A compass (or pair of compasses) is a drawing tool that can be used to draw circles or arcs, parts of circles. They can also be used  to measure distances, in particular on  maps. Compasses can be used for mathematics, drafting, navigation, and more.

Compasses are usually made of metal, and have two parts called legs meeting at a hinge. The legs can be moved apart or together to change the size of the circle. One part has a spike, a sharp, pointy part at its end, and the other part has a pencil or a pen. There are two types of compasses: the mechanical compass and normal compass. The mechanical compass is a compass that has a mechanical pencil, and the normal compass is a compass that has a normal pen or pencil on it. To make the compass work, you need to change how far the pencil sticks out.

A divider is a compass that has two parts with a spike, and is used to show measurements of distances and lengths. It is called a divider because it is used to divide (make smaller things from a bigger thing) a distance in two, using geometry.

Uses
Circles can be made by pressing the leg with the spike into the paper, putting the pencil on the paper, and moving the pencil in the circle. To do this, you need to not to move the legs farther apart or closer together while you are drawing the circle. A circle can be made bigger or smaller by moving the legs farther apart or closer together.

Distances can be measured on a map using dividers,compasses with two spikes. The distance between the spikes on the map shows a distance in reality. Measuring how many times the compasses fit between two things on the map shows the distance between those things.

Compass and straightedge drawing is used to show things in plane geometry (geometry used on a flat area). Real compasses are used on paper, but the perfect compass used in proofs is an imaginary, perfect tool that draws perfect circles. The most strict definition of this ideal tool, used for explaining, is the "collapsing compass". It draws a circle from a given place with a given radius and cannot be used again. That is, unlike a real pair of compasses, it cannot simply be moved to another place and used to draw another circle that is the same.

Tools
Mathematical tools
Measuring tools

Compass (drafting)


The right-hand rule is a convention in vector math.  It helps you remember direction when vectors get cross multiplied.

 Start by closing your right hand and stick out your pointer finger.
 Stick your thumb straight up as though you were making the sign for a gun.
 If you point your "gun" straight ahead, stick out your middle finger so that it points left and all your fingers are at right angles to each other.

If you have two vectors that you want to cross multiply, you can figure out the direction of the vector that comes out by pointing your thumb in the direction of the first vector and your pointer in the direction of the second vector.  Your middle finger will point the direction of the cross product.

Remember that when you change the order that vectors get cross multiplied, the result goes in the opposite direction.  So it's important to make sure that you go in the order of .

Variations
There is another rule called the right-hand grip rule (or corkscrew rule) that is used for magnetic fields and things that rotate.
 Start by putting your right hand out flat and point your thumb straight out so that it is at a right angle to your other fingers.
 Now curl your fingers into a fist and keep your thumb out (like a Thumbs Up).
 Match how your fingers curl in to the way something is moving. The direction that your thumb is pointing is the direction of the vector we use to talk about it.

You can do this in reverse by starting your thumb in the direction of the vector and see how your fingers curl to see the direction of rotation. If you point your thumb in the direction of current in a wire, the magnetic field that comes up around it is in the direction of your curling fingers.

Mathematics

Right-hand rule


Dog fighting is a blood sport that involves several dogs fighting at one time; sometimes many dogs are involved. The practice of dog fighting goes back to the ancient times. Dog fighting is forbidden in Australia, the United States and Canada. All fifty U.S. States classify dog fighting as a felony and attending a dog fight is not allowed in many US States.

In dog fighting breeds, gameness is valued as it gives the dog the ability to maintain the attack in baiting, despite ripped flesh, dehydration, exhaustion or broken bones. As one writer describes it, "Game is the dog that won't quit fighting, the dog that'll die in the ring, the dog that'll fight with two broken legs."  Training of a game dog varies depending on the level and experience of the dog-fighter. A famous American "gamebred" breed of dog is the American Pit Bull Terrier. A famous Irish "gamebred" breed of dog is the Kerry Blue Terrier.  A famous English "gamebred" breed of dog is the Staffordshire Bull Terrier.  A famous Japanese "gamebred" breed of dog is the Tosa Inu.  A famous Argentinian "gamebred" breed of dog is the Dogo Argentino.

Sports involving animals
Crime
Violence in sports

Dog fighting


Murder is where one person kills another person with aforethought. If a person does something reckless that makes someone else die, without the intention of killing, it is homicide and may be manslaughter. An accident caused by carelessness may be criminally negligent homicide. Sometimes, a death caused by someone else may not be a crime, for example killing in self-defense. Though, if the killer could've stopped a violent encounter without killing the victim, it's generally not a lawful killing.

A person who commits murder is called a murderer. The legal definition of "murder" and "manslaughter" may be different between countries. A killing in war is not usually called "murder" by those who fight in the war, as it's justifiable homicide. Killing in self defense is usually not "murder". Some countries do not even have manslaughter as a legal concept, and only have murder; the countries that do not have manslaughter charge with murder instead. In fact, the United States did not have manslaughter on the books until the 20th century. England was the first country to indoctrinate manslaughter, and the United States was second.

Most common circumstances for murder in the United States (1999)
A total of 12,658 murders were reported in 1999 in the U.S., including 1,903 without a specified reason, and 3,779 for which the reasons were unknown.

 Argument (unspecified) (3,391)
 Robbery (1,010)
 Juvenile gang killing (579)
 Contravention of narcotic drug laws (564)
 Argument over money or property (211)
 Brawl due to influence of alcohol (187)
 Romantic triangle (133)
 Gangland killing (116)
 Brawl due to influence of narcotics (111)
 Burglary (79)

Worst cities for murder in the United States (1999)
New York's status as the murder capital of the world improved during the 1990s.  What follows are the number of murders for 1999:
 New York, New York (671)
 Chicago, Illinois (642)
 Los Angeles, California (425)
 Detroit, Michigan (415)
 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (292)
 Houston, Texas (241)
 Washington, D.C. (241)
 Dallas, Texas (191)
 New Orleans, Louisiana (158)
 Atlanta, Georgia (143)

Attempted murder
Attempted murder is a crime. Attempted murder, or "attempt murder" in common law countries, also sometimes called "murder attempt", is when someone tries to kill another person. Just planning a murder is not enough. The act must come close to, but does not actually take the life of the other person.

It was punishable by death and the execution was carried out in Ancient Egypt, Ancient Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley, Ancient Greece, The Roman Empire, and of course, China, which is by far the most populated country in the world, to this day.

The Roman Empire carried out about ten thousand executions, most if not all beheadings, during its time, and there is no doubt that many of these were those convicted of attempted murder.

Assassination
"Assassination" is a word which means murdering a prominent person for a reason.  The word is most used when the person who was killed was a celebrity or was a person involved in politics.  The people who carry out assassinations are called "assassins" or "Hit-men".  An assassin may murder someone for political reasons, for money, or for other reasons, such as favors owed and revenge.

The word "Assassin" comes from Hashishin,  a Muslim group that was active in the Middle East from the 8th to the 14th centuries. This secret society killed people for political and religious reasons. It is thought that the assassins were under the influence of hashish and opium during their killings or during their training. The word assassin comes from either hashashim, the influence of the drugs, or hassansin, after their leader, Hassan-i Sabbah.

Murdersuicide
A murdersuicide is when a person kills someone else (murder), and then they kill themselves (suicide).

No one is tracking the number of murder–suicides in the United States. However, medical studies estimate between 1,000 and 1,500 deaths per year in the United States are murder-suicides.

Related pages

 John Wilkes Booth
 John Lennon
 Lee Harvey Oswald
 Gavrilo Princip
 James Earl Ray
 Nathuram Godse
 Otoya Yamaguchi

References

Murder


Rage is an emotion. It is an outward expression of great anger. In Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions he showed that many emotions are shown the same way in many different societies. The expressions of these emotions is largely genetic, and inherited. Rage can be confused with Anger and have similar causes but Rage is more severe.

Emotions

Rage


The General Intelligence and Security Service (, AIVD; ) is the intelligence and security agency of the Netherlands, tasked with domestic, foreign and signals intelligence and protecting national security. The military counterpart is the Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD), which operates under the Ministry of Defence.

History
The history of Dutch intelligence can trace itself back to 1914 with the creation of the Generale Staf III (GS III) during the outbreak of World War I.
The year following the end of the war, GS III was replaced by the Centrale Inlichtingendienst (CI) in 1919. After Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands, the Dutch government-in-exile deemed the CI to be inadequate for their war efforts and so created the Bureau Inlichtingen (BI) in 1942.

After the war, in 1945, Netherlands replaced the Bureau of National Security (Bureau voor Nationale Veiligheid) and in 1947, was later known as the Domestic Security Service (Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst) (BVD) which would be the predecessor of the AIVD. For the gathering of intelligence abroad, the Foreign Intelligence Service — Buitenlandse Inlichtingendienst (BID), renamed to Inlichtingendienst Buitenland (IDB) in 1972 — had existed since 1946. This service was located in Villa Maarheeze in Wassenaar, just north of The Hague. IDB was dissolved in 1994 after heavy internal turmoil. The foreign intelligence task was eventually handed over to the BVD, which in doing so turned into a combined intelligence and security service. For this reason, it was rebranded Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD) on 29 May 2002.

Mission
The AIVD focuses mostly on domestic non-military threats to Dutch national security, whereas the Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) focuses on international threats, specifically military and government-sponsored threats such as espionage. The AIVD is charged with collecting intelligence and assisting in combating domestic and foreign threats to national security.

List of directors-general

Oversight and accountability
The Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations is politically responsible for the AIVD's actions. Oversight is provided by three bodies:
 A review board for the use of special powers by intelligence and security services (Dutch: Toetsingscommissie Inzet Bevoegdheden, TIB) appointed by the Second Chamber of the States General.
 An oversight committee (Dutch: Commissie van Toezicht op de Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdiensten, CTIVD) also appointed by the Second Chamber of the States General.
 The Committee for the Intelligence and Security Services (Dutch: Commissie voor de Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdiensten, CIVD), comprising the leaders of all political parties represented in the Second Chamber of the States General, although until 2009 the Socialist Party (SP) was not and did not want to be part of this committee.

The AIVD publishes an annual report which includes its budget. The published version contains redactions where information is deemed sensitive.

The AIVD can be forced by the courts to publish any records held on a private citizen, but it may keep secret information that is relevant to current cases. No information that is less than five years old will be provided under any circumstance to private citizens about their records.

Activities
Its main activities include:
 monitoring specific people and groups of people, such as political extremists and religious extremists
 sourcing intelligence to and from foreign and domestic intelligence services
 performing background checks on individuals employed in "positions of trust", specifically public office and higher-up or privileged positions in industry (such as telecommunications, banks, and the largest companies)this includes members of parliamentary oversight committees
 investigating incidents such as terrorist bombings and threats
 giving advice and warning about risks to national security, including advising on the protection of national leadership
 Netherlands National Communications Security Agency, advising on communication security for government users

Methods and authorities
Its methods and authorities include:
 telephone and internet taps authorized by the minister of internal affairs (as opposed to a court order)
 infiltration (rarely by employees of the service, but rather by outsiders who would have easy access to a particular group)
 the use of informants (existing members of groups that are recruited)
 open sources intelligence
 unfettered access to police intelligence
 the use of foreign intelligence service liaisons who reside in the Netherlands under a diplomatic status (including full diplomatic immunity) to collect intelligence in excess of the AIVD's authority

The latter is technically the same as sourcing intelligence from a foreign intelligence service; this method has not been confirmed.

The AIVD operates in tight concert with the Regional Intelligence Service (Regionale Inlichtingen Dienst, RID), to which members of the police are appointed in every police district. It also co-operates with over one hundred intelligence services.

Criticism
The service has been criticized for:
 Soon after the arrest of the Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat, who has been convicted of complicity in war crimes for selling raw materials for the production of chemical weapons to Iraq during the reign of Saddam Hussein, Dutch newspapers reported that van Anraat had been an informer of the Dutch secret service AIVD and has enjoyed AIVD's protection.
 Letting go of Abdul Qadeer Khan, who stole Dutch nuclear knowledge and used it for Pakistan to produce its nuclear bomb. However, former Prime Minister of the Netherlands Ruud Lubbers claimed in 2005 that this was done on a foreign request.
 Not having enough focus and intelligence on Islamist groups, particularly following the September 11, 2001, attacks and the murder of Theo van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri, a member of the Hofstad Network of Islamist terrorism
 Not having enough focus and intelligence on political violence or environmental groups, particularly following the murder of Pim Fortuyn by an environmental radical
 Delivering hand grenades to members of the Hofstadgroep through alleged informer Saleh Bouali
 Investigating family members of the Queen that had had a family rift (Princess Margarita and ), though this was not ordered by the minister of internal affairs, but rather by the Queen's office
 Losing a laptop and a floppy disk with classified information from a regional office of the AIVD. The disk was found by an employee of a car rental agency, and subsequently given to Dutch crime-journalist Peter R. de Vries. Information on the disks indicated that the service collected information on Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn and members of his party, as well as on left-wing activists. Among other things, the documents accuse Pim Fortuyn of having sex with underage Moroccan boys.

During the Cold War the BVD had a reputation for interviewing potential employers of persons they deemed suspicious for any reason, thereby worrying corporations about the employment of these persons. Reasons for being suspect included leftist ideals, membership of the Communist Party, or a spotty military record (such as being a conscientious objector with regard to conscription), although no evidence of the latter has ever been produced.

Cozy Bear
On January 25, 2018, de Volkskrant and TV program Nieuwsuur reported that in 2014, the AIVD successfully infiltrated the computers of Cozy Bear and observed the hacking of the head office of the Democratic National Committee and subsequently the White House, as well as being the first to alert the National Security Agency (NSA) about the cyber-intrusion.

In popular culture
In the Lair of the Cozy Bear (allegedly a translation of the Dutch novel In het hol van de Cozy Bear) that relates the story of the infiltration of Cozy Bear told from the perspective of an American liaison officer attached to the AIVD.

References

External links

2002 establishments in the Netherlands
Government agencies established in 2002
Dutch intelligence agencies
Domestic intelligence agencies
National cyber security centres
Cyberwarfare
Non-military counterterrorist organizations
Cold War military history of the Netherlands
Organizations associated with Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
Organisations based in South Holland
Zoetermeer


1115 (MCXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Events
 Clairvaux Abbey is founded by St. Bernard.
 Anselm of Laon becomes archdeacon of Laon.
 Hugh of St. Victor joins the Victorines in Paris.
 Pierre Abélard becomes canon of Notre Dame de Paris.
 Stephen of England becomes count of Mortain.
 Battle of Welfesholz: Lothair I of Supplinburg defeats Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor.
 Arnulf of Chocques is accused of sexual relations with a Muslim woman, and is briefly removed from his position as Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.
 The Jurchen start the Jin Dynasty of China.
 The Crusader castle of Montreal is built by Baldwin I of Jerusalem.
 Roger of Salerno's Crusaders stop the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Sarmin in Syria.
 The Mixtec lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw is defeated in battle and sacrificed by a group of city-states led by his brother-in-law

Births
 Gilbert Fitz Richard de Clare (d. 1153)

Deaths
 July 24 – Matilda, Countess of Tuscany (b. 1046)
 November 8 – Godfrey of Amiens, bishop of Amiens and Catholic saint.
 Adela of Flanders, queen of Denmark, regent of Apulia
 Thierry II, Duke of Lorraine
 King Olaf Magnusson of Norway (b. 1099)
 Eight Deer Jaguar Claw, Mixtec ruler

References

1115


Anton van den Wyngaerde (Span.: Antonio de las Viñas;  1525 – 7 May 1571) was a prolific Flemish topographical artist who made panoramic sketches and paintings of towns in the southern Netherlands, northern France, England, Italy, and Spain.  He is best known for the many panoramas of cities in Spain that he drew while employed by Philip II. After his death, his works were dispersed into different collections, and their importance neglected. Their historical and artistic value have been recently rediscovered.

Life
Van den Wyngaerde was born probably around 1525 in Antwerp. His father may also have been an artist, as an "Anton van den Wyngaerde" was registered in 1510 in the painter's guild.

Van den Wyngaerde's first known work, from around 1544, was a topographical view of Dordrecht. As he was trained in the Antwerp school, he created his views using observations from nature.  A large view of London in 14 sheets is dated to 1544, including a plan of Whitehall Palace, which he redrew for Henry VIII of England.

Between 1552 and 1553 van den Wyngaerde created views of Rome, Genoa, Naples, and Ancona.
Four of van den Wyngaerde's panoramas of Rome were discovered in the Sutherland Collection in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University.  They appear to be copies, and may have been done by apprentices rather than by the artist himself. One original by van den Wyngaerde was found later, in four separate leaves, more clearly and carefully drawn.
They must have been executed no later than September 1557, as one of them shows the Pons Aemilius still complete, while it
was damaged by a flood of the Tiber on 18/27 September 1557, and was not repaired in stone until 1575.

Van den Wyngaerde entered the service of Philip II of Spain, and during the 1557 Spanish campaign in northern France he documented the sieges of Saint Quentin and Ham. He also drew views of Sluis, Dunkirk, Mechelen, and Bruges; a view of Brussels is dated 1558.

Between 1558 and 1559 he visited England, perhaps more than once, and made views of places that Philip II had visited in 1555 when he had travelled thence to wed Mary I of England. These views included Dover and London, as well as the palaces of Greenwich, Hampton Court, Oatlands, and Richmond. The original of the Panorama of London is in that part of the Sutherland Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and measures 10 feet by 17 inches, in seven sheets.

Around 1561 or 1562, Anton van den Wyngaerde travelled to Spain where Philip II commissioned him to document all the main towns, and also to decorate the royal palaces with pictures of the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy.
He decorated the walls of the El Pardo Palace with several city views, and he painted scenery for theatre productions at the royal court. Van den Wyngaerde made at least sixty-two views of cities and towns, including Barcelona, València, Zaragoza, Granada, Córdoba, Seville, Toledo, Burgos and Madrid. Van den Wyngaerde's picture of Cadiz before it was sacked by the English in 1596 is the only reliable view from that time. He drew the first known detailed picture of Gibraltar.
His main task was to make paintings of the many cities in Philip's kingdom on the walls of the Royal Palace of Madrid.
These were lost in a fire of 1727 that destroyed the palace, but many of his preparatory drawings survived.

Van de Wyngaerde once said, "Among all the joys that the delightful and ingenious art of painting has to offer, there is not one that I hold in higher esteem than the representation of cities." His last dated work was a panorama of Zamora in Spain from 1570.

He died in Madrid in 1571. He received little recognition during or after his life, and his work was rediscovered only in the late 1800s.

Work
As a servant of the king, van den Wyngaerde's drawings presented the Spanish cities in their best possible light, but he succeeded in giving a vivid depiction of town life in his day. He showed the general prosperity of the Spanish cities, fast-growing although all were still walled cities in the medieval tradition, dominated by churches and palaces. The drawings show the cities as they were during the Golden Age of Philip II with what appears to be photographic accuracy. However, there is no trace in his pictures of the squalor of street life that prevailed in all cities of that time.

Van den Wyngaerde's city views, often from imaginary viewpoints, were made without falling back on surveys or plans but depended on the artist's visual memory and imagination. His line drawings would be enhanced with watercolours in green, blue, red and brown to add detail and realism. He would add pictures of the surrounding countryside with figures of people to give a sense of scale, but the sense of realism was illusory, as close examination shows problems of scale and selective representation of features of interest.

In a 1563 View of Valencia, the city seems to be viewed from the north, but the cathedral is depicted as it appears from the west, displaying the building to better advantage.  The streets are made wider and straighter as though the city had been formally planned, the squares are made larger, and some of the towers are moved to different positions.  Despite the appearance of detail and realism, the picture gives an idealized sense of the city's appearance rather than an accurate representation.
Van den Wyngaerde's work was always more artistic than scientific.

Gallery

References
Notes

Citations

Sources

Further reading

1572 deaths
Flemish artists
Draughtsmen from Antwerp
Year of birth unknown
1525 births

Anton van den Wyngaerde


Clay animation is one of many ways to make a stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, can be formed and reformed into different shapes. People making a clay animation usually use something soft, like Plasticine clay.

Most animation is made the same way, whether it is cel animation or stop motion. Each frame, or still picture, is recorded on film or digital media and then played back quickly. When played back at a frame rate of more than 10–12 frames per second, the human mind sees the series of slightly changing, rapidly playing images as movement. To us it seems as if the object is moving by itself. This way of tricking the mind into seeing "movement" is the way that all moving images work, from zoetrope to movies to videogames. The way CGI animations are made is different from the frame by frame method.

How it is done
In clay animation, each object is made in clay, usually around a wire skeleton called an armature. The object is put on the set (background) and a still picture (one frame of film) is taken. The object or character is then moved slightly by hand. Another picture is taken, and the object is moved slightly again. This is repeated over and over. To get the best results, special care is taken to make sure that each frame is the same as the one before. For example, the lighting has to be the same and the object has to be put back in exactly the right place. The only thing that should be different is the slight change the animator makes to the object.

Making a stop-motion animation using clay is hard work. Normal movies use 24 frames per second (frame/s). Animation usually uses "doubles" or "twos"; that is using two frames for each shot. This means that 12 changes are made for one second of movie. For a 30-minute movie, there would be about 21,600 stops to change the objects for the next frame. For a full-length (90-minute) movie, there would be about 64,800 stops. IF some of the parts were done with only a single, not double frame, there would be even more stops. Great care must be taken to make sure that the object is not moved by accident. For full-length movies, animators now use rubber silicone and resin-cast objects. One foam-rubber method has been called Foamation by Will Vinton.

Examples of clay animation
Some famous clay animation movies have been made. Examples include:
 Gumby
 Wallace and Gromit
 Robot Chicken
 Bob the Builder
 Clay Studio of Sviridov Max

Claymation
The word "Claymation" is a registered trademark in the United States. It was registered by Will Vinton in 1978 to describe his clay animation films. The word is often used incorrectly to describe any clay animation movie.

References

Animation

Clay animation


Natural heritage refers to the sum total of the elements of biodiversity, including flora and fauna, ecosystems and geological structures. It forms part of our natural resources.

Definition
Heritage is that which is inherited from past generations, maintained in the present, and bestowed to future generations. The term "natural heritage", derived from "natural inheritance", pre-dates the term "biodiversity". It is a less scientific term and more easily comprehended in some ways by the wider audience interested in conservation.

The term was used in this context in the United States when Jimmy Carter set up the Georgia Heritage Trust  while he was governor of Georgia; Carter's trust dealt with both natural and cultural heritage. It would appear that Carter picked the term up from Lyndon Johnson, who used it in a 1966 Message to Congress.  (He may have gotten the term from his wife Lady Bird Johnson who was personally interested in conservation.)  President Johnson signed the Wilderness Act of 1964.

The term "Natural Heritage" was picked up by the Science Division of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) when, under Robert E. Jenkins, Jr., it launched in 1974 what ultimately became the network of state natural heritage programs—one in each state, all using the same methodology and all supported permanently by state governments because they scientifically document conservation priorities and facilitate science-based environmental reviews. When this network was extended outside the United States, the term "Conservation Data Center (or Centre)" was suggested by Guillermo Mann and came to be preferred for programs outside the US.  Despite the name difference, these programs, too, use the same core methodology as the 50 state natural heritage programs. In 1994 The network of natural heritage programs formed a membership association to work together on projects of common interest: the Association for Biodiversity Information (ABI). In 1999, Through an agreement with The Nature Conservancy, ABI expanded and assumed responsibility for the scientific databases, information, and tools developed by TNC in support of the network of natural heritage programs. In 2001, ABI changed its name to NatureServe. NatureServe continues to serve as the hub of the NatureServe Network, a collaboration of 86 governmental and non-governmental programs including natural heritage programs and conservation data centers located in the United States, Canada, and Latin America.

Legal status

An important site of natural heritage or cultural heritage can be listed as a World Heritage Site by the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO.  The UNESCO programme, catalogues, names, and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common heritage of humanity.  As of July 2023, there are 257 natural World Heritage sites (including 39 mixed sites) in 111 countries. This represents a total of more than 3.5 million km2 of protected areas, 60% of which are marine.

The 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention established that biological resources, such as plants, were the common heritage of mankind or as was expressed in the preamble: "need to be preserved as part of the world heritage of mankind as a whole". These rules probably inspired the creation of great public banks of genetic resources, located outside the source-countries.

New global agreements (e.g., the Convention on Biological Diversity), national rights over biological resources (not property). The idea of static  conservation of biodiversity is disappearing and being replaced by the idea of dynamic conservation, through the notion of resource and  innovation.

The new agreements commit countries to conserve biodiversity, develop resources for sustainability and share the benefits resulting from their use. Under new rules, it is expected  that bioprospecting or collection of natural products has to be allowed by  the biodiversity-rich country, in exchange for a share of the  benefits.

In 2005, the World Heritage Marine Programme was established to protect marine areas with Outstanding Universal Values.

See also
Geoheritage

References

Natural resources
Cultural heritage
Biodiversity
Environmental conservation
Environmental science
Environmental education

Natural heritage


An event is something which happens or takes place. An event is brief, possibly extremely brief. Contrast with a process, which takes time.

Alternate meaning: an important activity, an item in a program, or the program as a whole.

Culture
 A special occasion, such as a wedding or other party, is a social event.

Science
 In physics (and in some kinds of philosophy), an event occurs at a point in time which can be distinguished because the state of the world changed.  Something was different before and after the event.
 In special relativity (and general relativity), an event is a point in the spacetime continuum, i.e. it has a position in space and time.
 In experimental particle physics, an event refers to a set of elementary particle interactions recorded in a brief span of time.
 In probability a possible outcome of an experiment is called an elementary event, while a set of those (a subset of all) is called simply an event. (See event (probability theory).)
 In palaeontology, one speaks of extinction events.

Telecommunications
 In information processing, an event is a change in the properties received by an observer after being transmitted from an object.
 In computer science, an event is a software message that indicates something has happened. See event-driven programming. A number of protocols, such as MIDI, are also event-based.

Event


Thomas Caulfeild (often also spelled Caulfield, baptized 26 March 1685 – 2 March 1716/7) was an early British Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia.  Due to the frequent absence of governors Samuel Vetch and Francis Nicholson, Caulfeild often acted as governor for extended periods between 1711 and his death.

Caulfeild was born to an English family in Ireland.  He was the younger son of William Caulfeild, 2nd Viscount Charlemont and the daughter of the Archbishop of Armagh.  He entered the military, serving in Spain during the early years of the War of the Spanish Succession.  In 1710, his regiment was sent to North America, where he took part in Francis Nicholson's successful expedition against Port-Royal, the capital of French Acadia.  The next year he served in Admiral Hovenden Walker's disastrous expedition to Quebec.  He impressed General John Hill, the commander of the expedition's land forces, and was appointed by Hill to command the garrison at Annapolis Royal (as Port-Royal had been renamed) and serve as deputy to Governor Samuel Vetch.

Caulfeild was formally commissioned as Nova Scotia's lieutenant governor in October 1712.  Vetch was absent from the province between October 1711 and June 1712, during which time Caulfeild was acting governor.  Nicholson was also commissioned governor in October 1712, but his commission did not arrive in North America until 1713.  In October of that year Nicholson, who was in Boston performing other duties, directed Caulfeild to assume command.  Nicholson was absent during most of his time as governor, only briefly visiting the province in 1714.  In 1715 Nicholson was replaced as governor by Vetch, but Vetch never came to the province again.  Caulfeild governed the province in Vetch's absence until his (Caulfeild's) death in early 1717.

While acting as governor, Caulfeild was involved in several attempts to obtain oaths of allegiance to the British Crown from the Acadian French. He was unsuccessful in this endeavour, although he did obtain statements of neutrality from them upon the accession of King George I.  Caulfeild incurred significant personal debts in maintaining the garrison at Annapolis Royal, and was highly critical of actions by Nicholson that he saw as divisive during Nicholson's brief stay in the province.

References

Governors of the Colony of Nova Scotia
British Army officers
British military personnel of the War of the Spanish Succession
Younger sons of viscounts
1685 births
1717 deaths

Thomas Caulfeild


Fangu (and hina) are generic names for gourds or calabashes which have given their names to the daily word for bottle.
For long time it was believed that Lagenaria siceraria was the plant that was called fangu in Tonga and west Polynesia and hue in east Polynesia. But this was recently shown to be false, as the Benincasa hispida var. pruriens is found in the west, and the hue, a different species, the Lagenaria siceraria, is found in the east.

The fangu (Benincasa) is an old introduction from Maleisia. It can be eaten when green, (but it is not sweet, despite its English name, wintermelon), and it can be made into bottle when ripe and dried up. Traditionally it is still used to store scented coconut oil (lolo).

When the Polynesians reached South America around 500 – 1000 AD, they returned home with 2 new plants, the kumala and the hue (Lagenaria). The latter was found to be much superior as a bottle, that the original Benincasa almost or completely died out in the east. Especially in Hawaiʻi and Easter island, where there was no bamboo to make water containers, the new gourds became very important. In Hawaiʻi they even became important attributes to the hula.

Fangu/en


Ot en Sien (Ot and Sien) are two little children who appear in a series of stories which were written in the Dutch language more than a hundred years ago.   Ot (short for "Otto") is a little boy and Sien (pronounced like the English word "seen"), whose name may be short for "Francine", is the little girl who lives next door.  Although they are now very old-fashioned, the books are still popular in Holland.  They were written in rhyme and were illustrated with colourful pictures.

The author of the stories was called Hendricus Scheepstra.  The ideas for the stories were given to him by Jan Ligthart.  Cornelis Jetses made the illustrations.

The stories are set in Drenthe, which is in the north-eastern part of the Netherlands.  Drenthe was a very poor part of the country, but Ot and Sien live in a nice house and are quite well-off.  They are often seen playing in the garden with their toys which include a wooden horse on wheels and a doll in a dolly's pushchair.  The cat is often in the picture.  They are also seen at school.

The authors wrote the stories to show a happy family life.  Everyone is very friendly in the book, and strangers help them when they get lost in the street.  The family have a servant who helps in the house.

The stories were widely read by children in schools in the Netherlands until after the Second World War.  By then they had become very old-fashioned.  The daily life of Ot and Sien seemed to belong to a time long ago in history.   Hardly any Dutch children now live in a family with a servant.  No Dutch child nowadays goes for a walk dressed in sailor's costume with a father who wears a cloak and hat.  The books are no longer read in schools, but they continue to be popular with Dutch people at home.  In 2004, one hundred years after the first book was written, a special exhibition about Ot and Sien was held.

There is a statue to Ot and Sien in The Hague, made in 1930.

Dutch expressions referring to Ot and Sien

In the Dutch language there are expressions which refer to Ot and Sien.
 Als Ot en Sien, (Like Ot and Sien) means: "in a simple, child-like way"
 Uit de tijd van Ot en Sien (from the time of Ot and Sien) means: "a long time ago", like the English expression "in the good old days".

Dutch children's books
Characters in written fiction
Drenthe
1902 books

Ot en Sien


Jilin is one of 3 provinces in the far northeastern part of China, also known as Manchuria.  It is bordered on the north by Heilongjiang province, to the west by the "Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region", and to the southwest by Liaoning province. To the southeast lies North Korea.

The capital city of Jilin is Changchun (meaning "long spring").

The terrain and climate are much like that of neighboring Heilongjiang province.  Also like its neighboring provinces, one of the main agricultural products is corn, as the climate is too cold (and dry) for satisfactory rice cultivation.

Jilin


A dive bomber is a bomber aircraft that dives towards the ground so it can get very close to its targets so that it is more likely to hit them. This can also limit the chance of anti-aircraft fire hitting the plane.

Diving nearly vertically at the target, the aircraft will release the bombs very close to the target at high speed. This allows a dive bomber to drop bombs accurately on a relatively small target, or a moving target quite easily. Dive bombers were widely used to attack high value targets such as ships and bridges. This also had the advantage of attacking ships at a weak spot. A ship's armour was heaviest near the water. On the top of the ship, however, either the armour was very thin, or there was no armour at all. Also, dive bombing allowed relatively small aeroplanes carrying a limited bomb load to do more damage than usual.

Because of better bombsights and better anti-aircraft warfare after World War II, dive bombers were replaced by attack aircraft.

Military aircraft

Dive bomber


Tanjore Balasaraswati, also known as Balasaraswati (13 May 1918 – 9 February 1984), was an Indian dancer, and her rendering of Bharatanatyam, a classical dance style originated in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, made this style of dancing well known in different parts of India and many parts of the world.

She was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1957 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1977, the third and the second highest civilian honours given by the Government of India. In 1981 she was awarded the Sangeetha Kalasikhamani award of The Indian Fine Arts Society, Chennai.

Early life and background
Balasaraswati was a seventh generation representative of a traditional matrilineal family of temple musicians and dancers (devadasis, who traditionally enjoyed high social status (for those who'd like to believe so)), who have been described as the greatest single repository of the traditional performing arts of music and dance of the southern region of India. Her ancestor, Papammal, was a musician and dancer patronized in the mid-eighteenth century by the court of Thanjavur. Her grandmother, Veenai Dhanammal (1867–1938), is considered by many to be the most influential musician of the early twentieth century. Her mother, Jayammal (1890–1967) was a singer who encouraged the training of Balasaraswati and was her accompanist.

Balasaraswati created a revolution in traditional music and dance for bharata natyam, a combination of the performance arts of music and dance. She learned music within the family from her infancy, and her rigorous training in dance was begun when she was four under the distinguished dance teacher K. Kandappan Pillai, a member of the famed Thanjavur Nattuvanar family. Her younger brothers were the musicians T. Ranganathan and T. Viswanathan who would both become prominent performers and teachers in India and the United States. Her daughter, Lakshmi Knight (1943–2001), became a distinguished performer of her mother's style. Her grandson Aniruddha Knight continues to perform the family style today, and is artistic director of Bala Music and Dance Association in the United States and the Balasaraswati School of Dance in India. Her son-in-law Douglas M. Knight, Jr. has written her biography with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2003). Famous Indian film maker Satyajit Ray made a documentary on her works.

Career
Balasaraswati's debut took place in 1925. She was the first performer of her traditional style outside of South India, performing first in Calcutta in 1934. As a young teenager, she was seen by choreographer Uday Shankar, who became an ardent promoter of her performances, and throughout the 1930s she captured the imagination of audiences across India. She went on to a global career that attracted international critical attention and the respect of dance greats such as Shambhu Maharaj, Dame Margot Fonteyn, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham. Interest in Bharatanatyam rebounded in the 1950s as the public became interested in promoting a unique Indian art form. Balasaraswati, encouraged by an administrator at the Music Academy in Madras, established a dance school in association with the institution. There she trained new dancers in bharata natyam as per her vision. In the early 1960s she increasingly travelled globally, with performances in East Asia, Europe, and North America. Later that decade, throughout the 1970s, and into the early 1980s, she visited the United States repeatedly and held residencies—as both a teacher and a performer—at Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut), California Institute of the Arts (Valencia), Mills College (Oakland, California), the University of Washington (Seattle), and Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival (Beckett, Massachusetts), among other institutions. Through her international engagements as well as her activities in India, especially in Madras, Balasaraswati not only exposed countless audiences to the traditional style of bharata natyam but also trained many new practitioners of the art form.

Awards
She received numerous awards in India, including the President's Award from the Sangeet Natak Akademi (1955), Padma Vibhushan from the Government of India for distinguished national service (1977) and Sangita Kalanidhi from the Madras Music Academy, South India's highest award for musicians (1973). In a review in 1977, the New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff described her as one of the "supreme performing artists in the world". India Today, based on a survey, classified her as one of the 100 prominent Indians who have shaped the destiny of India. She was the only non-western dancer included in a compilation of the Dance Heritage Coalition, "America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: The First 100" (2000).

See also
 Bharatanatyam
 Mani Madhava Chakyar

In popular culture
Bengali film director Satyajit Ray made a documentary film on Balasaraswati named Bala (1976).

References

Other sources
https://www.thebetterindia.com/195407/tanjore-balasaraswati-bharatnatyam-greatest-dancer-woman-chennai-india/
https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/dance/tracing-balasaraswatis-journey/article22689812.ece
India's 50 Most Illustrious Women () by Indra Gupta
Balasaraswati: Her Art and Life, by Douglas M. Knight Jr., Wesleyan University Press (June, 2010),
Bala (1976), a documentary by Satyajit Ray, online
 "Hasta As Discourse on Music: T. Balasaraswati and her Art", by Kay Poursine, Dance Research Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2, Autumn, 1991
 "Bala in the US", by Kay Poursine, Nartanam - Vol. IX - No. 4

External links

1918 births
1984 deaths
Bharatanatyam exponents
People from Thanjavur
Recipients of the Padma Vibhushan in arts
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in arts
Indian female classical dancers
Performers of Indian classical dance
Indian dance teachers
Recipients of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award
Teachers of Indian classical dance
Women educators from Tamil Nadu
Educators from Tamil Nadu
20th-century Indian dancers
Dancers from Tamil Nadu
20th-century Indian educators
20th-century Indian women artists
Women artists from Tamil Nadu
20th-century Indian women educators
Bharatanatyam
Recipients of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship

Balasaraswati


There are four fundamental forces, sometimes called fundamental interactions.  The forces are called fundamental because there is no simpler way for physicists to understand what the forces do or how they do it (their action). They are called interactions because the action of one object on another is matched by a reaction from the other.

We feel the effects of gravity and electromagnetism all the time.
 The gravitational force is described by Einstein's general theory of relativity and is understood to be due to the curvature of spacetime by the mass of matter.
 The electromagnetic force is due to electric charge. Charge causes electric force and movement of charge causes magnetic force.

The strong and weak interactions are forces at the smallest distances and explain nuclear interactions.
The strong force binds protons and neutrons together and also keeps the nuclei of atoms together.
The weak force causes beta decay.

A complete description of the forces requires advanced physics. The Standard Model explains
three of these forces (electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force). Most physicists think that these become a single force under very high temperatures. This idea is known as the grand unification theory.

From the future to the past
In the future, new forces may explain dark energy and dark matter. We may also get a Theory of everything that explains the four known fundamental forces. Even if we first unify the three forces of the Standard Model, we may continue to think of those forces as fundamental. This is what happened when theoretical physicists unified electromagnetism and the weak interaction with
electroweak theory.

Once nuclear force was explained by color charge, it was seen not to be fundamental.
Nuclear force was a theory to explain how photons could stay close together in the nucleus when their like electric charge would make them move apart, if not overcome by a stronger force.

References

Force

Fundamental force


Inheritance is the practice of passing on property, titles, debts, and duties when someone dies. Those things usually go to family members. People have had laws about inheritance for thousands of years. The question is often settled in a will.

If only sons and other male family members get the inheritance, it is called patrilineal inheritence. If only daughters and other female family members get the inheritance, it is called matrilineal succession. In some cases inheritance depends on legitimacy.

Cultural inheritance is called legacy. Genetic inheritance is called heredity. A kingdom may be inherited, and the person who is expected to inherit is called the heir apparent.

The person who gets the property and other things when someone dies is called the heir (male) or heiress (female).

Inheritance tax is a tax paid by a person who inherits money or property of someone who has died.

Death customs
Property law

Inheritance


A chief restructuring officer (CRO) is a senior officer of a company given broad powers to renegotiate all aspects of a company's finances to deal with an impending bankruptcy or to restructure a company following a bankruptcy filing. The use of CROs, who usually have an expertise in the field of business in which the company operates, has been increasing in popularity since the 1990s. CROs are sometimes seen as an alternative to using a trustee in bankruptcy in a reorganization bankruptcy, because the trustees may not be knowledgeable in field of business conducted by the company.

Further CROs give the company management and creditors more of say in the running of a company than a trustee is required to do so. CRO's have sometimes been compared to "turn around" consultants although the CRO differs from a turn around consultant in that the CRO is an official of the company and has executive power.

While CROs officially report to the company and its board of directors, they are considered to have greatly strengthened the hand of creditors since the CRO can make executive decisions following a direct meeting with the creditors. On occasional instances, the CRO can oust the chief executive officer (CEO) or president of the company, as happened in 2012 when Gregory F. Rayburn replaced Hostess Brands CEO Brian Driscoll as CEO a month after being appointed CRO.

References

Corporate governance
Management occupations

Legal professions
United States bankruptcy law
Insolvency

Chief restructuring officer


މިއީ ސީނީ ނަމެކެވެ.; ޢާއިލީ ނަމަކީ ވެން އެވެ.

ވެން ޖިއަބާއޯ () (އުފަންވެވަޑައިގަތީ ސެޕްޓެމްބަރު 1942 ގައި) އަކީ ސީނުކަރައިގެ ދައުލަތު ކައުންސިލުގެ ޕްރެމިއަރ އެވެ.

He serves as a member of its Leading Party Members' Group and Secretary of the Financial Work Committee of the CPC Central Committee. Since taking office in 2003, Wen, ranked third in the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China hierarchy, has been a key part of the fourth generation of leadership in the Communist Party of China. Wen is generally popular with the Chinese people, and his modesty and more approachable personality are held to contrast with the bold and serious Hu Jintao.

Rise to power
A native of Tianjin, Wen Jiabao went to the famous Nankai High School from which the ex-premier Zhou Enlai graduated. He joined the Communist Party of China (CPC) in April 1965 and began working in September 1967.

A postgraduate and engineer, Wen graduated from the specialty of geological structure of Beijing Institute of Geology. Having studied geomechanics in Beijing, he began his career in the Gansu geology bureau; from 1968-1978, he presided over the Geomechanics Survey Team under the Gansu Provincial Geological Bureau and head of its political section. Rising as chief of the Gansu Provincial Geological Bureau and later as minister for the natural resources sector of the economy, Wen would rise through the ranks of the Politburo Central Committee in the 1980s and 1990s. Wen's move from Gansu to Beijing occurred while the party, then under the leadership of General Secretary Hu Yaobang, was conducting a talent search; Wen was quickly promoted to serve as the deputy in the Party's Central Office. He remained in the post for eight years.

Wen Jiabao is the only Standing Committee member to have served under three party secretaries: Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, and Jiang Zemin. A political survivor, his most significant recovery was after 1989, when Wen
was the head assistant to General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. He accompanied then-Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang to Tiananmen Square. Zhao was purged from the party days later for "grave insubordination" and lived under house arrest in Beijing until his death in January 2005. Unlike his mentor, Wen was able to politically survive the aftermath of the demonstrations.

During a political career dating back to 1965, Wen has built a network of patrons. During that time Wen, a strong administrator and technocrat, has earned a reputation for meticulousness, competence, and a focus on tangible results. Outgoing Premier Zhu Rongji showed his esteem for Wen by entrusting him, from 1998, with the task of overseeing agricultural, financial and environmental policies, considered crucial as China prepared to enter the World Trade Organization.

Premiership

Wen has been the third-ranking member of the Politburo Standing Committee, China's highest ruling council, since November 2002. During the transition of power as Hu Jintao assumed the presidency in March 2003, Wen Jiabao's nomination as premier was confirmed by the National People's Congress with over 99% of the delegates' vote. As premier, Wen has overseen China's economic reforms and has been involved in shifting national goals from economic growth at all costs to growth which also emphasizes more egalitarian wealth, along with other social goals, such as public health and education.  In addition, the Chinese government under Wen has begun to focus on the social costs of economic development, which include damage to the environment and to workers' health.  This more comprehensive definition of development has been encapsulated into the idea of a xiaokang society.

Wen's broad range of experience and expertise, especially cultivated while presiding over agricultural policies under Zhu Rongji has been important as the "fourth generation" seeks to revitalize the rural economy in regions left out by the past two decades of reform.

Initially regarded as quiet and unassuming, he is said to be a good communicator and is known as a "man of the people." Wen has appeared to make great efforts to reach out those who seem left out by two decades of stunning economic growth in rural and especially western China. Unlike Jiang Zemin and his protégés on the Politburo Standing Committee, who form the so-called "Shanghai clique", both Wen and Hu hail from, and have cultivated their political bases in, the vast Chinese interior. Many have noted the contrasts between Wen and Hu, "men of the people" and Jiang Zemin, the flamboyant, multilingual, and urbane former mayor of the country's most cosmopolitan city. Jiang, unlike the more reserved Hu and Wen, is known to quote maxims from Chinese and Western philosophy and recite poetry in many languages.

Like President Hu Jintao, whose purported brilliance and photographic memory have facilitated his meteoric rise to power, Wen is regarded as well-equipped to preside over a vast bureaucracy in the world's most populated and perhaps rapidly changing nation. In March 2003, the usually self-effacing Wen was quoted as saying, "The former Swiss ambassador to China once said that my brain is like a computer", he said. "Indeed, many statistics are stored in my brain."

Mild-tempered and conciliatory, especially compared to his predecessor, the tough, straight-talking Zhu Rongji, his consensual management style has enabled him to generate a great deal of good will and little hostility in Beijing. Although noticeably, Wen has been widely known to have been in conflict with then-Shanghai party chief Chen Liangyu, who disagreed with the central government's policies.

Wen has been involved in a two major episodes involving public health.  In early 2003, he was involved in ending the official inaction over the SARS crisis.  In November 2003, he became the first major Chinese official to publicly address the problem of AIDS, which has devastated parts of the provinces of Yunnan and Henan and threatens to be a major burden on Chinese development. Since May 2004, Wen made various visits to communities devastated by AIDS, trips shown prominently on national media. By showing these actions, Wen appeared to be attempting to reverse years of actions which many activists have seen as a policies of denial and inaction. Furthermore, Wen is concerned about the health and safety of previous drug addicts; since March 2004, Wen had visited several drug addict treatment facilities in southern China and addressed the issue to the patients in person.

Wen's many visits to relatively poor areas of China's countryside were conducted randomly -- to avoid elaborate preparations to appease officials and hide the real situation, which is done often in China. At committee meetings of the State Council, Wen made it clear that the rural wealth problem must be addressed. Along with President Hu Jintao, the "Three Rural Issues" of agriculture, rural areas, and farmers were highlighted as areas that need work and development. The Hu-Wen administration abolished the thousand-year-old agricultural tax entirely in 2005, a bold move that significantly changed the rural economic model. Like his predecessor, Zhu Rongji, Wen is generally seen as a popular communist official with the Chinese public. His attitude is seemingly sincere and warm, triggering comparisons with former premier Zhou Enlai.  Wen spent Chinese New Year in 2005 with a group of coal miners in a Shanxi coal mine.  To many, Wen's image is the "people's premier", a populist, and an ordinary Chinese citizen who knows and understands ordinary people's needs.  In an annual meeting of the Chinese Authors Association, Wen spoke for over two hours to the delegates without looking at any script. To foreign media, Wen also remains the highest government figure in China to give free press conferences, often facing politically sensitive and difficult questions regarding subjects such as Taiwan Independence, Tibet and human rights.

Wen is also seen by many as an able diplomat. In December 2003, Wen visited the United States of America for the first time.  During the trip, Wen was able to get President George W. Bush to issue what many saw as a mild rebuke to the President of the Republic of China, Chen Shui-bian. Wen has also been on visits to Canada and Australia, mostly on economic issues.

On 15 March 2005, after the anti-secession law was passed, by a majority of 2,896 to nil, with two abstentions by the National People's Congress, Wen famously said: "We don't wish for foreign intervention, but we are not afraid of it." as an allusion to the United States' stance on Taiwan. That earned him a long round of applause that was rare even by Chinese standards.

On 5 March 2007, Wen announced plans to increase the military budget. By the end of 2007 the military budget will rise to 17.8 percent compared to last years 45 billion dollars. These actions have created tension with the United States.

Political views
There are significant disputes inside China as well as in the Hong Kong and Taiwan journalistic circles regarding the political views of Wen Jiabao. Because he appears more often than President Hu Jintao in front of the press, Wen's viewpoints, although difficult to gauge in their entirety, are easier to discern than those of President Hu.

On the subject of political reform, Wen is seen as a moderate conservative, although more liberal than the hard-line Hu. He has remarked that "the socialist system will continue in China for the next 100 years", although later in a Press Conference at the 2007 National People's Congress, he vaguely stated that "democracy is one of the basic goals of the socialist system". Wen, a former ally of disgraced Premier Zhao Ziyang, is likely supportive of the latter's political rehabilitation. However, thus far Wen has stuck to script and rarely mentions Zhao.

On the subject of Taiwan, Wen reputedly believes in gradual negotiations as opposed to Hu's slant towards eventual military action. Xinhua has published articles in early 2007 with Wen's name separately attributed in several articles on the direction of national development. This was suspected as a sign that Wen has some differing viewpoints to the official party line.

State Council Administration

Wen leads the current State Council, China's cabinet.

Quotes
Talking about Chinese fast economic growth and social justice and fairness Wen Jiabao said: "The speed of the fleet is not determined by the fastest vessel; rather it is determined by the slowest one."

References

See also
 Politics of the People's Republic of China
 History of the People's Republic of China (2002-present)

External links
 Wen Jiabao biography @ China Vitae, the web's largest online database of China VIPs
 Wen Jiabao Biography and News
 The Age - Who is Wen Jiabao?
 How to pronounce Wen Jiabao
 Wen says China's reforms irreversible

1942 births
Living people
Leaders of the Communist Party of China

ވެން ޖިއަބާއޯ


Juvenile primary lateral sclerosis, also known as primary lateral sclerosis (PLSJ), is a very rare genetic disorder, with a small number of reported cases, characterized by progressive weakness and stiffness of muscles in the arms, legs, and face. The disorder damages motor neurons, which are specialized nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control muscle movement.

Symptoms and signs

Symptoms of JPLS begin in early childhood and progress over a period of 15 to 20 years. Early symptoms include clumsiness, muscle spasms, weakness and stiffness in the legs, and difficulty with balance. As symptoms progress, they become more serious and include weakness and stiffness in the arms and hands, slurred speech, drooling, difficulty swallowing, and an inability to walk.

Genetics

Juvenile primary lateral sclerosis is inherited in an autosomal recessive pattern, which means two copies of the gene in each cell are altered.  Most often, parents of affected individuals each carry one copy of the altered gene, but do not show any signs or symptoms.

Mutations in the ALS2 gene, found on chromosome 2, are responsible for causing juvenile primary lateral sclerosis.  The ALS2 gene provides instructions for making a protein called alsin. Alsin is abundant in motor neurons, but its function is not fully understood.  Mutations in the ALS2 gene in this disorder disrupt the instructions for producing alsin. As a result, alsin is unstable and decays rapidly, or it is disabled and cannot function properly. It is currently unknown how the loss of functional alsin protein causes the death of motor neurons and the symptoms of juvenile primary lateral sclerosis.

Diagnosis

Treatment
Treatment of ALS2-related disorders includes physical therapy and occupational therapy to promote mobility and independence and use of computer technologies and devices to facilitate writing and voice communication.

See also
 List of genetic disorders

References

External links

Systemic atrophies primarily affecting the central nervous system
Autosomal recessive disorders
Motor neuron diseases
Rare diseases

Juvenile primary lateral sclerosis


A child (the plural is children) is a person below the age of puberty (biologically) or below the age of majority (legally). A person can be called his or her parent's child, no matter how old he or she is. Another word for "child" is "kid".

In most countries, children go to school. Small children may go to nursery school, preschool or kindergarten. Playing with small toys and using their imaginations are important for child development. But often in a developing country, children sometimes work in factories or in the fields with their parents or guardians.

When two people get married and one (or both) of them have children with someone else before this marriage, that child is called a step child by the child's non-birth parent. If both people had children, the children of each parent are step brothers or step sisters of each other. A child whose parents have died is an orphan. Orphans with no parent may be raised by grandparents or other relatives. Otherwise they may go to live in an orphanage. They may be adopted by another adult or couple wanting a child. They will then be able to grow up in a new family.

Related pages
 Adolescent
 Parent
 Sibling (a brother or sister)

Basic English 850 words

Child


The Ebers Papyrus (c. 1550 BC) is an ancient Egyptian medical treatise.  It covers both practical and magical advice.  There are over 700 different drugs described in the papyrus. Some are useful such as opium for pain.  Other things in the papyrus can seem ridiculous. An example of that is tapping a person on the head with a fish if they have a migraine.  Aside from covering a large number of treatments, the papyrus also has information on a broad range of ailments from intestinal complaints and eye problems to depression or other mental disorders.

Other websites

2nd millennium BC in Egypt
History of medicine
2nd millennium BC works
Ancient Egyptian literature

Ebers papyrus


Les Baigneuses (also known as The Bathers) is a large oil painting created at the outset of 1912 by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes (1881–1953). It was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris during the spring of 1912; the Salon de la Société Normande de Peinture Moderne, Rouen, summer 1912; and the Salon de la Section d'Or, autumn 1912. The painting was reproduced in Du "Cubisme", written by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger the same year: the first and only manifesto on Cubism. Les Baigneuses, while still 'readable' in the figurative or representational sense, exemplifies the mobile, dynamic fragmentation of form and multiple perspective characteristic of Cubism at the outset of 1912. Highly sophisticated, both in theory and in practice, this aspect of simultaneity would soon become identified with the practices of the Section d'Or group. Gleizes deploys these techniques in "a radical, personal and coherent manner". Purchased in 1937, the painting is exhibited in the permanent collection of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Description

Les Baigneuses is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 105 x 171 cm (41.3 by 67.3 inches), signed Albert Gleizes and dated 1912, lower left. This work, painted at the outset of 1912, represents a series of naked elegant women at various points in the landscape foreground, their reflections along with the blue of the sky echoing off the water at the lower edge of the canvas. Beyond the bathers can be observed protruding rock-like formations or boulders—with highlights of primary color—that appear to espouse elements of the foreground. Above these cliffs are found several deciduous woody plants of the genus Populus. Though native to many areas of the Northern Hemisphere, the Poplar, with its fastigiate branches tapered towards the top, is especially iconic of the western suburbs of Paris (la banlieue ouest) where Gleizes lived, 24 Avenue Gambetta, Courbevoie. The Gleizes family moved to Avenue Gambetta in 1887. Towards the end of the 19th century and extending through the early 20th century, Courbevoie witnessed a rapid growth in population, and a surge in the development of crafts, industry and transport (including rail). Such a scene of naked bathers actually occurring would have been highly unlikely in Courbevoie, or anywhere else near the Parisian capital.

Optimistic reconciliation
Les Baigneuses—as Robert Delaunay's 1912 City of Paris, and to some extent Jean Metzinger's 1913 Meudon Landscape—juxtaposes sharply contrasting elements. On the one hand the artist includes elements from a society in the process of inexorable industrialization, and on the other, the sereneness of timeless classical nude figures (something rarely painted by Gleizes, as Brooke points out). Yet the relationships between the two are formally resolved. This aspect of simultaneity—the optimistic reconciliation of classical tradition and contemporary life—was of particular interest to Gleizes, as it was to the Section d'Or group of Cubists (also known as the Passy group, or Puteaux group).

The background forms a semi-urban landscape that possesses both rural and semi-industrial components, consistent with Courbevoie of the 1910s (except perhaps for the rock-like outcrops), a village or town with delicate smokestacks or factory chimneys billowing smoke that blends into the cloudy sky. Evidence that factories were already located on the Seine can be seen in Gleizes' Péniches et fumées à Courbevoie of 1908. The statuesque nudes themselves are highly stylized, divided into geometrized facets, planes and curves, yet they are graceful, balletic and elegant. The source of light, rather than beaming down from one particular direction, appears to emanate from within the canvas itself, with an intensification in the vicinity of the bathers.

Gleizes painted L'île de la Jatte many times since 1901 and on at least five occasions between 1907 and 1912:

 1907–1909, L'île de la Grande Jatte ou Bord de parc avec rivière animée de canots, pastel pierre noire and ink on bistre paper, , private collection
 1908, Péniches et fumées à Courbevoie, Crayon, ink and gouache on paper, 23 x 32.5 cm, Fondation Albert Gleizes (Paris)
 1908, L'île de la Grande Jatte, fusain and gouache on rose paper, , Musée national d'art moderne (Paris)
 1908, La Seine près de Courbevoie, oil on canvas, , Musée Roybet Fould (Courbevoie)
 1908, Barque à Courbevoie, fusain and chalk on paper, 30 x 38 cm, art market (Paris)

The subject matter of Les Baigneuses, much as that of his monumental Harvest Threshing of the same year, is derived from an unsentimental observation of the world.

Gleizes' interest centered on many things in the years leading up to 1912, one of which was the dynamic qualities of modern urban life. Les Baigneuses, depicts "a harmonious and balanced landscape in which industrial and urban elements are imbricated with the surrounding countryside;" writes Cottington in Cubism in the Shadow of War, "Poussinesque in its organizing geometry and Claudian in its specificity of place, this is the landscape not of Arcadia but of France as Gleizes wished it to be." Gleizes' formal innovations seen in this work are more closely related to the Salon Cubists (Jean Metzinger, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier and Fernand Léger) than to those of the Gallery Cubists (Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque).

The gestures of the bathers in the 'foreground' and the whirls of chimney-smoke in the 'background' are unified expressively through "a timeless and purportedly natural order." While the subject was "explicit in its reference to latinist classicism" writes Cottington, "and implicit in its rejection of the avant-gardist challenge of the futurists to avoid the pictorial representation of the nude as inescapably passé", he continues, "the presence of emblems of industrialization, not juxtaposed but integrated with the rhythms of the landscape, marked a definite, if tentative, departure from the concerns he had shared with Le Fauconnier." Gleizes made use of fragmentation of form, multiple perspective views (i.e., mobile and dynamic, rather than static and from one point-of-view) along with linear and planar structural qualities. Though highly sophisticated in theory, this aspect of simultaneity would actually become quite commonly employed within the practices of the Section d'Or group. Gleizes deployed these techniques in "a radical, personal and coherent manner" (Cottington, 1998).

1912

For Gleizes and those of his entourage 1912 signified a climax in the debates centering around modernism and classicism – Bergson and Nietzsche – Euclid and Riemann – nationalism and regionalism – Poincaré and four-dimensional space. It was precisely during 1912 that Gleizes and Metzinger would write the seminal treatise Du "Cubisme" (Cubism's only manifesto), in an attempt "to put a little order into the chaos of everything that had been written in the papers and reviews since 1911", to use the words of Gleizes.

It was both as artists and theorists (in painting and writing) that Gleizes and Metzinger expressed their critical and ideological discourse about the possible meanings and significance of Cubism and contemporary aesthetics. Indeed, Du "Cubisme" was much more than an unorthodox or anti-academic explanation of the avant-gardist innovations seen in Cubist paintings.

It was natural that Gleizes and Metzinger, both articulate men, should come not just to theorize on the meaning of Cubism, but to defend the movement against attacks leveled in the wake of the 1911 public exhibitions. The two had exhibited regularly at the important salons (Salon d'Automne and Salon des Indépendants) since around 1903 and held divers official positions within them (e.g., hanging committee members). Both were well-versed in philosophy, mathematics and poetry. While Metzinger had participated in discussions at the Bateau Lavoir (from 1907), both he and Gleizes were largely responsible for the impression made by the Cubists on the general public during both the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d'Automne of 1910 and 1911 respectively. Intellectual and moral support for their endeavors came from members of the Section d'Or (Groupe de Puteaux).

In contrast, Picasso and Braque remained unknown to the general public and made no recorded statements during the crucial pre-War period. Braque's first brief aphoristic statement regarding Cubism was written in 1917 during his gradual return to health following a head-wound during the war. Picasso's first recorded statement on Cubism is dated 1923, at a time when Dada, Surrealism and Abstract art had become fashionable.

By 1912 art had become much more than a dialogue between artist and nature. "The three dimensions of sensorial volume", Gleizes would write in 1925, "left open the field for the introduction of the time factor".

"The diversity of the relations of line to line must be indefinite;" write Gleizes and Metzinger, "on this condition it incorporates quality, the incommensurable sum of the affinities perceived between that which we discern and that which pre-exists within us: on this condition a work of art is able to move us".

Cézanne

Cézanne, progressively leading up to 1906, moved away from classic pictorial arrangements, single view perspectives, and outlines that enclosed color. His attempt was to arrive at a "lived perspective" by capturing all the complexities that could be observed with the eye and captured by the senses, where both "sight" and "touch" became one. Cézanne believed his paintings could capture a moment in time, that once passed it was gone, that art and nature are the same. Cézanne claimed: "Art is a personal apperception, which I embody in sensations and which I ask the understanding to organize into a painting." The true meaning of painting grew closer as the distance from tradition increased. Just as the Cubists he would inspire, Cézanne had little interest in the rational naturalistic painting and classical geometrical perspective inherited from the Renaissance. "Nor was he satisfied," writes Merleau-Ponty, "with the attempts of the Impressionists to dissolve this objective order into its original elements of light and atmosphere".[sic]

Staticity and dynamism

The preoccupations of Gleizes, to considerable extent beyond those emancipated by Cézanne, was to play with the mobile, dynamic, changing aspects of the same form relative to the position of the painter.

Les Baigneuses, along with other compositions by Gleizes and his fellow Salon Cubists from this period (1911-1912), tend to coordinate a variety of views of the same subject, or a multiplicity (in the Bergsonian sense) of different angles in one picture. This attempt clearly shows the importance of both the time element and the mobile properties in the sequence of events. According to Gleizes, the artist would accommodate either several successive moments in time projected onto a single space, or multiple spaces projected onto the canvas at the same time. These kinematic compositions that took into account both staticity and dynamism were not just a new description of the external world created by the artist, but also the inner world.

Paintings of the Renaissance could not entirely convey these aspects of the world since their subjects were immobilized in a depiction based on one unique point of view; but the real world better corresponds to multiplicity of vision (we have two eyes). And here is precisely where an ambiguity or uncertainty arises as regards interpretation. This period was in fact marked by the unification of disparate concepts. Classical perspective and non-Euclidean geometry were not, after all, incompatible with one another.

 The former was simply viewed as a special case contained within a more general concept. Reconciliation between the static classical and modern mobile approach was attainable since within the representation of successive states of an event could be found repeated images fixed for all time (as in the overlapping of several static images). Just as the dynamism of a motion picture results from a succession of still shots, the Cubists stance expounded by Gleizes and Metzinger on theoretical and plastic fronts, consisted of capturing the subject matter or object in a series of 'still shots' (static images) and suturing them together (i.e., several successive moments in time projected onto a single space). Likewise, or alternatively, the artist could depict (multiple spaces projected onto the canvas simultaneously).

There is a subtle difference or distinction between these two types of simultaneity Gleizes describes that deserve closer attention: inscribed onto the canvas could be either (1) the properties of two or more instantiations or physical occurrence happening at the same time from the point of view of one frame of reference (the artist fixed in one position), or (2) the artist could inscribe (paint) the properties of one event represented over a succession of time intervals, observed from several frame of reference (or multiple points of view simultaneously expressed onto the canvas), meaning that the observational reference frame is tied to the state of motion of an observer. There are shared variables between the two concepts, involving the flow of time, i.e., temporal in nature, and involving motion (on the part of either the artist or subject), spatial in nature.

This cinématique nomenclature offered to the spectator several views of an isolated event, of the same subject, or similarly, several different subjects, a series of events, observed from one point of view. No longer was the artist restricted to a principle (or set of principles). The liberation from academicism offered by Cubism, as instigated by Cézanne, resulted from the fact that the artist was no longer restricted to the representation of the subject (or the world) as seen in a photograph. No longer restricted to the imitative description of nature, and despite the complexification of visual stimuli (many views instead of one), the technique of painting became simple and direct.

In 1912 the photographic motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey particularly interested artists of the Section d'Or, including Jean Metzinger, Marcel Duchamp and Albert Gleizes. A predecessor to cinematography and moving film, chronophotography involved a series or succession of different images, originally created and used for the scientific study of movement. These chronophotographs included a series of dancers and women washing. Though Gleizes may not have seen these specific photographs he was likely interested in the same idea, as were the Futurists. The motion picture with its cinematic techniques was developing too at the time.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=Co7ipk-yOs0C&dq=Muybridge%2C+cubism&pg=PA117 Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918: With a New Preface, Harvard University Press, Nov 30, 2003]</ref>

There is also a scientifique nomenclature offered to the spectator (the relativity of simultaneity), that artists themselves, art critics and art historians have not failed to notice. Some have attempted to refute such connections and others have embraced them. Though the name Einstein was not yet a household word in 1912, there has been a rapprochement of the concept of multiplicity described above and the concept of relativity in the Einsteinian sense. While, as Einstein writes, the physicist can generally limit herself to one system of coordinates for the description of physical reality, the Cubist (particularly Gleizes and Metzinger) attempted to show the simultaneity of several such views, or, at the very least, they were unwilling to commit themselves to a single coordinate system.Alex Mittelmann, State of the Modern Art World, The Essence of Cubism and its Evolution in Time, 2011

Salon des Indépendants, 1912
At the 1912 Salon des Indépendants Albert Gleizes exhibited Les Baigneuses (no. 1347) — Marcel Duchamp's Nu descendant l'escalier was listed in the catalogue (n. 1001) but was supposedly withdrawn — Roger de La Fresnaye exhibited Artillerie (no. 1235) — Robert Delaunay showed his monumental Ville de Paris (no. 868) — Jean Metzinger exhibited La Femme au Cheval (Woman with a horse) and Le Port — Fernand Léger showed La Noce — Henri Le Fauconnier, Le Chasseur (The Huntsman) — and the newcomer Juan Gris exhibited his Portrait of Picasso.Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, Histoire & Mesure, no. XXII -1 (2007), Guerre et statistiques, L'art de la mesure, Le Salon d'Automne (1903-1914), l'avant-garde, ses étranger et la nation française (The Art of Measure: The Salon d'Automne Exhibition (1903-1914), the Avant-Garde, its Foreigners and the French Nation), electronic distribution Caim for Éditions de l'EHESS (in French)

The art critic Olivier-Hourcade writes of this exhibition in 1912 and its relation to the creation of a new French school: 'Metzinger with his Port, Delaunay with Paris, Gleizes with his Baigneuses, are close to this real and magnificent result, this victory comes from several centuries: the creation of a school of painting, 'French' and absolutely independent.

Gleizes, on the other hand, would write the following year (1913) of the movements continual evolution:

The changes it had already undergone since the Indépendants of 1911 could leave people in no doubt as to its nature. Cubism was not a school, distinguished by some superficial variation on a generally accepted norm. It was a total regeneration, indicating the emergence of a wholly new cast of mind. Every season it appeared renewed, growing like a living body. Its enemies could, eventually, have forgiven it if only it had passed away, like a fashion; but they became even more violent when they realised that it was destined to live a life that would be longer than that of those painters who had been the first to assume the responsibility for it.

"Never had a crowd been seen thrown into such a turmoil by works of the spirit, and especially over esemplastic works, paintings, whose nature it is to be silent", writes Albert Gleizes, "Never had the critics been so violent as they were at that time. From which it became clear that these paintings—and I specify the names of the painters who were, alone, the reluctant causes of all this frenzy: Jean Metzinger, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay and myself—appeared as a threat to an order that everyone thought had been established forever."

Exhibitions

 Salon des Indépendants, Paris, 1912, no. 1347.
 Salon de la Section d'Or, Galerie La Boétie in Paris, October 1912, no. 40.
 Exposition de Cubistes Français, Musée Rath, Geneva, 3–15 June 1913, no. 8
 Moderni Umeni, S.V.U. Mánes, Prague, 1914, no. 36.
 La Section d'Or exhibition, 1925, Galerie Vavin-Raspail, Paris
 Salon des Indépendants, Trente Ans d'Art Indépendants, 1884–1914, Grand Palais, Paris, 1926, no. 1057.
 Les créateurs du cubisme: Galerie Wildenstein, Paris, 1935, no. 31.
 Les Maitres de I'Art Indépendants 1895-1937, Petit Palais, Paris, 1937, no. 6.
 Albert Gleizes 1881 – 1953, A Retrospective Exhibition, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, 1964-1965 (no. 31).
 Le cubisme, 17 October 2018 – 25 February 2019, Galerie 1, Centre Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris. Kunstmuseum Basel, 31 March – 5 August 2019

Literature
 Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Du "Cubisme", published by Eugène Figuière, Paris, 1912, translated to English and Russian in 1913
 Apollinaire, g. Le Petit Bleu, March 20, 1912 (cf. Chroniques d'Art, 1960, p. 230).
 Bonfante, E. and Ravenna, J. Arte Cubista con "les Meditations Esthetiques sur la Peinture" di Guillaume Apollinaire, Venice, 1945, no. LVIII.
 Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Catalogue-Guide, Paris, 1961.
 Robbins, Daniel, Albert Gleizes 1881 – 1953, A Retrospective Exhibition, Published by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, in collaboration with Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, 1964 (catalogue no. 31).
 Varichon, Anne, Daniel Robbins, Albert Gleizes – Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 1, Paris, Somogy éditions d'art/Fondation Albert Gleizes, 1998, .

See also
 List of works by Albert Gleizes

References

External links
 Fondation Albert Gleizes
 Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Grand Palais, Agence photographique
 Albert Gleizes 1881–1953, a retrospective exhibition, by Daniel Robbins. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in collaboration with Musée national d'art moderne, Paris; Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, published 1964
 Arthur Jerome Eddy, Cubists and Post-Impressionism, A.C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1914, second edition 1919

Paintings by Albert Gleizes
Cubist paintings
1912 paintings
Landscape paintings
Portraits of women
Nude art
Bathing in art
Paintings in the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris

Les Baigneuses (Gleizes)


The Year of the Angry Rabbit is a science fiction novel by Australian author Russell Braddon, in which giant mutant rabbits run amok in Australia while the Prime Minister uses a new superweapon to dominate the planet.

The pulp narrative was played for laughs, and designed as an indictment of war, nationalism and capitalism. The novel was also notable as being part of a small revival of Australian science fiction in the 1960s. Its comic-horror tone was well received and a movie version was released in 1972 titled Night of the Lepus – a straight-faced monster movie that dropped the humor of the book.

Summary
Sir Alfred – who engineered Fitzgerald's election to prime minister – calls Fitzgerald one evening with a complaint: his Bludgerton property has been infested with rabbits that are immune to myxomatosis. Fearing another rabbit epidemic, Fitzgerald tasks Professor Welch and his scientists with inventing super myxomatosis, or Supermyx, to control the growing rabbit population. They test the first batch of Supermyx on a male and female rabbit, with disastrous results: Supermyx does not kill rabbits, and merely makes them savage, as if infected with rabies. Supermyx is, however, instantly lethal to humans, as demonstrated when Sir Alfred is brutally killed by the test cases, which then escape and turn the entire rabbit brood into flesh-rending Supermyx carriers.

In a temporary lapse of brilliance, Sir Alan Jacks suggests that Fitzgerald weaponize Supermyx and conquer the world. Fitzgerald does just that: after nuking the Bludgerton property to prevent the rabbit outbreak (and having the scientists committed so that word of the threat never comes to light), he has Supermyx bombs planted in every country; as a demonstration of power, he wipes out the entire populations of two countries who refuse to stop warring with each other. This results in total nuclear disarmament, the exile of all nuclear physicists to a doomed island, and an eventual end to conventional warfare. Wars are soon conducted as harmless arena games which are heavily promoted like the Olympics. Fitzgerald has all weapon factories shut down, but this quickly threatens the world economy, so he decrees the factories continue producing weapons of warfare, which are then summarily dumped into the ocean. Surprisingly, Fitzgerald's seemingly ridiculous plans actually work: world peace finally becomes a reality for three years.

As Supermyx cannot travel across bodies of water, Australia is completely safe from its own superweapons; however, the Supermyx-carrying Bludgerton Rabbits (now giant from atomic radiation) refuse to go away, and keep resurfacing time and again, threatening to overwhelm Australia and wipe out its population. The rabbits eventually become too numerous to contain, and Australia wages a one-sided war against the numberless brood. Fitzgerald is killed, and the entire continent is evacuated, leaving Australia to the aborigines, who eventually summon a flood to destroy the rabbits. The novel ends with the implication that the remaining Supermyx bombs will be detonated, wiping humanity from the face of the earth.

Characters

Kevin Sean Aloysius "Ella" Fitzgerald: Prime Minister of Australia, and the novel's protagonist. An archetypal scheming politician.

Major General Sir Alan Jacks: Notoriously incompetent Minister of Defence whose predictions are always wrong, except for one temporary lapse of brilliance when he suggests using Supermyx as a world-dominating weapon.

Sir Alfred Hill G.C.B.: Wealthy landowner, habitual blackmailer, and the story's catalyst. After discovering oil on his property he used his wealth to dominate two boroughs (pocket boroughs), which won Fitzgerald the last election by a two-seat majority. When rabbits begin spawning on his property, Alfred threatens to use the same trick to lose Fitzgerald the next election if he can't find a way to get rid of the rabbits.

Professor Welch: Leader of the team that is tasked to develop Supermyxomatosis, in the hope of annihilating the rabbit plague on Sir Alfred's ranch.

Les Dorfmann: Welch's second-in-command, who becomes a hunted fugitive, and later becomes Fitzgerald's last hope at defeating the deadly rabbits.

Dr Miller: Assistant to professor Golovin, who helps Dorfmann escape the authorities, and later marries him.

Flo Hill, AKA "Ladyill": Wife of Sir Alfred, who Fitzgerald was once infatuated with.

Major Gary Cooper Hill: Son of Ladyill and Sir Alfred. Military man in the Australian army. Unlike the Minister of Defence, Gary is a highly competent and very effective leader.

The Bludgerton Rabbits: Initially normal rabbits infesting Sir Alfred's Bludgerton property, they become savage plague-carriers when infected with Supermyx. They are the only thing that threatens Australia's total world dominance, and each time they resurface, they are larger, nastier, and more numerous.

Background
Braddon said he wrote the book "as a joke" and says it took him four weeks to complete.

References

External links
Serialised in Australia Women's weekly - Part One 21 October 1964, Part Two 28 October 1964, Part Three 4 November 1964

1964 Australian novels
1964 science fiction novels
Australian science fiction novels
Comic science fiction novels
Satirical novels
Australian novels adapted into films
Novels about rabbits and hares
Fiction about size change
Novels set in Australia
Heinemann (publisher) books

The Year of the Angry Rabbit