DSB Bank (DSB: Dirk Scheringa Beheer) was a Dutch bank and insurer that failed in 2009. Its loans were managed under Quion from June 2013 until June 2016 when Finqus began operating as the former DSB Bank. In 2018 Finqus BV took over DSB Bank and operated as a subsidiary of DSB Group. Finqus BV turned over its loan portfolio to NIBC Bank on 21 July 2021.

The company was founded in 1975 by , the sole shareholder. It was originally called Buro Frisia, but in 1998 the DSB Groep () was founded which included Buro Frisia. The bank made the news several times, due to, among numerous things, overpriced mortgages and deferred annuities. On 19 October 2009, the Amsterdam court declared DSB Bank to be in bankruptcy. Currently all bank services are active. No new loan applications are being accepted, and providing advice for payment services has also stopped.

History
, a former police officer, founded DSB BANK as Buro Frisia in 1975. In 1977 the company had capital worth €25 million and a balance of €300 million, due to stable growth and acquisitions. During the end of the 90s, Scheringa wanted to take his company to the market, the company was estimated to be worth 400 million at the time. However, right before the IPO, Scheringa decided not to through with it, since he supposedly did not agree with the introduction price.

He thus remained sole shareholder and found new ways to attract capital. He did so by creating subordinated debt to add to his capital. Such a debt is a loan which ranks after other debts should a company fall into liquidation or bankruptcy. Such debt is referred to as subordinate, because the debt providers (the lenders) have subordinate status in relationship to the normal debt. DSB bank went through some structural changes and changed its name to DSB Bank NV in 2006. Unlike most other banks, DSB bank's main source of profit was provision revenues from premiums and term life insurance, which were sold simultaneously with the loans. This form of combined sale is prohibited in the Netherlands, but no action was taken until 2009.

In June 2007, Scheringa appointed Gerrit Zalm as chief economist and chief financial officer to succeed the outgoing CFO Jaap van Dijk who had been with DSB from 2002 until November 2007. In November 2008, Zalm left DSB, took a job with ABN AMRO, and was succeeded as CFO at DSB from March 2009 to May 2009 by Frank de Grave. In July 2009, Ronald Buwalda, another member of VVD became CFO at DSB.

Activities
DSB bank provided mortgages and consumer loans, savings and insurance products to individuals. In the Netherlands, DSB bank had a market share of approximately 17% in the supply of private credit. DSB bank had various trade names, such as Becam, Frisia Financieringen, Lenen.nl en Postkrediet.

Dirk Scheringa owned the professional Dutch football club AZ Alkmaar and DSB Bank was the main sponsor of the football club. The bank also sponsored a lot of other sports clubs. Next to that Dirk Scheringa opened the Scheringa Museum for Realism in 1997. Dirk Scheringa had over the years acquired a large collection of paintings, mostly Dutch (Koch, Ket, Willink a.o.) in the magical-realistic genre, with the intention of creating a permanent exhibit in the museum. DSB bank ensured that it was known by creating a lot of television advertisements, unlike other banks in the Netherlands. These commercials were often chosen as 'most annoying advertisement of the year', but did provide them with the reputation of a cheap and safe bank. Their slogan was: DSB bank, good for you money.

Causes of bankruptcy

Overpriced mortgages
DSB bank sold mortgages jointly with term life insurance and made their customers pay these simultaneously, which is highly unusual, and illegal in the Netherlands. They charged very high premiums, sometimes 80% of the price of the purchase. This caused the mortgages to be overpriced e.g. the mortgage was worth, sometimes 46% more, than the actual value of the property, instead of the 25% threshold. Customers could only get the mortgage if they paid the term insurance simultaneously. They were drawn by the low interest rates, however these rates often increased within a year, increasing the pressure on the obligations of the customers. Customers that wanted to leave DSB had difficulty doing so, since no other bank wanted to take over their risky mortgages. Therefore, customers had no choice but to sell their house and accept the high remaining debt they were stuck with afterwards.

Fines
As this practice of providing mortgages came to light, the DSB bank received two fines from the Dutch Authority of Financial Markets. One for overpricing their credit and one for the lack of information given to customers with a combined value of €120.00010.

Damage Claims
In 2009, several support funds were created to inform potential clients about the way DSB conducted business. There also were mediation parties to help the duped customers.

Bank run
In 2009, the run on the DSB bank started when Pieter Lakeman, the representative of unsatisfied DSB-customers of the foundation 'Hypotheekleed' (roughly translated as: mortgage distress), motivated depositors at the DSB bank to withdraw their money. According to Lakeman it would be better for the depositors if the bank went bankrupt, due to the provision of frowned upon mortgages. Already on the same day, depositors withdrew 88 million euro from their bank accounts at the DSB bank, followed by 100 million euro on 2 October 2009 and 127 million euro on 3 October.  On 12 October all accounts at the DSB bank were frozen on request of the Dutch central bank, the DNB (De Nederlandse Bank), in order to stop the bank run which could lead to the failure of the DSB bank. At that point more than 600 million euro had already been withdrawn, which was a sign for DNB that the Solvency of the DSB bank was under pressure. The deposit insurance program still guaranteed the deposits at the DSB bank to an amount of 100.000 euro per account.

According to the ministry of Finance of the Netherlands this regulation was inevitable. The days before the implementation of this regulation the government, DNB and a group of five banks tried to come up with a solution for the DSB bank, but the risks of this operation were perceived too high and eventually the whole operation was cancelled.

Effects of the bankruptcy

Reactions
'We did not go bankrupt, we were destroyed' were the words of DSB bank owner Dirk Scheringa. Together with the board of directors he publicly asked for a parliamentary poll about DSB bank's bankruptcy. According to him it was necessary to investigate how the government could turn a totally healthy company into a failing company. Dirk Scheringa blamed the ministry of Finance, DNB and the media for the bankruptcy. Firstly, the ministry of Finance stated that the DSB bank charged idiotic provisions, but according to Scheringa a lot of other banks charged the same amounts. Secondly, DNB requirements for DSB were far too stringent and totally uncalled for. Thirdly, the media spread the news about a possible takeover of the DSB bank by DNB before the official report was published, this led to massive withdrawals by depositors. Dirk Scheringa promised to resign as chairman and to sell his shares, nevertheless DNB decided to let the DSB bank go bankrupt.

Final attempts to save the bank
During the weekend of 17 October the final attempts to save the DSB bank were presented on television by financial advisor Adrian Dorrepaal under the title 'Plan B'. He called in the help of 8,500 depositors who accounted for a total of 250 million euro and did not fall under the deposit insurance scheme. Since these depositors would lose their money in case of bankruptcy it was better for them to turn their deposits into shares of the DSB bank. According to Dorrepaal such a transformation would be sufficient to avoid bankruptcy. Once the DSB bank recovered, the depositors would get their money back through dividends.
That weekend Dirk Scheringa was working with Gardner Ross Corp. on a possible takeover bid from the American investment company 'Lone Star Funds'. When Lone Star Fund stated not to be interested anymore, Plan B was Dirk Scheringa's last resort. He had until 9 a.m. on 19 October to come up with a solution, otherwise the Court of Amsterdam would declare DSB Bank bankrupt. Already before the deadline Plan B was rejected by the government, which considered the plan too complicated and risk bearing. Besides that, the government believed that the plan would have little positive effects on the liquidity of the DSB bank.

The effects on sponsorships
After the bankruptcy of the DSB bank all sponsoring was stopped.

On 13 October all sponsorship towards the DSB bank's ice-skating team was shut down. This happened in the middle of a training camp in Germany, this led to the situation where the ice-skaters themselves had to pay for the rent of the ice-skating track and the transportation back home.

On 30 October the official sponsorship of AZ Alkmaar came to an end. All associations with the bank in and around the stadium were removed. At that time, AZ Alkmaar was the national titleholder. A part of the revenues of the new sponsorship deal with AFAS Software would accrue to the creditors of DSB bank, since AZ Alkmaar had an open debt of 14 million euro at the DSB bank.

Effects on museum
On 17 November the court of Alkmaar declared DS Art, which encompasses Dirk Scheringa's art collection, bankrupt. Sixteen employees of the museum in Spanbroek were fired. At that time Dirk Scheringa was building a new museum in Opmeer. ABN Amro impounded 1300 art pieces to serve as collateral for DSB Bank's mortgage-debt of 32 million euro. In March 2012, retired Dutch businessman Hans Melchers bought the bulk of this collection in a deal with Deutsche Bank, who were curator. Melchers is currently looking for a good location to make these paintings (over 1000) available to the public.

References

External links

Defunct banks of the Netherlands
Banks established in 1975
Banks disestablished in 2009
Bank failures
Medemblik

DSB Bank


Halsbury's Laws of England is an encyclopaedia of the law in England and Wales. It has an alphabetised title scheme for the areas of law, drawing on authorities including Acts of Parliament of the United Kingdom, Measures of the Welsh Assembly, UK case law and European law. It is written by or in consultation with experts in the relevant field.

Halsbury's Laws has an annual and monthly updating service. The encyclopaedia and updates are available in both hard copy and online, with some content available for free online.

History

In 1907 Stanley Shaw Bond, editor at Butterworths, began a project to produce a complete statement of the law of England and Wales that was authoritative, comprehensive and up-to-date. Bond tracked down the former Lord Chancellor, The Earl of Halsbury, on holiday in Nice to invite him to be the editor-in-chief of The Laws of England.

Traditionally, the role of editor-in-chief of Halsbury's Laws is held by a former Lord Chancellor, and the current incumbent is Lord Mackay of Clashfern.

In 2007, Halsbury's Laws celebrated its centenary with an evening of seminars led by Lord Mackay of Clashfern and professor Richard Susskind, and the publication of a collection of centenary essays.

First edition

The first edition was published in 31 volumes from 1907 to 1917. Since then, new editions have been launched at intervals of about 20 to 30 years.

Volume 1 was published in 1907. Its articles run from action to bankers and banking. The volume deals with action, admiralty, agency, agriculture, aliens, allotments, animals, arbitration, auction, bailment and bankers and banking.

Volume 2 was published in 1908. Its articles run from bankruptcy to bills of exchange. It contains but four treatises, upon bankruptcy and insolvency (335 pages), barristers (67 pages), bastardy (28 pages) and bills of exchange, promissory notes and negotiable instruments (124 pages).

Volume 5 (companies) is devoted entirely to company law, and forms a treatise of 768 pages on that subject. After a general consideration of the nature and domicile of companies, the work considers briefly the history of company legislation. Then follows an elaborate treatise on the Companies Act 1908. Special companies, like banking, insurance and public service companies, are considered; as well as chartered companies, the livery companies of the City of London, quasi-corporations, and illegal companies; and a few pages are devoted to foreign companies. The reviewer in the Harvard Law Review thought the table of cases cited must contain at least five thousand cases. He said the importance of this treatise was at once apparent; and that to the commercial lawyer in the Eastern cities of the United States it would be exceedingly useful.

The articles in volume 11 run from descent to ecclesiastical law. It contains a short article on descent and distribution; a discussion of discovery, inspection and interrogatories, under the English practice; an elaborate article on distress; an article on easements and profits, which the Harvard Law Review said was the most interesting article in the volume to an American lawyer; and an elaborate disquisition on ecclesiastical law.

The articles in volume 12 run from education to electric lighting and power. The Harvard Law Review said that the articles on education and elections had comparatively little value to the American bar, but the hundred pages devoted to electric lighting and power were useful.

Volume 20 was published in 1911. Its articles run from markets to misrepresentation. It contains articles on markets and fairs (59 pages), master and servant (221 pages), medicine and pharmacy (82 pages), the Metropolis (106 pages), mines, minerals and quarries (156 pages) and misrepresentation and fraud (110 pages). According to the Harvard Law Review, the article on master and servant was of constant interest to an American lawyer; and that on misrepresentation and fraud, from the master hand of G. Spencer Bower, was a valuable treatise in itself.

Volume 21 was published in 1912. Its articles run from mistake to partition. It contains articles on mistake (34 pages), money and money lending (29 pages), mortgage (283 pages), negligence (134 pages), notaries (9 pages), nuisance (72 pages), Parliament (197 pages) and partition (59 pages). The Harvard Law Review said that the standard set by the preceding volumes appeared to be maintained and that the series, up to this volume, was a collection of very admirable treatises on English law.

Second, third and fourth editions
The second edition was published in 37 volumes from 1932 to 1941. The editor-in-chief was Viscount Hailsham. The managing editor was Sir Roland Burrows. The second edition of volume 5 was published in 1949. The second and subsequent editions of the encyclopaedia took the name of the said Earl of Halsbury.

The third edition was published in 43 volumes from 1952 to 1964. The general editor was Lord Simonds.

The fourth edition was published in 56 volumes from 1973 to 1987. The editor-in-chief was Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone. The editor-in-chief of volumes reissued from August 1998 onwards was Lord Mackay of Clashfern.

Fifth edition
Publication of the fifth edition began in 2008 and is being published in 103 volumes. It will have a new title scheme, a new updating service, and improved integration of European law. New titles for the fifth edition include, Sports Law, Information Technology Law, Financial Services and Institutions, Judicial Review and Environmental Quality and Public Health.

Halsbury Legal Awards
The Halsbury Legal Awards debuted in 2013.  They celebrate the value that people in law bring to society. The theme of the awards is: "The Whole of the law. Connected".

The awards recognise the achievements and talents of individuals and teams across the entire legal sector. The Bar, legal practice, in-house counsel, academia and legal journalism are all recognised, as are contribution to the promotion, growth and value of the sector.

Halsbury Awards
The Halsbury Awards, in association with the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians, were sponsored by Halsbury's Laws from 2007 to 2012. They recognise outstanding performance given by legal information services, law libraries and teams managing legal collections and resources.

Related publications
Halsbury's Laws of Australia
Halsbury's Laws of Canada
Halsbury's Laws of Singapore
Halsbury's Laws of Malaysia
Halsbury's Laws of Hong Kong
Halsbury's Laws of India
Halsbury's Laws of New Zealand
The Laws of Scotland: Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia

See also
Halsbury's Statutes
Halsbury's Statutory Instruments
Is it in Force?
Destination Tables
LexisNexis Butterworths

Bibliography
Marke, J J. A Catalogue of the Law Collection at New York University. New York University. 1953.

References

External links

 Volume I - 1907 - Action to Bankers and Banking
 Volume II - 1908 - Bankruptcy and Insolvency to Bills of Exchange
 Volume III - 1908 - Bills of Sale to Burial and Cremation
 Volume IV - 1908 - Carriers to Commons and Rights of Common
 Volume V - 1910 - Companies
 Volume VI - 1909 - Compulsory Purchase of Land and Compensation to Constitutional Law (Parts I - V)
 Volume VII - 1909 - Constitutional Law (Part VI to End) to Contract
 Volume VIII - 1909 - Copyholds to County Court
 Volume IX - 1909 - Courts to Criminal Law and Procedure
 Volume X - 1909 - Crown Practice to Dependencies and Colonies
 Volume XI - 1910 - Descent and Distribution to Ecclesiastical Law
 Volume XII - 1910 - Education to Electric Lighting and Power
 Volume XIII - 1910 - Equity to Evidence
 Volume XIV - 1910 - Execution to Fisheries
 Volume XV - 1911 - Food and Drugs to Guarantee
 Volume XVI - 1911 - Highways, Streets, and Bridges to Income Tax
 Volume XVII - 1911 - Industrial, Provident and Similar Societies to Interpleader
 Volume XVIII - 1911 - Intoxicating Liquors to Libel and Slander
 Volume XIX - 1911 - Lien to Malicious Prosecution and Procedure
 Volume XX - 1911 - Markets and Fairs to Misrepresentation and Fraud
 Volume XXI - 1912 - Mistake to Partition
 Volume XXII - 1912 - Partnership to Post Office
 Volume XXIII - 1912 - Powers to Railways and Canals
 Volume XXIV - 1912 - Rates and Rating to Revenue
 Volume XXV - 1913 - Royal Forces to Sheriffs and Bailiffs
 Volume XXVI - 1914 - Shipping and Navigation to Solicitors
 Volume XXVII - 1913 - Specific Performance to Trover and Detinue
 Volume XXVIII - 1914 - Trusts and Trustees to Work and Labour
 Volume XXIX - 1915 - Consolidated Table of Cases
 Volume XXX - 1917 - General Index - A-L
 Volume XXXI - 1917 - General Index - M-Z
 Supplement No. 21 - 1931 - Bringing the Work up to 1931

English law
Encyclopedias of law
British encyclopedias
1907 non-fiction books
1932 non-fiction books
1952 non-fiction books
1973 non-fiction books
2008 non-fiction books
20th-century encyclopedias
21st-century encyclopedias

Halsbury's Laws of England


A celestial coordinate system is a coordinate system that helps astronomers specify the location of objects in the sky. These objects may be stars, planets or even satellites. There are several such coordinate systems listed below. All of them are spherical.

The fundamental plane divides the celestial sphere into two equal hemispheres and defines the baseline for the latitudinal coordinates, similar to the equator in the geographic coordinate system. The poles are located at ±90° from the fundamental plane. The primary direction is the starting point of the longitudinal coordinates.

Coordinate systems
These are common coordinate systems used by the astronomical community:

Horizontal system
The horizontal system is based on the position of the observer on Earth. It is a useful coordinate system for finding and tracking objects for observers on Earth. It is based on the position of stars relative to an observer's true or ideal horizon.

Equatorial system
The equatorial coordinates are based on the position of stars relative to the Earth's equator. Imagine the Earth's equator extended out to an infinite distance. The equatorial describes the sky as seen from the solar system. Modern star maps almost exclusively use equatorial coordinates.

Eclyptic system
The fundamental plane is the plane of the Earth's orbit, also called the ecliptic plane. There are two versions: the geocentric ecliptic coordinates centred on the Earth, and heliocentric ecliptic coordinates centred on the centre of mass of the solar system.

The geocentric ecliptic system was the principal coordinate system for ancient astronomy and is still useful for computing the apparent motions of the Sun, Moon, and planets.

The heliocentric ecliptic system describes the planets' orbital movement around the Sun, and centres on the barycenter of the solar system. This is very close to the centre of the Sun). The system is mainly used for computing the positions of planets and other solar system bodies, and their orbits.

Galactic system
The galactic coordinate system uses the approximate plane of our galaxy as its fundamental plane. The solar system is still the centre of the coordinate system, and the zero point is defined as the direction towards the galactic centre. 'Galactic latitude' means, roughly, the elevation above the galactic plane. 'Galactic longitude' is the direction relative to the centre of the galaxy.

Supergalactic system
The supergalactic coordinate system is a fundamental plane with a higher than average number of local galaxies in the sky as seen from Earth.

Software
There is standard software which does the calculations:
NOVAS: Naval Observatory Vector Astronomy Software.
IAU Standards of Fundamental Astronomy.

References

Coordinate systems
Astronomy

Celestial coordinate system


Chauncy Dennison Harris (1914 - December 26, 2003) was a pioneer of modern geography. His seminal works in the field of American urban geography ("The Nature of Cities" and "A Functional Classification of Cities in the United States") along with his work on the Soviet Union during and after the Cold War era established him as one of the world's foremost urban geographers. He also made significant contributions to the geographical study of ethnicity, specifically with respect to non-Russian minorities living within the Soviet Union. Harris traveled regularly to the Soviet Union and played a key role in establishing a healthy dialog between Soviet and American scholars.

Life and career
Harris was born in 1914 in Logan, Utah. The son of Academian Franklin S. Harris, he showed an early interest in Geography, declaring to his family at the end of second grade that he was going to become a geographer. He graduated from Brigham Young High School in Provo in 1930.  He received a B.A. from Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1933. The valedictorian of his class, Harris became the first Rhodes Scholar from BYU. The scholarship took him to Oxford where he completed a second B.A. as well as a Master's Degree. He also received an M.A. from the London School of Economics before returning to the U.S. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1940. His dissertation was entitled, "Salt Lake City - a Regional Capital in 1940."

After brief stints at Indiana University and the University of Nebraska, Harris was appointed Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Chicago in 1943. Around this same time he was called into military service with the U.S. Department of State, Office of the Geographer. Later, in 1943–44, he served the country in the Office of Strategic Services.  In Washington he became intrigued by the mystery surrounding the Soviet Union. He started studying Russian and exploring the available cartographic and statistical information about the country. He published his first two works on the Soviet Union in 1945. His early work in this area left him well prepared in the late 1950s when the Soviet Union began opening up to foreigners. By the time of his first visit, he was already a well established and respected expert in the field. Over the course of his career, he made 14 trips to the Soviet Union and played an important role in fostering and promoting collaboration between American and Russian geographers.

In addition to his work on the Soviet Union, Harris made several important contributions to the field of American Urban Geography. In particular, in 1945 he wrote "The Nature of Cities" with Edward Ullman. The paper, published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, described the Multiple nuclei model of urban development, which had prophetic relevance for understanding American cities in the later 20th century. This model gives a suggestion as to the possible land use within a city. It is an alternative model to the Concentric zone model and the Sector model.

During his professional career Harris held a number of important and prestigious positions including dean of the Division of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago (1954-1960). He served on the University of Chicago faculty from 1943 to 1984 and then continued as the Samuel N. Harper Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Geography until his death in 2003.

Awards and honors
 President of the Association of American Geographers (1957)
 President of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (1962)
 Councilor of the American Geographical Society from 1961 to 1974
 Secretary-general and treasurer of the International Geographical Union (1968-1976)
 Vice President of the American Geographical Society from 1969 to 1974
 Longtime member of the editorial board of the American Geographical Society's Geographical Review
 Was a key player in the founding of the American Geographical Society's Soviet Geography
 Co-editor of Soviet Geography for many years
 In 1985 the American Geographical Society awarded him The Cullum Geographical Medal
 In 1987 the Royal Geographical Society awarded him the Victoria Medal

See also
 Geographers on Film

References

External links
 Chronicle from Chicago university
 An appreciation
 Chauncy Harris, 89, Geographer Of a Little-Known Soviet Union
 Chauncy Harris, noted geographer
 Chauncy D. Harris (1914-2003), geographer extraordinaire*.(GEOGRAPHICAL RECORD)(Obituary)
 Guide to the Chauncy D. Harris Papers

American geographers
1914 births
2003 deaths
American Rhodes Scholars
Brigham Young University alumni
University of Chicago alumni
University of Chicago faculty
Recipients of the Cullum Geographical Medal
Alumni of Lincoln College, Oxford
People from Logan, Utah
Presidents of the American Association of Geographers
Urban geographers
Victoria Medal recipients
20th-century geographers

Chauncy Harris


Clones (Erse: Cluain Eois) is a smaa toun in wastern County Monaghan, in the mairch area o Ireland. The area is pairt o the Border, Midlands an Western reegion.

Clones is kent in Ireland as bein the location o a major GAA stadium, St. Tiarnach's Park, wi an estimate capacity o 36,000. This stadium is aften uised for inter-coonty matches in throu the Ulster proveencial championship in Gaelic Fitbaa, an tradeetionally hosts the final. The simmer fitbaa season is syne a soorce o siller for businesses in the toun.

References

Fremmit Airtins

Clones.ie

Touns an veelages in Coonty Monaghan

Clones


Homesteading is a lifestyle of self-sufficiency. It is characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of food, and may also involve the small scale production of textiles, clothing, and craft work for household use or sale. Pursued in different ways around the world—and in different historical eras—homesteading is generally differentiated from rural village or commune living by isolation (either socially or physically) of the homestead. Use of the term in the United States dates back to the Homestead Act (1862) and before. In sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in nations formerly controlled by the British Empire, a homestead is the household compound for a single extended family. In the UK the terms smallholder and croft are rough synonyms of homesteader.

Modern homesteaders often use renewable energy options including solar and wind power. Many also choose to plant and grow heirloom vegetables and to raise heritage livestock. Homesteading is not defined by where someone lives, such as the city or the country, but by the lifestyle choices they make.

As historical governmental policy

Historically, homesteading has been used by governmental entities (engaged in national expansion) to help settle what were previously unsettled areas, especially in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Guided by legal homestead principles, many of these "homestead acts" were instituted in the 19th and 20th centuries and targeted specific areas, with most being discontinued after a set time-frame or goal.

Renewed interest in homesteading was brought about by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's program of Subsistence Homesteading in the 1930s and 1940s.

As a social movement

The attractiveness of back-to-the-land movements dates from the Roman era, and has been noted in Asian poetry and philosophy tracts as well (Agriculturalism). In the 1700s, the philosophy of physiocracy developed in France and by the 1800s and early 1900s the philosophy of Agrarianism had taken hold in many places around the world. The ideas of modern homesteading proponents, such as Ralph Borsodi, gained in popularity in the 1960s in the United States. Self-sufficiency movements in the 1990s and 2000s began to apply the concept to urban and suburban settings, known as urban homesteading. According to author John Seymour, "urban homesteading" incorporates small-scale sustainable agriculture and homemaking.

As economic choice

In homesteading, social and government support systems are frequently eschewed in favor of self-reliance and relative deprivation in order to maximize independence and self-determination. The degree of independence occurs along a spectrum, with many homesteaders creating foodstuffs or crafts to appeal to high-end niche markets in order to meet financial needs. Other homesteaders come to the lifestyle following successful careers which provide the funding for land, housing, taxes, and specialized equipment such as solar panels, farm equipment, and electric generators.

Modern government regulation—in the form of property taxes, building codes, food safety codes, zoning regulations, minimum wage and social security for occasional labor, and town council restrictions on landscaping and animal keeping—can increase the marginal cost of home production of food in areas affected by these restrictions. Careful choice of homesteading location is essential for economic success.

Potential benefits of homesteading include a satisfying standard of living and a healthier, more rewarding lifestyle than more conventional patterns of living.

See also

 Permaculture
 Seasteading

Notes

Further reading
 Cannon, Brian Q., "Homesteading Remembered: A Sesquicentennial Perspective," Agricultural History, 87 (Winter 2013), 1–29.

External links

 Mid-America Homesteading Conference
 State of Alaska Land Offerings and Remote Recreation Cabins Staking Program
 Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture – Homesteading

Simple living
Self-sustainability
Western (genre) staples and terminology

Homesteading


The western long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus bruijni) is one of the echidnas which live in New Guinea. Fossils of this species have also been found in Australia. It is one of the four living echidnas, three of which are species of Zaglossus.

This echidna lives from 1300m to 4000m above sea level. It lives in alpine meadow and humid forests in the mountains. Unlike the short-beaked echidna which eats ants and termites, the long-beaked species eats earthworms. It is also larger that the short-beaked species. It can be told apart from the other Zaglossus species by the number of claws on the front and back feet. It has three (rarely four) claws.

It is an endangered species. Its population has been reduced by habitat loss and hunting. The long-beaked Echidna is good to eat. Although hunting the species has been banned by the Indonesian and Papua New Guinea governments, traditional hunting is permitted.

In February 2006, an expedition led by Conservation International found a population of them in what they described as a "lost world" of wildlife in the Foja Mountains of Papua Province, Indonesia.

The echidnas and Platypus are monotremes, the only mammals to lay eggs.

References

 Augee M and Gooden B. 1993. Echidnas of Australia and New Guinea. Australian National History Press
 Flannery T.F. and Groves C.P. 1998 A revision of the genus Zaglossus (Monotremata, Tachyglossidae), with description of new species and subspecies. Mammalia, 62(3): 367-396

Monotremes
Mammals of Oceania

Western long-beaked echidna


Göppingen (, Gebbeng, or Geppenge) is a town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. In 2005, there were 57,771 people living there. It is at the bottom of the  high "Kaiserberg", or "Emperors' Mountain".

History
The first settlement at Göppingen was in the Hallstatt period, 800-480 BC. A Roman settlement from about 250 BC was found near the present day Oberhofen Church. An Alemannic prince by the name of "Geppo", is believed to have started the town after the sometime in the 3rd or 4th century. The town is named after him.

A fire on August 25, 1782 destroyed most of the town, but it was immediately rebuilt. During the 1800s, many factories were built in the area. Companies such as Märklin and Schuler are still based in the town.

Cooke Barracks
In 1930, an air field was built north of Göppingen. This was taken over by the Luftwaffe in 1935 and was called the Fliegerhorst Kaserne (barracks). From 1945 to 1949, displaced persons and refugees were housed in the buildings. In 1949, it was renamed Cooke Barracks, after Charles H. Cooke, Jr., who been killed in action and given the Silver Star and Soldier's Medal for bravery.

In late 1950, the 7th Army had been reformed in Stuttgart and United States Army began to be stationed at Cooke Barracks. The barracks were made bigger for the 28th Infantry Division headquarters. The 28th Infantry was renamed as the 9th Infantry Division (United States) in 1954 and was replaced by the 8th Infantry Division in 1956. They were then replaced by the 4th Armored Division in 1957, which was renamed as the 1st Armored Division in 1971 and moved to Hindenburg Kaserne in Ansbach in 1972. The 1st Infantry Division moved from Augsburg in 1972 until 1991. There was also two Family Housing-Blocks in Donzdorf at the Göppingen (district). In July 2017, they was hold the remembering cooke barracks festival, because the inhabitants in göppingen district loved and liked the US Army who was once stationed in Goppingen.

Cooke Barracks were given back to the German government in 1992. The barracks were again used to house refugees for some time, then returned to civilian use.

Sport
Frisch Auf! Göppingen currently plays in the German first handball-division (Handball-Bundesliga).

References

Other websites

 Official website
 for people who served at Cooke Barracks

Göppingen


James Fee (7 December 1949 — 4 September 2006) was an American photographer known for his images of abandoned factories and lonesome highways.

Life
Fee was born in Knoxville, Iowa. After graduating from high school he drove from Iowa to California and settled in San Francisco. While in San Francisco, he married Sharon Kitzman. Fee also lived in New York City and Los Angeles, California.

Much of Fee's earlier personal work was made using a Graflex Norita 66 with a combination of extension tubes, tele-extenders and mid-century telephoto lenses. The camera and gear was stolen in the early 1990s during the creation of his "Photographs of Americana" series. Fee found it difficult to replace the camera and began to experiment using the Russian made Kieve 90 with lens embellishments. Fee appreciated the irony of using the Russian camera to complete the series.

Fee's approach to photography led museum curators to give his exhibitions such titles as "American Noir" and "The Weight of Time". His photographs are permanently housed in the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts, the William Benton Museum of Art, and the Getty Museum. Fee once collaborated with sculptor George Herms, who shared his attraction to the Beat Generation.

During his later career, Fee taught photography at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California from 1994–2003. In 1993 he taught at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. Fee photographed images that he thought represented United States cultural icons in decline, such as crumbling drive-in movie theaters and rusting, abandoned cars.

Peleliu Project
Fee's father Russell James Fee served in the U.S. Navy as a medical corpsman attached to the Marine Corps during World War II. During a harrowing battle on Peleliu Island in 1944, he photographed his fellow sailors and Marines and the aftermath of battles. Russell Fee died in 1972.

In 1998, James Fee traveled to Peleliu Island and photographed remnants of the World War II battles that still remained on the island, such as rusted and overgrown tanks, roads, and the tip of a sunken Japanese fighter plane. He attempted to photograph the same scenes recorded by his father more than 50 years earlier.

In an exhibit he called the "Peleliu Project" Fee artistically combined his own photographs with images his father had taken. The exhibit traveled the US and was exhibited at Craig Krull Gallery Santa Monica in 2001 and then housed in the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts permanently.

Personal life
James Fee was survived by his wife of 30 years, Elena Stoyanov (NJ), and Fee's son from his first marriage, Illya Eric Isaac Fee (CA).

Fee died in Beverly Hills, California. His death was attributed to hepatitis C and liver cancer. Illya Fee was at his father's bedside at the time of Fee's death.

References
 Rourke, Mary. (2006, September 9). James Fee, 56; His Bleak Photos Depicted U.S. Culture in Decline. The Los Angeles Times
 Levinson, William and Carol McCusker. (2003) James Fee; The Peleliu Project.

External links
 James Fee interview at Photographers Speak
 James Fee at Craig Krull Gallery

1949 births
2006 deaths
20th-century American photographers
Deaths from liver cancer
People from Knoxville, Iowa
People from Greater Los Angeles
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from hepatitis
Infectious disease deaths in California

James Fee


(IRA) against the British soldiers (known as the Black and Tans because of the colour of their uniform) who were trying to keep Ireland under British control.

The war was fought between 1919 and June 1921. The fighting stopped while a peace treaty was worked out.

It began because of the 1916 Easter Rising. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB)  men fought the British soldiers because they wanted Ireland to be its own country and wanted Britain to move its army out of Ireland.

6 IRB members were killed including 3 who were executed. These executions angered the Irish people and caused many people to become Republicans. Republicans lived mostly in the south of Ireland. Ulster was considered to be the most unionist part of Ireland. This was caused by the Ulster Plantations. The Unionists wanted to stay under control of the British Government.

In 1917 the IRB was renamed the IRA and in 1919, the fighting started. By the end of 1919, the IRA had beaten the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and Ireland had no police forces. In London, the British government began to debate about Ireland's rule. The war waged on until 1921 when Irish Sinn Féin leaders and British MPs made a peace treaty (called the Anglo-Irish Treaty). This treaty created the Irish Free State this meant that Ireland was given Dominion Status. The treaty gave all the same rights to the Irish government as that of the Canadian or Australian government.

It handed power of 26 of the 32 counties to the Irish Government. The 6 counties that were kept by the British Government were all in Ulster and formed Northern Ireland.

Related pages
 History of Ireland
Irish Republican Army

20th century in Ireland
Wars involving the United Kingdom
Irish War of Independence
Rebellions in Europe
20th-century rebellions
1919 in the United Kingdom
1920 in the United Kingdom
1921 in the United Kingdom

Irish War of Independence


The Printer Command Language (often shortened to PCL) is a page description language, developed by Hewlett-Packard. As of 2011, most modern printers understand PCL. Its complexity is between pure ASCII text, such as in ESC-P, and for example Postscript. There are different versions of the language. Common versions:
PCL3, PCL3+: Can use raster description of fonts, grayscale, 300 dpi output maximum
PCL3c,PCL3c+: Supports color, in addition to PCL3/PCL3+
PCL3GUI: Allows compression of raster images, is not compatible with other PCL standards
PCL4: Macros, bigger bitmaps, introduction of graphics
PCL5: Supports graphics in HPGL/2, fonts can be resized
PCL5e: Supports bidirectional communication with the printer, supports the windows fonts
PCL5c: Color version of PCL5e, supports different color palettes, and the option to select different colors
PCL XL later renamed to PCL6 enhanced: Allows compression to increase throughput. This is a stack-based object oriented programming language similar to Postscript
PCL 6 standard: Either PCL5e or PCL5c, for backwards compatibility
Jet Ready: Lowcost version of PCL XL. Only supports JFIF images. Allows to build printers without raster image processor, and without a lot of memory. The Rasterization is done in the computer, the printer only "prints images".

Except where stated, PCL versions are downwards compatible. A printer that supports PCL6 can also be programmed using PCL3, for example.

PCL is a very efficient way of coding. For this reason, certain manufacturers build high-volume printers that support different versions of PCL. Such printers can do more than 1000 pages per minute.

Computing

Printer Command Language


Natural Bridge State Resort Park is a Kentucky state park located in Powell and Wolfe Counties along the Middle Fork of the Red River, adjacent to the Red River Gorge Geologic Area and surrounded by the Daniel Boone National Forest. Its namesake natural bridge is the centerpiece of the park.  The natural sandstone arch spans  and is  high. The natural process of weathering formed the arch over millions of years.  The park is approximately  of which approximately  is dedicated by the Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves as a nature preserve. In 1981 this land was dedicated into the nature preserves system to protect the ecological communities and rare species habitat.  The first federally endangered Virginia big eared bats, Corynorhinus townsendii virginianus, recorded in Kentucky were found at Natural Bridge State Resort Park in the 1950s.

History and trails
The park was founded as a private tourist attraction in 1895 by the Lexington and Eastern Railroad.  In 1910, Louisville and Nashville Railroad acquired the land when it purchased the Lexington and Eastern Railroad. In 1926, L&N's President Wible L. Mapother turned over its approximately 137 acres to the Kentucky State Park Commission, making the Park one of Kentucky's original four state parks when that system was established the same year. There are over  of trails over uneven terrain from moderate to strenuous difficulty, including trails to White's Branch Arch, Henson's Cave Arch, and other scenic areas. Some of the most famous sites are the arch itself, "Lovers Leap", and "Fat Man's Squeeze". The park's  "Original Trail" to the natural bridge dates from the 1890s. Other trails include the  Sand Gap Trail and the  Balanced Rock Trail. Five miles (8 km) of the  Sheltowee Trace National Recreation Trail run through the park, including the Whittleton Trail which connects the park to the Red River Gorge Geologic Area. Activities such as hiking off-trails, disturbing wildlife, or collecting plants are not legal in any Kentucky State Park, and pets are not allowed on most trails at Natural Bridge State Park. "Fat Man's Squeeze", a narrow passage in the rock formation, leads to the bottom of the arch. In addition to these trails, a paid ski lift attraction is available to take people to the top of the Natural Bridge.

Natural Bridge has several unique sandstone rock formations, including the Balanced Rock. This is a huge block of sandstone balanced on the edge of a cliff near the Natural Bridge. The "Balanced Rock", is located on Trail #2, not far above Hemlock Lodge.  In the early days of the Park, it was called the Sphinx because, when viewed from the correct angle, it crudely resembles the Sphinx in Egypt.  Although it is now called the Balanced Rock, it is in fact a pedestal rock - a single piece of stone that has weathered in such a fashion that its midsection is narrower than its cap or its base.  This formation is one of the biggest and most perfectly formed examples of a pedestal rock east of the Rocky Mountains.

Annual events

Natural Bridge State Park is a member of the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics, and offers guided backpacking trips and natural history educational programs.  Annual events open to the public include Herpetology Weekend each May, Natural Arches Weekend each February, and the Kentucky Native Plant Society's Wildflower Weekend each April.

The Kentucky Natives Society's Wildflower Weekend in April consists of Kentucky plants and how they are essential to the well-being of our natural ecosystems commonwealth. " We incorporate research and support efforts to identify and protect endangered, threatened, and rare native plant species," says KNPS.ORG.

The State Park is also famous for hosting traditional Appalachian square dances. The traditional Appalachian style dances are held on Friday and Saturday evenings throughout the warm starlit Ky summers on the open-air dance floor.  The dance draws hundreds of participants and spectators, showcasing dance groups and singer/performer talents from all over.

Gallery

See also

 Slade, Kentucky—unincorporated community within the boundaries of the park

References

External links
Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves
Natural Bridge State Resort Park at Kentucky State Parks
Natural Bridge State Resort Park at American Byways
Leave No Trace

State parks of Kentucky
Natural arches of Kentucky
Protected areas of Powell County, Kentucky
Protected areas established in 1926
Protected areas of Wolfe County, Kentucky
Daniel Boone National Forest
Nature centers in Kentucky
Landforms of Wolfe County, Kentucky
Landforms of Powell County, Kentucky
1926 establishments in Kentucky

Natural Bridge State Resort Park


The Shimba Hills National Reserve is a small National Reserve in the former Coast Province of Kenya, 33 km from Mombasa and 15 km from the coast. The reserve is an area of coastal rainforest, woodland and grassland. It is an important area for plant biodiversity – over 50% of the 159 rare plants in Kenya are found in the Shimba Hills, including some endangered species of cycad and orchids. It is also a nationally important site for birds and butterflies.

There are estimated to be approximately 700 elephants in the reserve. This population is unsustainably high – it causes significant damage to vegetation, threatening the endangered plant life. Conflict between humans and elephants has also reached critical levels. North of the reserve, the Mwaluganje Elephant Sanctuary has been established to provide a route for elephants to leave the park. The remainder of the park boundary is fenced to prevent the elephants from invading farmland. The Kenya Wildlife Service has plans to relocate up to 400 elephants from Shimba to Tsavo East National Park in 2005.

Shimba Hills contains Kenya's only population of sable antelope. There are about 100 in the park.

References

External links

 Kenya Wildlife Service – Shimba Hills National Reserve

Wildlife sanctuaries of Kenya
Kwale County
Important Bird Areas of Kenya
Protected areas of Kenya
Protected areas established in 1968
1968 establishments in Kenya
Northern Zanzibar–Inhambane coastal forest mosaic

Shimba Hills National Reserve


Superfluidity is the characteristic property of a fluid with zero viscosity which therefore flows without any loss of kinetic energy. When stirred, a superfluid forms vortices that continue to rotate indefinitely. Superfluidity occurs in two isotopes of helium (helium-3 and helium-4) when they are liquefied by cooling to cryogenic temperatures. It is also a property of various other exotic states of matter theorized to exist in astrophysics, high-energy physics, and theories of quantum gravity. The theory of superfluidity was developed by Soviet theoretical physicists Lev Landau and Isaak Khalatnikov.

Superfluidity often co-occurs with Bose–Einstein condensation, but neither phenomenon is directly related to the other; not all Bose–Einstein condensates can be regarded as superfluids, and not all superfluids are Bose–Einstein condensates.

Superfluidity of liquid helium

Superfluidity was discovered in helium-4 by Pyotr Kapitsa and independently by John F. Allen and Don Misener in 1937. Onnes possibly observed the superfluid phase transition on August 2 1911, the same day that he observed superconductivity in mercury. It has since been described through phenomenology and microscopic theories.

In liquid helium-4, the superfluidity occurs at far higher temperatures than it does in helium-3. Each atom of helium-4 is a boson particle, by virtue of its integer spin. A helium-3 atom is a fermion particle; it can form bosons only by pairing with another particle like itself at much lower temperatures. The discovery of superfluidity in helium-3 was the basis for the award of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics. This process is similar to the electron pairing in superconductivity.

Ultracold atomic gases
Superfluidity in an ultracold fermionic gas was experimentally proven by Wolfgang Ketterle and his team who observed quantum vortices in lithium-6 at a temperature of 50 nK at MIT in April 2005.  Such vortices had previously been observed in an ultracold bosonic gas using rubidium-87 in 2000, and more recently in two-dimensional gases. As early as 1999, Lene Hau created such a condensate using sodium atoms for the purpose of slowing light, and later stopping it completely.  Her team subsequently used this system of compressed light to generate the superfluid analogue of shock waves and tornadoes:

Superfluids in astrophysics
The idea that superfluidity exists inside neutron stars was first proposed by Arkady Migdal. By analogy with electrons inside superconductors forming Cooper pairs because of electron-lattice interaction, it is expected that nucleons in a neutron star at sufficiently high density and low temperature can also form Cooper pairs because of the long-range attractive nuclear force and lead to superfluidity and superconductivity.

In high-energy physics and quantum gravity

Superfluid vacuum theory (SVT) is an approach in theoretical physics and quantum mechanics where the physical vacuum is viewed as superfluid.

The ultimate goal of the approach is to develop scientific models that unify quantum mechanics (describing three of the four known fundamental interactions) with gravity. This makes SVT a candidate for the theory of quantum gravity and an extension of the Standard Model.

It is hoped that development of such theory would unify into a single consistent model of all fundamental interactions,
and to describe all known interactions and elementary particles as different manifestations of the same entity, superfluid vacuum.

On the macro-scale a larger similar phenomenon has been suggested as happening in the murmurations of starlings. The rapidity of change in flight patterns mimics the phase change leading to superfluidity in some liquid states.

Light behaves like a superfluid in various applications such as Poisson's Spot. As the liquid helium shown above, light will travel along the surface of an obstacle before continuing along its trajectory. Since light is not affected by local gravity its "level" becomes its own trajectory and velocity. Another example is how a beam of light travels through the hole of an aperture and along its backside before diffraction.

See also
 Boojum (superfluidity)
 Condensed matter physics
 Macroscopic quantum phenomena
 Quantum hydrodynamics
 Slow light
 Superconductivity
 Supersolid

References

Further reading

 Svistunov, B. V., Babaev E. S., Prokof'ev N. V. Superfluid States of Matter

External links

 Video: Demonstration of superfluid helium (Alfred Leitner, 1963, 38 min.)
 Superfluidity seen in a 2d fermi gas recent 2021 observation relevant for Cuprate superconductors

Superfluidity

Physical phenomena
Fluid dynamics
Liquid helium
Phases of matter
Emerging technologies
Lev Landau

Superfluidity


Vero Copner Wynne-Edwards, CBE, FRS, FRSE (4 July 1906 – 5 January 1997) was an English zoologist. He was best known for his advocacy of group selection, the theory that natural selection acts at the level of the group.

Life
He was born in Leeds on 4 July 1906 the son of Rev Canon John Rosindale Wynne-Edwards and his wife, Lilian Agnes Streatfield. He attended Rugby School then studied Zoology at Oxford University graduating MA. In 1929 he took a post at McGill University in Canada, lecturing in zoology. This was interrupted by the Second World War during which he served in the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve. After the war Aberdeen University made him the Regius Professor in Natural History and he continued this until retiral in 1974.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1950. His proposers were Cyril Edward Lucas, Sir Maurice Yonge, Charles W Parsons and Dr John Berry. He won the Society's Neill Prize for the period 1973–75. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1974 and was given an honorary doctorate (LLD) by Aberdeen University.

He remained in the area after retiral and died in Banchory on 5 January 1997.

Advocacy of group selection

Wynne-Edwards was best known for espousing a form of group selection that operates at the level of the species, most notably in his 1962 book, Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behaviour.  In it, he argued that many behaviors evolved for the good of the species as a whole, rather than at a lower level of organization. For example, he argued that species have adaptive population-regulatory mechanisms. His arguments were vigorously criticized by George C. Williams in his Adaptation and Natural Selection, a debate summarized by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. David Sloan Wilson and E. O. Wilson called Wynne-Edwards' theory "naive group selection".

Among the mechanisms that Wynne-Edwards proposed was population regulation, based on the communication of population density by what he called epideictic displays, in which individuals advertised their genitals. If a population was becoming too dense, such displays would result in reduced breeding across the population, contrary to Darwinian natural selection but in line with Wynne-Edwards's group selection. The mechanism has never been demonstrated unequivocally.

Fellow of the Royal Society
In 1970 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His candidature citation read

"Wynne-Edwards is noted for his many contributions to ecology. His early work was on social and other forms of rhythmic behaviour in birds. Later work on North Atlantic birds disclosed the existence of inshore, offshore and pelagic zones, each with a characteristic avian fauna. These categories have been found to apply generally to all oceans, and have been adopted as standard by later authors. His most important work has been on population dynamics in relation to social behaviour. It provides an hypothesis of homeostatic control of population density in animals at an optimum level, with a primary and universal function of sociality. Wynne-Edwards directs two research teams devoted to this work. He has also published papers on the animals and plants of the Arctic."

Family
He married Jeannie Morris in 1929.

Their son Hugh Wynne-Edwards is a professor of geology, and his granddaughter Katherine Wynne-Edwards is a professor of biology at the University of Calgary.

Books
 Wynne-Edwards, V.C. 1962. Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behavior. Oliver & Boyd, London.

References

Bibliography

Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966) Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.
Group Selection(1971) Aldine·Atherton, Chicago, IL.

Further reading

External links
 http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v116n03/p0815-p0816.pdf
 https://web.archive.org/web/20050527025636/http://people.bu.edu/cschneid/BI504/PowerPoint/Week5_2.pdf
 Vero Wynne-Edwards fonds at Queen's University Archives
 http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/fellowship/obits/obits_alpha/wynne-edwards_vero.pdf
 http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/chronob/WYNN1906.htm
 https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/08/world/vero-wynne-edwards-90-evolution-theorist.html
 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3793/is_199907/ai_n8874242/
 http://www.hbi.ucalgary.ca/profiles/dr-katherine-e-wynne-edwards

1906 births
1997 deaths
Military personnel from Leeds
Royal Canadian Navy personnel of World War II
Royal Canadian Navy personnel
Scientists from Leeds
People educated at Rugby School
Alumni of New College, Oxford
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
English biologists
Fellows of the Royal Society
Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Academics of the University of Aberdeen
Academics of the University of Bristol
Academic staff of McGill University
20th-century biologists

V. C. Wynne-Edwards


Apex Records was a Canadian record label owned by the Compo Company which lasted as late as 1980.

Compo established the Apex label in July 1921 in Toronto. It released American recordings from Okeh Records and Gennett Records, among others. It also released recordings by Canadian artists for both the Anglophone and Francophone communities.

After Compo began a distribution arrangement with Decca Records (USA) in 1935, the Apex name was dropped. Apex was revived in 1942 to market Canadian recordings. American Decca bought Compo in 1951. In 1952, Apex resumed issuing American recordings from the various independent American record companies which were established after World War II. Compo was renamed MCA Records (Canada) in 1970, retaining the Apex label for Francophone recordings for a few years before phasing out the label. MCA Canada formally abandoned the trademark in 1984.

Discography of 45 rpm singles (incomplete)

Listed in alphabetical order by artist's first name:

References

External links
 Apex singles 76000 series
 Compo Company article in The Canadian Encyclopedia
 Compo entry in the History of Recorded Sound in Canada
 Compo entry from Collections Canada
 Entry at discogs.com

Defunct record labels of Canada
Record labels established in 1921
Record labels disestablished in 1935
Record labels established in 1942
Record labels disestablished in 1980
Re-established companies
Canadian companies established in 1921
Companies based in Toronto
1980 disestablishments in Canada

Apex Records


Joseph Martin Kraus (20 June 1756 – 15 December 1792), was a German-Swedish composer in the Classical era who was born in Miltenberg am Main, Germany. He moved to Sweden at age 21, and died at the age of 36 in Stockholm. He has been referred to as "the Swedish Mozart", and had a life span very similar to Mozart's.

Life

Childhood
Kraus was born in the South German town of Miltenberg in Lower Franconia, the son of Joseph Bernhard Kraus, a county clerk in the Archbishopric of Mainz, and Anna Dorothea née Schmidt. His father's family, originally from Augsburg, had a small restaurant in Weilbach near Amorbach, while his mother was a daughter of the master-builder at Miltenberg Johann Martin Schmidt. They had 14 children, of whom seven died in childhood; Marianne Kraus was a sister of Joseph's.

After a short stay in Osterburken, the Kraus family moved in 1761 to Buchen (in the Odenwald), where Joseph Bernhard Kraus found a position as a clerk. Joseph Martin Kraus began his formal education there. His first music teachers were rector Georg Pfister (1730–1807) and cantor Bernhard Franz Wendler (1702–1782), who gave him mainly piano and violin lessons. Kraus showed his musical talent at an early age. When he was 12, he was enrolled in the Jesuit Gymnasium and Music Seminar at Mannheim, where he studied German and Latin literature and music. There he received a rigorous musical training, especially in violin technique, and philological education from P. Alexander Keck (1724–1804) and P. Anton Klein (1748–1810).

Studies
Kraus's parents wished him to matriculate as a student of law at the University of Mainz in 1773. However, he was not satisfied with the situation at that university, and even published a satire about it. After only one year, he applied to the University of Erfurt, where he could study music too. Both Catholic and Protestant (Lutheran) music was flourishing in Erfurt, with a rich musical tradition. Kraus soon neglected his law studies and focused fully on music and literature.

A defamation trial against his father forced him to interrupt his studies for one year and to move back to Buchen. He spent his time there writing his three-act tragedy Tolon and several musical works for the town church of St. Oswald, including a Te Deum in D major and the motet Fracto Demum Sacramento, also in D major. After this one-year break, he continued his studies of law in Göttingen. Although the Göttinger Hainbund (the German poet group that flourished in 1772-74) no longer existed, Kraus found himself very much attracted to the ideas of this group of young poets who were almost fanatically devoted to Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. In this period Kraus composed a recently rediscovered book of 19 poems titled Versuch von Schäfersgedichten. He became increasingly involved with the Sturm und Drang movement, which influenced both his writing and his music.

In 1775, at the age of nineteen, Kraus wrote his Requiem, one of his earliest compositions. There is no way to know for sure whether young Kraus was induced to compose this genre of church music for personal reasons, or whether his choice may have been influenced by his attraction to Sturm und Drang. The work is full of dramatic force and original, bold ideas.

The Requiem was followed by two oratorios: Der Tod Jesu and Die Geburt Jesu (lost), and the musical treatise Etwas von und über Musik: fürs Jahr 1777 (Something about Music: for the year 1777; Frankfurt am Main 1778).

The oratorio Der Tod Jesu differs from the oratorios of many other composers in that Kraus wrote both the music and the text. As a librettist, Kraus showed a series of scenes that covered the full spectrum of human emotions, from sorrow and fear to joy. The work corresponds fully to a rhetorical question already raised in Kraus's treatise Etwas von und über Musik:

"Should not church music be mostly for the heart?"
("Soll die Musik in den Kirchen nicht am meisten fürs Herz sein?")

During his stay in Göttingen, Kraus had become friendly with a Swedish fellow student, , who persuaded him to accompany him to Stockholm to apply for a position at the court of King Gustav III.

At the Swedish court
Kraus moved to Stockholm in 1778, when he was not yet twenty-two. His first years there were not easy, and more than once he considered going back home. King Gustav's love for the fine arts had quickly become known in the rest of Europe and attracted musicians from many countries. It took Kraus three bitter years, often spent in extreme poverty, before the king noticed him. His opera Azire was rejected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, but the Academy decided to give him a second chance. Gustav III himself drafted the opera libretto Proserpin, which the poet Johan Henric Kellgren versified. Kraus's music to this libretto was successfully premiered at Ulriksdal Palace on 6 June 1781, before the king and the royal household. Kraus was appointed vice-Kapellmeister of the Royal Swedish Opera and director of the Royal Academy of Music.

It was the long-awaited breakthrough. Dizzy with the success, Kraus wrote to his parents:

"Immediately after the music ended, the king talked to me for more than a quarter of an hour ... it had simply given him so much satisfaction. Yesterday I was engaged by him. Of course I was not granted any great title, but quite simply that of Kapellmeister. What is worth much more to me than 600 guilders is the favour I have been granted, which is that I am to undertake a journey to Germany, France and Italy at the King's expense."

Grand Tour
Gustav III sent Kraus on a Grand Tour of Europe that lasted five years, to learn all he could about Theater abroad. On this trip, Kraus met Christoph Willibald Gluck, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, Padre Martini, and Joseph Haydn, for whom he wrote a symphony to play at Esterháza; it was first published under Haydn's name in Paris. Kraus's Symphonies in E minor, VB 141, and F major, VB 145, were first published in Paris in 1787, under the name of Giuseppe Cambini, a very popular composer at the time. During this time, Kraus became a member of the same masonic lodge as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

During his journey, Kraus also wrote his famous flute quintet in D Major, VB 188, that broke with all the erstwhile conventions that governed such pieces. The outer and inner form of that work were groundbreaking comparing with everything previously composed at the time, with the astoundingly long first movement of 306 bars.

After Vienna, his journey also took him throughout Italy, France, and England, where he witnessed the Handel Centenary celebrations at Westminster Abbey in 1785. While in Paris, he experienced difficulty with cabals back in Stockholm that sought to prevent his return, but their resolution in 1786 made it possible for him to become the leading figure in Gustavian musical life.

Back to Sweden
When Kraus returned in 1787, he was appointed as director of curriculum at the Royal Academy of Music, and the next year he succeeded Francesco Uttini as Kapellmästare, eventually attaining a reputation as an innovative conductor, progressive pedagogue, and multi-talented composer. He also became a member of the literary circle that gathered round the Architect Erik Palmstedt (who was commissioned by King Gustav III to build the first royal opera house), a group that discussed intellectual and cultural life in the Swedish capital.

For the convening of the Riksdag of the Estates in 1789, Gustav III wanted to persuade the parliament to accede to his ongoing war with Russia, where he was opposed by the nobility but supported by the burghers and the peasantry. To further his aims, Gustav III intended to secure parliamentary approval of the Act of Union and Security that would give him broad powers over the administration of the government. The king asked Kraus to write Riksdagsmusiken for the opening ceremonies in St Nicolai Church on 9 March 1789. The music consists of a march based on the March of the Priests from Mozart's Idomeneo, and a symphony (Sinfonia per la chiesa). The legislature approved the king's measures.

Kraus wrote an overture, a march and interludes for the staging of Voltaire's Olympie in January 1792. Although he was considered as a composer of stage music, his greatest work, Aeneas i Cartago, remained unperformed during his lifetime. 16 March 1792, Gustav III attended a masked ball at the opera, where he was assassinated. (This inspired the plots of operas by several composers, notably Verdi's Un ballo in maschera premiered in 1859.) The death of Gustav III caused considerable turmoil in the cultural establishment that the monarch had nurtured. Kraus wrote a funeral cantata and the Symphonie funèbre, which were played at the burial ceremony on April 13 and May 14.

Kraus's own health deteriorated shortly thereafter, and he died in December 1792 from tuberculosis. He was buried outside Stockholm at Tivoli following a ceremony where his coffin was carried across the ice of the Brunnsviken by torchlight. His tomb (c. 1833) bears the inscription: Här det jordiska af Kraus, det himmelska lefver i hans toner, which translates to: Here the earthly of Kraus; the heavenly lives in his music

Musical output

Works
Bertil H. van Boer divides Kraus's sacred music into two periods. The first, from 1768 to 1777, comprises Kraus's music written as a Roman Catholic for Catholic services. For the second, from 1778 to 1790, Kraus was still Catholic, but wrote music for Lutheran services. Aside from short hymns and chorales, there was not much use for sacred music in Sweden at that time. There was also an ongoing debate regarding the role music should play in the church, and Kraus participated by writing three articles on the subject in the Stockholms Posten.

Two different catalogues exist of Kraus's music, one by Karl Schreiber, Verzeichnis der Musikalischen Werke von Jos. Kraus's, which gives each composition an A number, and one by Bertil van Boer's Die Werke von Joseph Martin Kraus: Systematisch-thematisches Werkverzeichnis, which gives each composition a VB number, with renumberings in the 2nd edition (1998). See the list of compositions by Joseph Martin Kraus.

Bertil van Boer edited modern editions for Artaria Editions, recorded on four volumes of the Naxos Records complete set of Kraus symphonies, and also wrote the programme notes for those discs as well as the article on Kraus in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Volume 1 won the Cannes Classical Award in 1999, while Volume 2 contains world première recordings of three of Kraus's symphonies. The orchestra Concerto Köln won several prizes for its recordings on period instruments of the complete symphonies of Joseph Martin Kraus.

Musical style

Kraus's music is characterized by sudden dramatic contrasts in register, character, and most striking of all, harmony. His contrapuntal abilities were first-rate, but his motivic development does not seem as advanced as either Mozart's or Haydn's. Compared to other contemporaries, his lyrical gifts are apparent.

Kraus's symphonies
Many of Kraus's symphonies have been lost, or attributed to other composers. Of those definitely of Kraus's authorship, only about a dozen remain. Most of Kraus's extant symphonies are in three movements, without a minuet. Most are scored for two horns and strings, many include two flutes and two oboes, while the later ones also include two bassoons and two additional horns. The musicologist Bertil van Boer identifies Kraus's Symphony in C-sharp minor as "one of only two symphonies in this key written during the eighteenth century." It was later reworked in a more 'manageable' key as Symphony in C minor, VB 142.

It is still disputed whether the symphony dedicated to Haydn was the Symphony in D major VB 143 or the Symphony in C minor VB 142. The minor key and the mood of Symphony VB 142 seem to be reminiscent of Haydn's Sturm und Drang period around 1770, comparable with his earlier minor-key works, although based on the first measures of Gluck's overture to Iphigénie en Aulide. In any case, Haydn had a very high opinion of the work. Many years after Kraus's death, Haydn remarked to a common friend, Swedish diplomat Fredrik Samuel Silverstolpe:

"The symphony he wrote here in Vienna especially for me will be regarded as a masterpiece for centuries to come; believe me, there are few people who can compose something like that."

Kraus viola concerti
Kraus wrote two viola concerti that were lost or attributed to other composers in his lifetime. The C major Concerto was attributed to Roman Hoffstetter, but both works have been found to be Kraus's compositions and have been recorded professionally by David Aaron Carpenter in 2012.

Chamber music

Kraus's chamber music includes quartets, solo sonatas, and sonatas for violin and piano.

See also
Johan Helmich Roman
Music of Sweden
List of Swedes in music
Anno 1790 (Swedish 2011 television series set in Stockholm in 1790-92)

References

External links

 Internationale Joseph-Martin-Kraus-Gesellschaft (International Joseph Martin Kraus Society)
Jupiter in the Age of Enlightenment, a Kraus biography with notes on the Sinfonia Buffa, by Ron Drummond

 Brief biography of Joseph Martin Kraus on site devoted to Michael Haydn (brother of Joseph Haydn)
 Homepage of the town of Buchen im Odenwald
 MozartForum, a site exploring the world of classical-era music (1770–1827)
 Editions by Joseph Martin Kraus at Artaria Editions
 Brief biography and MP3s on eClassical.com site (commercial)
 Brief biography on site of Mozart - Linley - Kraus 250th Anniversary Festival

1756 births
1792 deaths
18th-century classical composers
18th-century German people
18th-century Swedish people
German Classical-period composers
People from Miltenberg
Composers for piano
Swedish classical composers
German male classical composers
Swedish people of German descent
University of Erfurt alumni
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz alumni
18th-century German composers
18th-century male musicians
String quartet composers

Joseph Martin Kraus


The Minolta DiMAGE A1 is a 5 megapixel bridge digital camera with electronic viewfinder manufactured by Minolta. It was introduced in July 2003, replacing the Minolta Dimage 7 series.  It was the first Minolta product to incorporate the Anti-Shake system, a built-in image stabilization system.

Unlike the DiMAGE 7-series cameras which use four AA batteries or an external battery pack connection, the DiMAGE A1 uses a newly introduced battery cell designated Minolta NP-400. A key feature of it is a long battery life. (The NP-400 is also used with the final Konica Minolta DSLRs, the Dynax 7D/5D).

This was the final Minolta-badged bridge camera product before the Konica Minolta merger. The DiMAGE A1 was succeeded by the DiMAGE A2 in March 2004 (as the first Konica Minolta-badged product), with an 8-megapixel CCD sensor.

References

External links

A1
Cameras introduced in 2003

Minolta Dimage A1


Elstree and Borehamwood is a civil parish in the Hertsmere district, in Hertfordshire, England. Located approximately  northwest of central London and adjacent to the Greater London boundary, it is an urbanised parish with suburban residential development, some open land and light industry. Elstree and Borehamwood is a recent renaming of the ancient parish of Elstree, covering the settlements of Elstree and Borehamwood. Formed in 1894 as the Elstree Parish Council, the local council is Elstree and Borehamwood Town Council. One of the most populous civil parishes in England, at the 2011 census it had a population of 37,065.

History
Elstree was an ancient parish in the Cashio Hundred of Hertfordshire. In 1894 it became part of the Barnet Rural District and the Elstree Parish Council was formed. Barnet Rural District became Elstree Rural District in 1941. The parish was part of the review area of the Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London, however it did not form part of the proposed Greater London area. In 1974 the parish became part of the Borough of Hertsmere. The Local Government Act 1972 permitted parish councils to become town councils and provided a mechanism for the name of the parish to be changed if the district council was in agreement. The parish name was subsequently changed to Elstree and Borehamwood on 24 February 1982. The parish council became Elstree and Borehamwood Town Council.

The boundaries of Elstree and Borehamwood were adjusted on 1 April 1993 when part of the village of Elstree was transferred from Greater London, and the boroughs of Barnet and Harrow to Hertfordshire.

Government
The local council is Elstree and Borehamwood Town Council. The council offices are located at Fairway Hall, Brook Close. The parish has thirteen councillors. It is divided into the five wards of Brookmeadow (electing three councillors), Cowley Hill (three councillors), Elstree (two councillors), Hillside (three councillors) and Kenilworth (two councillors).

Geography

The civil parish is . It is located approximately  northwest of central London and is adjacent to the Greater London boundary in the south and east. It is predominantly residential development with some light industry and open land in the Metropolitan Green Belt. The parish includes the settlements of Elstree and Borehamwood, which are divided from each other by the Midland Main Line. For postal addresses, the parish is almost entirely within the Borehamwood post town and the WD6 postcode district. The Elstree telephone exchange building is within  of Oxford Circus and subscriber numbers therefore use the 020 code.

Transport
Elstree & Borehamwood railway station is located between the two main settlements on the Thameslink route from Bedford to Brighton via Central London. Although outside Greater London, the railway station is in London fare zone 6 for Travelcard and Oyster card fares, and the area is served by London Buses routes 107 and 292, providing connections to Arkley, Chipping Barnet, Colindale, Edgware and New Barnet.

References

External links

Civil parishes in Hertfordshire
Hertsmere
Borehamwood

Elstree and Borehamwood


The Doctor and The Devils is a 1985 British gothic horror film directed by Freddie Francis, and produced by Mel Brooks, through his production company Brooksfilms. It is based upon the true story of Burke and Hare, who in 1828 Edinburgh, Scotland, murdered at least 16 people and sold their bodies for anatomical dissection.

The film stars Timothy Dalton as Dr. Thomas Rock (a character based on the real-life Dr. Knox, to whom Burke and Hare supplied bodies) and features Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea as Fallon and Broom, characters based upon Burke and Hare. The film was directed by Freddie Francis, and features a script adapted by Sir Ronald Harwood from an unproduced screenplay by Dylan Thomas.

Plot

Dr. Thomas Rock (Timothy Dalton) is a respected 19th-century anatomist lecturing at a prominent medical school. He is deeply passionate about improving medical knowledge, a pursuit for which he believes "the ends justify the means." Unfortunately, due to the laws of the time very few cadavers are legally available to the medical profession, necessitating the use of body snatchers or "Resurrection men" by the medical establishment to procure additional specimens. Dr. Rock's young assistant Dr. Murray (Julian Sands) is given the task of buying the bodies, for which he is authorized to pay a small fortune, particularly for fresher corpses.

When alcoholic miscreants Fallon (Jonathan Pryce) and Broom (Stephen Rea) overhear details of the arrangement, they begin to murder the locals and sell their bodies. Gradually, Dr. Murray becomes more suspicious of the string of fresh bodies turning up at the medical school, but Dr. Rock dismisses his concerns. Meanwhile, Murray has begun to fall for beautiful local prostitute Jennie Bailey (Twiggy), who soon becomes the target of Fallon and Broom's murderous enterprise. When Jennie's friend Alice (Nichola McAuliffe) turns up dead in Dr. Rock's dissection room, Murray realizes what is happening and heroically rescues Jennie from a murderous Fallon. Both killers are soon arrested, but Broom agrees to turn state's evidence against his former partner, and is set free, unrepentant. Fallon is executed by hanging. Dr. Rock, for his part in the killings, is the subject of widespread public outrage, but ultimately not punished or censured by his colleagues.

The film ends with Rock pondering his responsibility for the horrors and concluding, "oh my God -- I knew what I was doing."

Cast

Production

Brooksfilms founder and executive producer Mel Brooks, a lifelong horror fan, acquired the rights to Dylan Thomas's unproduced screenplay The Doctor and the Devils (first published in 1953) in the hopes of adapting it into a horror film. He hired director and former cinematographer Freddie Francis, who during the 1960s and 70s had directed a series of horror films for famed British horror productions companies Hammer and Amicus. Brooks' original intention was to simply use the title of the Thomas screenplay, but Francis pushed for a closer adherence to the original script. A compromise was arranged with playwright and screenwriter Ronald Harwood adapting Thomas's more cerebral work into something more genre-friendly. Despite the adaptation, much of Thomas's original dialogue remains.

Francis recalled, "this was one we had for a long time. A doctor friend of mine owned it, and he got the rights, he got the rights off Nick Ray. I suspect that Nick Ray owed him money, and he spent a lot of time trying to set it up. We eventually set it up with Mel Brooks. Mel Brook's thought he owed me a favour after Elephant Man and so he set it up and off we went. It wasn't a bad little film."

Reception

The film struggled to find an audience, and was not well received by critics. Roger Ebert gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of four, writing, "It is impossible to discover, on the evidence of "The Doctor and the Devils," why anybody connected with this movie thought it should be made. It is unredeemed, dreary, boring, gloomy dreck unilluminated by even the slightest fugitive moment of inspiration or ambition," though he praised star Twiggy as the film's "only ray of sunshine." Vincent Canby of the New York Times was more positive, writing the film boasts a "first-rate English cast," and adding that "Mr. Harwood's screenplay, which retains a lot of the original Thomas dialogue, is much more fun to see than the Thomas screenplay is to read."

See also
 The Greed of William Hart (1948)
 The Flesh and the Fiends (1960)
 Burke & Hare (1971)
 Burke & Hare (Comedy, 2010)

References

External links

1985 films
1985 horror films
1980s serial killer films
British horror films
British serial killer films
Body snatching
Films directed by Freddie Francis
Films produced by Mel Brooks
Films scored by John Morris
Films based on works by Dylan Thomas
Gothic horror films
Brooksfilms films
Crime films based on actual events
Films set in the 19th century
Biographical films about serial killers
Cultural depictions of William Burke and Hare
Films with screenplays by Ronald Harwood
1980s English-language films
1980s British films

The Doctor and the Devils


The Annotated Alice is a 1960 book by Martin Gardner incorporating the text of Lewis Carroll's major tales, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871), as well as the original illustrations by John Tenniel. It has extensive annotations explaining the contemporary references (including the Victorian poems that Carroll parodies), mathematical concepts, word play, and Victorian traditions (such as the parlor game snap-dragons) featured in the two books.

History
The original book was first published in 1960. It has been reprinted several times and translated into French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, German and Hebrew.

In 1990, a sequel, More Annotated Alice, was published. This sequel does not contain the original side notes, and Tenniel's illustrations are replaced by those of Peter Newell. It also contains the "suppressed" chapter "The Wasp in a Wig", which Carroll omitted from the text of Through the Looking-Glass on Tenniel's recommendation.

In 1999, The Definitive Edition was published. It combines the notes from both works and features Tenniel's illustrations in improved quality.

Gardner also compiled a companion volume, The Annotated Snark, dedicated to Carroll's classic nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark.

In 2015, The Annotated Alice: 150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition was published, combining the previous works of Gardner and expanded by Mark Burstein, president emeritus of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America. It includes features such as more than 100 new or updated annotations, over 100 new illustrations by Salvador Dalí, Beatrix Potter, Ralph Steadman, and 42 other artists and illustrators (in addition to original art by Sir John Tenniel), and a filmography of every Alice-related film by Carroll scholar David Schaefer.

Editions
 The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, Illustrated by John Tenniel by Martin Gardner (1960), New York, Bramhall House
 More Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner (1990)
 The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition by Martin Gardner (1998/1999)
 The Annotated Alice: 150th Anniversary Deluxe Edition by Martin Gardner and Mark Burstein (2015)

See also
Martin Gardner bibliography

References

External links
Description on the publisher's website
Review in The New Statesman, 25 December 2000, by Will Self

1960 books
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Works by Martin Gardner

The Annotated Alice


A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship
and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clans may claim descent from founding member or apical ancestor. Clans, in indigenous societies, were not endogamous, meaning that their members can not marry one another. Clans preceded more centralized forms of community organization and government, and exist in every country. Members may identify with a coat of arms or other symbol. Kinship-based groups may also have a symbolic ancestor, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor who serves as a symbol of the clan's unity.

Etymology
The English word "clan" is derived from old Irish  meaning "children", "offspring", "progeny" or "descendants"; it is not from the word for "family" or "clan" in either Irish or Scottish Gaelic. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "clan" was introduced into English in around 1425, as a descriptive label for the organization of society in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands.

None of the Irish and Scottish Gaelic terms for kinship groups is cognate to English clan; Scottish Gaelic  means "descendants":
   means (English) "clan"
  means "family" in the sense of the nuclear family, or can include more distant relatives living in the same house
  means either "family" in the sense of "household", or everyone who lives in the house, including non-relatives
  means "family" in the broad sense of "kinsfolk"

Clans as political units
In different cultures and situations, a clan usually has different meaning than other kin-based groups, such as tribes and bands. Often, the distinguishing factor is that a clan is a smaller, integral part of a larger society such as a tribe, chiefdom, or a state. In some societies, clans may have an official leader such as a chief, matriarch or patriarch; or such leadership role is performed by elders. In others, leadership positions may have to be achieved.

Examples include Irish, Scottish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese clans, which exist as distinct social groupings within their respective nations. Note, however, that tribes and bands can also be components of larger societies. The early Norse clans, the , are often translated as "house" or "line". The Biblical tribes of Israel were composed of many clans. Arab clans are sub-tribal groups within Arab society. Native American and First Nations peoples, often referred to as "tribes", also have clans. For instance, Ojibwa bands are smaller parts of the Ojibwa people or tribe in North America. The many Native American peoples are distinguished by language and culture, and most have clans and bands as the basic kinship organizations. In some cases tribes recognized each other's clans; for instance, both the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes of the Southeast United States had fox and bear clans, who felt a kinship that reached beyond their respective tribes.

Apart from these different historical traditions of kinship, conceptual confusion arises from colloquial usages of the term. In post-Soviet countries, for example, it is quite common to speak of "clans" in reference to informal networks within the economic and political sphere. This usage reflects the assumption that their members act towards each other in a particularly close and mutually supportive way, approximating the solidarity among kinsmen. Similar usage of the term applies to specific groups of various cultures and nationalities involved in organized crime. Polish clans differ from most others as they are a collection of families who bear the same coat of arms, as opposed to claiming a common descent (see Polish heraldry). There are multiple closely related clans in the Indian subcontinent, especially South India.

Romani people have many clans which are called vitsa in Romani.

Scottish Clans
Scottish clans are social groupings that have played a pivotal role in the history and culture of Scotland. Unlike some other clans that focus solely on common descent or a shared coat of arms, Scottish clans are unique in their elaborate systems of tartans, insignias, and mottos. Clan culture in Scotland also extends to community events such as clan gatherings and Highland Games. Each clan may have an official leader known as a "Chieftain" or "Chief."

Members of Scottish clans often have a shared interest in preserving their historical and cultural landmarks, as well as the natural environment and wildlife of Scotland. The clan system in Scotland has also been influenced by key historical events like the Highland Clearances and the Jacobite uprisings, which have left lasting impacts on clan structures and Scottish diaspora.

Clannism
Clannism (in Somali culture, qabiilism) is a system of society based on clan affiliation.

The Islamic world, the Near East, North and East Africa in general, and Somali culture specifically, is patriarchal  and traditionally centered on  patrilineal clans or tribes.

Clans by continent or region

See also
 Clan (video gaming)
 Endogamy
 Extended family
 Uradel

References

Clan


The Vienna Circle (in German: der Wiener Kreis) was the name of a group of philosophers who began meeting around the University of Vienna in 1922.

Many famous philosophers were members. Some of its members were:

 Gustav Bergmann,
 Alex Robinson
 Rudolf Carnap,
 Herbert Feigl,
 Philipp Frank,
 Kurt Gödel,
 Hans Hahn,
 Tscha Hung,
 Victor Kraft,
 Karl Menger,
 Richard von Mises,
 Marcel Natkin,
 Otto Neurath,
 Olga Hahn-Neurath,
 Theodor Radakovic,
 Rose Rand,
 Moritz Schlick (chairman),
 Friedrich Waismann
 Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Most followed the philosophy that came to be known as logical positivism.

Ludwig Wittgenstein's, 1921 book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus formed the basis for the group's ideas. Wittgenstein himself insisted that they did not understand him correctly and took to quietly reading poetry to himself during their meetings.

The Vienna Circle was broken up when the Nazi party came to power in Germany in 1933, many of its members moved to the USA, where they became teachers in several universities.

The Vienna Circle's influence on 20th century philosophy was very large.

References

20th-century philosophers

Vienna Circle