Dina statistik, hipotesis kosong (Ing: null hypotesis) nyaéta hipotesis nu mibanda anggapan awal bener lamun kajadian statistik dina bentuk tes hipotesis nunjukkeun sabalikna. Hipotesis kosong nyaéta hiji hipotesis yén urang mikaresep kana hiji hal nu nembongkeun hal éta téh palsu atawa salah! Salawasna ieu katangtuan téh ngeunaan hiji parameter nu ngagambarkeun sifat tina hiji populasi, nu mana sakabéh populasi ieu teu katalungtik, sarta tes dumasar kana sampel acak tina populasi ieu. Nu dimaksud sababaraha paraméter ieu, ilaharna nu dipaké nyaéta méan jeung simpangan baku.

Not unusually, such a hypothesis states that the parameters, or mathematical characteristics, of two or more populasi are identical.  For example, if we want to compare the test scores of two random samples of men and women, the null hypothesis would be that the méan score in the male population from which the first sample was drawn was the same as the méan score in the female population from which the second sample was drawn:

where:
H0 = the null hypothesis
μ1 = the mean of population 1, and
μ2 = the mean of population 2.

Alternatively, the null hypothesis can postulate that the two samples are drawn from the same population:

Formulation of the null hypothesis is a vital step in statistical significance testing.  Having formulated such a hypothesis, we can then proceed to establish the probability of observing the data we have actually obtained, or data more different from the prediction of the null hypothesis, if the null hypothesis is true.  That probability is what is commonly called the "significance level" of the results.

In formulating a particular null hypothesis, we are always also formulating an alternative hypothesis, which we will accept if the observed data values are sufficiently improbable under the null hypothesis.  The precise formulation of the null hypothesis has implications for the alternative.  For example, if the null hypothesis is that sample A is drawn from a population with the same méan as sample B, the alternative hypothesis is that they come from populations with different méans (and we shall proceed to a two-tailed test of significance).  But if the null hypothesis is that sample A is drawn from a population whose méan is no lower than the méan of the population from which sample B is drawn, the alternative hypothesis is that sample A comes from a population with a larger méan than the population from which sample B is drawn, and we will proceed to a one-tailed test.

A null hypothesis is only useful if it is possible to calculate the probability of observing a data set with particular paraméters from it.  In general it is much harder to be precise about how probable the data would be if the alternative hypothesis is true.

If experimental observations contradict the prediction of the null hypothesis, it méans that either the null hypothesis is false, or we have observed an event with very low probability. This gives us high confidence in the falsehood of the null hypothesis, which can be improved by incréasing the number of trials. However, accepting the alternative hypothesis only commits us to a difference in observed paraméters; it does not prove that the théory or principles that predicted such a difference is true, since it is always possible that the difference could be due to additional factors not recognised by the théory.

For example, rejection of a null hypothesis (that, say, rates of symptom relief in a sample of patients who received a placebo and a sample who received a medicinal drug will be equal) allows us to maké a non-null statement (that the rates differed); it does not prove that the drug relieved the symptoms, though it gives us more confidence in that hypothesis.

The formulation, testing, and rejection of null hypotheses is methodologically consistent with the falsificationist modél of scientific discovery formulated by Karl Popper and widely believed to apply to most kinds of empirical research.  However, concerns regarding the high power of statistical tests to detect differences in large samples have led to suggestions for re-defining the null hypothesis, for example as a hypothesis that an effect falls within a range considered negligible.

In 2002, a group of psychologists launched a new journal dedicated to experimental studies in psychology which support the null hypothesis.  The Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis (JASNH) was founded to address a scientific publishing bias against such articles.   According to the editors,

"other journals and reviewers have exhibited a bias against articles that did not reject the null hypothesis. We plan to change that by offering an outlet for experiments that do not reach the traditional significance levels (p < 0.05). Thus, reducing the file drawer problem, and reducing the bias in psychological literature. Without such a resource researchers could be wasting their time examining empirical questions that have already been examined. We collect these articles and provide them to the scientific community free of cost."

For example, if you want to see if there is gréater divorce avoidance from Thomas Théory than from Edgar Théory, so your Null Hypothesis would be, "Thomas Theory is no more effective than Edgar Theory."  If the probability of the observed results is under the null hypothesis is sufficiently low, you can accept the alternative hypothesis that Thomas Théory is indeed more effective.

Tempo oge: tes hipotesa statistik.

Statistika

Null hypothesis


Pedro Ángel Strop (born June 13, 1985) is a Dominican professional baseball pitcher for the Toros de Tijuana of the Mexican League. He previously played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Texas Rangers, Baltimore Orioles, Cincinnati Reds, and Chicago Cubs.

Career

Colorado Rockies
Strop was originally signed as an international free agent by the Colorado Rockies in . Strop was a position player in the Rockies minor league system from 2002 to 2005, primarily playing shortstop. Strop moved from shortstop to pitching in 2006 due to posting poor hitting numbers. His tenure in the Rockies organization ended with his release by the Rockies on September 19, 2008.

Texas Rangers
Strop was signed by the Texas Rangers as a free agent on September 23, 2008. On August 28, 2009 Pedro made his MLB debut and struck out his first batter, the Twins star catcher Joe Mauer. Pedro Strop appeared in seven games in 2009, pitching seven innings. He gave up six hits, six runs, and four walks and had an ERA of 7.71. He struck out nine batters as well.

Strop pitched one game in June 2010, on the second against the White Sox in which he struck out one batter, and walked a batter and went back to the minors. In a trade the Texas Rangers made that sent Bengie Molina to the team, Pedro Strop was rewarded with the empty roster spot. He pitched in three games before returning to the minors when other trades were made. As of his last appearance on July 9 against Baltimore, he appeared in four games overall in the 2010 season, pitching 3.2 innings while giving up three hits and a run. He walked three batters and struck out three batters.

Baltimore Orioles
On August 31, 2011, Strop was traded from the Rangers to the Baltimore Orioles as the player to be named later in the trade for Mike Gonzalez. He finished his 2011 season going 2–0 for Baltimore with a 0.73 ERA. His pitching success continued for the majority of 2012.Through August 15 of that season, Strop achieved a 1.20 ERA primarily as a set up man to closer Jim Johnson. But over the final six weeks of the season, Strop's ERA for that period was 7.24 with an OPS of .916. He picked up a win against the Yankees pitching two innings in extra innings in the 2012 American League Division Series playoffs. After pitching well in the World Baseball Classic prior to the start of the 2013 season, Strop's late season 2012 struggles continued. In 29 games for the Orioles, Strop went 0–3 with a 7.25 ERA. Baltimore crowds began to boo the reliever and Strop said of the booing, "They [the fans] don't care about players, they care about good results." About two weeks after his comments, Strop was traded to the National League.

Chicago Cubs
On July 2, 2013, Strop was traded along with Jake Arrieta to the Cubs in exchange for Scott Feldman and Steve Clevenger. Strop primarily served in the setup role for the Cubs. In 37 more appearances with the Cubs to finish 2013, Strop had a 2–2 record and a 2.83 ERA. Overall in 2013, combined with both teams, Strop made 66 total appearances with a 2–5 record and a 4.55 ERA.

2014 season
In 2014, Strop made 65 appearances with a 2–4 record and a 2.21 ERA.

2015 season
In 2015, Strop made 76 appearances with a 2–6 record, a 2.91 ERA, and 81 strikeouts.

2016 season
In 2016, Strop made 54 appearances with a 2–2 record and a 2.85 ERA. The Cubs would eventually win the 2016 World Series, giving Strop his first World Series title.

2017 season
In 2017, Strop made 69 appearances with a 5–4 record, 65 strikeouts and a 2.83 ERA.

2018 season
In 2018, Strop had one of his best seasons as a professional. He appeared in 60 games with a 6–1 record, 57 strikeouts, a career-high 13 saves, and a 2.26 ERA, the second best of his career.

2019 season
In 2019, Strop had arguably his worst season as a professional. He appeared in only 50 games, his fewest since 2011. He finished the season with a 2–5 record, 49 strikeouts, 10 saves, and a 4.97 ERA, the worst of his career.

Cincinnati Reds
On January 30, 2020, Strop was signed by the Cincinnati Reds for a 1-year deal worth $1.8 million. Strop was designated for assignment by the Reds on August 26, 2020 and released on August 31.

Chicago Cubs (second stint)
On September 4, 2020, Strop signed a minor league contract to return to the Chicago Cubs. He joined the team at their alternate training site but did not join the big league team. He became a free agent on November 2, 2020. On February 27, 2021, Strop re-signed with the Cubs organization on a minor league contract that included a Spring Training invitation. If he makes the major league roster, he will earn $800,000 in salary. On April 12, 2021, Strop was selected to the active roster. Strop was removed from the 40-man roster on April 17 after 2 scoreless innings in 2 appearances. On May 5, 2021, Strop requested and was granted his release from the organization.

Sultanes de Monterrey
On June 24, 2021, Strop signed with the Sultanes de Monterrey of the Mexican League. Strop made 12 appearances for Monterrey, logging a 3.21 ERA with 16 strikeouts and 3 saves in 14.0 innings pitched. He was released by the team on March 1, 2022.

On May 6, 2023, Strop announced via Twitter that he was attempting a comeback.

Toros de Tijuana
On May 16, 2023, Strop signed with the Toros de Tijuana of the Mexican League.

International career
Strop was born in the Dominican Republic to a Curaçaoan father. In 2013, Strop pitched as a reliever in the World Baseball Classic for the championship winning Dominican Republic. He represented the Netherlands national baseball team at the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

Hat
Strop is known for the unique way he wears his hat while pitching, slightly crooked to his left.

References

External links

1985 births
Living people
Dominican Republic people of Curaçao descent
Dutch people of Curaçao descent
Dutch people of Dominican Republic descent
Asheville Tourists players
Baltimore Orioles players
Casper Rockies players
Chicago Cubs players
Cincinnati Reds players
Dominican Republic expatriate baseball players in Mexico
Dominican Republic expatriate baseball players in the United States
Frisco RoughRiders players
Gigantes del Cibao players
Leones del Escogido players
Major League Baseball pitchers
Major League Baseball players from the Dominican Republic
Modesto Nuts players
Oklahoma City RedHawks players
Baseball players from San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic
Round Rock Express players
Sultanes de Monterrey players
Texas Rangers players
Toros de Tijuana players
Tri-City Dust Devils players
Tulsa Drillers players
World Baseball Classic players of the Dominican Republic
2013 World Baseball Classic players

Pedro Strop


A free-electron laser, or FEL, is a laser that produces a very bright beam of light.  It is basically a super flashlight.  It shares the same optical properties as conventional lasers such as emitting a beam consisting of coherent electromagnetic radiation which can reach high power. The FEL used operating principles to form the beam that are very different operating principles of a conventional laser. Unlike gas, liquid, or solid-state lasers such as diode lasers, in which electrons are excited while bound to atoms, FELs use a relativistic electron beam as the lasing medium which moves freely through a magnetic structure, hence the term free electron. The free-electron laser has the widest frequency range of any laser type, and can be widely tunable, currently ranging in wavelength from microwaves, through terahertz radiation and infrared, to the visible spectrum, to ultraviolet, to X-rays.

Free—electron lasers were invented by John Madey in 1976 at Stanford University. The work builds on research done by Hans Motz and his coworkers who made the first undulator at Stanford in 1953 using the wiggler magnetic configuration which is at the heart of a free-electron laser. Madey used a 24 MeV electron beam and 5 m long wiggler to amplify a signal. Soon afterward, other laboratories with accelerators started developing such lasers.

Free-electron lasers use a lot of electricity when they operate. To reduce the energy needed to keep them operating, scientist use an energy recovery linear accelerator to recycle the high-energy electron beam that activates the laser.

References

Further reading
 Madey, John, "Stimulated emission of bremsstrahlung in a periodic magnetic field". J. Appl. Phys. 42, 1906 (1971)
 Madey, John, Stimulated emission of radiation in periodically deflected electron beam, US Patent 38 22 410,1974
 Boscolo, et al., "Free-Electron Lasers and Masers on Curved Paths". Appl. Phys., (Germany), vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 46–51, May 1979.
 Deacon et al., "First Operation of a Free-Electron Laser". Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 38, No. 16, Apr. 1977, pp. 892–894.
 Elias, et al., "Observation of Stimulated Emission of Radiation by Relativistic Electrons in a Spatially Periodic Transverse Magnetic Field", Phys. Rev. Lett., 36 (13), 1976, p. 717.
 Gover, "Operation Regimes of Cerenkov-Smith-Purcell Free Electron Lasers and T. W. Amplifiers". Optics Communications, vol. 26, No. 3, Sep. 1978, pp. 375–379.
 Gover, "Collective and Single Electron Interactions of Electron Beams with Electromagnetic Waves and Free Electrons Lasers". App. Phys. 16 (1978), p. 121.
 "The FEL Program at Jefferson Lab"

Other websites
 Lightsources.org
 UCSB Free-Electron Laser
 Free-Electron Laser Open Book (National Academies Press)
 The World Wide Web Virtual Library: Free-Electron Laser research and applications
 European XFEL
 PSI SwissFEL
 SPring-8 Compact SASE Source
 Electron beam transport system and diagnostics of the Dresden FEL
 The Free Electron Laser for Infrared eXperiments FELIX
 W. M. Keck Free Electron Laser Center
 Jefferson Lab's Free-Electron Laser Program
 Free-Electron Lasers: The Next Generation by Davide Castelvecchi New Scientist, January 21, 2006
 Airborne megawatt class free-electron laser for defense and security
 FERMI@Elettra Free-Electron Laser Project
 Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL)

Medical equipment
Light
Technology

Free-electron laser


Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature,  Pope is best known for his satirical and discursive poetry including The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism, and for his translations of Homer.

Pope is often quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, some of his verses having entered common parlance (e.g. "damning with faint praise" or "to err is human; to forgive, divine").

Life
Alexander Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688 during the year of the Glorious Revolution. His father (Alexander Pope, 1646–1717) was a successful linen merchant in the Strand, London. His mother, Edith (née Turner, 1643–1733), was the daughter of William Turner, Esquire, of York. Both parents were Catholics. His mother's sister, Christiana, was the wife of famous miniature painter Samuel Cooper. Pope's education was affected by the recently enacted Test Acts, a series of English penal laws that upheld the status of the established Church of England, banning Catholics from teaching, attending a university, voting, and holding public office on penalty of perpetual imprisonment. Pope was taught to read by his aunt and attended Twyford School circa 1698. He also attended two Roman Catholic schools in London. Such schools, though still illegal, were tolerated in some areas.

In 1700, his family moved to a small estate at Popeswood, in Binfield, Berkshire, close to the royal Windsor Forest. This was due to strong anti-Catholic sentiment and a statute preventing "Papists" from living within  of London or Westminster. Pope would later describe the countryside around the house in his poem Windsor Forest. Pope's formal education ended at this time, and from then on, he mostly educated himself by reading the works of classical writers such as the satirists Horace and Juvenal, the epic poets Homer and Virgil, as well as English authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare and John Dryden. He studied many languages, reading works by French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. After five years of study, Pope came into contact with figures from London literary society such as William Congreve, Samuel Garth and William Trumbull.

At Binfield he made many important friends. One of them, John Caryll (the future dedicatee of The Rape of the Lock), was twenty years older than the poet and had made many acquaintances in the London literary world. He introduced the young Pope to the ageing playwright William Wycherley and to William Walsh, a minor poet, who helped Pope revise his first major work, The Pastorals. There, he met the Blount sisters, Teresa and Martha (Patty), in 1707. He remained close friends with Patty until his death, but his friendship with Teresa ended in 1722.

From the age of 12 he suffered numerous health problems, including Pott disease, a form of tuberculosis that affects the spine, which deformed his body and stunted his growth, leaving him with a severe hunchback. His tuberculosis infection caused other health problems including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes and abdominal pain. He grew to a height of only . Pope was already removed from society as a Catholic, and his poor health alienated him further. Although he never married, he had many female friends to whom he wrote witty letters, including Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. It has been alleged that his lifelong friend Martha Blount was his lover. His friend William Cheselden said, according to Joseph Spence, "I could give a more particular account of Mr. Pope's health than perhaps any man. Cibber's slander (of carnosity) is false. He had been gay [happy], but left that way of life upon his acquaintance with Mrs. B."

In May 1709, Pope's Pastorals was published in the sixth part of bookseller Jacob Tonson's Poetical Miscellanies. This earned Pope instant fame and was followed by An Essay on Criticism, published in May 1711, which was equally well received.

Around 1711, Pope made friends with Tory writers Jonathan Swift, Thomas Parnell and John Arbuthnot, who together formed the satirical Scriblerus Club. Its aim was to satirise ignorance and pedantry through the fictional scholar Martinus Scriblerus. He also made friends with Whig writers Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. In March 1713, Windsor Forest was published to great acclaim.

During Pope's friendship with Joseph Addison, he contributed to Addison's play Cato, as well as writing for The Guardian and The Spectator. Around this time, he began the work of translating the Iliad, which was a painstaking process – publication began in 1715 and did not end until 1720.

In 1714 the political situation worsened with the death of Queen Anne and the disputed succession between the Hanoverians and the Jacobites, leading to the Jacobite rising of 1715. Though Pope, as a Catholic, might have been expected to have supported the Jacobites because of his religious and political affiliations, according to Maynard Mack, "where Pope himself stood on these matters can probably never be confidently known". These events led to an immediate downturn in the fortunes of the Tories, and Pope's friend Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, fled to France. This was added to by the Impeachment of the former Tory Chief Minister Lord Oxford.

Pope lived in his parents' house in Mawson Row, Chiswick, between 1716 and 1719; the red-brick building is now the Mawson Arms, commemorating him with a blue plaque.

The money made from his translation of Homer allowed Pope to move in 1719 to a villa at Twickenham, where he created his now-famous grotto and gardens. The serendipitous discovery of a spring during the excavation of the subterranean retreat enabled it to be filled with the relaxing sound of trickling water, which would quietly echo around the chambers. Pope was said to have remarked, "Were it to have nymphs as well – it would be complete in everything." Although the house and gardens have long since been demolished, much of the grotto survives beneath Radnor House Independent Co-educational School. The grotto has been restored and will open to the public for 30 weekends a year from 2023 under the auspices of Pope's Grotto Preservation Trust.

Poetry

Essay on Criticism

An Essay on Criticism was first published anonymously on 15 May 1711. Pope began writing the poem early in his career and took about three years to finish it.

At the time the poem was published, its heroic couplet style was quite a new poetic form and Pope's work an ambitious attempt to identify and refine his own positions as a poet and critic. It was said to be a response to an ongoing debate on the question ofa whether poetry should be natural, or written according to predetermined artificial rules inherited from the classical past.

The "essay" begins with a discussion of the standard rules that govern poetry, by which a critic passes judgement. Pope comments on the classical authors who dealt with such standards and the authority he believed should be accredited to them. He discusses the laws to which a critic should adhere while analysing poetry, pointing out the important function critics perform in aiding poets with their works, as opposed to simply attacking them. The final section of An Essay on Criticism discusses the moral qualities and virtues inherent in an ideal critic, whom Pope claims is also the ideal man.

The Rape of the Lock
Pope's most famous poem is The Rape of the Lock, first published in 1712, with a revised version in 1714. A mock-epic, it satirises a high-society quarrel between Arabella Fermor (the "Belinda" of the poem) and Lord Petre, who had snipped a lock of hair from her head without permission. The satirical style is tempered, however, by a genuine, almost voyeuristic interest in the "beau-monde" (fashionable world) of 18th-century society. The revised, extended version of the poem focuses more clearly on its true subject: the onset of acquisitive individualism and a society of conspicuous consumers. In the poem, purchased artefacts displace human agency and "trivial things" come to dominate.

The Dunciad and Moral Essays

Though The Dunciad first appeared anonymously in Dublin, its authorship was not in doubt. Pope pilloried a host of other "hacks", "scribblers" and "dunces" in addition to Theobald, and Maynard Mack has accordingly called its publication "in many ways the greatest act of folly in Pope's life". Though a masterpiece due to having become "one of the most challenging and distinctive works in the history of English poetry", writes Mack, "it bore bitter fruit. It brought the poet in his own time the hostility of its victims and their sympathizers, who pursued him implacably from then on with a few damaging truths and a host of slanders and lies."

According to his half-sister Magdalen Rackett, some of Pope's targets were so enraged by The Dunciad that they threatened him physically. "My brother does not seem to know what fear is," she told Joseph Spence, explaining that Pope loved to walk alone, so went accompanied by his Great Dane Bounce, and for some time carried pistols in his pocket. This first Dunciad, along with John Gay's The Beggar's Opera and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, joined in a concerted propaganda assault against Robert Walpole's Whig ministry and the financial revolution it stabilised. Although Pope was a keen participant in the stock and money markets, he never missed a chance to satirise the personal, social and political effects of the new scheme of things. From The Rape of the Lock onwards, these satirical themes appear constantly in his work.

In 1731, Pope published his "Epistle to Burlington", on the subject of architecture, the first of four poems later grouped as the Moral Essays (1731–1735). The epistle ridicules the bad taste of the aristocrat "Timon". For example, the following are verses 99 and 100 of the Epistle:

Pope's foes claimed he was attacking the Duke of Chandos and his estate, Cannons. Though the charge was untrue, it did much damage to Pope.

There has been some speculation on a feud between Pope and Thomas Hearne, due in part to the character of Wormius in The Dunciad, who is seemingly based on Hearne.

An Essay on Man

An Essay on Man is a philosophical poem in heroic couplets published between 1732 and 1734. Pope meant it as the centrepiece of a proposed system of ethics to be put forth in poetic form. It was a piece that he sought to make into a larger work, but he did not live to complete it. It
attempts to "vindicate the ways of God to Man", a variation on Milton's attempt in Paradise Lost to "justify the ways of God to Man" (1.26). It challenges as prideful an anthropocentric worldview. The poem is not solely Christian, however. It assumes that man has fallen and must seek his own salvation.

Consisting of four epistles addressed to Lord Bolingbroke, it presents an idea of Pope's view of the Universe: no matter how imperfect, complex, inscrutable and disturbing the Universe may be, it functions in a rational fashion according to natural laws, so that the Universe as a whole is a perfect work of God, though to humans it appears to be evil and imperfect in many ways. Pope ascribes this to our limited mindset and intellectual capacity. He argues that humans must accept their position in the "Great Chain of Being", at a middle stage between the angels and the beasts of the world. Accomplish this and we potentially could lead happy and virtuous lives.

The poem is an affirmative statement of faith: life seems chaotic and confusing to man in the centre of it, but according to Pope it is truly divinely ordered. In Pope's world, God exists and is what he centres the Universe around as an ordered structure. The limited intelligence of man can only take in tiny portions of this order and experience only partial truths, hence man must rely on hope, which then leads to faith. Man must be aware of his existence in the Universe and what he brings to it in terms of riches, power and fame. Pope proclaims that man's duty is to strive to be good, regardless of other situations.

Later life and works

The Imitations of Horace that followed (1733–1738) were written in the popular Augustan form of an "imitation" of a classical poet, not so much a translation of his works as an updating with contemporary references. Pope used the model of Horace to satirise life under George II, especially what he saw as the widespread corruption tainting the country under Walpole's influence and the poor quality of the court's artistic taste. Pope added as an introduction to Imitations a wholly original poem that reviews his own literary career and includes famous portraits of Lord Hervey ("Sporus"), Thomas Hay, 9th Earl of Kinnoull ("Balbus") and Addison ("Atticus").

In 1738 came the Universal Prayer.

Among the younger poets whose work Pope admired was Joseph Thurston. After 1738, Pope himself wrote little. He toyed with the idea of composing a patriotic epic in blank verse called Brutus, but only the opening lines survive. His major work in those years was to revise and expand his masterpiece, The Dunciad. Book Four appeared in 1742 and a full revision of the whole poem the following year. Here Pope replaced the "hero" Lewis Theobald with the Poet Laureate, Colley Cibber as "king of dunces". However, the real focus of the revised poem is Walpole and his works. By now Pope's health, which had never been good, was failing. When told by his physician, on the morning of his death, that he was better, Pope replied: "Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms." He died at his villa surrounded by friends on 30 May 1744, about eleven o'clock at night. On the previous day, 29 May 1744, Pope had called for a priest and received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. He was buried in the nave of St Mary's Church, Twickenham.

Translations and editions

The Iliad
Pope had been fascinated by Homer since childhood. In 1713, he announced plans to publish a translation of the Iliad. The work would be available by subscription, with one volume appearing every year over six years. Pope secured a revolutionary deal with the publisher Bernard Lintot, which earned him 200 guineas (£210) a volume, a vast sum at the time.

His Iliad translation appeared between 1715 and 1720. It was acclaimed by Samuel Johnson as "a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal".  Conversely, the classical scholar Richard Bentley wrote: "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer."

The Odyssey

Encouraged by the success of the Iliad, Bernard Lintot published Pope's five-volume translation of Homer's Odyssey in 1725–1726. For this Pope collaborated with William Broome and Elijah Fenton: Broome translated eight books (2, 6, 8, 11, 12, 16, 18, 23), Fenton four (1, 4, 19, 20) and Pope the remaining 12. Broome provided the annotations. Pope tried to conceal the extent of the collaboration, but the secret leaked out. It did some damage to Pope's reputation for a time, but not to his profits. Leslie Stephen considered Pope's portion of the Odyssey inferior to his version of the Iliad, given that Pope had put more effort into the earlier work – to which, in any case, his style was better suited.

Shakespeare's works
In this period, Pope was employed by the publisher Jacob Tonson to produce an opulent new edition of Shakespeare. When it appeared in 1725, it silently regularised Shakespeare's metre and rewrote his verse in several places. Pope also removed about 1,560 lines of Shakespeare's material, arguing that some appealed to him more than others. In 1726, the lawyer, poet and pantomime-deviser Lewis Theobald published a scathing pamphlet called Shakespeare Restored, which catalogued the errors in Pope's work and suggested several revisions to the text. This enraged Pope, wherefore Theobald became the main target of Pope's Dunciad.

The second edition of Pope's Shakespeare appeared in 1728. Apart from some minor revisions to the preface, it seems that Pope had little to do with it. Most later 18th-century editors of Shakespeare dismissed Pope's creatively motivated approach to textual criticism. Pope's preface continued to be highly rated. It was suggested that Shakespeare's texts were thoroughly contaminated by actors' interpolations and they would influence editors for most of the 18th century.

Spirit, skill and satire
Pope's poetic career testifies to an indomitable spirit despite disadvantages of health and circumstance. The poet and his family were Catholics and so fell subject to the prohibitive Test Acts, which hampered their co-religionists after the abdication of James II. One of these banned them from living within ten miles of London, another from attending public school or university. So except for a few spurious Catholic schools, Pope was largely self-educated. He was taught to read by his aunt and became a book lover, reading in French, Italian, Latin and Greek and discovering Homer at the age of six. In 1700, when only twelve years of age, he wrote his poem Ode on Solitude. As a child Pope survived once being trampled by a cow, but when he was 12 he began struggling with tuberculosis of the spine (Pott disease), which restricted his growth, so that he was only  tall as an adult. He also suffered from crippling headaches.

In the year 1709, Pope showcased his precocious metrical skill with the publication of Pastorals, his first major poems. They earned him instant fame. By the age of 23, he had written An Essay on Criticism, released in 1711. A kind of poetic manifesto in the vein of Horace's Ars Poetica, it met with enthusiastic attention and won Pope a wider circle of prominent friends, notably Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, who had recently begun to collaborate on the influential The Spectator. The critic John Dennis, having found an ironic and veiled portrait of himself, was outraged by what he saw as the impudence of a younger author. Dennis hated Pope for the rest of his life, and save for a temporary reconciliation, dedicated his efforts to insulting him in print, to which Pope retaliated in kind, making Dennis the butt of much satire.

A folio containing a collection of his poems appeared in 1717, along with two new ones about the passion of love: Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady and the famous proto-romantic poem Eloisa to Abelard. Though Pope never married, about this time he became strongly attached to Lady M. Montagu, whom he indirectly referenced in his popular Eloisa to Abelard, and to Martha Blount, with whom his friendship continued through his life.

As a satirist, Pope made his share of enemies as critics, politicians and certain other prominent figures felt the sting of his sharp-witted satires. Some were so virulent that Pope even carried pistols while walking his dog. In 1738 and thenceforth, Pope composed relatively little. He began having ideas for a patriotic epic in blank verse titled Brutus, but mainly revised and expanded his Dunciad. Book Four appeared in 1742; and a complete revision of the whole in the year that followed. At this time Lewis Theobald was replaced with the Poet Laureate Colley Cibber as "king of dunces", but his real target remained the Whig politician Robert Walpole.

Reception
By the mid-18th century, new fashions in poetry emerged. A decade after Pope's death, Joseph Warton claimed that Pope's style was not the most excellent form of the art. The Romantic movement that rose to prominence in early 19th-century England was more ambivalent about his work. Though Lord Byron identified Pope as one of his chief influences – believing his own scathing satire of contemporary English literature English Bards and Scotch Reviewers to be a continuance of Pope's tradition – William Wordsworth found Pope's style too decadent to represent the human condition. George Gilfillan in an 1856 study called Pope's talent "a rose peering into the summer air, fine, rather than powerful".

Pope's reputation revived in the 20th century. His work was full of references to the people and places of his time, which aided people's understanding of the past. The post-war period stressed the power of Pope's poetry, recognising that Pope's immersion in Christian and Biblical culture lent depth to his poetry. For example, Maynard Mack, in the late 20th-century, argued that Pope's moral vision demanded as much respect as his technical excellence. Between 1953 and 1967 the definitive Twickenham edition of Pope's poems appeared in ten volumes, including an index volume.

Works

Major works
1709: Pastorals
1711: An Essay on Criticism
1712: Messiah (from the Book of Isaiah, and later translated into Latin by Samuel Johnson)
1712: The Rape of the Lock (enlarged in 1714)
1713: Windsor Forest
1715: The Temple of Fame: A Vision
1717: Eloisa to Abelard
1717: Three Hours After Marriage, with others
1717: Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
1728: Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry
1728: The Dunciad
1731–1735: Moral Essays
1733–1734: Essay on Man
1735: Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot

Translations and editions
1715–1720: Translation of the Iliad
1723–1725: The Works of Shakespear, in Six Volumes
1725–1726: Translation of the Odyssey

Other works
1700: Ode on Solitude
1713: Ode for Musick
1715: A Key to the Lock
1717: The Court Ballad
1717: Ode for Music on St. Cecilia's Day
1731: An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard Earl of Burlington
1733: The Impertinent, or A Visit to the Court
1736: Bounce to Fop
1737: The First Ode of the Fourth Book of Horace
1738: The First Epistle of the First Book of Horace

Editions
The Works of Alexander Pope vol 3 vol 3 v 9 of 10 v 6 of 8

See also
 Alexander Pope - Wikiquote
Characters and Observations
List of abolitionist forerunners
Pope's Urn

References

Bibliography

Hans Ostrom (1878) "Pope's Epilogue to the Satires, 'Dialogue I'." Explicator, 36:4, pp. 11–14.

External links

Alexander Pope at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)

John Wilkes and Alexander Pope – UK Parliament Living Heritage

BBC audio file. In Our Time, radio 4 discussion of Pope.
University of Toronto "Representative Poetry Online" page on Pope
Pope's Grave
The Twickenham Museum
Pope's Grotto Preservation Trust
Richmond Libraries' Local Studies Collection. Local History. Accessed 2010-10-19

Images relating to Alexander Pope  at the English Heritage Archive
Blue Plaque at 110 Chiswick Lane South, Chiswick, London W4 2LR

1688 births
1744 deaths
18th-century deaths from tuberculosis
18th-century English poets
18th-century English non-fiction writers
18th-century English male writers
18th-century essayists
Burials at St Mary's Church, Twickenham
English Catholic poets
English essayists
English male poets
English Roman Catholics
British male essayists
Neoclassical writers
People educated at Twyford School
People from Binfield
People from the City of London
Roman Catholic writers
Works by Alexander Pope
Freemasons of the Premier Grand Lodge of England
Tory poets
English male non-fiction writers
Translators of Homer
English landscape and garden designers
Tuberculosis deaths in England

Alexander Pope


William Motter Inge (; May 3, 1913 – June 10, 1973) was an American playwright and novelist, whose works typically feature solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relations. In the early 1950s he had a string of memorable Broadway productions, including Picnic, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize. With his portraits of small-town life and settings rooted in the American heartland, Inge became known as the "Playwright of the Midwest".

Early years
Inge was born in Independence, Kansas, the fifth child of Maude Sarah Gibson-Inge and Luther Clay Inge. William attended Independence Community College and graduated from the University of Kansas in 1935 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Speech and Drama. At the University of Kansas he was a member of the Nu chapter of Sigma Nu. Offered a scholarship to work on a Master of Arts degree, Inge moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend the George Peabody College for Teachers, but later dropped out.

Back in Kansas, he worked as a laborer on state highways and as a Wichita news announcer. From 1937 to 1938 he taught English and drama at Cherokee County Community High School in Columbus, Kansas. After returning and completing his Master's at Peabody in 1938, he taught at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, from 1938 to 1943.

Career
Inge began as a drama critic at the St. Louis Star-Times in 1943. With Tennessee Williams's encouragement, Inge wrote his first play, Farther Off from Heaven (1947), which was staged at Margo Jones' Theatre '47 in Dallas, Texas. As a teacher at Washington University in St. Louis between 1946 and 1949, he wrote Come Back, Little Sheba. It ran on Broadway for 190 performances in 1950, winning Tony Awards for Shirley Booth and Sidney Blackmer. (The 1952 film adaptation won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Shirley Booth. Willy van Hemert directed a 1955 adaptation for Dutch television, and NBC aired another TV production in 1977.) During his time teaching at Washington University, Inge's struggles with alcoholism became more acute; in 1947, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). It was through AA that Inge met the wife of a member of his AA group whose name was Lola and, who through name as well as personal characteristics, was the person upon whom one of the lead characters in Come Back, Little Sheba, "Lola", was based. Even as Come Back, Little Sheba was in a pre-Broadway run in early 1950, Inge was filled with some doubt as to its success. He expressed in a letter to his sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous, "If Sheba makes it in Hartford I guess it will go on to Broadway and if it doesn't I suppose I'll be back in St. Louis. If it does make it to Broadway, I don't know when I'll be back." Inge never had to return to St. Louis.

In 1953, Inge received a Pulitzer Prize for Picnic, a play based on women he had known as a small child:
When I was a boy in Kansas, my mother had a boarding house. There were three women school teachers living in the house. I was four years old, and they were nice to me. I liked them. I saw their attempts, and, even as a child, I sensed every woman's failure. I began to sense the sorrow and the emptiness in their lives, and it touched me.

Picnic had a successful Broadway run from February 19, 1953, to April 10, 1954. A film adaptation made in 1955 was directed by Joshua Logan and won two Academy Awards.

In 1953, Inge's short play Glory in the Flower was telecast on Omnibus with a cast of Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, and James Dean.

In 1955, his play Bus Stop premiered. Inge's inspiration of boy-pursuing-girl came from a similar situation he'd seen on a bus trip to Kansas City. Nominated for four Tony Awards including Best Play, it was made into a 1956 film starring Marilyn Monroe.

In 1957 he wrote The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, an expansion of his earlier Farther Off from Heaven. The play was nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Play, and was adapted as a film in 1960.

His 1959 play A Loss of Roses, with Carol Haney, Warren Beatty, and Betty Field, was filmed as The Stripper (1963), with Joanne Woodward, Richard Beymer, and Claire Trevor, and a popular Jerry Goldsmith score.

Natural Affection had the misfortune to open on Broadway during the 1962 New York City newspaper strike, which lasted from December 8, 1962, until April 1, 1963. Thus, few were aware of the play, and fewer bought tickets. It lasted only 36 performances, from January 31, 1963, to March 2, 1963. What theatergoers missed was a drama exploring themes of fragmented families and random violence. As with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, the inspiration for Natural Affection came from a newspaper account of a seemingly meaningless and unmotivated murder. The play centers on a single mother, Chicago department store buyer Sue Barker (Kim Stanley). While troubled teen Donnie (Gregory Rozakis), Sue's illegitimate son, has been away at reform school, she has entered into a relationship with Cadillac salesman Bernie Slovenk (Harry Guardino). With Donnie's unexpected return to her Chicago apartment, conflicts escalate, and Donnie finds himself on an emotional precipice. The closing five minutes of the play introduces a new character, a young woman Donnie meets in the apartment hallway. He invites her into the apartment and, without warning, kills her as the curtains close. The Broadway production, directed by Tony Richardson, benefited from composer John Lewis's made-to-order background music, which was provided via tape recordings, rather than live performance, and worked in the same fashion as a film score. A highly successful revival of Natural Affection was mounted in 2005 at Chicago's The Artistic Home. Directed by John Mossman, it was named by the Chicago Tribune one of the year's best productions.

Inge's The Last Pad premiered in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1972. Originally titled The Disposal, the world premiere of The Last Pad was produced by Robert L. "Bob" Johnson and directed by Keith A. Anderson through the Southwest Ensemble Theatre. The production starred Nick Nolte with Jim Matz and Richard Elmore (Elmer). The production moved to Los Angeles and opened just days after Inge died by suicide. The original production in Phoenix was proclaimed the Best Play of 1972 by the Arizona Republic, while the Los Angeles production brought awards to Nolte and helped introduce him to the film industry and catapult his subsequent film career.

The Last Pad is one of three of Inge's plays that either have openly gay characters or address homosexuality directly. The Boy in the Basement, a one-act play written in the early 1950s, but not published until 1962, is his only play that addresses homosexuality overtly, while Archie in The Last Pad and Pinky in Where's Daddy? (1966) are gay characters. Inge himself was closeted.

Summer Brave, produced posthumously on Broadway in 1975, is Inge's reworking of Picnic, as he noted:
It would be fair to say that Summer Brave is the original version of Picnic. I have written before that I never completely fulfilled my original intentions in writing Picnic before we went into production in 1953, and that I wrote what some considered a fortuitous ending in order to have a finished play to go into rehearsal. A couple of years after Picnic had closed on Broadway, after the film version had made its success, I got the early version out of my files and began to rework it, just for my own satisfaction. Summer Brave is the result. I admit that I prefer it to the version of the play that was produced, but I don't necessarily expect others to agree. Summer Brave might not have enjoyed any success on Broadway whatever, nor won any of the prizes that were bestowed upon Picnic. But I feel that it is more humorously true than Picnic, and it does fulfill my original intentions.

About two dozen unperformed plays by Inge began receiving wider attention in 2009. They were available for viewing, but not copying or borrowing, in the collection of his papers at Independence Community College. One, a three-act play titled Off the Main Road, was read at the Flea Theater in New York City on May 11, 2009, with Sigourney Weaver, Jay O. Sanders, and Frances Sternhagen in the cast. Another, The Killing, a one-act play, directed by José Angel Santana, and starring Neal Huff and J.J. Kandel, was performed at the 59E59 Theater, in New York City, through August 27, 2009. It is not yet known how many of these additional plays are complete. Besides Off the Main Road and The Killing, six others were performed in April 2009 at the William Inge Theater Festival, in Independence, Kansas. These six were published in A Complex Evening: Six Short Plays by William Inge.

Television and film
In 1961, Inge won an Academy Award for Splendor in the Grass (Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen). He made his film debut as a reverend in the film. John Frankenheimer directed All Fall Down (1962), Inge's screenplay adaptation of the novel by James Leo Herlihy. Inge was unhappy with changes made to his screenplay for Bus Riley's Back in Town (1965), so at his insistence, the writing credit on the film is "Walter Gage".

During the 1961–62 television season, Inge was the script supervisor of ABC's Bus Stop TV series, an adaptation of his play. With Marilyn Maxwell as Grace Sherwood, the owner of Sherwood's Bus Station and Diner in a fictitious Colorado town, the series presented dramas about the townspeople and travelers who passed through the diner in 25 one-hour episodes. The sixth episode, "Cherie", with Tuesday Weld, Gary Lockwood and Joseph Cotten, was an abbreviated version of the original Bus Stop play. Robert Altman directed eight episodes, and one of these, "A Lion Walks Among Us", led to a Congressional hearing on violence. The episode, which starred Fabian Forte as a maniacal axe-wielding serial killer, was adapted from Tom Wicker's novel Told By an Idiot.

In 1963 Inge met with CBS to consider a one-hour filmed television drama about a family in a Midwestern town. The series, with six continuing characters, had the tentative title All Over Town, and was planned for the 1964–65 season. Instead, Inge did a play, Out on the Outskirts of Town, which was seen on November 6, 1964, on NBC as part of the Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre series. It starred Anne Bancroft and Jack Warden with Inge taking the role of the town doctor. NBC gave the play a repeat on June 25, 1965.

Novels

Inge wrote two novels, both set in the fictional town of Freedom, Kansas. In Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff (Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1970), high-school Latin teacher Evelyn Wyckoff loses her job because she has an affair with the school's black janitor. The novel's themes include spinsterhood, racism, sexual tension and public humiliation during the late 1950s. Polly Platt wrote the screenplay for the 1979 film adaptation starring Anne Heywood as Evelyn Wyckoff. The film was released under several titles: The Shaming, The Sin, Secret Yearnings and Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff.

My Son Is a Splendid Driver (Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1971) is an autobiographical novel that traces the Hansen family from 1919 into the second half of the 20th century. The novel received praise from Kirkus Reviews:
Mr. Inge's novel, told in the form of a memoir, is a little more extended than Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff and though there's a slackening of structure and splintering of content towards the second half, the first part is immaculate in both design and focus. It features the early years of Joey, the narrator here, and there are lovely scenes, as clear as the summer sunlight, with his family and on visits to assorted relatives. The time lag between Joey and his older brother Jule—his mother's favorite, my son the splendid driver, and an attractive playboy of this midwestern world—will never be reconciled. Even long after Jule's early death from a wanton incidental. Here Act I breaks away from Act II, a whole psychic anatomy of Joey's years as a young man in compressed and fractured incidents—one replayed from Miss Wyckoff and one which seems unnecessary (his parents' syphilis). Thus Joey grows up impaired, never resolving his relationship with his absentee father or insufficiently loving mother, and ends up with his "aloneness like a corridor that has no end". Inge has told his story of life and death and all those spaces in between with a gentleness and probity which gives his novel a persistence few writers achieve.

During the early 1970s Inge lived in Los Angeles, where he taught playwriting at the University of California, Irvine. His last several plays attracted little notice or critical acclaim, and he fell into a deep depression, convinced he would never be able to write well again.

Death and legacy
Inge died of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning on June 10, 1973, at the Hollywood home he shared with his sister, Helene. He was 60 years old. Inge is buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery in his hometown of Independence, Kansas.

Inge has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Beginning with the premiere of Come Back, Little Sheba in 1950, Inge became wealthy from the success of his plays and movies. On the advice of his financial advisors, he began to buy works of contemporary art so he could reduce his taxes by donating them to museums. According to his biographer, "He bought only what he liked, but had excellent fortune in choosing what was going to become valuable..." [e.g. works by de Kooning, Pollock, and Modigliani]. Inge liked the modern art he bought because "in its abstractions and distortions" he saw "a reflection of the distorted times in which he...lived, the times he...tried to portray" in his written work. He donated a total of ten contemporary paintings to the Nelson Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri.

A black box theater is named for William Inge in Murphy Hall at the University of Kansas.

Inge is a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame, inducted posthumously in 1979.

Since 1982, Independence Community College's William Inge Center for the Arts in his hometown has sponsored the annual William Inge Theatre Festival to honor playwrights. The William Inge Collection at the college is the most extensive collection of Inge material, including 400 manuscripts, films, correspondence, theater programs, and other related items.

The March 2008 issue of The Brooklyn Rail featured interviews by playwright Adam Kraar of former Inge House resident playwrights Marcia Cebulska, Catherine Filloux, Caridad Svich, Lydia Stryk, and Alice Tuan, relating how Inge's life and work has influenced them.

Works
Plays
1950: Come Back, Little Sheba
1953: Picnic
1955: Bus Stop
1957: The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
1959: A Loss of Roses
1962: Summer Brave (a reworking of Picnic)
1963: Natural Affection
1966: Where's Daddy?
1973: The Last Pad
Off the Main Road

Short plays
 To Bobolink, for Her Spirit
 People in the Wind
 A Social Event
 The Boy in the Basement
 The Tiny Closet
 Memory of Summer
 Bus Riley's Back in Town
 The Rainy Afternoon
 The Mall
 An Incident at the Standish Arms
 The Strains of Triumph
 1953: Glory in the Flower
 The Killing
 The Love Death
 The Silent Call
 Bad Breath
 Morning on the Beach
 Moving In
 A Murder

Film and TV
1952: Come Back Little Sheba
1955: Picnic
1956: Bus Stop
1960: The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
1961: Splendor in the Grass - Reverend Whitman (uncredited)
1963: All Fall Down
1964: Out on the Outskirts of Town (a reworking of Off the Main Road) - Doctor (final appearance)
1965: Bus Riley's Back in Town (as Walter Gage)

Novels
1970: Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff
1971: My Son Is a Splendid Driver

See also

References

Further reading

 Johnson, Jeff. William Inge and the Subversion of Gender: Rewriting Stereotypes in the Plays, Novels, and Screenplays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2005.
 Radavich, David. "William Inge's Dramatic Mindscape". South Dakota Review 42:3 (Fall 2004): 49–69.
 Voss, Ralph F. A Life of William Inge: The Strains of Triumph. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000.

Listen to
Natural Affection audio scenes and interview

External links

William Inge Center for the Arts, at Independence Community College, in Independence, Kansas.
William Inge Collection  at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas
William Motter Inge Collection at Pittsburg State University
William Inge Collection at the Harry Ransom Center
St. Louis Walk of Fame
 New York Public Library Blog about William Inge and Barbara Baxley

1913 births
1973 suicides
1973 deaths
20th-century American novelists
American male novelists
American male screenwriters
Best Original Screenplay Academy Award winners
American gay writers
Writers from Kansas
Novelists from Missouri
People from Independence, Kansas
Pulitzer Prize for Drama winners
Stephens College faculty
Suicides by carbon monoxide poisoning
Suicides in Kansas
University of Kansas alumni
Washington University in St. Louis faculty
Independence Community College alumni
American LGBT dramatists and playwrights
American LGBT novelists
LGBT people from Kansas
20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
American male dramatists and playwrights
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American screenwriters

William Inge


Tax compliance software is software that assists tax compliance, and may cover income tax, corporate tax, VAT, service tax, customs, sales tax, use tax, or other taxes its users may be required to pay. The software automatically calculates a user's tax liabilities to the government, keeps track of all transactions (in case of indirect taxes), keeps track of eligible tax credits, etc. The software can also generate forms or filings needed for tax compliance. The software will have pre-defined tax rates and slabs and can allocate income or revenue in the right slab itself. The aim of the software is to provide the user with easy way to calculate tax payment and minimize any human error.
Tax compliance software has been present in developed countries for long in the form of tax calculators mainly for direct taxes, such as income tax and corporate tax. Gradually some more complex and customized tax compliance software has been designed and developed by organizations around the globe.

Tax compliance software can be divided into two main categories: direct and indirect tax compliance software.

Direct tax compliance software
A direct tax is one paid directly to the government by the persons (juristic or natural) on whom it is imposed (often accompanied by a tax return filed by the taxpayer). Examples include income tax, corporate tax, and transfer tax such as estate tax and gift tax.
Basic software for income tax in the form of a tax calculator, and are now widely used. For example, the Government of India provides an income tax calculator on their website.
Corporate tax compliance software has also been in existence for years, more often than not within the company's Finance & Accounting software or financial module of ERPs. These suites have the facilities to maintain the company's General Ledger, Cash Management, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Fixed Assets along with some basic taxes.

Indirect tax compliance software
An indirect tax (such as sales tax, value added tax (VAT), or goods and services tax (GST)) is a tax collected by an intermediary (such as a retail store) from the person who bears the ultimate economic burden of the tax (such as the customer). The intermediary later files a tax return and forwards the tax proceeds to government with the return.
Indirect Tax compliance has always been much more complex as compared to the direct taxes. Many indirect tax compliance programs have separate modules for VAT, Service Tax, Customs etc.

VAT compliance software
Value Added Tax (VAT) legislation has a common structure across countries (and states in case of India). Software must be customized to each country, however, because of differences in the some areas, such as handling of credit of capital goods, sale of scrap and second-hand goods, formats of mandatory submissions and audit exercises.

Service tax compliance software
Service tax compliance software often include maintenance of credit registers, handling reverse charges, rebate claims on export of services along with payment of tax and filing of returns.

See also
 Streamlined Sales Tax Project

References

Financial software
Regulatory compliance

Tax compliance software


The Southern Netherlands, also called the Catholic Netherlands, were the parts of the Low Countries belonging to the Holy Roman Empire which were at first largely controlled by Habsburg Spain (Spanish Netherlands, 1556–1714) and later by the Austrian Habsburgs (Austrian Netherlands, 1714–1794) until occupied and annexed by Revolutionary France (1794–1815).

The region also included a number of smaller states that were never ruled by Spain or Austria: the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, the Imperial Abbey of Stavelot-Malmedy, the County of Bouillon, the County of Horne and the Princely Abbey of Thorn.

The Southern Netherlands comprised most of modern-day Belgium and Luxembourg, small parts of the modern Netherlands and Germany (the Upper Guelders region, as well as the Bitburg area in Germany, then part of Luxembourg), in addition to (until 1678) most of the present Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, and Longwy area in northern France. The (southern) Upper Guelders region consisted of what is now divided between Germany and the modern Dutch Province of Limburg (in 1713 largely ceded to Prussia).

Place in the broader Netherlands

As they were very wealthy, the Netherlands in general were an important territory of the Habsburg crown which also ruled Spain and Austria among other places. But unlike the other Habsburg dominions, they were led by a merchant class. It was the merchant economy which made them wealthy, and the Habsburg attempts at increasing taxation to finance their wars was a major factor in the Dutch (merchants) efforts to defend their privileges. This, added to resistance to penal laws enforced by the Habsburg monarchy that made heresy a capital crime, led to a general rebellion of the Netherlands against Habsburg rule towards 1570 (protests and hostilities started the Dutch Eighty Years' War for independence –1568). Although the northern seven provinces, led by Holland and Zeeland, established their independence as the United Provinces after 1581, the ten southern Netherlands were reconquered by the Spanish general Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma. Liège, Stavelot-Malmédy and Bouillon maintained their independence.

The Habsburg Netherlands passed to the Austrian Habsburgs after the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714. Under Austrian rule, the ten provinces' defence of their privileges proved as troublesome to the reforming Emperor Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor as it had to his ancestor Philip II two centuries earlier, leading to a major rebellion in 1789–1790. The Austrian Netherlands were ultimately lost to the French Revolutionary armies, and annexed to France in 1794. Following the war, Austria's loss of the territories was confirmed, and they were joined with the northern Netherlands as a single kingdom under the House of Orange at the 1815 Congress of Vienna. The southeastern third of Luxembourg Province was made into the autonomous Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, because it was claimed by both the Netherlands and Prussia.

In 1830 the predominantly Roman Catholic southern half became independent as the Kingdom of Belgium (the northern half being predominantly Calvinist). In 1839 the final border between the kingdom of the Netherlands and Belgium was determined and the eastern part of Limburg returned to the Netherlands as the province of Limburg. The autonomy of Luxembourg was recognised in 1839, but an instrument to that effect was not signed until 1867. The King of the Netherlands was Grand Duke of Luxembourg until 1890, when William III was succeeded by his daughter, Wilhelmina of the Netherlands – but Luxembourg still followed the Salic law at the time, which forbade a woman to rule in her own right; so the union of the Dutch and Luxembourgish crowns then ended. The northwestern two-thirds of the original Luxembourg remains a province of Belgium.

Spanish Netherlands

The Spanish Netherlands (Dutch: Spaanse Nederlanden, Spanish: Países Bajos españoles) was a portion of the Low Countries controlled by Spain from 1556 to 1714, inherited from the Dukes of Burgundy. Although the territory of the Duchy of Burgundy itself remained in the hands of France, the Habsburgs remained in control of the title of Duke of Burgundy and the other parts of the Burgundian inheritance, notably the Low Countries and the Free County of Burgundy in the Holy Roman Empire. They often used the term Burgundy to refer to it (e.g. in the name of the Imperial Circle it was grouped into), until 1794, when the Austrian Netherlands were lost to the French Republic.

When part of the Netherlands separated from Spanish rule and became the United Provinces in 1581 the remainder of the area became known as the Spanish Netherlands and remained under Spanish control. This region comprised modern Belgium, Luxembourg as well as part of northern France.

The Spanish Netherlands originally consisted of:
County of Flanders, including Walloon Flanders
County of Artois
City of Tournai
Cambrai (roughly the département Nord and the northern half of Pas-de-Calais in modern France)
Duchy of Luxembourg
Duchy of Limburg
County of Hainaut
County of Namur
Lordship of Mechelen (officially a county since 1490)
Duchy of Brabant, including the Margraviate of Antwerp
the Upper Quarter (Bovenkwartier) of the duchy of Guelders (around Venlo and Roermond, in the present province of Dutch Limburg, and the town of Geldern in the present German district Kleve)

The capital, Brussels, was in Brabant. In the early 17th century, there was a flourishing court at Brussels, which was under the government of King Philip III's half-sister Archduchess Isabella and her husband, Archduke Albert of Austria. Among the artists who emerged from the court of the "Archdukes", as they were known, was Peter Paul Rubens. Under the Archdukes, the Spanish Netherlands actually had formal independence from Spain, but always remained unofficially within the Spanish sphere of influence, and with Albert's death in 1621 they returned to formal Spanish control, although the childless Isabella remained on as Governor until her death in 1633.

The failing wars intended to regain the 'heretical' northern Netherlands meant significant loss of (still mainly Catholic) territories in the north, which was consolidated in 1648 in the Peace of Westphalia, and given the peculiar, inferior status of Generality Lands (jointly ruled by the United Republic, not admitted as member provinces): Zeelandic Flanders (south of the river Scheldt), the present Dutch province of North Brabant and Maastricht (in the present Dutch province of Limburg).

As Spanish power waned in the latter decades of the 17th century, the territory of the Spanish Netherlands was repeatedly invaded by the French and an increasing portion of the territory came under French control in successive wars. By the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659 the French annexed Artois while Dunkirk was ceded to the English. By the Treaties of Aix-la-Chapelle (ending the War of Devolution in 1668) and Nijmegen (ending the Franco-Dutch War in 1678), further territory up to the current Franco-Belgian border was ceded, including  Cambrai, Walloon Flanders (the area around Lille, Douai and Orchies), as well as half of the county of Hainaut (including Valenciennes). Later, in the War of the Reunions and the Nine Years' War, France temporarily annexed other parts of the region that were returned in the 1697 Peace of Ryswick.

Austrian Netherlands

Under the Treaty of Rastatt (1714), following the War of the Spanish Succession, what was left of the Spanish Netherlands was ceded to Austria and thus became known as the Austrian Netherlands or Belgium Austriacum. However, the Austrians themselves generally had little interest in the region (aside from a short-lived attempt by Emperor Charles VI to compete with British and Dutch trade through the Ostend Company), and the fortresses along the border (the Barrier Fortresses) were, by treaty, garrisoned with Dutch troops. The area had, in fact, been given to Austria largely at British and Dutch insistence, as these powers feared potential French domination of the region.

Throughout the latter part of the eighteenth century, the principal foreign policy goal of the Habsburg rulers was to exchange the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria, which would round out Habsburg possessions in southern Germany. In the 1757 Treaty of Versailles, Austria agreed to the creation of an independent state in the Southern Netherlands ruled by Philip, Duke of Parma and garrisoned by French troops in exchange for French help in recovering Silesia. However the agreement was unimplemented and revoked by the Third Treaty of Versailles (1785) and Austrian rule continued.

In 1784, its ruler, Emperor Joseph II, took up the long-standing grudge of Antwerp, whose once-flourishing trade was destroyed by the permanent closing of the Scheldt, and he demanded for the Dutch Republic to open the river to navigation. However, his stance was far from militant, and he called off hostilities after the so-called Kettle War, so called because its only "casualty" was a kettle. Though Joseph secured in the 1785 Treaty of Fontainebleau that the territory's rulers would be compensated by the Dutch Republic for the continued closing the Scheldt, this failed to gain him much popularity.

The people of the Austrian Netherlands rebelled against Austria in 1788 as a result of Joseph II's centralizing policies. The different provinces established the United States of Belgium (January 1790). However, waylaying Joseph's intended concessions to the Belgians to restore the height of their autonomy and privileges, Austrian imperial power had been restored by Joseph's brother and successor, Leopold II, by the end of 1790.

French annexation

In the course of the French Revolution, the entire region (including territories that were never under Habsburg rule, like the Prince-Bishopric of Liège) was overrun by French armies after they won the Battle of Sprimont in 1794. The territory was then annexed to the Republic (October 1, 1795).

Only a minority of the population – mostly the local Jacobins and other members of "Societies of Friends of Liberty and Equality" in urban areas – supported the annexation. The majority were hostile to the French regime, above all because of the imposition of the assignat, wholesale conscription, and the ferocious antireligious policies of the French revolutionaries. The opposition was first led by the Catholic clergy, which became an irreducible enemy of the French Republic after it dissolved convents and monasteries and confiscated ecclesiastical properties, ordered the separation of Church and State, shut down the University of Louvain and other Catholic educational institutions, regulated church attendance and introduced divorce. In 1797, nearly 8000 priests refused to swear the newly introduced Oath of Hatred of Kings ("serment de haine à la royauté"), and went into hiding to escape arrest and deportation. The situation, particularly in the religious field, eased with the rise to power of Bonaparte in 1799, but soon, the intensification of conscription, the police state and the Continental System, which brought ruin to Ostend and Antwerp, reignited opposition to French rule. During that period Belgium was divided into nine départements: Deux-Nèthes, Dyle, Escaut, Forêts, Jemmape, Lys, Meuse-Inférieure, Ourthe and Sambre-et-Meuse.

Austria confirmed the loss of its territories by the Treaty of Campo Formio, in 1797.

In anticipation of Napoleon's defeat in 1814, it was hotly debated inside Austrian ruling circles whether Austria should get the Southern Netherlands back or, in view of the experience gained after the War of the Spanish Succession about the difficulty of defending non contiguous possessions, whether she should not instead obtain contiguous territorial compensations in Northern Italy. This latter viewpoint won and the Congress of Vienna allotted the Southern Netherlands to the new United Kingdom of the Netherlands. After the Belgian Revolution of 1830, the region separated to become the independent Kingdom of Belgium.

See also
 Catholic Church in the Netherlands, in Belgium and in Luxembourg
 Habsburg monarchy
History of Belgium
 List of governors of the Habsburg Netherlands
 List of plenipotentiaries of Austrian Netherlands
 Seventeen Provinces
 Spanish Armada
 Union of Atrecht (Including map, 1579)

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading
 Blom, J. C. H. and E. Lamberts, eds.  History of the Low Countries (2006) 504pp excerpt and text search; also complete edition online
  Cammaerts, Émile. A History of Belgium from the Roman Invasion to the Present Day (1921) 357 pages; complete text online
 Cook, Bernard A. Belgium: a history, 3rd ed. New York, 2004
 Kossmann, E. H. The Low Countries 1780–1940 (1978) excerpt and text search

External links

Early Modern Luxembourg

Southern Netherlands


The St. George Tucker House is one of the original colonial homes in Historic Williamsburg.  It was built in 1718–19 for William Levingston (who, incidentally, built the first theater in America). The house eventually came into the hands of St. George Tucker who had moved from Bermuda to Williamsburg. Tucker was a lawyer and professor of law at the College of William and Mary and later became a state and federal judge. In 1796, Judge Tucker wrote a controversial pamphlet addressed to the General Assembly of Virginia. In it he laid out a plan to end slavery in Virginia because "the abolition of slavery was of great importance for the moral character of the citizens of Virginia." He is also famous for his 1803 edition of "Blackstone's Commentaries" which has become an indispensable American law text.

The St. George Tucker House began as a simple structure but over the years, Tucker made many additions to the house to accommodate his growing family. Among these were chimneys, a second story, an east and west wing, a kitchen and bathrooms. St. George's son, Nathaniel Tucker continued the tradition and implemented many changes of his own. The family kept extensive records making the St. George Tucker House the most well documented home in Williamsburg.

Of the many stories and anecdotes tied to the house, one of the most enduring is that of the first Christmas tree in Williamsburg. A German professor, Professor Charles Minnigerode, a friend of St. George's son, was a frequent guest in the home. In 1842, he introduced the Tucker children to a German style holiday celebration. Following the German tradition, a small evergreen tree was brought into the house. To the delight of the children they proceeded to decorate the tree with gilded nuts, marbleized paper, and strings of popcorn. The following December most families in Williamsburg had a Christmas tree in their parlor. The tradition soon spread throughout Virginia. To this day during the holiday season the only Christmas tree in Colonial Williamsburg can be found in the St. George Tucker House to commemorate that first tree.

Tucker was somewhat of a disciplinarian as respected his children and other young residents, and being a judge, naturally drafted rules for the youngsters, called "Garrison Articles" to regulate behavior in the house. The children and visiting William and Mary students, somewhat-tongue-in cheek, then labeled the residence "Ft. St. George".

In 1930 the Coleman family, descendants of St. George, deeded the house to Colonial Williamsburg with a life tenancy agreement. It was not until 1993, after the death of Tucker's great, great granddaughter, Dr. Janet (Coleman) Kimbrogh, that the house was turned over to Colonial Williamsburg. The last private resident to the home was Mr. Erich Tucker Kimbrough while he was a student at the William & Mary Law School.  Remarkably, "the Tucker House" (as the family calls it) remained a private residence in the midst of Colonial Williamsburg until the early 1990s.

Once in the hands of Colonial Williamsburg, mechanical and electrical systems were brought up to date including a bathroom constructed in compliance  with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The necessary modernization notwithstanding, the classic 18th-century style of the house remains faithfully intact.

Today the St. George Tucker house is used as an elegant reception center for donors of Colonial Williamsburg.

References

External links

Houses completed in 1719
Houses in Williamsburg, Virginia
Colonial Williamsburg
Tucker family residences
1719 establishments in the Thirteen Colonies

St. George Tucker House


Prairie dogs are a genus of ground squirrels. They are  small, burrowing rodents which live in short-grass prairies and the high plains of western North America. The explorers Lewis and Clark sent a prairie dog to President Thomas Jefferson during their expedition; it was quite strange to him.

Prairie dogs are found in North America. In Mexico, they are mostly found in the northern states, which are the southern end of the great plains: northeastern Sonora, north and northeastern Chihuahua, northern Coahuila, northern Nuevo León, and northern Tamaulipas; in the U.S., they range primarily west of the Mississippi River, though they have also been introduced in a few eastern locales. They are also found in the Canadian Prairies. They will eat all sorts of vegetables and fruits.

Diet
Prairie dogs are mostly herbivores (plant-eaters). They eat grasses, seeds, leaves, flowers, fruit, eggs, and some insects.

Biology and behavior

Highly social, prairie dogs live in large colonies – collections of prairie dog families that can span hundreds of acres. Families usually are made up of one male and two to four females living in a strict social hierarchy. Prairie dog pups reach sexual maturity at about 3 years of age, and after their third winter the dominant male in a given family will drive them away, forcing them to establish their own families on the edges of the colony. The dominant male will defend the family's borders against rival prairie dogs, and disputes are resolved by fighting. Prairie dogs are also aggressive against predators such as badgers and snakes.

Prairie dogs are social animals, and often make social visits with each other, and greet each other with a sort of kiss. Prairie dogs employ a complex form of communication that involves barks and rhythmic chirps.

Prairie dog tunnel systems usually have several rooms. Tunnels can go down as far as , and can extend laterally as much as . Prairie dogs line their burrows with grass to insulate them, and the earth excavated from the burrow is piled up in mounds around the burrow's entrance. The prairie dogs use these carefully maintained mounds as observation posts.

The prairie dog is well adapted to predators. They can detect predators from a far distance and alert other prairie dogs to the danger with a special, high-pitched call. Prairie dogs use different calls to identify specific predators. Prairie dogs also trim the vegetation around their colonies, perhaps to remove any cover for predators. Their burrows generally contain several routes of escape.

The prairie dog is chiefly herbivorous, though it eats some insects. It feeds primarily on grasses and, in the fall, broadleaf plants. Prairie dogs have 1-6 pups (babies) yearly, which are born blind and furless and need about 30 days of close nurturing from their mother.

Sometimes two prairie dogs touch teeth with each other. Researchers think they do this as a way of recognizing each other.

Predators
Prairie dogs are hunted by many animals, including wolves, dogs, coyotes, bobcats, foxes, and humans.

References

Squirrels
Mammals of North America

Prairie dog


The Boxcar Children is a children's story. It was written by Gertrude Chandler Warner. It was published by Rand McNally in 1924. Warner wrote 19 other books about the boxcar children and their adventures. Other people wrote more stories. There are over 100 books about the boxcar children. Over the years they have made the story into different novels, comic books and they are making a movie which will be released in April of 2014.

Story
Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny are orphans. They have never seen their grandfather Mr. Alden. They have heard he is cruel. They run away because they don't want to live with him. One night, they find shelter in a bakery. They say they will help with the work the next day if they can stay the night. Benny is too little to work. The baker wants to take him to the children's home. The childen run away.

The children find an old boxcar in the woods. They make it their home. They find dishes, spoons, and other things to use in their new home. They help a dog with a hurt paw. Benny names the dog "Watch". The children dam a stream to make a swimming pool. Henry gets a job working for Dr. Moore. He mows the lawn and cleans the garage. He works in the garden for the doctor's mother. She gives him some vegetables. All the children pick cherries from the trees in the garden. The children are happy.

Dr. Moore reads in a newspaper that Mr. Alden is looking for his grandchildren. The doctor calls Mr. Alden. Mr. Alden arrives at the doctor's house. The children grow to like him. He is not cruel but kind. The children move to their grandfather's house. Mr. Alden puts the boxcar in the back yard for their fun.

American children's books
1924 books

The Boxcar Children


Don James is an American video game executive and currently serves as the executive vice president of operations for Nintendo of America.

As a key member of the team led by Howard Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa, James played a critical role in the reintroduction of home video game consoles in North America after the Video Game Crash of 1983, when the Nintendo Entertainment System spawned a late-1980s rebirth of video games. After the collapse of the home video game industry in 1983-84, retailers and press widely agreed that "video game consoles are dead, and the computer game industry is a niche market which mass market retailers should ignore." Arakawa, Lincoln and James coordinated the introduction of the NES while struggling to overcome that skepticism, and ultimately paved the way for Nintendo (and, to a lesser extent, Sega and Atari) to rebuild the multibillion-dollar industry during the last half of the decade.

James joined Nintendo of America in August 1981, and his employment with the company has now spanned over 40 years. He has been responsible for manufacturing, product development, and design for both coin-op and home games such as Tin Star.

James participated in organizing and creating the Interactive Digital Software Association (later renamed the Entertainment Software Association) and was a leader in the creation of the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show for the video game industry, the largest event of its kind in the world. He still sits on the advisory committee of the ESA.

He also helped to create the Entertainment Software Rating Board rating system and currently sits on the Advisory Committee for the ESRB. The ratings system was designed in response to concerns from the United States Congress about violence and other content in video games that was inappropriate for younger players. James has been a key figure in Nintendo's conservative approach to such mature game content.

James has been a member of the board of directors of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences since the inception of the organization.

References

Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Nintendo people
People from Redmond, Washington
Video game businesspeople

Don James (executive)


A Christmas card is a greeting card, given around Christmas. The first Christmas card was given in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole who gave the card to his friend who gave him the idea to make the card. Christmas cards usually have designs based around Christmas.

Christmas

Christmas card


The Roman calendar was a lunar calendar used by the Roman Kingdom and the Roman Republic.

Calendar system
The year started on 1 March and had only 304 days or 10 months (March, April, May, June, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November and December). These 304 days were followed by an unnamed 50-day winter period. The Roman king Numa Pompilius (c. 715-673 BC) introduced February and January (in that order) between December and March, increasing the length of the year to 354 or 355 days. In 450 BC, February was moved to its current position between January and March.

In order to make up for the lack of days in a year, an extra month, Intercalaris or Mercedonius, (allegedly with 22 or 23 days) was introduced in some years. In an 8 year period the length of the years were:

1: 12 months or 355 days
2: 13 months or 377 days
3: 12 months or 355 days
4: 13 months or 378 days
5: 12 months or 355 days
6: 13 months or 377 days
7: 12 months or 355 days
8: 13 months or 378 days

A total of 2930 days corresponding to a year of 366¼ days. This year was discovered to be too long, and therefore 7 days were later dropped from the 8th year, yielding 365.375 days per year.

It was the duty of the priesthood not to have any mistake of the intercalary month. However, leap years were considered unlucky. Therefore, they were avoided in time of crisis, such as the Second Punic War. In order to fix the problem, Julius Caesar made his famous calendar reform in 45 BC.

References

Calendars
Ancient Rome

Roman calendar


Otis Ray Wilson (born September 15, 1957) is an American former professional football player who was a linebacker in the National Football League (NFL) for the Chicago Bears and the Los Angeles Raiders. He won a Super Bowl as a member of the 1985 Chicago Bears. He is also the father of former Cincinnati Bengals running back Quincy Wilson. He is married to Tina Glover Wilson.

College career
After starting his college career at Syracuse University, Wilson transferred to the University of Louisville. Wilson was a three-year letter winner, from 1977 to 1979. In 1979, Wilson was a team captain and was named first-team All-American by the Sporting News. Wilson ranks second all-time in Louisville football history with 484 career tackles, and ranks fifth with 32 tackles for loss.

NFL career
Wilson was selected in the first round of the 1980 NFL Draft by the Chicago Bears, and went on to a nine-year career in the NFL.  As a starting outside linebacker for the Bears, Wilson played on one of the most dominating defenses in football history as part of the linebacking trio with Mike Singletary and Wilber Marshall. This defense helped the Bears to win Super Bowl XX. That same year, he also made the only Pro Bowl selection of his career. He was a featured soloist of the "Shuffling Crew" in the video The Super Bowl Shuffle in 1985.

Wilson had a significant role with the famous '85 Bears. While he didn't call the plays and run the defense like fellow linebacker Mike Singletary did, he was possibly the Bears' most feared pass-rusher and the most intimidating player when he lined up in the 46 defense. Because Singletary stayed in the middle and covered backs out of the backfield/stopped the run, and Wilber Marshall was basically a free-lancer who roamed the field, Wilson was the main blitzer in the Bears' 46. He was second on the team with 10.5 sacks in the 1985 season, and numerous times he hurried the quarterback into errant throws.

Wilson played with the Bears until 1987. Injuries kept him from playing in the 1988 season. In 1989, he signed with the Los Angeles Raiders, but played only one game in the season and retired soon afterwards. He finished his 9-season career with 36 sacks, 8 fumble recoveries, 31 fumble return yards 10 interceptions, 115 return yards, and 2 touchdowns in 110 games.

During Super Bowl XLIV, Wilson joined other members of the 1985 Chicago Bears in resurrecting the Super Bowl Shuffle in a Boost Mobile commercial.

Personal life
Otis is now focusing full-time on his nonprofit organization, The Otis Wilson Charitable Association, which provides an all-inclusive health and fitness program for at risk youth.  The organization sponsors many events to fund their programs and they are very active in the Chicago area.

Wilson's book "If These Walls Could Talk: Chicago Bears" (Triumph Books) was released in September 2017.

References

1957 births
Living people
American football linebackers
Chicago Bears players
Los Angeles Raiders players
Louisville Cardinals football players
Players of American football from Brooklyn
National Conference Pro Bowl players
Syracuse Orange football players
Thomas Jefferson High School (Brooklyn) alumni

Otis Wilson


Wat Plai Laem () is a wat on the resort island of Ko Samui, Thailand. Like the nearby Wat Phra Yai or "Big Buddha Temple", it is a modern Buddhist temple. The temple's design incorporates elements of Chinese and Thai traditions and was in part designed by distinguished Thai artist Jarit Phumdonming.
Its main statue, which is in Chinese style, is not of Gautama Buddha. It is a form of the bodhisattva of compassion and mercy, Avalokiteśvara, called Cundi. This form of the deity is known in Chinese as "Guanyin with eighteen arms".

In addition to the main statue, there is also a white statue of Budai and smaller shrines dedicated to Ganesha, Vishnu, Shiva and Sakka.

Although it is an open-air image, it is located within an elaborate ubosot on a platform-pavilion surrounded by a temple lake.

See also
List of Buddhist temples#Thailand

References

Tourist attractions in Surat Thani province
Buddhist temples in Surat Thani province

Wat Plai Laem


Mahmud Shah Durrani (1769 - 1829) was the ruler of the Durrani Empire between 1801 and 1803, again between 1809 and 1818. He was the son of Timur Shah Durrani and half-brother of his predecessor, Zaman Shah. On July 25, 1801, Zaman Shah was deposed, and Mahmud Shah ascended to rulership. He then had a chequered career; he was deposed in 1803, restored in 1809, and finally deposed again in 1818. He died in 1829. Between his two stints, the country was ruled by Shoja Shah, another of his half-brothers.

1769 births
1829 deaths
Monarchs of Afghanistan

Mahmud Shah Durrani


Foundation's Fear (1997) is a science fiction novel by American writer Gregory Benford, set in Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe.  It is the first book of the Second Foundation Trilogy, which was written after Asimov's death by three authors, authorized by the Asimov estate.

Plot summary
Emperor Cleon I wants to appoint Hari Seldon as the First Minister of the Galactic Empire.  Powerful Trantor High Council member Betan Lamurk opposes the independent Seldon's appointment.  Seldon himself is reluctant to accept the position because of its time constraints pulling him away from the psychohistory project.  The project is led by Seldon, Yugo Amaryl, and Seldon's advanced humaniform robot-spouse Dors Venabili.   Seldon needs to carry favor with the emperor, however, and advises Cleon I informally.  For example, Seldon suggests a decree that erases terrorists' names from records, denying them immortality, discouraging chaotic actions.

Besides the psychohistorians, much of the novel's action revolves around advanced sentient simulations (sims) of Joan of Arc and Voltaire.  The sims have been recreated by Artifice Associates, a research company located in Trantor's Dahl Sector.  Artifice Associates programmers Marq and Sybil plan to use the Joan/ Voltaire sims for two money-making projects.  First, Hari Seldon's psychohistory project.  Second, Trantor's Junin-Sector "Preservers vs Skeptics Society" debate whether mechanical beings endowed with artificial intelligence should be built.  And if so, whether they should receive full citizenship.  The Preservers' champion will be Joan, the Skeptics' champion Voltaire.

Hari Seldon and Dors Venabili flee Trantor, escaping High Council member Betan Lamurk's forces.  During their galactic odyssey, Hari and Dors experience virtual reality as chimpanzees on planet Panucopia.  They also visit helter-skelter New Renaissance world Sark.

Meanwhile, back on Trantor, sims Joan and Voltaire escape into Trantor's Mesh (Internet).  Joan and Voltaire interact with ancient aliens on the Mesh.  These aliens fled Trantor's physical space when terraforming robots arrived on Trantor more than 20,000 years ago. Via Joan and Voltaire, Hari allies with the mesh aliens.  The aliens aid Seldon's return to Trantor, and his defeat of High Council member Lamurk through tik-toks. The novel ends with Seldon accepting his position as Emperor Cleon's First Minister.

References

Novels by Gregory Benford
Foundation universe books
1997 American novels
1997 science fiction novels

Foundation's Fear


Lathyrus japonicus, the sea pea, beach pea, circumpolar pea or sea vetchling, is a species of flowering plant in the legume family Fabaceae, native to temperate coastal areas of the Northern Hemisphere, and Argentina.

It is a herbaceous perennial growing trailing stems  long, typically on sand and gravel storm beaches. The leaves are waxy glaucous green,  long, pinnate, with 2-5 pairs of leaflets, the terminal leaflet usually replaced by a twining tendril. The flowers are broad, with a dark purple standard petal and paler purple wing and keel petals; they are produced in racemes of up to twelve flowers.

Description
Lathyrus japonicus is a perennial plant. The stem grows to  and is limp, has no wings and is often hairless. The leaves are alternate, greyish green and somewhat succulent, almost stalkless with large, wide stipules. The leaf blades are pinnate with three to five pairs of narrow lanceolate leaflets with blunt tips, entire margins and a terminal tendril. The inflorescence has a long stem and five to twelve purple flowers, each  long, turning bluer as they age. These have five sepals and five petals and are irregular with a standard, two wings and a fused keel. There are ten stamens and a single carpel. The fruit is a long brown pod up to  in length. This plant flowers in mid-to-late summer (July and August in the Northern Hemisphere, January and February in the Southern Hemisphere).

Distribution and habitat
Lathyrus japonicus is native to temperate parts of Europe, Asia, North and South America. Its typical habitat is sandy or stony seashores and other coastal locations. The unusually extensive native range is explained by the ability of the seeds to remain viable while floating in sea water for up to five years, enabling the seeds to drift nearly worldwide. Germination occurs when the hard outer seed coat is abraded by waves on sand and gravel.

The pods can be eaten but like many members of the genus Lathyrus they contain β-oxalyl-L-α,β-diaminopropionic acid, which can cause paralysis called lathyrism. The leaves of the plant are used in Chinese traditional medicine.

References

japonicus
Edible legumes
Flora of Asia
Flora of Europe
Flora of Northern America
Flora of Southern America
Flora of California
Flora of Canada
Flora of Greenland
Flora without expected TNC conservation status

Lathyrus japonicus


Hwanghae Province (Hwanghae-do ) was one of the Eight Provinces of Korea during the Joseon era. Hwanghae was located in the northwest of Korea. The provincial capital was Haeju. The regional name for the province was Haeseo.

History
In 1395, the province was organized as Punghae ().  In 1417, the province was renamed Hwanghae. The name derived from the names of the two principal cities of Hwangju () and Haeju ).

In 1895, the province was reorganized into the Districts of Haeju () in the west and Gaeseong () in the east, but in 1896, a new system of thirteen provinces was established, and Hwanghae Province was reconstituted.

In 1945, Korea was divided into Soviet and American zones of occupation, north and south respectively of the 38th parallel. The southernmost part of Hwanghae (around the towns of Ongjin and Yonan County) was cut off from the rest of the province by the dividing line and joined Gyeonggi Province in the southern half of the country. In 1948, Hwanghae and Gyeonggi Provinces became parts of the new countries of North and South Korea respectively.

In 1953, at the end of the Korean War, the Northern Limit Line was established, which marked the maritime boundary between North and South Korea. The line runs between the mainland portion of Gyeonggi Province that had been part of Hwanghae before 1945, and the adjacent offshore islands (the largest of which is Baengnyeongdo). As a result, the mainland portion reverted to North Korean control, while the islands remained a part of South Korea.  (Since 1999, North Korea has claimed a more southerly Maritime Military Demarcation Line, which would make the islands a part of North Korea as well. Disputes between North and South Korean naval vessels often occur in this area.)

In 1954, North Korea's Hwanghae Province was divided into North and South Hwanghae Provinces.

Geography
Hwanghae was bounded by Pyeongan Province (after 1896 South Pyeongan) on the north, Gangwon Province on the east, Gyeonggi Province on the south, and the Yellow Sea on the west.

See also
Kōkai-dō

External links

 Seoul City history article on Hanseong and 22 other late 19th-century districts (in Korean)

Provinces of Korea
Joseon

Hwanghae Province