A lap dance (or contact dance) is a type of erotic dance performance offered in some strip clubs in which the dancer typically has body contact with a seated patron. Lap dancing is different from table dancing, in which the dancer is close to a seated patron, but without body contact. Variant terms include couch dance, which is a lap dance where the customer is seated on a couch.

With full-contact lap dances, the dancer may engage in non-penetrative sexual contact with the patron, such as "grinding" or "twerking" their body against the patron. Depending on the local jurisdiction and community standards, the participants in lap dancing are sometimes allowed to touch or be touched by each other. In some clubs any touching by the patron is forbidden. In others there is no oversight by the club and various levels of contact are negotiable between the participants. Clubs vary widely with regard to their enforcement of rules, and some turn a blind eye to any violations.

Lap dancing usually occurs with both participants being either clothed to more or less the same degree, or naked, or the dancer being partially or fully naked, depending on the laws of the jurisdiction and the club's policies. Some jurisdictions require a prohibition on alcohol if various degrees of nudity are allowed. In other jurisdictions nudity is only allowed where skin contact does not occur between the dancer and the patron, requiring at least one of them to wear clothing. Where specific licensing exists for an establishment to allow prostitution, the dress requirements may also be dependent on that licensing. As the dancer is rarely dressed to a greater degree than the patron, lap dancing is sometimes seen as a submissive act by the dancer.

In some places, a "block session" of lap dances (usually half an hour to an hour) can be booked in a "champagne room" or "VIP room", which is a private room usually located in the back of a club. In many clubs, the duration of a lap dance is measured by the length of the song being played by the club's DJ. Charges for lap dances vary significantly.

Controversy
There is some debate as to whether lap dancing is entertainment or a type of sex work. Critics of lap dancing allege that some club owners, by installing dark private booths and charging dancers steep stage fees, are covertly condoning and encouraging the sale of sexual acts between customers and dancers. This can be a concern if, as for instance in the United Kingdom, the club has a public entertainment licence rather than a sex establishment licence, and in jurisdictions where brothels are illegal. According to the liberal UK paper The Guardian, "Research shows that the majority of women become lap-dancers through poverty and lack of choice."

History and legal issues

Lap dancing clubs are a later development of earlier strip clubs, where strippers danced on stage and were paid a wage. In the 1970s, New York's Melody Theater introduced audience participation and called it "Mardi Gras". The Melody Theater became the Harmony Theater and operated in two locations in Manhattan for over 20 years until it was closed down in 1998.

Also during the 1970s, adult film makers Jim and Artie Mitchell had been running an adult movie house, called the O'Farrell Theatre, in San Francisco to feature their films. But in the second half of the 1970s, with the invention of the videocassette recorder and a proliferation of video cassette rental stores, the demand for adult movie theaters began to plummet. Realizing that they needed a new business model for their building, the Mitchell brothers sent manager Vince Stanich around the country to explore customer-contact shows in sex clubs. After Stanich reported back, the Mitchell brothers responded in 1977 by opening three new rooms at their O'Farrell Theatre featuring customer-contact shows: The Ultra Room, The Kopenhagen, and New York Live. The Kopenhagen's shows were performed by a pair of naked women in a small room with about twenty men. However the club's most profitable new venue was New York Live, which was a cabaret-style strip club act with women dancing three song sets upon a stage, while usually being totally nude for the final song.

Most of the strippers who were not dancing were sitting naked on customers' laps for tips. The amount of tipping rapidly increased and was then marketed as a "lap dance", and its popularity caused lines of men to regularly appear outside the theater's doors. The Mitchells hired new dancers as fast as they could to keep up with demand, and had created another sex-show innovation which gained them international notoriety and generated more money than their film business.

Later in 2004, a San Francisco District Attorney's decision to drop prostitution charges against lap dancers in the city changed the sexual culture of San Francisco and "has the potential to influence the policies of other cities".

In some areas of the U.S. and Canada, local authorities began cracking down on lap dancing after reports that some clubs allowed customers to engage in sexual intercourse or other sexual activity with dancers during lap dance sessions. Various strip clubs have wide-ranging rules on how customers should interact with strippers.

Canada
In 1973, an upmarket Vancouver bar called "Gary Taylor's Show Lounge" employed showgirls and strippers as waitresses who gave a free dance with every drink. The club was raided by the police under the guise of obscenity legislation, but, in 1974, Judge Jack McGivern ruled that dancer nudity was not obscene, which started a trend of nude dancing in bars. No contact between dancers and patrons was allowed at the club, but Gary Taylor's had a boxing ring where the girls performed revealing acrobatics after stripping off and then earned tips. Americans from Washington state made the trip to the club from the United States, which at the time had stricter laws.

In a landmark ruling regarding the 1994 case of Pat Mara and Allan East (the owner and manager of Cheaters Tavern), Judge E. Gordon Hachborn legally defined lap dancing and ruled that it did not contravene Canadian public decency statutes. A number of conflicting judgements were issued in the years that followed, including decisions to close certain bars in which sex acts took place on the floor of the club and other rulings in which patrons were allowed to touch the dancers, as long as an actual sex act did not take place.

In 1999, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a typical lap dance did not constitute an "obscene" act within the meaning of the Criminal Code. The Crown did not argue that lap dances constituted "prostitution", and therefore the court did not address the possible issue that the typical lap dance may contravene one or more anti-prostitution laws. This led to the displacement of strip clubs and table dancing clubs in Canada by lap dancing clubs.

In 2005, two Supreme Court of Canada rulings (R. v. Labaye and R. v. Kouri) decriminalized private sex clubs in Canada.

On 20 December 2013, (in Bedford v. Canada) the Supreme Court of Canada found the laws prohibiting brothels, public communication for the purpose of prostitution, and living on the profits of prostitution to be unconstitutional. The ruling gave the Canadian parliament twelve months to rewrite Canada's prostitution laws; in the meantime, existing anti-prostitution laws continued to be enforced. Current laws on prostitution in Canada, introduced in 2014, make it illegal to purchase sexual services (including lap dancing) but legal to sell them.

Ireland
In the early 2000s, lap dancing expanded rapidly in the Republic of Ireland, building on an existing strip pub industry. A number of lap-dancing clubs were opened in Dublin, including one by the English nightclub owner Peter Stringfellow. Lap-dancing clubs were also opened across the country.  Many of Ireland's lap-dancing clubs have subsequently closed as a result of the worsened economic climate and changes to Ireland's licensing laws in 2008. Reputational issues have also played a part in the decline of Ireland's lap-dancing clubs.

Police raids took place on Irish lap-dancing clubs in 2003 in search of criminal activity as part of Operation Quest. Efforts to distance Irish lap dancing from the sex industry were hampered by the UK's decision in 2010 to classify its lap dancing clubs as sex establishments. Ireland's lap-dancing clubs became viewed as more expensive than their rivals overseas and more restricted in terms of the entertainment on offer. By 2012 there were five or six clubs operating in Dublin, one in Galway and one in Cork. Most lap-dancing clubs in Ireland operate a no-touching rule, and typically do not charge dancers a "house fee" to perform, instead taking a proportion of the dancer's earnings.

United Kingdom
The first lap dancing club in the UK was opened in 1995. During the 2000s the lap dancing industry grew quickly, with the Licensing Act 2003 as the only legislation in England and Wales regulating lap dancing clubs. The Lap Dancing Association (LDA), a trade association for the UK lap dancing industry, was formed in 2006 and officially launched in 2008. It operated a code of practice for its members. According to a BBC report, as of November 2008, the association represented roughly one-third of the industry's clubs. Members included For Your Eyes Only, Spearmint Rhino, Bandit Queen and Candy Bar. In 2008, clubs were being opened at a rate of about one per week.

In April 2008 the LDA proposed that its code of conduct should become legally enforceable by local authorities as part of their licensing function. The association submitted a memorandum to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in November 2008 when the latter was reviewing the Licensing Act 2003. The association said that there was no sexual activity offered for sale in their clubs, and that to classify them as part of the sex industry would stigmatise performers. Simon Warr, who ran the clubs Platinum Lace and For Your Eyes Only and who was the president of the LDA In 2009, gave oral evidence to the committee, describing lap dancing as "not sexually stimulating". Three MPs undertook a fact-finding visit to a London lap dancing club at the invitation of the LDA. The association opposed the provisions of the subsequent Policing and Crime Act 2009 which reclassified lap-dancing clubs in England and Wales as "sexual entertainment venues" instead of "entertainment venues", introduced a licensing system for clubs and allowed local authorities to decide the number and location of lap-dancing clubs in their area. Chris Knight, vice-chairman of the LDA, said that the cost of the additional licence required to run a lap dancing club from 2010 could affect many businesses and questioned the right of local authorities to make licensing decisions on "emotive and moralistic grounds".

In 2009, the total number of clubs had reached its peak of 310 (approximately twice the number in 2003), and the number of lap-dancers was estimated at 10,000. Lap-dancing clubs had opened in big cities, small towns, and out-of-town business parks. The figures plateaued during the subsequent weaker economic climate and had hardly changed by 2012. At that point, the amount of money a lap-dancer earned in an average shift was £230 (down from around £280 in 2011), and the industry was valued at around £300 million. However, some clubs, particularly in London, charged a house fee for the dancers to perform and had an increased number of dancers, which reduced an individual dancer's earnings.

Between 2010 and 2015, there were approximately forty-five refusals of licences for sexual entertainment venues in England and Wales, mainly on the grounds that the locality was unsuitable. The legislation provides for no right of appeal against such refusals, except on the grounds that committees have not followed correct procedure. The number of refusals, together with the costs of licence application, means that there have been few new businesses opened since 2010, with the overall number of clubs declining over time as a number of local authorities implemented a "nil limit" for new clubs.

In February 2014, Fiona Mactaggart (MP for Slough) asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, if he would "make it his policy not to offer job subsidies for employing teenagers as auxiliary workers in adult entertainment establishments". Her question related to employers in the adult entertainment industry being offered an incentive of over £2,000 from the Department for Work and Pensions for every unemployed young person (aged 18–24) that they hired. Esther McVey, the Minister of State for Employment, stated that: "The Welfare Reform Act 2012 ensured that vacancies which involve performing sexual activities were banned from being advertised on Government websites and a distinction was made in law to differentiate between performers and ancillary workers."

Scotland
In 2005 Tom McCabe MSP set up the Adult Entertainment Working Group, an advisory body within the Scottish Government, to investigate the legislative issues involved in a proposed lap dancing ban in Scotland. At that time, lap dancing clubs in Scotland were licensed under Section 41 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, which covers general entertainment licenses, and licences in Scotland could not be refused on the basis of the nature of the entertainment in itself. The working group, headed by Linda Costelloe Baker, consisted of academics, lawyers and politicians, and had a working period from April 2005 until April 2006. It commissioned the market research organisation Ipsos MORI to examine the public's attitudes towards adult entertainment, completed site visits and took evidence from a variety of witnesses. Respondents to the group's consultation included the Church of Scotland. The group reported to Scottish ministers on 25 April 2006.

The group concluded that lap dancing venues are a form of "commercial sexual exploitation...which encompasses pornography, internet sex chat rooms, sex phone lines, escort services, prostitution, trafficking for prostitution, peep shows, lap dancing, pole dancing, table dancing and stripping". It recommended reviewing the licensing of lap dancing venues and proposed national guidelines to prevent performers from touching or being touched by customers, ensuring that activities are visible at all times, and introducing a minimum age of 18 for everyone involved. A prominent voice of opposition to a lap dancing ban was exotic dancer Veronica Deneuve who set out to try to involve the stripping community in the discussion to inform such legislation. The International Union of Sex Workers said that the "recommendations are flawed and would be extremely detrimental to workers and operators in the industry".

The Scottish Government accepted a number of the recommendations, but it rejected the idea that licensing boards should be able to determine whether full nudity is appropriate in given locales. It also rejected the idea of a compulsory one-metre no-touching zone between dancer and customer, suggesting that this would be unenforceable. It did, however, propose to enable licensing boards to consider nude dance venues as a separate class of venue. No legislation directly followed the group's report. However, the report informed the statement of licensing policy of many licensing boards across Scotland on the introduction of the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005.

In 2013 the Scottish Government and carried out a consultation on the regulation of "sexual entertainment venues". This, in combination with the AEWG's 2006 report, paved the way for the Scottish Parliament to introduce licensing reform for lap dancing as part of the Air Weapons and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2015. This came into effect in 2016 and requires local authorities in Scotland to set out individual policies with regard to the licensing of lap dancing clubs.

Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland's first lap dancing club was opened by Donegal businessman Jerome Brennan, who already owned lap dancing clubs in Dundalk and Limerick in the Republic of Ireland, mainly using dancers from Russia and the Baltic states. In 2002 Brennan opened the Movie Star Cafe, a lap dancing club in Belfast, with dancers from Belfast and England. The Belfast club was officially opened as a restaurant to circumvent Northern Ireland's licensing laws. The opening of the club was opposed by Rev. David McIlveen, a minister in the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, and the club was often picketed by protesters from the church and women's groups. In 2003 councillors from Belfast City Council expressed their intention to refuse the renewal of the club's licence, and the club closed in November 2003 with debts of over £300,000. Brennan's nightclub in Dundalk remained open.

A few years later Northern Ireland businessman Lawrence John organised lap dancing at a Hooters bar, followed by a clandestine lap dancing club in Belfast in 2007.  It was the subject of a report on the BBC Northern Ireland TV programme Spotlight in 2008 alleging that simulated lesbian sex shows took place on the premises.

United States
Some jurisdictions in the United States outlaw lap dances and enforce a minimum distance between dancer and patron. In Seattle, one such minimum distance ordinance was overturned by public referendum in November 2006.

Also in 2006, concerned about reports of sexual assault and illegal stage fees, San Francisco's Commission on the Status of Women recommended a ban on private rooms and booths at adult clubs in the city. However, a majority of dancers at the Commission's meetings and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' meetings protested against these efforts, fearing for their income and claiming that these rooms were safer than other venues. As a result, the Commission's proposed ban was not adopted by the city.

In February 2010, the Detroit City Council voted to ban lap dances in VIP rooms. However, across from Detroit in Windsor, Ontario in Canada, lap dancing remained legal, even where alcohol was served, and sex clubs were also legal in Windsor.

In 2012, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that lap dances were not an art form and are subject to sales tax.

Labor issues and job conditions

The economic position of lap dancers, as employees of the clubs, has also changed. Over time, most strip clubs have stopped paying wages to the dancers. Stage dancing became a showcase to advertise the bodies of the dancers, whose money came from the tips or standard charges, depending on the club, that the patrons gave them for lap dancing. In the majority of clubs, dancers are simply charged a percentage of their nightly takings. However, the latest development in many countries, including Great Britain, the United States and Canada, is that many clubs charge dancers a "stage fee" or "tip-out", which is an amount that a dancer needs to pay a club (usually in advance) in order to work on a given night, per shift. The lapdancers are expected to tip the "house mothers" (women who work in a strip club to support and assist the dancers) and DJs.

Given that dancers are basically paying for the privilege to be at a club, some clubs allow as many dancers as possible to appear on any given night, increasing competition among the dancers. Also, the vast majority of clubs will not waive this charge if a night happens to be slow. Consequently, the dancer either leaves her shift without any profit or builds a debt to the club.

Concerns raised by lapdancers include patrons stalking them, exposing their penis, ejaculating in their pants, attempting to have sex with the dancers without their consent, or committing sexual assault.
Some lapdance clubs have CCTV cameras in the "champagne rooms" for the safety of the dancers. Dancer Mary Jane says that when a lapdancer wishes to have paid sexual activities with a client, she tips the management, waitresses, and DJ to "turn a blind eye" to these sexual  activities.

In the U.S., most clubs treat dancers as independent contractors, thereby avoiding the need to pay minimum wages, overtime pay, income taxes and other benefits required by law. This status has repeatedly been challenged by some dancers. While labor commissions and the courts have, for the most part, ruled that exotic dancers are employees and deserving of reimbursement for back pay and stage fees, some court decisions have decided that an exotic dancer can be classified as an independent contractor. In June 2006, in Tracy Buel v. Chowder House (dba The Hungry I) an appellate court of California's first district ruled that dancer Tracy Buel, also known as "Daisy Anarchy", was correctly classified as an independent contractor and that "Buel shall pay defendants' costs on appeal". A publication called the California Employment Law Letter described the case as follows: "The dancer based her suit on the fact that she was an employee of the nightclub rather than an independent contractor. The appellate court, however, after applying a 10-factor test, upheld the jury's verdict in favor of the nightclub and its owners and found that the evidence weighed in favor of classifying the dancer as an independent contractor rather than an employee."

A UK study on lap dancing found that the overwhelming majority of those surveyed were satisfied with their work, because they got to choose their own hours, got paid instantly, got more money than in other available jobs, and had the opportunity to combine "fun and work" (e.g., socializing with other dancers and patrons). At the same time, the same study revealed various disadvantages to lap dancing work, such as: the women never knew how much they would earn each week; the women had to try to keep their job secret from friends and family; the women had to face some rude and abusive customers. As well, while most felt safe, almost half of the dancers had faced frequent verbal harassment and unwanted touching from patrons. Another issue raised by the dancers was their lack of labour rights in the workplace and the high overhead costs – house fees (or stage fees), commissions, fines (whether paid directly to the club's management or not), and tipping out (or paying a portion of their income) to DJs and bouncers.

The UK paper The Guardian gave a darker portrait of lap dancing in an article partly based on an interview with a former stripper. It stated that "[r]esearch shows that the majority of women become lap-dancers through poverty and lack of choice," and that "academic research has linked lap-dancing to trafficking, prostitution and an increase in male sexual violence against both the women who work in the clubs and those who live and work in their vicinity." For example, a "recent conference in Ireland highlighted the use of lap-dance clubs by human traffickers as a tool for grooming women into prostitution; the clubs also normalise the idea of paying for sexual services." "[R]esearch on strip clubs in the US found that all dancers had suffered verbal harassment and physical and sexual abuse while at work; all had been propositioned for prostitution; and three-quarters had been stalked by men associated with the club."

Critics of lap dancing choose to describe it as a type of sex work, because, in their opinion, "it is difficult to discern between the performance of erotic dance and prostitution." However, others contend that it is a misnomer to call a lap dancer a sex worker, because no sexual act is technically performed during a typical lap dance. Club owners in the UK argue that lap dancing should not be labelled as sex work. On the other hand, one lapdancer, Mary Jane, told a reporter that she and other lapdancers negotiate "extras" (nicknamed the "secret menu") with clients, such as a "hand job" (male masturbation) or sexual intercourse, for additional payment.

In 2007, based on statistics from eighteen dancers over a period of 60 days, it was noted that female lap dancers earned the highest tips around the time of ovulation, during the most fertile period of their menstrual cycle and the lowest tips during menstruation; the average difference in earning between those two times amounted to about $30 per hour. Women on the pill earned overall less than those not on the pill. The results were interpreted as evidence of estrus in humans: females apparently advertise their fertility status to males in some manner. This finding earned its authors the 2008 Ig Nobel Prize (a parody of the Nobel Prize given for unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research) in Economics.

Level of contact
Establishments that offer lap dancing, and the lap dancers themselves, are sometimes rated regarding "mileage."  It refers to the amount of contact between dancer and patron during the performance.  Every jurisdiction has its own laws regarding such contact, but enforcement of these laws is sporadic. Ultimately, it comes down to what the club and the dancer will allow.

Nevada, and especially Las Vegas, have established very lenient laws regarding what contact is allowed during a lap dance.  Patrons may legally touch the dancer anywhere she will permit, excluding the genitals.  This has led to a pricing strategy in some all-nude strip clubs, in which a standard lap dance is considered to be just topless with no contact, but can be upgraded to include full nudity or touching with additional payment.

In film
 1995: In the film Showgirls, Zack Carey (Kyle MacLachlan) gets a lap dance from Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley).
 1999: In the film Go, Marcus (Taye Diggs) and a friend get lap dances in Las Vegas, but violence ensues when a bouncer assaults them after some hand-contact with a lap dancer.
 2001: Within director Wayne Wang's film, Center of the World starring Peter Sarsgaard and Molly Parker, a wealthy dot-com entrepreneur becomes obsessed with a lap dancer.
 2007: In Quentin Tarantino's film Death Proof, Butterfly performs a lap dance on Stuntman Mike to The Coasters' "Down in Mexico". In the double-feature Grindhouse, the scene was abruptly "skipped" in a comical manner.
 2010: In the film Welcome to the Rileys starring James Gandolfini and Kristen Stewart, an emotionally damaged man tries to help a wayward lap dancer.
 2014: Within the film Lap Dance starring Carmen Electra, an actress makes a pact with her fiancé to take a job as a lap dancer in order to take care of her cancer-stricken father.

See also

 Erotic dance
 Legal status of striptease
 Pole dance
 Strip club
 Striptease
 Taxi dancer
 Las Vegas Dancers Alliance

References
Notes

Bibliography

External links

Erotic dance

Lap dance


The Big Four was a name used to describe the four largest railway companies in the United Kingdom in the period 1923–47. The name was coined by The Railway Magazine in its issue of February 1923: "The Big Four of the New Railway Era".

The Big Four were:

 Great Western Railway (GWR)
 London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS)
 London and North Eastern Railway (LNER)
 Southern Railway (SR)

The companies were formed as a result of the Railways Act 1921, in a process known as "The Grouping" (of the railways), which came into effect on 1 January 1923.

On 1 January 1948, the companies were nationalised to form British Railways as a result of the Transport Act 1947.

Related pages
 List of railway companies involved in the 1923 Grouping

Big Four (British railway companies)

Big Four (British railway companies)


The Fourth Geneva Convention (full tilte: Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War) is an international treaty signed in 1949. These treaties are known as Geneva Conventions, because they were originally signed in Geneva. The fourth geneva convention protects civilians in a war zone and prohibit forced migration in general. Currently, 194 countries are party to this treaty of international law.

In 1993, the United Nations Security Council adopted a report from the Secretary-General and a Commission of Experts; this report stated that the Geneva Conventions had passed into the body of customary international law. If this is the case, the treaties are binding even to countries who did not sign them,whenever they engage in armed conflicts.

References

International law
Geneva Conventions
1940s treaties
1949 in Europe
20th century in Geneva

Fourth Geneva Convention


Polly Bradfield is an American violinist from the New York City free improvisation scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Her closest musical associates were Eugene Chadbourne and John Zorn. She also played on records by William Parker and Frank Lowe. Her music career ended when she moved to California sometime in the 1980s. Her last appearance on record was on Zorn's The Big Gundown in 1986.

Biography
"I began playing music when I was 8 or 9. First piano, then violin. I preferred to play classical literature, but I started improvising by playing piano in a high school stage band. I studied jazz in college after hearing Cecil Taylor I started developing a style of improvisation on the piano, playing with many different musicians and performing occasionally. When I met Eugene Chadbourne and John Zorn on moving to New York, I quit playing the piano and concentrated on the violin. My playing really changed and so did my attitudes about music and improvising..." (from Bradfield's own liner notes on the back of her Solo Violin Improvisations LP)

Influences & Influenced
In the same liner notes, she lists her musical inspirations: Paganini, Bartók, Ives, Ligeti, Django Reinhardt, Stuff Smith, Eddie South, Joe Venuti, The Sacred Guitar and Violin music of the Modern Aztecs, Jean Carignan, Swedish fiddle music, and Cajun string bands. (She also thanks Zorn and Chadbourne for their effect on her music.)

A song named after Polly Bradfield was released by Two Of Substance in early 2019.

Solo music
In 1979 she released an LP on Chadbourne's Parachute label called Solo Violin Improvisations. The cover shows a photo of a young girl, presumably Bradfield as a child, sawing a branch off a tree, a pun on violin playing described as "sawing". The album contains more silence than sawing, though; her scrapes, scratches, plunks, and occasional notes on the violin are often separated by long stretches of it. Her radically still, non-discursive, Cageian style on this little known LP foreshadows later trends in free improvisation.

Eugene Chadbourne describes the album as "a controlled masterwork of severely intense playing" .

In her liner notes, Bradfield writes "The music on this record is all acoustic violin. Usually I use an amplifier when performing, but I wanted my first solo recording to be acoustic. I felt it was a small way to pay homage to the instrument's long and diverse history which began long before electricity was discovered."

Remarks from other musicians

Kevin Drumm
"Whatever happened to Polly? Amazing and unique solo LP released on Eugene Chadbourne's Parachute label. Best solo improv record ever." (from Dusted Magazine )

Eugene Chadbourne
"...violinist Polly Bradfield... whatever happened to her? She's still playing. She had a lot of children and went out to California. She was never that driven to have a musical career. She was a really interesting musician though, I really liked her. Very extreme. I think her solo violin album is one of the best things I've ever heard. Do you know that? I have to send you a copy. I've got lots of copies, because when she left New York, in a big hurry, she piled her records out in the street, so I kept them; every now and then I meet somebody who wants one or who I think ought to have one. We did a couple of concerts together in England and Belgium that came out on a record, Torture Time--that was another nice album."

(from an interview by Dan Warburton )

Fred Frith
"Polly Bradfield's solo playing was quite different -- harder, less lyrical and treading a tightrope between controlled and contrived. I thought she had a lot of bottle actually, because she's chosen a difficult path; her playing is austere and uncompromising, a little stiff; she takes chances; her use of silence is similar to John Zorn's, though her humour's dryer (it's there though). After she'd played I felt mentally excited but earthbound."

John Zorn
"About seven and a half minutes into the fourth take of "Lacrosse", Polly Bradfield plucks the C natural... this note was one of the great musical experiences of my life... notes like this C natural... are what music is all about for me, but they are too rare." (from his liner notes to School)

John Corbett
"Boxes of this brilliant fiddle outing, one of the best records of its kind, were reputedly discarded by Bradfield, having gone unsold for years. Knotty, intense, nuanced little sounds by an important early associate of John Zorn and Eugene Chadbourne." (from Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium, Duke University Press (2017), page 178)

Discography
 The Frank Lowe Orchestra, Lowe and Behold (Musicworks, 1978; recorded 1977)
 Eugene Chadbourne & John Zorn, School (Parachute, 1978)
 William Parker, Through Acceptance of the Mystery Peace (Centering, 1979)
 Polly Bradfield, Solo Violin Improvisations (Parachute, 1979)
 Eugene Chadbourne, 2000 Statues/The English Channel (Parachute, 1979)
 Lesli Dalaba, Trumpet Songs and Dances (Solos & Duets) LP (Parachute, 1979)
 Andrea Centazzo, Environment for Sextet (Ictus, 1979)
 Andrea Centazzo, USA Concerts (Ictus, 1979)
 John Zorn, Pool (Parachute, 1980)
 Eugene Chadbourne & Polly Bradfield, Torture Time (Parachute, 1981)
 John Zorn, Archery (Parachute, 1982)
 Curlew, North America (Moers, 1986; recorded 1984-85)
 John Zorn, The Big Gundown (Nonesuch, 1986)
 Eugene Chadbourne & John Zorn, Sonora (1977–1981) (Materiali Sonori, 1998)
 John Zorn, The Parachute Years (Tzadik, 1997)
 John Zorn, Lacrosse (Tzadik, 2000; recorded 1978)
 Eugene Chadbourne, Vision-Ease (House of Chadula, 2000; recorded 1978)
 John Zorn, Hockey (Tzadik, 2002)

References

External links
 Polly Bradfield page at Answers.com with text by Eugene Chadbourne
 John Zorn discography with details on many of the recordings listed above

Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
American violinists
American women violinists
Free improvisation violinists
21st-century violinists

Polly Bradfield


Nikolai Nikolaevich Tsukanov (Russian: Николай Николаевич Цуканов)  (born March 22, 1965 is a Russian politician. He is from the village Lipovo, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia). In September 2010, he became governor of the Kaliningrad oblast. He became Secretary of the Kaliningrad regional council of the party "United Russia"  in 2010. He was also the mayor of the municipality "Gusev City District" in 2005-2010.

References

1965 births
Living people

Russian politicians
Kaliningrad Oblast

Nikolai Tsukanov


International human rights law is a series of the international laws on human rights. International human rights law is based upon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Charter of the United Nations that declare human dignity and rights of all human being on the earth. Its fundamental philosophy and aim are to prevent war and keep world peace on the earth, with the idea of rule of law.

Human Rights law made by United Nations
United Nations has adopted Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 to affirm all human rights. To give authority to it by international law, United Nations has adopted International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights for civil rights in 1966. Those treaties are to ensure more in detail the contents of human rights and often called "International Human Rights Bill" together with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Further, the United Nations has adopted treaties on human rights to fortify or supply them. as follow:
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide against genocide (adopted in 1948)
Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees for refugees (adopted in 1951)
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination against racism (adopted in 1965)
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women for women's rights (adopted in 1979)
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment against torture (adopted in 1984)
Convention on the Rights of the Child for children's rights (adopted in 1989)
Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families for the rights of migrant workers (adopted in 1990)
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for the rights of persons with disability (adopted in 2006)

And also United Nations has made United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights accoding to the Vienna Declaration and the Yogyakarta Principles for LGBT rights by International Commission of Jurists and approved by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2006.

Human Rights Law made other international organizations
Council of Europe had adopted the European Convention on Human Rights in 1951 to ensure human rights according to Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights is made by this Convention to realize human rights in the member countries of Council of Europe with legal force.

As well, the Organization of American States has adopted the American Convention on Human Rights in 1969 and the African Union has adopted the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights in 1981. Those Organizations also have their own Human Rights Court to ensure human rights affirmed in the Convention or Chater.

Related pages
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Council of Europe
Organization of American States
African Union

Human rights
International law

International human rights law


Stefano Lelio Beniamino Accorsi (; born 2 March 1971) is an Italian actor.

Early life and background
Accorsi was born in Bologna. He graduated from Bologna's Theatrical School in 1993, and acted in the theatre for several years before moving to cinema.

Career
In 1995 he played the lead in Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo, one of his best known films.

In 1998 he worked with Daniele Luchetti in I Piccoli Maestri, which competed for the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival. In the same year he won three prizes for his role in Radiofreccia, directed by rock star Luciano Ligabue, including David di Donatello for Best Actor.

He was the lead in the successful film L'ultimo bacio (The Last Kiss).

He won the leading role in Maria de Medeiros' Capitães de Abril (April Captains), and has worked with director Nanni Moretti in The Son's Room.

In 2001, Accorsi also had the leading role in Ferzan Özpetek's Le fate ignoranti (His Secret Life – Festival Title/The Ignorant Fairies – International Title), which was in competition at the 2001 Berlin International Film Festival. This film was a big success in Italy and in Turkey, and Accorsi, who played the role of a homosexual man, won three awards for his interpretation.

He also starred in David Blair's Tabloid TV (UK) and in Marco Ponti's Santa Maradona.

Then Accorsi acted in the TV film  by Giacomo Battiato.

His next film was Un viaggio chiamato amore (A Journey Called Love) which took part in the Venice International Film Festival 2002 and for which he won the Coppa Volpi, the award for best male performance as the Italian poet Dino Campana.

He didn't make any more films for about a year, during which time he went to France. He went to the Venice International Film Festival 2003 as a member of the jury. In 2004 he shot two movies: Ovunque sei, directed by Michele Placido, where he plays the role of an emergency care doctor; and L'amore ritrovato, directed by Carlo Mazzacurati.

Accorsi worked with Diane Kruger in Les Brigades du Tigre (2005) and with Julie Depardieu in La Faute à Fidel. He was featured in Un baiser s'il vous plaît in 2007 and its sequel Baciami ancora in 2010.

Personal life
Accorsi was engaged to Corsican supermodel Laetitia Casta. They have one son and one daughter together, Orlando, born on 21 September 2006 and Athena, born on 29 August 2009.

He is an agnostic.

Filmography

Films

Television

Music videos

Awards

References

External links

 Saverio Ferragina press agent
 Biography

1971 births
Living people
Actors from Bologna
Italian male film actors
Italian male television actors
Italian agnostics
David di Donatello winners
Nastro d'Argento winners
Ciak d'oro winners
Volpi Cup for Best Actor winners
20th-century Italian male actors
21st-century Italian male actors

Stefano Accorsi


An amicus curiae (literally, friend of the court; plural, amici curiae) is someone who is not a party to a case and offers information that affects the case but who has not been asked by any of the parties to assist a court. This may take the form of legal opinion, testimony or learned treatise (the amicus brief). It is a way to introduce concerns that might be overlooked by the parties directly involved in the case. The decision on whether to admit the information lies at the discretion of the court. The phrase amicus curiae is legal Latin.

History
The amicus curiae practice was found in Roman law. It played an important part in both English common law and the American legal system. Later, it was introduced in international law, in particular, concerning human rights. Today, it is used by the European Court of Human Rights. It is also used in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

Presentation
The situation most often noted in the press is when an advocacy group files a brief in a case before an appellate court to which it is not a litigant.  Appellate cases are normally limited to the factual record and arguments coming from the lower court case under appeal. Usually attorneys focus on the facts and arguments most favorable to their clients.  Where a case may have broader implications, amicus curiae briefs are a way to introduce those concerns, so that the possibly broad legal effects of court decisions will not depend solely on the parties directly involved in the case.

In prominent cases, amici curiae are generally organizations with sizable legal budgets. In the United States, for example, non-profit legal advocacy organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Landmark Legal Foundation, the Pacific Legal Foundation, and others, frequently submit such briefs to advocate for or against a particular legal change or interpretation. If a decision could affect an entire industry, companies other than the litigants may wish to have their concerns heard.  In the United States, federal courts often hear cases involving the constitutionality of state laws.  Hence states may file briefs as amici curiae when their laws are likely to be affected, as in the Supreme Court case McDonald v. Chicago, when thirty-two states under the aegis of Texas (and California independently) filed such briefs.

Amici curiae who do not file briefs often present an academic perspective on the case. Newspaper editorials, blogs, and other opinion pieces arguably have the capability to influence Supreme Court decisions as de facto amici curiae. They are not, however, technically considered amicus curiae, as they do not submit materials to the Court, do not need to ask for leave, and have no guarantee that they will be read.

United States Supreme Court rules
The Supreme Court of the United States has special rules for amicus curiae briefs sought to be filed in cases pending before it. Supreme Court Rule 37 states, in part, such a brief should cover "relevant matter" not dealt with by the parties which "may be of considerable help". The cover of an amicus brief must identify which party the brief is supporting, or if the brief supports only affirmance or reversal. The Court also requires that, inter alia, all non-governmental amici identify those providing a monetary contribution to the preparation or submission of the brief. Briefs must be prepared in booklet format, and 40 copies must be served with the Court.

In the United States Supreme Court, unless the amicus brief is being filed by the federal government (or one of its officers or agents) or a U.S. state, permission of the court (by means of motion for leave) or mutual consent of the parties is  generally required. Allowing an amicus curiae to present oral argument is considered "extraordinary".

In the World Trade Organization
The role of amicus curiae briefs in the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement system is controversial. The controversy arises due to the governmental nature of WTO disputes. As only WTO members have access to the system, any non-members such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are excluded and have no right to be heard. Thus the only way for them to contribute to a WTO decision is through amicus curiae briefs.

References

Other websites

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
Dictionary – MSN Encarta  (Archived 2009-10-31)
Definitions from Dictionary.com
The Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia

Legal terms

Amicus curiae


JET, Jet or Jets all have many meanings. Some of them are:

Science
A jet is a stream of liquid or gas which is moving together in parallel.
In fluid or gas engineering contexts, a jet is a stream of material ejected from a nozzle, or a nozzle designed to produce such a stream.
In automotive terms, a jet is a tube, nozzle, or passageway through which petrol is metered within a carburetor.
In geology, jet (lignite) (or Whitby jet) is a mineraloid (mineral-like material) which is used as a gemstone.
In meteorology, a blue jet is a form of upper atmospheric lightning.
In meteorology, a jet is an electrical discharge that occurs high above the cumulonimbus cloud of an active thunderstorm.
In astrophysics, a relativistic jet is a stream of fast-moving plasma emitted at nearly 300,000 km/s (the speed of light) from an active galaxy. A similar phenomenon on a much smaller scale is a polar jet.  These are emitted during star formation from either side of the accretion disk, along the two polar axes.
In nuclear and particle physics, a jet is a cone of hadrons
In nuclear physics, the Joint European Torus or JET is an experimental Nuclear fusion reactor.
In mathematics, a jet is an operation that produces an abstract polynomial
In mathematics, a jet bundle (or spray) is a manipulation of differential equations
In software engineering, Java Emitter Templates (JET) is a Template engine that is part of the Eclipse EMF project.

Aerospace
Jet engine
Jet aircraft
Jet Airways, an airline based in India serving domestic and international routes
JetBlue Airways, an airline based on New York
Jetstar Airlines, an Australian airline servicing domestic and International routes

Water
Water jet

Music
Jet, a hit rock music single on the 1973 album Band on the Run by Wings
Jet-CD (also known as Jet), 1998's album by J-pop band, Puffy AmiYumi
Jet, a rock band from Melbourne, Australia
Jet, a rock band that existed from 1971 to 1974, from Genoa, northern Italy
Jet, a glam rock band from England that recorded one eponymous album in 1975
The Jets, a family band from Minneapolis, Minnesota that does pop, R&B, dance and religious music, and had several hit singles in the 1980s
The Jets, a 1970s rock band from Pekin, Illinois
Jet Records, a record label

Fiction
Jet, a character from Wildstorm/DC Comics, and the daughter of Backlash. Another character by the name of Jet, a female one, exists in DC comics, New Guardians.
Jet Black, a main character from the anime Cowboy Bebop.
Jet, a character from the Earth Kingdom forests in the TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender
The Jets, a gang in West Side Story which fought with the Sharks.
JET TV, a television station in the Jadeworld station group
Jet the Hawk, a video game character.
Jet, an addictive drug in the Fallout series of video games.
Jet Fusion, a super spy who makes occasional appearances in the cartoon The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius

Sports
New York Jets, a professional American football team in the National Football League
Newcastle United Jets, a professional soccer team in the Australian A-League competition
Winnipeg Jets (1972–96), a former professional hockey team in the World Hockey Association and National Hockey League
Winnipeg Jets, a professional ice hockey team in the National Hockey League
Jet (Diane Youdale) was one of the stars of Gladiators
"Jet," or "Jet Terry," nickname of the popular Dallas Maverick and former University of Arizona point guard Jason Terry.
Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, A kickboxer, coreographer and actor (Benny Urquidez)

Culture
Jet (slang), to leave in a hurry
Jet, an African-American themed magazine
Jet, a filling station brand of ConocoPhillips
A ZX Spectrum clone from Romania.
 JET, a 1985 flight simulator produced by subLOGIC
 The JET Programme - The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme (teaching English)

Places
Jet, a town in Alfalfa County, Oklahoma, United States

Jet


The Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRT), also known as Twin City Lines (TCL), was a transportation company that operated streetcars and buses in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Other types of transportation were tested including taxicabs and steamboats, along with the operation of some destination sites such as amusement parks. It existed under the TCRT name from a merger in the 1890s until it was purchased in 1962. At its height in the early 20th century, the company operated an intercity streetcar system that was believed to be one of the best in the United States. It is a predecessor of the current Metro Transit bus and light rail system that operates in the metro area.

Establishment

The origins of street rail transport in the Twin Cities are not entirely known. Some sources state that it dates back to 1865, when businessman and mayor Dorilus Morrison began building rails in downtown Minneapolis. He quickly joined forces with Colonel William S. King and other Minneapolis businessmen to create the Minneapolis Street Railway. However, the lines didn't go very far and the railway was useless for a time. There are some indications that a streetcar was purchased but never used, collecting dust for several years.

On the other side of the Mississippi River, the St. Paul Railway Company started the first successful horse-drawn streetcar system of the metro area in St. Paul. Then in 1875, the reformed Minneapolis Street Railway made a deal with the Minneapolis City Council where the company would have exclusive access to street rails for 50 years if they could be up and operating in four months. The company recruited real-estate mogul Thomas Lowry, who on September 2, 1875, brought on line a route between downtown Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota.

The streetcars became popular because they rode on smooth rails, while most of the streets of the era were dirt or made of cobblestone pavers. These roads became treacherous to pedestrians and uncomfortable to ride on in horse-drawn buggies, especially during Minnesota winters.

Thomas Lowry envisioned linking together the various railways that were cropping up around Minneapolis. While other systems were popping up with more horse-drawn carriages or cable cars, Lowry pushed forward with electrification of the lines. Starting in the late-1880s, electric streetcars began moving in both Minneapolis and St. Paul. Cable cars quickly lost favor as they struggled through snowy Minnesota winters and the public quickly grew weary of slow horsecars.

Rise of the system

In 1890, the two cities were connected with a railway along University Avenue, the first of four rail lines linking them together. A merger of the two city systems, the St. Paul City Railway Co. and Minneapolis Street Railway, formed the Twin City Rapid Transit Company. It went on a building spree, quickly doubling the amount of electrified track in the system.

The company continued absorbing smaller competitors for the next 40 years. In 1898, the company began a transition to using company-built streetcars and machinery (such as cranes and snowplows) rather than purchasing the cars from other companies. The first such car was built as a personal streetcar for company president Thomas Lowry, although his was a special-order. The car featured one end with large windows, to make the scenery more visible. This car was used on special occasions, such as the opening of new lines and a visit by United States President William McKinley.

TCRT built some of the largest streetcars in the country. The Twin City Rapid Transit Company got into the business of building street cars at its Nicolett Shops in 1898 after concluding that cars it was operating from Eastern manufactures couldn't hold up to Minnesota's harsh winters. By 1906 they opened a manufacturing facility at its Snelling Shops where they not only manufactured cars for TCRT but also Chattanooga, Duluth, Seattle and Chicago among others. These cars were larger than traditional streetcars, being  long and  wide.

Old track was also upgraded. In the early days, a number of lines had been laid down with narrow gauge track. These were all upgraded to  (standard gauge). In addition, the basic construction of the lines improved. The rails of the Twin Cities were upgraded to the most expensive track in the country, running US$60,000 per mile. Tracks featured welded (thermite) joints, and were commonly surrounded by cobblestone or asphalt. By 1909, 95 percent of the rails were of this type of construction. They were used until the company ended streetcar service.

From 1906 to 1926, TCRT experimented with "streetcar boats." Officially known as Express Boats, they were steam-powered vessels with designs reminiscent of the streetcars of the day. The boats operated between communities on Lake Minnetonka, but improved roads in that area hit ridership hard in the 1920s. Ultimately, seven were built, but most of them were scuttled in the lake in 1926.

TCRT also expanded into the suburban amusement park business by opening the Wildwood Amusement Park on White Bear Lake and Big Island Park on Lake Minnetonka. The park on Big Island was serviced by three large ferry boats from Excelsior.

The internal combustion engine didn't escape notice. The Twin City Rapid Transit acquired several bus lines that began to pop up around the time of World War I. They also acquired a taxicab company in the 1920s.

When the transportation system peaked in 1922, it had nearly  of track and 1021 streetcars. Rail extended a distance of about  from Stillwater on the bank of the St. Croix River in the east to Lake Minnetonka in the west. For a time, TCRT was the largest employer in the area.

It is rumored that anyone who lived in Minneapolis was no farther than  (less than ) from the nearest station at that time.

Changing labor conditions

In 1917, a major labor strike took place in the months after the United States entered World War I. It began on October 6, and was influenced by the organization Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also known as the "Wobblies"), a militant group that had been organizing unions in the region, particularly in the northern Mesabi Iron Range. Horace Lowry, son of Thomas Lowry, headed the company at this time and absolutely refused to negotiate with the striking workers. This angered workers and others who felt sympathy for them.

Angry strikers in St. Paul damaged streetcars and harassed those who had continued to work. The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety ordered the workers back on the job and they complied for a while. People again left work in late-November. On December 2, a crowd energized by speakers from the Nonpartisan League again grew angry after TCRT cut off electricity to the streetcars in downtown St. Paul, making it impossible for many people to return home. Over the following days, many were arrested and the strike was effectively broken. 800 people were eventually replaced by non-union workers.

Things turned out differently in the 1930s, although it was not a smooth transition. In 1932, most of the system's streetcars were converted to "one-man operation" where, rather than requiring both a motorman to drive in front and a conductor to take fares in the rear, the motorman took over both operations. The doors on the streetcars were modified to allow easier boarding in front. So-called "gate cars" which had used open grating on the rear of the cars mostly disappeared from the lines. The transition from two-man to one-man operation was taking place on many streetcar lines across the country around this time.

The conversion to single-man operation meant that about half of the company's workforce was suddenly surplus. Many employees found it hard to get work and were often forced to take strange shifts. One worker recorded having a 17-hour shift from 4:24 p.m. on Sunday to 9:49 a.m. on Monday. There was a company union, although it hadn't done much good. By October 1933, the workers had gained backing from Minnesota Governor Floyd B. Olson, St. Paul Mayor William Mahoney and the National Recovery Administration, among others. The next year, the workers voted to join the Amalgamated Transit Union.

Competition from automobiles
With the Great Depression and the rise of the automobile, the rail lines began to decline. Buses were frequently used toward the edges of the system as long routes, especially those with low ridership, were cut back. World War II allowed the system to bounce back for a time, since strict fuel rationing and citizens' efforts to conserve resources made automobile use rather un-patriotic. However, the restrictions also hit TCRT itself since they could not afford to build many new streetcars. The company was forced to add more buses to shore up the system's various routes.

After the war, trolley riders returned to their automobiles. TCRT's management explored ways to upgrade the line to bring people back. Heavy wartime use meant that the rails needed to be repaired. Competition from other forms of transportation required modernization. In 1945, the company received its first streamlined PCC streetcar. The following years saw dozens of new PCC cars on the streets, although the first one remained unique in the fleet because it was the only one to have air brakes. All of the PCCs were several inches wider than standard, to match the  width of the company's older streetcars.

Company takeover and decline

The company had a long-standing policy of reinvestment in the rail system. When profits appeared, they were usually used to pay off loans and improve the rails, streetcars and other hardware the company owned. It was rare for the company to pay out dividends. In 1948, Wall Street speculator Charles Green bought 6000 shares of TCRT stock. He expected to quickly gain profit, but found he had purchased stock just as the company decided to set forth on some major construction. Knowing this would demolish his anticipated dividends, Green contacted other shareholders and urged them to vote out the company's president, D. J. Strouse and put him in charge instead.

Green took control of the company in 1949 and quickly started dismantling the railway system, announcing that the company would completely switch to buses by 1958. The system's PCCs were sold to Mexico City (91), Newark NJ (30) and Shaker Heights OH (20). Green sold his shares in 1950 to be briefly replaced by Emil B. Anderson before local lawyer Fred Ossanna ascended to head the company the next year. Ossanna held off on the teardown for a short while, but soon announced that the process would be accelerated. Lines would be removed and replaced by buses in two years.

End of the streetcar system

On June 19, 1954, four years before Green had envisioned, the very last streetcars ran in Minneapolis. The leftover vehicles were burned to recover the scrap metal they contained. The last streetcar was famously photographed alight behind Fred Ossanna and James Towley as Towley presented Ossanna with a check.

At the time there were a range of issues facing TCRT. Highway development enabled settlement over a wider area. Minneapolis' population peaked in the late 1940s and St. Paul's a decade later in the late 1950s. Population growth and job growth was spread out in less dense suburbs where capital requirements for building new rail were too high compared to the potential ridership. Building rails to service these areas was cost prohibitive. Buses though could be profitable on such routes. More so other streetcar lines without connection to NCL also converted to buses, frequently having done so long before the TCRT began the process.

Fred Ossanna came to work at TCRT as a lawyer for Charles Green in the 1949 takeover of the company. Reportedly, Ossanna planned to order 25 buses from General Motors and was instead offered 525. The vast majority of buses in TCRT's eventual bus fleet were built by GM.

Most of the activity was geared toward stripping TCRT of its assets to fill the pockets of owners and investors. Ossanna was convicted in 1960 of illegally taking personal profit from the company during the transition period. He was imprisoned along with other accomplices. Carl Pohlad, who became the owner of the Minnesota Twins in 1984, was the eventual successor of Fred Ossanna as head of Twin City Lines in the 1960s. He ultimately sold the company in 1970.

Streetcar preservation
Before the dismantling began, TCRT had purchased a significant number of PCC streetcars. These were sold off in 1952 and 1953, still in very good operating condition. The cars ended up in Mexico City (91 cars), Newark, New Jersey (30) and Shaker Heights, Ohio (20). Relatively few places could have taken them because of their extra width and each of these buyers had significant amounts of dedicated right-of-way. For instance, the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit commuter line in Cleveland was grade-separated in many areas. The vast majority of the older wooden streetcars, mostly built by TCRT itself, were destroyed. Out of 1240 built by the company, only five have survived to be restored and operated by rail museums.

Only two of the wooden streetcars in use in the 1950s had been given away to railfan groups before the rest of the fleet was burned. They are owned by the Minnesota Streetcar Museum (TCRT No. 1300) and the Seashore Trolley Museum (TCRT No. 1267) in Maine. One other steel-sheathed car (TCRT No. 1583) had been sent to a railway to the north in Duluth-Superior, but it was never used. It now resides at the East Troy Electric Railroad Museum in Wisconsin. A few additional cars escaped the burn pits, but they were still subjected to harsh conditions and only two are restored.

One of the streetcar boats, the Minnehaha, was found by divers and then brought to the surface in 1980. After a long wait, it was restored and has been operating on Lake Minnetonka from 1996 to 2004 by the Minnesota Transportation Museum and since then by the Museum of Lake Minnetonka. MTM also restored one of TCRT's old PCC cars (TCRT No. 322), operated now by the Minnesota Streetcar Museum.

A number of PCC cars once owned by Twin City Rapid Transit are just beginning their lives as museum pieces. The Newark City Subway finished operation of their 24 remaining cars on August 24, 2001, replacing the cars with new light-rail trainsets. Fifteen have been sold to the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), for their collection of classic streetcars on the Market Street Railway. In addition, 12 PCCs that ran on the Shaker Heights line are now owned by the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association. Many of these cars owe their longevity to the fact that the Twin Cities area makes heavy use of salt to de-ice roadways in the winter. In anticipation of this, the cars were largely made of stainless steel to prevent corrosion.

Historical remnants
Other vestiges of the company's streetcar history remained in the Twin Cities, and some surviving elements are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. One of the oldest structures to survive is a building in Minneapolis now known as the Colonial Warehouse. First built in 1885, it housed the headquarters of the Minneapolis Street Railway Co. during the early horsecar era and also later served as a powerhouse as the system was converted. The lines needed a lot of electricity, so hydroelectric generators were installed at Saint Anthony Falls about a mile away and the Southeast Steam Plant was also constructed nearby. The old headquarters was sold in 1908, soon after these were constructed. The steam plant was bought by the University of Minnesota, which now uses it for providing heat to the campus downriver.

A large building on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul first served as the main construction and repair shop for the streetcars when it was built in 1907. It was expanded and remodeled over the years, later becoming a major garage for the bus system. However, the complex became outdated, with poor ventilation, a leaky roof and other problems. It was finally shut down and demolished in September 2001.

Selby Hill in St. Paul was a steep climb and was a place where cable cars were used in the late 19th century before Selby Hill Tunnel was constructed in 1905 to provide a more gradual incline. The tunnel still exists, but the ends have been blocked off, and as of July 2022 has largely become a homeless encampment. It is near the Cathedral of St. Paul.

Billboards across the area were originally laid out to target passengers of the rail lines with advertising. Many of these billboards remained for decades afterward, despite the fact that automobile traffic frequently favored different routes. These finally disappeared due to city beautification efforts in the 1990s.

Legacy to 21st century rail
In the 1970s, the bus lines (some of which still trace former horse-drawn buggy paths) were shifted to a partially publicly funded operation overseen by the Metropolitan Council. All regional transportation for the metropolitan area was soon overseen by the Met Council's transit agency which would take on the name Metro Transit. Twenty years after rails disappeared from Twin Cities streets, politicians and planners began proposing new light rail systems. Congestion was bad enough in 1972 that there were proposals to build new subways or people movers, but excessively high costs prevented any of the projects from getting anywhere until the end of the century. The University of Minnesota did a fair amount of research on personal rapid transit (PRT) systems and has held a number of patents on the idea.

Rail transport returned to the Twin Cities with the construction of the Blue Line, which began operations in 2004. A proposal for a heritage streetcar line running east-west through the city, possibly including PCC cars once owned by TCRT, has been examined. A Northstar commuter rail line, tracing U.S. Highway 10 northwest out of Minneapolis, opened in 2009. A connection between both of the twin cities, called the Green Line, opened on June 14, 2014. Light rail west from Minneapolis to the southwest suburbs is being constructed as of 2020. Other proposals have included adding both a commuter connection to the complete North and Southeast of downtown Saint Paul. A light rail alignment to the Southwest of downtown Saint Paul has been previously discussed, but dismissed due to the expectation of low ridership.

See also
General Motors streetcar conspiracy
Light rail in Minnesota
Minnesota Streetcar Museum

References

Get Rail!. Retrieved January 29, 2004, from The Rake
Newark PCC cars history. Retrieved January 30, 2004, from The Shore Line Trolley Museum (East Haven, Connecticut)
Russel L. Olson (1976). The Electric Railways of Minnesota. Minnesota Transportation Museum, Hopkins/H. M. Smyth Co., St. Paul.
1917 Twin City Rapid Transit Company Street Railway Strike. Retrieved May 25, 2004, from the Minnesota Historical Society
Bill Millikan. Bustin' unions: Under 'Crape-Hanger' Davidson, businesses perfected ways to crush workers. Retrieved May 25, 2004, from Workday Minnesota
Robert E. and Ruth Linsley Forman. Streetcarring in the 1930s: A personal account. Hennepin History. Minneapolis Star Tribune. Retrieved July 22, 2004.

External links

Minnesota Streetcar Museum
Minnesota Transportation Museum
Minneapolis Public Library: Intercity transport history with the infamous burning car photo
Minneapolis Track Map – 1950
Streetcars in Minneapolis & St. Paul
Market Street Railway in San Francisco owns some old TCRT PCC cars
Seashore Trolley Museum
East Troy Electric Railroad

History of Minnesota
Streetcars in Minnesota
Transportation in Minneapolis–Saint Paul
Interurban railways in Minnesota
Light rail in Minnesota
Commuter rail in Minnesota
Industrial Workers of the World in Minnesota
Defunct public transport operators in the United States
Defunct Minnesota railroads
Electric railways in Minnesota
Minneapolis

Twin City Rapid Transit Company


Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an award-winning American author who wrote short stories and novels about the American South.  Her book, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards.  She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America.  Her house in Jackson, Mississippi, is a National Historic Landmark and open to the public as a museum.

Life
Welty worked as a publicity agent for the work progress administration. She had to travel around Mississippi for her job. In her own time, she took memorable photographs. These mostly show how different people from all economic and social classes coped with the Great Depression. Collections of her photograph were published as One time, One place (1971) and Photograph (1989).
Very often, a photograph was the basis of one of her short stories, including Why I live at the P.O., which was inspired by a woman she photographed  ironing in the back of a small post office.

References

1909 births
2001 deaths
Writers from Mississippi
People from Jackson, Mississippi
O. Henry Award winners

Eudora Welty


The suffix -ene is used in organic chemistry to form names of organic compounds where the -C=C- group has been attributed the highest priority according to the rules of organic nomenclature. Sometimes a number between hyphens is inserted before it to say that the double bond is between that atom and the atom with the next number up. This suffix comes from the end of the word ethylene, which is the simplest alkene. The final "-e" disappears if it comes before by a suffix that starts with a vowel, e.g. "-enal", which is a compound that contains both a -C=C- bond and an aldehyde functional group. If the other suffix starts with a consonant or "y", the final "-e" remains, e.g. "-enediyne" (which has the "-ene" suffix and also the "-yne" suffix, for a compound with a double bond and two triple bonds.)

A Greek number prefix before the "-ene" indicates how many double bonds there are in the compound, e.g. butadiene.

The suffix "-ene" is also used in inorganic chemistry to indicate a one-atom thick two-dimensional layer of atoms, as in graphene, silicene, stanene, borophene, xenzophene, and germanene.

See also
 IUPAC nomenclature of organic chemistry

References

ene
English suffixes

-ene


Jack D. "Jumping Jack" McCracken (June 15, 1912 – January 5, 1958) was an American basketball player in the 1930s and 1940s.

A native of Chickasha, Oklahoma, McCracken went to Classen High School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He attended Northwest Missouri State Teachers College (now Northwest Missouri State University) in Maryville, Missouri and played for coach Henry Iba, who had also coached him in high school. McCracken never turned professional.

After leaving Northwest Missouri State Teachers College, he went to Denver, Colorado, to play in the AAU.

External links
 Jack "Jumping Jack" McCracken biography on hoophall.com

1912 births
1958 deaths
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees
National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame inductees
Northwest Missouri State Bearcats men's basketball players
People from Chickasha, Oklahoma
Phillips 66ers players
Basketball players from Oklahoma City
American men's basketball players
Forwards (basketball)
Classen School of Advanced Studies alumni

Jack McCracken


A capstan is a machine that is used on sailing ships to pull ropes and cables (also called hawsers). It has a vertical axle, and is very much like the windlass, which has a horizontal axle.

Grip on power pull capstan and it's opposite brakeforce on bollard posts; both work thru Capstan Equation

Man powered capstan is a 2nd Class Lever concentrating man force inwards to smaller radius for more power from levers.

Motor powered capstan spins motor shaft from inside post/not outside levers so is a 3rd Class Lever delivering force wider radius than motor shaft force input.

Ships

Capstan (nautical)


Reproductive isolation refers to the situation where different species may live in the same area, but properties of individuals prevent them from interbreeding.

The things which stop species or groups of organisms reproducing sexually are called isolating mechanisms.

Members of one species do not, in general, mate with members of another species, though there are many exceptions and variations to this. And, if such mating does take place, the offspring may not develop, or may not be fertile.

If species arise by the splitting of ancestral species, it might be asked what stops the new species continuing to reproduce together. If they did, they would again become one species.

Isolating mechanisms
A list as drawn up of isolating mechanisms:

Pre-mating mechanisms
Factors which cause individuals to mate with their own species.
Temporal isolation: Individuals do not mate because they are active at different times.
Ecological isolation: Individuals only mate in their preferred habitat. They do not meet those with different ecological preferences.
Behavioral isolation: Individuals of different species may meet, but choose members of their own species. They may not recognize sexual cues given by other species.
Mechanical isolation: Copulation may be attempted but transfer of sperm does not take place. The individuals may be incompatible due to size or morphology.

Post-mating isolating mechanisms
Incompatibility of the two genomes stops normal development in the hybrid.
Gametes not compatible. Sperm transfer takes place, but egg is not fertilized.
Zygote mortality: The egg is fertilized, but the zygote does not develop.
Hybrid inviability: Hybrid embryo forms, but dies.
Hybrid sterility: Hybrid is viable, but the resulting adult is sterile.
Hybrid breakdown: First generation hybrids are viable and fertile, but further hybrid generations and backcrosses are inviable or sterile.

There is still much debate as to whether the Dobzhansky/Mayr account is satisfactory. Modern researchers tends to avoid the general term 'isolating mechanisms' in favour of the more specific terms 'mate choice', 'hybrid incompatibility' and other forms of 'reproductive isolation'.

References

Evolutionary biology

Reproductive isolation


S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, previously known as S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Oblivion Lost, is a post-apocalyptic first-person shooter video game by Ukrainian developer GSC Game World.

The game uses a software feature called the "X-Ray engine". It features an alternate reality theme, where the second nuclear disaster happens at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the near future and makes strange changes happen to the area around it, which create a lot of mutated animals, plants, and change the laws of Physics. The game has a storyline that lets the player have a lot of freedom, and features gameplay features such as trading and two-way communication with NPCs. The game includes features of role-playing and economic games.

Some phrases used in the game ("The Zone", "Stalker") as well as the idea of the game, are borrowed from the popular science fiction book Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky and the 1979 film Stalker, based on the book.

GSC Game World talked about the game's AI in January 2005. IGN said that the game, while similar to Far Cry, will have more wildlife, and that the way animals act in the game is as important to them as the humans. The animals anger will vary with how hungry and tired they are, as well as other things. So, the game will have some idea of fight or flight to it.

Gameplay
In the game, the player is known as "The Marked One" who is a Stalker, a person who lives in the Zone and makes a living collecting "Artifacts" and selling them. The Zone has a lot of danger in it.

The type of game is a mix of a RPG and a FPS, though the player does not get attributes like Strength of Constitution, or get more powerful, which is different from a normal computer RPG. The role-playing part is mainly about normal RPG elements, such as storyline and the way other people in the game act with the player. But, the game does not let the player have a lot of choice when it comes to talking to characters in the game. Unlike RPGs such as Knights of the Old Republic, the number of different conversations the player can have with NPCs in the game is quite small and does not change the way that the game will end for the player a lot.

The Zone is made up of a 30 km square area, that has wilderness, human camps, and a few heavily guarded military bases. But, the game world is not one big world, but is a lot of smaller maps broken up by loading screens. Moving from one area of the Zone to another can only happen at certain passageways; a white fence border stops players from trying to cross the map in any other area. The game does not have vehicles that the player can drive. The player does have a fast sprint, but he or she cannot sprint without stopping, and the player can not fire weapons while sprinting

Bullet physics
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. uses "realistic" bullet physics, that is, the way that the bullets move is like how a bullet would move in real life. The bullet physics are similar to tactical shooters such as Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter or Call of Duty 2. Bullets are affected by gravity, and weapons are highly inaccurate when fired "from the hip". To be sure of hitting the enemy at long range, players must aim using the iron sights on their guns. Also, bullets do "realistic" damage, and the player can die after only being shot a few times (but to make up for this, later in the game the player can get different armor suits that increase the amount the player can be shot before dying).

Artifacts
"Artifacts" are the product of 'anomalies', which occur randomly throughout the game. Anomalies are normally a few metres across, these areas are dangerous to enter and can instantly kill the player or cause serious injury. They can be seen by looking for swirling leaves, heat waves, wind moving about, and electricity. An anomaly will be in the game for about one week in game time, and once they have disappeared the player is able to collect the artifacts left behind, which can be traded for supplies, or worn to enhance some player abilities, with normally some bad side effects; for example, there is an artifact in the game that can make bullets less likely to hit the player, but will slowly give the player radiation sickness, which will eventually kill the character being played.

Mutants
The local animals and plants were altered a lot by the years of radiation. They have become more dangerous, and have developed natural defenses to survive the harsh world. There are also a lot of people that were mutated by the radiation from the second explosion in the power plant.

Human factions
The stalkers find it difficult to hunt for artifacts because the Ukrainian Military is in the area, trying to stop the zone getting bigger, and help control the mutant. The Military is an enemy of anyone who is not Military, and will work as a big team to attack anyone they see using heavy force and the use of Mi-35 Hind gunships, which are attack helicopters.

A few other groups work in the zone, and are neutral or an enemy based on certain events. Two groups are important: "Freedom" and "Duty" as they are the only two groups that the player can decide if they want to be friendly towards or not. Neither Faction will attack the player at first, and both will offer missions to the player. Freedom and Duty are at war with one another, and although th player can keep friendship with both of them at first, the player will end up having to choose a side. The player cannot join either faction, no matter how friendly the player becomes towards them, as the player's faction status in the player's P.D.A. will tell the player, the player is always a loner in this game. There are several other groups, these are almost all enemies for the player. The scientists are different though, because the player can be friends by saving one of them from a mercenary attack later in the game.

The player also works with other NPCs in the Zone, and can help Stalker factions and receive missions, which further the storyline. Players are able to explore over 30 square km of the Zone, including the ghost town of Pripyat and the empty Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, while meeting animals and plants mutated by radiation as well as other Stalkers and NPCs.

Technical features

Artificial intelligence
The game uses uses GSC Gameworld's proprietary ALife artificial intelligence engine. ALife supports more than one thousand characters living in the Zone.

The NPCs act as if they really are alive, having different states, such as task accomplishment, combat, rest, feeding and sleep. The monsters in the game also act in this way. These monsters will move in large groups. The non-scripted way the characters work means that there are an unlimited number of random quests. For example, rescuing Stalkers from danger, killing Stalker renegades, protecting or attacking Stalker camps or searching for treasure. The AI characters travel around the entire zone as they want.

Numerous different ways of playing the game can be used, such as using stealth and sniping. The NPCs will react in a different way to each of them.

Weather
A weather system works in various parts of the landscape and let the weather act as if it is real, letting the game have weather such as sunshine, storms and showers. The weapons available, the way the AI acts, game tactics and ranking systems will depend on the weather.

Multiplayer
Multiplayer, like many other new games, will work over both LAN and the Internet with up to 32 players. Currently the three game modes are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Artifact hunt. The game will also use a ranking system.

Initial concept
Early in the development of the game it was named Oblivion Lost, and the game was planned to have more of a futuristic theme before the idea was reworked to set the game in Chernobyl, being a nearby location to the game's Kiev based development team. Eventually, this was reflected in the change of the game's subtitle to Shadow of Chernobyl. Screenshots and trailers of this early version can be found on various web sites, depicting the robots and spacecraft originally planned for the game.

While the source of the Zone may still turn out to have extraterrestrial connections (like in Roadside Picnic, where the Zone is thought to have been an absent-minded, accidental creation of a careless, vastly superior alien race), there is no indication that such more direct manifestations will return.

Development delay
The game was first announced in November 2001 and has had its release date, originally in 2003, pushed back several times. Meanwhile, hundreds of screenshots of the game have been released, as well as dozen preview video clips, accompanied by other forms of promotion by GSC, such as inviting fans to their offices in Kiev to play the current build of the game. However, due to the delays some considered S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to be vaporware, like the game Duke Nukem Forever, or fear that the game may become a new Daikatana.

In their E3 Awards for 2005, IGN gave S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s absence the award of "Biggest PC Surprise"; the runners-up were the absence of Fallout 3 from the show, and the lack of a new announcement from Blizzard Entertainment.

In February 2005, THQ expressed desire to see the game released toward the end of its 2006 fiscal year (March 31 2006) but maintained that no release date had been set. In October, 2005, THQ confirmed that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. will not be out "until the second half of THQ's 2007 fiscal year - October 2006 at the earliest." In February 2006, THQ revised this possible release window, saying the game would not be in stores until the first quarter of 2007.

In an interview at the Russian Gameland Awards, PR Manager Oleg Yavorsky indicated that release was planned for September 2006.

In 2006, the game came 9th in Wired'''s Vaporware '06 award.

THQ ran a competition in January 2007 offering the lucky winners the chance to play the beta version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R, in a 24-hour marathon session. The event, scheduled to take place on the January 24 2007, was subsequently changed to a 12-hour session days before it was supposed to occur.

On the morning of the event, the 'lucky' winners were met at the venue by the THQ staff that had organized the event, who were embarrassed to report that they had been unable to get any copies of the game. In late February GSC managed to release a public beta. Multiplayer demo was released to public on March 15 2007.

On March 2 2007, it was announced that the game had gone gold.

 Reception
So far, publications which have reviewed the title have been largely positive, noting the immersive, atmospheric setting and open-ended, rewarding gameplay. Some aspects of the game, such as the translation of printed text, the absence of subtitles for spoken Russian, and general game performance, have received negative criticism. It has also been noted that there are numerous sporadic bugs which can affect gameplay, although most of these are considered minor. However, in the newly released patch 1.0001 it is claimed that many bugs and glitches were fixed. Another common criticism is the fact that less than half of the map is actually accessible by the player.

Publications which have submitted reviews include IGN U.S. (8.2/10), IGN Australia (8.9/10), GameSpot (8.5/10), Australian PC User 95% and PC Gamer'' (87%). Ukraine's own Gameplay magazine awarded it 4.5 out of 5. UK based website Mansized  scored the game 4/5.

Plot
Several years after the Chernobyl disaster, the Zone was occupied and "repurposed" by several research projects run by the Soviet government. Facilities were constructed or expanded under the abandoned military bases and civilian factories and industrial sites in the area, and a large lab was established directly beneath Reactor 4 and its Sarcophagus. These experiments were focused primarily on various aspects of the mind, including creating and enhancing ESP in humans, psychotronic weapons, and an experiment intended to create a human hive mind: the "Collective Consciousness," or "C-Consciousness," project.

Shortly after C-Consciousness was successfully created by the fusion of seven human minds through a computer interface, the Soviet Union collapsed. In the years that followed, some of the research labs were abandoned, and the C-Consciousness entity took greater control over the few facilities that remained in full operation. With its enhanced cognitive abilities, C-Consciousness was able to perceive and eventually to directly alter the "noosphere" (the collective "environment" of all thought, just as the "biosphere" refers to the sum total of all biological matter and its myriad interactions).

The intention of C-Consciousness was subtle mind control on a global scale. It believed that by manipulating the noosphere that the more negative and destructive aspects of human consciousness, cognition, and emotion could be eliminated to create world peace and harmony. Unfortunately, in 2006 C-Consciousness's first major attempt to manipulate the Noosphere resulted in disaster. There was a massive explosion of both psychic and physical force, and the noosphere in the vicinity of the C-Consciousness lab was twisted and distorted. In much the same way that the biosphere can permanently alter the physical landscape of the earth, so manipulation of the noosphere can distort all manner of physical reality: mind over matter on a massive scale.

This distortion of the noosphere powered by C-Consciousness and the machinery it was connected to created the anomalies and many of the mutants that inhabit the Zone in 2012. Desperate to correct its mistake and in order to shield itself from outside interference, especially the meddlesome "Stalkers" beginning to appear in the Zone, the C-Consciousness created an "Alien Monolith" in the center of the gutted Reactor 4, and used its ability to affect the minds of normal humans to create the "Monolith" cult, a group of heavily armed zealots whose tenets included worship of the Monolith and the prevention of "heretics" from approaching the remains of Chernobyl. They converted the Steel Yard radar facility near Pripyat into a powerful "Brain Scorcher" that would blast the mind of any unprotected human who approached too close, turning them into mindlessly aggressive zombies (while allowing C-Consciousness to select some individuals to brainwash into new members of Monolith). Finally, they used some of their agents (former Stalkers spread throughout the Zone) to disseminate stories of a "Wish Granter" at the heart of Chernobyl, ensuring that anyone who did manage to evade both the Monolith faction and the Brain Scorcher would be drawn to the Monolith and disposed of, rather than discovering the existence of the C-Consciousness lab.

This lasted for several years, but the continued efforts of C-Consciousness were unable to repair the damage they had done to the Zone. In fact, the damage appeared to be getting worse, with "Blowouts" deepening the distortion of the noosphere around the Zone at irregular intervals. Still, the C-Consciousness entity persisted in its experiments, behind the shields of the Monolith and the Wish Granter myth, the Monolith faction's patrols, the Brain Scorcher, and the dangers of the Zone itself. Occasionally, though, special circumstances would require an agent, a human able to do what was needed to preserve the Zone's secrets without revealing the existence of the C-Consciousness project. In these cases, Stalkers who were tough and resourceful enough to make it to or past the Brain Scorcher would be captured, brainwashed, and sent back into the outer areas of the zone on one of the "Death Trucks." These agents were marked with the tattoo "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." This is where Strelok, the main character, enters the story.

Strelok and his allies, Ghost, Fang, and Doc, were a group of Stalkers who had a particular interest in what exactly lay at the center of The Zone. At some point a few weeks before the start of the game, they managed to slip past the Brain Scorcher and all the way to the Nuclear Power Plant, finding the Monolith, an electronically locked vault door beneath the Monolith chamber (which leads to C-Consciousness), and documents hinting at the fact that the giant glowing Monolith was in fact a deliberate trap for anyone attempting to discover the secrets of the Zone. Unfortunately, they were forced to retreat, and their next attempt to penetrate into the heart of the Zone met with disaster. They had managed to obtain an electronic lockpick that would open the vault door, but this time the Monolith was ready for them and they were forced to retreat again, and their escape was further complicated by a blowout. Strelok was caught in the blowout and rendered unconscious with a severe case of amnesia. This made for a perfect subject for the conditioning process for a human agent of the C-Consciousness entity. Ghost and Fang escaped, but Fang was seriously wounded and died before the pair made it out of Pripyat, with Ghost moving on to find "safer" work in the outer regions of the Zone.

By this point, Strelok had become a serious threat to the security and secrecy of the C-Consciousness lab and the entity contained there, and it was decided that Strelok must be killed. However, due to unknown factors, C-Consciousness made a mistake: not realizing the identity of the man who had been caught in the blowout, they attempted to program him to kill Strelok, when in fact the man was Strelok. A second accident, the chance destruction of the Death Truck meant to carry this new agent back to the outer Zone, resulted in a loss of C-Consciousness control over him. Strelok was a free agent once again, though confused, amnesiac, and stripped of his possessions. The mission to kill himself led Strelok to retrace his steps through the past few weeks, tracking down his old associates and, over time, putting back together the evidence that had led him to become a danger to C-Consciousness in the first place. With the help of Doc to reveal his identity and to point him in the direction of a backup cache of documentation and another electronic lock pick, Strelok returned to Chernobyl and penetrated to the chamber under the "Monolith," destroying the projection device that created the illusion.

C-Consciousness, having no other option, confronted him to offer an explanation of their actions, the nature of the Zone, and a choice: to join them, bolster their numbers, help them repair the harm they had caused and shepherd humanity's consciousness towards peace, or to face a final confrontation with the remaining forces of the Monolith Faction in an attempt to reach the heart of the real C-Consciousness Lab, in order to put a stop to their manipulations and machinations.

References

Other websites

 Official website
 THQ's Official S.T.A.L.K.E.R website
 GSC Game World's Official website

Windows games
THQ games
2007 video games
Shooter video games
Horror video games

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl


Mesoamerica (literally, "central  America") is a geographical region. It begins from around the Tropic of Cancer in central Mexico and ends near Costa Rica. The term is especially used to mean the native peoples and cultures that were there before the Spanish took over that region. The cacao tree is native to this area.

Mesoamerica