software may attempt to exploit known vulnerabilities in a system - which may or may not be bugs. Viruses are not bugs in themselves - they are typically programs that are doing precisely what they were designed to do. However, viruses are occasionally referred to as such in the popular press.

Security vulnerabilities

Divide by zero
NULL pointer dereference
Infinite loops
Arithmetic overflow or underflow
Exceeding array bounds
Using an uninitialized variable
Accessing memory not owned (Access violation)
Memory leak or Handle leak
Stack overflow or underflow
Buffer overflow
Deadlock
Off by one error
Race condition
Loss of precision in type conversion See also

2007-11-05T09:51:00.001-08:00

Events

1578 - Agostino Agazzari, Italian composer and music theorist (d. 1640)
1694 - William Shirley, Colonial Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1771)
1703 - Ferdinand Konscak, Croatian explorer (d. 1759)
1710 - Bertinazzi, Italian actor and writer (d. 1783)
1738 - Richard Montgomery, Irish-born soldier (d. 1775)
1754 - William Cooper, American judge (d. 1809)
1760 - John Breckinridge, American politician (d. 1806)
1811 - Jean-Charles Chapais, French Canadian politician, Father of the Canadian Confederation (d. 1885)
1817 - Heinrich von Sybel, German historian (d. 1895)
1825 - Emperor Pedro II of Brazil (d. 1891)
1846 - Pierre Marie René Ernest Waldeck-Rousseau, French statesman (d. 1904)
1859 - Georges Seurat, French painter (d. 1891)
1863 - Charles Ringling, American circus owner (d. 1926)
1885 - George Richards Minot, American physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize (d. 1950)
1886 - Harry Burleigh, American composer (d. 1949)
1891 - Otto Dix, German painter and graphic artist (d. 1969)
1892 - Leo Ornstein, Russian-born composer and pianist (d. 2002)
1894 - Warren William, American Broadway and film actor (d. 1948)
1895 - Harriet Cohen, British pianist (d. 1967)
1897 - Hovhannes Bagramyan, Marshall of the Soviet Union (d. 1982)
1898 - Indra Lal Roy, Indian pilot (d. 1918)
1899 - John Barbirolli, British conductor (d. 1970)
1899 - John Cobb, British racing driver (d. 1952)
1901 - Raimundo Orsi, Argentine-born footballer (d. 1986)
1902 - Howard Koch, American screenwriter (d. 1995)
1906 - Peter Carl Goldmark, Hungarian-born recording engineer (d. 1977)
1914 - Adolph Green, American composer (d. 2002)
1914 - Ray Walston, American actor (d. 2001)
1917 - Sylvia Syms, American jazz singer (d. 1992)
1923 - Maria Callas, Greek soprano (d. 1977)
1924 - Alexander M. Haig, Jr., American soldier and politician
1925 - Julie Harris, American actress
1930 - Gary Becker, American economist, recipient of the Bank of Sweden Prize
1931 - Edwin Meese, American politician
1931 - Nigel Calder, British science writer
1931 - Hatsumi Masaaki, Founder and head of the Bujinkan Dojo organization
1931 - Wynton Kelly, American jazz pianist (d. 1971)
1933 - Michael Larrabee, American athlete (d. 2003)
1933 - K. Veeramani, Indian anti-caste activist
1934 - Andre Rodgers, baseball player (d. 2004)
1935 - David Hackett Fischer, American historian
1939 - Yael Dayan, Israeli writer and politician
1939 - Harry Reid, American politician
1939 - Francis Fox, Canadian politician, member of the Senate
1943 - Wayne Allard, American politician
1944 - Ibrahim Rugova, first President of Kosovo (d. 2006)
1944 - Botho Strauß, German author
1944 - Dionysis Savvopoulos, Greek musician and songwriter
1944 - Inger Davidson, Swedish politician
1945 - Penelope Spheeris, American film director
1946 - Gianni Versace, Italian fashion designer (d. 1997)
1947 - Isaac Bitton, French rock band drummer (Les Variations)
1947 - Tommy Jenkins, English football player
1948 - T. Coraghessan Boyle, American writer
1950 - Bob Kevoian, American radio personality
1951 - Adrian Devine, American baseball pitcher
1952 - Carol Shea-Porter, American Congresswoman
1954 - Dan Butler, American actor
1954 - Stone Phillips, American television journalist
1957 - Dagfinn Høybråten, Norwegian politician
1958 - Uladzimir Parfianovich, Belarusian canoer
1958 - Eric L. Harry, American novelist
1958 - George Saunders, American writer
1960 - Rick Savage, British bassist (Def Leppard)
1962 - Kardam, Prince of Turnovo, titular Bulgarian royal family
1963 - Ann Patchett, American novelist
1963 - Ron Sutter, National Hockey League player
1966 - Jinsei Shinzaki, Japanese professional wrestler
1968 - Lucy Liu, American actress
1968 - Nate Mendel, American bassist (Foo Fighters)
1968 - Rena Sofer, American actress
1968 - Chris Wedge, American animator
1968 - Darryl Kile, baseball player (d. 2002)
1971 - Wilson Jermaine Heredia, American actor
1971 - Francesco Toldo, Italian Football Player (Inter Milan)
1972 - Sergei Zholtok, Latvian ice hockey player (d. 2004)
1973 - Monica Seles, Yugoslavian-born tennis player
1973 - Jan Ullrich, German cyclist
1973 - Graham Kavanagh, Irish Footballer plays for Sunderland A.F.C.
1976 - Eddy Garabito, professional baseball player
1977 - Siyabonga Nomvethe, South African footballer plays for Aalborg BK
1978 - Nelly Furtado, Canadian singer and songwriter
1978 - Chris Wolstenholme, British bassist (Muse)
1978 - David Rivas, Spanish Footballer plays for Real Betis
1978 - Jason Collins, American basketball player for New Jersey Nets
1978 - Jarron Collins, American basketball player for Utah Jazz
1979 - Yvonne Catterfeld, German singer and actress
1979 - Michael McIndoe, Scottish professional footballer (Wolverhampton Wanderers)
1981 - Isabella Soprano, American pornographic actress
1981 - Britney Spears, American singer
1981 - Danijel Pranjić, Croatian football player plays for SC Heerenveen
1982 - Matt Ware, American football player
1982 - Pizon, American rapper/producer
1982 - Hristos Karipidis, Greek footballer
1983 - Bibiana Candelas, Mexican volleyball player
1983 - Chris Burke (footballer), Scottish footballer plays for Rangers F.C.
1984 - Péter Máté, Hungarian footballer (Reading F.C.)
1985 - Dorell Wright, American basketball player
1986 - Claudiu Keserü, Romanian football player (FC Nantes Atlantique)
1987 - Teairra Mari, American R&B singer
1989 - Cassie Steele, Canadian actress Deaths

R.C. Saints - St Bibiana, Saint Chromatius
Laos - National Day
United Arab Emirates - National Day (independence from Britain, 1971)
International Day for the Abolition of Slavery - United Nations

2007-11-04T08:34:00.000-08:00

The Territoire de Belfort is a department in the Franche-Comté region of eastern France.

Geography

Communes of the Territoire de Belfort department
Cantons of the Territoire de Belfort department
Arrondissements of the Territoire de Belfort department

2007-11-03T08:59:00.001-07:00

The Atlanta Thrashers are a professional ice hockey team based in Atlanta, Georgia. They are members of the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL). Their home arena is Philips Arena.

Franchise history
Led by captain Shawn McEachern, the Thrashers jumped quickly out of the gates with some notable highlights. Ilya Kovalchuk scored eight goals in the first seven games, including two hat tricks, one in a 7-2 rout of the Chicago Blackhawks and another in a come-from-behind victory against the Nashville Predators. Those comeback victories became a recurring sight throughout the season, including shocking upsets against the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Boston Bruins, and the Ottawa Senators, as well as wins from games against the Los Angeles Kings and the New York Islanders.
Eleven games into the season, the Thrashers were alone in first place atop both the Southeast Division the NHL. Although they continued to play well, they could not keep up with the Tampa Bay Lightning, the eventual Stanley Cup champions, or other teams in the league. The absence of Heatley and a lack of depth started to appear. Boxing Day 2003 marked both a bright and dark day for the Thrash. On that day, Heatley skated for the first time since his car accident with Snyder, but it also marked the last win for the Thrashers before an extended losing streak. From December 28 to February 11 the Thrashers went a dismal 1-17-3. However, fans were entertained regardless of the team's struggles. Kovalchuk became only the second Thrashers' player to score in the NHL All-Star Game (after Heatley), an exciting overtime loss to the Detroit Red Wings occurred on New Year's Eve, Randy Robitaille broke Brian Boucher's shutout streak, Dany Heatley eventually returned to game action, and a twelve-man brawl against the Edmonton Oilers took place. The losing streak finally ended with a 4-1 win against the Vancouver Canucks.
While the Thrashers' playoff hopes were done for the year, they still played on and ended up finishing second in the Southeast Division and tenth in the Eastern Conference, only a handful of wins away from the playoffs. Kovalchuk ended up tying for the league lead in goals (41) with Jarome Iginla and Rick Nash. Goaltender Kari Lehtonen started his NHL career with four wins in four starts, including one shutout.

2003-04 Season Recap
Before the start of the 2005-06 season, the Thrashers picked up many veteran players in the hopes of making the playoffs for the first time. They signed Mike Dunham, Peter Bondra, Bobby Holik, Jaroslav Modry, and Scott Mellanby. They traded Dany Heatley on August 23, 2005, to the Ottawa Senators, in a blockbuster deal for forward Marian Hossa and defenseman Greg de Vries.
The 2005-06 season saw the Thrashers win a club-record 41 games, even with numerous goaltending injuries. Only a few minutes into the first game of the season, Lehtonen pulled his groin, an injury that would keep him out for a good portion of the season. Veteran backup Mike Dunham, an experienced number-one net minder, stepped in, but also promptly injured himself only a few games later; this left only prospects Michael Garnett and Adam Berkhoel to mind the nets. Journeyman goalie Steve Shields was signed, but he too was injured within ten games. On April 6, Lehtonen was run into by Tampa Bay's Chris Dingman, injuring him yet again. The remainder of the season was left to Dunham. Garnett was injured in a game against the Washington Capitals. Dunham, who had started the game but was relieved by the young rookie after poor play, was forced back into action in the third period.

2005-06 Season Recap
For a complete overview of the 2006-07 season, see 2006-07 Atlanta Thrashers season
October 13, 2006, the first official event on the new SportSouth was a National Hockey League game between the Atlanta Thrashers and the Carolina Hurricanes. The Thrashers ended up losing 4-3, giving the Hurricanes their first win of the season. On April 24, 2007, team captain Scott Mellanby announced his retirement. On October 17, coach Bob Hartley was fired after an 0-6 start.

Recent

Team colors and mascot
The current team colors are ice blue, navy blue, red, and gold. In 2003, the NHL decided to switch home and road jerseys.

Jerseys
The team's mascot is Thrash, a Brown Thrasher.

Mascot

Statistics and records

Individual records

Most Goals in a season: Ilya Kovalchuk, 52 (2005-06)
Most Assists in a season: Marc Savard, 69 (2005-06)
Most Points in a season: Marian Hossa, 100 (2006-07)
Most Penalty Minutes in a season: Jeff Odgers, 226 (2000-01)
Most Points in a season, defenseman: Jaroslav Modry, 38 (2005-06)
Most Points in a season, rookie: Dany Heatley, 67 (2001-02)
Most Wins in a season: Kari Lehtonen, 34 (2006-07)
Most Shutouts in a season: Kari Lehtonen, 4 (2006-07) Regular season
This is a partial list of the last five seasons completed by the Thrashers. For the full season-by-season history, see Atlanta Thrashers seasons
Note: GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, OTL = Overtime Losses, Pts = Points, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against, PIM = Penalties in minutes
Records as of May 10, 2007. As of the 2005-06 NHL season, all games tied after regulation will be decided in a shootout; SOL (Shootout losses) will be recorded as OTL in the standings.

Current roster

Kelly Buchberger, 1999-2000
Steve Staios, 2000-01
Ray Ferraro, 2001-02
Shawn McEachern, 2002-05
Scott Mellanby, 2005-07
Bobby Holik, 2007- present Team captains
Hall of Famers: Currently, no member of the Thrashers has been inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Retired Numbers: The Thrashers have not retired a number, although Wayne Gretzky's Number 99 was retired League-wide on February 6, 2000. Number 37 (though not retired) has been taken out of circulation since the tragic death of Dan Snyder in 2003.

Honored Members

1999: Patrik Stefan (1st overall)
2000: Dany Heatley (2nd overall)
2001: Ilya Kovalchuk (1st overall)
2002: Kari Lehtonen (2nd overall) & Jim Slater (30th overall)
2003: Braydon Coburn (8th overall)
2004: Boris Valabik (10th overall)
2005: Alex Bourret (16th overall)
2006: Bryan Little (12th overall)
2007: none First-round draft picks
These are the top-ten point-scorers in franchise history. Figures are updated after each completed NHL regular season.
Note: Pos = Position; GP = Games Played; G = Goals; A = Assists; Pts = Points; P/G = Points per game; * = current Thrashers player

Franchise scoring leaders
Calder Memorial Trophy
Rocket Richard Trophy

Dany Heatley: 2001-02
Ilya Kovalchuk: 2003-04 (shared with Jarome Iginla of the Calgary Flames and Rick Nash of the Columbus Blue Jackets) Media

2007-11-02T11:09:00.001-07:00

A godparent, in many denominations of Christianity, is someone who sponsors a child's baptism. Judaism has this equivalent in the circumcision ceremony. A male godparent is a godfather and a female godparent is a godmother. The child is a godchild (godson, goddaughter).

Christianity
In the Catholic church, only church members who have undergone Confirmation are accepted as godparents. Someone who belongs to another Christian denomination cannot become a godparent but is known as a Christian Witness, with most of the regular role of a godparent. Non-Christians are not at all eligible to any religious role formalized by the Church. This is based on the view that the godparent-godchild relationship is not something which is just between the persons and God, but a whole-Church event wherein the Holy Spirit dwells.
A Godparent is regarded as a patron saint on earth, who prays for the newly baptised, looks after them spiritually and gives them guidance. The Catholic Church sees Baptism as an entry into the Kingdom of God, and entry into the Church.

Anglican Church
There are two roles in the Jewish circumcision ceremony which are sometimes translated as godparent. The sandek holds the baby boy while he is circumcised. Among Orthodox Ashkenazi the kvater (or kvaterin if female) is the person who takes the child from his mother and carries him into the room in which the circumcision is performed.

Islam
In some cultures, the word for "godparent of one's child" is used for any, or certain, very close friends. This is the meaning of the Spanish compadre and comadre, the French commère and compère, and the archaic meaning of the English word gossip (from godsib, "god-sibling").
Godparent is also used, in absence of a "religious reason", as a stated person (be it family member or close friend) who is responsible for the child in the event of both parents' demise or incapacitation.
Folktales often feature a fairy godmother, a fairy who acts as a mentor to a main character.

2007-11-01T10:11:00.001-07:00

As Player
As Manager
Harold Abraham McRae (born July 10, 1945 in Avon Park, Florida) is a former outfielder in Major League Baseball who played for the Cincinnati Reds (1968, 1970-72) and Kansas City Royals (1973-87). McRae batted and threw right-handed. He is the father of Brian McRae. Son Cullen McRae is the Florida Marlins video coordinator.
McRae was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in the 6th round of the 1965 draft with the 117th overall pick. He was considered a below-average outfielder with the Reds. In 1972, McRae was traded to the Kansas City Royals along with Wayne Simpson in exchange for Roger Nelson and Richie Scheinblum. McRae developed as a consistent designated hitter in the American League. His playing career spanned 23 years, including 14 seasons with Kansas City. Selected a three-time All-Star, he hit over .300 six times for the Royals and was named Designated Hitter of the Year three times both by The Sporting News and Associated Press.
In 1976 McRae was on top of the American League batting title race going into the final game of the season, in which his teammate George Brett went 2-for-4 to clinch the title over McRae by a margin of less than .001. McRae finished second. Oddly, the other two of the top four finishers that season, Minnesota Twins' Rod Carew and Lyman Bostock, played in that same game.
In a 19-year MLB career, McRae posted a .290 batting average (2091-for-7218) with 191 home runs, 1097 RBI, 484 doubles, 65 triples, and 109 stolen bases in 2084 games played. He added a .351 on base percentage and a .454 slugging average for a combined .805 OPS.
Following his playing retirement, McRae managed the Kansas City Royals (1991-94) and Tampa Bay Devil Rays (2001-02). He also served as a hitting coach for the Reds and Phillies, and is currently the hitting coach of the St. Louis Cardinals. McRae, who won a World Series ring playing for Kansas City against the Cardinals in 1985, won a ring as a coach for the Cardinals when they defeated the Detroit Tigers in the 2006 World Series, four games to one.

Cincinnati Reds (1968,1970–1972)
Kansas City Royals (1973–1987)
Kansas City Royals (1991–1994)
Tampa Bay Devil Rays (2001–2002)
3-time All-Star (1975-76, 1982)
3-time TSN and AP DH Award (1976, 1980, 1982)
Silver Slugger Award (1982)
Led league in on base percentage (.407, 1976)
Led league in OPS (.868, 1976)
Finished second for AL batting title by less than .001 (1976)
Led league in games played (162, 1977)
Led league in doubles (54, 1977)
Led league in extra-base hits (86, 1977)
Led league in hit by pitch (13, 1977)
Led league and set a Royals record in RBI (133, 1982)
Tied a MLB record with six extra-base hits in a game (five doubles and a home run, August 27, 1974) Trivia

While managing for Kansas City Royals, McRae was involved in an infamous incident after a game on April 26, 1993 (a 5-3 loss against the Detroit Tigers ) in which he lost his temper with reporters and trashed his entire office, throwing things off of his desk and yelling profanities at reporters. It was recently voted the biggest pro-athlete blow up on The Best Damn Sports Show Period.

2007-10-30T08:49:00.001-07:00

Career
Bernd was killed during a world speed record attempt on the Autobahn between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, on January 28th 1938.
Competing for the record on the same day against Rudolf Caracciola, the Mercedes driver went first and set a new record of 432 km/h (268 mph) in the early hours of the day. Rosemeyer went out next in his Auto Union Streamliner despite report that the wind was picking up. After two preliminary runs he was on his third and final attempt at 11:47am when the car was probably caught by a gust of wind or an unforeseen aerodynamic effect and skidded to the left and then to the right and off the road. Rosemeyer was thrown out of the car that was somersaulting through the air, and died at the roadside.

Fatal Record Attempt
Today, there is a monument south of the Bundesautobahn 5 exit of Langen/Mörfelden, roughly where his car left the road due to wind gusts. On the south-bound exit of a rest area on the western lane, named Bernd-Rosemeyer-Parkplatz, a sign indicates that the Bernd-Rosemeyer-Denkmal is 70 meters away. It used to be hidden in bushes which are removed now, and is apparently visited frequently as a foot path, or foot prints in snow, lead there.
49°58′25″N, 8°36′11″E
There is also a bronze memorial situated next to the entrance to the Donington Park Museum in Leicestershire.
Bernd Rosemeyer is buried in the Waldfriedhof Dahlem on Hütten Weg in Berlin.

Major career victories

Chris Nixon & Elly Beinhorn Rosemeyer: "Rosemeyer!", Transport Bookman Publications 1989, SBN 0851840469

2007-10-29T09:29:00.001-07:00

For the city, see Molise (commune).
Molise is a region of Central Italy, the second smallest of the regions. It was formerly (until 1963) part of the region of Abruzzi e Molise (with Abruzzo) and now a separate entity. The region covers 4,438 km² and has a population of about 300,000.

Geography
Molise was populated for thousands of years. It has a proud heritage. For example the arena in Larino predates Rome's Colosseum and the ruins at Sepinum are remarkably well preserved and provide an insight into the sophistication of the Samnite tribes who, along with the Frentani, dominated this region. The Samnites were a hardy race of highlanders who bested the Romans in battle for a long time. After the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 AD Molise was invaded by the Goths (535 AD) and then by the Lombards in 572, and annexed to the Duchy of Benevento. A very troubled period began with the invasions of the Saracens, that in 860 AD destroyed Isernia, Telese, Alife, Sepino, Boiano and Venafro. By the 10th century there were 9 countdoms: Venafro, Larino, Trivento, Bojano, Isernia, Campomarino, Termoli, Sangro, Pietrabbondante.
In 1095 the most powerful of them, Bojano, came under the rule of the Norman Hugo I of Molhouse, who most probably gave his name to the region; his successor Ugo II was Count of Molise in 1144.
The province enjoyed a resurgence towards the end of the thirteenth century. The cathedral in Larino was built in 1314. The Franciscan monastery, in the same town, was dedicated, along with its rectangular bell tower, in 1312.
In the 16th century Molise was included to the Province of Capitanata (Apulia) and in 1806 became an autonomous Province, included in the Abruzzi region.
In the 19th century there was a general worsening of the economic conditions of the population, and this gave rise, under the newly established Kingdom of Italy (1861), to brigandage and a massive emigration not only abroad but also to more industrial Italian areas.
The French novelist Alexander Dumas was in Molise at the time of Garibaldi. It was in Molise that he conceived his idea for The Blood Reign, based on a true episode that took place in the town of Larino.
Massive destruction occurred during World War II, until finally the Allied Forces were able to land at Termoli, in September 1943. Huge Allied land forces were based in Campobasso which was called "Maple Leaf City" by the Canadian troops.
Molise is the youngest Italian region, since it was established in 1963, when the region "Abruzzi e Molise" was split into two regions, which, however, retain a common identity both geographically and in their historical and traditional heritage.

Politics
On the whole, Molise is the least populated Italian region after the Val d'Aosta, with also a very low average density of population. Apart from the historical difficulties of settling in a territory which is mainly mountainous, this is due to a flow of emigrants abroad and to other Italian regions, a phenomenon which reached a peak at the beginning of the century and in the post-war period, and started to decline to a certain extent only from the 1970s onwards. The population density is highest in the areas surrounding Campobasso, the regional capital, and along the Adriatic coast, while the mountainous areas (for example in the Province of Isernia) are almost uninhabited. In the region there are two ethnic minorities: the Molisan Croatians (2,500 people who speak an old dialect of the Croatian-Dalmatian language) and the Molisan Albanians (Arbëreshë who speak an old dialect of the Albanian language which is now very different from the Albanian spoken on the other side of the Adriatic Sea). Molisan Albanians are generally of the Orthodox religion.

2007-10-28T09:08:00.001-07:00

The "Ø" (minuscule: "ø"), is a vowel and a letter used in the Danish, Faroese and Norwegian alphabets. The vowel is not to be confused with the slashed zero.

Usage

The Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Tatar, Finnish, Swedish, Icelandic, German, Estonian, and Hungarian alphabets use the letter "Ö" instead of Ø.
In Danish (and Riksmål Norwegian) spelling, ø is also a word and means "island".
Ø is a place in Denmark.
The symbol "ø" is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to indicate the sound of the Danish and Norwegian letter, the close-mid front rounded vowel.
Although it never appears elsewhere, the letter Ø-with-umlaut is used by the Danish and Swedish national railways in pictograms marking trains crossing the Øresund (da)/Öresund (sv) Bridge between the nations.
The ø is used in the fictional language Bork Bork Bork.
There are examples in typesetting of ø being confused with the Greek φ.
The Cyrillic alphabet has "Ө" as the equivalent letter, which are used in the Cyrillic alphabets for Kazakh, Mongolian, Azerbaijani etc.
In linguistics, the symbol is used to refer to the linguistic zero. History

For computers, when using the ISO 8859-1 or Unicode sets, the codes for 'Ø' and 'ø' are respectively 216 and 248, or in hexadecimal D8 and F8.
In the TeX typesetting system, the letter is produced by o
On the Apple Macintosh operating system it can by typed by pressing the [Option] key then typing O or o, while using U.S. keyboard.
On Microsoft Windows, using the "United States-International" keyboard setting, it can be typed by holding down the [Alt] key and pressing "L". It can also be typed under any keyboard setting by holding down the [Alt] key while typing 0216 or 0248 on the numeric keypad, provided the system uses code page 1252 as system default.
The Unicode letter name is "Latin capital/small letter O with stroke".
In HTML character entity references, needed in cases where the letter is not available by ordinary coding, the codes are Ø and ø.
In the X Window System environment, one can produce these characters by pressing Alt-Gr and o or O, or by pressing the Multi key followed with a slash and then o or O.
In some systems, such as older versions of MS-DOS, the letter Ø is not part of the default codepage. In Scandinavian codepages, Ø replaces the yen sign (¥) at 165, and ø replaces the ¢ sign at 162. On computers

The symbol "Ø" is also used in mathematics to refer to the empty set, following Bourbaki. Mathematics

ØØ Void is an album by the Seattle-based drone doom metal band Sunn O))).
"Ø" is the name of a Finnish experimental Intelligent Dance Music artist, also known as Mika Vainio.
American post hardcore band Underøath uses the ø on some writings of their name, and as a logo to represent themselves.
Bløf is a Dutch pop band. Other uses

2007-10-26T09:26:00.001-07:00

Anglican Communion its 'instruments of unity': Archbishop of Canterbury Lambeth Conferences Primates' Meeting Anglican Consultative Council Christianity Catholicism Apostolic Succession English Reformation Henry VIII Thomas Cranmer Thomas Cromwell Elizabeth I Richard Hooker Charles I William Laud Book of Common Prayer High Church · Low Church Broad Church Oxford Movement Thirty-Nine Articles Doctrine · Ministry Sacraments Saints in Anglicanism

Second Act of Supremacy 1559

Supreme Governor of the Church of England
Religion in the United Kingdom
State religion
Separation of church and state

2007-10-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

Blenheim Palace is a large and monumental country house situated in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. It is the only non-episcopal country house in England to hold the title "palace". The Palace, one of England's largest houses, was built between 1705 and circa 1722.
Its construction was originally intended to be a gift to John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough from a grateful nation in return for military triumph against the French and Bavarians. However, it soon became the subject of political infighting, which led to Marlborough's exile, the fall from power of his Duchess, and irreparable damage to the reputation of the architect Sir John Vanbrugh. Designed in the rare, and short-lived, English baroque style, architectural appreciation of the palace is as divided today as it was in the 1720s. It is unique in its combined usage as a family home, mausoleum and national monument. The palace is also notable as the birthplace and ancestral home of Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
The plaque above the massive East gate gives a sanitised history of the palace's construction, reading:
"Under the auspices of a munificent sovereign this house was built for John Duke of Marlborough and his Duchess Sarah, by Sir J Vanbrugh between the years 1705 and 1722. And the Royal Manor of Woodstock, together with a grant of £240,000 towards the building of Blenheim, was given by Her Majesty Queen Anne and confirmed by act of Parliament."
The truth is that the building of the palace was a minefield of political intrigue, with scheming on a Machiavellian scale by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. Following the palace's completion, it has been the home of the Churchill family for the last 300 years, and various members of the family have in that period wrought various changes, in the interiors, park and gardens, some for the better, others for the worse. At the end of the 19th century, the palace and the Churchills were saved from ruin by an American marriage. Thus, the exterior of the palace remains in good repair, exactly as completed.

The Churchills
The estate given by the nation to Marlborough for the new palace was the manor of Woodstock, sometimes called the Palace of Woodstock, which had been a royal demesne, in reality little more than a hunting box. Legend has obscured the manor's origins. King Henry I enclosed the park to contain the deer. Henry II housed his mistress Rosamund Clifford (sometimes known as "Fair Rosamund") there in a "bower and labyrinth"; a spring where she is said to have bathed remains, named after her. It seems the unostentatious hunting lodge was rebuilt many times, and had an uneventful history until Elizabeth I, before her succession, was imprisoned there by her sister between 1554 and 1555. Elizabeth had been implicated in the Wyatt plot. Elizabeth's imprisonment at Woodstock was short, and the manor remained in obscurity until bombarded and ruined by Oliver Cromwell's troops during the Civil War. When the park was being re-landscaped as a setting for the palace the 1st Duchess wanted the historic ruins demolished, while Vanbrugh, an early conservationist, wanted them restored and made into a landscape feature. The Duchess as so often in her disputes with her architect won the day and the remains of the manor were swept away.

The site
The architect selected for the ambitious project was a controversial one. The Duchess was known to favour Sir Christopher Wren, famous for St Paul's Cathedral and many other national buildings. The Duke however, following a chance meeting at a playhouse, is said to have commissioned Sir John Vanbrugh there and then. Vanbrugh, a popular dramatist, was an untrained architect, who usually worked in conjunction with the trained and practical Nicholas Hawksmoor. The duo had recently completed the first stages of the baroque Castle Howard. This huge Yorkshire mansion was one of England's first houses in the flamboyant European baroque style. Marlborough had obviously been impressed by this grandiose pile and wished for something similar at Woodstock.
Blenheim, however, was not to provide Vanbrugh with the architectural plaudits he imagined. The fighting over funding led to accusations of extravagance and impracticality of design, many of these charges levelled by the Whig factions in power. He found no defender in the Duchess of Marlborough. Having been foiled in her wish to employ Wren, she levelled criticism at Vanbrugh on every level, from design to taste. In part their problems arose from what was demanded of the architect. The nation (who it was then assumed, by architect and owners, was paying the bills) wanted a monument, but the Duchess wanted not only a fitting tribute to her husband but also a comfortable home, two requirements which were not compatible in 18th-century architecture. Finally, in the early days of the building the Duke was frequently away on his military campaigns, and it was left to the Duchess to negotiate with Vanbrugh. More aware than her husband of the precarious state of the financial aid they were receiving, she attempted to curb Vanbrugh's grandiose ideas, in an arrogant fashion (as was her wont) rather than explain the true reasons behind her frugality.
Following their final altercation Vanbrugh was banned from the site. In 1719, while the Duchess was away, Vanbrugh viewed the palace in secret. However, when he and his wife, with the Earl of Carlisle, visited the completed Blenheim as members of the viewing public in 1725, they were refused admission to even enter the park. The palace had been completed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, his friend and architectural associate.
Vanbrugh's severe massed baroque used at Blenheim never truly caught the public imagination, and was quickly superseded by the revival of the Palladian style. Vanbrugh's reputation was irreparably damaged, and he received no further truly great public commissions. For his final design, Seaton Delaval Hall, he used a refined version of the baroque employed at Blenheim, which was hailed as his masterpiece. He died shortly before its completion.

Architect
The precise responsibility for the funding of the new palace has always been a debatable subject, unresolved to this day. That a grateful nation led by its Queen wished and intended to give their national hero a suitable home is beyond doubt, but the exact size and nature of that house is questionable. A warrant dated 1705, signed by the parliamentary treasurer the Earl of Godolphin, appointed Vanbrugh as architect, and outlined his remit. Unfortunately for the Churchills, nowhere did this warrant mention Queen, or Crown. This error provided the escape clause for the state when the costs and political infighting escalated. It is interesting to note that the palace as a reward was mooted within months of the Battle of Blenheim, at a time when Marlborough was still to further his many victories on behalf of the country.
The Duke of Marlborough contributed £60,000 to the initial cost when work commenced in 1705, which, supplemented by Parliament, should have built a monumental house. Parliament voted funds for the building of Blenheim, but no exact sum was mentioned or provision for inflation or "over budget" expenses. Almost from the outset, funds were spasmodic. Queen Anne paid some of them, but with growing reluctance and lapses, following her frequent altercations with the Duchess. After their final argument in 1712, all state money ceased and work came to a halt. £220,000 had already been spent and £45,000 was owing to workmen. The Marlboroughs were forced into exile on the continent, and did not return until after the Queen's death in 1714.
On their return the Duke and Duchess came back into favour at court. The 64-year-old Duke now decided to complete the project at his own expense. In 1716 work re-started, but the project relied completely upon the limited means of the Duke himself. Harmony on the building site was short lived, as in 1717 the Duke suffered a severe stroke, and the thrifty Duchess took control. The Duchess blamed Vanbrugh entirely for the growing costs and extravagance of the palace, the design of which she had never liked. Following a meeting with the Duchess, Vanbrugh left the building site in a rage, insisting that the new masons, carpenters and craftsmen, brought in by the Duchess, were inferior to those he had employed. The master craftsmen he had patronised, however, such as Grinling Gibbons, refused to work for the lower rates paid by the Marlboroughs. The craftsmen brought in by the Duchess, under the guidance of furniture designer James Moore, and Vanbrugh's assistant architect Hawksmoor, completed the work in perfect imitation of the greater masters, so there was fault and intransigence on both sides in this famed argument.
Following the Duke's death in 1722, completion of the Palace and its park became the Duchess's driving ambition. Vanbrugh's assistant Hawksmoor was recalled and designed in 1723 the "Arch of Triumph", based on the Arch of Titus, at the entrance to the park from Woodstock. Hawksmoor also completed the interior design of the library, the ceilings of many of the state rooms, and other details in numerous other minor rooms, and various outbuildings. Cutting rates of pay to workmen, and using lower quality materials in unobtrusive places, the widowed Duchess completed the great house as a tribute to her late husband. The final date of completion is not known, as late as 1735 the Duchess was haggling with Rysbrack over the cost of Queen Anne's statue placed in the library. In 1732 the Duchess wrote "The Chappel is finish'd and more than half the Tomb there ready to set up".

Funding the construction
Vanbrugh planned Blenheim in perspective, that is to be best viewed from a distance. As the site covers some seven acres (28,000 m²) this is also a necessity. Close to, and square on, the facades can appear daunting, or weighed down by too much stone and ornamentation.
The plan of Blenheim Palace is basically that of a large central rectangular block (see plan), containing behind the southern facade the principal state apartments. On the east side are the suites of private apartments of the Duke and Duchess, on the west along the entire length is the long gallery originally conceived as a picture gallery. The central block is flanked by two further service blocks around square courtyards (not shown in the plan). The east court contains the kitchens, laundry, and other domestic offices, the west court adjacent to the chapel the stables and indoor riding school. The three blocks together form the "Great Court" designed to overpower the visitor arriving at the palace. Pilasters and pillars abound, while from the roofs, themselves resembling those of a small town, great statues in the renaissance manner of St Peter's in Rome gaze down on the visitor below, who is rendered inconsequential. Other assorted statuary in the guise of martial trophies, and the English lion devouring a French cock, also decorate the lower roofs. Many of these are by such masters as Grinling Gibbons.
In the design of great 18th-century houses comfort and convenience were subservient to magnificence, and this is certainly the case at Blenheim. This magnificence over creature comfort is heightened as the architect's brief was to create not only a home but a national monument to reflect the power and civilisation of the nation. In order to create this monumental effect, Vanbrugh chose to design in a severe form of baroque, using great masses of stone to imitate strength and create shadow as decoration. The solid and huge entrance portico on the north front resembles more the entrance to a pantheon than a family home. Vanbrugh also liked to employ what he called his "castle air", which he achieved by placing a low tower at each corner of the central block and crowning the towers with vast belvederes of massed stone, decorated with curious finials (disguising the chimneys). Coincidentally these towers which hint at the pylons of an Egyptian temple further add to the heroic pantheonesque atmosphere of the building.
There are two approaches to the palace's grand entrance, one from the long straight drive through wrought iron gates directly into the Great Court, while the other, equally if not more impressive, betrays Vanbrugh's true vision: the palace as a bastion or strong citadel, the true monument and home to a great warrior. Piercing the windowless, city-like curtain wall of the east court is the great East Gate, a monumental triumphal arch, more Egyptian in design than Roman, an optical illusion was created by tapering its walls to create an impression of even greater height. Confounding those who accuse Vanbrugh of impracticality this gate is also the palace's water tower. Through the arch of the gate one views across the courtyard a second equally massive gate, that beneath the clock tower, through which, rather like the sanctuary of a temple, one glimpses the Great Court. In this way Vanbrugh is giving even greater, almost God-like, importance to the areas of the palace occupied by the great Duke himself.
This view of the Duke as an omnipotent being is also reflected in the interior design of the palace, and indeed its axis to certain features in the park. It was planned that when the Duke dined in state in his place of honour in the great saloon, he would be the climax of a great procession of architectural mass aggrandising him rather like a proscenium. The line of celebration and honour of his victorious life began with the great column of victory surmounted by his statue and detailing his triumphs, and the next point on the great axis, planted with trees in the position of troops, was the epic Roman style bridge. The approach continues through the great portico into the hall, its ceiling painted by James Thornhill with the Duke's apotheosis, then on under a great triumphal arch, through the huge marble door-case with the Duke's marble effigy above it (bearing the ducal plaudit "Nor could Augustus better calm mankind"), and into the painted saloon, the most highly decorated room in the palace, where the Duke was to have sat enthroned.
The Duke was to have sat with his back to the great 30-tonne marble bust of his vanquished foe Louis XIV, positioned high above the south portico. Here the defeated King was humiliatingly forced to look down on the great parterre and spoils of his conqueror (rather in the same way as decapitated heads were displayed generations earlier). The Duke did not live long enough to view this majestic tribute realised, and sit enthroned in this architectural vision. The Duke and Duchess moved into their apartments at the palace, but the entirety was not completed until after the Duke's death.
The palace chapel as a consequence of the Duke's death now obtained even greater importance. The design was altered by the Marlboroughs' friend the Earl of Godolphin, who placed the high altar in defiance of religious convention against the west wall, thus allowing the dominating feature to be the Duke's gargantuan tomb and sarcophagus. Commissioned by the Duchess in 1730, it was designed by William Kent, and statues of the Duke and Duchess depicted as Caesar and Caesarina adorn the great sarcophagus. In bas relief at the base of the tomb, the Duchess ordered to be depicted the surrender of Marshal Tallard. Thus finally the theme throughout the palace of honouring the Duke reached its apotheosis with completion of his tomb. The Duke's coffin was returned to Blenheim from Westminster Abbey. Now Blenheim had indeed become a pantheon and mausoleum. Successive Dukes and their wives are also interred in the vault beneath the chapel.

Design and architecture
The internal layout of the rooms of the central block at Blenheim was defined by the court etiquette of the day. State apartments were designed as an axis of rooms of increasing importance and public use, leading to the chief room. The larger houses, like Blenheim, had two sets of state apartments each mirroring each other. The grandest and most public and important was the central saloon ("B" in the plan) which served as the communal state dining room. Either side of the saloon are suites of state apartments, decreasing in importance but increasing in privacy: the first room ("C") would have been an audience chamber for receiving important guests, the next room ("L") a private withdrawing room, the next room ("M") would have been the bedroom of the occupier of the suite, thus the most private. One of the small rooms between the bedroom and the internal courtyard was intended as a dressing room. This arrangement is reflected on the other side of the saloon. The state apartments were intended only for use by the most important guests such as a visiting sovereign. On the left (east) side of the plan on either side of the bow room (marked "O") can be seen a smaller but near identical layout of rooms, which were the suites of the Duke and Duchess themselves. Thus the bow room corresponds exactly to the saloon in terms of its importance to the two smaller suites.
Blenheim Palace was the birthplace of the 1st Duke's famous descendant, Winston Churchill, whose life and times are commemorated by a permanent exhibition in the suite of rooms in which he was born (marked "K" on the plan). Blenheim Palace was designed with all its principal and secondary rooms on the piano nobile, thus there is no great staircase of state: anyone worthy of such state would have no cause to leave the piano nobile. Insofar as Blenheim does have a grand staircase, then it is the series of steps in the Great Court which lead to the North Portico. There are staircases of various sizes and grandeur in the central block, but none are designed on the same scale of magnificence as the palace. James Thornhill painted the ceiling of the hall in 1716. It depicts Marlborough kneeling to Britannia and proffering a map of the Battle of Blenheim. The hall is 67 ft high, and remarkable chiefly for its size and for its stone carvings by Gibbons, yet in spite of its immense size it is merely a vast ante-room to the saloon.
The saloon was also to have been painted by Thornhill, but the Duchess suspected him of overcharging, so the commission was given to Louis Laguerre. This room is an example of three-dimensional painting, or trompe l'œil, "trick of the eye", a fashionable painting technique at the time. The Peace Treaty of Utrecht was about to be signed, so all the elements in the painting represent the coming of peace. The domed ceiling is an allegorical representation of Peace: John Churchill is in the chariot, he holds a zigzag thunderbolt of war, and the woman who holds back his arm represents Peace. The walls depict all the nations of the world who have come together peacefully. Laguerre also included a self-portrait placing himself next to Dean Jones, chaplain to the 1st Duke, another enemy of the Duchess, although she tolerated him in the household because he could play a good hand at cards. To the right of the doorway leading into the first stateroom, Laguerre included the French spies, said to have big ears and eyes because they may still be spying; behind them the figure of the 5th Earl of Sild appears in silhouette, a tactful reference on the part of the artist as the Earl was disfigured during the Battle of Ramillies. Of the three marble door-cases in the room displaying the Duke's crest as a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, only one is by Gibbons, the other two were copied indistinguishably by the Duchess's cheaper craftsmen.
The third remarkable room is the long library, (H), 180 ft long, which was intended as a picture gallery. The ceiling has saucer domes, which were to have been painted by Thornhill, had the Duchess not upset him. The palace, and in particular this room, was furnished with the many valuable artefacts the Duke had been given, or sequestered as the spoils of war, including a fine art collection. Here in the library, rewriting history in her own indomitable style, the Duchess set up a larger than life statue of Queen Anne, its base recording their friendship.
From the northern end of the library - in which is housed a pipe organ, which was built by England's great Organbuilder Henry Willis - access is obtained to the raised colonnade which leads to the chapel (H2). The chapel is perfectly balanced on the eastern side of the palace by the vaulted kitchen. This symmetrical balancing and equal weight given to both spiritual and physical nourishment would no doubt have appealed to Vanbrugh's renowned sense of humour, if not the Duchess's. The distance of the kitchen from even the private dining room ("O" on the plan) was obviously of no consideration, hot food being of less importance than to avoid having to inhale the odour of cooking and proximity of servants.

Interior
Blenheim sits in the centre of a large undulating park. When Vanbrugh first cast his eyes over it in 1704 he immediately conceived a typically grandiose plan: through the park trickled the small River Glyme, and Vanbrugh envisaged this marshy brook traversed by the "finest bridge in Europe". Thus, ignoring the second opinion offered by Sir Christopher Wren, the marsh was channelled into three small canal-like streams and across it rose a bridge of huge proportions, so huge it was reported to contain some 30-odd rooms. While the bridge was indeed an amazing wonder, in this setting it appeared incongruous, causing Alexander Pope to comment:
"the minnows, as under this vast arch they pass,/murmur, how like whales we look, thanks to your Grace"
Another of Vanbrugh's schemes was the great parterre, nearly half a mile long and as wide as the south front. Also in the park, completed after the 1st Duke's death, is the Column of Victory. It is 134 ft high and terminates a great avenue of elms leading to the palace, which were planted in the positions of Marlborough's troops at the Battle of Blenheim. Vanbrugh had wanted an obelisk to mark the site of the former royal manor, and the trysts of Henry II which had taken place there, causing the 1st Duchess to remark, "If there were obelisks to bee made of all what our Kings have done of that sort, the countrey would bee stuffed with very odd things" (sic). The obelisk was never realised.
Following the 1st Duke's death the Duchess concentrated most of her considerable energies on the completion of the palace itself, and the park remained relatively unchanged until the arrival of Capability Brown in 1764. The 4th Duke employed Brown who immediately began a scheme to naturalise and enhance the landscape, with tree planting, and man made undulations. However, the feature with which he is forever associated is the lake, a huge stretch of water created by damming the River Glyme and ornamented by a series of cascades where the river flows in and out. The lake was narrowed at the point of Vanbrugh's grand bridge, but the three small canal-like streams trickling underneath it were completely absorbed by one river-like stretch. Brown's great achievement at this point was to actually flood and submerge beneath the water level the lower stories and rooms of the bridge itself, thus reducing its incongruous height and achieving what is regarded by many as the epitome of an English landscape. Brown also grassed over the great parterre and the Great Court. The latter was re-paved by Duchene in the early 20th century. The 5th Duke was responsible for several other garden follies and novelties such as the swivelling bolder, which would suddenly roll across a path, to supposedly thrill the walker.
Sir William Chambers, assisted by John Yenn, was responsible for the small summerhouse known as "The Temple of Diana" down by the lake, where in 1908 Winston Churchill proposed to his future wife. However, the ornamental gardens seen today close to the palace, the Italian and water gardens, are entirely the design of Duchene and the 9th Duke.

The Park and gardens
On the death of the 1st Duke in 1722, as both his sons were dead, he was succeeded by his daughter Henrietta. This was an unusual succession and required a special Act of Parliament, as only sons can usually succeed to a Dukedom. When Henrietta died, the title passed to Marlborough's grandson Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, whose mother was Marlborough's second daughter Anne.
The 1st Duke as a soldier was not a rich man, and what fortune he possessed was mostly used for finishing the palace. In comparison with other British ducal families the Marlboroughs were not very wealthy. Yet they existed quite comfortably until the time of the Fifth Duke of Marlborough (1766–1840), a spendthrift who considerably depleted the family's remaining fortune. He was eventually forced to sell other family estates, but Blenheim was safe from him as it was entailed. This did not prevent him selling the Marlboroughs' Boccaccio for a mere £875, and his own library in over 4000 lots. On his death in 1840 he left the estate and family with financial problems.
By the 1870s the Marlboroughs were in severe financial trouble, and in 1875 the 7th Duke sold the "Marriage of Cupid and Psyche", together with the famed Marlborough gems, at auction for £10,000. However this was not enough to save the family. In 1880 the 7th Duke was forced to petition Parliament to break the protective entail on the Palace and its contents. This was achieved under the Blenheim Settled Estates Act of 1880, and the door was now open for wholesale dispersal of Blenheim and its contents. The first victim was the great Sunderland Library which was sold in 1882, including such volumes as The Epistles of Horace, printed at Caen in 1480, and the works of Josephus, printed at Verona in 1648. The 18,000 volumes raised almost £60,000. The sales continued to denude the palace: Raphael's "Ansidei Madonna" was sold for £70,000; Van Dyck's equestrian painting of Charles I realised £17,500; and finally the "piece de resistance" of the collection, Peter Paul Rubens "Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment, and Their Son Peter Paul", which had been given by the city of Brussels to the 1st Duke in 1704, was also sold, and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
These sums of money, vast by the standards of the day, failed to cover the debts, and the maintenance of the great palace remained beyond the Marlboroughs' resources. These had always been small in relation to their ducal rank and the size of their house. The British agricultural depression which started in the 1870s added to the family's problems. When the 9th Duke inherited in 1892, the Spencer-Churchills were almost bankrupt.

Failing fortunes
Charles, 9th Duke of Marlborough (1871–1934) can be credited with saving both the palace and the family. Inheriting the near-bankrupt dukedom in 1892, he was forced to find a quick and drastic solution to the problems. Prevented by the strict social dictates of late 19th-century society from earning money, he was left with one solution, he had to marry it. In November 1896 he coldly and openly without love married the American railroad heiress and renowned beauty Consuelo Vanderbilt. The marriage was celebrated following lengthy negotiations with her divorced parents: her mother was desperate to see her daughter a Duchess, and the bride's father, William Vanderbilt paid for the privilege. The final price was $2,500,000 ( $54 100 436.75 in 2007 ) in 50,000 shares of the capital stock of the Beech Creek Railway Company with a minimum 4% dividend guaranteed by the New York Central Railroad Company. The couple were given a further annual income each of $100,000 for life. The bride later claimed she had been locked in her room until she agreed to the marriage. The contract was actually signed in the vestry of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, New York immediately after the wedding vows had been made. In the carriage leaving the church, Marlborough told Consuelo he loved another woman, and would never return to America, as he "despised anything that was not British".
The replenishing of Blenheim began on the honeymoon itself, with the replacement of the Marlborough gems. Tapestries, paintings and furniture were bought in Europe to fill the depleted palace. On their return the Duke began an exhaustive restoration and redecoration of the palace. The state rooms to the west of the saloon were redecorated with gilt boiseries in imitation of Versailles. Vanbrugh's subtle rivalry to Louis XIV's great palace was now completely undermined, as the interiors became mere pastiches of those of the greater palace. While this redecoration may not have been without fault (and the Duke later regretted it), other improvements were better received. Another problem caused by the redecoration was that the state and principal bedrooms were now moved upstairs, thus rendering the state rooms an enfilade of rather similar and meaningless drawing rooms. On the west terrace the French landscape architect Achille Duchêne was employed to create a water garden. On a second terrace below this were placed two great fountains in the style of Bernini, scaled models of those in the Piazza Navona which had been presented to the 1st Duke.
Inside the palace the staff was enlarged and smartened to suit a fabulously wealthy ducal household. The inside staff was of approximately 40, while the outside staff numbered 50, including the game-keeping staff of 12, electricians for the newly installed wiring, carpenters, flower arrangers, lodge keepers, and a cricket professional to ensure the success and honour of the estate cricket team. The lodge keepers were dressed in black coats with silver buttons, buff breeches, and cockaded top hats. The gamekeepers donned green velvet coats with brass buttons and black billycock hats.
Blenheim was once again a place of wonder and prestige. However, Consuelo was far from happy; she records many of her problems in her cynical and often less than candid biography "The Glitter and the Gold". In 1906 she shocked society and left her husband, finally divorcing in 1921. She subsequently married a Frenchman, Jacques Balsan. She died in 1964 having lived to see her son Duke of Marlborough, and frequently returning to Blenheim, the house she had hated and yet saved, albeit as the unwilling sacrifice.
After his divorce the Duke married again a former friend of Consuelo, Gladys Deacon, another American. This eccentric lady was of an artistic disposition, and a painting of one of her eyes still remains on the ceiling of the great north portico. A lower terrace was decorated with sphinxes modelled on Gladys and executed by W. Ward Willis in 1930. Before her marriage while staying with the Marlboroughs she had caused a diplomatic incident by encouraging the young Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany to form an attachment. The prince had given her an heirloom ring, which the combined diplomatic services of two empires were charged to recover. After her marriage Gladys was in the habit of dining with the Duke with a revolver by the side of her plate. Tiring of her the Duke was temporarily forced to close Blenheim, and turn off the utilities in order to drive her out. They subsequently separated but did not divorce. The Duke died in 1934 and his last Duchess in 1977.
The 9th Duke was succeeded by his and Consuelo Vanderbilt's eldest son: John, 10th Duke of Marlborough (1898-1972) after eleven years as a widower, remarried at the age of 74, to (Frances) Laura Charteris, formerly the wife of the 2nd Viscount Long and the 3rd Earl of Dudley, and grand-daughter of the 11th Earl of Wemyss. The marriage was short-lived however, the Duke died just six weeks later, on 11 March 1972. The bereaved Duchess complained of "the gloom and inhospitality of Blenheim" after his death, and soon moved out. In her autobiography, Laughter from a Cloud (1980) she referred to Blenheim Palace as "The Dump". She died in London in 1990.

Blenheim today
The following films have had scenes filmed at Blenheim Palace:

The Avengers
Barry Lyndon
Entrapment
The Four Feathers
Hamlet - Kenneth Branagh's 1996 version. The incumbent Duke has a non-speaking role as a Norwegian general.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
History of the World, Part I
Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham
King Ralph
The Lost Prince
Orlando Blenheim on film

The setting for T. H. White's novel Mistress Masham's Repose is a huge, ruined estate called Malplaquet, a parody of Blenheim Palace. See also

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For other meanings, see Burgos (disambiguation)
Burgos is a city of northern Spain, at the edge of the central plateau, with about 173,600 inhabitants in the city proper and another 10,000 in its suburbs. It is the capital of the province of Burgos. The Burgos Laws or Leyes de Burgos were promulgated there in 1512.

History
Burgos still possesses more ecclesiastical monuments than any other Spanish city, even Toledo. The three most outstanding are the cathedral, with its chapel of the Condestables de Castilla, the monastery of Las Huelgas and the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores. In addition to the collegiate churches of Lerma, Villadiego, Plampiega, Palenzuela, Covarrubias and others, there are in Burgos alone many magnificent buildings. The cathedral treasury, the monastery of Las Huelgas and the Carthusian monastery of Miraflores, are museums of permanent value.
Minor notable churches are: San Esteban, San Gil (Sancti Aegidii), San Pedro, San Cosme y San Damian, Santiago (Sancti Jacobi), San Lorenzo and San Lesmes (Adelelmi). The Convento de la Merced, occupied by the Jesuits, and the Hospital del Rey are also worthy of mention. In the walls of the city are the famous gateway of Santa María, erected for the first entrance of the Emperor Charles V, and the arch of Fernán González.
The diocese has two fine ecclesiastical seminaries. There are also many institutions for secular education. Schools are maintained in every diocese, the Instituto Provincial, and many colleges are conducted by private individuals, religious orders and nuns both cloistered and uncloistered.

Church of Santa Águeda, commonly called Santa Gadea

Main article: Burgos Cathedral Burgos cathedral

Main article: Las Huelgas Monasterio de las Huelgas
A very beautiful and life-like statue of St. Bruno carved in wood is one of the treasures of the monastery; the stalls in the church also display exquisite workmanship. The mausoleum of King John II and of his wife Isabel, in this monastery, is constructed of the finest marble and so delicately carved that portions seem to be sculptured in wax rather than stone. Around the top are beautiful statues of angels in miniature, which might be the work of Phidias. The French soldiers in the War of Independence (1814) mutilated this beautiful work, cutting off some of the heads and carrying them away to France.
The Carthusian monastery of Miraflores, noted for its strict observance, is situated about four kilometres from the historic city center. The mausoleum of King John II and of his wife Isabel, in this monastery, is carved of alabaster.

Cartuja de Miraflores
The sister city of Burgos is Bruges, a city on the cost of Flanders. Both cities want to work together especially on culture, tourism and economy.
The mayors of the Flemish Bruges and Burgos signed a treaty on 29 January 2007 in the Bruges' city hall for future cooperation. This engagement could be seen as a prologue on the opening of the exhibition Comeliness and Madness. This exhibition on Philip the Handsome opened recently in the Casa del Cordón in Burgos where the monarch died. On 30 January 2007 the exhibition opened in Bruges, the city where Philip the Handsome was born and where the urn with his hearth is kept in Onthaalkerk O.L.V. (the Church of Our Lady).

See also

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Twillingate is a town of about 3,000 inhabitants situated on two neighbouring islands in northern Newfoundland. Its name comes from the French word "Toulinquet" which was given to the islands by French fishermen, who named them after a group of islands off the French coast, near Brest, also called Toulinquet.
Twillingate is at the mouth of the Exploits River where it flows into Notre Dame Bay. The islands provided an excellent sheltered harbour and easy access to the rich fishing grounds nearby. In recent years a causeway has been built connecting it to the mainland via New World Island.
Twillingate was probably used as a seasonal fishing port during the 15th and 16th centuries, but there were no recorded European settlers until the 17th century. The native Beothuk managed to survive until the early 19th century in small numbers near Twillingate and the mouth of the Exploits River. By the winter of 1739, there were 152 people - the "livyers" or permanent settlers - living in Twillingate. They were mostly fishermen and their families from the West Country in England.
As the population grew, Twillingate became an important fishing community - the "Capital of the North." It was a busy trade and service centre for Labrador and the northern shore fisheries for more than two centuries.
One of the most prominent historical events of Twillingate history was its local newspaper - The Twillingate Sun which served the Twillingate district from the 1880's to 1950's.
The Sun was a robust and professional newspaper that covered not just local & provincial but international news as well.
Since the moratorium on fishing northern cod was announced on July 2, 1992, Twillingate has been forced to look to the tourist industry for income and is becoming a popular spot for visitors in the summer. It is now being promoted as the "Iceberg Capital of the World".
Twillingate is home to a popular summer festival, called the "Fish Fun and Folk Festival". Many tourists from around the world come to take part in the events and concerts held annually.
The "Fish Fun and Folk Festival" is usually held in the last part of July and has many fun things to do including booths and games at the stadium, entertainment on Thursday & Friday nights, gospel concerts, the ever-popular Split Peas concert, and many more things that are great for the entire family. The festival invites many tourists to the beautiful town and ends with a massive fireworks display.