Mutual information measures how much more is known about one random value when given another. For example, knowing the temperature of a random day of the year will not reveal what month it is, but it will give some hint. In the same way, knowing what month it is will not reveal the exact temperature, but will make certain temperatures more or less likely. These hints or changes in likelihood are explained and measured with mutual information.

Calculating mutual information

Required information
To calculate mutual information, the probability (chance) of all possible events, and the probability of them happening at the same time, is needed. For example, to measure mutual information between month and temperature we would need to know how many days in the year are 10 degrees Celsius, how many days out of the year are March and finally how many days are 10 degrees Celsius in March.

Formula
The formula requires the summation, or adding up, of many terms or numbers. Every possible outcome has its own term. From the above calculation of mutual information between month and temperature, we will use the following variables:
 p(x,y) = probability of it being x degrees Celsius in month y
 t(x) = probability of it being x degrees Celsius (on any day of the year)
 m(y) = probability of it being month y

This means m(3) equals the probability of a randomly selected day being in March. This is 31/365, or about 0.085, since 31 out of 365 days in the year are in March.

One term would be as follows:

In this formula, "log" means logarithm.

Adding all possible terms together gives the value for mutual information.

Understanding mutual information

Possible values
The larger the mutual information, the more you would learn about one random value (e.g. month) when told another (e.g. temperature).

 If mutual information is zero, you cannot determine anything about one value when given another.
 For example, knowing if you got heads or tails in a coin flip last time will not tell you anything about what will happen next time.

 If mutual information is small, there may still be no mutual information. Sometimes random events seem to have a pattern in the short term, but overall there is no mutual information.

 If mutual information is large, there is likely some connection between the two things being looked at.
 Since temperature and month are connected, their mutual information would be a lot larger than zero.
 It is not easy to know if mutual information is significant or large.

 If mutual information is one, then knowing one value will exactly tell you the other.
 For example, if a random desk is selected in a classroom, a teacher can know exactly which student will sit there. Knowing which desk was selected tells us exactly which student is connected to it.

Important facts
Mutual information does not change based on which of the two random values is revealed. This means we know just as much about temperature when told the month as we know about the month when told the temperature.

Mutual information is difficult to compare. If we calculate mutual information for weather and another value for a card game, the two values cannot easily be compared.

Related pages
 Information theory

Mathematics

Mutual information


A heraldic badge is not a part of an armiger's achievement of arms, but it is granted by the same body.

The badge is designed to be used by the supporters of an armiger.  A mediaeval knight would be granted arms by letter patent, but his supporters or followers would not be allowed to display that achievement, instead they would use a badge to help identify themselves to each other and to other people.

Today, many English towns and cities have an achievement of arms.  Usually the mayor and council are the only ones allowed to used the full coat of arms.  The departments of the council use a badge, and it is the badge which is painted on council vehicles etc. to identify them.

Badges, like the arms, can only be used with the permission of the person to whom they were granted.

The "Prince of Wales's Feathers" is the badge of the heir apparent of the British monarch.  The badge is used because the coats of arms of the prince and the monarch are very similar.

Heraldry

Heraldic badge


Enterprise Project Management, in broad terms, is the field of organizational development that supports organizations in managing integrally and adapting themselves to the changes of a transformation.  Enterprise Project Management is a way of thinking, communicating and working, supported by an information system, that organizes enterprise's resources in a direct relationship to the leadership's vision and the mission, strategy, goals and objectives that move the organization forward.  Simply put, EPM provides a 360 degree view of the organization's collective efforts.

In recent years, with general adoption of (IT) governance practices, Enterprise Project Management has become more specific: whereas in the 1990s focus was generally on the management of the single project, in the subsequent decade, the focus lay more on the fact that a project is likely to be not the only one in the enterprise.  The project co-exists with many other projects in the enterprise, or may be part of one or more programs.  It may utilize (human) resources that are shared among other projects.

In order to facilitate governance, it has become essential to be able to manage, monitor, and assess the status of all projects (and other assets, of course) in the enterprise, through a set of (preferably uniform) Enterprise Project Management processes, methods and application packages.  Typically, organizations that adopt an Enterprise Project Management way of working, might set up a Project Management Office (PMO)/ Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO), which is said to be more successful than a traditional PMO in addressing the priorities of the organization as its scope is enterprise-wide), might select and adopt a Project Management Methodology like PRINCE2, PMBOK (or create a proprietary method) or follow the concepts of IPMA Competence Baseline as a foundation for development and certification of project managers and their knowledge, experience and behaviour. They might even select and implement a software system to support Enterprise Project Management.

An even more recent evolution in Enterprise Project Management is to not only plan and track the existing set of projects, but to create a portfolio (per budget size, per calendar year, per budget year, per business line, et cetera) of existing and future (demand) projects.  This is called Project Portfolio Management.  Just like the management of a portfolio of shares, Project Portfolio Management is the activity of selecting which projects to keep in portfolio (because of their anticipated value) and which ones to discard (because of their obsoleteness or because they will not yield the value that was initially calculated).  Project Portfolio Management includes the creation of various scenarios to decide which is the best portfolio (for a certain year, business, budget, etcetera).  Once the contents of the portfolio are agreed upon, it is key to constantly scrutinize how the individual projects are evolving in terms of quality, cost and schedule.

Implementing an Enterprise Project Management toolset needs to be considered in the light of the organization's Project Management Maturity and the methodologies, processes and governance structures that are currently in place.  There are many consulting organizations that can support such implementations.

See also

Strategic enterprise management

References

External links
 Genius Project Enterprise Project Management Software
 Triskell Entreprise Portfolio Management Software - A PPM+++ Cloud Service
 Enterprise Project Management Tools - Wrike Inc.
 Enterprise Project Management Solutionss - Changepoint Corporation
 Customer-Centric Enterprise Work Management - Leankor

Network management
Project management by type

Enterprise project management


S is for Space (1966) is a collection of science fiction short stories written by Ray Bradbury. It was compiled for the Young Adult sections of libraries.

Contents
"Chrysalis"
A science fiction story in which three men anxiously watch their fellow-scientist as he is encased in a mysterious green chrysalis. They eventually come to believe he is undergoing metamorphosis inside the chrysalis.

"Pillar of Fire"
A science fiction/horror short novel. Set in the year 2349, it depicts a Utopian society in which all corpses are incinerated for hygienic reasons. All horror literature has also been burned to produce a healthier mindset. When his grave is disturbed, a man who died four centuries earlier rises from his tomb to infiltrate the utopia and launch a vendetta to restore fear.

"Zero Hour"
A science fiction story, involving a world-wide befriending of children by sinister aliens.

"The Man"
A rocket ship lands on an isolated planet, expecting an astounded welcome. However, they find they have been preceded by a much more important visitor.

"Time in Thy Flight"
A science fiction story. A high-school teacher takes three children on a field-trip in a time machine.

"The Pedestrian"
A science fiction story about a society addicted to television.

"Hail and Farewell"
A fantasy story concerning a middle-aged man who never physically aged past his pre-adolescence.

"Invisible Boy"
A comical story about an old woman who convinces a boy she has turned him invisible.

"Come into My Cellar"
A science fiction story about mushrooms and alien invasions.

"The Million-Year Picnic"
A science fiction story in which a family travels to an unsullied Mars to escape a ravaged Earth.  Previously adapted as the final chapter of The Martian Chronicles (1950).

"The Screaming Woman"
A mystery/suspense story, describing a young girl who tries to procure help in digging up a woman buried in an empty lot.

"The Smile"
A science fiction story describing a world devastated by nuclear war, whose inhabitants systematically destroy artifacts of the past. The story touches on one boy who is enchanted by Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

"Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed"
An atomic war on Earth drives a family to flee to a human colony Mars.

"The Trolley"
An idyllic story about the last trolley-ride in a small town.

"The Flying Machine"
A story set in ancient China, whose Emperor discovers a peasant has invented a flying-machine.

"Icarus Montgolfier Wright"
A story concerning the first man to fly a rocket ship.

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

External links

1966 short story collections
Short story collections by Ray Bradbury
Doubleday (publisher) books

S Is for Space


The Mary Whitehouse Experience is a British topical sketch comedy show that the BBC produced in association with Spitting Image Productions. It starred two comedy double acts, one being David Baddiel and Rob Newman, the other Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis. All four comedians had graduated from Cambridge University. It was broadcast on both radio and television in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The show was named after Mary Whitehouse, a campaigner against what she saw as a decline in television standards and public morality. She became the target of mockery in the UK for her attitudes. The BBC feared Whitehouse would initiate litigation for the use of her name in the show's title, and for a period the alternative title The William Rees-Mogg Experience was considered.

BBC Radio One show

A radio pilot was broadcast on 10 March 1989 on BBC Radio 1 and a series of 13 shows began on 7 April the same year. Bill Dare devised the format. The two pairings of Newman and Baddiel and Punt and Dennis were central to the show, with support from Nick Hancock, Jo Brand, Jack Dee, Mark Thomas and Mark Hurst. The show also included musical interludes from Skint Video and The Tracy Brothers.

It was originally aired at midnight on Friday. It was subsequently moved to a 10:30pm slot, before being moved again for its fourth and final series to 7pm on Saturday evenings. The show ran for four series and a special (44 episodes in total) from March 1989 to December 1990.

In the episode originally broadcast on 17 March 1990, there was a brief reference to Robert Newman losing his virginity to a music teacher, a Mr Clulow, in detention, which is widely believed to be true.   This is widely thought to be a reference to Peter Clulow, a former music teacher at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School (where David Baddiel was a pupil) who left the school in the mid-1980s following allegations concerning indecent approaches to the boys.  Clulow was subsequently convicted and imprisoned on charges of indecent assault and one count of causing a child to engage in sexual activity.

Television

A television pilot aired on BBC2 shortly before the fourth and final radio series, on 3 October 1990. The first series started on 3 January 1991 and ran for six episodes, with a second set of six episodes in 1992.

The television series was a mix of observational comedy sketches and monologues, in a format similar to shows such as Mr. Show and The Kids in the Hall. The show featured a lot of satirical takes on famous people, films and TV shows of the day along with original character material.

Each show was made up of sections usually headed by a caption related to the topic about to be discussed. The caption took the form of 'The [topic] Experience'. One of the performers would begin talking about the topic in monologue form, sometimes with input from another performer who appeared in character. The monologue would make reference to a humorous scenario which would be played out in sketch form, returning either to the same topic or moving on to a different or loosely related one. Lines or characters from sketches might recur throughout the show either as a continuation of the original sketch or an invasion of another one.

The pace of the show was fairly rapid, helped by the inclusion of a boom camera in the studio which panned quickly around the audience and back to the stage at the beginning of each monologue. Each section was punctuated with a small excerpt of the theme music, Jack to the Sound of the Underground.

In 1991 a companion book to the series was released called The Mary Whitehouse Experience Encyclopedia, with references to some of the sketches featured on the show and much new additional material.

Recurring characters

Ray
(played by Rob Newman)

A man afflicted with a disease that gives him a permanently sarcastic tone of voice, so that everything he says comes out sounding sarcastic, no matter how sincerely he means it. This sketch is presented as a medical case history told by Ray's psychiatrist (played by David Baddiel), who gives accounts of various situations in which Ray's affliction has got him into trouble. These are usually sensitive situations such as speaking out at a funeral, apologising to an old man after running over his wife in his car, and complimenting a suicidal child on his drawings. At other times Ray has experienced near-fatal accidents, such as having an arrow shot through his brain, which are ignored by passers-by given that even his cries of pain sound sarcastic. Ray's disorder also affects his body language, as demonstrated in one sketch in which he converses with his deaf foster mother. Ray's psychiatrist discovers that the only things Ray's voice can say normally are those that he means sarcastically. In one sketch he makes friends with some media types, who appreciate his seemingly endless sarcasm when talking about the film Edward Scissorhands.  In the final episode, on being given a Cure album as a present, Ray cannot bring himself to sound sarcastic when thanking his friend and, bizarrely, starts speaking Flemish. Ray has quite a successful run of appearances on Flemish chat-shows, before the inevitable happens, and he begins speaking Flemish in a sarcastic tone. Ray often uses the phrase "Oh no, what a personal disaster" which became one of the show's most popular catchphrases.

Ivan
(played by Rob Newman)

Ivan is a daytime television presenter who hosts a show similar to the BBC's Pebble Mill at One.  His appearance became increasingly unusual as the sketches progressed (his hair ends up extremely ruffled and he has plasters on his face), however he appears at first glance to be like any normal daytime TV presenter. But Ivan is very overemotional and will fly into a tormented rage at the slightest mention of anything vaguely bad. One such example is when a professional gardener he is interviewing tells him in passing that someone has trodden on and broken a garden cane he was going to use, and Ivan proceeds to fly into a hysterical rage and smash apart the whole greenhouse. Likewise, when informed that the situation is not so bad after all, Ivan will similarly react in an overly ecstatic manner, much to the annoyance of his guests.

Mr. Strange
(played by Hugh Dennis, better known as the 'Milky Milky' sketch)

Mr. Strange is the archetypal 'man your mother warned you about', the weird man who walks around town in a dirty old mac, indulging in disturbingly eccentric behaviour. Mr. Strange's main trait is that he has an absurd addiction to off milk, and is always carrying cartons or bottles of milk with him, not only drinking from them but obsessively sniffing them before uttering the words "Lovely—Milky Milky" (which became another one of the show's most popular catchphrases). This led to a 1992 novelty tie-in single "Milky Milky (Take Me to the Fridge)" by Mr Strange and the Lactose Brotherhood, as well as Punt and Dennis' tour of the same year being named "The Milky Milky Tour".

One sketch features Mr. Strange as a contestant on Mastermind whose specialist subject is 'Milk and the way it smells' while another features him presenting a Party political broadcast offering himself as an alternative to the main political leaders because "I don't wash my pants—it's not nature's way".

History Today

History Today made its debut in the second half of the show's second TV series. History Today is an historical discussion programme presented by two elderly, scholarly professors, both well-spoken and well-groomed. The first of these professors, who introduces each 'episode' and its topic of discussion, is played by David Baddiel although the character is never named. The second is Professor F. J. Lewis, Emeritus Professor of History at All Souls College, Oxford, who is played by Rob Newman. Each 'episode' begins as a standard historical debate, but quickly degenerates into a playground-style quarrel with the professors exchanging childish insults. The humour lies largely in the juxtaposition of the professors' formal tone of voice with their puerile words. This sketch spawned perhaps the show's most popular catchphrase "...That's you, that is", spoken after they had described someone/something supposedly pathetic and/or disgusting. This sketch was later carried over into Newman and Baddiel's own show, Newman and Baddiel in Pieces.

Parodies
Robert Smith (played by Rob Newman)

A parody of the singer Robert Smith, front-man with the British rock band The Cure. This was prompted by Baddiel's observation that, although the band's earlier material had been recorded in a downbeat, 'doom and gloom' Gothic rock style, they had later moved in a more poppy direction (with singles such as "Friday I'm in Love"). Each sketch features Robert Smith and The Cure performing a particularly happy, cheery song or nursery rhyme in the band's goth style. The songs included "Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport" (originally by Rolf Harris), "The Laughing Policeman" and Tommy Steele's "Flash Bang Wallop". Robert Smith himself also made a guest appearance on the final episode of the show, in the last of the 'Ray' sketches, in which he was seen to sing "The Sun Has Got His Hat On".

Edward Colanderhands (played by Rob Newman)

A parody of the Tim Burton film Edward Scissorhands, which featured a similar character but with colanders for hands instead of scissors. He was seen in a sketch helping a housewife to drain vegetables. He was also present in the Robert Smith sketch as an audience member clapping to the beat of the songs, instead of clapping his hands he clapped his colanders together and unlike the rest of the audience he showed immense enjoyment of the performance.  He later returned as "Edward 'Good Movie Guide' Knob".

Mark and Tim

A parody of Mark Gardener and Tim Burgess. Rob Newman admits to growing his hair to look like Mark Gardener and Tim Burgess, out of respective bands Ride and The Charlatans, and while praising their musical accomplishments he demonstrates why you wouldn't want to 'hang out with them' in several scenarios. These include playing football, helping to check if Rob's car brake lights are working and as backup while Rob is being held at knife point. In each event both Tim and Mark remain silent and motionless apart from moving their head slowly from side to side.

Repeats
The majority of the first three radio series were repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2003. However, rights issues precluded further transmissions, although there have been very occasional one-off airings in the Saturday morning Comedy Controller slot.  A run of selected episodes started on Friday nights in September 2013.

Although there were edited compilation repeats of the television series on the BBC within a year of the original broadcasts, it has never been released on home video.

See also
 Newman and Baddiel in Pieces
 The Imaginatively Titled Punt & Dennis Show

Notes

External links

1990 British television series debuts
1992 British television series endings
1990s British television sketch shows
BBC television sketch shows
Radio programs adapted into television shows
Television series based on radio series
British stand-up comedy television series
1989 radio programme debuts
1990 radio programme endings
BBC Radio comedy programmes
British radio sketch shows
BBC Radio 1 programmes

The Mary Whitehouse Experience


Peter Forsskål, sometimes spelled Pehr Forsskål, Peter Forskaol, Petrus Forskål or Pehr Forsskåhl (11 January 1732 – 11 July 1763) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish explorer, orientalist, naturalist, and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus.

Early life

Forsskål was born in Helsinki, now in Finland but then a part of Sweden, where his father, Finnish priest , was serving as a Lutheran clergyman, but the family migrated to Sweden in 1741 when the father was appointed to the parish of Tegelsmora in Uppland and the archdiocese of Uppsala. As was common at the time, he enrolled at Uppsala University at a young age in 1742, but returned home for some time and, after studies on his own, rematriculated in Uppsala in 1751, where he completed a theological degree the same year.

Linnaeus's disciple

In Uppsala Forsskål was one of the students of Linnaeus, but apparently also studied with the orientalist Carl Aurivillius, whose contacts with the Göttingen orientalist Johann David Michaelis are probably the reason why Forsskål travelled to the University of Göttingen in 1753; he studied Oriental languages and Philosophy and completed a doctorate there with a dissertation entitled Dubia de principiis philosophiae recentioris (1756). Returning to Uppsala in 1756, he wanted to pursue studies in economics.

In November 1759, he published a political pamphlet called, in Swedish, Tankar om borgerliga friheten (Thoughts on civil liberty). As it advocated complete freedom of the press, it was at the time controversial and was consequently suppressed by the authorities on the day of publication.  The pamphlet was censored by the "Hats" government and caused him to be warned by the Royal Chancellery.

Journey to Yemen and death

On Michaelis's recommendation, and with Linnaeus's approval, Forsskål the next year (1760) was appointed by Frederick V of Denmark to join, amongst others, the orientalist and mathematician Carsten Niebuhr on an expedition to Arabia. The group first went to Egypt where they stayed for about a year, with Forsskål pursuing studies in Arabic dialects, and arrived in South Arabia (Arabia Felix, present-day Yemen) at the end of December 1762. Just 31 years old, Forsskål worked hard on collecting botanical and zoological specimens, but fell ill with malaria and died in July 1763. He was buried at night in Yarim, Yemen.

Linnaeus mourned the death of his young student and named one of the plants Forsskål had sent home Forsskaolea tenacissima because the plant was as stubborn and persistent as the young man had been.

The entire journey of this Danish expedition was the subject of Thorkild Hansen's first book, Det lykkelige Arabien (1962, translated into English as Arabia Felix).

Legacy

Forsskål's companion Niebuhr, who was the only one of the participants to survive the expedition, was entrusted with the care of editing his manuscripts, and published in 1775 Descriptiones Animalium – Avium, amphiborum, insectorum, vermium quæ in itinere orientali observavit Petrus Forskål. In the same year his account of the plants of Yemen and of lower Egypt also appeared, under the title of Flora Ægyptiaco-Arabica sive descriptiones plantarum quas per Ægyptum Inferiorem et Arabiam felicem detexit, illustravit Petrus Forskål. Most of his specimens were lost in transport or deteriorated due to bad storage in Copenhagen; his herbarium was reconstructed some 150 years after his death by the botanist Carl Christensen.

In his taxonomy work, Forsskål used the local Arabic name of the fish as the species name: these reflect the names used then (and now) on the coasts of the Red Sea for many species of fish.

In his pamphlet, Thoughts on Civil Liberty (1759), Forsskål argues the case for civil liberties of the kind people in modern democracies take for granted. A sample (para 21):

Finally, another important right in any free society is the liberty to contribute to the Public Good. But for this to happen, it must be possible to make the state of affairs in society known to one and all, and everyone must be free to express their thoughts about it. Where this is lacking, liberty is not worth its name.

Shortly after its publication the pamphlet was banned, and Forsskål was forced into exile. But only seven years later, in 1766, freedom of the press was given protection in Swedish constitutional law – the first such legislation in world history. (Under the reign of Gustaf III Sweden fell back into repression. Freedom of the press was reinstated in the Constitution of 1809.)

Species named in his honor

The Tiger fish Hydrocynus forskahlii was named in his honor by Georges Cuvier. Forsskål originally reported this species as Salmo (=Alestes) dentex in 1775.

The Siphonophore Forskalia in the monotypic family Forskaliidae was named in his honor by Kölliker.

The black sea cucumber Holothuria forskali was named in his honor by Delle Chiaje.

The plant genus Forsskaolea L. was named in his honor.

Many plants also bear his name in the epithet, among which :
Gymnosporia forsskaoliana (Sebsebe) Jordaan, Celastraceae.
Dracaena forskaliana (Schult. f.) Byng & Christenh., Asparagaceae.
Cynanchum forskaolianum (Schult.) Meve & Liede, Apocynaceae.
Viola forskaalii Greuter, Violaceae.
Centropodia forskaolii (Vahl) Cope, Poaceae.
Helichrysum forskahlii (J. F. Gmel.) Hilliard & B. L. Burtt, Asteraceae.
Aneilema forskaolii Kunth, Commelinaceae.
Ruellia forsskaolii Thulin, Acanthaceae.

His name is one of those with most variants, as botanists are free to choose their latinization, and the transcription to the vowel å has varied through time.

Variant spellings of his name
In subsequent botanical works many different variants of his name were recorded (Forsskål, Forskål, Forskåhl, Forsskåhl, Forsskaal, Forskal, Forsskal, occasionally also Forsskaol). For citing the scientist's name it was recommended not to replace å by a. Family members in these times used three alternative spellings Forsskål, Forskål and Forsskåhl. Modern members of the family seem to prefer Forsskåhl. Peter's father and brother used the spelling Forsskåhl. Peter himself alternatively used Forsskål and Forsskaal, in approximately the same frequency, but the choice depended on the language of a letter's recipient. In one letter to England he once spelled his name Forsskol. Linnæus spelled Peter's name Forskåhl, not in agreement with the student's father. In publications issued during Peter's lifetime the spelling Forsskål was used, including in his dissertation issued in 1756 in Göttingen.

In the important work Descriptiones animalium which was published 12 years after his death and which was attributed to him the spelling "Forskål" had been used. In current zoological sources both spellings Forskål and Forsskål are in use, Forskåhl and Forsskåhl are not used.

Publications

 Thoughts on Civil Liberty / Tankar om borgerliga friheten (1759). Stockholm: Bokförlaget Atlantis, 2009. . [Edited and translated by David Goldberg, Gunilla Jonsson, Helena Jäderblom, Gunnar Persson and Thomas von Vegesack, assisted by David Shaw.] (Swedish Wikisource)
 *
 *
 *
 Resa till lyklige Arabien. 1950.

See also
:Category:Taxa named by Peter Forsskål

References

External links

Book Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica, by Peter Forskål, year 1775, in Latin.
Book Descriptiones animalium ... quæ in itinere orientali, by Peter Forskål, year 1775, in Latin.
Book Icones rerum naturalium quas in itinere orientali, by Peter Forskål, year 1776, in Latin.
Biography of Forsskål with links to other web sites on him, and includes how he used Arabic names for species names.
Peter Forsskål, Royal Library, Copenhagen, Oriental collections - mainly on Forsskål's contributions to the knowledge of Arabian pharmacognosy
Thoughts on Civil Liberty English, French, German, Swedish and Spanish translations of Forsskal's original (uncensored) manuscript.

Swedish naturalists
Swedish taxonomists
1732 births
1763 deaths
18th-century Swedish botanists
18th-century Swedish zoologists
Swedish phycologists
Pteridologists
Swedish explorers
Swedish orientalists
Botanists active in Egypt
Botanists with author abbreviations
Uppsala University alumni
Scientists from Helsinki
Age of Liberty people
18th-century explorers
Deaths from malaria
Swedish expatriates in Egypt
Swedish expatriates in Yemen
Swedish people of Finnish descent
Swedish-speaking Finns
Natural history of Palestine (region)

Peter Forsskål


Control engineering is the engineering field that focuses on mathematical modeling of dynamical systems, and uses control theory to create controllers that cause the systems to behave in some desired manner. Modern control engineering is closely related to electrical, electronic, and computer engineering.  As engineering continues to develop, control engineering is often wanted.

In most cases, control engineers make use of feedback when designing control systems. For example, in an automobile with sail control, the machine's speed is continuously checked and fed back to the system, which then adjusts the motor's spin power on the fly. Recently, control systems are also used in nanotechnology. In chemical engineering, control engineering is known as process control. Many advancements in science, finance, and even human action, can be attributed to control engineering.

Many control systems rely on feedback. However, there are also control systems that work without feedback. Such a system is known as an open-loop control. An open-loop controller, also called a non-feedback controller, relies only on the model and the input signal fed to the system.  An example of open-loop control can be found in washing machines, which work by running pre-programmed cycles but, most importantly, do not rely on any measurements of the speed of the barrel or water volume to adjust the machine on the fly.

Control engineering

Control engineering


Barton in Fabis is a village and civil parish in the Rushcliffe district of Nottinghamshire.  It has a population of about 250, being measured at 266 in the 2011 Census. The village is just south of Nottingham, being on the other side of the River Trent from Attenborough.

A ferry, Barton Ferry, used to cross the River Trent to the Attenborough side near to the mouth of the River Erewash. A ferry crossed the River Trent at this point since before 1774.

The name originates from an older name, "Barton in the Beans" (Fabis being Latin for 'bean', in the ablative plural), apparently referring to the beans grown in the village.  This name was also used for a Leicestershire village, Barton in the Beans, which has retained its name.

See also
Listed buildings in Barton in Fabis

References

External links

Villages in Nottinghamshire
Rushcliffe

Barton in Fabis


Midlands could be in general the central region of any territory. In Britain and Ireland, the term is reseved for the "middle" in the north–south ("vertical") direction (countries that are oriented more east–west use "Mid" with a "horizontal" meaning.)

In the United Kingdom, Scotland and England both have midland areas that are famous enough to be called the "Midlands" (as a name, not just as a description). In Wales the term for the central region is "Mid Wales" (not "The Welsh Midlands").

The rest of this article deals with the English Region known simply as The Midlands, which is more or less the territory of the early-medieval kingdom of Mercia.

The area lies between Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales, and includes the counties of Derbyshire, Herefordshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, the West Midlands and Worcestershire. The 2001 census also included Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire in the Midlands but these are not generally considered to be part of the Midlands but East Anglia.

There are two administrative regions of England in the Midlands: West Midlands and East Midlands. Taken together, these regions do not fully cover the traditional Midlands:
 Part of Northern Lincolnshire is now in Yorkshire and the Humber;
 Peterborough has been removed from Northamptonshire and included with Cambridgeshire in the East of England;
 Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire are now in the South West and South East respectively.
 Bedfordshire is now in the East of England.

The "midland" status of Cheshire is often debated. South Cheshire has strong links with North Staffordshire (definitely in the Midlands), and North Cheshire with Merseyside and Manchester (both definitely in Northern England). Officially Cheshire is now part of the North West region.

The largest Midlands conurbation, which includes the cities of Birmingham and Wolverhampton, is approximately covered by a metropolitan county (which also includes Coventry) also called the West Midlands. Thus, there are two West Midlands, a Region and a (smaller) County.

Parts of the East Midlands are also densely populated, particularly the triangle formed by the cities of Leicester, Nottingham and Derby.

The South Midlands have an own government for development. They include Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire with northern Buckinghamshire. In other context Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire are not considered part of the Midlands. They are in the administrative regions of the South East and the East of England.

Notable cities and towns

 Belper, Birmingham, Boston, Burton upon Trent, Buxton
 Chesterfield, Corby, Coventry
 Derby, Dudley
 Gainsborough, Gloucester, Grantham
 Hereford,
 Kettering, Kidderminster
 Leamington Spa, Leicester, Lichfield, Lincoln, Loughborough
 Mansfield, Matlock
 Newark, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Northampton, Nottingham, Nuneaton
 Redditch, Rugby
 Shrewsbury, Stafford, Stoke-on-Trent, Stratford-on-Avon, Solihull
 Tamworth, Telford
 Walsall, Warwick, Wolverhampton, Worcester,

References

Other websites

 Official map of the Midlands, ODPM

Regions of England

Midlands


Blackleach Burritt (1744 – August 27, 1794) was a preacher during the American Revolutionary War. During the war, he was incarcerated in a sugar house prison.

Early life and ancestors
Blackleach Burritt was born at Ripton Parish, now Huntington, Fairfield County, Connecticut, circa 1744, although no birth records have been found for his birth.  He was the son and second child of Peleg Burritt, Jr.  and the grandson of Peleg Burritt, Sr. and Sarah Bennett and member of the fifth generation of the Burritt family in America. The Burritts were descended from an old Connecticut family and his original immigrant ancestor was William Burritt and his wife Elizabeth who had emigrated to Connecticut around 1640 possibly from Glamorganshire, Wales. They were among the first settlers of Stratford, Connecticut. He was an expert blacksmith, an important trade for the new town.

His mother was Elizabeth Blackleach, the daughter of Richard Blackleach, Jr.  and Mehitabel (Leete) Laborie and a great-granddaughter of William Leete who was the Governor of the Colony of New Haven from 1661 to 1665 and Governor of Connecticut from 1676 to 1683. His mother died circa 1745 and his father remarried at Ripton Parish on November 25, 1746, Deborah Beardslee, the daughter of Caleb Beardslee and Elizabeth Booth, who was born on February 1, 1726, at Stratford, Connecticut and died at Hanover Green, Pennsylvania, on August 7, 1802. They were the parents of five children.

In 1751, he was made the heir of his grandfather Blackleach's large estate, since his mother had already died. He had aspired to further his education and his college tuition was paid for by the inheritance from his grandfather Blackleach's estate.

His great-uncle was the Rev. Dr. Israel Chauncy, the youngest son of President Charles Chauncy. He graduated in 1661 from Harvard College and was called as the pastor at the Congregational Church at Stratford, Connecticut, in 1663. On November 11, 1701, he was chosen Rector, or President of the new founded Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut.  Professor James Luce Kingsley, in his History of Yale College, remarks of him, that "he had a high reputation for scholarship." He, however, declined the appointment. Dr. Charles Chauncy of Boston says of him, "He spent his days among that people (the people of Stratford) in great reputation as a physician, as well as a divine. It was said of him that he was one of the most hospitable and benevolent old gentlemen."

Family
Soon after graduating from Yale College in 1765, he married, as his first wife, Martha Welles (1744 - April 1786) with whom he had twelve children. She was a daughter of Gideon Welles and Eunice Walker and a great-great granddaughter of Governor Thomas Welles who along with his wife Alice and six children settled in the late summer 1636 probably in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was the only man in Connecticut's history to hold all four top offices: governor, deputy governor, treasurer, and secretary. Following the death of his first wife, he married Deborah Wells of Long Island in 1788. There were two children born from this second marriage.

Education and career
He graduated from Yale College in 1765.  After graduating, he studied theology with his pastor, the Rev. Jedidiah Mills, Yale College, 1722, and was licensed to preach in the Congregational Church on February 24, 1768, by the Fairfield East Association of Ministers. Shortly after this he was preaching in Ridgebury Parish, in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Sometime prior to 1774, he and his family had relocated to Dutchess County, New York.  He was ordained and licensed to preach that year in the Presbyterian Church and was installed as the pastor of the Pound Ridge Presbyterian Church where he was a very active partisan on the side of the Patriots while serving at this parish.

Burritt was influenced by and championed the causes of the evangelical style of the Great Awakening.  He was also greatly influenced by the works of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield.  He heard Whitefield preach, on several occasions, at the Yale College Chapel. He was also known for his use of extemporaneous preaching.

Imprisonment
At the beginning of 1779, he was installed as the pastor of the  Congregational Church in Greenwich, Connecticut, and while thus employed, having been prominent in his advocacy of the American cause, he was captured, on the early morning of June 18, 1779, and taken to the Sugar House Prison in New York City, where he was detained for about fourteen months, during which time his family took refuge in Pound Ridge, New York. The British press referred to Blackleach Burritt as that "most pestiferous rebel priest and preacher of sedition".

It is worthy of record here in this connection, that while Rev. Burritt was so incarcerated, being sick almost unto death, he was kindly ministered unto by William Irving, father of Washington Irving, and to whom he afterwards gave a quaint certificate vouching for his loyalty and setting forth the facts of the case, he (Irving) evidently being under the impression that his residence in the city during the war might expose him to proscription on the part of the now victorious Patriots. The document is published in Vol. I., of Washington Irving's Biography, and reference is made to the fact in the Burritt Family Record.

Release
The exact date of his release from the Sugar House Prison is not known. However, by October 1780, he was living near Crompond, New York, where he was serving as pastor of the Presbyterian Church at that location. He served as the pastor of several Presbyterian churches in Westchester County, New York from 1780 to around 1788. In 1788 or 9 he was preaching in the North Parish of New Fairfield, Connecticut, now the town of Sherman, Connecticut; and in 1790 he was similarly engaged in Greenfield, then part of Saratoga, New York. Sometime in 1790, he had relocated to Duanesburg, New York, where many members of his family had settled and he founded the Presbyterian Church in Duanesburg around this same time.

Death
In 1792 he began to preach to the Congregational Society in the village of Winhall, Vermont, where he was installed pastor on January 1, 1793. Burritt is reported to have had wonderful physical strength and agility. As a preacher he was noted for fluency and a love of argument. He was regarded as somewhat visionary and unpractical, and perhaps eccentric.

He died in Winhall of a prevailing fever on August 27, 1794, aged about 50 years.

References

Sources
Bailey, Sarah Loring.Historical sketches of Andover: (comprising the present towns of North Andover and Andover)Pages 97–1857 of Historical Sketches of Andover: Comprising the Present Towns of North Andover and Andover New York: Publisher Houghton, 1880.
Bolton, Robert. A history of the county of Westchester, from its first settlement to the present time, Volume 2  Publisher Printed by Alexander S. Gould, 1848.
Brace, Gerald Warner. Days that Were. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 1976. .
Burritt, Dr, Alice.The family of Blackleach Burritt, Jr: pioneer, and one of the first settlers of Uniondale, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania  Publisher: Press of Gibson Bros., 1911.
Clark, Edward Stephens.The Stephens family, with collateral branches  Publisher: J. Winterburn Company, 1892.
Cleave, Egbert. Sketch of Dr. John Franklin Gray, Cleave's Biographical Cyclopædia of Homœopathic Physicians and Surgeons. published by Galaxy Publishing Company, 1873.
Day, Sherman.Historical collections of the State of Pennsylvania: containing a copious selection of the most interesting facts, traditions, biographical sketches, anecdotes, etc., relating to its history and antiquities, both general and local, with topographical descriptions of every county  Publisher: G. W. Gorton, 1843.
Dexter, Franklin Bowditch.Biographical sketches of the graduates of Yale college with annals of the college history ... Volume 3 of Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History  Publisher: Holt & Company, 1903.
Durfee, Calvin.Williams biographical annals Publisher Lee and Shepard, 1871.
Foster, Emma J.The New York genealogical and biographical record, Volume 34" History of Carmel, New York  Publisher: New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, 1903.
Fowler, Charles Chauncy.Memorials of the Chaunceys: including President Chauncy, his ancestors and descendants  Publisher: H.W. Dutton and son, printers, 1858.
Fuess, Claude Moore. An old New England school: a history of Phillips Academy Andover  New York: Publisher Houghton Mifflin company, 1917.
Gillett, Rev. Ezra Hall History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, Volume 1  Publisher Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1864.
Hillstrom, Kevin.The industrial revolution in America, Volume 2  Publisher: ABC-CLIO, 2005 .
Irving, Pierre Munroe. The Life and Letters of Washington Irving New York: Publisher, BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2008. .
Kingsley, James Luce.A sketch of the history of Yale College in Connecticut   Publisher: printed by Perkins, Marvin, & Co., 1835.
Lindgren, Charlotte Holt. Gerald Warner Brace: Writer, Sailor, Teacher. New Hampshire: Hollis Publishing Company. 1998. .
Mather, Frederic Gregory. The refugees of 1776 from Long Island to Connecticut, Volume 94 of Willey whaling collection New York: J. B. Lyon Company, printers, 1913
Mead, Spencer. Abstract of Probate Records at Fairfield, County of Fairfield, and State of Connecticut, 1704-1757 The Knickerbocker Press, 1911.
O'Dea, Suzanne. From suffrage to the Senate an encyclopedia of American women in politics Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio
Raymond, Marcius Denison. Gray genealogy : being a genealogical record and history of the descendants of John Gray, of Beverly, Mass., and also including sketches of other Gray families. New York: Higginson Book Company, 1887.
MD Raymond. Souvenir of the Sherburne Centennial Celebration and Dedication of Monument to the Proprietors and Early Settlers, held on Wednesday, June 21, 1893. New York: M.D. Raymond, 1892.
Raymond, Marcius D. Sketch of Rev. Blackleach Burritt and related Stratford families : a paper read before the Fairfield County Historical Society, at Bridgeport, Conn., Friday evening, Feb. 19, 1892. Bridgeport : Fairfield County Historical Society 1892.
Raymond, Samuel. Genealogies of the Raymond families of New England, 1630-1 to 1886. With a historical sketch of some of the Raymonds of early times, their origin, etc. New York: Press of J.J. Little & Co., 1886.
Siemiatkoski, Donna Holt.The Descendants of Governor Thomas Welles of Connecticut, 1590–1658, and His Wife, Alice Tomes Baltimore: Publisher Gateway Press, 1990.
Talcott, Edward Lorenzo.The family of William Leete: one of the first settlers of Guilford, Conn., and governor of New Haven and Connecticut colonies  Publisher: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, printers, 1884.

External links

 Biographical sketches of the graduates of Yale college with annals of the college history ... Volume 3 of Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History. Publisher: Holt & Company, (1903).
Gray genealogy : being a genealogical record and history of the descendants of John Gray, of Beverly, Mass., and also including sketches of other Gray families. New York: Higginson Book Company, (1887).
Sketch of Rev. Blackleach Burritt and related Stratford families : a paper read before the Fairfield County Historical Society, at Bridgeport, Conn., Friday evening, Feb. 19, 1892 (1892)
Souvenir of the Sherburne Centennial Celebration and Dedication of Monument to the Proprietors and Early Settlers, held on Wednesday, June 21, 1893 (1893).
 The Children's Aid Society
 Biographical sketch of Thomas Welles Connecticut State Library
 Biographical sketch of William Leete Connecticut State Library

1744 births
1794 deaths
People from Shelton, Connecticut
Yale College alumni
American Congregationalist ministers
American Presbyterians
People of colonial Connecticut
Congregationalism
People of Connecticut in the American Revolution
People of New York (state) in the American Revolution
Clergy in the American Revolution
American Revolutionary War prisoners of war held by Great Britain

Blackleach Burritt


Fouad A. Ajami (; September 18, 1945 – June 22, 2014) was a Lebanese-born American university professor and writer on Middle Eastern issues. He was a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Ajami was an outspoken supporter of the Bush Doctrine and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which he believed to have been a "noble war" and a "gift" to the people of Iraq.

Early life and education
Ajami was born in Arnoun, a rocky hamlet in the south of Lebanon into a Shia Muslim family. His Shia great-grandfather had immigrated to Arnoun from Tabriz, Iran in the 1850s.  In Arabic, the word "Ajam" means "non-Arab" or "non-Arabic-speaker"; specifically in this context, it means "Persian" or "Persian-speaker." Ajami arrived in the United States in the fall of 1963, just before he turned 18. He did some of his undergraduate work at Eastern Oregon State College (now Eastern Oregon University) in La Grande, Oregon. He did his graduate work at the University of Washington, where he wrote his thesis on international relations and world government, and earned a PhD.

Career

Academia
In 1973 Ajami joined the politics department of Princeton University. He made a name for himself there as a vocal supporter of Palestinian self-determination.  In 1980, the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University named him director of Middle East Studies. He joined the Hoover Institution in 2011.

Government
Ajami was an advisor to United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as well as a friend and colleague of Paul Wolfowitz.

Journalism
Ajami was a frequent contributor on Middle Eastern issues and contemporary international history to The New York Times Book Review, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, as well as other journals and periodicals. He was also a contributor and close friend to Anderson Cooper of CNN. He was also a frequent guest on Fox News Channel's "America's News Headquarters w/ Uma Pemmaraju"

Television
Ajami frequently appeared on PBS, CBS, CNN and Fox News.

Books
In "The Fate of Nonalignment," an essay in the Winter 1980/81 issue of the journal Foreign Affairs, Ajami outlined how the third world has fared in a context of nonalignment in post Cold war politics.  In 1980, he accepted an offer from Johns Hopkins University to become director of Middle East Studies at their international relations graduate program in Washington, D.C.: the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).  He holds an endowed chair as the Majid Khadduri professor.

A year after arriving at SAIS, Ajami published his first book, The Arab Predicament, which analyzed what Ajami described as an intellectual and political crisis that swept the Arab world following its defeat by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Subsequently, Ajami has written several other books: The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation's Odyssey (1998), Beirut: City of Regrets (1988), and The Vanished Imam: Musa Al-Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (1986).

In The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation's Odyssey, Ajami surveyed the intellectual landscape in the Arab world and Iran, in what was in some ways an autobiography as well as a sequel to "The Arab Predicament." On Middle Eastern politics, he wrote of "a world where triumph rarely comes with mercy or moderation." On Pan-Arabism, he described the ideology as "Sunni dominion dressed in secular garb."

Ajami's book The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, The Arabs and The Iraqis in Iraq (2006), is about the American invasion of Iraq.

Crosswinds: The Way of Saudi Arabia (2020), was published posthumously, by the Hoover Institute.

Philosophy

View of Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations"
One notable contribution Ajami made in the September October 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs was a rebuttal to Samuel Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations?", regarding the state and future of international relations after the Cold War.  According to Judith Miller, Ajami continued to argue that militant Islamism of the type represented by Al Qaeda had peaked and was fading into insignificance.

Huntington presents a world divided at the highest level into eight civilizations, and includes a number of countries that are "torn" between two civilizations, arguing that these civilizational divides are far more fundamental than economic interests, ideology, and regimes, and that the world is becoming a smaller place with increasingly close interactions. He further claims that the pre-eminence of a so-called "kin-country" syndrome will provide a civilizational rallying point that will replace political ideology and traditional "balance of power" considerations for relations between states and nations, resulting in a division between the West and "the rest" creating a backlash against Western values (which supposedly "differ fundamentally" from those prevalent in other civilizations).

In his article "The Summoning", Ajami criticises Huntington for ignoring the empirical complexities and state interests which drive conflicts in and between civilizations. Ajami believes that states will remain the dominant factor influencing the global framework and interaction. He also argues that civilizational ties are only utilized by states and groups when it is in their best interest to do so and that modernity and secularism are here to stay, especially in places with considerable struggles to obtain them, and he cites the example of the Indian middle class. Ajami also believes that civilizations do not control states; rather, states control civilizations.

Ajami later relented on his initial criticism of Huntington's theories in the January 6, 2008 issue of the New York Times Book Review in an article titled "The Clash" in which he wrote that "Huntington's thesis about a civilizational clash seems more compelling to me than the critique I provided at that time."

Support for Iraq War
Ajami was an outspoken supporter of the Iraq War, which he believed "issued out of a deep American frustration... with the culture of terrorism that had put down roots in Arab lands."

In an August 2002 speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, US Vice President Dick Cheney sought to assuage concerns about the anticipated US invasion of Iraq, stating: "As for the reaction of the Arab 'street,' the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are 'sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans.'"

Ajami cautioned the United States about the likely negative consequences of the Iraq War. In a 2003 essay in Foreign Affairs, "Iraq and the Arabs' Future," Ajami wrote,

There should be no illusions about the sort of Arab landscape that America is destined to find if, or when, it embarks on a war against the Iraqi regime. There would be no "hearts and minds" to be won in the Arab world, no public diplomacy that would convince the overwhelming majority of Arabs that this war would be a just war. An American expedition in the wake of thwarted UN inspections would be seen by the vast majority of Arabs as an imperial reach into their world, a favor to Israel, or a way for the United States to secure control over Iraq's oil. No hearing would be given to the great foreign power.

But he also goes on to say:

America ought to be able to live with this distrust and discount a good deal of this anti-Americanism as the "road rage" of a thwarted Arab world – the congenital condition of a culture yet to take full responsibility for its self-inflicted wounds. There is no need to pay excessive deference to the political pieties and givens of the region. Indeed, this is one of those settings where a reforming foreign power's simpler guidelines offer a better way than the region's age-old prohibitions and defects.

Ajami retained a positive view of the war three years later. In a 2006 book on the invasion and its aftermath, he described it as a noble effort, and argued that despite many unhappy consequences, it was too soon to write it off as a failure.

Vice President Cheney cited Ajami again in an October 21, 2007 speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, stating, "We have no illusions about the road ahead. As Fouad Ajami said recently, Iraq is not yet 'a country at peace, and all its furies have not burned out, but a measure of order has begun to stick on the ground.'"

Eight days after U.S. President Barack Obama took office, a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Ajami called Obama a "messenger of the old, settled ways," claimed that the George W. Bush administration's diplomacy had had "revolutionary impact," and chided Obama for not praising the Iraq War. Ajami credited the Egyptian Revolution and Tunisian revolution to the Iraq War and Bush's advocacy of democracy:

He also stated, however, that

In June 2011, Ajami wrote an article for The New Republic arguing that the U.S. troops should remain in Iraq, writing that "the United States will have to be prepared for and accept the losses and adversity that are an integral part of staying on, rightly, in so tangled and difficult a setting." On June 13, 2011, he wrote in The Wall Street Journal about the unrest in Syria that "The mask of the Assad regime finally falls..."

Death
On June 22, 2014, Ajami died from prostate cancer at a summer home in Maine, aged 68.

Awards
Ajami was a 1982 winner of a five-year MacArthur Prize Fellowship in the arts and sciences.
In 2006, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Bush, and the Bradley Prize, and in 2011 he earned the Benjamin Franklin Award for public service, and the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism.

Memberships
Ajami was a member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the board of advisors of the journal Foreign Affairs. Ajami was a founding member of ASMEA (The Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa) and was vice chairman of its academic council. Ajami also sat on the editorial board of Middle East Quarterly, a publication of the Middle East Forum think tank. He was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the cochair of their Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.

References

External links
Fouad Ajami at Johns Hopkins SAIS
Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA)

Iraq and the Arabs' Future, 2003
Fouad Ajami speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations on July 11, 2006 about his book, The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, The Arabs and The Iraqis in Iraq
Iraq in the Balance WSJ op-ed by Ajami, April 11, 2007
"A Cold-Blooded Foreign Policy", op-ed by  Ajami, Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2009
Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University on Charlie Rose
Remembering Fouad Ajami By Francis A. Boyle
Ajami's articles on Foreign Affairs

1945 births
2014 deaths
MacArthur Fellows
Lebanese emigrants to the United States
Lebanese people of Iranian descent
University of Washington alumni
Johns Hopkins University faculty
Princeton University faculty
Middle Eastern studies in the United States
Middle East Forum
American people of Iranian descent
American people of Arab descent
Eastern Oregon University alumni
National Humanities Medal recipients
Hoover Institution people
People from Nabatieh District

Fouad Ajami


A second language is a language that a person learns in addition to their first language. A second language may be learned in a formal or informal way, such as at school or in a family. A person may speak two or more second languages.

Adults do not learn languages the same way that children do. Learning a second language is difficult for adults, who rarely speak it as well as their native language because it is much easier for children to learn a second language.

Some children have native multilingualism and so speak several languages, such as by living in a foreign country or having a father speaking a different language from their mother.

Other websites
Asha

References

Language education

Second language


Government House is the official residence of the governor of Victoria, currently Margaret Gardner. It is located in Kings Domain, Melbourne, next to the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Government House was opened in 1876, on land that had originally been set aside in 1841. Previous governors' residences included La Trobe's Cottage (1839–1854), Toorak House (1854–1874), and Bishopscourt (1874–1876). It was designed by William Wardell in the Italianate style, and modelled to some extent on Queen Victoria's Osborne House residence, to which it bears a strong resemblance. Between 1901 and 1930, Government House was used as the official residence of the governor-general of Australia. This occurred during the period when Canberra was still under construction and Melbourne was designated as the temporary seat of government. Despite Parliament House opening in 1927, the Governor-General did not permanently move to Yarralumla for another three years, at which point Government House was given back to the Victorian government.

History
The land for Government House was set aside by Lieutenant-Governor of Victoria, Charles La Trobe,  in 1841. In 1857, Ferdinand von Mueller, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, landscaped the whole area, including Government House reserve, as one parkland. Construction of the building did not start until 1871 and was completed in 1876.

While La Trobe was Lieutenant-Governor he lived in La Trobe's Cottage. Between 1854 and 1874, Governors lived at Toorak House, then they lived in Bishopscourt in East Melbourne until the present Government House was occupied in 1876.

Between the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 and 1927, Government House was the official residence of the governor-general of Australia. When the Federal Parliament commenced sitting in Canberra in 1927, the Governor-General stayed at Government House, Canberra at Yarralumla while Parliament was in session, but also continued living at Government House in Melbourne until 1930. During this period Governors of Victoria lived at Stonington mansion. The House has been in continuous use by the Governors of Victoria since 1934.

Building design
Government House was designed by William Wardell, Inspector General of the Public Works Department, in the Victorian Period Italianate style, and is reminiscent of Queen Victoria's summer residence on the Isle of Wight, Osborne House. The building reflects the extravagant style of the period with a booming economy due to the Victorian gold rush.

The main building consists of three parts: the south wing with its extravagant single storey State Ballroom, a grand staircase hall entrance to the three storey State rooms and two storey vice-regal apartments to the north. Rising from the building is a 145-foot belvedere tower. The mews — a paved area surrounded on three sides by stables, coach houses and staff living quarters is nearby.

The garden was designed by John Sayce in 1873 and is thought to be the "most intact 19th century mansion garden remaining in Melbourne" by the Victorian Heritage Register. William Guilfoyle, curator of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, further refined the original garden design with "many fine mature trees, including conifers, Australian rainforest species and deciduous trees, which are characteristic of the era and which also reflect Guilfoyle's personal taste.".

See also

 William Wardell, Government House, Melbourne.
 Government House
 Governor of Victoria
 Governor-General of Australia
 Government Houses of Australia
 Government Houses in the Commonwealth

References

External links

Government House Victoria - Virtual Tour

Government buildings in Melbourne
Official residences in Australia
Melbourne
Government buildings completed in 1876
Houses in Melbourne
Houses completed in 1876
1876 establishments in Australia
Victoria State Government
Heritage-listed buildings in Melbourne
William Wardell buildings
British colonial architecture in Australia
Italianate architecture in Melbourne
Neoclassical architecture in Australia
Victorian architecture in Victoria (state)
Ballrooms in Australia
Governors' mansions
Landmarks in Melbourne
Buildings and structures in the City of Melbourne (LGA)
Royal residences in Australia

Government House, Melbourne


Black pepper is a plant that grows in the tropics, especially in India. The plant is a perennial vine that bears flowers. People cultivate the plant for its fruit, the peppercorn. The peppercorn can be used as a spice or condiment. Usually, it makes things hot.

There are several different plants called Pepper, all are in the Piper genus of Piperaceae.

From the 16th century onwards, people used the word pepper to also refer to the Chili peppers, which come from a completely unrelated plant. It was also called black gold in older times.

Culinary uses
Pepper is one of the most common spices used around the world. It is very common in European cuisine, and has been known and traded for a very long time. Very often, the peppercorns are ground, and the powder is used to make things taste hot. They get their heat from a chemical called piperine unlike other peppers that get it from capsaicin.

Medical uses

Like all eastern spices, pepper was historically both a seasoning and a medicine. Long pepper, being stronger, was often the preferred medication, but both were used.

Black peppercorns are mentioned in Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani medicine in India. The 5th century Syriac Book of Medicines prescribes pepper (or perhaps long pepper) for illnesses such as constipation, diarrhea, earache, gangrene, heart disease, hernia, hoarseness, indigestion, insect bites, insomnia, joint pain, liver problems, lung disease, oral abscesses, sunburn, tooth decay, and toothaches. Various sources from the 5th century onward also say pepper is good to treat eye problems. Often special ointments made with pepper have to be applied directly to the eye. There is no current medical evidence that any of these treatments has any benefit; pepper applied directly to the eye would be quite uncomfortable and possibly damaging.

For a long time, people believed pepper is the cause for sneezing; this is still believed true today. Some sources say that piperine irritates the nostrils, which will cause the sneezing; some say that it is just the effect of the fine dust in ground pepper, and some say that pepper is not in fact a very effective sneeze-producer at all. Few if any controlled studies  have been carried out to answer the question.

Pepper can irritate the intestines. It is therefore eliminated from the diet of patients having abdominal surgery and ulcers. The replacement is usually called a bland diet.

Pepper contains small amounts of safrole, a carcinogenic compound.

References

Other websites
Nutritional benefits of Black Pepper
Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages
Plant Cultures: History and botany of black pepper in South Asia

Piperales
Spices

Black pepper


Teófilo Villavicencio Marxuach  (October 2, 1912 – February 29, 1992) was a pioneer in Puerto Rican radio broadcasting.  Joaquín Agusty Ramírez, Rafael Quiñones Vidal, and Villavicencio are considered (in that order) the three most important Puerto Rican pioneers of radio broadcasting.

Early years
Villavicencio Marxuach was born in the town of Santurce to Rafael Villavicencio Plumey and Teresa Marxuach Plumey de Villavicencio; his maternal uncle was Lieutenant Colonel Teófilo Marxuach.

Radio broadcasting career
Previous to working as a radio host he worked as a print journalist. He was the official on air voice of the informational and entertainment programs sponsored by the West Indies Advertising Company, his programs served as the permanent radio home of popular local orchestras such as those headed by the Brothers Morales, Mario Dumont, Rafael Petitón Guzmán, and Carmelo Díaz Soler. He was also host on various occasions to native artists such as Arturo Somohano, Emilio Bouret, Daniel Capa, Arturo Cortés, Lolita Cuevas, Alfonso López Prado, Ernestico Mantilla, Armando Ríos Araujo, Rafael Seijo, Lolita Traviso and Germán Vázquez, as well as to international stars (including Pedro Vargas, Hugo del Carril, the Argentine Paulina Singerman, and Carlos Gardel).

Villavicencio Marxuach followed the West Indies Advertising Company to their own newly inaugurated radio station in 1942, where he hosted the news program Diario de La Democracia and El Batey, which was both a news and musical variety show, and that he continued to host until 1960. After leaving radio he worked as spokesman for the Puerto Rican Department of Commerce, as a frequent articles contributor for the newspaper El Mundo, and finally as a columnist for El Vocero. Villavicencio Marxuach was a member of the Puerto Rican Independence Party and a follower of independence advocates Pedro Albizu Campos and Luis Lloréns Torres, an interest which resulted in the 1977 publication of Luis Lloréns Torres, maestro en lo sencillo.

Later years
Teófilo Villavicencio Marxuach married Gloria Sabater in 1941 (Ms. Sabater worked for a time as personal secretary to alcaldesa Felisa Rincón de Gautier). The marriage produced two sons Ever and José Rafael. Villavicencio Marxuach died in Río Piedras in 1992.

Notes

See also

Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Revolts of the 1950s
List of Puerto Ricans
Puerto Rican Nationalist Party
 Other members of the Marxuach family

References

External links
La radio difusión commercial en Puerto Rico cumple 80 años

1912 births
1992 deaths
People from Santurce, Puerto Rico
Puerto Rican people of Catalan descent
Puerto Rican columnists
Puerto Rican journalists
Members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party
Puerto Rican independence activists
20th-century journalists

Teófilo Villavicencio Marxuach


A seal is something such as a piece of wax which has an official mark on it, and which is attached to an important letter or document to make it official.  It can also mean the device (e.g. a metal stamp or ring) which is used to make the official mark.
The word comes from the Latin "sigillum".

The study of seals is called Sigillography.

Impression
Seals are used on documents to prove that they really did come from the person who signed it (they "authenticate" the document).  A seal could be put on the letter itself, or on the envelope where it is stuck down.  The writer would pour some wax  over the joint of the letter, then press a ring or metal stamp (called a matrix) which has his official mark on.   This meant that no one would be able to open the letter and then close it again, because the seal will break when the letter is opened. Most governments still put seals on important documents.  Letters do not normally have seals any more, even important letters.

Sometimes lead, pewter or ivory were used instead of wax.

Each seal is different from any other.  This means that an important person (e.g. a king) has his own personalized stamp.

History of seals
Seals were used in very early civilizations.  In ancient Mesopotamia seals were engraved on cylinders, which could be rolled to create an impression on clay.  Signet-rings of kings from Ancient Egypt have been found. From Ancient Egypt seals in the form of signet-rings of kings have been found.  Other ancient seals come from Saudi Arabia or the Ancient Greek and Roman times.

After the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 seals were not used so much.  The Popes used lead seals, and Charlemagne (who died in 814) had a special seal engraved with Jupiter Sarpis.  In England all the kings from Edward the Confessor onwards had their own "seal of majesty".

Seals from East Asian later developed into block printing.  Seals from China have been found from the 5th century B.C.

The wearing of signet rings (from Latin "signum" meaning sign) is an old tradition among nobles in European and some other cultures. In Latin America, it is also traditional for the descendants of the old criollo aristocratic families to wear signet rings in the Spanish tradition.

Signet rings were often worn on the little finger of either the right or left hand (depending on the country), although some countries have different customs (French and German noblemen, and some Spanish nobles wear it on the ring finger of their left hand; Swiss wear it on the ring finger of their right hand).  In the United Kingdom, signet rings are typically worn on the little finger of the left hand of the bearer and are often cast of gold. The ring is worn with the seal facing outwards so that the wearer can make a seal without taking the ring off.

A similar tradition is found with blacksmiths who use their "touchmark" (a stamp used on the hot metal to show who made it) on whatever they made.  When they died their touchmark was destroyed.

The study of seals (sigillography) is very useful in many areas: genealogy, political history, art history etc.  This is because modern science can work out very closely how old a seal is.  This makes it possible to date documents or works of art.

Metaphorical uses of "seal"
The word "seal" is often used as a metaphor:
 To "set one's seal", or to give one's "seal of approval" means: to say or do something which seems to give one's authority to some decision.

Because seals are used to close something officially, the word "seal" can also be used in other situations with a similar meaning:
 A seal can mean a gesture or promise which is made, e.g. the promise made by two people at their marriage.
 To "seal" can mean to decide or settle something, e.g. to "seal someone's fate" or to "seal a business agreement".
 To "seal" can mean to close something for a long time.  To "seal something off" means to close an area so that no one can go there.
 A secret record is "sealed".

References
 Encyclopædia Britannica 1973 edition

Authentication methods

Seal (device)


Naengmyeon is a traditional Korean summer food. The name means "cold noodles".  Naengmyeon's basic ingredients are flour, a boiled egg, slices of cucumber and slices of boiled meat. Water or gochujang can be added depending on the type of Naengmyeon. There are many kinds of noodles made from wheat, buckwheat, potatoes or sweet potatoes.

History
According to the 19th century writings, it has been made since the Joseon Dynasty. It began as a delicacy in northern Korea. It was popular in the cities of Pyongyang and Hamhung in North Korea. Naengmyeon became widely popular in Korea after the Korean War.

Types

The two main types of naengmyeon are mul naengmyeon and bibim naengmyeon. Mul naengmyeon is served as a cold soup with the noodles contained in broth made from beef or chicken. Bibim naengmyeon is served with a spicy dressing made mainly from gochujang (red chili paste).

Korean food

Naengmyeon


Sir Graham Berry,  (28 August 1822 – 25 January 1904),
was an Australian colonial politician and the 11th Premier of Victoria. He was one of the most radical and colourful figures in the politics of colonial Victoria, and made the most determined efforts to break the power of the Victorian Legislative Council, the stronghold of the landowning class.

Early years
Berry was born in Twickenham, near London, where his father, Benjamin Berry, was a licensed victualler. He had a primary education until 11 years old, then became an apprentice draper. In 1848 he married Harriet Ann Blencowe,
with whom he had eleven children.

Migration
In 1852 he migrated to Victoria, and went into business as a grocer in Prahran, then as a general storekeeper in South Yarra. His business skills and Victoria's booming economy soon made him a wealthy man. After his first wife's death he married Rebekah Evans in 1871; the couple had seven children of their own. At his death, Berry was survived by eight of the children from his first marriage and all seven of the children from his second marriage.

In Victoria, Berry, by voracious reading, acquired the education he had missed in England, and taught himself economics, literature and philosophy. But all his life he retained a broad London accent, which many Victorian conservatives found offensive or amusing. In Parliament he once asked the Speaker: "What is now before the 'Ouse?" To which the Leader of the Opposition interjected: "An H!" He developed a powerful rhetorical style modelled on that of his hero Gladstone, equally effective in the rough-house of the colonial Parliament or on the hustings. The conservative newspaper The Argus conceded: "His oratory might not be polished: it certainly was not—but it was passionate, and it told." Noted for his humour, Berry was nevertheless a tough and determined politician.

Political career
Berry was elected to the Legislative Assembly for East Melbourne at a by-election in 1861, as what The Argus called "an extreme liberal." At the general election later in the same year he switched to Collingwood, then famously the most radical electorate in the colony. He was re-elected in 1864, but his criticism of James McCulloch's government during the tariff crisis of 1865 led to his defeat in that year's snap election.

In 1866 Berry moved to Geelong, where he started a newspaper, the Geelong Register, as a rival to the established Geelong Advertiser. Using the paper as a platform, he was elected for Geelong West in February 1869. In 1877 he switched to Geelong, which he represented until February 1886. He was briefly Treasurer in John MacPherson's government in 1870. When Charles Gavan Duffy formed a strong liberal government in June 1871, Berry again became Treasurer. He was a convinced protectionist, and steered a bill for increased tariffs through the Parliament.

Premier
After the conservative interlude of the Francis and Kerferd governments, Berry assumed leadership of the liberals and became Premier and Treasurer in August 1875. But the liberal majority in the Assembly was unreliable, and in October the government's budget was defeated and Berry resigned. He asked the Governor, Sir George Bowen, for a dissolution, but was refused. He then campaigned across the colony in opposition to the third McCulloch government. At the May 1877 election, with the powerful backing of the Melbourne Age under David Syme, he won a huge liberal majority in the Assembly and returned to office at the head of a radical ministry.

Berry's election manifesto proposed a punitive land tax designed to break up the squatter class's great pastoral properties – about 800 men at this time owned most of Victoria's grazing lands. He also advocated a high tariff to benefit local manufacturing, which threatened to harm the importing and banking interests. He promised that if the council, which was elected on a limited property-based franchise, blocked his program, it would be "dealt with according to its deserts." He described the council as "a chamber which robs the people of the gold in the soil and the land God gave them." Given that there was no mechanism in the Victorian Constitution to override the council, this was taken by conservatives to be a threat of revolutionary violence.

Berry was a devoted constitutional liberal and had no plans for illegal measures. But the Councillors were sufficiently alarmed to pass a modified version of Berry's land tax bill, despite the urgings of the ultra-conservative former Premier Sir Charles Sladen to reject it outright. Berry, emboldened, next introduced a bill for the payment of members of the Assembly, which the trade unions were demanding so that working class candidates could be elected. Berry "tacked" the bill to the Appropriation Bill so that Council could not reject it without paralysing the Colony's finances. The Council resented this blackmail and at Sladen's urging declined to pass the bill, laying it aside.

With the two Houses deadlocked, Berry embarked on a public campaign of "coercion" against the council. "We coerce madmen", he said, "We put them into lunatic asylums, and never was anything more the act of madmen than the rejection of the Appropriation Bill." To bring matters to a head, on 8 January 1878 ("Black Wednesday") Berry's government began to dismiss public servants, starting with police and judges, arguing that without an Appropriation Bill they could not be paid. Berry next brought in a bill to strip the Council of its powers, which the Council of course rejected.

For the next two years Berry clung to office while the colony was gripped with class conflict, including huge torchlit processions through Melbourne sponsored by The Age (pro-Berry) and The Argus (anti-Berry) – although, remarkably, there was almost no violence. Almost no legislation was passed and the administration ground to a halt as funds ran out. Berry's next tactic was to pass a bill through the Assembly stating that finance bills did not need to be passed by the council, but would become law when passed by the Assembly. Bowen thought this bill unconstitutional, but signed it on Berry's advice. When the Colonial Office learned of this, Bowen was recalled and the bill overturned.

Finally a compromise was reached, the payment of members bill was passed, and the sacked public servants were reinstated. Berry then introduced another bill to reduce the powers of the council. When this was rejected, he decided to appeal directly to London. In 1879 Berry and another leading liberal, Charles Pearson, travelled to London to try to persuade the British Government to amend the Victorian Constitution in such a way as to reduce the power of the council. Unfortunately for them, the Conservatives under Benjamin Disraeli were in power, and the Colonial Secretary, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, refused to agree to Berry's requests.

Returning to Melbourne empty-handed, Berry was welcomed by huge crowds, but the popularity of his government was declining and his majority in the Assembly was crumbling under the strain of the crisis. He tried to pass another bill to amend the Constitution, but in December 1879 it failed by one vote to gain the necessary two-thirds in the Assembly. Berry then resigned, and at the subsequent election he was very narrowly defeated. The conservatives under James Service formed a weak government, which resigned in June 1880, leading to another election, which the liberals won, though not as convincingly as they had done in 1877.

Berry returned as Premier, and formed a much more moderate ministry than the one which had fallen in 1879. Both sides were exhausted by the struggle, and in July 1881 a modest reform bill was passed, including some reforms of Council elections, but no concessions on the essential powers of the council. Berry, feeling he could do no more, resigned, and Bryan O'Loghlen formed another weak conservative government. Later Berry accepted office as Chief Secretary and Postmaster-General in a coalition government led by Service, from 1883 to 1886.

Later years
In 1886 Berry resigned from Parliament and was appointed Victorian Agent-General in London, then an important and prestigious post. He was also appointed Executive Commissioner to the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, for his services in connection with which he was created K.C.M.G., becoming Sir Graham Berry. He was lionised as a liberal hero in London. Berry was one of the representatives of Victoria at the Colonial Conference held in London in 1887, and took a prominent part in its proceedings. For his services in connection with the Paris Exhibition of 1889 he was appointed a Commander of the Legion of Honour by the French Government. Berry was also awarded the Order of the Crown of Italy.

Although he was now 70, he was not yet done with politics. Returning to Melbourne in 1892, just as the great post-gold rush economic boom was collapsing and the colony entering a severe depression, he was elected for East Bourke Boroughs at the May 1892 elections. He was Treasurer in William Shiels's Liberal government, but the days of reforming liberalism in Victoria were over for the time being and he resigned in January 1893. In October 1894 he was elected Speaker, a post he held until September 1897, when he finally retired.

Berry was granted a pension by Parliament, and devoted the remainder of his life to supporting the cause of Australian Federation. In 1897 he was elected a Victorian delegate to the Constitutional Convention which drafted the Australian Constitution, mainly because of the support of The Age. He was out of sympathy with the tendency of the opinion at the convention, and more often than not voted on the losing side of divisions, the only delegate with that distinction. At 75, he was too frail to contribute much except his prestige as one of the country's radical heroes. He retired to the seaside with his enormous family, and died at St Kilda in 1904. He was given a state funeral and eulogised by Prime Minister Alfred Deakin.

The Age editorialised on Berry's death: "Sir Graham Berry had ten years of such storms as might well have daunted one less resolute. But he lived to see the triumph of almost all the great reforms he had fought for." This was not strictly true, since the conservative domination of the Legislative Council lasted unbroken for nearly a century after his death, but Berry certainly deserved to be remembered as the most determined radical politician in 19th century Victoria.

Portrayals on screen
Berry appears as a minor character in the 2003 film Ned Kelly, played by Australian actor Charles Tingwell. Berry is portrayed as receiving Kelly's now famous Jerilderie Letter and reading it out loud to the officers in charge of the hunt, though in reality, Berry was never sent the letter, nor was it ever intended to be sent to him.

References

Further reading
Geoff Browne, A Biographical Register of the Victorian Parliament, 1900–84, Government Printer, Melbourne, 1985
Don Garden, Victoria: A History, Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1984
Peter Mansfield, Graham Berry: Geelong's radical premier, Geelong Historical Society, Geelong, 2006
Sean Scalmer, Democratic Adventurer: Graham Berry and the making of Australian politics, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2020
Kathleen Thompson and Geoffrey Serle, A Biographical Register of the Victorian Parliament, 1856–1900, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1972
 Raymond Wright, A People's Counsel. A History of the Parliament of Victoria, 1856–1990, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1992

External links

1822 births
1904 deaths
Premiers of Victoria
Australian federationists
Chartists
Victoria (state) state politicians
Speakers of the Victorian Legislative Assembly
Agents-General for Victoria
British emigrants to the Colony of Victoria
Knights Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George
Commanders of the Legion of Honour
People from Twickenham
Members of the Victorian Legislative Assembly
Chief Secretaries of Victoria
Treasurers of Victoria

Graham Berry


James Martin (19 October 1933 – 24 June 2013) was an English information technology consultant and author, known for his work on information technology engineering.

Biography
James Martin was born on 19 October 1933 in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, England. He earned a degree in physics at Keble College, Oxford.

Martin joined IBM in 1959, and from the 1980s on, established several IT consultancy firms. Starting in 1981 with Dixon Doll and Tony Carter he established DMW (Doll Martin Worldwide) in London, UK, which was later renamed James Martin Associates (JMA), which was (partly) bought by Texas Instruments Software in 1991. He later co-founded Database Design Inc. (DDI), in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to promulgate his database design techniques and to develop tools to help implement them.  After becoming the market leader in information technology engineering software, DDI was renamed KnowledgeWare and eventually purchased by Fran Tarkenton, who took it public.

Martin was awarded an honorary fellowship by Keble College, Oxford and an honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Warwick in July 2009. He gave the Turing Lecture in 2008. According to Computerworld'''s 25th anniversary issue, he was ranked fourth among the 25 individuals who have most influenced the world of computer science.

Personal life
From the 1990s onwards, Martin lived on his own private island, Agar's Island, in Bermuda, where he died on 24 June 2013, apparently in a swimming accident.

 Work
Martin was an expert in the field of systems design, software development methodology, information technology engineering and computer-aided software engineering. He was one of the first to promote fourth-generation programming languages, and was one of the main developers of the Rapid Application Development methodology.

 Information Technology Engineering
Information technology engineering (ITE) is an approach to designing and developing information systems. It has a somewhat chequered history that follows two very distinct threads. It is said to have originated in Australia between 1976 and 1980, and appears first in the literature in 1981 in the Savant Institute publication Information Engineering by James Martin and Clive Finkelstein.

Information technology engineering first provided data analysis and database design techniques that could be used by database administrators (DBAs) and by systems analysts to develop database designs and systems based upon an understanding of the operational processing needs of organisations for the 1980s.

The Finkelstein thread evolved after 1980 into the data processing (DP)-driven variant of IE. From 1983 till 1986 IE evolved further into the business-driven variant of IE, which was intended to address a rapidly changing business environment. The then Technical Director, Charles M. Richter, from 1983 to 1987, played a significant role by revamping the IE methodology as well as designing the IE software product (User-Data) which helped automate the IE methodology, opening the way to next generation Information Architecture.

 Computer-aided software engineering
The Martin thread in information technology engineering was strategy-driven from the outset and from 1983 was focused on the possibility of automating the development process through the provision of techniques for business description that could be used to populate a data dictionary or encyclopaedia that could in turn be used as source material for code generation. The Martin methodology provided a foundation for the CASE (Computer-Aided Software Engineering) tool industry.

Martin himself had significant stakes in at least four CASE tool vendors—InTech (Excelerator), Higher Order Software, KnowledgeWare, originally Database Design Inc, (Information Engineering Workbench) and James Martin Associates, originally DMW and now Headstrong (the original designers of the Texas Instruments' CA Gen facility and the principal developers of the methodology).

At the end of the 1980s and early 1990s the Martin thread incorporated rapid application development (RAD) and business process reengineering (BPR) and soon after also entered the object oriented field.

 Rapid Application Development (RAD)

Rapid application development (RAD) is a term originally used for describing a software development process first developed and successfully deployed during the mid-1970s by D.Dinadasa at Getahetta Telephone Co's Systems Development Center under the direction of Dan Gielan. Following a series of remarkably successful implementations of this process, Gielan lectured extensively in various forums on the methodology, practice, and benefits of this process.

Martin introduced his approach in 1991. Martin's methodology involves iterative development and the construction of prototypes. More recently, the term and its acronym have come to be used in a broader, generic sense that encompasses a variety of techniques aimed at speeding application development, such as the use of web application frameworks and other types of software frameworks.

RAD approaches may entail compromises in functionality and performance in exchange for enabling faster development and facilitating application maintenance.

 The Oxford Martin School
In 2004 Martin donated £60m to help establish The James Martin 21st Century School, which in 2010 was renamed The Oxford Martin School, at the University of Oxford, in what was the largest single donation to the university. This school aims to "formulate new concepts, policies and technologies that will make the future a better place to be". In 2009 Martin pledged up to an additional $50 million if it could be matched by other donors. This condition was met in April 2010.

 Publications
Martin wrote over a hundred books many of which were best sellers in the information technology industry. A selection:

 1965. Programming real-time computer systems.
 1967. Design of real-time computer systems.
 1969. Telecommunications and the computer.
 1970. The Computerized Society (with Adrian R.D.Norman).
 1971. Future developments in telecommunications 1972. Introduction to teleprocessing.
 1972. Systems analysis for data transmission.
 1973. Design of man-computer dialogues.
 1973. Security, accuracy, and privacy in computer systems. 1976. Principles of Data-Base Management. 1978. Wired society.
 1981. End-user's guide to data base.
 1980. Managing the data base environment
 1981. Information engineering.
 1982. Application Development without Programmers.
 1982. Viewdata and the information society.
 1983. Software maintenance: the problem and its solutions. With Carma McClure.
 1984. Recommended diagramming standards for analysts and programmers: a basis for automation  1985. Diagramming techniques for analysts and programmers. With Carma McClure.
 1985. Fourth-generation languages.
 1985. System design from provably correct constructs: the beginnings of true software engineering.
 1986. Wired world: towards a greater understanding of the world information economy. With Simon Grant and the Atwater Institute.
 1987. VSAM: access method services and programming techniques (with Joe Leben and Jim Arnold)<ref>VSAM: access method services and programming techniques</ref>
 1988. Structured techniques: the basis for CASE
 1989. Strategic information planning methodologies.
 1992. Object-oriented analysis and design.
 1995. The Great Transition: Using the Seven Disciplines of Enterprise Engineering to Align People, Technology and Strategy.
 2000. After the Internet: Alien Intelligence.
 2006. The Meaning of the 21st Century.

See also
Create, read, update and delete

References

External links

Michael Douglas narrates Martin documentary on 21st century challenges
Webcast about Martins vision for the 21st century

1933 births
2013 deaths
People from Ashby-de-la-Zouch
Alumni of Keble College, Oxford
Rhodes University alumni
Fellows of Keble College, Oxford
IBM employees
English computer scientists
Database specialists
British software engineers
Technology evangelists
Deaths by drowning
Accidental deaths in Bermuda
English male writers

James Martin (author)


Polyurethane is a polymer. Its name is often shortened to PU or PUR. Polyurethane is made of organic units, which are joined by urethane. Polyurethane polymers are formed through step-growth polymerization. In this process, a monomer containing at least two isocyanate functional groups reacts with another monomer containing at least two hydroxyl (alcohol) groups in the presence of a catalyst.

Polyurethane is available with different levels of stiffness, hardness or densities. Examples for such materials are:
 Low-density flexible foam used in upholstery
 Low-density rigid foam used for thermal insulation and RTM cores
 Soft solid elastomers used for gel pads and print rollers
 Low density elastomers used in footwear
 Hard solid plastics used as electronic instrument bezels and structural parts

Polyurethanes are widely used in high resiliency flexible foam seating, rigid foam insulation panels, microcellular foam seals and gaskets, durable elastomeric wheels and tires, automotive suspension bushings, electrical potting compounds, high performance adhesives and sealants, Spandex fibers, seals, gaskets, carpet underlay, and hard plastic parts.

Polyurethane products are often called "urethanes". They should not be confused with the specific substance urethane, also known as ethyl carbamate. Polyurethanes are neither produced from ethyl carbamate, nor do they contain it.

References

Polymers

Polyurethane


is a Japanese art form in which the primary technique uses coloured paper that is torn to create images, and may resemble a water colour painting. The technique dates from the Heian period of Japanese history when it was often used in conjunction with calligraphy. Handmade paper is essential for the creation of chigiri-e images.

History
In Japan's Heian period chigiri-e was used in conjunction with calligraphy.  Poems were written on a background of either plain or decorated coloured paper, such as in the textural passages of the Genji scrolls and the Sanju Rokunin Kashu. In the 11th century calligraphy paper was usually white or light blue: it could be decorated and coloured and then mounted onto a support.

Chigiri-e has become a popular art form. It can be used to create either realistic images or abstract ones.  Its use in Japan is often decorative, using flowers and landscapes as subject matter. The paper may be coloured by the craftsman paper-maker but many chigiri-e artists colour the paper themselves, using vegetable dyes, coloured inks or powder pigments. The paper most often used is Tengujoshi: a handmade, long-fibered, very light weight paper (0.03 millimetres thickness).

The craft of paper-making had almost disappeared until, in the early 1900s, a craftsman developed Tengujoshi, one of the strongest and finest papers currently made. The craft takes three years to learn. This paper, due to its strength, transparency and lightness, is also used for repairing and restoring paintings and other art works. The paper can be made in any range of colors, or may be uncolored.  Although very light weight its long fibres assure its strength. It is made with 100% mulberry and is sifted through bamboo boards woven with a layer of silk; only about 100 sheets may be produced in one day. There is also a less-labour-intensive machine-made version of Tengujo paper.

Themes
Traditionally Heian calligraphy backgrounds incorporated Chinese patterns and themes and are often used in woodblock techniques to achieve them (grasses, bamboo, water).  These themes are still used.  Colorful collages could be made with torn (chigiri-e) or cut (kiri-e) paper.  Some were further decorated with colour pigments or metallic dust. This provides the under-drawing for aristocratic calligraphy. The combination of texture and transparency results in a characteristic richness of colour. "Colour names and layered colours are woven throughout Heian poetry and literature.  The use of layered colour is also found in clothing in this period. In many collage techniques found images are used but in chigiri-e the torn paper itself is used to create images.

See also
 Washi paper.

References

Japanese art

Chigiri-e