An electrical cell is a device used to generate electricity, or to make chemical reactions  by applying electricity. A battery is one or more cells, connected. This cell is also known as electrochemical cell.

Cells producing electricity
The simple electrical cells were first developed in 1800s. They are also called galvanic cells, because an Italian scientist named Luigi Galvani invented these cells.

Special chemical reactions which occur inside the electrical cell, result in oxidation and reduction of the substances inside the cell. This produces electrical energy. Normal batteries work like this.

Some electrical cells produce electricity without using chemical energy. For example, solar cells produce electricity when they are exposed to sun light.

A plate of zinc and a plate of copper immersed in a dilute solution which contains acid or salt is an example of the chemical reaction based cell. The solution acts as an electrolyte (electric conductor). When the two plates are connected to a current meter with a wire, electric current will pass; this is because oxidation and reduction processes take place in this chemical reaction turning the zinc plate to a negative electrode and the copper plate to a positive electrode, and so the electrons flow from zinc to copper.

Cells using electricity
Some chemical reactions need high energy to happen. An example is the breakdown of water into hydrogen and oxygen. An electrical cell (or an "electrolytic cell") is used for these reactions. It is a container which has to have a chemical reaction involving electrodes. The chemical substances are exposed to electrical power, and the electrolysis reaction happens inside the electrical cell.

Two pieces of metal are placed in water that has a little electrolyte such as hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, sodium bicarbonate, or sodium hydroxide added to it. An electric current is applied and gas comes out of each electrode. Some greenish-brown color may be seen too if iron was used.

There may also be a chemical reaction which will result in the explosion of the iron and has a strong blast radius (safety goggles recommended).

Related pages
 Battery

References

Tools
Electricity

Electrical cell


A GPRS roaming exchange (GRX) acts as a hub for General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) connections from roaming users, removing the need for a dedicated link between each GPRS service provider. It was developed to facilitate a more efficient way for operators to interconnect networks, and played a large part in the transition to third-generation systems.

Development

Initially GPRS roaming was based on complicated relationships between individual operators with each operator requiring a dedicated link to each different partner so that , whereby  is the number of global operators that would require a dedicated link. This meant that mobile subscribers who wanted to use GPRS whilst roaming could only do so if their operator had a direct agreement with the operator in the country or area in which they were roaming.

In 2000  the GSMA (GSM Association) developed the idea of GRX to handle all roaming between public land mobile networks (PLMNs).

Technical implementation
Usually, GRX is based on a private or public IP backbone and uses GPRS Tunnelling Protocol on the session layer (OSI Layer Five) between the visited PLMN (Public Land Mobile Network) and the home PLMN. Each GRX operator will have a network consisting of a set of routers and links connecting to the GPRS networks, moreover the GRX network will have links connecting to other GRX nodes in peer model.

The GRX operator can therefore act as a hub, allowing a GPRS subscriber to interconnect with many roaming partners without the need for dedicated links. For operators this is advantageous in that it allows quicker implementation of roaming partners, faster time to market for new operators and lower capital expenditure seeing as it is a scalable solution depending on bandwidth and quality of service requirements. Because the interconnection between the visited PLMN and home PLMN uses private GRX networks there is also no need to maintain Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) tunnels over the public internet.

See also
IP exchange (IPX)

References

External links
GRX exploitation

Mobile telecommunications standards
3GPP standards

GPRS roaming exchange


The Spreckels Sugar Company is an American sugar beet refiner that for many years controlled much of the U.S. West Coast refined sugar market. It is currently headquartered in Brawley, California.

History
The Spreckels Sugar Company was founded by entrepreneur, industrialist, newspaper publisher, and railroad executive Claus Spreckels (1828–1908) in February 1899. He founded the company town of Spreckels, California, just south of the city of Salinas, California, in 1897, but his descendants began to relinquish control when they started selling homes in the community to the public c. 1925. In 1891, Henry O. Havemeyer, who controlled The American Sugar Refining Company (The Sugar Trust), bought half of the stock of the Western Sugar Company, thus giving his company control of the Hawaiian sugar and of the markets west of the Mississippi River. When it was completed in 1899, Spreckels' "Factory 1" was the largest sugar refinery in the United States and the third-largest in the world. Shipping to and from the plant was mostly by a private Spreckels-owned narrow-gauge railroad system connecting to the docks at Moss Landing, California. The factory was just north of the Salinas River at .

On Claus Spreckels' death, his second son Adolph B. Spreckels (1857–1924) assumed the management of Spreckels Sugar Company. Adolph's wife's nephew, Charles Edouard de Bretteville, eventually took over as head of the company and in 1949 led a group that purchased control. In 1963, the family sold their interests to Amstar. In 1987, a management team bought out the Spreckels Sugar Division; in 1996, it was sold to Imperial Holly Corp. of Sugar Land, Texas, who owned it until 2005 when it was sold to Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative of Renville, Minnesota.

Spreckels Boulevard outside Salinas, as well as Spreckels Road outside King City, California and Spreckels Boulevard in Manteca, California, still bear witness to the mark Spreckels Sugar made in the area.

American author John Steinbeck worked on ranches owned by Spreckels Sugar throughout the Salinas Valley in the early 1920s.

See also
 Spreckelsville, Hawaii: a company town

References

External links

Sugar companies of the United States
Companies based in Imperial County, California
History of Monterey County, California
Salinas Valley
Food and drink companies established in 1899
1899 establishments in California
Business in Hawaii

Spreckels Sugar Company


Juan Pablo Montoya (born September 20, 1975 in Bogotá, Colombia) is an IndyCar Series racecar driver. He used to race in NASCAR and Formula 1. His wife is Connie and he has a son and a daughter. He was  a CART champion winning the Indianapolis 500., his first win in NASCAR came in 2007 and the second in 2010 for Chip Ganassi's racing team. Before 2007, he was in Formula One from 2000 to 2006 winning at 7 Grand Prix's one of them in Monte Carlo, Monaco.  While in NASCAR, he drove for Earnhardt Ganassi Racing (his old CART Team), and his teammate was Jamie McMurray. He left Ganassi and NASCAR in 2014 to race IndyCars for Penske Racing. In 2014, he won his first race since leaving NASCAR when he won a race at Pocono Raceway.

Weblinks
http://www.nascar.com/drivers/dps/jmontoya00/cup/ Official Website NASCAR Website Juan Pablo Montoya
http://www.jpmontoya.com/2011/ Juan Pablo Montoya Official Personal Website

1975 births
Living people
People from Bogotá
Colombian sportspeople
NASCAR drivers
Formula One drivers

Juan Pablo Montoya


Cimabue, (c.1240 - c.1302), was a painter from Florence in Italy who worked in the Late Medieval period. His real name was Cenni di Peppi. He painted large icons in the Byzantine style and was the first great painter in the city of Florence. The only works of art that are known to be definitely by Cimabue are the mosaic of Christ in Majesty in Pisa Cathedral and two very large ruined frescos in the Church of St Francis in Assisi.

The most famous painting that is believed to be by Cimabue is the "Madonna of Santa Trinita" which is an altarpiece that was done for the Church of the Holy Trinity. It is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. He is also believed to have painted two large crucifixes which hung in the Church of St Domenic in Arezzo and the Church of the Holy Cross (Santa Croce, Florence). The crucifix of Santa Croce was ruined in a flood and is now in the church's museum.

The biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote about Cimabue's life, 250 years after his death. He wrote that one day Cimabue was walking in the country when he saw a little shepherd boy scratching a picture of a sheep onto a rock. The drawing was so good that Cimabue went to the boy's father and begged that he might take the boy as his apprentice and teach him to paint. The boy was Giotto, who became a very famous painter, and who is thought of as the very first painter of the Italian Renaissance.

References
 Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, (1568), 1965 edition, trans George Bull, Penguin,
 Frederick Hartt, A History of Italian Renaissance Art, (1970) Thames and Hudson,
 Helen Gardner, Art through the Ages, (1970) Harcourt, Brace and World,
 Ilan Rachum, The Renaissance, an Illustrated Encyclopedia, (1979) Octopus,
 Luciano Berti, Florence: the city and its art, (1971) Scala,
 Luciano Berti, The Ufizzi, (1971) Scala, Florence.

1240 births
1302 deaths
13th-century Italian painters

Cimabue


The Oregon Treaty is a treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States that was signed on June 15, 1846, in Washington, D.C. The treaty brought an end to the Oregon boundary dispute by settling competing American and British claims to the Oregon Country; the area had been jointly occupied by both Britain and the U.S. since the Treaty of 1818.

Background

The Treaty of 1818 set the boundary between the United States and British North America along the 49th parallel of north latitude from Minnesota to the "Stony Mountains" (now known as the Rocky Mountains). The region west of those mountains was known to the Americans as the Oregon Country and to the British as the Columbia Department or Columbia District of the Hudson's Bay Company. (Also included in the region was the southern portion of another fur district, New Caledonia.) The treaty provided for joint control of that land for ten years. Both countries could claim land and both were guaranteed free navigation throughout.

Joint control steadily grew less tolerable for both sides. After a British minister rejected the offer of U.S. Presidents James K. Polk and John Tyler to settle the boundary at the 49th parallel north, American expansionists called for the annexation of the entire region up to Parallel 54°40′ north, the southern limit of Russian America as established by parallel treaties between the Russian Empire and the United States (1824) and Britain (1825). However, after the outbreak of the Mexican–American War in April 1846 diverted U.S. attention and military resources, a compromise was reached in the ongoing negotiations in Washington, D.C., and the matter was then settled by the Polk administration (to the surprise of its own party's hardliners) to avoid a two-war situation, and another war with the formidable military strength of Great Britain.

Senate vote in June 1846

In early June 1846 the British offered to negotiate the boundaries between the United States and British North America in the region west of the Rockies.  Some US senators such as Charles Gordon Atherton and Benning Wentworth Jenness were combative and were in favor of rejecting British proposals to negotiate. However others, such as both Alabama senators (Arthur P. Bagby and Dixon Hall Lewis) as well as both Massachusetts senators (Daniel Webster and John Davis) were in favor of accepting British proposals. The Senate agreed that they would vote on whether or not to recommend President Polk accept British offers to negotiate.  Watching closely, the British hoped this vote would pass the Senate. On June 12, the Senate voted 38–12 recommending that President Polk accept British proposals to negotiate this boundary. Votes in favor included 18 Democrats and 20 Whigs, whereas 11 Democrats and one Whig voted against. Three Democrats and three Whigs abstained.

Negotiations
The treaty was negotiated by US Secretary of State James Buchanan and Richard Pakenham, British envoy to the United States. Foreign Secretary Earl of Aberdeen was responsible for it in Parliament. The treaty was signed on June 15, 1846, ending the joint occupation and making Oregonians south of the 49th parallel American citizens, with those north of it becoming British.

The Oregon Treaty set the border between the U.S. and British North America at the 49th parallel with the exception of Vancouver Island, which was retained in its entirety by the British. Vancouver Island, with all coastal islands, was constituted as the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1849. The U.S. portion of the region was organized as Oregon Territory on August 15, 1848, with Washington Territory being formed from it in 1853.  The British portion remained unorganized until 1858, when the Colony of British Columbia was set up as a result of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush and fears of the re-asserted American expansionist intentions. The two British colonies were amalgamated in 1866 as the United Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. When the Colony of British Columbia joined Canada in 1871, the 49th parallel and marine boundaries established by the Oregon Treaty became the Canada–US border.

In order to ensure that Britain retained all of Vancouver Island and the southern Gulf Islands, it was agreed that the border would swing south around that area. Ownership of several channel islands, including the San Juan Islands remained in dispute. A bloodless confrontation known as the Pig War erupted in 1859 over ownership of the San Juans, which was not resolved until 1872. Ultimately, arbitration began with German Emperor Wilhelm I as head of a three-man arbitration commission. On October 21, 1872, the commission decided in favor of the United States, awarding the San Juan Islands to the U.S.

Treaty definitions

The treaty states that the border in the Strait of Juan de Fuca would follow "the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island."  It did not, however, specify which of several possible channels was intended, giving rise to ownership disputes over the San Juan Islands beginning in 1859.

Other provisions included:
 Navigation of "channel[s] and straits, south of the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, remain free and open to both parties".
 The "Puget's Sound Agricultural Company" (a subsidiary of the Hudson's Bay Company) retains the right to their property north of the Columbia River, and shall be compensated for properties surrendered if required by the United States.
 The property rights of the Hudson's Bay Company and all British subjects south of the new boundary will be respected.

Issues arising from treaty

Ambiguities in the wording of the Oregon Treaty regarding the route of the boundary, which was to follow "the deepest channel" out to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and beyond to the open ocean, resulted in the Pig War, another boundary dispute in 1859 over the San Juan Islands. The dispute was peacefully resolved after a decade of confrontation and military bluster during which the local British authorities consistently lobbied London to seize back the Puget Sound region entirely, as the Americans were busy elsewhere with the Civil War. The San Juans dispute was not resolved until 1872 when, pursuant to the 1871 Treaty of Washington, an arbitrator (William I, German Emperor) chose the American-preferred marine boundary via Haro Strait, to the west of the islands, over the British preference for Rosario Strait which lay to their east.

The treaty also had the unintended consequence of putting what became Point Roberts, Washington on the "wrong" side of the border. A peninsula, jutting south from Canada into Boundary Bay, was made by the agreement, as land south of the 49th parallel, a separate fragment of the United States.

According to American historian Thomas C. McClintock,  the British public welcomed the treaty:

See also

 Joseph Smith Harris' account of surveying the border
 Presidency of James K. Polk
 United Kingdom–United States relations
 Webster-Ashburton Treaty

References and footnotes

Bibliography
 Anderson, Stuart. "British Threats and the Settlement of the Oregon Boundary Dispute." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 66#4 (1975): 153–160. online
 Cramer, Richard S. "British magazines and the Oregon question." Pacific Historical Review 32.4 (1963): 369–382. online
 Dykstra, David L. The Shifting Balance of Power: American-British Diplomacy in North America, 1842-1848 (University Press of America, 1999).
 Jones, Wilbur D., and J. Chal Vinson. "British Preparedness and the Oregon Settlement." Pacific Historical Review 22#4 (1953): 353–364. online
 Levirs, Franklin P. "The British attitude to the Oregon question, 1846." (Diss. University of British Columbia, 1931) online.
 Miles, Edwin A. "'Fifty-four Forty or Fight' – An American Political Legend." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 44#2 (1957): 291–309. online
 Merk, Frederick. "The British Corn Crisis of 1845-46 and the Oregon Treaty." Agricultural History 8#3 (1934): 95–123.
 Merk, Frederick.   "British Government Propaganda and the Oregon Treaty." American Historical Review 40#1 (1934): 38-62 online
 Pletcher, David M. The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War. (U of Missouri Press, 1973), a standard scholarly history
 Rakestraw, Donald A. For Honor or Destiny: The Anglo-American Crisis over the Oregon Territory (Peter Lang Publishing, 1995), a standard scholarly history.
 Winther, Oscar Osburn. "The British in Oregon Country: A Triptych View." The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 58.4 (1967): 179–187. online

External links

 Map of North America at time of Oregon Treaty at omniatlas.com

1846 in Washington, D.C.
1846 in British law
1846 in American law
1846 treaties
June 1846 events
Canada–United States border
History of the Pacific Northwest
Pre-Confederation British Columbia
Legal history of Canada
Pre-statehood history of Oregon
Oregon Country
United Kingdom–United States treaties
Treaties of the United Kingdom (1801–1922)
George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen
James Buchanan

Oregon Treaty


Brunhilde was a mighty female warrior, one of the Valkyries. She was also a heroine from the German epics, especially in the Nibelungen saga, in which she is an Icelandic princess.

She defied Odin and in punishment he imprisoned her within a ring of fire on earth. She had to stay there until someone rescued her. Siegfied (Sigurd) braved the fire, woke her, and fell in love with her.

He gave her the ring Andvarinaut, unaware of its curse. Eventually she killed herself when she learned that Sigurd had betrayed her with another woman (Gudrun), not knowing he had been bewitched into doing so by Grimhild.

Sources
 http://www.pantheon.org/articles/b/brunhilde.html

Norse mythology

Brunhilde


This is about distribution in a mathematical sense, other meanings can be found at distribution
In mathematics, a distribution is a generalisation of a function. Distributions were introduced in the middle of the 20th century by Laurent Schwartz, who received a Fields Medal for his work on them. The Fields medal is comparable to a Nobel Prize in mathematics, which does not exist.

Distributions were introduced to model certain concepts from Physics. Physics has the concept of a mass of points in space. The Dirac delta function can model an electromagnetic charge of a point in space. The Dirac delta function is zero everywhere, except at one point, where it is infinitely large. This needs to be the case, because the density function needs to be 1. There is no function that can meet this criterion, except if integraton is taken as a function in the mathematical sense.

Today, distributions are used in different fields of mathematics and physics, for example to model Partial differential equations or Fourier analyses, which are important for Quantum electrodynamics or signal processing.

Mathematics

Distribution (mathematics)


Louse Wies Sija Anne Lilly Berthe "Lousewies" van der Laan (born 18 February 1966) is a retired Dutch politician of the Democrats 66 (D66) party and jurist.

Life before politics
In her youth, Van der Laan lived in Belgium, Germany, and the United States.

She finished high school at the German School in Washington, DC. She obtained the International Baccalaureate at Armand Hammer United World College of the American West (In Montezuma, New Mexico). After graduating in 1984, Van der Laan moved to the Netherlands to study law at the University of Leiden. She specialized in International and European Law and graduated in 1990. Between 1990 and 1991 she studied international relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University at Bologna. After an internship at Greenpeace in Brussels, she became an intern at the cabinet of Dutch European Commissioner Frans Andriessen.

Between 1991 and 1994 she worked for TACIS of the European Commission, where she was responsible for environmental projects. In 1995 she worked as an environmental specialist for the EBRD in London. Between 1995 and 1997 she worked for the Cabinet of Dutch European Commissioner for External Relations, Hans van den Broek. In 1997 she became his spokesperson.

Political life
In 1999 she became head of the D66 list for the European elections. She became chairwoman of the parliamentary party and member of the parliamentary party board of the ELDR. In the European Parliament she was active on a range of issue focusing on civil liberties, environmental affairs, budget and international relations. In the European Parliament she was vice-chairwoman of the Committee on Budget Control between 1999 and 2002, vice-chairwoman of the Committee on Liberties and Civil Rights, Justice and Home Affairs between 2002 and 2003. She was member of the Committee on the Rights of the Woman and Equal Chances between 1999 and 2003, the delegation for relations with the Palestinian Authority between 1999 and 2002. Between 1999 and 2002 she was a substitute for the Committee on Environmental Protection, Public Health and Consumers' Policy and a substitute for the delegation for relations with Slovakia. Between 2002 and 2003 she was a substitute for the Budget Committee. She founded the Intergroup on Food Safety, the Campaign for Parliamentary Reform.

In 2003 she switched to the Dutch Parliament. She was the spokeswoman of her party on foreign policy, higher education, justice, technology, European affairs and gay rights. She was the vice-chairwoman of the parliamentary party and the chairwoman of the parliamentary committee on technology policy and vice-chairwoman of the committee on European affairs. In 2004, she and her husband, Dennis Hesseling, a mathematician, had a son that they named "Helix". Van der Laan, who speaks English and Dutch fluently, is raising her son bilingually.

She assumed the parliamentary leadership of D66 in the House of Representatives on 3 February 2006, succeeding Boris Dittrich. Dittrich stepped down after the debate on sending Dutch troops to the Afghan province of Uruzgan.

Lousewies van der Laan lost out to Alexander Pechtold in the June 2006 D66 leadership election.

Van der Laan played a significant role in the downfall of the Second Balkenende cabinet by supporting a motion of no confidence against Minister Rita Verdonk regarding Verdonk's behavior in the matter of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's citizenship. On 4 August 2006, she announced that she would retire from the House of Representatives after the 2006 elections. She describes herself as an agnostic.

Life after politics
After leaving elected office, Lousewies van der Laan ran an international consultancy business, LW International, which included clients like the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster reduction. From January 2009 until 2015 she was employed as the Chef de Cabinet working for the Presidency of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Lousewies van der Laan remains active in promoting democracy, inter alia, by working with the National Democratic Institute, including as election observer at the 2007 elections in Morocco and 2009 elections in Lebanon. Since 2008 she has chaired the Dutch National Committee of United World Colleges, which selects students to attend one of the 12 United World Colleges around the world. She is a member of Women on Top, which advocates for more women in high level positions and works against the feminisation of poverty. She sits on various Advisory boards, including the Getu Foundation, the Rainbow Tree Foundation (Stichting De Regenboogboom) and the International Democratic Initiative. She has been a member of the Steering Board of the "Apeldoorn Conference", the bilateral conference between the UK and The Netherlands since 2004.  She is a guest lecturer at the University of Maastricht, the Clingendael Institute for International Relations and the Nyenrode Business University.

In 2015 she was appointed to the Board of Directors of ICANN, for a three-year term starting in October 2015.

References

External links

Official
  Mr. L.W.S.A.L.B. (Lousewies) van der Laan Parlement & Politiek

1966 births
Living people
Democrats 66 MEPs
Democrats 66 politicians
Dutch agnostics
Dutch expatriates in Belgium
Dutch expatriates in Germany
Dutch expatriates in the United States
Dutch nonprofit executives
Dutch nonprofit directors
Dutch lobbyists
Dutch political consultants
Dutch women jurists
Leiden University alumni
Members of the House of Representatives (Netherlands)
MEPs for the Netherlands 1999–2004
20th-century women MEPs for the Netherlands
21st-century women MEPs for the Netherlands
Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies alumni
People educated at a United World College
Politicians from Rotterdam
20th-century Dutch civil servants
20th-century Dutch politicians
21st-century Dutch civil servants
21st-century Dutch politicians

Lousewies van der Laan


Omarr Ali Hasan Smith (born April 7, 1977) is a former American football defensive back who was most recently the head coach of the Baltimore Brigade of the Arena Football League (AFL). He played professionally for the San Jose SaberCats of the AFL, and played college football at San Jose State.

In his career, Smith has played for the San Jose SaberCats twice, from 2000–2002 and 2004–2008. He also played one year (2003) for the Tampa Bay Storm. He has also coached defensive backs at Whittier College. Prior to re-joining the SaberCats, Smith served as defensive coordinator with the rival Arizona Rattlers for three years (winning two championships). Smith has won seven total Arenabowl championships as a player (4) and assistant coach (3); this ties the legendary Tim Marcum, who won seven as a head coach, for the most in AFL history. Smith was the head coach of the Los Angeles KISS of the AFL in 2016 and currently coaches the Baltimore Brigade.

Early years
Smith attended Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance, California. While there, he lettered in football, basketball and track. He was a three-time all-league and two-time all-area grid choice.

College career
Smith played four years at San Jose State University and had 13 career interceptions, the second-most in school history. He joined the team as a walk-on in 1995 and was assigned to cover Keyshawn Johnson in his first collegiate start. He led San Jose State with nine passes broken up in 1996 and 16 in 1997. He tied for second in the nation in 1997 with seven interceptions and tied a school record with three interceptions against the University of Hawaii. Smith returned 22 punts for 246 yards and was the only player in Division I-A to rank in the top-30 in both interceptions and punt returns. He had an 84-yard touchdown return at UTEP in 1997 and an 88-yard punt return for a touchdown against Fresno State in 1998. Smith had 74 tackles as a sophomore, third-most on the team, and ended his career with 182 career tackles.

Professional career

2000
In 2000, Smith played in eight games at WR/DB as a rookie. He posted 16 tackles, five passes broken up and five receptions for 48 yards. All five receptions on the season came in two games. He made his AFL debut with two tackles against the Houston Thunderbears. Had his first career reception and totaled two for the game with two pass break-ups against the Los Angeles Avengers. He recorded 2.5 tackles (a tackle for a loss) and a season-high three pass break-ups against the New England Sea Wolves. Smith had three receptions for 32 yards at the Grand Rapids Rampage. He recorded a season-high five solo tackles on the road against the Avengers.

2001
In 2001, Smith was one of just four players to participate in all 14 games that season. He recorded a team-leading four interceptions and was fourth with 37 tackles earning team defensive MVP honors. He returned his first career interception 45-yards for his first career touchdown against the Arizona Rattlers. Smith missed a portion of the game after taking a knee to the helmet in Houston. He had his first catch of the season against the Oklahoma Wranglers. He had his second career interception and returned a blocked extra point attempt for the first two-point defensive point after try in league history at the New York Dragons. Smith made his first-career start at Defensive Specialist (DS) intercepting an Andy Kelly pass late in the game, leading to a game-tying field goal in a game that the San Jose SaberCats won in overtime against the Nashville Kats. He recorded career-highs of four catches for 86 yards and added his fourth career interception against the Florida Bobcats. Smith had the first two missed field goal returns of his career against the Thunderbears..

2001 playoffs
Smith played in both San Jose playoff games. He appeared in his first AFL playoff game replacing the injured Anthony Cobbs at DS against the Rattlers. He recorded 5.5 tackles and a pass break-up in Nashville.

2002
In 2002, Smith played in all 14 games for a second straight season. He earned ArenaBowl XVI game Ironman honors. He set single-season career-highs with 15 receptions for 234 yards finishing fifth on the team. He finished second on team with 49.5 tackles and eight passes broken up. Smith started at DS and recorded a career-high 8.5 tackles and matched his career-best with seven solo tackles at the Tampa Bay Storm. He had his first catch of the season against the Georgia Force. He was named the Ironman of the Game against the Los Angeles Avengers after recording two catches for 43 yards and a touchdown and five tackles along with a pass break up. He had his fifth career interception, and second returned for a touchdown on the road against the Orlando Predators. Smith recorded a career-long 37-yard reception on the road against the Buffalo Destroyers. He had the 20th reception of his career in Los Angeles. He was named Ironman of the Game after recording a 34-yard touchdown catch, his sixth career interception, and five tackles and two pass break ups against the Chicago Rush. Smith recorded a season-high three receptions against the Indiana Firebirds.

2002 playoffs
He caught three passes for 37 yards and had an interception for game Ironman against the Predators.
Smith started ArenaBowl XVI and was named the game's Ironman after rushing twice for nine yards, catching four passes for 34 yards and totaling five tackles, an interception and a fumble recovery against the Rattlers.

2003
In 2003, Smith started all 16 games at DS for the Storm. He led the team with 88.5 tackles, eight interceptions and 18 pass broken up to earn second-team All-AFL honors. He had an interception in four straight games. Smith equaled his career-high with seven solo tackles and recorded an interception in his first game with the Storm against the Carolina Cobras. He had a career-high two fumble recoveries on the road against the Las Vegas Gladiators. He matched a career-high with seven solo tackles against the Detroit Fury. Smith recorded the ninth and 10th interceptions of his career with his first ever two-interception game in Indiana. He had an interception, two passes broken up and six tackles, all against the Force. He was named game MVP after two pass break-ups and an interception in Carolina. He had his third career interception return touchdown against the Colorado Crush. He intercepted his eighth pass of the season giving him an interception in four straight games on the road against the New York Dragons.

2004
Smith re-signed with the San Jose SaberCats on November 7, 2003.

In 2004, Smith, returning to San Jose, played in 15 games at DS earning first-team All-AFL honors, and became just the fourth player in team history with 100 solo tackles.. He led the team with 83 total tackles (71 solo). He tied for first in the AFL with a career-high nine interceptions. He was the team leader and tied for fourth in the AFL with 14 passes broken up and 23 passes defended. Smith was named the AFL's Defensive Player of the Week (Week One). He set career-highs with five assisted tackles and five pass break-ups on the road against the Fury. Smith was inactive with a hamstring injury, the only game he missed all season, on the road against the New York Dragons. He recorded the 100th solo tackle of his San Jose career against the Crush. He was named the Defensive Player of the Game after returning an interception 48-yards for a touchdown against the Las Vegas Gladiators. Smith moved into fifth place on team's all-time list with his 11th career San Jose interception on the road against the Dallas Desperados. He was named Defensive Player of the Game after recording an interception in his third straight game against the Rush. He recorded his single-season career-high ninth interception on the road against the Gladiators.

2004 playoffs
In the 2004 playoffs, Smith won his third straight championship. He started all 3 games at DS. He set a team single-game playoff record for total tackles (10.5) and solo tackles (10) in ArenaBowl XVIII.

2005
In 2005, Smith started at DS for the first three games of the season before sustaining a season-ending knee injury. He recorded 20.5 tackles (18 solo), an interception and four passes broken up for the season. He became just the third player in team history to record 200 career tackles. Smith recorded his 16th career interception as a SaberCat (24th overall) along with two pass break-ups to earn Defensive Player of the Game against the Gladiators. His season ended when he left the game in the fourth quarter after sustaining a knee injury on the road against the New Orleans VooDoo. The SaberCats placed him on Injured Reserve (IR) on February 17, 2005 with a ruptured patellar tendon missing the remainder of the season.

2006
In 2006, Smith returned from a serious knee injury and played and started 11 games at DS, including the final 10 regular season games. He began the season on IR recovering from the knee surgery. He totaled 41 tackles (38 solo), three passes broken up and two forced fumbles. He had three interceptions on the season giving him 27 in his career and 19 as a SaberCat. Smith returned two of his interceptions for touchdowns giving him the team's career lead. He started at DS in his first game since sustaining a knee injury in New Orleans on February 13, 2005, on the road against the Rattlers. He returned to the lineup after being inactive for three games starting at DS against the Avengers. In Tampa Bay, he recorded his 25th career interception which he returned 16 yards for a touchdown, his fifth career interception returned for a touchdown, to earn Defensive Player of the Game. Smith recorded his 18th interception of his San Jose career (26th overall) moving into fourth place on the team's career list, against the Austin Wranglers. He broke a tie with Greg Hopkins for sole possession of 20th place on the AFL's all-time career interception list with his 27th that he returned 42 yards for a touchdown, his fifth career interception return for a touchdown with San Jose (sixth overall) giving him the team's all-time lead, against the Crush.

2006 playoffs
Smith started both games at DS. He was named Defensive Player of the Game after his fifth career playoff interception (third as a SaberCat), five tackles and a pass broken up against the Rattlers. He had 3.5 tackles, a pass break-up and a fumble recovery against the Rush.

2007
In 2007, Smith started all 16 games at DB. He set team season records for most solo tackles (79) and total tackles (87.5). He tied Pat McGuirk for second on the team's career interception list with 24. Smith recorded 17 pass break-ups for the year to move into third place on the team's career list with 55. He recorded his 400th career total tackle, 365th career solo tackle, 100th career assisted tackle and 100th defended pass. He returned two of his five interceptions for touchdowns giving him eight for his career. He had the seventh longest fumble return in AFL history with 47-yards for a touchdown in a game against the Predators. He recorded his 300th career solo tackle on the road against the Avengers. He recorded his 350th career total tackle on the road against the Force. Smith recorded his 20th career interception as a SaberCat, 28th overall, against the Crush. He recorded his 29th career interception and 330th career solo tackle, against the Avengers. He played in his 90th career regular season AFL game at the Arizona Rattlers on May 5, 2007. He returned his 30th career interception 50-yards for a touchdown, the third longest return in team history, against the Gladiators. Smith moved into a tie for 17th place all-time with his 31st career interception earning Defensive Player of the Game honors against the Rampage. He recorded his 400th career total tackle, on the road against the Kats. He had two pass break-ups, giving him 100 passes defended for his career, on the road at the Utah Blaze. Smith had his 24th career interception as a SaberCat, tying Pat McGuirk for second place on team's career list, and returned it 36-yards for a touchdown, his eighth career interception returned for a touchdown and a team record seventh with San Jose, against the Rattlers. He recorded a season-high three pass break-ups in Las Vegas.

2007 playoffs
Smith started all three playoff games. He recorded nine tackles, his sixth career playoff interception and two pass break ups and earned Defensive Player of the Game in the SaberCats ArenaBowl XXI win over the Columbus Destroyers.

2008
In 2008, Smith began the season tied for second on the team's all-time interceptions list with 24. His 32 career interceptions were good for a 16th place tie on the AFL's chart. Smith posted three interceptions in the American Conference championship game, setting a SaberCats record for postseason play; this matched his interception total from the regular season.

Coaching career

College
Smith spent time as the defensive backs coach at Whittier College and Phoenix College.

Arkansas Twisters
Smith was the defensive backs coach of the Arkansas Twisters of the af2 in 2009.

Arizona Rattlers
Smith served as the defensive coordinator for the Arizona Rattlers from 2010 to 2013.

San Jose SaberCats
In November 2013, Smith joined the SaberCats as assistant head coach. He was the assistant head coach from 2014 to 2015. He was also the team's offensive coordinator in 2014.

Los Angeles KISS
On November 4, 2015, Smith was named the head coach of the Los Angeles KISS. The team folded after the 2016 season.

Baltimore Brigade
On December 14, 2016, Smith was named the Baltimore Brigade's first head coach.

Head coaching record

Personal life
One of Smith's cousins is former San Francisco 49ers safety Tim McDonald.

Smith has coached defensive backs at Whittier College. He has expressed a desire for a post-football career in broadcasting. He has covered various high school football and volleyball games and some junior college football games in Southern California. Smith enjoys bowling and has partnered with teammates for a weekly outing during the season.

References

External links
 San Jose SaberCats profile

1977 births
Living people
Players of American football from Chicago
San Jose State Spartans football players
American football defensive backs
San Jose SaberCats players
Tampa Bay Storm players
Whittier Poets football coaches
Texas Revolution coaches
Arizona Rattlers coaches
San Jose SaberCats coaches
Los Angeles Kiss coaches
Baltimore Brigade coaches
Junior college football coaches in the United States
Bishop Montgomery High School alumni

Omarr Smith


Michael "Mick" Collins ( 16 October 1890 – 22 August 1922) was an Irish revolutionary leader. He was a Minister for Finance and Teachta Dála (TD member of parliament) for Cork South in the First Dáil of 1919. He was also the Director of Intelligence for the Southern IRA, and member of the Irish delegation during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. After that he was both Chairman of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-chief of the National Army. Throughout this time, at least as of 1919, he was also President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Under the rules of the Brotherhood this meant that he was President of the Irish Republic. Collins was shot and killed in August 1922, during the Irish Civil War.

Early years
He was born on his family farm named Woodfield in Sam's Cross near Clonakilty, West Cork. Michael Collins was the third son and youngest of eight children. Most biographies state his date of birth as 16 October 1890; however, his tombstone gives his date of birth as 12 October 1890. His father, also named Michael, was a member of the republican Fenian movement, but had left and settled down to farming. Collins was six years old when his father died.

After leaving school aged 15, Collins took the British Civil Service examination in Cork in February 1906,. In 1910, he moved to London where he became a messenger at a London firm of stock brokers, Horne and Company. While in London he lived with his elder sister, and studied at King's College London. He joined the London GAA and, through this, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret, oath-bound society dedicated to achieving Irish independence. In 1915, he moved to the Guaranty Trust Company of New York where he remained until his return to Ireland the following year.

Easter Rising
Michael Collins first became known during the Easter Rising in 1916. A skilled organiser and very intelligent, he was highly respected in the IRB. When the Rising itself took place on Easter Monday, 1916, he fought alongside Patrick Pearse and others in the General Post Office in Dublin.

Collins, like many of the other participants, was arrested, almost executed. He was imprisoned at Frongoch internment camp. Collins became one of the leading figures in Sinn Féin after the Rising. This was a small nationalist party which the British government and the Irish media mistakenly accredited the Rising to. By October 1917, Collins had become a member of the executive of Sinn Féin and Director of Organisation of the Irish Volunteers. Éamon de Valera was president of both organisations.

The first Irish Parliament, the Dáil Éireann

Collins was nominated in the 1918 general election to elect Irish MPs to the British House of Commons in London. Collins won for Sinn Féin, becoming MP for Cork South. However, unlike their rivals in the Irish Parliamentary Party, Sinn Féin MPs had announced that they would not take their seats in Westminster, but instead would set up an Irish Parliament in Dublin.

That new parliament, called Dáil Éireann (meaning "Assembly of Ireland") met in the Mansion House, Dublin in January 1919, although De Valera and leading Sinn Féin MPs had been arrested.

In de Valera's absence, Cathal Brugha was elected Príomh Aire ('Main' or 'Prime', Minister', but often translated as 'President of Dáil Éireann'). He was replaced by de Valera, when Collins helped him escape from Lincoln Prison in April 1919.

The Irish War of Independence began on the same day that the First Dáil met on 21 January 1919.  An ambush party of IRA volunteers acting without orders and led by Seán Treacy attacked a group of Royal Irish Constabulary men. They were escorting a shipment of gelignite to a quarry in Soloheadbeg, County Tipperary. Two policemen were shot dead during the fight. This incident is considered to be the first action taken in the Irish War of Independence.

1919 and the start of the War of Independence
In 1919, Collins had a number of roles. In the summer he was elected president of the IRB, Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army. He also became the Minister for Finance. His ministry was able to organise a large bond issue in the form of a "National Loan" to fund the new Irish Republic. Collins and Richard Mulcahy were the two main organisers for the Irish Republican Army, in as far as it was possible to direct the actions of disorganised guerrilla units.

In 1920, the British offered a prize of £10,000 (equivalent to GB£474,000.00 / €535,026.83 in 2017) for information leading to the capture or death of Collins. His fame had so transcended the IRA movement that he was nicknamed "The Big Fellow".

In July 1921, the British suddenly offered a truce.  Arrangements were made for a conference between the British government and the leaders of the as-yet unrecognised Irish Republic.

In August 1921, Eamonn de Valera made the Dáil upgrade his office from Prime Minister to President of the Irish Republic. This made him on the same level as George V in the negotiations. Eventually, however, he said that as the King would not attend, then neither would he. Instead, with the reluctant agreement of his cabinet, de Valera assembled a team of delegates to go in his place. The team was headed by Vice-President Arthur Griffith with Collins as Deputy.

Anglo-Irish Treaty
The negotiations resulted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty which was signed on 6 December 1921. In it, a new state was agreed upon, called the "Irish Free State". The agreement made an all-Ireland state possible. The six-county region in the northeast could opt out of the Free State if they wanted to. If this happened, an Irish Boundary Commission was to redraw the Irish border. The Irish Free State was established in December 1922, and as expected, Northern Ireland opted to remain part of the United Kingdom proper.

Although it was not the republic he was fighting for, Collins concluded that the Treaty offered Ireland "the freedom to achieve freedom." He knew that the treaty, and in particular the issue of partition, would not be popular in Ireland. When he signed the treaty, he said "I have signed my own death warrant."

Sinn Féin split over the treaty, and the Dáil debated the matter bitterly for ten days until it was approved by a vote of 64 to 57.  The Supreme Council of the IRB, which was informed in detail about the Treaty negotiations voted unanimously (without exceptions) to accept the Treaty. The only exception was the later COS of the IRA Liam Lynch.

Provisional Government

As expected, the Treaty was extremely controversial in Ireland.

First, Éamon de Valera, President of  the Irish Republic until 9 January, had been unhappy that Collins had signed any deal without his and his cabinet's authorisation.

Second, the contents of the Treaty were bitterly disputed. De Valera and many other members of the republican movement did not want Ireland to be a dominion of the British Empire. They did not like the symbolism of having to give a statement of faithfulness to the British king.

The dividing of Ireland between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland was not as controversial. One of the main reasons for this was that Collins was secretly planning to launch a guerrilla war against the Northern State. In the early months of 1922, he had sent IRA units to the border, and arms and money to the northern units. In May–June 1922, he and IRA Chief of Staff Liam Lynch organised an attack of both pro- and anti-treaty IRA units along the new border. This offensive was officially called off under British pressure on 3 June and Collins issued a statement that "no troops from the 26 counties, either those under official control [pro-treaty] or those attached to the [IRA] Executive [anti-treaty] should be permitted to invade the six county area."

The new Provisional Government () was formed under Collins, who became "President of the Provisional Government of Southern Ireland" (i.e., Prime Minister). He also remained Minister for Finance of Griffith's republican administration after de Valera stepped down.

In the months leading up to the outbreak of civil war in June 1922, Collins tried to heal the split in the nationalist movement and prevent civil war. De Valera, having opposed the Treaty in the Dáil, withdrew from the assembly with his supporters. Collins secured a compromise, "The Collins/De Valera Pact", whereby the two factions of Sinn Féin, pro- and anti-Treaty, would fight the soon-to-be Free State's first election jointly and form a coalition government afterwards. This Pact was agreed without Griffith's knowledge and he opposed it as a potential betrayal of the Treaty. For a time it appeared that a split would occur in the pro-Treaty ranks but Griffith relented realizing that Collins held all the power. His friendship with Collins did not survive.

To try and find a compromise, Collins proposed that the Free State would have a republican constitution, with no mention of the British king. However, the British did not sign the proposed republican constitution. They argued they had signed the Treaty in good faith and its terms could not be changed so quickly.

Civil War

On 14 April 1922, a group of 200 anti-Treaty IRA men occupied the Four Courts in Dublin in defiance of the Provisional government. Collins, who wanted to avoid civil war at all costs, did not attack them until June 1922, when British pressure also forced his hand. After a final attempt to persuade the men to leave, Collins borrowed two 18 pounder artillery pieces from the British and bombarded the Four Courts until the men surrendered.

This led to the Irish Civil War as fighting broke out in Dublin between the anti-Treaty IRA and the provisional government's troops.

Under Collins' supervision, the Free State rapidly took control of the capital. In July 1922, anti-Treaty forces held the southern province of Munster and several other areas of the country. De Valera and the other anti-Treaty TDs supported the anti-Treaty IRA.

By mid-1922, Collins no longer really worked as Chairman of the Provisional Government. He became the Commander-in-Chief of the National Army, a formal uniformed army that formed around the pro-Treaty IRA.

Collins, along with Richard Mulcahy and Eoin O'Duffy decided on a series of seaborne landings into republican held areas. They re-took Munster and the west in July–August 1922. As part of this offensive, Collins travelled to his native Cork. This was against the advice of his companions, and despite suffering from stomach ache and depression. Collins is said to have told his comrades that "They wouldn't shoot me in my own county".
He recorded his plan for peace in his diary: Republicans must "accept the People's Verdict" on the Treaty, but could then "go home without their arms (guns). We don't ask for any surrender of their principles". "We want to avoid any possible unnecessary destruction and loss of life." But if Republicans did not accept his terms, "further blood is on their shoulders".

Death

On the road to Bandon, at the village of Béal na mBláth (Irish, "the Mouth of Flowers"), Collins stopped to ask directions. However the man whom they asked, Dinny Long, was also a member of the local Anti-Treaty IRA. An ambush was then prepared for the convoy when it made its journey back to Cork city. They knew Collins would return by the same road as the two other roads from Bandon to Cork were destroyed by Republicans. The ambush party, commanded by Liam Deasy, opened fire on Collins' convoy.

Collins was killed in the gun battle, which lasted about 20 minutes, from 8:00 p.m. to 8:20 p.m. He was the only fatality. He had ordered his convoy to stop and return fire, instead of choosing the safer option of driving on in his touring car or transferring to the safety of the accompanying armoured car, as his companion, Emmet Dalton, had wished. They do not know who fired the fatal shot.

Collins' men brought his body back to Cork where it was then shipped to Dublin because it was feared the body might be stolen in an ambush if it were transported by road. His body lay in state for three days in Dublin City Hall where tens of thousands of mourners walked past his coffin to pay their respects. His funeral mass took place at Dublin's Pro Cathedral where a number of foreign and Irish dignitaries were in attendance. Some 500,000 people attended his funeral, almost one fifth of the country's population.

Eamon de Valera is reported to have stated in 1966:
"I can't see my way to becoming Patron of the Michael Collins Foundation. It is my considered opinion that in the fullness of time history will record the greatness of Collins and it will be recorded at my expense"However, there is some doubt that de Valera ever made this controversial statement.

Commemoration
An annual commemoration ceremony takes place each year in August at the ambush site at Béal na mBláth, Cork.  There is also a remembrance ceremony in Glasnevin at Collins' graveside.  In November 2023 a bronze statue of him with a bicycle was put in the Grand Parade in Cork city, near where he spent the last night of his life.

Societies
The Collins 22 Society established in 2002 is an international organisation dedicated to keeping the name and legacy of Michael Collins in living memory. The patron of the society is Nora Owen, grand-niece of Michael Collins.

In popular culture

Movies
The 1936 movie Beloved Enemy, starring David Niven, is a fictionalised account of Collins' life. Unlike the real Michael Collins, the fictionalised "Dennis Riordan" (played by Brian Aherne) is shot, but recovers. Hang Up Your Brightest Colours, a British documentary by Kenneth Griffith, was made for ITV in 1973, but refused transmission. It was eventually screened by the BBC in Wales in 1993 and across the United Kingdom the following year.

An Irish documentary made by Colm Connolly for RTE Television in 1989 called The Shadow of Béal na Bláth covered Collins' death. A made for TV film, The Treaty, was produced in 1991 and starred Brendan Gleeson as Collins and Ian Bannen as David Lloyd George. In 2007 RTE produced a documentary entitled Get Collins, centered around the intelligence war which took place in Dublin.

Collins was the subject of director Neil Jordan's 1996 film Michael Collins, with Liam Neeson in the title role.

Related pages

References

Sources

Other websites
  Michael Collins Centre
  Collins 22 Society
 A Man Against an Empire

1890 births
1922 deaths
Assassinated people
Government ministers of Ireland
Irish Free State
Irish republicanism
Murders by firearm
People from County Cork
Prisoners of war
Sinn Féin members of Dáil Éireann
Irish crime victims

Michael Collins (Irish leader)


A gel is a semi-solid substance material which usually wobbles.

By weight, gels are mostly liquid. But gels also behave like solids. They have a three-dimensional cross-linked network within the liquid. It is the crosslinks in the fluid that give a gel its structure.

As colloids, gels are a dispersion of molecules of a liquid within a solid. In a gel, the solid is the continuous phase; the liquid is the discontinuous phase.

Examples: Jellies, agar, contact lenses, organic slime.

Physical chemistry
Materials

Gel


A sovereign state is a country with borders where people live, and where a government makes laws and talks to other sovereign states. The people have to follow the laws that the government makes. Most sovereign states are made up of a singular country and nation. However, some states such as the United Kingdom are made up of multiple countries.

Most sovereign states are recognized which means other sovereign states agree that it is really a sovereign state. Being recognized makes it easier for a sovereign state to talk to and make agreements (treaties) with other sovereign states. There are hundreds of recognized sovereign states today - see List of sovereign states.

Definition

There is no rule to say what exactly makes a state. Usually, the things a state must have are mainly political, not legal. The Czechs and the Poles were seen as separate states during World War I, even though they did not exist as states yet. L.C. Green explained this by saying that "recognition of statehood is a matter of discretion, it is open to any existing state to accept as a state any entity it wishes, regardless of the existence of territory or an established government."

This means that it is up to any state that already exists to treat any other group as a state. This recognition can be direct or implied. When a state does this, it usually means that the group will also be treated as a state for things that happened in the past. Sometimes it means that the state wants diplomatic relations with the other group, but not always.

Sovereignty
Sovereignty is a word that is often used wrongly. Lassa Oppenheim said that there is no idea whose meaning is more controversial than sovereignty. From the time the idea of sovereignty was first used in political science until now, there has never been one meaning that everyone agreed on. Justice Evatt of the High Court of Australia says that "sovereignty is neither a question of fact, nor a question of law, but a question that does not arise at all."

Although the word sovereignty often includes all types of government, ancient and modern, the modern state has some links to the type of government first seen in the 15th century, when the term "state" also first meant what it does today. Because of this, the word is often used to refer only to modern political systems.

Similar words
We often use the words "country", "nation", and "state" as if they mean the same thing; but there are actually differences:

 A nation is a group of people who are believed to share common customs, origins, and history. However, the adjectives national and international are used about what is strictly a sovereign state, as in national capital, international law.
 A sovereign state is the government and other supporting groups of people that have sovereignty over an area of land and population. The word "state" is often used to refer to the government.
 A country is the area that the nation lives in and that the state has sovereignty over. Most countries are a singular sovereign state but sometimes a sovereign state is made up of multiple countries, such as the United Kingdom.

Because the meaning of the words has changed over time and past writers often used the word "state" in a different ways it is difficult to say exactly what a state is. Mikhail Bakunin used the word simply to mean a governing organization. Other writers used the word "state" to mean any law-making or law enforcement agency. Karl Marx said that the state was what was used by the ruling class of a country to control the rule. According to Max Weber, the state is an organization who are the only people allowed to use violence in a particular area.

Constitutive theory of statehood
In 1815 at the Congress of Vienna the Final Act only recognized 39 sovereign states in Europe. Because of this, they said that in future new states would have to be recognized by other states. In practice, this meant recognition by one or more of the most powerful countries.

Development
This constitutive theory was developed in the 19th century to describe what is and is not a state. With this theory, the need to follow international law depends on whether other sovereign governments recognize the group. Because of this, new states could not become part of the international community or be bound by international law immediately, so recognized nations did not have to respect international law in their dealings with them.

Disputes
In 1912, an expert said "International Law does not say that a State is not in existence as long as it isn't recognised, but it takes no notice of it before its recognition. Through recognition only and exclusively a State becomes an International Person and a subject of International Law".

One of the major issues is the confusion that happens when some states recognize a new group, but other states do not. Hersch Lauterpacht, one of the main people who supported the theory, suggested that it is a state's job to grant recognition as a possible solution. However, a state may use any set of rules when judging if they should give recognition.

Declarative theory of statehood

One of the criteria most commonly used by micronations is the Montevideo Convention. The Montevideo Convention was signed on December 26 1933 by the United States, Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay, Paraguay, Mexico, Panama, Bolivia, Guatemala, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Cuba but it never received international consensus. The Montevideo Convention has four conditions that a group "should" meet to become a state:

 a population that lives there
 a set piece of land
 a government
 the ability to enter into relations with other states

According to this, the existence of a state does not depend upon recognition by other states. Whether or not an group meets the conditions is decided by other states when they decide if they are going to treat that group as a state. Usually, new states are formally recognized by at least a few other states.

De facto and de jure states
Most sovereign states are states de jure and de facto. This means they exist both in law and in real life. However, sometimes states are only de jure states. This means that other states see a group as the true government of a place where they have no actual control. Many European states had governments-in-exile during the Second World War which still had relations with the Allies, even though their countries were under Nazi occupation. An example today is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which is a United Nations observer, has bi-lateral diplomatic relations with 104 states. It has no land of its own, only embassies and consulates. Other states may have sovereignty over a place, but are not recognized by other states, these are de facto states only. Many people agree that Somaliland is such a state.

References

States

nn:Suverenitet#Suveren stat

Sovereign state


Old-school hip hop (also old school rap) is the earliest recorded hip hop music. It lasted from the late 1970s to around 1983 or 1984. This music is said to have ended in the early-to-mid 1980s due to changes in rapping techniques and the accompanying music and rhythms.

A lot of this music was about partying and having a good time.

Old-school rappers include Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster Flash.

Hip hop

Old-school hip hop


The virgin cleansing myth (also referred to as the virgin cure myth, virgin rape myth, or simply virgin myth) is the belief that having sex with a virgin girl cures a man of HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases. Helping the idea that Christian women who were virgins, were capable of being powerful enough to fight off transmitted diseases.

Anthropologist Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala says the myth is a potential factor in infant rape by HIV-positive men in South Africa.  In addition to young girls, who are presumed to be virgins because of their age, people who are "blind, deaf, physically impaired, intellectually disabled, or who have mental-health disabilities" are sometimes raped under the erroneous presumption that individuals with disabilities are sexually inactive and therefore virgins.

History
The myth was first reported in 16th-century Europe and gained prominence in 19th-century Victorian England as a cure for syphilis and gonorrhea among other sexually transmitted diseases.  The origin is unknown, but historian Hanne Blank writes that the idea may have evolved from Christian legends of virgin–martyrs, whose purity served as a form of protection in battling demons.

Prevalence
People all over the world have heard this myth, including in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

A survey by the University of South Africa (UNISA) in South Africa found that 18 percent of laborers thought that having sex with a virgin cures HIV/AIDS. An earlier study in 1999 by sexual health educators in Gauteng reported that 32 percent of the survey participants believed the myth.

According to Betty Makoni of the Girl Child Network in Zimbabwe, the myth is perpetuated by traditional healers advising HIV-positive men to cure their disease by having sex with virgin girls. In Zimbabwe, some people also believe that the blood produced by raping a virgin will cleanse the infected person's blood of the disease.

In 2002, psychologist Mike Earl-Taylor wrote that the virgin cure myth may explain the staggering rise in child or infant rapes in South Africa, which is facing an HIV/AIDS epidemic. UNICEF has attributed the rape of hundreds of girls to the virgin cleansing myth.

In 2019, more than 40 million people in India, mostly children and women, were trapped as slaves. In South Africa, men take advantage of women with disabilities as they believe they are virgins.

However, it is unknown exactly how common the myth is and to what degree rapes happen because of the belief in it. The claim that the myth drives either HIV infection or child sexual abuse in Africa is disputed by researchers Rachel Jewkes and Helen Epstein, as well as by research on convicted sex offenders in Malawi, where no evidence was found to support the idea that the virgin cleansing myth prompted any rapes.

Importance of education
Ignorance with regards to HIV and AIDS infection serves as a barrier to prevention in numerous African nations.

Education has helped women such as Betty Makoni speak out against the myth and attempt to dissuade people from believing the virgin cleansing myth.

According to UNICEF, culture-based gender roles that prize innocence and ignorance in girls and that accept sexual licentiousness in men promote this myth. Girls may be forced to marry older men, which can increase the likelihood of HIV transmission to girls. The stigma attached to AIDS also stops many people from seeking information or health services to shield their status, contributing to further transmission.

In popular culture

The virgin cleansing myth is referenced in the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon. The minor character Mattumbo is stopped from raping a baby based on the belief that sex with a virgin will cure his AIDS. During the song "Making Things Up Again", Elder Cunningham tells Mattumbo that raping babies is against God's will, and invents a passage in the Book of Mormon in which God tells Joseph Smith to instead have sex with a frog to cure his AIDS.

See also
 Tapestries of Hope
 Madonna–whore complex
 Sexual violence in South Africa
 Sexual cleansing
 Droit du seigneur, an alleged legal right of European feudal lords to have sex with a subordinate woman, particularly on her wedding night

References

16th-century introductions
Child sexual abuse in South Africa
Christian mythology
European mythology
HIV/AIDS
Misconceptions
Rape in South Africa
Sexual urban legends
Violence against women in South Africa
Superstitions of Africa
Hymen
Virginity

Virgin cleansing myth


Victoria Elizabeth "Vicki" Hearne (February 13, 1946 – August 21, 2001) was an American author, philosopher, poet, animal trainer, and scholar of literary criticism and linguistics.

Biography
She was born in Austin, Texas, but, because her father was an Air Force Officer, her childhood was spent in a number of Air Force Bases.  The last, where her father retired, was in Riverside, California, where she attended the University of California. There, Hearne received her B.A. in English. She subsequently spent more than twenty-five years studying animal behavior as a horse and dog trainer. Central to Hearne's view on animal training was her belief that animals should not be defined by behaviorists' dictates, that in their individuality they have the capacity to be in reciprocal relationships with humans both emotionally and morally. In addition to her poetry, she authored several books on animals and animal-training theory, including Adam's Task, Bandit, and Animal Happiness. She received a 1992 award for outstanding literary achievement from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In the mid-1980s, she was offered an appointment at Yale, inducing a move from California to Connecticut. Eventually, she settled in Westbrook, Connecticut. While in Connecticut, she appeared in the Oscar-nominated short documentary, A Little Vicious.

Before she died she was an author of many beautiful pieces of work including; "News from the Dogs", "Young Dog, Grass and More", and "Trained Man and Dog"

She died at the age of 55 of lung cancer at the Connecticut Hospice in Branford, attended by her daughter Colleen Lehrman from a previous marriage, her husband Robert Tragesser and her brother, James Hearne. She was in addition survived by her father, William Victor Hearne.

Sources
Hafrey, Leigh. "You Can't Lie to a Dog—THE WHITE GERMAN SHEPHERD. By Vicki Hearne". The New York Times (June 26, 1988)
Boxer, Sarah. "Who You Calling a Pit Bull?—BANDIT: Dossier of a Dangerous Dog. By Vicki Hearne". The New York Times (December 15, 1991)
Verongos, Helen. "Vicki Hearne, Who Saw Human Traits in Pets, Dies at 55". The New York Times (August 27, 2001)

External links
Vicki Hearne mentioned in IMDb plot summary for A Little Vicious, the documentary short about Bandit, the dog

 Vicki Hearne Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

1946 births
2001 deaths
20th-century American novelists
American literary critics
American women literary critics
American spiritual writers
American women novelists
American women poets
Novelists from Connecticut
Writers from Austin, Texas
People from Westbrook, Connecticut
Deaths from lung cancer
Deaths from cancer in Connecticut
20th-century American poets
American women essayists
Women science writers
20th-century American women writers
20th-century American essayists
Novelists from Texas
American nature writers

Vicki Hearne


Frank Schirrmacher (5 September 1959 – 12 June 2014) was a German journalist, literature expert and essayist, writer, and from 1994 co-publisher of the national German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Education
After studying German studies, English studies, and philosophy in Heidelberg and Cambridge, Schirrmacher joined the FAZ as editor of the feuilleton (literature and arts section) in 1985. In 1988, he received his doctorate for a work about Franz Kafka at the University of Siegen. Several years later, Der Spiegel criticized him for self-plagiarism in his dissertation—asserting that most of the text had already been used as his magister thesis and in a Suhrkamp book publication—, as well as for other inconsistent statements about his biography.

Editor and publisher of FAZ
In 1989, Schirrmacher succeeded Marcel Reich-Ranicki as the director of the editorial staff of the FAZ's arts supplement – Feuilleton. In 1994, he succeeded Joachim Fest as one of the five publishers of the newspaper, responsible for the Feuilleton, Science and other parts. Under Schirrmacher's direction FAZ coverage of science and popular culture was expanded.

As the press boomed around 2000, Schirrmacher expanded the Feuilleton supplement, recruiting journalists from other newspapers. A few years later, however, he was forced to reduce the number of pages in the Feuilleton and for the first time in the history of the FAZ laid off employees.

Public debates
Schirrmacher often influenced the public discussion in Germany of controversial topics such as the debates about genetic engineering and brain research and about the low birth rates in Germany and Europe. Newsweek named him one of Germany's leading intellectuals and Ray Kurzweil called Schirrmacher one of the "big thinkers".

Schirrmacher's roasting of Martin Walser's novel Tod eines Kritikers in 2002 caused a stir in the German press. Schirrmacher claimed the book, which was seen as a roman à clef centering on Schirrmacher's predecessor Reich-Ranicki (a German literature critic of Jewish ancestry), contained anti-semitic passages. He had reviewed the book before it came out, so the publishers changed the novel before publishing it, the first time a book review had this effect in German history.

In his 2004 book Das Methusalem-Komplott, published in 14 languages and selling more than 1 million copies in Germany,  Schirrmacher prognosticated the ageing of society as a result of low birth rates and calling for an "uprising of the old". He received the Goldene Feder award for this book. In 2006, Minimum was published, which became a bestseller too. The title refers to Schirrmacher's assertion that the family was dissolving as the smallest cell of society, resulting in diminution of social relationships to a minimum. To prove the superiority of the family, he cites the event of the Donner Party, resorted to cannibalism. Critics claimed that he exaggerated the statistics and that he supported a conservative view of the family. Through a PR campaign which included publishing some passages in Der Spiegel and Bild-Zeitung, the book caused another media debate about the topic.

In a 2006 interview with Schirrmacher, Nobel laureate Günter Grass admitted to have served in the Waffen-SS as a young man. Grass made the admission in a conversation about his new autobiography, Peeling the Onion, saying he had been drafted at the age of 17 into the Waffen-SS—the combat force of the SS—in the final months of World War II. The interview stirred up a worldwide debate and forced Grass' publisher to publish the book earlier than intended.

Schirrmacher died on 12 June 2014 following a cardiac arrest, at the age of 54.

Honours
Among other awards and honours, Schirrmacher received the International Corinne Book Prize, and in 2007 he was awarded the "Kulturpreis Deutsche Sprache" which is among the highest cultural prizes in the German-speaking world.

References

External links

1959 births
2014 deaths
German newspaper editors
German journalists
German male journalists
German newspaper journalists
20th-century German journalists
21st-century German journalists
German essayists
Heidelberg University alumni
Alumni of the University of Cambridge
University of Siegen alumni
German male writers
German male essayists
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung people

Frank Schirrmacher


The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of Nepal is an independent and autonomous constitutional body. It was established in the year 2000 as a statutory body under the Human Rights Commission Act 1997 (2053 BS). The Interim Constitution of Nepal 2007 (2063 BS) made the NHRC a constitutional body. It has a separate sphere of responsibilities in the constitutional legal system of the country. These responsibilities complement the responsibilities of the normal machinery of the administration of Justice, the Supreme Court, the Office of the Attorney General, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority, and other existing executive, quasi-judicial or judicial bodies of Nepal.

The Commission was created in response to a 1991 UN-sponsored meeting of representatives of national institutions held in Paris, which laid down a detailed set of principles on the status of national institutions commonly known as the Paris Principles. These principles, subsequently endorsed by the UN Commission on Human Rights (Resolution 1992/54 of 3 March 1992) and the UN General Assembly (Resolution 48/134 of 20 December 1993, annex) have become the foundation and reference point for the establishment and operation of the National Human Rights Commission of Nepal as well.

The establishment and constitution of the Commission complies with the minimum standards set out in the 'Paris Principles'. To name a few, they are independence guaranteed by statute or constitution; autonomy from executive, pluralism, including in membership; a broad mandate based on universal human rights standards; and adequate powers of investigation. Article 132 of the Interim Constitution of Nepal vests primary responsibility in the Commission to protect and promote the human rights of Nepalese people. In order to perform this responsibility, the Commission can conduct inquiries and investigations, on its own or upon a petition or complaint files to it on violation of human rights and abetment thereon, and carelessness and negligence in the prevention of violations of the human rights by any person, organization or authority concerned. It can also inquire into a matter with the permission of the court in respect of any claim on violations of human rights, which is sub-judice in the court. The Commission can visit and observe any authority, jail or any organization under the Government of Nepal and to submit necessary recommendations to it on the reform to be made on the functions, procedures and physical facilities which may be made necessary for such an organization for the protection of human rights.

Apart from these powers, the Constitution maintains that the Commission may review the provisions on safeguards provided by the Constitution and other prevailing law for the enforcement of human rights and submit necessary recommendations for the effective implementation of such provisions. The power encompasses the study of international treaties and instruments on human rights and submits the necessary and appropriate recommendations to the Government for effective implementation of the related provisions. As such, it can also make necessary recommendations to the Government of Nepal regarding reports to be furnished by Nepal pursuant to the provisions of international treaties on human rights. On the matters of Nepal's obligation to furnish reports under international treaties on human rights, the government is obligated to furnish reports upon receiving the opinion of the Commission thereon.

The Commission is also responsible to undertake or cause to be undertaken research in the field of human rights, and evaluate the existing human rights situation of the country. It may publicize and propagate human rights education among the various sections of society through various seminars, symposia, conferences and also build consciousness and awareness about the guarantees bestowed by law for the protection of human rights. Another power of the Commission is to encourage the functioning and efforts of institutions working in the non-governmental sector. In addition, there is a general power to carry out such activities, as the Commission may deem necessary and appropriate for the enforcement, promotion and protection of human rights.

The Commission has one chairperson and four other members; all of them are full-time appointees, who are appointed by the president upon the recommendation of the Constitutional Council. The secretary of the Commission is the focal point for the administration. He/she is appointed by the prime minister on the recommendation of the Commission. The Commission has power to appoint employees as may be required to carry out its functions. In case the Commission requests any government office for assistance in the performance of its functions, the office so requested must provide the required assistance.

The budget of the Commission comes from the Government of Nepal, but may also obtain such means and resources from different agencies by way of grants as are required for the performance of its functions. The account of the Commission is to be audited by the auditor general of Nepal.

External links
 NHRC Nepal
 UNDP Nepal

Constitutional Commission of Nepal
National human rights institutions
Human rights organisations based in Nepal
Organizations established in 2000
2000 in Nepal

National Human Rights Commission (Nepal)


Allan Hills 84001 (commonly abbreviated ALH84001) is a meteorite that was found in Allan Hills, Antarctica on December 27, 1984, by a team of American meteorite hunters from the ANSMET project. Like other members of the group of SNCs (shergottite, nakhlite, chassignite), ALH84001 is thought to be from Mars. However, it does not fit into any of the previously discovered SNC groups. On discovery, its mass was .

References

Meteorites

Allan Hills 84001


Emperor Shun of Liu Song ((劉)宋順帝; 8 August 469 – 23 June 479), personal name Liu Zhun (劉準), courtesy name Zhongmou (仲謀), childhood name Zhiguan (智觀), was the last emperor of the Liu Song dynasty of China. He became emperor in August 477 after his violent older brother Emperor Houfei was assassinated by his attendant at the instigation of the general Xiao Daocheng, but in his brief reign he was effectively Xiao's puppet. In 479, Xiao forced him to yield the throne to Xiao, ending Liu Song and starting Southern Qi. Later that year, the former Emperor Shun was killed by guards who were supposed to protect him, and the Liu clan was soon slaughtered as well.

Background
Liu Zhun was born in August 469. Ostensibly, his parents were Emperor Ming and Emperor Ming's concubine Consort Chen Farong—but history does not provide a conclusive account of his actual parentage. Historical accounts, written during the succeeding Southern Qi Dynasty, indicate that Emperor Ming was impotent, and that although he had 12 sons, those were the results of his having seized his brothers' pregnant concubines and kept the children if they bore males, or his having had his concubines have sexual relations with others.  (However, the fact that Emperor Ming's wife Empress Wang Zhenfeng had two daughters, although no sons, may argue against such allegations, because it appeared rather unlikely that Emperor Ming would do this over female children—indeed, the allegations stated that he would only do this if his brothers' concubines bore males—or that the morally upright Empress Wang would engage in sexual relations with others, thus suggesting that the allegations were made to delegitimize Emperor Ming's sons Emperor Houfei and Liu Zhun vis-à-vis Southern Qi.)  Those accounts allege that his biological father was Emperor Ming's brother Liu Xiufan () the Prince of Guiyang, and his biological mother was a concubine of Liu Xiufan.  In any case, whether he was born of Consort Chen or not, she raised him.  In 471, he was created the Prince of Ancheng.

After Emperor Ming's death in 472, Liu Zhun's older brother Liu Yu the Crown Prince became emperor (as Emperor Houfei).  Liu Zhun himself was made the governor of the important capital region, Yang Province (揚州, modern Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu), but actual governance was carried out by his staff members.  In 474, after Liu Xiufan rebelled and sieged the capital Jiankang, the official Chu Cheng (), not knowing that assassins sent by Emperor Houfei's general Xiao Daocheng had already assassinated Liu Xiufan, seized Liu Zhun and surrendered Liu Zhun's headquarters to Liu Xiufan's army, claiming that Liu Xiufan had declared Liu Zhun to be his son.  (Liu Xiufan himself made no such public declaration before his death.)  However, when Liu Xiufan's army later found out that he was already dead, it collapsed, and Liu Zhun was not harmed.

By 477, Emperor Houfei had shown himself to be a cruel and violent ruler, often roving outside the palace with his guards and killing any person or animal that they encountered.  Xiao, in fear of being killed by Emperor Houfei, engaged his associates to have him assassinated, and then used his personal control of the army to effectively force other high-level officials Yuan Can and Liu Bing to grant him near-imperial powers.  He then made Liu Zhun emperor (as Emperor Shun), but the 10-year-old emperor was little more than Xiao's puppet.

Reign
Upon hearing of Emperor Houfei's death, the general Shen Youzhi accused Xiao Daocheng of wanting to usurp the throne, and he started a rebellion from his Jing Province (荊州, modern central and western Hubei), although he then ill-advisedly became bogged down in his progress in sieging Yingcheng (郢城, in modern Wuhan, Hubei).  Meanwhile, an attempted coup by Yuan Can and Liu Bing to seize back power for the imperial clan failed in late 477, and both Yuan and Liu Bing were killed, permitting Xiao to further consolidate his power.  By spring 478, Shen also had been defeated, and he committed suicide.  Xiao no longer had opposition.  He began to have himself bestowed with higher and higher offices and honors, posturing himself for the throne.  He was also gradually assassinating some of Emperor Shun's brothers.

In winter 478, Emperor Shun created Xie Fanjing, the granddaughter of the official Xie Zhuang (), as his wife and empress.

In 479, Xiao first had Emperor Shun create him the Duke of Qi and grant him the nine bestowments, and then create him the Prince of Qi.  In summer 479, Xiao was prepared to seize the throne, and he prepared a ceremony at which Emperor Shun was to ascend a high platform and issue an edict giving the throne to him.  However, the 12-year-old Emperor Shun was fearful, and he hid under a statue of a buddha, crying.  Xiao sent his general Wang Jingze () into the palace, and Empress Dowager Wang, fearful of what the consequences might be, personally led the eunuchs to search for Emperor Shun as well, finally finding him.  Wang Jingze calmed Emperor Shun with false promises, finally getting him to get on the wagon that Wang Jingze prepared.  He asked Wang, "Are you going to kill me?"  Wang responded, "I will not kill you -- just letting you live elsewhere.  Do not be sad -- this is what your Liu clan did to the Sima clan as well."  (This was a reference to how Emperor Shun's great-grandfather Emperor Wu had seized the throne from Jin Dynasty.)  Emperor Shun resumed crying, and said, "When I am reincarnated, may it be that I will never be again reborn in an emperor's household!"  Wang brought Emperor Shun to the platform and had him complete the ceremony.  Xiao accepted the throne, ending Liu Song and starting Southern Qi (as its Emperor Gao).

Death
Xiao Daocheng created Liu Zhun the Prince of Ruyin (汝阴王) and built him a mansion in the vicinity of the capital Jiankang, but put him under heavy guard. Less than a month after Xiao's taking of the throne, someone rode a horse near Liu Zhun's mansion, and the guards mistook the situation as someone wanting to seize Liu Zhun and start a rebellion, so they killed Liu Zhun themselves. Xiao not only did not punish them, but instead awarded them, and subsequently started a slaughter of the Liu clan. He did, however, bury the former emperor with imperial honors.

Family
Consorts:
 Empress, of the Xie clan of Chen (; b. 466), personal name Fanjing ()

Ancestry

References

467 births
479 deaths
5th-century murdered monarchs
Liu Song emperors
Southern Qi people
Murdered Chinese emperors

Emperor Shun of Song


The White Mountains are a mountain range covering about a quarter of the state of New Hampshire and a small portion of western Maine in the United States. They are part of the northern Appalachian Mountains and the most rugged mountains in New England. Several of the higher peaks contain an Alpine tundra. The range is heavily visited due to its proximity to Boston, New York City, and Montreal.

Most of the area is public land, including the White Mountain National Forest and a number of state parks. Its most famous mountain is  Mount Washington, which is the highest peak in the Northeastern U.S. and for 76 years held the record for fastest surface wind gust in the world ( in 1934). Mount Washington is part of a line of summits, the Presidential Range, that are named after U.S. presidents and other prominent Americans.

The White Mountains also include the Franconia Range, Sandwich Range, Carter-Moriah Range and Kinsman Range in New Hampshire, and the Mahoosuc Range straddling the border between it and Maine. In all, there are 48 peaks within New Hampshire as well as one (Old Speck Mountain) in Maine over , known as the four-thousand footers.

The Whites are known for a system of alpine huts for hikers operated by the Appalachian Mountain Club. The Appalachian Trail crosses the area from southwest to northeast.

Etymology
It is not clear where the name "White Mountains" came from. There is no record of what Native Americans called the range, although pre-Colonial names for many individual peaks are known. The name and similar ones such as "White Hills" or "Wine Hills" are found in literature from Colonial times. According to tradition, the mountains were first sighted from shipboard off the coast near the Piscataqua estuary.  The highest peaks would often be snow-capped, appearing white. An alternate theory is that the mica-laden granite of the summits looked white to observers.

Geology and physiography
The White Mountains are a physiographic section of the larger New England province, which in turn is part of the larger Appalachian Highlands physiographic division.

The magma intrusions forming the White Mountains today were created 124 to 100 million years ago as the North American Plate moved westward over the New England hotspot.

Widespread evidence of glaciation may be seen in the U-shaped form of various notches, or mountain passes. Glacial cirques form the heads of Tuckerman Ravine on Mt. Washington and King Ravine on Mt. Adams. Glacial striations are visible at numerous locations, including on the exposed rocks at the summit of Pine Mountain in Gorham.

The Red Hill Syenite, a rock unit of the White Mountains, found in central New Hampshire, is of interest to researchers due to the fact that it contains feldspathoids as well as quartz-bearing rocks.

Attractions
The White Mountain National Forest, formed in 1911 after passage of the Weeks Act, includes most of the mountain range and now covers  in New Hampshire and western Maine. The Mount Washington Auto Road and Mount Washington Cog Railway ascend the range's highest peak, which hosts a visitor center and weather observatory. Heavily visited Arethusa Falls, the second tallest waterfall in New Hampshire, lies on a southwest flank of Crawford Notch. The Old Man of the Mountain, a rock formation on Cannon Mountain that resembled the craggy profile of a man's face, was a White Mountain landmark until it fell in May 2003. It remains the state symbol of New Hampshire. The range also includes a natural feature dubbed "The Basin", consisting of a granite bowl,  in diameter, fed by a waterfall, worn smooth by the Pemigewasset River. The areas around The Basin are popular spots for swimming in the cold water.

The range is crossed north–south by U.S. Route 3 and Interstate 93 through Franconia Notch and New Hampshire Route 16 through Pinkham Notch, and east–west by the Kancamagus Highway (part of New Hampshire Route 112) through Kancamagus Pass and U.S. Route 302 through Crawford Notch. Many of these highways are designated as scenic routes.

Several amusement parks lie in or near the White Mountains, including Story Land, Santa's Village, Whale's Tale Water Park and Clark's Trading Post.  The White Mountains region is also home to numerous hiking attractions through the various river gorges, ravines, and caves in the area. The Flume Gorge, Lost River Reservation and Polar Caves Park all provide moderate hikes that one can complete in a few hours.  Skiing is a popular attraction in the area.  Cannon Mountain Ski Area, Loon Mountain Ski Resort, Attitash Mountain Resort, Wildcat Mountain Ski Area, Bretton Woods Mountain Resort, and Waterville Valley Resort are all popular winter ski resorts, and many of them provide year-round outdoor activities such as bridle paths, hiking trails, alpine slides, and the like.  The Mount Washington Hotel located in Bretton Woods was the site of the Bretton Woods Conference following World War II, and today remains one of the few early twentieth century grand hotels still in use. An estimated six million visitors visit the region yearly.

Mapping

Some of the earliest maps of the White Mountains were produced as tourist maps and not topographical maps. One of the first two tourist maps of the mountains was that produced by Franklin Leavitt, a self-taught artist born near Lancaster, New Hampshire in 1824. Leavitt's hand-drawn map, today in the collection of Harvard University, is largely folk art, but does convey some of the region's features. Leavitt drew several versions of his map, beginning in 1852. The fourth version, printed in 1871, was printed at Boston and carried a retail price of one dollar. Other early maps of the region were drawn by H. Conant and by Harvard astronomer George Phillips Bond, who published the first topographical map of the region in 1853.

Art

The White Mountains drew hundreds of painters during the 19th century.  This group of artists is sometimes referred to as belonging to the "White Mountain school" of art.  Others dispute the notion that these painters were a "school", since they did not all paint in the same style as, for example, those artists of the Hudson River School.

In literature and drama

Nathaniel Hawthorne chose the White Mountains as the setting for his short story "The Great Carbuncle". Other White Mountain tales by Hawthorne include "The Ambitious Guest", "Sketches from Memory" and "The Great Stone Face". The White Mountain region also figures prominently in the writings of Louisa May Alcott, including the novel Eight Cousins and its sequel, Rose in Bloom.

See also

List of mountain passes in New Hampshire
List of mountains of New Hampshire
White Mountains Region

References

External links

 Interactive map of the White Mountains National Forest
 The Grand Hotels, The Glory and The Conflagration, Randall E. Spalding, WhiteMountainHistory.org

Mountain ranges of New Hampshire
Mountain ranges of Maine
Subranges of the Appalachian Mountains
White Mountain National Forest
Geography of New England
Cretaceous magmatism
Igneous petrology of New Hampshire
Physiographic sections

White Mountains (New Hampshire)


French, one calls boxe pieds-poings ("feet-fists boxing"), since the years 1980, the combat sports of striking with boxing gloves. These sports are practised in a ring (or on a mat) and belong to the category of sport boxing. The boxers use, according to the regulation, the techniques of leg (kicks and knee kicks), the techniques of arm (punches and elbow strikes) and the techniques of throwing.

Among the most known we have:
 the American disciplines (American boxing) under three main forms:
 full contact karate without kicks below the belt,
 kickboxing with roundhouse kicks in the thighs or American kickboxing,
 and semicontact or fights in the points (point fighting), a class of karate with gloves and slippers in foam,
 French boxing (savate), today called "Savate-BF",
 Japanese kickboxing: kickboxing with direct knee kicks, roundhouse kicks in the thighs (low kick), and with few wrestling catches,
 two kinds of boxing, where almost everything is permitted, Burmese boxing (lethwei) and Thai boxing (muay thai).

Other websites
  French Page of boxe pieds-poings.

Martial arts

Boxe pieds-poings


Junk food news is a sardonic term for news stories that deliver "sensationalized, personalized, and homogenized inconsequential trivia",
especially when such stories appear at the expense of serious investigative journalism. It implies a criticism of the mass media for disseminating news that, while not very nourishing, is "cheap to produce and profitable for media proprietors."

Meaning
The term junk food news was first used in print by Carl Jensen in the March 1983 edition of Penthouse. As the leader of Project Censored, he had frequently faulted the media for ignoring important stories. In response, says Jensen, editors claimed that other stories were more important, and bolstered this claim with ad hominem comments directed against him.
...news editors and directors...argued that the real issue isn't censorship—but rather a difference of opinion as to what information is important to publish or broadcast. Editors often point out that there is a finite amount of time and space for news delivery—about 23 minutes for a half-hour network television evening news program—and that it's their responsibility to determine which stories are most critical for the public to hear. The critics said I wasn't exploring media censorship but rather I was just another frustrated academic criticizing editorial news judgment.

To give this argument a fair hearing, Jensen decided to conduct a review to determine which stories the media had considered more important. But instead of hard-hitting investigative journalism, what he discovered was the phenomenon that he termed junk food news fell into predictable categories:

 Brand name news (celebrity gossip)
 Sex news (exposés and sexual titillation)
 Yo-yo news (statistics that change daily, such as stock market numbers and box office totals)
 Show business news (movie openings)
 Latest craze news (brief fads)
 Anniversary news (anniversaries of major events or celebrity deaths)
 Sports news (sports rumours)
 Political news (bi-annual coverage of congressional campaign promises)

As the flip side to its annual list of the Top 25 Censored Stories, Project Censored publishes an annual list of the Top 10 Junk Food News stories, compiled by members of the National Organization of News Ombudsmen.

See also

References

Criticism of journalism
Mass media issues
Tabloid journalism

Junk food news


Slyudyanka (), is a town in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. The town is located on the southern coast of Lake Baikal. It sits at the foot of the Khamar-Daban mountain range. It is next to the confluence of the Slyudyanka River and Baikal. The town is divided into two parts by the Transsiberian Railway. Slyudyanka had a population of 19,242 in the 2002 census. In 2010. 18,542 people lived there. It is served by Slyudyanka-I and Slyudyanka-II railway stations. The Circum-Baikal Railway starts from the Slyudyanka-II station.

Slyudyanka was founded in 1647 by the Russian Cossacks. Because of its geographical position, the city grew quickly and became a large transit centre which connected Irkutsk with China and Mongolia. The town became a railway hub in 1905, when constructing of Transsiberian Railway had been finished. Also there is a marble deposit in the town.

Cities and towns in Irkutsk Oblast

Slyudyanka