William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White (1859), a mystery novel and early "sensation novel", and for The Moonstone (1868), which established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel and is also perhaps the earliest clear example of the police procedural genre.

Born to the London painter William Collins and his wife, Harriet Geddes, he moved with them to Italy when he was twelve, living there and in France for two years, learning both Italian and French. He worked initially as a tea merchant. After Antonina, his first novel, appeared in 1850, Collins met Charles Dickens, who became a friend and mentor. Some of his work appeared in Dickens's journals Household Words and All the Year Round. They also collaborated on drama and fiction. Collins gained financial stability and an international following by the 1860s, but, in the 1870s and 1880s, after becoming addicted to the opium he took for his gout, his health and writing quality declined.

Collins criticised the institution of marriage: he split his time between widow Caroline Graves – living with her for most of his life, treating her daughter as his – and the younger Martha Rudd, with whom he had three children.

Early life

Collins was born at 11 New Cavendish Street, London, the son of William Collins, a well-known Royal Academician landscape painter, and his wife, Harriet Geddes. Named after his father, he was soon known by his middle name, which honoured his godfather, David Wilkie. The family moved to Pond Street, Hampstead, in 1826. In 1828 Collins's brother Charles Allston Collins was born. Between 1829 and 1830, the Collins family moved twice, first to Hampstead Square and then to Porchester Terrace, Bayswater. Wilkie and Charles received their early education from their mother at home. The Collins family were deeply religious, and Collins's mother enforced strict church attendance on her sons, which Wilkie disliked.

In 1835, Collins began attending school at the Maida Vale academy. From 1836 to 1838, he lived with his parents in Italy and France, which made a great impression on him. He learned Italian while in Italy and began learning French, in which he would eventually become fluent. From 1838 to 1840, he attended the Reverend Cole's private boarding school in Highbury, where he was bullied. One boy forced Collins to tell him a story every night before allowing him to go to sleep. "It was this brute who first awakened in me, his poor little victim, a power of which but for him I might never have been aware.... When I left school I continued story telling for my own pleasure," Collins later said.

In 1840 the family moved to 85 Oxford Terrace, Bayswater. In late 1840, Collins left school at the age of nearly 17 and was apprenticed as a clerk to the firm of tea merchants Antrobus & Co, owned by a friend of Wilkie's father. He disliked his clerical work but worked for the company for more than five years.

Collins started writing and published his first story, "The Last Stage Coachman", in the Illuminated Magazine in August 1843. In 1844 he travelled to Paris with Charles Ward. That same year he wrote his first novel, Iolani, or Tahiti as It Was; a Romance, which was submitted to Chapman and Hall but rejected in 1845. The novel remained unpublished during his lifetime. Collins said of it: "My youthful imagination ran riot among the noble savages, in scenes which caused the respectable British publisher to declare that it was impossible to put his name on the title page of such a novel." While Collins was writing this novel, his father first learned that his son would not follow him in becoming a painter.

William Collins had intended his first son to become a clergyman and was disappointed in his son's lack of interest. At his father's insistence, Collins instead entered Lincoln's Inn in 1846, to study law; his father wanted him to have a steady income. Collins showed only a slight interest in law and spent most of his time with friends and on working on a second novel, Antonina, or the Fall of Rome. After his father's death in 1847, Collins produced his first published book, Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R. A., published in 1848.

The family moved to 38 Blandford Square soon afterwards, where they used their drawing room for amateur theatricals. In 1849, Collins exhibited a painting, The Smugglers' Retreat, at the Royal Academy summer exhibition. Antonina was published by Richard Bentley in February 1850. Collins went on a walking tour of Cornwall with artist Henry Brandling in July and August 1850. He managed to complete his legal studies and was called to the bar in 1851. Though he never formally practised, he used his legal knowledge in many of his novels.

Early writing career

An instrumental event in his career was an introduction in March 1851 to Charles Dickens by a mutual friend, the painter Augustus Egg. They became lifelong friends and collaborators. In May of that year, Collins acted with Dickens in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's play Not So Bad As We Seem. Among the audience were Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Collins's story "A Terribly Strange Bed", his first contribution to Dickens's journal Household Words, was published in April 1852. In May 1852 he went on tour with Dickens's company of amateur actors, again performing Not So Bad As We Seem, but with a more substantial role.

Collins's novel Basil was published by Bentley in November. During the writing of Hide and Seek, in early 1853, Collins suffered what was probably his first attack of gout, which would plague him for the rest of his life. He was ill from April to early July. After that he stayed with Dickens in Boulogne from July to September 1853, then toured Switzerland and Italy with Dickens and Egg from October to December. Collins published Hide and Seek in June 1854.

During this period Collins extended the variety of his writing, publishing articles in George Henry Lewes's paper The Leader, short stories and essays for Bentley's Miscellany, as well as dramatic criticism and the travel book Rambles Beyond Railways. His first play, The Lighthouse, was performed by Dickens's theatrical company at Tavistock House, in 1855. His first collection of short stories, After Dark, was published by Smith, Elder in February 1856. His novel A Rogue's Life was serialised in Household Words in March 1856. Around then, Collins began using laudanum regularly to treat his gout. He became addicted and struggled with that problem later in life.

Collins joined the staff of Household Words in October 1856. In 1856–57 he collaborated closely with Dickens on a play, The Frozen Deep, first performed in Tavistock. Collins's novel The Dead Secret was serialised in Household Words from January to June 1857, before being published in volume form by Bradbury and Evans. Collins's play The Lighthouse was performed at the Olympic Theatre in August. His account, The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, based on Dickens's and Collins's walking tour in the north of England, was serialised in Household Words in October 1857. In 1858 Collins collaborated with Dickens and other writers on the story "A House to Let".

1860s
According to Collins's biographer Melisa Klimaszewski,
The novels Collins published in the 1860s are the best and most enduring of his career. The Woman in White, No Name, Armadale, and The Moonstone, written in less than a decade, show Collins not just as a master of his craft, but as an innovater and provocateur. These four works, which secured him an international reputation, and sold in large numbers, ensured his financial stability, and allowed him to support many others.

The Woman in White was serialised in All the Year Round from November 1859 to August 1860 to great success. The novel was published in book form soon after and reached an eighth edition by November 1860. His rising success as a writer allowed Collins to resign his post with All the Year Round in 1862 and focus on his novels. While planning his next novel, No Name, he continued to suffer from gout, which began to affect his eyes. Serial publication of No Name began in early 1862 and finished in 1863. By that time Collins was having difficulty controlling the amount of laudanum he was taking for his continual gout and became addicted.

At the beginning of 1863, he travelled with Caroline Graves to German spas and Italy for his health. In 1864, he began work on his novel Armadale, travelling in August to the Norfolk Broads and the village of Winterton-on-Sea to do research for it. It was published serially in The Cornhill Magazine in 1864–1866.

His play No Thoroughfare, co-written with Dickens, was published as the 1867 Christmas number of All the Year Round and dramatised at the Adelphi Theatre in the West End on 26 December. It enjoyed a run of 200 nights before being taken on tour. The Moonstone was serialised in All the Year Round from January to August 1868. His mother, Harriet Collins, died in that year.

Later years

In 1870, his novel Man and Wife was published. That year Charles Dickens died, which caused him great sadness. He said of the friends' early days together, "We saw each other every day, and were as fond of each other as men could be."

The Woman in White was dramatised and produced at the Olympic Theatre in October 1871. Collins's novel Poor Miss Finch was serialised in Cassell's Magazine from October to March 1872. His short novel Miss or Mrs? was published in the 1872 Christmas number of the Graphic. His novel The New Magdalen was serialised from October 1872 to July 1873. His younger brother, Charles Allston Collins, died later in 1873 at the age of 45. Charles had married Dickens's younger daughter, Kate.

In 1873–74, Collins toured the United States and Canada, giving readings of his work. The American writers he met included Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and Mark Twain. He began a friendship with photographer Napoleon Sarony, who took several portraits of him.

His novel The Law and the Lady, serialised in the Graphic from September to March 1875, was followed by a short novel, The Haunted Hotel, which was serialised from June to November 1878. His later novels include Jezebel's Daughter (1880), The Black Robe (1881), Heart and Science (1883), and The Evil Genius (1886). In 1884, Collins was elected Vice-President of the Society of Authors, which had been founded by his friend and fellow novelist Walter Besant.

The inconsistent quality of Collins's dramatic and fictional works in the last decade of his life was accompanied by a general decline in his health, including diminished eyesight. He was often unable to leave home and had difficulty writing. During these last years, he focused on mentoring younger writers, including the novelist Hall Caine. He also used his legal background to help protect other writers from copyright infringement of their works. His writing became a way for him to fight his illness without allowing it to keep him bedridden. His step-daughter Harriet also served as an amanuensis for several years. His last novel, Blind Love, was finished posthumously by Walter Besant.

Death

Collins died on 23 September 1889, at 65 Wimpole Street, following a paralytic stroke. He is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, West London. His headstone describes him as the author of The Woman in White. Caroline Graves died in 1895 and was buried with Collins. Martha Rudd died in 1919.

Personal life
In 1858 Collins began living with Caroline Graves and her daughter Harriet. Caroline came from a humble family, having married young, had a child, and been widowed. Collins lived close to the small shop kept by Caroline, and the two may have met in the neighbourhood in the mid–1850s. He treated Harriet, whom he called Carrie, as his own daughter, and helped to provide for her education. Excepting one short separation, they lived together for the rest of Collins's life. Collins disliked the institution of marriage, but remained dedicated to Caroline and Harriet, considering them to be his family.

Caroline had wanted to marry Collins. She left him while he wrote The Moonstone when he was suffering an attack of acute gout. She married a younger man named Joseph Clow, but after two years, she returned to Collins.

In 1868, Collins met Martha Rudd in Winterton-on-Sea in Norfolk, and the two began a liaison. She was 19 years old and from a large, poor family. A few years later, she moved to London to be closer to him. Their daughter Marian was born in 1869; their second daughter, Harriet Constance, in 1871; and their son, William Charles, in 1874. When he was with Martha, Collins assumed the name William Dawson, and she and their children used the last name of Dawson themselves.

For the last 20 years of his life Collins divided his time between Caroline, who lived with him at his home in Gloucester Place, and Martha, who was nearby.

Collins was a professing Christian.

Works

Collins's works were classified at the time as "sensation novels", a genre seen nowadays as the precursor to detective and suspense fiction. He also wrote penetratingly on the plight of women and on the social and domestic issues of his time. For example, his 1854 Hide and Seek contained one of the first portrayals of a deaf character in English literature. As did many writers of his time, Collins first published most of his novels as serials in magazines such as Dickens's All the Year Round, and was known as a master of the form, creating just the right degree of suspense to keep his audience reading from week to week.

The Lighthouse was a melodrama loosely based on Collins's 1853 short story, "Gabriel's Marriage", but set in the Eddystone Lighthouse of December 1748. In May 1855, Collins sent the finished play to Dickens, who enthusiastically took over the production. Dickens played Aaron Gurnock, the head lightkeeper, and arranged for Clarkson Stanfield to paint the backdrop. Other parts were taken by Collins, Augustus Egg, Mark Lemon, Mary Dickens and Georgina Hogarth. The production ran for four nights at Tavistock House, from 16 June 1855, followed by a single performance on 10 July at Campden House, Kensington. It was staged at the Royal Olympic Theatre from 10 August to 17 October 1857, as Collins's first professional production. Robson played Aaron Gurnock and George Vining read the Prologue. An American version opened at the New Theatre, New York, on 21 January 1858. There was an amateur production with Palgrave Simpson on 3 May 1865 at the Royal Bijou Theatre (Lambeth School of Art) and further revivals at Shelley's Boscombe Theatre in the 1870s and 1880s. The Lighthouse was translated into French by Emile Forgues.

Collins enjoyed ten years of success after publishing The Woman in White in 1859. His next novel, No Name combined social commentary – the absurdity of the law as applied to children of unmarried parents (see Illegitimacy in fiction) – with a densely plotted revenge thriller. Armadale, the first and only one of Collins's major novels of the 1860s to be serialised in a magazine other than All the Year Round, provoked strong criticism. Reviewers found its villainess Lydia Gwilt to be transgressive, and were further provoked by Collins's typically confrontational preface. The novel was simultaneously a financial coup for its author and a comparative commercial failure: the sum paid by Cornhill for the serialisation rights was exceptional, eclipsing by a substantial margin the prices paid for the vast majority of similar novels, yet the novel failed to recoup its publisher's investment.

The Moonstone, published in 1868, and the last novel of what is generally regarded as the most successful decade of its author's career, was, despite a somewhat cool reception from both Dickens and the critics, a significant return to form. It re-established the market value of an author whose success on the competitive Victorian literary market had been waning in the wake of his first perceived masterpiece. Viewed by many as the advent of the detective story within the tradition of the English novel, The Moonstone remains one of Collins's most acclaimed works. It was described later by T. S. Eliot as "the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels... in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe." The noted mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers later referred to it as "probably the very finest detective story ever written".

After The Moonstone, Collins's novels contained fewer thriller elements and more social commentary. The subject matter continued to be sensational, but his popularity declined. The poet Algernon Charles Swinburne commented: "What brought good Wilkie's genius nigh perdition? / Some demon whispered—'Wilkie! have a mission." Factors most often cited in Collins's decline have been the death of Dickens in 1870 and with it the loss of his literary mentoring, Collins's increased dependence upon laudanum, and his penchant for using his fiction to rail against social injustices.

The Woman in White and The Moonstone share an unusual narrative structure, somewhat resembling an epistolary novel, in which different portions of the book have different narrators, each with a distinct narrative voice. Armadale has this to a lesser extent through the correspondence between some characters.

Notable works

Antonina, or The Fall of Rome (1850)
Basil (1852)
"Gabriel's Marriage" (1853), short story
Hide and Seek (1854)
The Dead Secret (1856)
After Dark (1856), short story collection
The Frozen Deep (1857), play co-written with Charles Dickens
"A House to Let" (1858), short story co-written with Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter
"The Haunted House", short story co-written with Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Anne Proctor, George Sala and Hesba Stretton
The Woman in White (1860)
No Name (1862)
Armadale (1866)
No Thoroughfare (1867), story and play co-written with Charles Dickens
The Moonstone (1868)
Man and Wife (1870)
Poor Miss Finch (1872), dedicated to Frances Minto Elliot
The Law and the Lady (1875)
The Haunted Hotel (1878)
The Fallen Leaves (1879)
Jezebel's Daughter (1880)
The Black Robe (1881)
Heart and Science (1882–1883)
The Evil Genius (1885)

Screen adaptations
The Woman in White (silent, UK, 1929)
The Moonstone (1934)
The Woman in White (US, 1948)
The Moonstone (UK, seven episodes, 1959)
The Woman in White (West Germany, miniseries, three episodes, 1971, under the German title Die Frau in Weiß)
The Woman in White (USSR, two episodes, 1981, under the Russian title 'Zhenshchina v belom')
The Woman In White (1982 TV series, UK, five episodes, 1982)
The Woman in White (1997 TV series, The Woman in White, UK, 1997)
Basil (1998)
The Moonstone (UK, five episodes, 2016)
The Woman in White (UK, five episodes, 2018)

See also
Illegitimacy in fiction

References

Further reading

Elwin, Malcolm. Victorian Wallflowers, Jonathan Cape, 1934. (chapter 6)
Robert Gottlieb, "'Make 'Em Cry, Make 'Em Laugh, Make 'Em Wait'", The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 10 (8 June 2017), pp. 25–28.

Olive Logan "Wilkie Collins's Charms"

External links

The Wilkie Collins Website
Wilkie Collins Information Pages
Wilkie Collins Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin

The Ramsgate Society Website

Book of the Week from BBC Radio 4.

1824 births
1889 deaths
19th-century English biographers
19th-century English dramatists and playwrights
19th-century British journalists
19th-century English non-fiction writers
19th-century English novelists
19th-century British short story writers
19th-century English essayists
19th-century merchants
19th-century English memoirists
British biographers
British crime fiction writers
British expatriates in France
British expatriates in Italy
British historical fiction writers
British historical novelists
British horror writers
British male dramatists and playwrights
British male essayists
British male journalists
British male non-fiction writers
British male novelists
British male short story writers
British memoirists
British merchants
British mystery writers
British people of Scottish descent
British romantic fiction writers
Burials at Kensal Green Cemetery
Criticism of marriage
Critics of the Catholic Church
British detective fiction writers
English biographers
English crime fiction writers
English essayists
English expatriates in France
English expatriates in Italy
English historical novelists
English horror writers
English male dramatists and playwrights
English male journalists
English male novelists
English male short story writers
English merchants
English mystery writers
English non-fiction writers
English people of Scottish descent
English romantic fiction writers
Writers from Marylebone
British psychological fiction writers
Victorian novelists
Writers about activism and social change
Writers of Gothic fiction
Writers of historical fiction set in antiquity
Writers of historical fiction set in the early modern period
Writers of historical romances

Wilkie Collins


A pipeline is a long tube, that is used to transport liquids or gases over long distances. Pipelines are made of metal. While the transport of liquids and gases is common, some pipelines are used to transport coal or iron ore, which are mixed with mud. Such pipelines are sometimes called slurry pipelines. Even though a pipeline is very expensive to build, the low operating cost often makes it the cheapest transport.

Many stadiums use a central tank for beer. Each bar is served by a pipeline from the central tank.

Even though mail and other goods can also be delivered that way, the system is generally not referred to as pipeline. In this case, capsules are used. These are propelled by air.

Technology
Pipeline networks are made of different components. These are:
The supply station is where the pipeline starts. Very often, there are  tanks that act as a buffer
There are several pumps and compressors, which move the product through the pipeline.
Partial delivery stations allow to deliver part of the product
Block valve stations use valves to isolate the pipeline into independent segments.
Regulator stations are used to release some of the pressure
The final delivery station is where the product is delivered to the consumer. Very often tanks are used as a buffer.

Images

Technology

Pipeline


The Fields Medal is a prize given to mathematicians who are not over 40 years of age. It is given at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union. This is a meeting that takes place every four years.

The Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields was the first to propose this medal and it was first awarded in 1936. It has been regularly awarded since 1950. Its purpose is to support younger mathematicians who made major contributions.

The Fields Medal is viewed, at least in the media, as the top honor a mathematician can receive. It comes with a monetary award. In 2006 the award was C$15,000 (US$13,400 or €10,550). The Abel Prize has similar prestige, and more money.

Conditions of the award
The Fields Medal is often described as the "Nobel Prize of mathematics". But there are several differences. First, it is awarded not only to recognize the valuable contributions of a mathematician but also to encourage him or her to continue their works. The Fields Medals have generally been awarded for a mathematician's whole work.

Another difference is that the Fields Medal is awarded every four years. The recipients cannot be over the age of 40.

Fields Medalists
 2022: Hugo Duminil-Copin (France), June Huh (US), James Maynard (UK), Maryna Viazovska (Ukraine)
 2018: Caucher Birkar (UK-Iran), Alessio Figalli (Italy), Peter Scholze (Germany), Akshay Venkatesh (Australia)
 2014: Artur Avila (Brazil), Manjul Bhargava (U.S.), Martin Hairer (UK), Maryam Mirzakhani (U.S.)
 2010: Elon Lindenstrauss (Israel), Ngô Bảo Châu (Vietnam/France), Stanislav Smirnov (Russia), Cédric Villani (France)
 2006: Andrei Okounkov (Russia), Grigori Perelman (Russia) (declined award), Terence Tao (Australia), Wendelin Werner (France)
 2002: Laurent Lafforgue (France), Vladimir Voevodsky (Russia)
 1998: Richard Ewen Borcherds (UK), William Timothy Gowers (UK), Maxim Kontsevich (Russia), Curtis T. McMullen (U.S.)
 1994: Efim Isakovich Zelmanov (Russia), Pierre-Louis Lions (France), Jean Bourgain (Belgium), Jean-Christophe Yoccoz (France)
 1990: Vladimir Drinfeld (USSR), Vaughan Frederick Randal Jones (New Zealand), Shigefumi Mori (Japan), Edward Witten (U.S.)
 1986: Simon Donaldson (UK), Gerd Faltings (West Germany), Michael Freedman (U.S.)
 1982: Alain Connes (France), William Thurston (U.S.), Shing-Tung Yau (China)
 1978: Pierre Deligne (Belgium), Charles Fefferman (U.S.), Grigory Margulis (USSR), Daniel Quillen (U.S.)
 1974: Enrico Bombieri (Italy), David Mumford (U.S.)
 1970: Alan Baker (UK), Heisuke Hironaka (Japan), Sergei Petrovich Novikov (USSR), John Griggs Thompson (U.S.)
 1966: Michael Atiyah (UK), Paul Joseph Cohen (U.S.), Alexander Grothendieck (France), Stephen Smale (U.S.)
 1962: Lars Hörmander (Sweden), John Milnor (U.S.)
 1958: Klaus Roth (UK), René Thom (France)
 1954: Kunihiko Kodaira (Japan), Jean-Pierre Serre (France)
 1950: Laurent Schwartz (France), Atle Selberg (Norway)
 1936: Lars Ahlfors (Finland), Jesse Douglas (U.S.)

Footnotes

Other websites
 Official site

Mathematics
Science awards

Fields Medal


A period 4 element is an element in the fourth period (row) of the periodic table. It begins at potassium and ends at krypton. Period 4 has 18 elements.

Period 4 elements have electrons in the first four electron shells. All period 4 elements have one or more electrons in the fourth electron shell (valence electrons). When atomic number increases by one, another electron is added. Two electrons join the 4s orbital, ten electrons join the 3d orbital, and six electrons join the 4p orbitals.

Periodic table

Period 4 element


Diethyl ether is a clear liquid chemical. It is often just called ether. Ether burns very easily and boils at about 35°C. It has a sweet smell and does not mix with water.

Ether was discovered in 1275. It was used in the past as a general anesthetic to make people unconscious during surgery. Now other chemicals are used because ether has side effects and can catch fire. Ether is used as a solvent by scientists for chemical reactions.

People used to take ether as a recreational drug (drugs used for fun, such as alcohol) in the 1800s. People would either drink a drink with small amounts of ether in it, just like people drink alcoholic drinks, or inhale the fumes given off by pure or nearly pure ether. This could have addicted these people to the ether if they did that often enough. It was a big problem in some places, like Ireland and Poland. It first became popular because Europeans thought it was unladylike to drink alcohol. Women would drink ether instead, as would teetotalers, people who had decided not to drink alcohol.

It became illegal to sell ether in Poland in 1923.

Ether is made as a byproduct when ethanol is made, so it is not very expensive.

Organic compounds
Anesthetics

Diethyl ether


Seeheim-Jugenheim is a municipality in the Darmstadt-Dieburg district in Hesse, Germany.  It has a population of approximately 17,000.

Seeheim-Jugenheim consists of seven villages:

Balkhausen (population 693)
Jugenheim (population 4,448)
Malchen (population 1,004)
Ober-Beerbach (population 1,269)
Seeheim (population 9,060)
Steigerts (population 81)
Stettbach (population 144)

The municipality was formed on January 1, 1977.  Before there had been the two municipalities of Seeheim and Jugenheim.  Until January 1, 1978 the municipality was known as Seeheim; after that it became known as Seeheim-Jugenheim.

It is famous for its mountain bike trails to the nearby mountain Melibokus.

Seeheim-Jugenheim has been home to several famous residents, including Tsar Nicholas II of Russia as well as writers Georg Kaiser and Helene Christaller.

Industrial and commercial activity in Seeheim-Jugenheim is close to nonexistent; thus, most of its residents work in the nearby cities of Darmstadt, Frankfurt or Heidelberg.

Other websites
 www.seeheim-jugenheim.de

Municipalities in Hesse

Seeheim-Jugenheim


Swimming is the movement of the body through water using arms and legs. People can swim in the sea, swimming pools, rivers and lakes. People swim for exercise, for fun, and as a sport. There are several styles of swimming, known as "strokes", including: front crawl, breaststroke, freestyle, butterfly, and backstroke.

Swimming works all the muscles simultaneously. It is impact free. It also builds up stamina.

Styles of swimming
There are several styles in swimming. Some of them are:

 Front crawl: Fastest and most efficient technique; also called freestyle, because swimmers use it in freestyle events.
 Backstroke: Only stroke that is swum on the back with the swimmer looking up; uses the same leg movements (flutter kick) as crawl.
 Breaststroke: One of the easiest and most relaxing strokes; competitive swimmers find it difficult because it uses more energy when swum at a fast pace.
 Butterfly: Powerful and fast; relies on good technique; uses the dolphin kick; the hardest and least popular stroke.

Competitive swimming
The goal of competitive swimming is to improve speed, and to beat other competitors in events. An athlete goes through several stages of training. At the beginning, the body is overloaded with work. The workload becomes less closer to the date of the competition. This final stage is often referred to as "shave and taper"; the swimmer tapering downs his or her workload to be able to perform at their optimal level. At the end of this stage, before competition, the swimmer shaves off all exposed hair and dead skin. Often confused within shaving, swimmers shave to rid the skin of dead skin cells to expose sensitive skin to the water. The effect of shaving is a decrease in drag from hair and an increase in the sensation of "feeling" the water.

Equipment
Sometimes equipment is used when swimming, and can include:

 Fins: rubber or plastic and are worn on the foot.
 Kickboard: keeps the upper body afloat; allows the swimmer to concentrate on kicking correctly
 Pull buoy: foam float that swimmers hold between their thighs to keep the lower body high and flat; helps to learn the arm and upper body movements
Swimming Suits: These are made from a special fabric and used in swimming

Related pages
 Aquatic locomotion deals with animals swimming.

References

Fitness

Animal locomotion

Swimming


Fa il suo esordio nella massima serie nel 1981 a 18 anni nelle file del Bologna ove resterà sino al 1989 per poi passare nelle file del Milano che nel frattempo era stato acquistato da Berlusconi inserendo il Baseball nella neo creata Mediolanun Sport con calcio, rugby, hockey su ghiaccio e pallavolo, dopo tre campionati viene acquistato dal Parma Baseball con cui rimane sino al 1996 per poi passare per una sola stagione al Modena e quella successiva al Rimini, facendo ritorno a Modena nel 1999 dove conclude la sua carriere da giocatore intraprendendo quella da tecnico appunto nel Modena e poi nello Junior Parma.

È l'unico giocatore in Italia ad essersi aggiudicato per 2 volte il prestigioso trofeo della Tripla corona.

L'esordio in Nazionale è nel 1982 ai Mondiali in Korea,ha partecipato a 2 Olimpiadi, 1984 Los Angeles 1992 Barcellona

Il 22 agosto 1990 ha rappresentato l'Italia insieme a Ruggero Bagialemani giocando da titolare la partita delle Stelle, svoltasi ad Atlanta tra Americhe Vs. Resto del Mondo vinta dal Resto del Mondo per 11 a 8.

È stato insignito dal CONI con la Medaglia di bronzo e la Medaglia d'argento al valore atletico e nel 2009 è entrato a far parte della HALL OF FAME del Baseball Italiano.

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Roberto Bianchi

Bats Right, Throws Right
Height 6' 1", Weight 200 lb.
Born March 2, 1963 in Milan, Milan Italy
Olympics-Reference pag

Biographical Information
Roberto Bianchi holds the all-time Italian home run record. He won two Triple Crowns in Italy as well and was a two-time Olympian.

Bianchi debuted in Italy's Serie A1 in 1981 with Fortitudo Bologna, hitting .350/.403/.658 with 28 runs, 10 home runs and 43 RBI in 28 games. He played catcher, first base, right field and left field, all positions he would see significant time at during his lengthy career. As a rookie, Roberto led the league in RBI. In a try-out for the Baltimore Orioles that season, he hit a home run out of Memorial Stadium. The Orioles wanted to sign Bianchi but the Italian Baseball and Softball Federation nixed the move. He would later see offers from the California Angels, Cincinnati Reds, Los Angeles Dodgers and Cleveland Indians but remained in Italy, much like Giorgio Castelli.

Roberto hit .314/.455/.471 with 27 walks and 26 runs in 28 games in '82. He debuted for the Italian national team at age 19 in the 1982 Amateur World Series. In the 1983 campaign, the Bologna slugger batted .482/.550/.819 with 13 doubles, 15 walks, 28 runs and 36 RBI in 18 games in the Serie A Girone B, then hit .347/.445/.627 with 11 home runs, 45 runs and 44 RBI in 39 games in the Poule Scudetto. He helped Italy win a Gold Medal at the 1983 European Championship, being named the best hitter after batting .487 with 3 home runs and 15 RBI in their 9 games.

Bianchi's batting line in 1984 read .408/.538/.887 with 18 walks, 9 home runs, 29 runs and 28 RBI in 20 games in the Serie Nazionale Lega Est, then .430/.589/.793 with 50 walks, 45 runs and 45 RBI in 41 contests in the Poule Scudetto. He was .006 behind batting champion Craig Stimac, a former major leaguer. He helped Bologna win the title, the only pennant they took during his gloried seasons with them. Roberto played for Italy in the 1984 Olympics. In the 1984 Amateur World Series, he hit .500/.546/1.025 with 6 HR, 12 R and 20 RBI in 10 games, primarily at catcher. He led the Series in average by .025 over Víctor Mesa and was the lone non-Cuban in the top five. He tied Luis Casanova and Pedro Jose Rodriguez Sr. for the home run lead and tied Casanova for 3rd with 20 hits, trailing only Mesa and Alfonso Urquiola. He also led the event in RBI, 4 ahead of runners-up Barry Bonds and Lourdes Gourriel Sr.. Jim Dietz listed him as a pro prospect that year.

Bianchi put together a strong season in 1985, hitting .392/.542/.804 with 76 walks, 26 home runs, 106 runs and 102 RBI in 67 games. He shattered Stimac's RBI record of 74; no one else has even reached triple digits in Italian history. Roberto helped Italy win a Silver Medal at the 1985 European Championship, hitting .469/.605/.906 to lead his team in OBP and slugging. He also led with 9 walks in 9 games and 16 runs (7 more than #2 Guglielmo Trinci). His 11 RBI tied Paolo Catanzani for second on the team, one behind Trinci. He was Italy's main catcher in the event and also backed up in LF.

Roberto kept on slugging in '86, producing at a .466/.560/.960 clip with 51 walks, 23 home runs, 74 runs and 84 RBI in 48 games. He won his first batting title and led in RBI for the third time. He was one home run shy of a Triple Crown, trailing Dave Malpeso. He was named the All-Star catcher at the 1986 Amateur World Series after hitting .414 with 5 home runs and a tourney-best 18 runs. He was one homer behind tourney leader Casanova of Cuba.

In 1987, Bianchi won his first Triple Crown, hitting .474/.588/1.051 with 41 walks, 16 steals in 19 tries, 27 home runs, 70 runs and 72 RBI in just 41 games. He was just the third Triple Crown winner in Italian baseball history following Roberto Gandini (1962) and Castelli (1974). He played in the 1987 Intercontinental Cup and 1987 European Championship (in which Italy won a Silver Medal). In the '87 Euros, he hit .559/.615/1.265, leading Italy in average, hits (19, two more than Elio Gambuti), runs (16, 4 more than Trinci), homers (8, double Ruggero Bagialemani), RBI (22, 6 ahead of Bagialemani) and game-winning RBI (3 of their 4).

Bianchi batted .351/.528/.743 for Bologna in 1988 with 28 walks, 27 runs and 25 RBI in 22 games. In the 1988 Baseball World Cup, Roberto hit only .235/.341/.265 in a disappointing showing as Italy's left fielder. Roberto hit .387/.526/.824 in 1989 with 45 walks, 15 home runs, 46 runs and 53 RBI in 42 games. He won his second home run crown and 5th RBI title that year. He was 39 points behind batting champion Giuseppe Carelli. He played in the 1989 Intercontinental Cup and 1989 European Championship (hitting .276/.447/.345 with 8 runs and a team-high 9 walks in 9 games as Italy took Gold; he mostly was DH, also backing up Gambuti at catcher).

Roberto's pace did not slacken as he ended his first decade. He hit .368/.519/.741 for Milano in 1990 with 61 walks, 85 runs, 18 home runs and 75 RBI in 62 games. He was two home runs shy of the league lead. In the 1990 Baseball World Cup, the veteran hit .417/.563/.667 with 7 RBI in 7 games while alternating between catcher and DH, leading Italy's offense once more in a major tournament.

In 1991, the Milan native hit .460/.580/.921 for his hometown club with 38 walks, 16 homers, 45 runs and 55 RBI in 36 games. He became the first two-time Triple Crown winner in Italian history. It would be 19 years before another player (Carlos Duran would win a Tripla Corona in Italy. He then batted .414/.457/.724 for Italy in the 1991 Intercontinental Cup, leading Italy's hitters again. In the 1991 European Championship, he was named best hitter and Italy took home the title. It would be his last appearance in the European Championships; with 3 Gold Medals, he was one of the top medalists in Italian history.

Bianchi batted .394/.492/.827 with 13 homers, 38 runs and 43 RBI in 29 games in 1992. He was one home run behind leader David Sheldon. In the 1992 Olympics, the 29-year-old hit .200/.500/.267 as Italy's main DH. He tied Jason Giambi for the most walks (9) in the Summer Games that year and only had two fewer walks than the entire Spanish team; this despite sitting out two of Italy's 8 games.

In 1993, Roberto's batting line was .448/.523/.784 for his new Parma club. He had 40 runs and 51 RBI in 33 contests for his 7th and last time leading the Serie A1 in RBI. He was just 2 for 17 as Italy's first baseman in the 1993 Intercontinental Cup. It was his last major tournament with the Italian national team, having played 150 games for them on the international stage. Through 2009, only longtime Azzurri teammate Bagialemani had played more games for Italy.

Bianchi batted .353/.480/.660 for Parma in '94 with 53 runs and 51 RBI in 46 games. He was 10 RBI behind leader Brad Komminsk. He won his second pennant that year. In 1995, he hit .422/.515/.797 with Parma with 23 doubles, 15 home runs, 55 runs and 65 RBI in 54 games. He was .005 shy of Jessie Reid for the batting title, 4 home runs behind leader Reid and two RBI behind leader Francesco Casolari, nearly taking home another Triple Crown in his 15th year. He helped Parma win another title. In 2015, he was retroactively awarded the MVP for 1995 (no MVP was issued in Italy from 1983-1999).

The old-timer produced at a .356/.502/.684 rate in 1996 with 61 runs and 52 RBI in 50 games. That year, he told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel that "I love baseball more than I love myself." Despite his success on the field, he could walk down an Italian street without drawing notice due to the low profile of the game in his nation.

At age 34, Bianchi hit .384/.506/.664 for Modena with 49 walks, 48 runs and 64 RBI in 53 games. In '98, he batted .355/.449/.633 with Rimini, scoring 43 and driving in 57 in 44 games. He was only 7 RBI behind leader Massimo Fochi. He was 7 for 15 in the finals but Rimini failed to take the title. He wrapped up his playing career in 1999, hitting .371/.491/.484 with just one home run in 28 games.

Overall, Bianchi had batted .384/.508/.730 in 949 games in Italy. He had 1,106 runs, 270 doubles, 288 home runs, 1,170 RBI, 843 walks and 134 steals in 174 tries. Through 2008, he is among Italy's all-time leaders in homers (1st, 68 over runner-up Carelli), hits (1,307, 3rd behind Roberto De Franceschi and Bagialemani), RBI (1st by 246 over Carelli), runs (1st by 39 over De Franceschi) and average (4th behind Castelli, Stimac and Jesse Baez).

He later became a coach and manager.

In 2009, he was voted into the Italian Baseball Hall of Fame.

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni

Roberto Bianchi (giocatore di baseball)


New Year's Revolution was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event, that was shown every January by the American professional wrestling promotion, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). The event was created in 2005, with its first event shown in January of that year. To go with the brand extension, only wrestlers from the Raw brand were on it during the event's history.

Since its creation in 2005, the event has been held in one country: the United States. It has been held in two U.S. states and once in Puerto Rico, where every event has been held in an indoor arena. Each event showed professional wrestlers from WWE competing in various professional wrestling match types. Since the first event, three championship matches have taken place in the main event.

New Year's Revolution was removed from the WWE schedule when they removed more PPVs per year.  Currently, the only PPV run by the WWE in January is the Royal Rumble.

World Wrestling Entertainment pay-per-view events
2005 establishments
January events

WWE New Year's Revolution


Duplicity is a 2009 American romantic crime comedy film written and directed by Tony Gilroy, and starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. The plot follows two corporate spies with a romantic history who collaborate to carry out a complicated con. The film was released on March 20, 2009.

Plot
Five years ago. Ray Koval, an MI6 agent, meets Claire Stenwick, a CIA officer, at a party in Dubai. He is unaware of her identity and attempts to seduce her. Claire drugs him and steals classified documents from him.

Three years later in Rome, Ray and Claire meet for the first time since Dubai and spend several days together at a posh hotel. They imagine leaving their government jobs for work in an intensely competitive area in the private sector. They contemplate using their skills in intelligence to enrich themselves. After exploring possibilities over several months, including companies vying for the market in double-crust pizza, they settle on cosmetics and personal hygiene. How they will turn their positions to their advantage is unclear even to them, but they will be ready when the opportunity presents itself.

Claire accepts a job in counter-intelligence at Burkett & Randle. After more than a year, Ray takes a position in intelligence at Equikrom, where he will act as the handler and Claire as one of his agents.

Aware that Ray's new employer will be spying on him to assess his loyalty, he and Claire first practise how they will pretend to be meeting in New York for the first time since Dubai, reprising much of the dialogue of their actual encounter in Rome. They are unaware that Claire's employers at Burkett & Randle are spying on her and overhear this rehearsal, which blows her cover. Burkett & Randle's CEO Howard Tully decides to keep Claire in her job, even though she is a mole, and to manipulate her in his rivalry with Equikrom.

Claire and Ray, working as mole and handler, reprise the dialogue yet again and, as they had anticipated, Ray's employer is listening in and is persuaded that Ray is loyal.

Throughout the weeks that follow, Claire and Ray remain wary of one another. Both are experienced in double-dealing and despite their romantic connection and plans to escape with new identities once this operation is complete, neither is entirely free of the other's suspicion.

Tully makes a speech to his intelligence team, including Claire, that paints his company as the innovator defending itself from duplicity and theft. He underscores how the unannounced new product makes vigilance even more urgent. He and others in his organization plant information that they know she and the intelligence team at Equikrom will steal as they try to understand what that "major development" might be.

Claire provides a copy of this speech to Equikrom CEO Dick Garsik, who plots to steal whatever Burkett & Randle has developed. His team, including Ray, devote themselves to stealing information from Burkett & Randle's offices, in the course of which Ray seduces one of their travel office employees and he and several others visit a casino in the Bahamas.

Thanks to information from Ray, Claire is able to appear a hero to her employers, catching Equikrom's spying activities after the fact or thwarting them in some measure in the Bahamas. Tully at Burkett & Randle pretends to be impressed, thanks Claire for successfully defending the company's new product, and he reveals to her that it is a cure for baldness. She informs Garsik at Equikrom, who leaves for a shareholders meeting in Las Vegas expecting she will obtain the chemical formula and he will announce the new development to his shareholders before Burkett & Randle goes public with the information.

Excitement builds as the Equikrom team, using Claire as their principal source inside their rival's offices, succeed in acquiring a copy of the formula. Claire and Ray meet at the Zürich Airport, each with a copy of the formula that they plan to sell to a Swiss company for $35 million. At the same time, Garsik tells his shareholders that they are in the final stages of testing a product that cures baldness. The formula, the Swiss announce to Ray and Claire, is not what they think, just a harmless lotion. They in turn are disappointed, but impressed by how completely they were manipulated. They have only each other now, and a thank you bottle of champagne from Tully.

Narrative style
The film does not present events chronologically, but moves back and forth in time to peel away layers and reveal unsuspected motivations. In one instance, the same dialog is recapitulated, but the words that are spoken in chronological sequence in Rome, a hotel room, and a bar, are presented in a different sequence: the bar, Rome, the hotel room. The audience only understands progressively when these lines represent an actual conversation and when they are being repeated, and also when they are overheard by an unsuspected audience and overheard by a suspected audience. In chronological sequence the events are still complex.

Cast

 Julia Roberts as Claire Stenwick
 Clive Owen as Ray Koval
 Tom Wilkinson as Howard Tully
 Paul Giamatti as Richard "Dick" Garsik
 Denis O'Hare as Duke Monahan
 Kathleen Chalfant as Pam Fraile
 Thomas McCarthy as Jeff Bauer
 Wayne Duvall as Ned Guston
 Carrie Preston as Barbara Bofferd
 Christopher Denham as Ronny Partiz
 Oleg Shtefanko as Boris Fetyov (as Oleg Stefan)
 Happy Anderson as Physec
 Rick Worthy as Dale Raimes

Production
Production on Duplicity began in New York City on March 9, 2008, and wrapped shooting on May 27 of that year. Filming locations included Paradise Island in the Bahamas for the casino shots, New York City including the West Village, Trafalgar Square in London and outside the Pantheon in Rome.

Release
The film was released on March 19, 2009 in Australia and on March 20 in the US and the UK. It had its world premiere on March 11, 2009 at London's Leicester Square.

Reception
The film received mixed to positive reviews from film critics. , the film holds a 65% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 192 reviews with an average rating of 6.40/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Duplicity is well-crafted, smart, and often funny, but it's mostly more cerebral than visceral and features far too many plot twists." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 69 out of 100 based on reviews from 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "Duplicity is entertaining, but the complexities of its plot keep it from being really involving: When nothing is as it seems, why care?", but admitted that "the fun is in watching Roberts and Owen fencing with dialogue, keeping straight faces, trying to read each other's minds".

In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, "So what has gone wrong with Duplicity? I can only go with my gut feeling: that Mr. Gilroy has outsmarted himself by pulling too many switches in his narrative. He then fails to recover by coming up with a smash ending that pulls all the scattered pieces together". Scott Foundas, in his review for the Village Voice, wrote, "Comedy seems to have liberated Gilroy, who directs Duplicity with the high gloss and fleet-footed hustle of a golden-age Hollywood craftsman. There's nary a dull stretch in its two-hour breadth".

Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B" rating; Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, "Gilroy counts on a Thin Man-style undercurrent of sexual sparring to sustain our interest in two scheming corporate operatives despite the fact that nothing much else is going on".

In his review for The New York Times, A. O. Scott praised Julia Roberts' performance: "Ms. Roberts has almost entirely left behind the coltish, America's-sweetheart mannerisms, except when she uses them strategically, to disarm or confuse. Curvier than she used to be and with a touch of weariness around her eyes and impatience in her voice, she is, at 41, unmistakably in her prime".

Sukhdev Sandhu, in his review for The Daily Telegraph, wrote, "Duplicity is really all about Roberts and Owen. They're con artists, but they don't fool us. Their pairing here feels duplicitous. Gilroy, it seems, is better at thrilling audiences than he is at seducing them". However, not all reviews were positive; Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film two and a half stars out of four and said "Gilroy and his stars make it elegant fun to be fooled, but they sure as hell make you work for it."

Filmmaker and author Peter Bogdanovich cited Duplicity as an example of a recent Hollywood film that has a pretentious style of filmmaking as compared with the organic artistic approach of Orson Welles to cinema, highlighting its non-chronological presentation of events as unnecessary and stating, "... and they wonder why the audience said 'What the fuck is going on?'"

Accolades

Home media
The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on August 25, 2009. Mill Creek Entertainment re-released the Blu-ray on September 17, 2019 and also included the DVD version in the Romance 4 Pack collection that will be released on September 15, 2020.

References

External links

2009 films
2000s crime comedy films
2009 romantic comedy films
American romantic comedy films
American crime comedy films
Films directed by Tony Gilroy
Films scored by James Newton Howard
Films shot in New York City
Films shot in Rome
Films with screenplays by Tony Gilroy
Relativity Media films
Universal Pictures films
Romantic crime films
2000s English-language films
2000s American films

Duplicity (film)


No Pressure is a 2010 short film produced by the global warming mitigation campaign 10:10, written by Richard Curtis and Franny Armstrong, and directed by Dougal Wilson. Intended for cinema and television advertisements, No Pressure is composed of scenes in which a variety of men, women and children in every-day situations are graphically blown to pieces for failing to be sufficiently enthusiastic about the 10:10 campaign to reduce CO2 emissions. The film's makers said that they viewed No Pressure as "a funny and satirical tongue-in-cheek little film in the over-the-top style of Monty Python or South Park". Before its release, The Guardian described it as "attention-grabbing" and "pretty edgy."

The film was withdrawn from public circulation by 10:10, on the same day it was released, due to negative publicity. Charities that had backed the film stated they were "absolutely appalled" upon seeing it, and several of 10:10's corporate and strategic partners withdrew from partnership.

Background and production
The film was made in an attempt to challenge the "no pressure" attitude often displayed both by governments and individuals towards taking real action on climate change. 10:10 highlighted the urgency of action with claims that carbon dioxide emissions must be stabilised by 2014 (within four years) in order to avoid disaster, and that "300,000 real people" are already killed by climate change annually. Lizzie Gillet, 10:10 global campaign director, explained: "With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines while making people laugh. We were therefore delighted when Richard Curtis agreed to write a short film for the 10:10 campaign".

The film was shot on a location at Camden School for Girls, in the London Borough of Camden in North London. According to 10:10, over 50 film professionals and more than 40 actors and extras provided their services at no cost.

Synopsis
The four-minute film consists of a series of short scenes in which groups of people are asked if they are interested in participating in the 10:10 project to reduce carbon emissions. Those failing to show enthusiasm for the cause are gruesomely blown to pieces.

In the first scene, a bright and chirpy schoolteacher, played by Lyndsey Marshal, tells her class about the 10:10 campaign, and asks what they are doing to reduce their carbon footprint. She asks which students are planning to participate; most raise their hands, but two children shrug apathetically. The teacher reassures them that this is "fine, it's absolutely fine, it's your choice" and there is "no pressure", but then shifts the papers on her desk to reveal a red-buttoned detonator, which she presses. The two children who did not want to participate explode, covering their screaming classmates with blood and body parts. The blood-spattered teacher then goes on casually to explain the night's homework to her horrified charges.

The second scene shows a group of white-collar workers in an office meeting. The office manager, played by Paul Ritter, similarly explains the purpose of the 10:10 campaign, and asks who will be participating. While most raise their hands, four raise their hands unconvinced. The manager reassures them that there is "no pressure" to participate, but he is then handed a detonator by an assistant, which he uses to blow up the four workers, splattering appalled co-workers with gore.

The third scene is set on a football pitch during team training. The coach, played by David Ginola, asks the players to explain the 10:10 campaign that the team is participating in. They describe a range of energy-saving measures which have been implemented by the team and its fans. However, the coach remains unmoved, remarking the campaign would distract him from football. A player tells him that there's "no pressure", produces a detonator, and blows him up. Unlike the witnesses depicted in previous scenes, the team is not at all surprised, and casually jogs away to resume training.

A brief interlude with captions explains the campaign, accompanied by music from Radiohead. In the final scene, the actress Gillian Anderson is finishing the voice-over for the interlude just seen. The sound engineer asks her what she is planning to do to cut her carbon footprint. Anderson irritably remarks that she thought providing the recording was a sufficient contribution. The sound engineer repeats the film's catchphrase, "no pressure", and detonates Anderson before picking up to leave. The film ends with a shot of Anderson's gory remains sliding down the sound-booth window with the text "Cut your carbon by 10%. No pressure."

Reception
Upon its release, No Pressure provoked an immediate negative reaction in the media, and the resulting controversy became widely referred to as "splattergate" by bloggers.

In The Daily Telegraph, James Delingpole wrote that the film was an "ugly, counterproductive eco-propaganda movie" and that "with No Pressure, the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness". The ConservativeHome website described it as "crass, tasteless and unfunny as it gets", while Melanie Phillips in The Spectator commented on the intended humorous aspect of the film by writing that "The joke was only about blowing dissenters to bits and raining their flesh down on terrified people. Because exterminating human beings is acceptable to greens as a joke. From which we can only assume at best indifference towards and at worst a profound loathing of the human condition".

American environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben lamented the film on the Climate Progress website, where he wrote "The climate skeptics can crow. It's the kind of stupidity that hurts our side, reinforcing in people's minds a series of preconceived notions, not the least of which is that we're out-of-control and out of touch—not to mention off the wall, and also with completely misplaced sense of humor". McKibben added "There's no question that crap like this will cast a shadow, for a time, over our efforts and everyone else who's working on global warming. McKibben subsequently withdrew as an organisational partner of 10:10.

In The Independent, Dominic Lawson wrote "As often as 10:10 tried to pull the film off YouTube, their critics re-posted it. This, at least, proves what a cataclysmic misjudgement Curtis had made. When you try to satirise the critics of your campaign, and it turns out that those very critics embrace your film as demonstrating exactly what they find unbearable about the climate-obsessed eco-lobby, then you know that you have kicked the ball into your own net".

The film generated a huge reaction in the blogosphere. One comment to The Guardian read: "To suggest that people who disagree with you deserve to die is incredibly stupid. Imagine if some Christian group in the US did that to gays, Muslims or anyone else they disagree with. The outrage would be palpable. And deserved."

The Guardian, which was a key collaborator with the 10:10 campaign since its launch and got exclusive rights to show the film première, responded to the criticism by stating that "the film may have been somewhat tasteless, but it was an imaginative attempt to challenge public apathy over climate change". This statement originally ended "and, highly unusually for attempts to communicate about this subject, funny too", but this was later redacted. A later report in the newspaper by Adam Vaughan said that the film, "intended as a tongue-in-cheek spoof of hectoring greens", had created a huge amount of global coverage for 10:10, in print and on the web. The report said that while many people had found the film hilarious, there was a "predictable slating from climate sceptics" as well as furious reactions from some environmentalists. The report also went on to describe other, more reflective responses, which had focused on effective communication, psychology, satire, and ways of engaging with various audiences over climate change.

Withdrawal
Although originally planned to be shown in cinema and television advertisements, 10:10 removed the film from their website and YouTube later on 1 October 2010. On Friday 2 October, 10:10 placed a notice on their website saying, "Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn't and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended. [...] At 10:10 we're all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn." This was criticised as a non-apology apology by Michelle Malkin in the Litchfield County Register and Andrew Revkin in an opinion piece in The New York Times. A spokesman for 10:10 also denied that the withdrawal had been planned from the beginning in order to generate publicity. After removing the video from YouTube, 10:10 issued a statement: "We won't be making any attempt to censor or remove other versions currently in circulation on the internet". Then, on Monday 5 October 10:10 director Eugenie Harvey issued a second, more comprehensive apology, stating: "We are... sorry to our corporate sponsors, delivery partners and board members, who have been implicated in this situation despite having no involvement in the film's production or release."

ActionAid, a charity which co-ordinates a schools programme with 10:10, approved the decision to withdraw the film, and stated "Our job is to encourage proactive decisions at class level to reduce carbon emissions. We did it because evidence shows children are deeply concerned about climate change and because we see the impacts of it in the developing world where a lot of our work is. So we think the 10:10 campaign is very important, but the moment this film was seen it was clear it was inappropriate."

In the wake of the film's withdrawal, Richard Curtis admitted that the attempt to draw attention to the cause of lowering  emissions may have backfired. Curtis said "When you try to be funny on a serious subject, it's obviously risky. I hope people who don't like the little film will still think about the big issue and try to do something about it."

Withdrawal of sponsors

Several sponsors withdrew their support of 10:10 as a result of the No Pressure film. Nick Sharples, Sony Europe's Director of Communications, issued a statement saying, "we strongly condemn the No Pressure video which was conceived, produced and released by 10:10 entirely without the knowledge or involvement of Sony", and cutting ties with 10:10: "As a result we have taken the decision to disassociate ourselves from 10:10 at this time". Kyocera and Eaga were removed from the list of 10:10 sponsors, and National Magazine Company was removed from the list of 10:10 media partners. At the same time, a spokesman for O2, a partner of 10:10, refused to disassociate itself from the group: "10:10 is an independent organisation and we don't ask for editorial control over the content of its campaigns."

350.org, with whom 10:10 had been collaborating on the 10 October 2010 day of action, broke all current and future relations with 10:10. In a press release, they said: "We respect 10:10's previous work to encourage companies, schools, and churches to voluntarily cut their carbon emissions 10%. Upon seeing the video, however, we have informed 10:10 that we can no longer remain partners on 10 October 2010 or any other initiative. 350.org maintains an absolute commitment to nonviolence in word and deed".

See also
Individual and political action on climate change
Climate change mitigation
Graphic violence
Ecofascism

References

External links

 Announcement on the 10:10 website on the film's withdrawal

2010 films
2010 independent films
British short films
Emissions reduction
Green politics
Films with screenplays by Richard Curtis
Films set in England
British independent films
2010 short films
2010s English-language films
2010s British films
Climate change films
Film controversies in the United Kingdom
Climate change controversies

No Pressure (film)


Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky (;  – ) was a Russian literary critic of Westernizing tendency. Belinsky played one of the key roles in the career of poet and publisher Nikolay Nekrasov and his popular magazine Sovremennik.  He was the most influential of the Westernizers, especially among the younger generation. He worked primarily as a literary critic, because that area was less heavily censored than political pamphlets. He agreed with Slavophiles that society had precedence over individualism, but he insisted the society had to allow the expression of individual ideas and rights. He strongly opposed Slavophiles on the role of Orthodoxy, which he considered a retrograde force. He emphasized reason and knowledge, and attacked autocracy and theocracy.

Biography
Born in Sveaborg (now part of Helsinki), Vissarion Belinsky lived in the town of Chembar (now Belinsky in Belinsky District of Penza Oblast) and in Penza, where he studied in gymnazia (1825–1829). In 1829–1832 he was a student of Moscow University. In Moscow he published his first famous articles.

In 1839 Belinsky went to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he became a respected critic and editor of two major literary magazines: Otechestvennye Zapiski ("Notes of the Fatherland"), and Sovremennik ("The Contemporary"). In both magazines Belinsky worked with younger Nikolay Nekrasov.

He was unlike most of the other Russian intellectuals of the 1830s and 1840s. The son of a rural medical doctor, he was not a wealthy aristocrat. The fact that Belinsky was relatively underprivileged meant, among other effects, that he was mainly self-educated; this was partly due to being expelled from Moscow University for political activity. But it was less for his philosophical skill that Belinsky was admired and more for emotional commitment and fervor. "For me, to think, to feel, to understand and to suffer are one and the same thing," he liked to say. This was, of course, true to the Romantic ideal, to the beliefs that real understanding comes not only from mere thinking (reason), but also from intuitive insight. This combination of thinking and feeling pervaded Belinsky's life.

Ideologically, Belinsky shared, but with exceptional intellectual and moral passion, the central value of most of Westernizer intelligentsia: the notion of the individual self, a person (lichnost'(личность)), that which makes people human, and gives them dignity and rights. With this idea in hand (achieved through a complex intellectual struggle), he faced the world around him armed to do battle. He took on much conventional philosophical thinking among educated Russians, including the dry and abstract philosophizing of the German idealists and their Russian followers although maintaining the perspective of literary realism in his critical writings. In his words, "What is it to me that the Universal exists when the individual personality [lichnost'] is suffering."  Or: "The fate of the individual, of the person, is more important than the fate of the whole world." Also upon this principle, Belinsky constructed an extensive critique of the world around him (especially the Russian one). He bitterly criticized autocracy and serfdom (as "trampling upon everything that is even remotely human and noble") but also poverty, prostitution, drunkenness, bureaucratic coldness, and cruelty toward the less powerful (including women).

Belinsky worked most of his short life as a literary critic. His writings on literature were inseparable from these moral judgments. Belinsky believed that the only realm of freedom in the repressive reign of Nicholas I was through the written word. What Belinsky required most of a work of literature was "truth." This meant not only a probing portrayal of real life (he hated works of mere fantasy, or escape, or aestheticism), but also commitment to "true" ideas — the correct moral stance (above all this meant a concern for the dignity of individual people):  As he told Nikolai Gogol (in a famous letter) the public "is always ready to forgive a writer for a bad book [i.e. aesthetically bad], but never for a pernicious one [ideologically and morally bad]."  Belinsky viewed Gogol's recent book, Correspondence with Friends, as pernicious because it renounced the need to "awaken in the people a sense of their human dignity, trampled down in the mud and the filth for so many centuries."

Fyodor Dostoevsky read aloud at several public events Belinsky's letter, which called for the end of serfdom. A secret press was assembled to print and distribute Belinsky's letter. For these offenses Dostoevsky was arrested, convicted and condemned to death in 1849, a sentence later commuted to 4 years incarceration in the prison camps of Siberia.

In his role as perhaps the most influential liberal critic and ideologist of his day, Belinsky advocated literature that was socially conscious. He hailed Fyodor Dostoyevsky's first novel, Poor Folk (1845), however, Dostoevsky soon thereafter broke with Belinsky.

Inspired by these ideas, which led to thinking about radical changes in society's organization, Belinsky began to call himself a socialist starting in 1841.
Among his last great efforts were his move to join Nikolay Nekrasov in the popular magazine The Contemporary (Sovremennik), where the two critics established the new literary center of St. Petersburg and Russia. At that time Belinsky published his Literary Review for the Year 1847.

In 1848, shortly before his death, Belinsky granted full rights to Nikolay Nekrasov and his magazine, The Contemporary (Sovremennik), to publish various articles and other material originally planned for an almanac, to be called the Leviathan.

Belinsky died of consumption on the eve of his arrest by the Tsar's police on account of his political views. In 1910, Russia celebrated the centenary of his birth with enthusiasm and appreciation.

His surname has variously been spelled Belinsky or Byelinski. His works, in twelve volumes, were first published in 1859–1862.  Following the expiration of the copyright in 1898, several new editions appeared.  The best of these is by S. Vengerov; it is supplied with profuse notes.

Belinsky early supported the work of Ivan Turgenev. The two became close friends and Turgenev fondly recalls Belinsky in his book Literary Reminiscences and Autobiographical Fragments. The British writer Isaiah Berlin has a chapter on Belinsky on his 1978 book Russian Thinkers. Here he points out some deficiencies of Belinsky's critical insight:

He was wildly erratic, and all his enthusiasm and seriousness and integrity do not make up for lapses of insight or intellectual power. He declared that Dante was not a poet; that Fenimore Cooper was the equal of Shakespeare; that Othello was the product of a barbarous age...

But further on in the same essay, Berlin remarks:

Because he was naturally responsive to everything that was living and genuine, he transformed the concept of the critic's calling in his native country.  The lasting effect of his work was in altering and altering crucially and irretrievably, the moral and social outlook of the leading younger writers and thinkers of his time.  He altered the quality and the tone both of the experience and of the expression of so much Russian thought and feeling that his role as a dominant social influence overshadows his attainments as a literary critic.

Berlin's book introduced Belinsky to playwright Tom Stoppard, who included Belinsky as one of the principal characters in his trilogy of plays about Russian writers and activists: The Coast of Utopia (2002)

Legacy
Belinsky Street and Belinsky Lane, close to Red Square in Moscow, were named after Belinsky from 1920–1994.

English translations
Selected Philosophical Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1956.
Belinsky, Chernyshevsky & Dobrolyubov: Selected Criticism, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1976.

Notes

References

Further reading
 Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers, London, 1978
 Neil Cornwell, "Belinsky and V.F. Odoyevsky." Slavonic and East European Review 62.1 (1984): 6–24. online
 Alexander Herzen. My Past and Thoughts
 A. Pypin, Belinsky: His Life and Correspondence, Saint Petersburg, 1876
 Ivan Turgenev, Literary Reminiscences and Autobiographical Fragments, New York, 1958
 .

External links

 Letter to Gogol
 The Coast of Utopia at Lincoln Center
 Lincoln Center Theater Review, Fall 2006

1811 births
1848 deaths
Writers from Helsinki
People from the Grand Duchy of Finland
19th-century writers from the Russian Empire
Journalists from the Russian Empire
Male writers from the Russian Empire
19th-century deaths from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis deaths in the Russian Empire
Literary critics from the Russian Empire
Atheists from the Russian Empire
19th-century journalists from the Russian Empire
Russian male journalists
19th-century male writers from the Russian Empire
Russian atheists
Russian atheist writers
19th-century atheists
Westernizers

Vissarion Belinsky


102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue is a video game based on the live-action Disney movie 102 Dalmatians. It was made for the Sony PlayStation.

Voice cast
 Susan Blakeslee as Cruella de Vil
 Molly Marlette as Oddball
 Frankie Muniz as Domino
 Barbara Dirikson as Dottie
 Jeff Bennett as Dipstick and Jasper
 Eric Idle as Waddlesworth
 Nancy Cartwright as Fidget
 Eddie Izzard as Sgt. Tibs
 Tress MacNeille as Ivana
 Rob Paulsen as Fluffy
 Maurice LaMarche as Horace

Gameplay
The game itself does not follow the movie's storyline. The player can choose the role of two of the dalmatians, Oddball or Domino, who are out on the town looking for treasure. It's not long before the player realizes that a toy found buried in a park was made at one of Cruella de Vil's toy factories; the fact that her toys are being buried rather than being played with is making mean Cruella very upset. Facing financial ruin from lack of sales, Cruella sets an evil plan in motion - to reprogram her toys to capture any Dalmatian puppies in sight. Soon enough, Domino and Oddball are out on their biggest adventure yet - to save their brothers and sisters. The player needs to save their brothers and sisters, collect 100 bones and stop Cruella's henchmen. Player's health can be increased by picking up food. The player fights Cruella a few times, then off to the Toy Factory where Cruella is waiting for them. The game includes several challenging levels, from the sewers to the circus. The player befriends many other characters that help them along the way. At times the player has to take a challenge to fight Cruella in certain levels as well as other enemies such as Jasper or Horace.

Levels
 Regent's Park
-You find Jasper in this level.
 Toy Store
 Picadilly
-Horace is found in this level.
 Big Ben
1. Cruella I
-Defeat Cruella to unlock the mini game "Tilt Maze".
 Royal Museum
-Le Pelt will be found inside the Pyramid in the Egyptian exhibit.
 The Underground
 Carnival
-Jasper will be found here. When you find the dunk tank after talking to the turtle Shelby, he will appear.
 Lumber Mill
2. Cruella II
-Defeat Cruella to unlock the mini game "Checkers".
 Countryside
-Horace will show up near Stonehenge.
 Barnyard
 Ice Festival
-Jasper shows up for the 3rd time in this level.
 Medieval Castle
3. Cruella III
-Defeat Cruella and you will unlock the mini game "Ice Race".
 Spooky Forest
-Le Pelt shows up again in this level.
 Hedge Maze
 De Vil Mansion
-Horace appears in this level.
 Toy Factory
4. Cruella IV
-Defeat Cruella and you will win the game as well as unlocking the mini game "Jam Dance."

Cruella's Toys
 Jack-in-the-Box: This toy is the very first toy you'll come across in the game (found in the first level). When they pop up, they say "Hello." Get too close to them and they'll say "I've got an idea" before lashing out at you.

References

Game Boy Color games
PlayStation games
Dreamcast games
Video games based on movies

102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue


Nu palantír eni n'artifattu magicu criatu dâ fantasia di J. R. R. Tolkien nta lu legendarium.

[[Image:Palantir Stone.jpg|thumb|300px|Lu palantír di Orthanc, usatu di lu putenti magu Saruman nta lu film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.]]

Origgini e carattiristichi
A palantír (sometimes translated as Seeing Stone but actually meaning "Farsighted" or "One that Sees from Afar") is a stone that functions somewhat like a crystal ball. When one looks in it, one can communicate with other Stones and anyone who might be looking into them; people of great power can manipulate the Stones to see virtually any part of the world. They were made by the Elves of Valinor in the Uttermost West, by the Noldor and maybe even Fëanor himself.  Many palantíri were made, but the number is not known.  Some had power over other Stones.  The stones were of various sizes. The smallest had a diameter of about a foot, while the largest filled a large chamber. The larger stones allowed one to walk around them, thereby changing the viewpoint of its vision. The Master Stone was kept in the tower of Avallónë on Tol Eressëa, but no record is made of successful communication from any palantír of Middle-earth to this one.  They are believed to have a power over people, as seen from the experience of Peregrin Took and the Orthanc-stone.  However, it is unclear if Pippin's compulsion to use the Orthanc-stone was imparted by the stone itself, or if it was a result of Sauron's influence over it. According to Gandalf, it is beyond the skill of both Sauron and Saruman to create the palantíri and that Sauron cannot make the palantíri "lie", or create false images (though he could show selective images to create a false impression on the viewer).

The stones' gaze can pierce anything except darkness and shadow. A technique called shrouding was used when something was to be kept secret from the enemies' eyes. Knowledge of this technique was lost long ago, although Sauron probably knew of it.

In Middle-earth
Some of the stones were given to the Dúnedain of Númenor as a gift, during the Second Age.  Of these, Elendil took seven with him on his flight to Middle-earth, and after the Kingdoms in Exile had been established, they were distributed among seven places: four in Gondor and three in Arnor. Sauron captured the palantír of Minas Ithil and used it to corrupt Saruman who had the palantír of Orthanc and Denethor who had the palantír of Minas Tirith.
By the end of the Third Age, three had been lost forever, one was buried amongst the  ruins of the Dark Tower of Barad-dûr and a sixth had been rendered virtually unusable (the palantír of Minas Tirith showed only the burning hands of Denethor save to those with the strength of will to turn it elsewhere). The seventh stone was retained by the king of the Reunited Kingdom.

Stones of Arnor

Elostirion
One Stone was placed in the tower of Elostirion in the Tower Hills, just west of the Shire. Its location was only known to a few and it remained hidden there until it was taken back to the West with the three Elven Rings. It could be used to look along the Straight Road to Avallónë.

Amon Sûl
The palantír of Amon Sûl was placed in the Watchtower of Amon Sûl, later renamed "Weathertop". When Arnor was divided into three kingdoms, all of them claimed Amon Sûl. Just before Angmar took control of and destroyed the Watchtower in 1409, the Stone was rescued and taken to Fornost. It remained there until Fornost too was overrun and was lost as Arvedui tried to escape by sea near Forochel and his ship foundered in the ice.

Annúminas
The last Stone of the North was placed in Annúminas on the shores of Lake Evendim. When Annúminas was abandoned and the Kings moved to Fornost, they took the palantír with them. This stone was also lost when Arvedui, the last king of Arnor, was shipwrecked in the Ice-bay of Forochel in 1975.

Stones of Gondor

Osgiliath
The Stone of Osgiliath was the largest stone among the seven, and chief among them. It alone could "eavesdrop" on the others (only two palantíri could communicate with each other at one time, and none other but the Osgiliath stone could intercept that communication).  It was placed in a tower on the great bridge in Osgiliath that crossed the Anduin.  The domed ceiling was painted to resemble a starry sky, and gave its name (os-giliath, the Dome of Stars) to the city itself.  This Stone was the first to be lost: during the civil war of the Kin-strife around the middle of the Third Age, it fell into the river Anduin.

Minas Ithil
One Stone was placed at Minas Ithil in the mountains that came to be known as the Ephel Dúath.  When Minas Ithil fell to the Nazgûl in T.A. 2002, the Ithil-stone was taken to the Barad-dûr and used by Sauron. It was presumably lost at the fall of Sauron.  The stones are virtually indestructible, but it would be buried in the wreckage of the Dark Tower.

Orthanc
One Stone was placed at Angrenost (Isengard) in Orthanc, the great tower built by the Dúnedain in the Second Age at the southern end of the Misty Mountains. In T.A. 2759, Saruman obtained the keys of Orthanc from Beren, the ruling Steward of Gondor, possibly because Saruman desired to use the palantír to garner information on his neighbours and their activities.  The stone was also partially responsible for Saruman's fall from grace, as he was using it when he came upon Sauron, and was ensnared by him, though his transformation to one of the fallen Maiar had undoubtedly begun much earlier.  Saruman later used the stone to confer with Sauron through the Ithil-stone in Barad-dûr.  By showing Saruman selective visions of his new armies, Sauron convinced the Wizard that he was going to win the War of the Ring, regardless of whether he actually found the One Ring.

Later, Gríma Wormtongue cast the stone down from Orthanc, where it was recovered by Peregrin Took and turned over to Gandalf.  Peregrin inadvertently contacted Sauron, after which Gandalf turned the stone over to Aragorn.

Using the stone, Aragorn declared himself as the heir of Isildur to Sauron, seeking to distract him from Frodo.  Sauron was led to believe that the One Ring had fallen into the hands of Aragorn or some other Western leader, and this was partly responsible for Sauron's hasty assault against Gondor.  Sauron's attack, before he was fully ready, deeply influenced the outcome of the war.  The Orthanc-stone remained in the custody of the Kings of Gondor in the Fourth Age, the only one to remain fully functional.

Minas Anor
One Stone was placed at Minas Anor, later renamed Minas Tirith and made the capital of Gondor.  It was ultimately used by Steward Denethor II, in an attempt to find out the enemy's movements, in order to protect his city. Eventually, Sauron encountered him (it seems that Denethor did not know he had actually been in contact with Sauron himself). Denethor did not become corrupted, but the great effort of will that this required of him led him to age quickly.  Furthermore, using the Ithil-stone, Sauron largely controlled what Denethor saw, leading to the latter's despair and insanity.  For instance, Denethor sees a black fleet of apparent reinforcements for Sauron's forces coming from supposedly safe territory, unaware that the ships are actually carrying Aragorn's forces coming to relieve the siege.  Denethor was holding the stone when he committed suicide on a funeral pyre, and after this, only people of exceeding power could see in it anything other than two flaming withered hands.

In adaptations

In Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings films, the palantíri of Minas Ithil, Orthanc, and Minas Anor (Minas Tirith) are included with alterations. As a consequence of eliminating the Battle of Bywater, Saruman is killed by Wormtongue much earlier (at the beginning of the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King) and the palantír of Orthanc is transferred to Gandalf by means of Pippin retrieving it from Saruman's corpse instead of Wormtongue throwing it from the tower window.

Aragorn also reveals himself to Sauron after the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in the extended version of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. It is unclear in the films whether Aragorn uses the palantír of Minas Anor or Orthanc to do this. In the book the revelation was the primary factor for Sauron's assault on Minas Tirith before he had fully readied his forces. This plot element is partially transferred to Pippin's use of the palantír in the films. Here, Aragorn is luring Sauron to the Battle of the Morannon, and Sauron responds by showing him a vision of a dying Arwen.

In the film, Denethor's comment to Gandalf, "Do you think the eyes of the White Tower are blind? I have seen more than you know." (paraphrased from the book) may be an allusion to his use of the palantír. This is more explicit in the book, where it is implied certain visions are technically true but cast in an ambiguous or outright negative light by Sauron's influence.

In the computer game The Lord of the Rings Online, it is hinted that the palantír of Osgiliath was not lost, but recovered by Sauron and sent to Carn Dûm so he could communicate with the Witch-king of Angmar or his Steward, Mordirith. When the player successfully attacks Mordirith, the Palantir gets stolen by Amarthiel, who takes it to Annuminas. The player then has to steal the palantír, after which it disappears out of the plot, safely kept away.

Middle-earth objects
Fictional balls

de:Gegenstände in Tolkiens Welt#Die Palantíri
pl:Lista artefaktów Śródziemia#Palantíry

Palantir


The National Archaeological Museum of Florence (Italian – Museo archeologico nazionale di Firenze) is an archaeological museum in Florence, Italy. It is located at 1 piazza Santissima Annunziata, in the Palazzo della Crocetta (a palace built in 1620 for princess Maria Maddalena de' Medici, daughter of Ferdinand I de Medici, by Giulio Parigi).

History
The museum was inaugurated in the presence of king Victor Emmanuel II in 1870 in the buildings of the Cenacolo di Fuligno on via Faenza. At that time it only comprised Etruscan and Roman remains. As the collections grew, a new site soon became necessary and in 1880 the museum was transferred to its present building.

The collection's first foundations were the family collections of the Medici and Lorraine, with several transfers from the Uffizi up to 1890 (except the collections of marble sculpture which the Uffizi already possessed). The Egyptian section was first formed in the first half of the 18th century from part of the collections of Pierre Léopold de Toscane, from another part of an expedition promoted by the same Grand Duke in 1828–29 and led by Ippolito Rosellini and Champollion (the man who first deciphered hieroglyphics). In 1887 a new topographic museum on the Etruscans was added, but it was destroyed in the 1966 floods.

Etruscan collections

The organisation of the Etruscan rooms was reconsidered and reordered in 2006.  Also in 2006, the 40-year-overdue restoration was carried out on over 2000 objects damaged in the 1966 floods.

 The Chimera of Arezzo – discovered in 1553 at Arezzo during the construction of a Medici fortress
 The statue of the Arringatore ("The Orator"), a life-size bronze sculpture of an Etruscan man wearing a toga (1st century BC)
 The funerary statue Mater Matuta (460–450 BC) (returned to Chianciano Terme)
 The sarcophagus of Laerthia Seianti (2nd century BC)
 The sarcophagus of the Amazons (4th century BC)

Roman collections
 The "idolino of Pesaro", a 146-cm-high bronze statue of a young man, a Roman copy from a classical Greek original, found in fragments in the centre of Pesaro in October 1530.
 The "torso di Livorno", copy of a 5th-century BC Greek original.
 Statue of a cockerel, the so-called "Gallo Treboniano", late 3rd-century work.
 The Minerva of Arezzo, a bronze Roman copy of a 4th-century BC Greek model attributed to Praxiteles.

Greek collections
The huge collection of ancient ceramics is shown in a large room with numerous cases on the second floor. Generally the vases come from Etruscan tombs and are evidence of cultural and mercantile exchange with Greece, and particularly Athens (where most of the vases were made) and date to the period between the 4th century BC and the present.

The most important of the vases is a large black figure krater of  signed by the potter Ergotimos and the painter Kleitias. It is named the "François vase" after the archaeologist who found it in 1844 in an Etruscan tomb at fonte Rotella, on the Chiusi road, and shows a series of Greek mythological narratives on both sides.  Other notable objects are:

 the red figure hydria signed by the Meidias painter (550–540 BC)
 the cups by the Little Masters (560–540 BC), named after their miniaturist style of their figures
 the sculptures of Apollo and Apollino Milani (6th century BC, named after the man who gave them to the museum)
 the athlete's torso (5th century BC)
 the large Hellenistic horse's head (known as the Medici Riccardi head after the first place it was displayed, in the Medici's Riccardi palace), fragment of an equestrian statue, which inspired Donatello and Verrocchio in two famous equestrian monuments in Padua and Venice.
 two Archaic marble kouroi, displayed in a corridor

Egyptian Museum
The Egyptian section of the collection is known as the Egyptian Museum, and is the second largest collection of Egyptian artifacts in Italy, after that of the Museo Egizio in Turin.

Foundation
Florence's first collection of Egyptian antiquities was in the Medici collection, dating from the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, began acquisition of the artifacts now housed at the Egyptian Museum. Together with Charles X of France, he financed a scientific expedition to Egypt in 1828 to 1829. The expedition was directed by Jean-François Champollion, who deciphered the hieroglyphic script. Ippolito Rosellini, friend and student of Champollion, represented the Italian interests during the expedition. He went on to become the father of Italian Egyptology. Many artifacts were collected during the expedition, both from archeological diggings, and via purchases from local merchants. On their return, these were distributed evenly between the Louvre in Paris, and the new Egyptian Museum in Florence.

Development
The museum was officially opened in 1855. The first director was Ernesto Schiaparelli, from Piedmont. He later went on to become director of the larger Egyptian museum in Turin.
By 1880 he had catalogued the collection and organized transportation of the antiquities to the Florentine Archaeological Museum. Under Schiaparelli, the collection expanded with further excavations and purchases carried out in Egypt. Many of the artifacts were, however, later transferred to Turin.

The Florentine collection continued to grow after this time, with donations from private individuals and scientific institutions. In particular, the Papyrological Institute of Florence provided artifacts from its expeditions to Egypt between 1934 and 1939. These now provide one of the most substantial collections of Coptic art and documents in the world.

The Egyptian Museum today
The museum now has a permanent staff including two professional Egyptologists. It houses more than 14,000 artifacts, distributed in nine galleries and two warehouses. The artifacts displayed in the galleries have been substantially restored. The old classification system devised by Schiaparelli is being replaced by a new, chronological and partly topographical system.

The collection comprises material that extends from the prehistorical era right through to the Coptic Age. There are remarkable collections of stele, mummies, ushabti, amulets and bronze statuettes of several eras. There are statues from the reign of Amenhotep III, a chariot from the eighteenth dynasty, a pillar from the tomb of Seti I, parts of the burial equipment of Tjesraperet, who was a wet nurse of King Taharqo, a New Testament papyrus (, ) and many other distinctive artifacts from many periods.

Separate section
A separate section of the museum is in the baroque Villa Corsini a Castello, nearby Florence, mostly dedicated to Ancient Roman and Etruscan sculpture.

See also
 Cartonnage
 List of New Testament papyri
 Museums of Florence

References

External links

 Egyptian Museum, Florence
 National Archeological Museum, Florence
 Museums in Florence – National Archaeological Museum

1870 establishments in Italy
Archaeological museums in Italy
Museums established in 1870
Museums in Florence
Museums of ancient Greece in Italy
Museums of ancient Rome in Italy
National museums of Italy
Etruscans museums in Italy

National Archaeological Museum, Florence


Jan Styka (April 8, 1858 in Lemberg – April 11, 1925 in Rome) was a Polish painter noted for producing large historical, battle-piece, and Christian religious panoramas. He was also illustrator and poet. Known also as a great patriotic speaker - his speeches were printed in 1915 under the French title L'ame de la Pologne (The Soul of Poland).

Biography

The son of a Czech officer in Austria-Hungary, Styka attended school in his native Lemberg (Polish: Lwów, now Lviv) then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria following which he took up residence in Kraków in 1882 where he studied historical painting under Jan Matejko. Next he came back to Lwów and opened there a workshop. Here, together with a celebrated Polish historical painter Wojciech Kossak, they created his most famous work in Poland – The Racławice Panorama. Later he travelled to Italy for a short time before moving to France where the great art movements at Montmartre and Montparnasse were taking shape and where he would spend a large part of his life.

Among Styka's important works is the large scene of Saint Peter preaching the Gospel in the Catacombs (seen here) painted in Paris in 1902. His renowned panoramas include  Bem in Siedmiogrod (1897), The Martydrom of Christians in Nero's Circus (1897), and the Wrocław Branch of the National Museum of Poland houses the monumental collaboration The Battle of Racławice painted in 1894.

Personal life

Sons  (1889–1954) and   (1890–1959) were both painters.

Styka died in 1925 and was buried in Rome. However, in 1959 Hubert Eaton arranged with Styka's family for his remains to be brought to the United States for interment in the "Hall of The Immortals" at Forest Lawn cemetery.

The Crucifixion

In 1910 Styka painted a portrait of esteemed pianist and Polish statesman, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, which is now at the National Museum of Poland in Poznań. Previously, near the end of the 19th century, Paderewski had commissioned Styka to paint what would become his most famous work internationally. Originally entitled "Golgotha" (the Aramaic name for the site of Christ's crucifixion), the painting became known simply as The Crucifixion. This piece is an enormous panorama standing  long by  in height.

The Crucifixion has a fascinating history.  Upon its commission in 1894, Styka travelled to Jerusalem to prepare sketches, and to Rome, where his palette was blessed by Pope Leo XIII.

The painting was unveiled in Warsaw to great success on June 22, 1897. It was shown in many of the great cities of Europe, before making its way to America, to join the 1904 St. Louis Exposition.
The painting was seized when Styka's American partners failed to pay the customs taxes, and was considered lost for nearly forty years.  In 1944 the painting was found, rolled around a telephone pole and badly damaged, having languished in the basement of the Chicago Civic Opera Company for decades.

Acquired by American businessman, Hubert Eaton, the painting was restored by Jan Styka's son, artist .  It is on display in the Hall of the Crucifixion at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

In 2005–2006 the painting underwent a massive restoration as part of Forest Lawn's centennial celebration.  It currently is shown, except on Mondays, on the hour, except 1:00 p.m., from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.. It features a new, state of the art guided light show and narrated presentation written by biblical scholar and filmmaker Timothy Kirk.

Selected paintings

References

External links

Details of the "Panorama of the Battle of Racławice" at the Wroclaw Municipality website
Details of "The Crucifixion" at the Forest Lawn website
Maria Styka family art

1858 births
1925 deaths
Artists from Lviv
Artists from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
Polish people of Czech descent
19th-century Polish painters
19th-century Polish male artists
20th-century Polish painters
20th-century Polish male artists
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna alumni
Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale)
Polish male painters
Catholic painters

Jan Styka


Vaginal bleeding is any bleeding through the human vagina. That includes bleeding from either the vaginal wall itself or, more commonly, other areas of the female reproductive system. Vaginal bleeding may happen at any age, although it always needs investigation if encountered in girls or women after menopause. If the condition happens in pregnancy, that could indicate a medical need which should be addressed.

Female reproductive system

Vaginal bleeding


Shanxi (山西) is a province of the People's Republic China. It is in northern China. The Yellow River flows through it. The name Shanxi means "mountain's west" or "west of the mountains", as it is west of the Taihang Mountains.

Its major cities are its capital Taiyuan, Datong, Changzhi, and Yangquan.

The abbreviation of Shanxi is Jin (晋), since there is another province, Shandong (山东), that has the word "Shan" (山) in it, meaning "mountain" in Chinese.

Although in pinyin, the name of the neighboring province to the west, "Shaanxi", is spelled exactly the same as "Shanxi", the only difference in how the two words are pronounced is that the first syllable in "Shanxi" is said using the first tone in Mandarin, while the first syllable in "Shaanxi" is said with the third tone. Since tone markers are not usually used to show how to pronounce the two different names, the first word in "Shaanxi" is spelled using the Gwoyeu Romatzyh method instead, which indicates tones by adding extra letters to a syllable.

Notable residents
Mi Fu, poet

References

Shanxi


A recital is a concert of classical music given by just one musician or one musician and an accompanist.  A pianist playing a concert by himself will be giving a "piano recital".  A "violin recital" will be given by a violinist and piano accompanist.

People started talking about "recitals" in the middle of the 19th century.  Pianists such as Liszt became famous when they travelled about giving piano recitals.  Soon piano manufacturers (firms that make pianos) and concert agents started to sponsor famous pianists to give recitals.  These great pianists became great stars in the way that, in music, only opera singers had been great stars before. Some concert halls have become well-known places for recitals, e.g. the Bosendorfersaal in Vienna, the Beethovensaal in Berlin, the Wigmore Hall in London and the Carnegie Hall in New York.

Some pianists became known for playing recitals of music by just one composer.  Recitals of Chopin's music were particularly popular.  "Song recitals" (or "vocal recitals") are given by singers who sing Lieder and sometimes arias from operas.

Music events

Recital