Scream is a 1996 American slasher movie directed by Wes Craven. It was written by Kevin Williamson.  The film stars David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Matthew Lillard, Seth Green, Dax Shepard, Freddie Prinze Jr., Rose McGowan, Skeet Ulrich, Jamie Kennedy and Drew Barrymore.

It was the first movie of the Scream franchise.

Plot
High school student Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) receives a flirtatious phone call from an unknown person, asking her, "What's your favorite scary movie?" However, the caller turns sadistic and threatens her life. He reveals that her boyfriend Steve Orth (Kevin Patrick Walls) is being held hostage and demands she answer questions about horror films. After Casey gets one wrong, Steve is murdered. When Casey refuses to answer more questions, she is murdered by a masked killer. Her parents come home to find her corpse hanging from a tree.

The following day, the news media descend on the town and a police investigation begins. Meanwhile, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) struggles with the impending first anniversary of her mother's murder by Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber). While waiting at home for her friend, Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan), Sidney and her brother Jerry Prescott (Matthew Lillard) receive a threatening phone call. After she hangs up and she and Jerry are attacked by the killer, but manage to escape. Sidney's boyfriend, Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich), arrives shortly after, but after he drops his cell phone, Sidney and Jerry suspect him of making the call and flee. Billy is arrested and Sidney and Jerry spend the night at Tatum's house.

Billy is released the next day. Suspicion has shifted to Sidney and Jerry's father, Neil Prescott (Lawrence Hecht), as the calls have been traced to his phone. School is suspended in the wake of the murders. After the students have left the school, Principal Himbry (Henry Winkler) is stabbed to death in his office. Tatum's boyfriend, Stu Macher (Freddie Prinze Jr.) throws a party to celebrate the school's closure. The party is attended by Sidney, Jerry, Tatum and their friends Dan Williams (Seth Green), Tom Scott (Dax Shepard) and Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), and multiple other students. Reporter Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) attends uninvited to cover the situation, as she expects the killer to strike. Tatum's brother deputy sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette) also looks out for the murderer at the party. Tatum is killed during the party after having her head crushed by the garage door. Billy arrives to speak to Sidney privately, and the two ultimately consummate their relationship. Dewey and Gale investigate a nearby abandoned car. Many party attendees are drawn away after hearing news of Himbry's death; Sidney, Jerry, Dan, Tom, Billy, Randy, Stu, and Gale's cameraman Kenny remain.

After having sex, Sidney and Billy are attacked by the killer, who seemingly murders Billy. Sidney, Jerry, Dan and Tom narrowly escape the house and seeks help from Kenny (W. Earl Brown), but the killer slits his throat; Sidney, Jerry, Dan and Tom then flee again. Gale and Dewey, having discovered that the car belongs to Neil Prescott, return to the house. They believe Neil is the killer and has come to the party to continue his spree. Gale tries to escape in her van, but drives off the road and crashes to avoid hitting Sidney, Jerry, Dan and Tom. Meanwhile, Dewey is stabbed in the back while investigating in the house, and Sidney takes his gun. Stu and Randy appear and accuse each other of being the killer. Sidney, Jerry, Dan and Tom retreat into the house, where they find Billy wounded but still alive. Sidney gives Billy the gun; he lets Randy into the house and shoots him. Billy reveals that he feigned his injuries and is actually the killer; Stu is his accomplice.

Billy and Stu discuss their plan to kill Sidney, Jerry, Dan and Tom and frame the murder spree on Sidney and Jerry's father, whom they have taken hostage. The pair also reveal that they, not Cotton, murdered her mother, Maureen, as she was having an affair with Billy's father, which drove his mother away. Gale, who survived the crash, intervenes, and Sidney, Jerry, Dan and Tom take advantage of this to turn the tables on their attackers, killing Stu. Randy is revealed to be wounded but alive. Billy stabs Dan in the ribs, killing him, then Billy attacks Sidney but she shoots him through the head, killing him, Jerry runs over to Dan's body, then Dan gives Jerry his photo album with pictures of him, Jerry, Tom, Sidney, Tatum, Billy, Stu, Randy, Cici (who will appear in Scream 2), Martha, Jerry's old friends: (Douglas Harris (who will appear in Scream 4), Karen James and Thomas Weston) and Sidney and Jerry's brother Steve (who will appear in Scream 3), as Dan slowly dies, Jerry cries over Dan's body. As the sun rises and police arrive, a badly injured Dewey is taken away by ambulance and Gale makes an impromptu news report about the night's events. Two weeks later at Dan's funeral, Sidney, Jerry, Tom and Randy stand near Dan's grave.

Cast
Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott
David Arquette as Dewey Riley
Courteney Cox as Gale Weathers
Matthew Lillard as Jerry Prescott
Seth Green as Dan Williams
Dax Shepard as Tom Scott
Freddie Prinze Jr. as Stu Macher
Rose McGowan as Tatum Riley
Skeet Ulrich as Billy Loomis
Jamie Kennedy as Randy Meeks
Drew Barrymore as Casey Becker
Joseph Whipp as Sheriff Burke
W. Earl Brown as Kenny
Liev Schreiber as Cotton Weary
Henry Winkler as Principal Himbry (uncredited)
Kevin Patrick Walls as Steve Orth
Lawrence Hecht as Neil Prescott
C.W. Morgan as Hank Loomis
Roger L. Jackson as Ghostface (voice)

1996 horror movies
1996 thriller movies
1990s horror thriller movies
1996 mystery movies
1990s satirical movies
1990s teen horror movies
Scream movies
American independent movies

Scream (1996 movie)


John Augustin Daly (July 20, 1838June 7, 1899) was one of the most influential men in American theatre during his lifetime. Drama critic, theatre manager, playwright, and adapter, he became the first recognized stage director in America. He exercised a fierce and tyrannical control over all aspects of his productions. His rules of conduct for actors and actresses imposed heavy fines for late appearances and forgotten lines and earned him the title "the autocrat of the stage." He formed a permanent company in New York and opened Daly's Theatre in New York in 1879, and a second one in London in 1893.

Biography
Augustin Daly was born in Plymouth, North Carolina to Captain Denis Daly, a sea-captain and ship owner, and Elizabeth, daughter of Lieutenant John Duffy of the British Army. He was educated at Norfolk, Virginia, and in the public schools of New York City. His mother, early left a widow, brought her two boys to New York City, where they soon became frequent attendants at the theaters and were members of amateur groups, which under such names as the "Burton Association" or the "Murdoch Association" were the precursors of the Little Theatre Movement.

He was dramatic critic for several New York papers from 1859, and he adapted or wrote a number of plays, Under the Gaslight (1867) being his first success. In 1869 he became the manager of the Fifth Avenue Theatre on 24th St. and in 1873 the Fifth Avenue Theatre on 28th. In 1879 he rebuilt and opened Daly's Theatre at Broadway and 30th Street in New York, and, in 1893, Daly's Theatre in London.

At the first of these, he gathered a company of players, headed by Ada Rehan, which made for it a high reputation, and for them he adapted plays from foreign sources, and revived Shakespearean comedies in a manner before unknown in America. He took his entire company on tour, visiting England, Germany and France, and some of the best actors on the American stage have owed their training and first successes to him. Among these were Clara Morris, Sara Jewett, John Drew, Jr., Maurice Barrymore, Fanny Davenport, Agnes Ethel, Maude Adams, Mrs. Gilbert, Tyrone Power, Sr., Ada Dyas, Isadora Duncan, Maud Jeffries and many others.  Daly's willingness to, as he put it, "stoop to the curb and bestow upon the low, untried actor a chance at greatness" earned him the nickname "Little Man Auggie" among his peers. His play Leah the Forsaken, adapted from Hermann Salomon Mosenthal's Deborah, was a star vehicle for Margaret Mather.

His Shakespeare productions were often severely criticized by George Bernard Shaw, who was active as a drama critic during those years. Shaw took Daly to task for cutting Shakespeare's plays and for presenting them in unorthodox ways. (Shaw was a strong believer in presenting Shakespeare's plays uncut.) Several of Shaw's criticisms of Daly's Shakespeare productions were reprinted in the anthology Shaw on Shakespeare.

In 1894, he was awarded the Laetare Medal by the university of Notre Dame, considered the most prestigious award for American Catholics.

Daly was a great book-lover, and his valuable library was dispersed by auction after his death, which occurred in Paris. Besides plays, original and adapted, he wrote Woffington: a Tribute to the Actress and the Woman (1888).

He died on 7th June 1899 in Paris aged 60 and laid to rest in Calvary Cemetery, Woodside, Queens County, New York, US.

Dora Knowlton Ranous, a onetime actress in the Daly company, published a 1910 memoir of her experiences entitled Diary of a Daly Débutante.

Notable works

Under the Gaslight (1867) is an example of Daly's mixture of realism and melodrama, seen in the authenticity of his depiction of real locations and in his use of social commentary. The play introduced the now-clichéd device of the villain tying someone to railroad tracks, although in a reversal of the usual roles it was the hero who was tied up and the heroine who saved him. In the book Vagrant Memories, the author, William Winter recalls how Daly came up with the device. He says: "He once told me under what circumstances he hit upon this device. He was walking home toward night, thinking intently about the play which he had begun to write, when suddenly the crowning expedient occurred to him and at the same instant he stumbled over a misplaced flagstone, striking his right foot against the edge of the stone and sustaining a severe hurt. "I was near my door," he said, "and I rushed into the house, threw myself into a chair, grasping my injured foot with both hands, for the pain was great, and exclaiming, over and over again, 'I've got it! I've got it! And it beats hot-irons all to pieces!" I  wasn't even thinking of the hurt. I had the thought of having my hero tied on a railroad track and rescued by his sweetheart, just in the nick of time, before the swift passage of an express train across a dark stage.

A Flash of Lightning (1868), like Under the Gaslight, is pure melodrama, with water and fire spectacles providing action scenes and special effects for its eager audiences.

Horizon (1871) is an adaptation of a Bret Harte story about the westward expansion of the States; it is an example of the popularity of western drama, coupled with Daly's interest in realism of the local color variety, although it remains melodramatic.

Divorce (1871) and Pique (1875), both adaptations of British novels, demonstrate Daly's attempts to create social comedy, although the plays remain somewhat melodramatic.

See also
 Webster v. Daly
 Brady v. Daly

References

Sources
Autograph letters signed from Miriam Coles Harris to Augustin Daly (1885) Google Books

Further reading

Archival materials
 Collection of letters and papers of Augustin Daly, held by the Folger Shakespeare Library: 33 boxes, call numbers: Y.c.2602-3099, Y.c.4000-5378
 Correspondence of Augustin Daly and Joseph F. Daly and documents serving for memoirs, 1858-1899, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: 9 boxes, call number: *T-Mss 2001-251
 portrait of Augustin Daly(North American Theatre Online, Alexander Street)

External links

American theatre managers and producers
Writers from North Carolina
1838 births
1899 deaths
People from Plymouth, North Carolina
Laetare Medal recipients
19th-century American dramatists and playwrights
American theater critics
19th-century American journalists
American male journalists
American male dramatists and playwrights
19th-century American male writers
19th-century American businesspeople
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Augustin Daly


Steel is iron mixed with carbon and perhaps other metals. It is harder and stronger than iron. Iron with more than 1.7% percent carbon by weight is named cast iron. Steel is different from wrought iron, which has little or no carbon.

Making steel
Steel has a long history. People in India and Sri Lanka were making small amounts of steel more than 2,500 years ago. It was very expensive and was often used to make swords and knives. In the Middle Ages, steel could be made only in small amounts since the processes took a long time.

In the time since, there have been many changes to the way steel is made. In about the year 1610 steel started to be made in England, and the way it was made got better and cheaper over the next 100 years. Cheap steel helped start the Industrial Revolution in England and in Europe. The first industrial Converter (metallurgy) for making cheap steel was the Bessemer converter, followed by Siemens-Martin open-hearth process.

Today the most common way of making steel is the basic-oxygen process.  The converter is a large turnip-shaped vessel.  Liquid raw iron called "pig iron" is poured in and some scrap metal is added in to balance the heat. Oxygen is then blown into the iron. The oxygen burns off the extra carbon and other impurities.  Then enough carbon is added to make the carbon contents as wanted. The liquid steel is then poured. It can be either cast into molds or rolled into sheets, slabs, beams and other so-called "long products", such as railway tracks. Some special steels are made in electric arc furnaces.

Steel is most often made by machines in huge buildings called steel mills.  It is a very cheap metal and is used to make many things.  Steel is used in making buildings and bridges, and all kinds of machines. Almost all ships and cars are today made from steel. When a steel object is old, or it is broken beyond repair, it is called scrap. It can be melted down and re-shaped into a new object. Steel is recyclable material; that is, the same steel can be used and re-used.

Iron and steel chemistry
Steel is a metal alloy which includes iron and often some carbon.

Every material is made up of atoms which are very small parts. Some atoms hold together quite well, which is what makes some solid materials hard. Something made of pure iron is softer than steel because the atoms can slip over one another. If other atoms like carbon are added, they are different from iron atoms and stop the iron atoms from sliding apart so easily. This makes the metal stronger and harder.

Changing the amount of carbon (or other atoms) added to steel will change those things that are interesting and useful about the metal. These are called the properties of the steel. Some properties are:

 Hardness
 How easily it bends
 Ductility: can it be made into thin wires?
 Is it magnetic? Can a magnet pick it up?
 Will it rust (or corrode)?

Steel with more carbon is harder and stronger than pure iron, but it also breaks more easily (brittle).

Types of steel

There are thousands of steel types, each made of different amounts of different chemical elements.

All steels have some elements that have a bad effect, such as phosphorus (P) and sulphur (S). Steel makers take out as much P and S as possible.

Plain carbon steels are made only of iron, carbon, and undesired elements.  They fall into three general groups. Plain carbon steel with 0.05 to 0.2% carbon does not harden by heat treating.  Welding it is simple, so it is used for shipbuilding, boilers, pipes, fence wire and other purposes where low cost is important.  Plain  steels are used for springs, gears, and engine parts.  Plain carbon steel with 0.45 to 0.8% carbon is used for very hard items such as shears and machine tools.

Alloy steels are plain carbon steel with metals such as Boron (B), manganese (Mn), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), molybdenum (Mo), tungsten (W), and cobalt (Co) added.  These give other properties than plain carbon steel.  Alloy steels are made for specialized purposes. For example, chromium can be added to make stainless steel, which does not rust easily, or boron can be added to make very hard steel that is also not brittle.

Uses of steel
There are a huge number of things that people make from steel. It is one of the most common and useful metals.
A lot of items made from iron in the past are now made of steel. Some of them are:
 Tools
 Machines
 Motors and engines
 Wires
 Rails for trains
 Buildings
 Bridges
 Bars for making reinforced concrete
 Hulls of ships and large boats
 Car and train bodies
 Major appliances
 Cutlery and knives

Other websites

 steel -Citizendium
Basic English 850 words
Construction
Alloys
Iron

Steel


Chronology is a word meaning 'the study of time'. It comes from the Greek words chronos (time) and logos (word). The adjective is chronological.

Putting events in chronological order means: listing them in the order in which they happened.

There are many sciences which deal in different ways with chronology. General is sometimes called "periodization". Historical chronology can deal with history or with the geological history of the earth.

When things are put in chronological order it can sometimes be called a "timeline".  Adjective- (of a record of events) following the order in which they occurred (kind of like a timeline)

Related pages
 Annals
 Calendar

Chronology


Stress analysis is the study of stresses and strains in materials and structures as force is applied against them. It is a topic in engineering. Stress may cause deformation or fractures in materials. Stress analysis is about finding out how much stress causes deformation in a given material.

Stress analysis is an important task for civil, mechanical and aerospace engineers. They work on the design of structures of all sizes, such as bridges and dams, machines, and even plastic cutlery and staples. Stress analysis is also used in the maintenance of such structures, and to investigate the causes of structural failures.

Mechanics

Stress analysis


Pride means having a feeling of being good and worthy. The adjective is proud.

The word pride can be used in a good sense as well as in a bad sense.

In a good sense it means having a feeling of self-respect. People can be satisfied with their achievements. They can be proud of something good that they have done. They can be proud of (or take pride in) their work. They might be proud of their son or daughter or husband or wife or anyone else who is close to them and who has done something good. People can be proud of their country (patriotism). The opposite would be to be ashamed of someone or something.

In a bad sense, pride can mean that someone has an exaggerated sense of feeling good. This might mean that someone has no respect for what other people do, only respect for what he or she does. Someone who is described as proud may be arrogant. The word is used in this sense in the saying: "Pride comes before a fall" or "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall." Prov.16:18 (meaning that someone is so overconfident that he or she might soon have a disaster).

Emotions
Seven deadly sins

Pride


Ptah was the ancient Egyptian god of craftsmen and architects. Ptah is named in the Turin King List as the first of the eight legendary god-kings of Egypt.

In art, he is shown as a hairless, bearded mummified man, often wearing a skull cap, holding a djed or other large tool (which he is sometimes shown using during mummification ceremonies). He was believed to be married to Sekhmet.

Ptah was the local god of Memphis, one of the ancient capitals of Egypt. He is the parson of craftsmen, since it is believed that he invented the arts.

Egyptian gods and goddesses

Ptah


Duchess Elisabeth of Bavaria (December 24, 1837 - September 10, 1898) was the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.

Biography

Elisabeth was born in Munich, Bavaria state in Germany. She was part of the royal family of Wittelsbach. She was the fourth of the ten children of Prince Maximilian of Bavaria and his wife Princess Ludovika. She was known as "Sisi". She grew up with her brothers and sisters at Possenhofen Castle. In August 1853, she went to Bad Ischl with her mother and older sister Helene, to celebrate Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph's 23rd birthday. The event was also supposed to be the occasion to announce his engagement to Helene. However, Franz Joseph liked the young and beautiful Elisabeth so much that he proposed to her instead.

Marriage

Elisabeth and Franz Joseph were married in great pomp in Vienna on April 24, 1854.  Elisabeth had an informal upbringing, before marrying Franz Joseph. She disliked the  much more formal life she had to live at court. Early in the marriage, her mother-in-law, Princess Sophie, took over the care of Elisabeth's daughters. One daughter died when she was a baby. The birth of her son Rudolf improved her standing at court. Her health suffered under the stress of the  court life. She had four children: Sophie (1855-1857), Gisele (1856-1932), Rudolf (1858-1889) and Valerie (1868-1924).

Franz Joseph and Elisabeth became King and Queen of Hungary in 1867, when the two countries joined together and created the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Elisabeth suffered from lung disease and melancholia. She disliked the strict etiquette of the court. She was often away and lived long periods of time abroad, notably in Hungary and at her villa in Corfu.

Her only son, Rudolf, committed suicide in 1889, after killing his young mistress Marie Vetsera. Empress Elisabeth was assassinated by an Italian anarchist in 1898, while on a visit to Geneva.

She has since become something of an historical icon and highly romantic figure, through a series of movies called Sisi in the 1950s. The movies starred actress Romy Schneider.

1837 births
1898 deaths
House of Wittelsbach
Empresses consort

Elisabeth of Bavaria


The Long Earth is the first novel in a collaborative science fiction series by British authors Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter.

Plot summary
The "Long Earth" is a (possibly infinite) series of parallel worlds that are similar to Earth, which can be reached by using an inexpensive device called a "Stepper" – designs for which are one day posted online suddenly allowing humanity to explore worlds "East" and "West" of "Datum Earth". The worlds are mostly familiar, though others differ in greater and greater details, but all share one similarity: on none are there, or have there ever been, Homo sapiens – although the same cannot be said of earlier hominid species, especially Homo habilis.

The book deals primarily with the journey of Joshua Valienté (a natural "Stepper") and Lobsang, who claims to be a Tibetan motorcycle repairman reincarnated as an artificial intelligence. The two chart a course to learn as much as possible about the parallel worlds, travelling millions of steps away from the original Earth. They encounter evidence of other humanoid species (referred to as trolls and elves); of human settlers who learned their gifts early – including Sally Linsay, daughter of the inventor of the stepper, who joins them on their expedition; and of an extinct race of bipedal dinosaur descendants. They also encounter warning signs of a great danger, millions of worlds away from Earth, causing catastrophe as it moves. The book also deals with the effects of the explosion of available space on the people of Datum Earth and the new colonies and political movements that are spreading throughout the Long Earth.

A young girl, Helen Green, and her family (with the exception of her brother, Rod, who is unable to step) trek across the long earth to form a new community, Reboot, on Earth West 101,754.

After stepping across "The Gap" – a universe around two million steps from the Datum where the Earth no longer exists – Joshua and Lobsang encounter the threat that has caused the slow migration of Trolls away from the gap. First Person Singular is a being that absorbs other sentient life forms, eventually taking over everything on earth before stepping to the next. It currently cannot pass The Gap. Lobsang elects to stay in First Person Singular's universe and commune with it, in the hopes of convincing it not to advance further, or at least to not absorb all other sentients.

Joshua and Sally return to Datum Earth back the way they came.  Upon reaching Earth West 101,754, they hear news that Datum Madison has been destroyed in a nuclear explosion, the result of a bomb planted by a terrorist group of humans incapable of stepping (called "phobics" in the book's terminology).  The book ends with the two of them briefly seeing the explosion site, before retreating to Earth West 1 Madison, where a backed-up instantiation of Lobsang contacts Joshua by phone.

Characters
Joshua Valienté: an orphan, born on another world when his mother stepped during childbirth. A natural stepper. He is antisocial but has an altruistic nature.
Lobsang: an artificial intelligence who claims to be a reincarnated Tibetan motorcycle repairman.
Sally Linsay: daughter of the inventor of the Stepper box, a device that allows the majority of humans to step between parallel universes. A natural stepper and later romantic interest to Joshua Valienté. Like Joshua, she usually prefers the tranquillity of uninhabited worlds to the "noise" of Datum Earth and their close counterparts.
Monica Jansson: A Madison Police Officer who helps the disappearing children on Step Day, the day when the blueprint for the Stepper Box is released on the internet.
Helen Green: a young girl who sets off across the long earth with most of her family to start a new community. She keeps a diary of her travels.
Rod Green: brother to Helen Green, a boy who cannot step and is left on Datum Earth by his family as they travel across the long earth. He later helps in the bombing of Madison where he is captured and imprisoned.
Sister Agnes: a nun who looks after Joshua during his younger years at the orphanage.
Douglas Black: founder of the Black Corporation, a high-profile research based weapons and technology company and manufacturer. Creator of Lobsang.
First Person Singular: a being found on the far side of The Gap, more than two million steps from earth, that absorbs all sentient life.
Mark Twain: an airship with a certain level of artificial intelligence granted by the Black Corporation and Lobsang, allowing it, and those within it, to step. The Mark Twain, named after the author who penned the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, carries Joshua and Lobsang on their journey across the long Earth.

Reception
Reviewing the book in The Guardian, Adam Roberts found it to be "much more like a Baxter novel than a Pratchett one." It was also said to be "a charming, absorbing and somehow spacious piece of imagineering."

The book reached 13th on the New York Times hardback best-sellers list on 8 July 2012.

The novel won the Goodreads Choice Awards 2012 for Science Fiction.

Sequel
Sequels of the novel in the series are:
 The Long War (June 2013)
 The Long Mars (June 2014)
 The Long Utopia (June 2015)
 The Long Cosmos (June 2016)

See also
 Bigfoot
 Living Space
 Paratime series
 Sliders

References

External links

2012 British novels
2012 science fiction novels
Doubleday (publisher) books
British science fiction novels
Novels about parallel universes
Novels about reincarnation
Novels about artificial intelligence
Evolution in popular culture
Novels about nuclear war and weapons
Novels about terrorism
Science fantasy novels
Collaborative novels

The Long Earth


Warsaw School of Mathematics is the name given to a group of mathematicians who worked at Warsaw, Poland, in the two decades between the World Wars, especially in the fields of logic, set theory, point-set topology and real analysis. They published in the journal Fundamenta Mathematicae, founded in 1920—one of the world's first specialist pure-mathematics journals. It was in this journal, in 1933, that Alfred Tarski—whose illustrious career would a few years later take him to the University of California, Berkeley—published his celebrated theorem on the undefinability of the notion of truth.

Notable members of the Warsaw School of Mathematics have included:
 Wacław Sierpiński
 Kazimierz Kuratowski
 Edward Marczewski
 Bronisław Knaster
 Zygmunt Janiszewski
 Stefan Mazurkiewicz
 Stanisław Saks
 Karol Borsuk
 Roman Sikorski
 Nachman Aronszajn
 Samuel Eilenberg

Additionally, notable logicians of the Lwów–Warsaw School of Logic, working at Warsaw, have included:
 Stanisław Leśniewski
 Adolf Lindenbaum
 Alfred Tarski
 Jan Łukasiewicz
 Andrzej Mostowski
 Helena Rasiowa

Fourier analysis has been advanced at Warsaw by:
 Aleksander Rajchman
 Antoni Zygmund
 Józef Marcinkiewicz
 Otton M. Nikodym
 Jerzy Spława-Neyman

See also
 Polish School of Mathematics
 Kraków School of Mathematics
 Lwów School of Mathematics

Polish mathematics
History of education in Poland
History of mathematics
History of Warsaw
Science and technology in Poland
Warsaw School of Mathematics

Warsaw School (mathematics)


Saint George (c. 275/280 – April 23, 303) is the patron saint of England and some other countries. There is no reliable history about St. George yet. On St George's day some people in England wear a red rose, or put an English flag in their window. The Saint George's Cross is the flag of England: white with a red cross.

According to a legend, Saint George of Lydda killed a dragon and saved the lives of many people.

A legend
A city called Silene had a large lake, where a plague-bearing dragon who breathed fire and disease lived. The dragon poisoned all the countryside. To please the dragon, the people of Silene gave it a sheep every day, for food, and when there were no more sheep, they gave their children to the dragon. The children were chosen by a lottery.

One year the lottery chose the King's daughter. The King, sad and desperate, asked the people to take all his gold and silver, and half of his empire - but only if his daughter could be saved. The people refused. The daughter was sent out to the lake, dressed in white as a bride, to be a fine meal for the dragon.

Not knowing this, Saint George was riding past the lake on the same day. The princess, terrified and trembling, tried to send him away, but George said he would stay and protect her.

The dragon came suddenly out of the lake while they were speaking.  George made the Sign of the Cross gesture, jumped on his horse and advanced toward the dragon.  He used his long spear to hurt the dragon badly. Then he asked the princess to throw her long pretty belt to him. He put the silk belt around the dragon's neck.
Now, the dragon followed the girl like a humble pet follows its master.

The Princess and Saint George took the dragon back to the city of Silene, where the people were terrified to see the dragon enter. But Saint George told them not to be scared. He said that if the people became Christians and went to Church to be baptized, he would kill the dragon immediately.

The king and the people of Silene converted to Christianity, George killed the dragon with his sword, 'Ascalon', and its body was taken out of the city on carts.
Fifteen thousand men were baptized, not counting women and children.
On the site where the dragon died, the king built a Church for the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint George. From the altar in the church came a fountain of holy water. The water cured any disease.

Symbolism
The story of Saint George and the Dragon symbolizes good winning over evil. Compare Book of Revelation chapters 12-13.
It is the subject of a lot of art through many centuries. In Sweden, the Princess symbolizes the nation of Sweden, and the dragon represents a foreign army of enemies. The story was passed from parent to child through songs in Russia. It was also made into the story 'The Reluctant Dragon' by Ken Ransom, which was made into a Disney film.

Patron Saint

St. George's Day is also England's National Day, April 23, but this is not a holiday in the UK. He is the patron saint of many other countries, too - including Greece, Palestine, Georgia, Portugal and Russia. Moscow has 41 Churches with the name of Saint George, and the Moscow city Coat of Arms, or symbol, is of Saint George on a horse killing the dragon. Saint George is the patron saint of the Boy Scouts of America.

270s births
303 deaths
George
Religion in England
Legendary people

Saint George


Jersey Girl is a 2004 American drama-comedy movie. It was written and directed by Kevin Smith. It was produced by Scott Mosier. It stars Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Raquel Castro, George Carlin, Jason Biggs, Jennifer Lopez, Stephen Root, and Will Smith. Jason Lee, Matt Damon, and Betty Aberlin had cameo appearances.

It was released on March 26, 2004 to negative reviews. Critic Roger Ebert thought the movie was good because he gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars.

2004 comedy-drama movies
2004 romantic comedy movies
2004 romantic drama movies
American romantic comedy movies
American romantic drama movies
Movies directed by Kevin Smith
Movies set in New Jersey
Movies set in New York City
Movies set in the 1990s
Screenplays by Kevin Smith

Jersey Girl (2004 movie)


Dina statistik, covariance matrix nyaruakeun konsép varian tina hiji ka n dimension, dina basa séjén, bentuk nilai-scalar random variable ka nilai-vector random variables (tuple tina variabel random skalar).  Lamun X mangrupa nilai-skalar variabel random nu mibanda nilai ekspektasi μ mangka variance-na nyaéta

Lamun X nyaéta hiji n-ku-1 nilai-vektor kolon variabel random whose expected value is an n-by-1 column vector μ then its variance is the n-by-n nonnegative-definite matrix

The entries in this matrix are the covariances between the n different scalar components of X.  Since the covariance between a scalar-valued random variable and itself is its variance, it follows that, in particular, the entries on the diagonal of this matrix are the variances of the scalar components of X.  This may appéar to be a property of this matrix that depends on which coordinate system is chosen for the space in which the random vector X resides.  However, it is true generally that if u is any unit vector, then the variance of the projection of X on u is uTΣu.  (This point is expanded upon somewhat at .  It is a consequence of an identity that appéars below.)

Nomenclatures differ.  Some statisticians, following the probabilist William Feller, call this the variance of the random vector X, because it is the natural generalization to higher dimensions of the 1-dimensional variance.  Others call it the covariance matrix, because it is the matrix of covariances between the scalar components of the vector X.

With scalar-valued random variables X, we have the identity

if a is constant, i.e., not random.  If X is an n-by-1 column vector-valued random variable and A is an m-by-n constant (i.e., non-random) matrix, then AX is an m-by-1 column vector-valued random variable, whose variance must therefore be an m-by-m matrix.  It is

This covariance matrix (though very simple) is a very useful tool in many
very different aréas. From it a transformation matrix can be derived
that allows one to completely decorrelate
the data or, from a different point of view, to find an optimal basis
for representing the data in a compact way.
This is called PCA (principal components analysis) in statistics and KL-Transform  (Karhunen-Loéve transform) in image processing.

Statistika

Matriks kovarians


The Leo Belgicus is a map of the former Low Countries (the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium and a small part of northern France).  They are drawn in the shape of a lion.  The Leo Belgicus that came first was drawn by the Austrian cartographer Michael Aitzinger in 1583.  The Netherlands were fighting the Eighty Years' War for freedom at this time.
There were three different drawings. In the most common one, the lion's head was found in the northeast part of the country and the tail in the southeast part of the country.  The most famous version is the drawing of Claes Janszoon Visscher. It was made in 1609 when the Twelve Years' Truce was written.  The third version was made late in the war. It was made after the freedom of the Dutch Republic was given in the Peace of Westphalia of the year 1648. It is called the Leo Hollandicus, the Holland Lion, and shows only the province of Holland.

Cartography
National symbols of Belgium

Leo Belgicus


Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a Canadian university.  It has campuses in Burnaby Mountain in Burnaby, Vancouver and Surrey, all in British Columbia. SFU is rated as one of Canada's top universities. It was started in 1965. SFU currently has 24,000 students. The university is named after Simon Fraser. He was an explorer of the Vancouver area.

Overview
Maclean's magazine rated SFU as Canada's best comprehensive university in 1993, 1997, 1998 and 2000. It is usually always at or near the top of the magazine's list. Research Infosource named SFU the top comprehensive university in Canada for "publication effectiveness" in 2006.

Type of university
Like most Canadian universities, SFU is a public university. Fifty-six percent of the money used to run the school comes from taxpayers. Thirty-nine percent comes from tuition fees.

Studies
The university teaches students in six main groups of topics. Applied Sciences, Arts and Social Sciences, Business Administration, Education, Health Sciences, and Science.

In May 2004, the SFU Senate approved the policy on degree requirements that all its undergraduate students must have. SFU was the first Canadian university to do this. The policy was created to make certain students got a more complete education.

Websites

SFU's Official website

Colleges and universities in Canada
Organizations based in Vancouver

Simon Fraser University


Echinoderms  are a successful phylum of marine animals. They include sea stars, brittle stars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and their relatives.

Echinoderms have these features:
 A skeleton of plates. These are formed from calcite, a mineral made of calcium carbonate. The plates are usually spiny, and the skeleton is covered outside and in by a layer of skin.
 Five-rayed (pentameral) symmetry.
 A water-vascular system. This is an internal system of tubes and bladders filled with water.
 Tube feet. These are extensions of the water-vascular system. The tube feet poke out from the skeleton, and are used in walking, respiration and feeding. The animal handles the world outside by using its tube feet.
 Stenohaline. They can't handle big changes in the salinity of the water. No doubt this is why they are:
 Entirely marine.

Echinoderms live in all parts of the ocean, but mostly on the sea floor. Some are filter feeders, and others (starfish) are important predators of molluscs and other shell-fish. They are extremely common near the shore, and on reefs.

They have a long and abundant fossil record. This phylum appeared in the early Cambrian period; it contains about 7,000 living  and 13,000 extinct species. The four or five main groups are called sub-phyla by some authorities, and classes by others.

Echinodermata is the largest animal phylum which is entirely marine: no animals in this group live on land or in fresh or brackish water.

Taxonomy

A modern classification
 Asterozoa: about 1,500 species that catch prey for their food.
 Asteroidea: the starfish.
 Sea daisies, notable for their unusual water vascular system. Only two species, now merged into Asteroidea.
 Ophiuroidea (brittle stars and basket stars), the largest echinoderms; about 1,500 species.
 Crinozoa (crinoids: the feather stars or sea lilies): about 600 species that are suspension feeders. Originally these were stalked echinoderms with long arms, rather plant-like in appearance. In this form they are called 'sea lilies'. The P/Tr extinction event almost eliminated them. Now they are reduced to a few deep-water species. The free-living 'feather stars' in shallow water are quite successful today.
 Blastozoa: the cystoids, an extinct group. They were mostly sessile and lived in shallow waters. Sometimes put together with crinoids in the subphylum Pelmatozoa.
 Echinozoa: echinoids and sea cucumbers.
 Echinoidea: sea urchins and sand dollars, notable for their movable spines. There are about 1,000 species.
 Holothuroidea (sea cucumbers). Relatively soft-bodied animals with a tube-like shape; about 1,500 species. The usual calcareous elements in the skin are much reduced, but the skin is quite tough, and covered in slime. They have good defences against predators.
 Homalozoa: an extinct group of strange early echinoderms. Some put them in the phylum Chordata, and call them calcichordates.

A simplified classification
For many purposes it is better to use the following classification. It is easier to learn and understand, and is based more on the living forms.p19

 Asteroidea: the starfish.
 Ophiuroidea: the brittle-stars
 Echinoidea: the sea-urchins
 Holothuroidea: the sea-cucumbers
 Crinoidea: the sea-lilies and feather-stars.

Only with the crinoids is it necessary to deal with the fossil forms, because the stalked crinoids were so important on the Palaeozoic sea floors.

General account

All echinoderms have fivefold radial symmetry in their body at some stage of life. The holothurians have bilateral symmetry as adults, and do not have so much of a skeleton as other groups.

Echinoderms have a hydraulic water vascular system. This network of fluid-filled canals moves and feeds the animal, and allows gas exchange. There is also a complete digestive tube. They have a simple radial nervous system that consists of a modified nerve net. There are nerve rings with radiating nerves around the mouth extending into each arm. The branches of these nerves coordinate the movements of the animal. Echinoderms have no brain, although some do have ganglia. They usually move with their tube feet, but brittle stars use their arms to pull against rocks. Some feather stars and sea cucumbers can swim.

The sexes are usually separate. Sexual reproduction typically consists of releasing eggs and sperm into the water, with fertilization taking place externally. Their larvae are planktonic.

Many echinoderms have remarkable powers of regeneration. A starfish arm cut off will regenerate. A section as small as a single arm, with some central disk and neural tissue, can regenerate the whole organism.

Echinoderm larvae
Most of the adults have radial symmetry. If they are not sessile or attached, they are at least benthic (bottom-dwellers). In contrast, echinoderm larvae are planktonic, and have bilateral symmetry.p119 Echinoderm larvae are ciliated free-swimming organisms that have a bilaterally symmetry rather like embryonic chordates. The first stage in all groups except the crinoids is the dipleurula, which has a row of cilia winding round its body. All the groups have second and third stage larvae. The larvae grow, and are carried away from their parents.

Later, the adult body grows into a radial form, with the body arranged in five parts around a central axis. This means they often have a star-shaped pattern.

Evolution
There is no geological evidence about the origin of echinoderms. The first undoubted fossils in the Lower Cambrian are already well developed, and fall into five or six different groups. Arkarua, from the Ediacaran, is thought to be an echinoderm. Tribrachidium is another possible, from the same period. On general biological grounds, it seems that echinoderms, and some related phyla, may have been derived from worm-like ancestors.p311

Of all invertebrate phyla, the echinoderms are the closest relatives to the chordata, that is, animals who have spinal cord, such as vertebrates. With the chordates and hemichordates, echinoderms are deuterostomes, one of the two major divisions of the animal kingdom.

Notes

References
 Clark A.M. 1968. Starfishes and their relations, 2nd edition. British Museum (Natural History).
 Paul C.R.C & Smith A.B. (eds) 1988. Echinoderm phylogeny and evolutionary biology. Oxford.

Other websites

 Echinodermata  from the Tree of Life website.

Echinoderm


Sharon Forrester (born 1956) is a Jamaican reggae singer who had success in the 1970s and 1990s.

Biography
Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1956, Forrester was born into a musical family and began singing at an early age, singing in church choirs from the age of six. After performing to tourists on Jamaica's north coast, she appeared on television alongside Richard Ace, and was introduced to Geoffrey Chung. She had success in 1973 with the single "Silly Wasn't I", produced by Chung and backed by his Now Generation Band, and performed alongside The Wailers at the Ethiopian Benefit Concert later that year. Chung also produced her debut album, Sharon, mostly recorded in the United Kingdom in 1974 due to a musicians strike in Jamaica. While in the UK, she appeared in the BFI film Moon Over the Alley alongside Danny Ray. In the autumn of 1974 she was part of the Jamaica Showcase international tour, along with Dennis Brown, The Maytals, and Cynthia Richards, and she also appeared on the UK television show Aquarius, performing a version of George Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun". For much of the next twenty years she only recorded intermittently, and worked occasionally as a backing vocalist, but returned with the "Love Inside" single in 1994, which was a top 50 hit in the UK, and the This Time album in 1996. Since then she has provided guest vocals or backing vocals on recordings by other artists including Alpha Blondy, Burning Spear, Jimmy Cliff, The Heptones, and Yami Bolo.

Albums
Sharon (1974), Ashanti
This Time (1996), VP

References

1956 births
Living people
Musicians from Kingston, Jamaica
20th-century Jamaican women singers
Jamaican reggae singers
VP Records artists

Sharon Forrester


Jan Hendrik (John) Kraaijkamp Sr. (19 April 1925 – 17 July 2011) was a Dutch Golden Calf and Louis d'Or winning actor, comedian and singer. For years, he formed a comedy team with Rijk de Gooyer. One of The Netherlands' most popular comedians, praised for his perfect timing, he also played in more serious plays, including the title role in King Lear (1979) and in the Academy Award-winning WWII drama film The Assault (1986). From 1993 until 2003, he starred in the successful sitcom "Het Zonnetje in Huis" along his son John Kraaijkamp Jr.

Early life
Kraaijkamp was one of four children of a greengrocer and a housecleaner. He grew up in the Kinkerbuurt in Amsterdam. After an accident, his father was declared unfit for work and Johnny had to find work at a young age. At the age of 14, he already performed as a boy soprano in the famous Amsterdam theatre Carré.

Career

With Rijk de Gooyer
Kraaijkamp worked for a short while as acrobat, but then moved on to become a singer in a show orchestra. He performed as an entertainer and bass player in local bars, where he was discovered in the 1950s by Rijk de Gooyer.

Together they recorded the song "Twee jongens op een gitaar" (Two guys on a guitar). It was the start of a long and successful partnership. John (then "Johnny") and Rijk began to perform together on radio and television. In spring 1956, they joined the "Weekendshow", an entertainment show from the broadcasting company AVRO which also included comedians Huub Matron and later René van Vooren. They also toured with the Snip & Snap Revue and perform in several comedy plays written for TV, together and apart.

In 1962, they got together again for Open het dorp, an extremely well-watched TV benefit marathon presented by Mies Bouwman, in which they performed in their pyjamas. In the 1960s and 1970s they performed regularly together on Dutch TV. In 1964, they began with the Johnny & Rijk shows (later called 'n Paar Apart). In 1968, they presented another "Weekendhow". In all these shows, Rijk was the "feeder" and John the comedian. Even when they worked apart, they held close contact. In 1963, John got his own TV show at the broadcasting company KRO, the Johnny Kraaijkamp Show, for which De Gooyer wrote. The duo also recorded a couple of hit singles, including "De Bostella", for which they received a golden record in 1968. From 1970 to 1971, they even had a show on German TV, Spass durch Zwei.

Solo work
In 1973, De Gooyer started a film career. Kraaijkamp didn't sit still, and made a couple of shows for the NCRV, with Tonny Huurdeman as his new feeder. Unfortunately, these were not very successful: the show only lasted three episodes. The TROS later produced a new series of Johnny Kraaijkamp Shows. De Gooyer performs in two episodes. In 1985, he joined old partner De Gooyer in the AVRO TV series De Brekers, which also starred Adèle Bloemendaal and Sacco van der Made. He also played in a couple of movies in the 1970s and 1980s, including Jos Stelling's De Wisselwachter and Fons Rademakers' The Assault (both 1986), as the bittered resistance fighter Cor Takes, and Iris (1987), with Monique van de Ven.

Kraaijkamp also was a prolific stage actor. With theatre company Ensemble he plays in The Taming of the Shrew from 1958 to 1959. From 1962 to 1964 he's a member of the Amsterdams Volkstoneel. He also starred in a couple of free productions, including musicals Irma la Douce (1962–1964) and Man of La Mancha (1969–1970). After a period of comic plays, he joined the Ro Theater in 1979 to play in a number of classic roles. The title role in Shakespeare's King Lear that year is considered his big breakthrough as a serious actor. He also performed in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1984 he won the Louis d'Or, the most prestigious award in stage acting in The Netherlands, for his lead role in Jacques de fatalist en zijn meester.

Later years
In 1986 he voiced Mr. Smee in a Dutch dub of Disney's Peter Pan.
From 1988 until 1990, he starred in the prison sitcom Laat maar zitten, based on the British TV series Porridge. His most successful role in recent years was the part of Piet Boverkerk in the RTL comedy series Het zonnetje in huis (1993–2003). In the show, he played a pig-headed old man that comes to live with his son and daughter-in-law (played by his own son, John Kraaijkamp Jr., and Martine Bijl) after his wife died.

He continued to perform in various plays, including The Sunshine Boys (1994), along with his son, Harold Pinter's The Homecoming (2001), and Gouwe Handjes (2002–2003), which was written especially for him by Haye van der Heyden. In 2000, theater producer Joop van den Ende named a musical award after him. The John Kraaijkamp Musical Awards are awarded every year to musical actors and actresses. In recent years, his only public appearances were these gala shows, except for a brief role in the Dutch TV comedy series "Kinderen geen bezwaar" in 2007.<ref>De Telegraaf. 18 July 2011. Vanessa Bontje. "John Kraaijkamp sr. overleden."</ref>

Personal life
Kraaijkamp was married three times and had four children. With Riemada Elisabeth Panhuysen, he had two children, son John (1954) and daughter Ellissigne. With his second wife, Tilly van Duijkeren, he had a son, Michiel. With Mai Lun Lee he had a daughter, Sanne. John, Ellissigne and Sanne became actors.

Kraaijkamp spent his final years in the Rosa Spier Huis in Laren, in the room where famous Dutch comic book artist Marten Toonder used to live. His 85th birthday was celebrated there. Among the attendants were important Dutch comedians and television personalities including André van Duin, Rijk de Gooyer and Mies Bouwman.

Death
Kraaijkamp died on 17 July 2011 in the Rosa Spier Huis in the presence of his children, his grand and great-grandchildren, his ex-wife and friends. He was 86 years old. The next day, several TV stations paid tribute to the comedian with TV specials. On Friday 22 July, the Dutch public bid him farewell in the recently renewed DeLaMar Theater. The next day, he was cremated.

Awards
Throughout his life, Kraaijkamp received several acting awards, both for the stage, TV and film. In 1984, Kraaijkamp received the Louis d'Or for his role as Jacques in the play Jacques de fatalist en zijn meester. In 1986, he received the Golden Calf for Best Actor for his roles in the films The Assault and De Wisselwachter. The next year, in 1987, he was awarded with the Johan Kaartprijs for his contribution to stage comedy and entertainment. In 1998, he received a Gouden Beeld, a television award, for Best Actor in a Comedy for his role in Het Zonnetje in Huis''. On 21 October 2007 he received the Blijvend Applaus Prijs for his exceptional contribution to Dutch theater, television and film.

References

1925 births
2011 deaths
Dutch male comedians
Dutch male film actors
Dutch male stage actors
Dutch male television actors
Golden Calf winners
Male actors from Amsterdam
Comedians from Amsterdam

John Kraaijkamp Sr.


The Kingdom of Saxony (), existed from 1806 until 1918.

From 1871 it was part of the German Empire, and after World War I it became part of the Weimar Republic. Its capital was the city of Dresden, and its modern successor state is the Free State of Saxony.

Before 1806 Saxony was the Electorate of Saxony in the Holy Roman Empire.  This meant that the princes who ruled Saxony were prince-elector and could help elect a new Holy Roman Emperor.

When Emperor Francis II was defeated by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz and the empire was dissolved  the electorate became an independent kingdom. The last elector of Saxony became King Frederick Augustus I.

After the Battle of Jena in 1806, Saxony joined the Confederation of the Rhine, and remained within the Confederation until it broke up in 1813 when Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Leipzig.

The Catholic ruler of Saxony was one of the few German leaders to support the French.  Saxony was put under Russian occupation and 40% of the Kingdom, including the historically significant Wittenberg, home of the Protestant Reformation, was taken by Prussia, but Frederick Augustus was allowed back to rule the remainder of his kingdom, which still included the major cities of Dresden and Leipzig.  The Kingdom also joined the German Confederation, the new organization of the German states to replace the Holy Roman Empire.

The Austro-Prussian War and the German Empire

During the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, Saxony sided with Austria.  The Saxon army was the only large army to help Austria.  At the peace talks Austria said Saxony should not be punished.  The  other states in north Germany including the large Kingdom of Hanover were annexed (taken over) by Prussia after the war.  These states had promised help to Austria but did little, so Austria did not try to help them at the peace talks.

Saxony joined the Prussian-led North German Confederation the next year in 1867. When Prussia beat  France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, the Confederation was turned into the German Empire by Otto von Bismarck, with Wilhelm I as its Emperor.

John I, as Saxony's king, was below the Emperor, although he, like the other German princes, kept some of the rights of a sovereign ruler, including sending ambassadors  other states.

The end of the kingdom
Wilhelm I's grandson Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated in 1918 after  Germany's defeat in the First World War. King Frederick Augustus III of Saxony followed him into abdication and the Kingdom of Saxony became the Free State of Saxony inside the newly-formed Weimar Republic.  The Kingdom of Saxony had lasted only 112 years.

Related pages
 Saxony

1800s establishments in Germany
1918 disestablishments in Germany
Former states in Germany
Saxony
1806 establishments in Europe

Kingdom of Saxony


The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) was the military aviation arm of the United States of America during and immediately after World War II. It was the direct precursor to the United States Air Force, established in 1947. At its peak strength in 1944, the USAAF had over 2.4 million men and women in service, nearly 80,000 aircraft and 783 permanent bases, and operated from more than 2,000 airfields worldwide.

History
The Air Corps became the Army Air Forces in June 1941 to provide the air arm a greater autonomy in which to expand more efficiently, and to provide a structure for the additional command echelons required by a vastly increased force. Although other nations already had separate air forces independent of the army or navy (such as the British Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffe), the USAAF remained a part of the United States Army.

United States Air Force
1941 establishments in the United States
1947 disestablishments in the United States

United States Army Air Force


London Fields is a blackly comic murder mystery novel by the British writer Martin Amis, published in 1989. The tone gradually shifts from high comedy, interspersed with deep personal introspections, to a dark sense of foreboding and eventually panic at the approach of the deadline, or "horror day", the climactic scene alluded to on the very first page.

The story is narrated by Samson Young (Sam), an American writer living in London who has had writer's block for 20 years and is now terminally ill. The other main characters are Guy Clinch, the foil; Keith Talent, the cheat; and Nicola Six, the murder victim, who knows that she will be murdered a few minutes after midnight on 5 November 1999—her 35th birthday—and who goes in search of her killer.

Plot summary

London Fields is set in London in 1999 against a backdrop of environmental, social, and moral degradation, and the looming threat of world instability and nuclear war (referred to as "The Crisis"). The novel opens with Samson explaining how grateful he is to have found this story, already formed, already happening, waiting to be written down.

This is the story of a murder. It hasn't happened yet. But it will. (It had better.) I know the murderer, I know the murderee. I know the time, I know the place. I know the motive (her motive) and I know the means. I know who will be the foil, the fool, the poor foal, also utterly destroyed. I couldn't stop them, I don't think, even if I wanted to. The girl will die. It's what she always wanted. You can't stop people, once they start. You can't stop people, once they start creating.

What a gift. This page is briefly stained by my tears of gratitude. Novelists don't usually have it so good, do they, when something real happens (something unified, dramatic, and pretty saleable), and they just write it down?

The characters have few, if any, redeeming features. Sam, the narrator of the novel (who twice emphasizes that he is "a reliable narrator"), is an American, a failed non-fiction writer with decades-long writer's block who is slowly dying of some sort of terminal disease. Recently arrived in London, he immediately meets Keith Talent, a cheat (small-time criminal) and aspiring professional darts player, at Heathrow Airport where Keith is posing as a minicab driver. Keith gives Sam an extortionately priced ride into town. The two converse in Keith's car, and Keith invites Sam to the Black Cross, a pub on the Portobello Road, Keith's main hangout. At the Black Cross, Sam meets Guy Clinch, a rich upper-class banker who is bored with life, with his terrifyingly snobbish American wife, Hope, and his out-of-control toddler, Marmaduke. Shortly after, the two both meet the anti-heroine, Nicola Six, a 34-year-old local resident, of uncertain nationality, who has entered the pub after attending a funeral.

Later that day, Sam sees Nicola dramatically dumping what turns out to be her diaries in a litter bin outside the flat where he is staying (it belongs to Mark Asprey, a wildly successful English writer). The diaries tell Sam that Nicola believes she can somehow see her own future, and, bored with life and fearing the ageing process, is plotting her own murder for midnight on 5 November, her 35th birthday. Sam, who considers that he lacks the imagination and courage to write fiction, realises he can simply document the progress towards the murder to create a plausible, lucrative, story. He assumes that Keith, the bad guy, will be the murderer. Sam enters into a strange relationship with Nicola where he regularly interviews her and is updated on the "plot".

The novel proceeds on the basis that Keith Talent, the known criminal, will kill Nicola Six, with Guy Clinch as the fall guy necessary to provoke him into doing it (and, incidentally, to provide funds to help Talent avoid being beaten up by loan sharks, and to further his darts career so he can appear in the Sparrow Masters darts final the day before the planned murder). But there is an unexpected twist at the finale. Amis hints at a false ending, in one of Samson Young's terrifying dreams, simply to confuse the reader.

Characters
Keith regularly cheats on and abuses his wife, Kath. He regularly sleeps with an underage girl in return for cash payments to her mother and has up to six further regular affairs he visits frequently. He drinks, gambles, and takes part in burglaries and semi-violent crime (although he is unable to follow through with actual violent crime). He is addicted to pornography and television to the extent that he is unable to distinguish reality from what is shown on the screen. He has raped several women in the past (including his wife).

Nicola is a self-styled "murderee", who manipulates the entire cast of characters to bring about her own murder so that she will not have to face ageing, a natural process that she hates as she fears the loss of her attractiveness and power to manipulate men, as well as the indignities of decay and old age. She describes herself as a failed suicide, who must find her murderer if she is to end her life. She spins a different story to each of the three male characters (Sam, Keith, and Guy). To Guy, she pretends she is a frigid, sexually timid virgin: she tells him that her childhood in a dreadful orphanage and her friendship with a tragic girl called Enola Gay who is raped by a "pitiless Iraqi" and who produces a child called Little Boy, has left her unable to form a sexual relationship with any man, but that Guy has awakened the possibility in her. Feigning love for Guy, she teases him sexually at every opportunity, pretending she is too afraid and too unready to "go the whole way" with him, until his unsatisfiable and excruciating lust induces him to leave his wife and child and to give her a very large sum of money which he believes will help her bring the fictional Enola Gay and Little Boy to London. Nicola insists that Guy leave his wife and son to consummate their relationship, and Guy does so, destroying his family life. To Keith, Nicola styles herself as a rich, knowing woman of the world, a former one-night stand of the Shah of Iran, who recognises him for what he truly is – a darts prodigy and future darts and TV personality. She gives Keith Guy's money, which he spends on ridiculous clothes and accessories. Keith, a pornography aficionado (and addict) is kept keen by regular "home videos" created by Nicola, starring herself. To Sam, Nicola pretends to tell the whole truth, but in fact manipulates him as well, in a way that is apparent to the reader only when Sam himself realises – at the end of the story.

Guy is an idle, rich dreamer whose relationship with his "frightening wife" is sexless after the birth of their uncontrollable son, Marmaduke, who seems to have a violent Oedipal complex. Guy cheats on his wife and finally leaves her and his son to be with Nicola, although at the end, when he realises what Nicola is, he goes back home.

Sam is a failed writer who selfishly uses the three main characters to have a chance at writing a popular and successful novel. Although he knows that Keith is abusing his wife and someone is abusing their baby daughter, he does not intervene until the very end to remove the child from Keith's care.

Unreliable narrators
One of the central themes of the novel is the link between reading and information-gathering, and the (un)reliability of written information, of narrators and narrative. Frederick Holmes writes that the novel dramatises a contest for authorship. All the main characters are authors of one kind or another, supplying Sam with written material, competing with each other to shape the narrative: Nicola's diaries, Guy's short stories, and Keith's own darting diary together with his cheat's brochure of goods and services. In the shadows of the novel is the mysterious Mark Asprey, whose pen-name, or one of them, is also Marius Appleby, initials MA (the same as Martin Amis). As Mark Asprey, he writes what appear to be highly popular fiction, translated into innumerable languages. As Marius Appleby, he writes what appears to be a true-life memoir of his seduction of a large-bosomed lady on an exotic foreign exploration. But (as we learn at every turn) the written word deceives us: Asprey prints his own translations to look impressive and Appleby's memoir is exaggerated to the point of being untrue. At the end of the novel, it appears that Asprey has appropriated Sam's narrative for his own. Asprey is not famous for writing: he is famous for being famous – for publicity. One of the protagonists in Appleby's "memoir" complains of the inaccuracies in the text in a magazine article – another gossip column, a piece of popular media, whose own accuracy we cannot trust.

Mass media has corrupted the ability to read and led to disorientation, heavy reliance is placed on gossip and tabloids, neither of which can pass any test of accuracy. When Kath, Keith's wife, wants to read "the proper papers", she has to go to the library: her husband's tabloids don't make any mention of world affairs, it is impossible to tell what is happening from them. Keith's obsession with television, and with the fast-forwarded, freeze-frame version of television that he screens nightly, and with his tabloid newspaper The Daily Lark, is so great that he becomes confused with reality. When he stars in the darts "docu-drama" – itself implying a dangerous mixture, or confusion, of reality and TV-fiction, he is unable to cope with the concept and it is Nicola who must "translate him" for TV.

London Fields and literary geography
London Fields is a park in Hackney, east London, but the novel is set in west London, like most of Amis's work. The park in which the narrator, Sam, walks with various characters – Nicola Six, Guy Clinch and Keith Talent – is Hyde Park in central London. Sam reminisces that he played in "London Fields" as a boy, and wants to return there before his death. It is not clear whether the "London Fields" he refers to is the real-life East London park, or whether it has another meaning. The title suggests a paradox: a rural or pastoral place in a modern urban setting. Sam's narrative refers again to this inherent paradox, as he remarks that in London "there are no fields", only fields of attraction and repulsion, only force fields. The title indicates to the reader the ambiguities inherent in Amis's creation of an imagined London: there is a conflict between the descriptions of London locations in the novel and their location in reality. The topography of the imagined city cannot fit exactly onto the topography of the real city.  Just as Sam realises that "this is London and there are no fields", and just as he is unable to return to the "London Fields" of his childhood, it is similarly impossible for us to return to the stage of London as a field. London Fields exists simultaneously as a real place in the real London, and as an imagined and dreamed-of place "present all along" on every page of the novel, and the scene of a murder. A theme in London Fields is pub culture, specifically the culture of Keith's "local" The Black Cross. The book also references The Marquis of Edenderry, a pub in the west London suburb of Acton. One of Keith Talent's darts matches takes place in the Marquis of Edenderry. Keith Talent also drinks at a late-night drinking club called The Golgotha.

Reception
Simon Schama commented in 2011:

"Martin Amis'[s] glorious fury, London Fields; the never-likely-to-be-bettered bedtime story from the heart of Mrs Thatcher's darkest Albion; stained with punk spit and pub puke; glossy as polished leather and sexy as hell. Amis' masterpiece isn't exactly neglected but neither is it established as one of the all-time great London novels, but that's what it is. Thick with allegory; packed with characters you'll never forget; a rendezvous with desire, craziness and death; what more could you want?""

Bette Pesetsky of The New York Times identified the recurring problem of female characterisation in Amis's novels as a salient one in London Fields. She wrote that the character of Nicola Six was "not truly satisfying as character or caricature. She seems to be another of Mr. Amis's plastic women." The review concluded that the book "succeeds, however, as a picaresque novel rich in its effects".

Film adaptation

David Cronenberg was approached in 2001 to do a film adaptation of the book, and Amis wrote a draft of the script. However, Cronenberg would leave the film for A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Other directors approached include David Mackenzie and Michael Winterbottom. The film entered production in September 2013 in London, England. Billy Bob Thornton plays the narrator Samson. The cast also includes Amber Heard, Jim Sturgess, Cara Delevingne, Johnny Depp  and Theo James. Mathew Cullen directed the film. It had a wide release in US theaters on October 26, 2018 and was considered a massive critical and commercial failure. Amber Heard received a nomination for a 2019 Razzie Award for Word Actress for the performance.

The score was written and produced by Toydrum and Benson Taylor.

Notes

References

Amis, Martin. London Fields. Jonathan Cape, 1989, first hardback edition.
Diedrick, James. Understanding Martin Amis. University of South Carolina Press, 2004.
Holmes, Frederick. "The Death of the Author as Cultural Critique in London Fields" in Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso. Powerless Fictions? Ethics, Cultural Critique, and American Fiction in the Age of Postmodernism. Rodopi, 1996.

Further reading

 London Fields by Martin Amis, reviewed by Ted Gioia (Postmodern Mystery)
 Picone, Jason. London Fields (Vintage International), powells.com, 2002.

From Russia with love and hate: the hidden secret of Nicola Six in Amis's London Fields from TMO Magazine
 Bentley, Nick. "Martin Amis, London Fields". In Contemporary British Fiction. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 135–44. .

Novels by Martin Amis
1989 British novels
British novels adapted into films
Fiction with unreliable narrators
Fiction set in 1999
Jonathan Cape books
Metafictional novels
Novels about writers
Novels set in London

London Fields (novel)


George Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician. He is a former member of the Labour Party, but left in October 2003; later he was in the Respect Party, until this group was wound up in 2016.

Early life
Galloway was born and raised in Dundee, Scotland. He joined the Labour Party Young Socialists when he was 13 years old.

Career
In 1983 Galloway became General Secretary of the London charity War on Want. Galloway was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Glasgow Hillhead from 1987-1997 and Glasgow Kelvin from 1997-2005. In 1998, he started a political campaign called the Mariam Appeal. Galloway became the Vice-President of the Stop the War Coalition in 2001. Galloway was thrown out of   the Labour Party in 2003 because of some of his actions. From 2004 to 2016, he was a leading figure in Respect. He was MP for Bethnal Green and Bow from 2005-2010. From 29 March 2012 to 8 May 2015 he was the Respect Party MP for Bradford West.

Galloway was a housemate in the 2006 series of Celebrity Big Brother.

Galloway stood in the 2016 London Mayoral election, but came seventh in the vote.

Personal life
In 1979, he married Elaine Fyffe; their daughter was born in 1983. The couple divorced in 1999. In 2000, he married Amineh Abu-Zayyad; she divorced him in 2009 for his unreasonable behaviour. He married Rima Husseini in 2007; their sons were born in 2007 and 2011. He married Putri Gayatri Pertiwi in 2012. Their son was born in 2014.

References

Other websites

1954 births
Living people
British crime victims
British radio personalities
Celebrity Big Brother contestants
Labour Party (UK) MPs
Members of the British House of Commons for Scottish constituencies
Members of the British House of Commons for English constituencies
Politicians from Dundee

UK MPs 1987–1992
UK MPs 1992–1997
UK MPs 1997–2001
UK MPs 2001–2005
UK MPs 2005–2010
UK MPs 2010–2015

George Galloway


A hinge is something that connects two objects and lets them rotate. The most common examples are the hinges that connect doors to walls or door frames. To open a door on hinges, one pushes the side far from the hinges and the door rotates around the side with hinges.

Hinges can be very large or very small. Small hinges are used for jewellery boxes and other small things with lids. Very large hinges have been used at the bottom of buildings, to let a building sit on loose soil or mud without breaking.

Construction
Hardware (mechanical)

Hinge


Jan Murray (born Murray Janofsky; October 4, 1916 – July 2, 2006) was an American stand-up comedian, actor, and game-show host who originally made his name on the Borscht Belt and later was known for his frequent television appearances over several decades.

Early life
Murray was born in the Bronx borough of New York City to Jewish parents. His interest in comedy began during his childhood, when he would often act out comedy routines he had seen at the local theatre for his bedridden mother.

Career
Murray began performing on the vaudeville stage at the age of 18. During the 1930s, he entertained at the "Borscht Belt" Catskills resorts popular with Jewish vacationers. In the 1940s and early 1950s, he became a Las Vegas marquee performer, including headlining at the Flamingo Hotel during its first year of operation.

Starting in the late 1940s, Murray moved into television, appearing several times on Texaco Star Theater hosted by Milton Berle, and later as a guest on comedy/ variety programs hosted by Jerry Lewis, Steve Allen, Garry Moore, Dean Martin, and Jackie Gleason, among others. During the 1950s and 1960s, he made numerous appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show (including several as guest host), and The Joey Bishop Show (including several as guest host). He co-hosted the annual West Coast Chabad Lubavitch telethon for 18 years.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Murray hosted a number of TV game shows, such as Blind Date (DuMont, 1953), Dollar a Second (1953–1957), his creation Treasure Hunt (1956–1959), Charge Account  (also known as The Jan Murray Show, 1960–1962), and Chain Letter (1966). Between 1966 and 1980, he was a regular panelist on The Hollywood Squares, appearing in nearly 250 episodes. He appeared as a participant on many game shows that featured celebrities, including Funny You Should Ask, Match Game, Celebrity Bowling, Celebrity Sweepstakes, and Break the Bank (1976).

From the 1960s through the 1980s, Murray had acting roles in episodes of many TV comedy and drama series, including Dr. Kildare; The Lucy Show; The Man From U.N.C.L.E.; The Name of the Game; Love, American Style; Mannix; Kolchak: The Night Stalker; Fantasy Island; The Fall Guy; and Hardcastle and McCormick. He appeared playing himself on a 1962 episode of the police comedy Car 54, Where Are You? and also played himself on a 1964 episode of the courtroom drama The Defenders. In 1977, he appeared in the final episode of the NBC situation comedy The Practice. His last TV acting role was as Uncle Raymond on a 1989 episode of My Two Dads.

Murray also occasionally acted in films, including Of Love and Desire (1963), Who Killed Teddy Bear? (1965), The Busy Body (1967), Tarzan and the Great River (1967), Thunder Alley (1967), A Man Called Dagger (1968), Which Way to the Front? (1970), The Day of the Wolves (1971), Roll, Freddy, Roll! (1974 TV movie), The Dream Merchants (1980 TV miniseries), and Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I (1981).

For his career achievements, Murray received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. In 1997, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was also dedicated to him.

Personal life
Murray married Pearl Cohen in 1939, and had a child with her, but they later divorced. In October 1949, he married Kathleen (Toni) Mann, had three children with her, and remained married to her until his death. Murray's production company, Jantone, took its name from their first names.

Murray was an avid golfer and had many fellow comedians as partners. Among them were Jack Carter, Jerry Lewis, Joey Bishop, and others, from whom he created comedy routines often related at various golf charity events. He chaired the Comedians' Golf Classic for several years, held both in New York and California.

Murray retired from show business at the age of 83, as he felt his asthma was affecting his timing. He died at the age of 89 in Beverly Hills, California, on July 2, 2006. He was buried at the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Partial filmography

Of Love and Desire (1963) – Pete Madsen
Who Killed Teddy Bear? (1965) – Lt. Dave Madden
The Busy Body (1967) – Murray Foster
Tarzan and the Great River (1967) – Captain Sam Bishop
Thunder Alley (1967) – Pete Madsen
A Man Called Dagger (1968, filmed in 1966) – Rudolph Koffman / Hans Leitel
The Angry Breed (1968) – Mori Thompson
Which Way to the Front? (1970) – Sid Hackle
The Day of the Wolves (1971) – No. 1
Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974) – Ichabod Grace
History of the World, Part I (1981) – Nothing Vendor – The French Revolution

References

External links

1916 births
2006 deaths
American male film actors
American game show hosts
American stand-up comedians
Jewish American male actors
Jewish comedy and humor
Entertainers from the Bronx
Male actors from Los Angeles
Vaudeville performers
Burials at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
Comedians from California
Comedians from New York (state)
20th-century American comedians
20th-century American male actors
Jewish American male comedians
20th-century American Jews
21st-century American Jews

Jan Murray


The traditional music of Africa, given the vastness of the continent, is historically ancient, rich and diverse, with different regions and nations of Africa having many distinct musical traditions. Music in Africa is very important when it comes to religion. Songs and music are used in rituals and religious ceremonies, to pass down stories from generation to generation, as well as to sing and dance to.

Afropop
Afropop is a term sometimes used to describe contemporary African pop music. Characterized by a mixture of dances and sounds between American pop music and African music, Afropop does not refer to a specific style or musical sound, but the word is used as a general term for popular music. African.

References

African culture
Music

Music of Africa


Slag is a liquid residue from making iron. It consists of calcium silicate. The silicon dioxide in iron has to be taken away. The calcium oxide reacts with the silicon dioxide solid to make liquid calcium silicate, which is lighter than iron. It is drained out of the blast furnace. Slag can be used to make concrete. Air can be blown through molten slag to make a fluffy insulation made mineral wool.

Concrete made with blast furnace slag is almost pure white compared to ordinary concrete which is greyish.

Related pages
Steel

Chemicals

Slag


A conscientious objector (CO) is a person who decides not to be a combatant in military forces under conscription.

There are many reasons for this decision such as nonviolent or religious beliefs, ethical and moral beliefs to not kill human beings or pacifism.

Countries treat COs in various ways. They have also been treated differently throughout history. COs have been arrested or had to pay a fine. Some countries punished them by killing them. After World War II, many Western countries created alternative non-military services (civil service) as alternative form for pacifists. Often there were commissions to decide if someone really did not want to do armed service because of his beliefs or because of fear of war.

European Court of Human Rights has judged the denial of COs is violation of freedom of religion and thought in 2013, as well European Union recognized the right of conscientious objector as one of fundamental rights.

Other websites
Alternative Service in the Second World War: Conscientious Objectors in Canada 1939-1945.
Conscientious objectors in a volunteer army (Chicago Tribune article by Anthony DeBartolo)
The National Registry for Conscientious Objection
Conscience - the peace tax campaign
"Thoughts for Young Men ..." a one-page leaflet
Manifesto against conscription and the military system , with online signature, official website
International Conscientious Objectors' Day (War Resisters' International)
"Making a Choice: Conscientious Objection or Refusing to Register" (Resisters.info)
The European Bureau for Conscientious Objection
GI Rights Hotline
The Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (US)
 Mennonite Central Committee's listing of resources for CO's (US)
Christadelphian Position And Experience Of Conscientious Objection
War
Politics by issue

Conscientious objector


Malkuth (; Tiberian   "kingdom"; Ashkenazi: Malkhus ), Malkhut Malkhuth or Malchus, is the tenth of the sefirot in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

In the Zohar, an important Kabbalistic text from late al-Andalus, Malkhuth sits at the bottom of the Tree of Life below Yesod and "governs the simple fact of existence in the physical world"; it is also known as Shekhinah. "[T]he central teaching of the Zohar coalesced around an anthropomorphic model, in which the sefirot represent a cosmic anthropos. The lower sefirot, Malkhut, Yesod, Hod, and Nezah, constitute the most physical dimension of life, the nefesh."

Unlike the other nine sephirot, it is an attribute of God which does not emanate from God directly. Rather it emanates from God's creation—when that creation reflects and evinces God's glory from within itself.

Hermetic and Christian Kabbalah
Malkuth means Kingdom. It is associated with the realm of matter/earth and relates to the physical world, the planets and the Solar System. It is important not to think of this sephirah as "unspiritual". Even though Malkuth is the emanation "furthest" from the Divine Source, it is still on the Tree of Life and therefore has its own unique spiritual qualities. It is often said that Kether (the "highest" sephira) is in Malkuth and Malkuth is in Kether. As the receiving sphere of all the other sephiroth, Malkuth gives tangible form to the other emanations. The Divine energy comes down and finds its expression in this plane, and our purpose as human beings is to bring that energy back around the circuit again and back up the Tree.

Some occultists have also likened Malkuth to a cosmic filter, as it lies above the world of the Qliphoth, or the Tree of Death. The Qliphoth, being the world of chaos, is constructed from the imbalance of the original sephirot in the Tree of Life. For this reason Malkuth is associated with the feet and anus of the human body, the feet connecting the body to Earth, and the anus being the body's "filter" through which waste is excreted, just as Malkuth excretes unbalanced energy into the Qliphoth. Another way to understand this is that when one is sitting, as in a meditative state, it is the anus that makes physical contact with the Earth, whereas when one is standing or walking, it is the feet that come in contact with the Earth.

Malkuth is also associated with the World of Assiah, the material plane, and the "densest" of the Four Worlds of the Kabbalah. Because of this relation to Assiah, it is also related to the suit of Pentacles or Coins of the Tarot. Through Assiah, Malkuth is also related to the four Page cards in the Tarot as well. There is also a connection between Malkuth and the tenth card of each suit in Tarot as Malkuth is the tenth sephiroth. In the modern set of playing cards, Malkuth is related to the Suit of Diamonds' symbolizing material wealth, or the treasures found in the physical world. Malkuths association with the Page cards of the Tarot is reflected in the modern playing card deck as the Jacks of the deck. As Malkuth is directly associated with Assiah, Malkuth also represents the second He (ה) in the Tetragrammaton (יהוה), and is associated with the classical element of Earth.

The Names of God associated with Malkuth are Adonai Melekh and Adonai ha-Arets. The Archangel of this sphere is Sandalphon. The Ishim (Souls of Fire) is the Angelic order associated with Malkuth, and the planetary/astrological correspondence of Malkuth is the Earth. The Qliphah of Malkuth is represented by the demonic order Nehemoth, ruled by the Archdemon Naamah. Symbols associated with this sphere are a Bride (a young woman on a throne with a veil over her face) and a double cubed altar. Where Binah is known as the Superior Mother, Malkuth is referred to as the Inferior Mother. It is also referred to as the Bride of Microprosopos, where the Macroprosopos is Kether.

From a Christian viewpoint this sphere is important since Jesus preached that people should "seek first the Kingdom of God". In some systems, it is equated with Da'at, knowledge in the sense of Gnosis, the invisible sephirah. In comparison with Eastern systems, Malkuth is a very similar archetypal idea to that of the Muladhara chakra. In Shakta Tantra, which is also associated with the Earth, this is the plane in which karma is expressed.

Although Malkuth is seen as the "lowest" sephiroth on the tree of life, it also contains within it the potential to reach the highest. This is exemplified in the Hermetic maxim 'As above so below', and "Kether is in Malkuth, and Malkuth is in Kether".

See also
 Malakut

References

Sephirot
Kabbalistic words and phrases

Malkuth


The Lancashire Cotton Corporation was a company set up by the Bank of England in 1929, to rescue the Lancashire spinning industry by means of horizontal rationalisation. In merged 105 companies, ending up in 1950 with 53 operating mills. It was bought up by Courtaulds in August 1964.

Formation

By the late 1920s the situation of the cotton industry in Lancashire was desperate. Many spinning mills and weaving sheds had closed down, the stock market had crashed and a general slump was affecting western economies. Political action was called for. Within the cotton industry the main problem was in the spinning sector; weaving was having a rough time, and the finishing trades were getting by, but in spinning a cutthroat competition between individual enterprises was destroying them. Things were hard for shareholders; they were no better for the banks that had, in effect, had the assets thrust into their hands as companies defaulted on their loans.

It was for this reason that the Bank of England became involved. It promoted the establishment of a quasi-governmental authority, to be called the Lancashire Cotton Corporation (LCC), which was set up in 1929, headed by Sir K. D. Stewart. Its target was to control ten million spindle and rationalise production by central planning. It would use the most efficient plants to lower production costs, and would scrap uneconomic mills. The state enterprise had access to unlimited capital on which it paid no interest. The small mill owners couldn't compete. The aim was to win back export markets, and thus save some of the Lancashire industry; but this failed, its customers were in the main domestic. The LCC succeeded in buying out 96 companies, which represented a quarter of the industry's spindles.

During 1928 there were difficult negotiations to persuade creditors and shareholders to exchange their shares for Income Debentures and Shares in the LCC. It established central purchasing and marketing organisations and progressively took control of mills and weaving sheds. Sometimes the mills were closed down and scrapped, but others were brought back into production per the plan. Small share holders held worthless shares while the banks benefited by being to keep the assets on their balance sheets until the time was opportune to manage a liquidation, thus preventing a banking crisis.

LCC attempted a capital raising exercise in 1931, the prospectus being published in The Times on 26 March. It was for £2 million six-year 6.5% First Mortgage Debenture Stock and in the event, though competitively priced, 96% was left with the underwriters, The Sun Insurance Office. Lancashire had been too hurt, and become too sceptical, by the debacle of its cotton industry and there was no faith left.

By 1930 several dozen mills had been taken over, the names and dates of the contracts signed with the LCC being published in the prospectus. The LCC ran a trading loss of £382,795 in 1932, then a loss of £69,766 in 1933 but turned a profit of £30,189 in 1934. Although this looks creditable, it is likely that the accounts of the organisation would not have reflected the real commercial state of the business. In January 1935 the LCC owned 5,361,000 equivalent mule spindles and had scrapped 4,630,000 others. Of 140 mills it had acquired, 74 had been, or were being, scrapped at that time.

Sir Frank Platt
Sir Frank Platt (1890–1955) became a director in mid 1932, and managing director in 1933, his scheme to merge a further 44 companies, and 5 million spindles did not get bank backing. Platt spent the thirties fighting to save the struggling company. He supported the Cotton Spinning Act 1936 which allowed the buying up and destruction of surplus looms. He used his wartime post as Cotton Controller to continue to argue for further rationalisation.

In the 1944 Platt Report, he emphasised the labour productivity gap between the British and American mills, and argued that the United Kingdom should reorganise on their vertical model.

In October 1950 claimed fixed assets of £4,227,120 and current assets of  £11 695 946. It had £4,058,526 in shares and had  £683,010 in the profit and loss account.

Hopwood Hall
The Colonel Hopwood offered Hopwood Hall for sale on 10 May 1922. He failed to sell. The hall was in a poor state when it was taken over by the Lancashire Cotton Corporation during World War II. The corporation used Hopwood Hall, in conjunction with Blackfriars House to run the firm during the wartime years. After the war the Lancashire Cotton Corporation sold the hall to a trust in 1946, under which it became a training college for Catholic teachers under the De La Salle Brothers.

The final days
Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and Courtaulds were major players in the textile industry, who had been discussing merger and then attempted take-overs. These failed. Courtaulds returned to its plans for reorganising the textile industry. The company has said that by the early 1960s it was becoming increasingly apparent to it that the provisions of the Cotton Industry Act 1959 were insufficient to ensure the future and strength of all sectors of the textile industry; new capital and management were needed to achieve re-equipment and re-organisation into the different and more stream-lined groups essential if the industry was to become economically viable.

In the autumn of 1962, Courtaulds conceived a plan which it called its Northern Project and it entered into negotiations with five major textile groups, namely Lancashire Cotton Corporation, Combined English Mills (Spinners), English Sewing Cotton Company, Fine Spinners & Doublers and Tootals. It was at first envisaged that Courtaulds would acquire the five companies but this was later modified to a scheme whereby the five would exchange their existing shares for shares in a new joint company and Courtaulds would buy shares in the new company by providing relatively large amounts of cash to finance re-equipment. The Board of Trade were informed of the intended re-grouping. Between December 1962 and April 1963 Courtaulds, ICI and the five textile companies concerned together examined the Northern Project in detail, but a financial agreement was not reached.

ICI and Courtaulds then pursued different policies in acquisition, and between July and August 1964 Courtaulds acquired the whole of the equity capital of Lancashire Cotton Corporation and Fine Spinners & Doublers, becoming thereby the owner of 30% of the spinning capacity of the Lancashire textile industry.

See also

 List of mills owned by the Lancashire Cotton Corporation Limited

References

.

Textile manufacturers of England
Textile companies of the United Kingdom
Defunct companies based in Manchester
Former textile mills in the United Kingdom
British companies established in 1929
Manufacturing companies established in 1929
Manufacturing companies disestablished in 1964
1929 establishments in England
1964 disestablishments in England

Lancashire Cotton Corporation


A bye in sports and other competitive activities can have two different meanings. Both mean that a participant in a competition is not required to compete while most of the other participants are. Its main use is in tournament competitions. In single-elimination tournaments, when there are an odd number of participants, a bye allows one or more to play in a later round. Other types of eliminator tournaments may also include a bye for others reasons. An example would be as a reward for the best ranked team(s).

In round-robin tournaments where there are an odd number of competitors, usually one gets a bye in each round. However, over the whole tournament, each team plays the same number of games.

Similar to the round-robin context, in leagues where most teams play on the same days during regular-season play, a team that does not play on a given day is said to be on bye. In sports that are played weekly, especially gridiron football, a team that does not play at all during a given week is said to be on its bye week. For example, during the regular football Season in the NFL, each team gets a week off (bye week) during the regular season.

References

Sports words

Bye (sports)


Michael Praetorius (born Creuzburg an der Werra, near Eisenach 15 February 1571? ; died Wolfenbüttel, 15 February 1621) was a German composer, organist and music theorist. He was one of the most important composers of his day and he wrote lots of different kinds of music. A lot of his music is based on hymns of the Protestant church.

We are not quite certain about the date of his birth. He was born at a time when there was a lot of argument about religion in Germany. His father was a strict Lutheran and lost his job more than once because of his beliefs. We know very little about the life of Praetorius. He seems to have gone to the Lateinschule ("Latin School") in Torgau where he had music lessons from Michael Voigt. He probably never had music lessons after he left school. Then he went to the University of Frankfurt an der Oder. There Praetorius graduated in divinity. Afterwards he found a job as organist to the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. He soon earned a good salary. He married in 1603 and had two sons.

Although he had his job in Wolfenbüttel for many years he also worked a lot in Dresden where he met Heinrich Schütz and in Magdeburg where he met Samuel Scheidt. His health was not good, possibly because he worked so hard. When he died he left a lot of money to the poor.

His music

Praetorius wrote a very large amount of music. Much of it has been lost. He wrote a collection of French dances called Terpsichore for a small group of instruments. These are very happy pieces and are very popular today. A lot of his music is based on Protestant hymns, written for the services in the Lutheran church. He liked to write music in which two groups of singers or instrumentalists alternate (take it in turns to sing/play). His music for choir, which includes many motets, shows him to be one of the best composers of his time. He liked to write music for two, three or four choirs (all singing different parts). The tune would be in the top part so that the congregation could join in.

His theory works

Praetorius wrote a book about music theory called Syntagma Musicum. Part One talks about religious music. It is very interesting for us today because it tells us a lot about the way that Martin Luther wanted to change music in the church services. In Part Two he described the musical instruments of his day. Part Three talks about musical forms: this included discussions about things like music notation (the way music was written), transposition (music), solmization and how to write for large choirs. He was going to write a Part Four in which he wanted to discuss the technique of musical composition, but he died before he could write it.

1571 births
1621 deaths
Baroque composers
17th-century German composers
German organists
Music theorists
People from Thuringia

Michael Praetorius