The River Thames is a large river in England. It goes through London, the capital city of the United Kingdom.

The Thames is 346 kilometres (235 statute miles) long. Its source is near the village of Kemble in the Cotswolds; it flows through Oxford (where it is called "The Isis", a shortening of its Latin name), Reading, Maidenhead, Eton and then Windsor.

From the outskirts of Greater London, it passes Syon House, Hampton Court Palace, Richmond (with the famous view of the Thames from Richmond Hill), and Kew. It then passes through London, then Greenwich and Dartford before it enters the sea in an estuary, The Nore. Part of the area west of London is sometimes called the Thames Valley. The area east of Tower Bridge is called Thames Gateway by development agencies and officials.

About 90 kilometres from the sea, above London, the river begins to show the tide caused by the North Sea. It is said that London was made capital of Roman Britain at the spot where the tides reached in 43 AD, but different things have pushed this spot farther up the river in the over 2000 years since then. At London, the water is slightly salty with sea salt.

History
Like the Celts who lived in the area, the Romans called the river Thamesis.
The Thames was an important way to go between London and Westminster in the 16th and 17th centuries. The guild of watermen took Londoners back and forth by ferry. One of them, John Taylor, the Water Poet (15801653), described the river in a poem.

In the 17th and 18th century, at a time some call the "Little Ice Age", the Thames often froze over in the winter. This led to the first "Frost Fair" in 1607, with a tent city set up on the river with lots of odd amusements, like ice bowling. The last time the river froze over was in 1814. The building of a new London Bridge in 1825 may have helped stop it from freezing: the new bridge had fewer pillars than the old, allowing the river to flow more easily, and stopping it from flowing slowly enough to freeze in cold winters.

By the 18th century, the Thames was one of the world's busiest waterways, as London became the centre of the very big British Empire. During this time one of the worst river disasters in England took place on 3 September 1878 on the Thames, when the crowded pleasure boat Princess Alice crashed into the Bywell Castle killing over 640 people.

In the 'Great Stink' of 1858, pollution in the river became so bad that the House of Commons at Westminster had to quit sitting.
The authorities accepted a proposal from the civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette. He moved the effluent eastwards along a series of interconnecting sewers. These sloped towards outfalls beyond the metropolitan area.

The coming of rail transport and road transport, and the decline of the Empire in the years after 1945, made the river less important than it was. London itself is no longer used much as a port, and the "Port of London" has moved down the river to Tilbury. The Thames has been greatly cleaned up, and life has returned to its dead waters.

In the early 1980s, the Thames Barrier was opened to control flooding. It is used many times a year to stop water damage to London's low-lying areas up the river.

There are many bridges and tunnels crossing the Thames, including Tower Bridge, London Bridge, Lambeth Bridge, and the Dartford Crossing.

In September 2011 a British comedian, David Walliams, swam the entire 140 mile length of the river raising over £1million for a charity called Sport Relief. On Red Nose Day, people swim the Thames for charity.

The Thames in literature
Many books have been written about the Thames. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome describes a boat trip up the Thames. Somewhere near Oxford is where the Lidells were rowing in the poem at the start of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Somewhere near here was where Alice fell asleep in the book. The river is named in both The Wind in the Willows and the play Toad of Toad Hall. In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Marlow tells his tale while waiting for the tide near the mouth of the Thames.

Other fictional events include Sherlock Holmes looking for a boat in A Study in Scarlet and Bill Sykes killing Nancy just near the river, in Charles Dickens's classic novel  Oliver Twist.

Crossings of the Thames
See Crossings of the River Thames for a full article. Famous crossings include
 Dartford Crossing
 Thames Barrier
 Blackwall Tunnel
 Rotherhithe Tunnel
 Thames Tunnel
 Tower Bridge
 London Bridge
 Millennium Bridge
 Hungerford Bridge
 Westminster Bridge Islands in the Thames
Listed in upstream order.
 Canvey Island
 Isle of Grain
 Frog Island, Rainham
 Isle of Dogs
 Chiswick Eyot
 Oliver's Island, Kew
 Brentford Ait
 Lot's Ait
 Isleworth Ait
 Corporation Island, Twickenham
 Glover's Island, Twickenham
 Eel Pie Island, Twickenham
 Trowlock Island, Teddington
 Steven's Eyot
 Raven's Ait, Surbiton
 Boyle Farm Island
 Thames Ditton Island
 Ash Island, Hampton Court
 Tagg's Island, Hampton Court
 Garrick's Ait, Hampton
 Platt's Eyot, Hampton
 Sunbury Court Island, Sunbury
 Swan's Rest Island, Sunbury
 Rivermead Island, Sunbury
 Sunbury Lock Ait
 Wheatley's Ait
 Desborough Island, Shepperton
 D'Oyly Carte Island
 Lock Island
 Hamhaugh Island
 Pharaoh's Island
 Penton Hook Island
 Truss's Island
 Church Island, Staines
 Hollyhock Island, Staines
 Holm Island, Staines
 The Island, Hythe End
 Magna Carta Island, Runnymede
 Pats Croft Eyot
 White Lily Island
 Katie-Jo's island
 Isle of The Great Crostini
 Poodle island
 Caspars island
 Mather Island
 Kat Isle
 Scuttle Island
 Davage Ait

Images

References

River Thames


Kapingamarangi is an atoll in the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the Federated States of Micronesia. There are about 700 people living in Kapingamarangi. The inhabitants speak the Kapingamarangi language, a Polynesian dialect.

The Kapingamarangi people live a simple life. They believe that it's not what you have that is important. They help each other, neighbors, relatives, and everybody. They share what they have. The sea provides a significant source of food. And the people are very talented in doing all the different types of fishing.

Atolls
Federated States of Micronesia

Kapingamarangi


Fort Kearny was a historic outpost of the United States Army founded in 1848 in the western U.S. during the middle and late 19th century. The fort was named after Col. and later General Stephen Watts Kearny.  The outpost was located along the Oregon Trail near Kearney, Nebraska.  The town of Kearney took its name from the fort.  The "e" was added to Kearny by postmen who consistently misspelled the town name. A portion of the original site is preserved as Fort Kearny State Historical Park by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.

The fort became the eastern anchor of the Great Platte River Road and thus an important military and civilian way station for 20 years. Wagon trains moving west, were able to resupply after completing about a sixth (16%) of the journey. The fort offered a safe resting area for the eastern immigrants in this new and hostile land.  Livestock could be traded for fresh stock and letters sent back to the States. The fort continued to expand over the years, until there were over 30 buildings before its closure in 1871. It took on additional roles as a Pony Express station, an Overland Stage station and a telegraph station.

Origins and various missions of the fort
The fort was built in response to the growth of overland emigration to Oregon after 1845. The first post, Fort Kearny, was established in the spring of 1848 "near the head of the Grand Island" along the Platte River by Lieutenant Daniel P. Woodbury. It was first called Fort Chiles, but in 1848 the post was renamed Fort Kearny in honor of General Stephen Watts Kearny.

Despite its lack of fortifications, Fort Kearny served as way station, sentinel post, supply depot, and message center for 49'ers bound for California and homeseekers traveling to California, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. The earliest surviving photograph of the post, taken in 1858 by Samuel C. Mills, shows the post as a collection of adobe buildings without any wall or fortifications. By the 1860s the fort had become a significant state and freighting station and home station of the Pony Express. During the Indian Wars of 1864-1865 a small stockade was apparently built upon the earth embankment still visible. Although never under attack, the post did serve as an outfitting depot for several Indian campaigns.

The fort was a precious source of provisions for emigrants on the early section of the trail for several decades during the height of the trail use until its abandonment in 1871.  As it had been founded along the Platte River to protect emigrants on the trail westward, the fort became an important stop along the eastern part of the trail for the following decade, offering the sale of food, reliable mail service and other amenities.  At the height of the pioneer trail use in the 1850s, as many as 2,000 emigrants and 10,000 oxen might pass through in a single day during the height of the trail season in late May.

One of the fort's final duties was the protection of workers building the Union Pacific. In 1871, two years after the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the fort was discontinued as a military post. Its buildings were disassembled and moved West to outfit newer posts.

Description
The fort was intended mostly as a supply post, and not as defensive position in the Indian Wars. Throughout most of its history, the fort consisted mostly of wooden buildings surrounding a central parade ground without fortified walls.  Throughout the decades of its use until the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the character of the buildings became slightly more permanent, changing from adobe and sod structures to wooden frame construction. Although it was in the heart of area inhabited by American Indians aka Native Americans, and was near the center of hostile action in the 1860s, no direct attack was ever made on the fort.

History

First Fort Kearny
The fort along the Platte River was the second of two army posts in present-day Nebraska to be named after Colonel Stephen W. Kearny of the U.S. Army.  In 1838, Kearny had scouted the area along the Missouri River at the mouth of Table Creek near present-day  Nebraska City looking for a suitable location for an outpost to protect westward travelers. In 1846, following Kearny's recommendation, the United States War Department had ordered the building of an outpost on the site and directed Kearny to construct one there. The Army then sent Colonel Kearny with a detachment of men from Fort Leavenworth up the Missouri to the area with orders to construct an outpost at the selected site.

The Army constructed a two-story wooden blockhouse on the site, which became known as Camp Kearny and later Fort Kearny. The Army quickly realized, however, the location was not chosen well, since few emigrants passed the site on their way west. Instead, the main routes of the trails preferred by emigrants lay to the north near Omaha and to the south. Construction was subsequently halted on the site, with the exception of the erection of a number of log huts for temporary quarters for a battalion of troops who wintered there in 1847–1848.

Second Fort Kearny
In September 1847, Kearny sent topographical engineer Lt. Daniel P. Woodbury westward along the Platte looking for a more suitable location for the outpost. Woodbury selected a site in present-day central Nebraska near the spot where the Trail westward from Independence, Missouri joined the trail westward from Omaha and Council Bluffs. Woodbury described the spot in his journals as:

I have located the post opposite a group of wooded islands in the Platte River ... three hundred seventeen miles from Independence, Missouri, one hundred seventeen miles from Fort Kearny on the Missouri and three miles from the head of the group of islands called Grand Island.

In December Woodbury went to Washington, D.C., with orders to secure organization of the new post. Woodbury requested an appropriation of $15,000 for construction, while advocating the employment of Mormon emigrants for construction. Although he did not receive these provisions, Woodbury received permission to build the fort from scratch with soldier labor.

The Army abandoned the Table Creek post in May 1848 and arrived at the new site in June. Woodbury directed construction of the fort with 175 men as labor. They built wooden buildings around a four-acre (16,000 m²) parade ground, with cottonwood trees planted around the perimeter. Woodbury initially named the fort "Fort Childs" after Col. Thomas Childs, a famous soldier in the Mexican–American War, as well as Woodbury's father-in-law. A directive from War Department, however, directed that the name "Fort Kearny" would be transferred to the new fort.

The fort grew rapidly into an important trail stop. By June 1849, Woodbury noted in his journals that 4,000 wagons had passed the fort so far that year, mostly on their way to California. The fort accumulated large stores of goods for travelers, with the directive of selling them at a beneficial cost to the emigrants. Specifically, the commander of the fort was authorized to sell goods at cost to emigrants, and in some cases of hardship, to give goods to them for free. In 1850, the fort acquired regular once-a-month mail service with the arrival of a stagecoach route between Independence, Missouri and Salt Lake City. It was the first regular mail service established along the trail.

Trail Junction
Fort Kearny's location was chosen based on its proximity to the junction of several existing smaller trails, which joined together into a single broader route that became known as the Great Platte River Road.  At this location, immigrant trains from the Missouri River trail head converged and thousands of overland travelers passed by the fort each year. The Armies two functions included protection and aid to the thousands of emigrants moving westward and to protect the Indian tribes from the migrants and from other tribes. Over time, road ranches grew up nearby. Dobytown became the first settlement providing supplies and entertainment to the emigrants and the soldiers.
Eastern Trailsheads
Westport near Kansas City, used by most emigrants.
Fort Leavenworth
 St. Joseph, Missouri
 Nebraska City became a major freight center during The Mormon War and after the discovery of gold in the Colorado and Montana Territories (1858-1865). Freighters found the Ox-Bow Trail, with more abundant grass and water although longer and prone to having muddy lowlands.  This was replaced in 1858 by the "Steam Wagon Road" which was a more direct route and improved after 1862.
 Omaha, along with Florence, Nebraska, which served the Mormon Pioneers from Winter Quarters.

Role in the Indian Wars

The early years of the fort were relatively peaceful. After 1854, and the creation of the Nebraska Territory by the Kansas–Nebraska Act, the area around the fort in northern Kansas and southern Nebraska increasingly came under the hostile activity of the Cheyenne and Sioux tribes. In the summer of 1864, the irritation of the Native Americans at the encroachment by white settlers culminated in violent attacks on wagon trains along the Platte and the Little Blue River. During this time, soldiers from the fort began escorting wagon trains, and the fort became a center for refugees fleeing from attacks. Earthwork fortifications were constructed at the fort, and the Army ordered the deployment of the First Nebraska Cavalry and the Seventh Iowa Cavalry to the fort. By 1865, the conflict between Native Americans and white settlers had shifted westward away from the area of the fort.

Later years and abandonment
The construction of the Union Pacific Railroad across Nebraska starting in 1865 largely marked the end of the need for a fort to protect and supply wagon train emigrants. Following the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the U.S. Army issued an order for abandonment of the post on May 22, 1871.  In 1875, the buildings were torn down and the materials removed to barracks at North Platte and Sidney. The troops of the fort were restationed to Omaha and its stores were relocated to Fort McPherson 70 miles (110 km) to the west. In December 1876, the grounds were given over to the United States Department of the Interior for disbursement to settlements under the Homestead Act. Within several years, little remained of the fort except for cottonwood trees and the 1864 earthwork fortifications.

Fort Kearny State Historical Park
In 1928, the Fort Kearny Memorial Association was formed by Nebraska citizens to raise money to purchase and restore part of the grounds. The organization was able to purchase  of the original site, which it offered to the State of Nebraska. The State Legislature authorized the purchase, which became final on March 26, 1929. Thus acquired by the State of Nebraska in 1929, part of the original site is now operated as Fort Kearny State Historical Park by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. The site has been entered on the National Register of Historic Places.

In cooperation with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, which operates the current State Historic Park, the Nebraska State Historical Society conducts ongoing archaeological investigations of the grounds. These digs have uncovered and marked the foundations of all major building on the site including headquarters, officers and troops quarters, parade grounds, storage and livestock stockade. A small theatre that shows a 20-minute history of the fort, a museum with collected artifacts and a reconstructed blacksmith shop with period cannons, caissons, tack and other equipment is behind the museum. There is space on the park for RV and trailer parking with some facilities. The park is only open during the summer months. Reenactors fire the authentic cannon every year on 4 July weekend ceremonies.

In June 2010, Governor Dave Heineman signed a Proclamation re-establishing the 2nd Battalion, Nebraska Veteran Cavalry; the unit will be at the Fort on three major holidays, Memorial Day weekend, July 4th weekend, and Labor Day weekend.
This historical cavalry unit served at the fort during the Indian Wars, the unit is historically correct in every possible aspect; bugle calls used by the cavalry can be heard at differing times to announce the activities of the troop at the fort.

Depiction in fiction
In the novel Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne, a train in the process of being hijacked by Sioux stops at Fort Kearny to request aid from the troops there. Such an event is somewhat of an anachronism, given that the conflicts with Native Americans had largely shifted away from the area by the time of the completion of the railroad.

The fort is prominently mentioned and described as a stop along the Oregon Trail in 1855 in the novel Westward Hearts (Homeward on the Oregon Trail Book 1) by Melody Carlson, 2012 chapter 25.

Fort Kearny also appears in the short-lived television western drama series The Loner starring actor Lloyd Bridges. The series, created and written by Rod Serling of "The Twilight Zone" fame, takes place in the late 1860s and features the fort in an episode titled "Westward the Shoemaker". The "Westward..." episode concerns an Eastern European Jewish immigrant who seeks a new life in Nebraska Territory as a bootmaker but runs afoul of a card shark.

The fort is mentioned in the introduction to an episode of the TV series Wagon Train, "The Willy Moran Story" as the next destination of the settlers.

The fort is also referenced in the HBO television series Deadwood in episode 5 of the first series as the closest place to find smallpox vaccine.

The fort is mentioned in the 2014 film The Homesman, as the post Tommy Lee Jones character was stationed when a soldier with the U.S. Dragoons.

The fort is a stop in the Oregon Trail video game.

The fort is mentioned in the Song "One Black Sheep" by Mat Kearney

The fort is featured in the series "Hell on Wheels" where the shows protagonist Cullen Bohannon was imprisoned awaiting execution but was saved by and old ally named Doc.

See also
 Dobytown, Nebraska
 Fort Phil Kearny
 Mormon Trail
 Landmarks of the Nebraska Territory
 Pony Express

References

Further reading
Barnes, Jeff. Forts of the Northern Plains: Guide to Historic Military Posts of the Plains Indian Wars. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2008.

External links

Fort Kearny State Historical Park Nebraska Game and Parks Commission
Fort Kearny State Historical Park and State Recreation Area Maps Nebraska Game and Parks Commission

Kearny
1848 establishments in the United States
1871 disestablishments in Nebraska
Archaeological sites in Nebraska
California Trail
Kearny
Mormon Trail
State parks of Nebraska
Oregon Trail
Museums in Kearney County, Nebraska
Military and war museums in Nebraska
Pre-statehood history of Nebraska
Protected areas of Kearney County, Nebraska
Protected areas established in 1929
Kearny
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Nebraska
National Register of Historic Places in Kearney County, Nebraska

Fort Kearny


The Arlington Theatre is
a historic movie theatre in Santa Barbara, California, United States. Combining the Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival styles of architecture, it the largest movie theater and principal performing arts venue the city. In addition to regular screenings and artists, it is home to many events associated with the annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

History
The Arlington was built at 1317 State Street, on the former site of the Arlington Hotel, which was destroyed following the 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake. The current structure was erected in 1930 as a showcase movie house for Fox West Coast Theaters. It was restored and expanded in the mid-1970s by Metropolitan Theaters Corporation, reopening its doors in 1976.

Architecture

The Arlington was designed in the Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival styles in a period when Santa Barbara was being rebuilt in that style following a powerful earthquake in 1925. It was designed by the Santa Barbara architectural firm of Edwards and Plunkett, which was formed in 1925 by William A. Edwards and Joseph J. Plunkett and dissolved in 1940 when Edwards left to take a government job.

The exterior has a Mission Revival steeple that ends in an art deco finial. The red tiled building features a covered courtyard with fountain and a free-standing ticket booth.

The interior is elaborately decorated. The ceilings of the lobbies are heavily beamed and painted.  The auditorium itself seats 2,018 on the main floor and balcony.

It is built to give theatergoers the impression that they are sitting outside in the plaza of a colonial Spanish town, each wall features houses, staircases, and balconies, not painted on but built out from the walls.

The proscenium, in the original theater, was formed by what appeared to be a large stone arc, through which could be seen a river and hills (these were painted on the curtain.)  Today, this effect is gone, and the proscenium is topped by the equipment necessary for lighting stage shows.  The original ceiling remains to give patrons the impression that they are sitting outdoors under the stars.

One of the Arlington's signature features is a Robert Morton pipe organ from the Loew's Jersey Theatre that was installed in 1949. Hidden below the orchestra floor, the organ's console rises on a platform into view when played at a performance.

References

External links

The Arlington Theatre - Venue Official Website
Santa Barbara Film Festival - Main page features photo illustration of the Arlington marquee.

Cinemas and movie theaters in California
Tourist attractions in Santa Barbara, California
Music venues in California
Concert halls in California
Spanish Colonial Revival architecture in California
Mission Revival architecture in California
Buildings and structures in Santa Barbara, California
Event venues established in 1931

Arlington Theatre


Matilda of Brabant (14 June 1224 – 29 September 1288) was the eldest daughter of Henry II, Duke of Brabant and his first wife Marie of Hohenstaufen.

Marriages and children
On 14 June 1237, which was her 13th birthday, Matilda married her first husband Robert I of Artois. Robert was the son of Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile. They had:

Blanche of Artois (1248 – 2 May 1302). Married first Henry I of Navarre and secondly Edmund Crouchback, 1st Earl of Lancaster.
Robert II, Count of Artois (1250 – 11 July 1302 at the Battle of the Golden Spurs).

On 8 February 1250, Robert I was killed while participating in the Seventh Crusade.  On 16 January 1255, Matilda married her second husband Guy III, Count of Saint-Pol. He was a younger son of Hugh I, Count of Blois and Mary, Countess of Blois. They had:

Hugh II, Count of Blois (died 1307), Count of Saint Pol and later Count of Blois
Guy IV, Count of Saint-Pol (died 1317), Count of Saint Pol
Jacques I of Leuze-Châtillon (died 11 July 1302 at the Battle of the Golden Spurs), first of the lords of Leuze, married Catherine de Condé and had issue; his descendants brought Condé, Carency, etc. into the House of Bourbon.
Beatrix (died 1304), married John I of Brienne, Count of Eu
Jeanne, married Guillaume III de Chauvigny, Lord of Châteauroux
Gertrude, married Florent, Lord of Mechelen (French: Malines).

References

Sources

1224 births
1288 deaths
House of Reginar
Countesses of Artois
13th-century French women
13th-century French nobility
13th-century German women
13th-century German nobility
Christians of the Sixth Crusade

Matilda of Brabant, Countess of Artois


A precinct is a closed or clearly marked space which belongs to an organisation. Around some main buildings, such as a cathedral or college, is a space. This space may have other buildings in it, and usually has a wall round it. The whole area has one owner (such as the church). People may only come into the precinct if they are allowed: it is not a public space, even though members of the public may use it. For example, students and staff may enter a college, but visitors will have to give reasons at the entry.

The concept of a precinct is mediaeval. Towns, churches, palaces, colleges were places of limited access. They were surrounded by walls and guarded.

Buildings and structures

Precinct


Dreadlocks, also called locks or dreads, are coils of hair which are made by themselves, in all hair types, if the hair is allowed to grow naturally without grooming for a long time. They are part of some religions, like the Rastafarian religion in Jamaica. People who do not have to have dreadlocks because of their religion sometimes have dreadlocks as well. A lot of them do not let their dreads form naturally, but make dreadlocks themselves. There are different ways in which people help their hair go together to form dreadlocks. Backcombing, braiding, and twisting are some of the different techniques used to form dreadlocks.

Dreadlocks are one kind of protective hairstyle.  They can stop the hairs from breaking.

References

Hairstyles

Dreadlocks


Wasteland 2 is a post-apocalyptic role-playing video game developed by inXile Entertainment and published by Deep Silver. It is the sequel to 1988's Wasteland, and was successfully crowdfunded through Kickstarter. After the postponement of the original release date from October 2013, it was released for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux in September 2014. An enhanced version of the game, named Wasteland 2: Director's Cut, was released in October 2015, including versions for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

A sequel, Wasteland 3 was released on August 28, 2020.

Gameplay

Wasteland 2 features a semi-overhead view with a rotatable camera. It is a turn-based and party-based role-playing game with tactical combat. The player's party has room for seven characters, including the four player-designed characters and up to three non-player characters (NPCs). The player characters are highly customizable and the player's choice of statistics, skills, and appearance gives them an individualized personality. The non-player characters in the party each have their own personality, motivations, opinions, and agendas.

Plot
The game is set in an alternate history timeline, in which a nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union took place in 1998 in relation to an impact event involving a cluster of meteors that sparked a global nuclear war. On the day of the cataclysm, a company of U.S. Army Engineers were in the desolate southwestern desert constructing bridges in an area with a number of small survivalist communities and a newly constructed federal death row prison with light industrial facilities. The soldiers sought shelter in the prison, expelled the inmates, and invited nearby survivalists to join them shortly thereafter. Years later, together they formed "the Desert Rangers, in the great tradition of the Texas and Arizona Rangers", to help other survivors in the desert and beyond it.

The game begins in 2102, fifteen years after the events of the original Wasteland, with the Rangers now occupying the former Guardian Citadel, which had formerly housed deranged technology-worshipping monks (the Guardians), but is now fully under Ranger control after the monks had been wiped out by the Rangers. The experienced ranger Ace is found dead by locals with signs of violence on his body. This greatly troubles General Vargas, the leader of the Desert Rangers. General Vargas, just a few days prior, sent Ace out to investigate a strange radio signal that speaks of "man and machine becoming one" while threatening to attack and wipe out the Desert Rangers. Controlling a squad of newly recruited rangers, the player is tasked with finding out who killed Ace and why they did it, and try to complete Ace's original mission.

Arizona
The story starts at the funeral of Ace, one of the Desert Rangers featured in the original game. General Vargas, leader of the Rangers, sends the four player-created Rangers, a newly comprised Ranger team Echo-One, out to investigate Ace's murder; they also have the option of taking along Angela Deth, Ace's lover and a highly experienced Ranger. Their initial investigation requires them to go to a radio tower in the desert where Ace was attacked and killed. There they find the body of a "synth", or AI-equipped synthetic human, that attacked him, and later disturbances at the antenna will reveal a squad of murderous robots - albeit relatively low-tech ones without proper artificial intelligence.

General Vargas is disturbed to learn of the existence of the synth, recalling the artificial intelligence monsters (Finster, a deranged android, and Cochise, a malevolent AI) that he and his fellow Rangers fought years before in the original Wasteland. He tells the recruits that they must take on Ace's original mission of installing repeater units in three radio towers in order to triangulate the location of a suspicious radio message. The first repeater is already installed; they must go to towers in Highpool (a community based around a local dam that provides the area with water) and the Ag Center (a science commune that grows genetically modified vegetables).

Things quickly get complicated as the Rangers are forced to choose between saving Highpool from raiders or the Ag Center from a lab experiment gone wrong; their choice wins them allies and acclaim from those they save, but means terrible losses for the other location (they can also fail to save both locations). The Rangers install the repeater unit in one of the two sites, and Vargas says that one last repeater needs to be installed in a town called Damonta, which is tucked away behind a wall of very high radiation and past a valley occupied by suicidal, nuke-worshipping monks.

The Rangers are able to find the mangled body of Hell Razor, another missing Ranger from Vargas' original team, in Rail Nomad's camp - he too was killed by the synths after trying to investigate them.

Ranger team Echo-One manage to find and make their way to Damonta, acquiring new allies, finding new communities and solving (or accidentally creating) crises along the way. There, instead of the bustling hub of activity they were expecting, they find Damonta torn apart by rampaging robots, with handfuls of survivors holed up in buildings. In the process of rescuing the survivors, the Rangers find a synth named Tinker installing a mechanical heart in a young girl. They kill it, and in doing so learn that it was working for another synth that plans to 'upgrade' humanity into robot bodies - whether they agree to the modifications or not.

With the repeater unit installed in Damonta, General Vargas traces the signal to Los Angeles, and sends out a helicopter with a team of crack Rangers, including Angela Deth. The player characters listen from the Ranger base as Angela and the team follow the signal to a military base, where they are attacked and their helicopter shot down. With the signal lost, Vargas sends the player's team to Los Angeles in the hope of finding out what happened.

Los Angeles
On the way, the players are forced to navigate a storm and run out of fuel, crash-landing in a crumbling factory compound in Santa Fe Springs. With the help of Lt Woodson, who survived the previous attack, they secure the compound and turn it into a Ranger outpost. Their goals are fourfold: acquire enough zeolite and cat litter to upgrade their radiation suits, allowing them passage across all of Los Angeles; fit out more radio towers with repeaters to boost the signal back to Arizona and tell Vargas that they have survived; help out the locals with their problems to promote the Ranger name; and track down the source of the suspicious signal.

The Rangers discover that the area is occupied by a number of factions of varying degrees of hostility: there are the Mannerites, who enforce politeness with excessive violence; the Robbinsons, who believe in the triumph of the powerful over the weak; God's Militia, a group of murderously pious priests and nuns; the Children of the Citadel, a group who are encouraging people to upgrade their bodies with technological augmentations, much as Tinker did, and follow a figure named Matthias; and a band of murderous robots controlled by an AI named Dugan.

The Rangers deal with the various arguments and fights in the LA wasteland while trying to stop an unknown adversary that is trying to besmirch their good name by framing them for a series of massacres.

Ultimately the team manage to acquire the upgraded radiation suits and report back in with Vargas, who sends them on to Seal Beach, the base of the Children of the Citadel, where Angela's team crashed. There, they find the downed chopper but no sign of Angela or anyone else. Infiltrating the base - and doing battle with groups of partly upgraded cyborgs in the process - the Rangers encounter Dugan, who had previously seemed to be an enemy of Matthias. In fact, he is in league with Matthias, and was merely providing a further incentive for the citizens of Los Angeles to join the church and voluntarily allow themselves to be upgraded.

It turns out that Matthias and Dugan are two survivor Guardians from the Guardian Citadel, having fled to Los Angeles from Arizona. For the past fifteen years they have been raising an army of cyborgs and modified humans in California and plotting to destroy the Rangers in revenge for wiping out their former faction, the Guardians. In addition, Matthias and Dugan plan to revive the Base Cochise Boss AI at the current Ranger Citadel (hidden in the computers beneath it, having copied itself there after the Base Cochise destruction). The two former Guardians believe that uploading their minds to the AI will make them achieve technological transcendence and be present in every AI host in the world, making them 'gods' ruling the world with the Children of the Citadel and Dugan's army of AI bots. Matthias tells the Rangers that the dormant security defenses in the Ranger base are now active and turned against the Rangers and that their old friends will probably all be dead by now while Dugan prepares to finish the Echo-One team off personally.

After destroying several tons of deranged machines, including Dugan himself, the Rangers acquire a helicopter and immediately fly to the Ranger Citadel in a rescue attempt. The Citadel is on fire and swarming with dangerous robots, with scores of Rangers having been killed, including one of the original Ranger heroes Thrasher. With the aid of General Vargas and those members of the Arizona wasteland that they have helped, the Rangers kill their way down to a previously inaccessible AI core, and prepare to do battle with Matthias.

However, before the fight can begin, the Base Cochise Boss AI is revived and takes over the body of Matthias (actually erasing his mind completely), his synthetic bodyguard army, and any cyborg allies that the Rangers may have acquired during the course of the game. It turns out that the AI plans to directly and remotely control all cyborgs and machines in the wasteland, either converting humans into its drones or exterminating them all.

A massive fight ensues and the Rangers are able to destroy the Boss AI minions. The Rangers learn that the Cochise AI was actually the instigator of the nuclear war by provoking the Soviets into launching nuclear missiles resulting in a war that almost destroyed the entire world. With the spread of the AI to other computers worldwide imminent, the only way to kill it appears to be by completely destroying the Ranger Citadel with a crudely jury-rigged nuclear bomb prepared by a deceased Ranger demolitions expert. One of the Rangers or their surviving allies sacrifices themselves to give the others a chance to flee. As the escape chopper soars into the irradiated skies, the former Ranger Citadel is obliterated in a ball of nuclear fire. An epilogue sequence then explains how the Rangers' actions affected each of the communities they came into contact with, and what happened to some of their more prominent allies.

Development

In 2003, inXile Entertainment, founded by Wastelands producer and co-designer, Brian Fargo, acquired the rights to Wasteland from Electronic Arts, which had let the rights lapse and handed them to Fargo after a discussion with him. In June 2007, Fargo stated: "I am indeed looking into bringing back the game that spawned the Fallout series. Stay tuned..." In November 2007, Fallout fan website Duck and Cover reported on possible concept art images from Wasteland 2 displayed in the main header of the inXile Entertainment website.

On February 16, 2012, inXile announced their plans to have a crowd funded production of a new Wasteland game, inspired by Double Fine's recent success of using Kickstarter to fund Double Fine Adventure; it was one of a number of games to be funded in the video game crowdfunding boom that followed the success of Double Fine Adventure. Project director Brian Fargo has reassembled key team members from the original Wasteland: Alan Pavlish, Michael A. Stackpole, Ken St. Andre and Liz Danforth, as well as the early Fallout games' designer Jason Anderson (Anderson, however, left the company in December 2010). The composer Mark Morgan, who created the soundtracks for Fallout and Fallout 2, was also hired to compose music for the game.

On March 13, 2012, the Kickstarter page for the production of Wasteland 2 went live. A minimum budget of $1,000,000 was set for the project, but Fargo agreed to cover up to $100,000 if need be, should the project fall short, and the campaign's goal was set at $900,000, the largest target for any Kickstarter project at that point. Within 24 hours, the contributions totaled nearly $600,000, and the original goal was reached in under 43 hours. The "tremendous" success of the campaign made ranked number four on the Complex list of the biggest video game wins and fails on Kickstarter in 2012. Much of the money raised for Wasteland 2 came from first-time backers of Double Fine Adventure. On March 30, it was announced that, should the funded amount reach $2.1 million or more, the game's development would include Chris Avellone. The Wasteland 2 Kickstarter ended on the April 17, raising a total of $2,933,252, with an additional $107,152 in PayPal pledges. On April 24, it was confirmed that Obsidian developers would be working on the project.

Brian Fargo originally stated that the team aimed to ship Wasteland 2 around October 2013, and on July 10, 2012 it was announced that the original Wasteland would be bundled with it. There are no plans to support any consoles or handheld devices. In August 2012, Planescape: Torment writer/designer Colin McComb joined the development team as a writer. Nathan Long signed up as a co-writer two months later. The first trailer for Wasteland 2 was released on February 9, 2013, showcasing some of the story, art and gameplay, with an audio commentary from the producer Chris Keenan.

Fargo announced in July 2013 that the game was being delayed. The producer stated an intent to begin beta testing a "feature complete" version of the game at that time, with a final release date to be determined during the beta.

Release

On December 13, 2013, Wasteland 2 became available as an early access beta on the Steam store. In May 2014, inXile announced that the release date would be at the end of August 2014. The game was subsequently delayed to September 2014, so as to be able to fulfill physical reward and game disk requirements. In August 2014, it was announced that the game will be released on September 19, 2014.

The standard edition contains a free copy of Wasteland 1 - The Original Classic, the game soundtrack and the game manual.  A Digital Deluxe Edition was released on video game distribution services and contained a free copy of The Bard's Tale and three digital novellas set in the universe of the game. In addition, Deep Silver released a limited Ranger Edition available in Europe that included a collector's box, soundtrack, game manual, collector cards, a printed map of the game world, a download code for Wasteland 1 - The Original Classic, and a double sided poster.

Director's Cut

In February 2015, the developers announced that the game would be receiving a visual upgrade with the game engine being moved to Unity 5 from Unity 4.5, as well as new gameplay features and modding tools.

On March 3, 2015, at the Game Developers Conference Microsoft announced that Wasteland 2 was in development for Xbox One.  The following day, Wasteland 2 was announced for PlayStation 4. The console version was to be a port of the enhanced PC version of the game, then described as Wasteland 2: Game of the Year Edition. In April 2015, the developers said that it would run at 1080p resolution on both consoles. The enhanced version would be available for free to all Kickstarter backers and anyone who bought the original game.

In June 2015, Wasteland 2: Game of the Year Edition was renamed to Wasteland 2: Director's Cut and a trailer showcasing the enhanced version was released on June 23, 2015.

The Director's Cut was released digitally on October 13, 2015, with retail editions released on the same day in North America and other territories on October 16.

In February 2017, inXile partnered with IndieBox, a monthly subscription box service, to release a physical version of Wasteland 2: Director's Cut. This limited collector's edition included a DRM-free game disc, the official soundtrack, an instruction manual, Steam key, and various custom-designed collectible items.

Besides the visual upgrade, the Director's Cut edition featured many other improvements and additions: expanded voice-overs (with over 8,000 new lines of pre-recorded dialogue), new perks and quirks, a "Precision Strike" system allowing the player to target individual body parts to cripple or stun enemies or shatter their armour, redesigned encounters, a redesigned user interface, and controller support.

Reception

Wasteland 2 received generally positive reviews from critics. The game holds an aggregate score of 80.70% on GameRankings based on 32 reviews and a score of 81/100 on Metacritic based on 54 reviews. The game generated a revenue of $1.5 million in its first 4 days of release, and sold roughly 350,000 copies by May 2015. In September 2016, Fargo stated that inXile had earned $12 million from sales of the game.

Leif Johnson of IGN praised its story writing and branching storyline impacted by the player's choices. Daniel Starkey of GameSpot lauded its environmental graphics and tactical gameplay. Alasdair Duncan of Destructoid wrote it "delivers exactly what was expected". Richard Cobbett of Eurogamer stated "it's very clearly made with love to be true to the original game while still learning from the games that followed." Daniel Tack of Game Informer called it a "triumphant heir" to the original game and praising its re-playability and audio quality. Earnest Cavalli of Joystiq criticized the game for being buggy. Cory Banks of PC Gamer praised its combat and writing. It was later given the Game of the Year  award for 2014 by PC World.

Reviews
 Casus Belli (v4, Issue 12 - Nov/Dec 2014)

References

External links

2014 video games
Alternate history video games
Crowdfunded video games
Deep Silver games
Kickstarter-funded video games
Linux games
MacOS games
Nintendo Switch games
PlayStation 4 games
Post-apocalyptic video games
Role-playing video games
Science fiction video games
Single-player video games
Square Enix games
Video games developed in the United States
Video games with gender-selectable protagonists
Video games scored by Mark Morgan
Video games set in Arizona
Video games set in California
Video games set in Los Angeles
Wasteland (series)
Windows games
Xbox Cloud Gaming games
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InXile Entertainment games
Early access video games
Video game sequels

Wasteland 2


The Great Society was a set of programs proposed or enacted in the United States by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Two main goals of the Great Society were to end poverty and to end racial discrimination. New major spending programs that dealt with education, medical care, urban problems, and transportation were started during this period. The Great Society was like the New Deal domestic plan of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but had very different programs.

Unlike the New Deal, the Great Society focused more on people rather than the economy. Medicaid and Medicare were implemented to help poor Americans. President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society was the largest expansion of spending programs since the Great Depression. Many of the programs that exist can be attributed to the passage of the Great Society.

1960s in the United States

Great Society


The Little Troll Prince (onscreen title: The Little Troll Prince: A Christmas Parable) is a 1987 animated Christmas television special produced by Hanna-Barbera. Backed by the International Lutheran Laymen's League, it has strong Christian themes of unconditional love, self-sacrifice, and redemption, with a substantial Protestant influence. The story was a written parable script for the Christmas special with a lesson about the feeling of joy and love in one's heart, that can lead one from a cruel world to a light-hearted world. The special aired in syndication on US broadcast TV.

Synopsis
In a Norwegian mountain village, children play under the shadow of a sinister mountain of the trolls. In one small cottage, a gnome named Bu (voiced by Danny Cooksey) is happily decorating his own home with Christmas decorations, aided by mice and birds. He explains to the viewers that the Christmas season doesn't really start for him until the arrival of the Christmas tree, at which point two girls and their father return to the cottage dragging a tree on a sleigh. When the humans set the tree up in their home below, the uppermost branches are pushed through a hole in the attic to form a miniature tree for the gnome. He quickly decorates the tree, topping it with a minuscule Bible.

Bu explains that while humans and gnomes love Christmas, trolls do not. He explains that trolls live high in the mountains because they fear our world — to them, all that is good is bad, all that is right is wrong and that Christmas is scarier than Halloween. They have no word for "love", and do not believe in God. He adds that he knows all this because the previous year he not only lived among the trolls, but was their crown prince. The film turns to the previous December. Bu narrates how his father, the two-headed King Ulvik (voiced by Vincent Price and Jonathan Winters), could grow so angry that storms would sweep across Norway.

Ulvik is shouting at his wife Queen Sirena (voiced by Cloris Leachman) for having given him the insulting news that Bu is failing his lessons at Sinister School. Sirena waives his anger displaying an obvious favoritism for her younger sons the two-headed Borch (voiced by Rob Paulsen and Laurie Faso) and the two-headed Prag (voiced by Neil Ross and Frank Welker). Ulvik accuses the queen of having passed on bad genes to Bu (noting that the prince, like his mother, has only one head). Sirena rebuffs this by pointing out Bu's lack of grotesque features, like his father. It was also mentioned that Bu is the oldest of Borch and Prag but doesn't look like he's older than them. She claims that his innocent looks and unassuming personality will lead to a revolt if he remains crown prince. Ulvik decides that he will have to teach his son to be a brat, blaming the modern school system for lack of discipline.

In Sinister School, Professor Nidaros (voiced by Don Knotts) teaches his class to cause disorder, inflict pain, and follow the Troll Golden Rule: "Do unto others before they do unto you" ("Sinister School"). His lesson is interrupted by Ulvik, who arrives to test his sons' educations. While Prag demonstrates his understanding of humans (that they kill trolls for sport), and Borch demonstrates a knowledge of troll conduct (that those who are different should be avoided at all costs), the king only cares about Bu's learning. The crown prince timidly answers his father's questions, taken from the Troll Bible, correctly (reciting the Troll Golden Rule, his belief in growing more "evil and disgusting day after day", and that he is heartless and selfish), but finishes by politely asking to return to his seat. Upon hearing Bu utter the words "thank you", Ulvik begins shouting at his son accusing him of profanity and disgrace at which Bu begins to cry. Infuriated with Bu showing tears, Ulvik sends the class fleeing at his rage.

Later, the young trolls make good on their lessons, ruining each other's fun in the winter weather. Bu sits alone in the palace courtyard, hurt by his father's tirade while Ulvik is scolding Professor Nidaros for not making Bu bad enough. A dimwitted troll named Ribo (voiced by Michael Bell) tells Borch and Prag that they should eat their eldest brother, making Prag the new crown prince. A devious bull-headed troll named Stav (voiced by Charlie Adler) suggests that the princes do not have the nerve to deal with Bu, to which they protest that the king would kill them if they hurt the troll prince. Based on a rumor that the humans are currently involved in something strange (hanging wreaths on their doors and lights on their eaves), the four trolls devise a plan to trick Bu into venturing to "People-land", in the hopes that he will get killed by humans while investigating. They tell Bu that the humans may be planning an invasion of the Troll Kingdom, and that as prince it is his duty to investigate. While Bu is at first hesitant (believing the expedition to be a trick and fearing the humans), he is inspired by the thought that uncovering the humans' plot will make his father proud.

Summoning his courage, Bu decides to lead the four trolls to People-land in spite of his timidity, facing the trollish fears of humans and those who are different ("Down From the Mountain"). Their first obstacle down the mountain is the Troll Bridge, which is made of rotting ropes held together by frost. Though the trolls hope Bu will fall (saving them the trouble of actually going to People-land, which they do fear), he makes it safely across and the five continue down the mountain, encountering two rabbits and a squirrel (which, by comparison, are extremely large). Finally they arrive in a small Norwegian mountain village. Venturing to the nearest cottage, Bu witnesses a woman baking and eating gingerbread men. Mistaking them for flattened, cooked trolls, Bu flees the scene in horror, telling his companions to run for their lives.

Though the trolls believe Bu, they tie him to the top of a tree near a ledge of the mountain on their way back to the kingdom. Bu pleads with his brothers to rescue him, but they mock him for using the word "please" and leave him to the mercy of the humans. Two young girls, Kristi (voiced by Ami Foster) and Sonja (voiced by Christina Lange) come with their father (voiced by Vincent Price) to find a Christmas tree. Choosing the tree to which Bu is bound, they chop it down and haul it onto their sleigh, singing a carol ("Sleigh Bells in December").

While decorating the tree at home, the two sisters discover Bu, whom they take for a gnome based on his friendly appearance. Avoiding their questions, Bu demands to know more about them, confused by the good nature of their song versus his knowledge of humans. As the girls explain caroling and Christmas, Bu is confused by the word "Christ". After Kristi mentions the Bible, Bu is curious to see what humans use (having been raised on the Troll Bible himself). Sonja reads Luke 2:10–11, prompting Bu to ask what "savior" means. After learning that Christ is sent to "love the whole world" (and having the concept of "love" explained), Bu asks if "the whole world" includes him. Kristi and Sonja, taking him for a gnome, don't hesitate to say yes. When he questions God's love for trolls, the girls affirm that, as evil as they may be, God must love them ("God Loves All He Made"). As he listens, to Bu's shock his heart begins to beat for the first time in his life. Sonja finds a miniature Bible used as an ornament and gives it to the prince.

As Bu begins to read, the house tremors and winds howl outside. Horrified, he runs to the window and realizes the king's messenger, Malfred (Alvy Dorman), has been sent by his father to retrieve him. Bu frantically tries to help Kristi and Sonja escape, but realizing they have no place to go but their home, he leaves them to find Malfred before the messenger finds them. As he runs into the mountains, Bu realizes he finally understands love. Manifested as a ruinous, fiery-eyed monster of the wind, Malfred freezes the awaiting Bu and carries him to a cell in the palace prison.

As Bu wanders confused in his cell, he hallucinates of Kristi and Sonja before realizing they are gone. Remembering them brings to mind his Bible, however, which Bu begins to read, discovering the true Golden Rule. He falls asleep reading Luke, but is roused by the reawakening of his heartbeat. As he finally accepts that Sonja and Kristi must be right, two giant troll guards remove him from his cell and take him to a public trial. As the crowd accuses him of sedition and mocks his appearance, Ulvik explains that Bu has been brought before the Council of Elders (six identical trolls) to determine whether he is fit to remain crown prince. Borch and Prag have testified against Bu by lying, claiming he attempted to push them off the Troll Bridge. They add that he tied them to trees and bragged of spying for the humans, which horrifies the crowd and Bu's parents. Finally Prag concludes that the humans plan to cook and eat the trolls, at which Queen Sirena accuses Bu of trying to kill her "babies".

Ulvik protests that there is no evidence against his son, but Krill (voiced by Michael Bell) the prosecuting attorney charges Bu with heresy while Stav points out that Bu is at least guilty of desertion. Agreeing that if Bu has committed heresy than he is guilty, Ulvik encourages his son to prove his knowledge of "Trollship", at which Sirena accuses her husband of favoritism. The king proceeds to ask his son the same questions he had asked him previously in Sinister School. Bu, however, recites the biblical Golden Rule, his belief in Jesus, and that he has a heart full of love. As he speaks, he fails to notice his nose shrink, his tail disappear, and his ears lose their points.

Not understanding what Bu is saying, but recognizing its contradiction to the Troll Bible, the court accuses him of blasphemy. Irate, the king not only strips Bu of his princeship, but disowns him and leaves him to the mercy of the crowd. Bu escapes amid the confusion and heads down the mountain in a snow storm. Discovering that the former prince has escaped, Sirena fears that he will lead the humans to the Troll Kingdom and begs Ulvik to retrieve him. The king, however, depressed by the loss of his favorite son, assures his wife that Bu has never been a traitor and will not cause them any trouble. He tells Sirena to let him go as "it's all over." Having eavesdropped on their parents' conversation, Borch and Prag find Stav and Ribo and head out armed into the night to kill Bu.

Lost in the wilderness, Bu laments that he has no home since he is neither a troll nor a human ("I'm So All Alone"); he finds shelter by a tree and falls asleep. Meanwhile, the murderous trolls are chased back up the mountain by a fox, the Troll Bridge crumbling behind them and trapping and isolated them in the Troll Kingdom forever. As they flee, they are watched warily by a gnome named Bjørn (voiced by William Christopher) and his wife (voiced by B.J. Ward). Discovering Bu at the base of their treehouse, Bjørn ventures down to see if he is another troll, but proclaims that he must be a traveling gnome. As Bu protests, he catches his reflection in a slab of ice and sees that he is no longer trollish. Bjørn asks Bu to stay in the valley to help out the other gnomes with their work. After Bu learns that he is in the village where Kristi and Sonja live, Bjørn takes him to their cottage. Back in the present, Bu readies himself for bed. He explains that while his story may sound like a fairy tale, the story of Jesus is not. He falls asleep as the Star of Bethlehem shines outside.

Cast
 Danny Cooksey - Crown Prince Bu
 Vincent Price - King Ulvik (Right Head), Kristi and Sonja's Father
 Jonathan Winters - King Ulvik (Left Head)
 Cloris Leachman - Queen Sirena
 Don Knotts - Professor Nidaros
 Charlie Adler - Stav, Trolls
 Michael Bell - Ribo, Krill, Trolls
 William Christopher - Bjørn
 Laurie Faso - Prince Borch (Left Head)
 Ami Foster - Kristi
 Christina Lange - Sonja
 Rob Paulsen - Prince Borch (Right Head)
 Neil Ross - Prince Prag (Right Head)
 B.J. Ward - Bjørn's Wife, Trolls
 Frank Welker - Prince Prag (Left Head)
 Alvy Dorman - Malfred (uncredited)

Crew
 Gordon Hunt - Recording Director
 Andrea Romano - Animation Casting Director
 Kris Zimmerman - Talent Coordinator

Music

Home media
Warner Archive released the special along with The Cabbage Patch Kids' First Christmas as a double bill on DVD on October 15, 2013.

See also
 List of Christmas films

References

External links

1987 films
1987 animated films
1980s American animated films
1987 fantasy films
1980s Christmas films
American children's animated fantasy films
American Christmas films
Christmas characters
Christmas television specials
Fictional princes
Christian animation
Animated films about trolls
Animated films based on Norse mythology
Animated films set in Norway
Hanna-Barbera animated films
Hanna-Barbera television specials
Films directed by Ray Patterson (animator)
1980s English-language films
Animated Christmas television specials

The Little Troll Prince


The Einstein solid is a model of a crystalline solid that contains a large number of independent three-dimensional quantum harmonic oscillators of the same frequency. The independence assumption is relaxed in the Debye model.

While the model provides qualitative agreement with experimental data, especially for the high-temperature limit, these oscillations are in fact phonons, or collective modes involving many atoms. Albert Einstein was aware that getting the frequency of the actual oscillations would be difficult, but he nevertheless proposed this theory because it was a particularly clear demonstration that quantum mechanics could solve the specific heat problem in classical mechanics.

Historical impact
The original theory proposed by Einstein in 1907 has great historical relevance. The heat capacity of solids as predicted by the empirical Dulong–Petit law was required by classical mechanics, the specific heat of solids should be independent of temperature. But experiments at low temperatures showed that the heat capacity changes, going to zero at absolute zero. As the temperature goes up, the specific heat goes up until it approaches the Dulong and Petit prediction at high temperature.

By employing Planck's quantization assumption, Einstein's theory accounted for the observed experimental trend for the first time. Together with the photoelectric effect, this became one of the most important pieces of evidence for the need of quantization. Einstein used the levels of the quantum mechanical oscillator many years before the advent of modern quantum mechanics.

Heat capacity
For a thermodynamic approach, the heat capacity can be derived using different statistical ensembles. All solutions are equivalent at the thermodynamic limit.

Microcanonical ensemble

The heat capacity of an object at constant volume V is defined through the internal energy U as

, the temperature of the system, can be found from the entropy

To find the entropy consider a solid made of  atoms, each of which has 3 degrees of freedom. So there are  quantum harmonic oscillators (hereafter SHOs for "Simple Harmonic Oscillators").

Possible energies of an SHO are given by

where the n of SHO is usually interpreted as the excitation state of the oscillating mass but here n is usually interpreted as the number of phonons (bosons) occupying that vibrational mode (frequency). The net effect is that the energy levels are evenly spaced, and one can define a quantum of energy due to a phonon as

which is the smallest and only amount by which the energy of an SHO is increased. Next, we must compute the multiplicity of the system. That is, compute the number of ways to distribute  quanta of energy among  SHOs. This task becomes simpler if one thinks of distributing  pebbles over  boxes

or separating stacks of pebbles with  partitions

or arranging  pebbles and  partitions

The last picture is the most telling. The number of arrangements of  objects is . So the number of possible arrangements of  pebbles and  partitions is . However, if partition #3 and partition #5 trade places, no one would notice. The same argument goes for quanta. To obtain the number of possible distinguishable arrangements one has to divide the total number of arrangements by the number of indistinguishable arrangements. There are  identical quanta arrangements, and  identical partition arrangements. Therefore, multiplicity of the system is given by

which, as mentioned before, is the number of ways to deposit  quanta of energy into  oscillators. Entropy of the system has the form

 is a huge number—subtracting one from it has no overall effect whatsoever:

With the help of Stirling's approximation, entropy can be simplified:

Total energy of the solid is given by

since there are q energy quanta in total in the system in addition to the ground state energy of each oscillator. Some authors, such as Schroeder, omit this ground state energy in their definition of the total energy of an Einstein solid.

We are now ready to compute the temperature

Elimination of q between the two preceding formulas gives for U:

The first term is associated with zero point energy and does not contribute to specific heat. It will therefore be lost in the next step.

Differentiating with respect to temperature to find  we obtain:

or

Although the Einstein model of the solid predicts the heat capacity accurately at high temperatures, and in this limit

,

which is equivalent to Dulong–Petit law.

Nevertheless, the heat capacity noticeably deviates from experimental values at low temperatures. See Debye model for how to calculate accurate low-temperature heat capacities.

Canonical ensemble
Heat capacity is obtained through the use of the canonical partition function of a simple quantum harmonic oscillator.

where

substituting this into the partition function formula yields

This is the partition function of one harmonic oscillator. Because, statistically, heat capacity, energy, and entropy of the solid are equally distributed among its atoms, we can work with this partition function to obtain those quantities and then simply multiply them by  to get the total. Next, let's compute the average energy of each oscillator

where

Therefore,

Heat capacity of one oscillator is then

Up to now, we calculated the heat capacity of a unique degree of freedom, which has been modeled as a quantum harmonic. The heat capacity of the entire solid is then given by , where the total number of degree of freedom of the solid is three (for the three directional degree of freedom) times , the number of atoms in the solid. One thus obtains

which is algebraically identical to the formula derived in the previous section.

The quantity  has the dimensions of temperature and is a characteristic property of a crystal. It is known as the Einstein temperature. Hence, the Einstein crystal model predicts that the energy and heat capacities of a crystal are universal functions of the dimensionless ratio . Similarly, the Debye model predicts a universal function of the ratio , where  is the Debye temperature.

Limitations and succeeding model
In Einstein's model, the specific heat approaches zero exponentially fast at low temperatures. This is because all the oscillations have one common frequency. The correct behavior is found by quantizing the normal modes of the solid in the same way that Einstein suggested. Then the frequencies of the waves are not all the same, and the specific heat goes to zero as a  power law, which matches experiment. This modification is called the Debye model, which appeared in 1912.

See also
Kinetic theory of solids

References

External links
.

Condensed matter physics
Albert Einstein

Einstein solid


Niacin is a vitamin. It is also known by the name nicotinic acid. It is Vitamin B3. It can be dissolved in water.  It plays a very important role in the metabolism of living cells.

Other functions of niacin include removing toxic chemicals from the body, and helping with the production of steroid hormones made by the adrenal gland. These hormones include sex hormones and stress-related ones.

History
Niacin was first discovered from the oxidation of nicotine to form nicotinic acid. When the properties of nicotinic acid were discovered, it was thought prudent to choose a name to dissociate it from nicotine, in order to avoid the perception that vitamins or niacin-rich food contain nicotine. The resulting name 'niacin' was made from nicotinic acid + vitamin.

Niacin is also referred to as Vitamin B3 because it was the third of the B vitamins to be discovered. It has historically been referred to as "vitamin PP". That name was derived from the term "pellagra-preventing factor", because the disease pellagra is due to a deficiency of niacin in the diet.

How much Niacin is needed
The recommended daily allowance of niacin is 2–12 mg a day for children, 14 mg a day for women, 16 mg a day for men, and 18 mg a day for pregnant or breast-feeding women.

Severe deficiency of niacin in the diet causes the disease pellagra. A mild deficiency will slow down the metabolism, causing decreased tolerance to cold.

Dietary niacin deficiency tends to occur only in areas where people eat corn (maize), the only grain low in niacin, as a staple food, and that do not use lime during meal/flour production.  Alkali lime releases the tryptophan from the corn in a process called nixtamalization so that it can be absorbed in the intestine, and converted to niacin.

Foods containing Niacin

References

B vitamins
Organonitrogen compounds

Niacin


A blessing is way to wish good luck for a person. Sometimes, in religious rituals, it is said the God blesses those who are good, or people can bless God with anointing. In Judaism, they bless God over wine. The priests can also bless religious objects in order to make them become holy.

The saying "bless you" is commonly used when someone sneezes. This is done because there is a tradition carried by the superstition that a person's soul will come out of their mouth and nose if they sneeze. People believed that saying "God bless you," or "bless you" for short, would make the soul go back inside. They are wishing the person good luck so that their soul is able to come back.

People also think that if unusual good luck or a miracle comes to them, it is a blessing. For example, if some people wanted a child badly but are having difficulty conceiving, it could be considered a blessing from God if they end up having a child.

To give your blessing to someone is to give permission to them. For example, a man can ask his girlfriend's parents' for their blessing before he asks her to marry him.

Blessings are often thought of as the opposite of a curse.

References

Theology
Luck

Blessing


The g-force of an object is its acceleration relative to free fall. On earth this is 1g, or 9.8 meters per second squared (m/s^2) or equivalently  newtons of force per kilogram of mass (N/kg). Astronauts experience unusually high and low g-forces. G-force can also be seen on rollercoasters. When the coaster goes down the drop, you are pushed back into your seat because of g-force. Negative g-forces is when gravity is pushing you downwards causing you to feel weightless. (Going down a rollercoaster) Positive g-forces is when gravity is pushing against you causing you to feel heavier. (Going up a rollercoaster)

Mechanics

G-Force


Child custody and guardianship are legal terms which are sometimes used to describe the legal relationship between a parent and his or her child.  It includes such things as the right of the parent to make decisions for the child, and the parent's duty to care for the child.

Child custody decisions have to be made in cases such as divorce, or when a child cannot be looked after by either parent and has to be put into foster care or put up for adoption.

In general: decisions about who will have custody of a child will be taken in such a way as is best for the child.

A child may be given state custody.  This may be because the child is in danger when living at home.  There may, for example, be violence in the home.

When there is a divorce case, a decision will be made about whether the mother or the father has custody of the child.  There may be "joint custody", which means that both parents have custody over the child.

Physical custody means: who looks after the child from day to day.  It is about where a child will live.

Legal custody means: having the power to make decisions about the child, e.g. where he or she goes to school etc.

If a child lives with one parent, that parent has "sole physical custody".  He or she is the "custodial parent".  The other parent is the "non-custodial parent", but they may have the right to visit the child.

The laws about child custody will vary from one country to another.

Related pages
Children's rights
Foster care
Divorce

Childhood
Family law

Child custody


Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (25 June 1884 – 11 January 1979) was a German-born art collector, and one of the most notable French art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent as an art gallery owner in Paris beginning in 1907 and was among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and the Cubist movement in art.

Early life
Kahnweiler was born in 1884 in Mannheim, Baden to a prosperous Jewish family. His family had previously moved from Rockenhausen, a small village in the Palatinate. Kahnweiler grew up in Stuttgart and was trained to study finance and philosophy. His upbringing and education at a German Gymnasium prepared him for his life as an art connoisseur and pragmatic businessman. Early employment in the family business of stock brokerage in Germany and Paris gave way to an interest in art collecting while Kahnweiler was still in his twenties. He opened his first small art gallery (4 by 4 meters) in Paris in 1907 at 28 rue Vignon, at age 23. There was a family precedent for such an enterprise, since his uncle, who ran a famous stock brokerage house in London, was a major art collector of traditional English art works and furniture.

Art dealer

Kahnweiler is considered to have been one of the greatest supporters of the Cubist art movement through his activities as an art dealer and spokesman for artists. He was among the first people to recognize the importance and beauty of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and immediately wanted to buy it along with all of Picasso's works. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler, "What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?" Kahnweiler's appreciation of Picasso's talents was especially gratifying to the artist, since he was largely unknown and destitute at the time when many of his most famous works were created.

In his gallery, Kahnweiler supported many of the great artists of his time who found themselves without adequate recognition and little or no interest among collectors. Initial purchases included works by Kees van Dongen, André Derain, André Masson, Fernand Léger, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several other artists of the same generation. To use his own word, Kahnweiler wanted to "defend" great artists, but only those who had no dealers and of whose talents he was convinced. Rather than exhibiting appealing works by established artists from the past and present, Kahnweiler championed burgeoning artists who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse and Montmartre at the time. Thus Paul Cézanne, although a great artist, was considered too old to be represented, and his work was already represented by the dealer Ambroise Vollard in any case.

Along with such men as Alfred Flechtheim, Paul Cassirer, Daniel Wildenstein, Léonce Rosenberg and Paul Rosenberg, Kahnweiler was one of the influential art connoisseurs of the 20th century. As a businessman, Kahnweiler pioneered many new methods of working with artists and art dealing; these are now established practices in the industry.

In 1907, when there were only half a dozen viable galleries in Paris, he made contracts with artists to buy all of their work in order to free them from financial worries and permit them to concentrate on their creative work. He met with them daily to discuss their work, photographed each work they produced (he felt it imperative to have a record), held exhibitions of their work and promoted their work internationally. Since he considered himself friends with many of them, he co-owned little sailing boats with his artists.

As part of his activities in promoting the work of emerging artists, Kahnweiler sponsored the first exhibition of the work of Georges Braque. He encouraged the practice of publishing Beaux Livres (beautiful books), in which a contemporary artist would illustrate a work of a contemporary writer. He expanded his presentations by bringing together artists, writers and poets to produce their works as a joint project in more than 40 books. Picasso, for example, illustrated the works of Max Jacob. As a publisher of art with literary works, he had no equal, and was the first to sponsor publications by Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire, André Masson, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, and many others. In doing so, he launched many literary careers.

Kahnweiler's entrepreneurial abilities were so acute that by the 1950s his art gallery was among the top 100 French companies in terms of export figures.

Art history
Although the financial support for artists was an important contribution to art history, he was also a significant figure for his work as an art historian and eyewitness to the emergence of Cubism during the period 1907–1914. When working in Paris, his spare time was devoted to reading and understanding the history of art and aesthetics. He also spent his time visiting the city's museums and art galleries. Besides the museums in Paris, he took trips around the European continent to see what was being shown in museums and art galleries outside France. He gave his first interview on Cubism in 1912, and it was actual historical events that led to his career as a historian. There is a view that Kahnweiler's sensibility was such that his gallery, and the way he styled and developed it, was as much a Cubist gallery as were the paintings by Picasso and the other Cubist painters. The gallery had a clear aesthetic position, uncompromising integrity, financial stability and creative development. During the years 1907-1914 his gallery was a central cradle for Cubism, not only to display the works, but where one also met the artists.

Concurrently, the primary means for avant-garde painters and sculptors to show their works to a wider audience remained the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne. Kahnweiler forbade his 'gallery Cubists' from exhibiting at these major Salons, and by so doing, actually removed them from public view. From the viewpoint of the general public, Cubism came to be more associated with the 'Salon Cubists', such as Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia.

World War I and World War II

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 not only ruptured the Cubist experiments in art, but also forced Kahnweiler to live in exile in Switzerland; due to his German citizenship, he was considered an alien under French law. Many German nationals living in France had their possessions sequestered by the French state, and as a result, Kahnweiler's collection was confiscated in 1914 and sold by the government in a series of auctions at the Hôtel Drouot between 1921 and 1923.

During the years of exile (until 1920), Kahnweiler studied and wrote works such as the Der Weg zum Kubismus and Confessions esthétiques. Writing becoming a passion he continued over his lifetime, and he authored hundreds of books and major articles. The second period of enforced writing came during a period of internal exile caused by the events of World War II.  As a Jew, the Nazis forced him to flee Paris. He remained in France, in hiding. "Under the clouds from the gas chambers," as he put it in his seminal work on Juan Gris.

At the end
Kahnweiler was very prolific as an author, but never produced a full autobiography. There was, however, a series of interviews first aired on French television, then published and translated as a book under the title Mes galleries et mes peintres ("My galleries and my painters"). For his 80th birthday, a Festschrift was published with contributions by the world's leading philosophers, art historians, and artists, all of whom emphasized the vital importance of his unique contribution to art history – an importance still not yet fully appreciated, probably due to the fact that he has been viewed mostly as an art dealer and not as an art historian. This situation has been aggravated because some of his major works on aesthetics were either never translated into English or badly translated. The omission of key elements of a proper understanding of Cubism and focus on small and sensational elements of his complex relationship with Picasso has led to a flawed understanding of the ideas he put forward in these writings.

Although revered by artists for his business and aesthetic sense and respected by art dealers and art historians, the true impact of his life and work has yet to be recognized, despite a 1988 biography by Pierre Assouline. He died in 1979 in Paris, aged 94.

Sources
John Richardson, A Life of Picasso: The Prodigy, 1881–1906, Publ. Alfred A. Knopf, 1991,
John Richardson, A Life of Picasso: The Cubist Rebel, 1907-1916, Publ. Alfred A. Knopf, 1991,
Malcolm Gee,  Dealers, critics, and collectors of modern painting: aspects of the Parisian art market between 1910 and 1930, London, Garland, 1981.

References

External links
 D. H. Kahnweiler on photographs by Vaclav Chochola
 New York Times review of Bio pic, retrieved online April 26, 2008

French art dealers
French art collectors
French art historians
German art dealers
German art collectors
20th-century art collectors
German art historians
Jewish artists
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to France
Jewish art collectors
Businesspeople from Mannheim
Stockbrokers
1884 births
1979 deaths
French male non-fiction writers
German male non-fiction writers
20th-century French male writers
Art gallery owners

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler


Phillips Exeter Academy (also called Exeter, Phillips Exeter, or PEA) is a high school for boys and girls in Exeter, New Hampshire. It is a boarding school, and 80% of the students live there. The school has 1.3 billion dollars, which is the most any school in New England has, and as much as many colleges do.

Phillips Exeter Academy is one of the oldest private boarding school in the United States, and was founded in 1781, during the American Revolution, by John Phillips, as a school for only boys. The school opened to girls also in 1970. The school is known for its special teaching method, the Harkness method, where students discuss concepts instead of being lectured. The school has many important buildings, like the Class of 45 Library and the Exeter Inn. It has an art museum, called the Lamont Gallery.

Its rival school, Phillips Academy, was founded three years before in Andover, Massachusetts by John Phillips' nephew, Samuel Phillips Jr. with the help of the older Phillips. Their football teams have played against each other almost every year since 1878. This makes their rivalry one of the oldest high school rivalries in the country.

Many politicians, writers, and other leaders have graduated from this school. An American president, Franklin Pierce, went there, as did the children of three other American presidents: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Grover Cleveland. The inventor of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, also did. The school has three mottos: Non Sibi, which means "Not For Oneself", Finis Origine Pendet, which means "The End Depends On The Beginning", and Χάριτι Θεοῦ, which means "By the Grace of God".
Schools in New Hampshire
1780s establishments in the United States
1781 establishments in North America
18th-century establishments in New Hampshire

Phillips Exeter Academy


William G. Roll (July 3, 1926 – January 9, 2012) was an American psychologist and parapsychologist on the faculty of the Psychology Department of the University of West Georgia in Carrollton, Georgia. Roll is most notable for his belief in poltergeist activity. He coined the term "recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis" (RSPK) to explain poltergeist cases. However, RSPK was never accepted by mainstream science and skeptics have described Roll as a credulous investigator.

Career

Roll was born in 1926 in Bremen, Germany, where his father, diplomat William Roll, was American Vice-consul. At the age of three, after his parents divorced, he moved to Denmark with his mother Gudrun Agerholm Roll. According to Roll, while in Denmark, he began having out-of-body experiences at night. His mother died in 1942 and in 1946 he went to America with his father, who had come to Denmark with the American Allied forces.

Roll enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1947, where he received his BA, majoring in philosophy and psychology. A year after graduating, he went on to Oxford University, where he did parapsychology research for eight years. During this period, he was president of the Oxford University Society for Psychical Research. At Oxford, he wrote his thesis which earned him his Master of Letters degree, "Theory and Experiment in Psychical Research". His thesis was later published in the United States by Arno Press.

Sometimes credited as William Roll, or informally, Bill Roll, he was a parapsychologist since the 1950s and authored or coauthored many research papers and articles, as well as four books: The Poltergeist (1972), Theory and Experiment in Psychical Research (1975), Psychic Connections (1995, with co-author Lois Duncan), and Unleashed: Of Poltergeists and Murder: The Curious Story of Tina Resch (2004, with co-author Valerie Storey). He is also notable for making several appearances in the television show Unsolved Mysteries, among them an episode discussing disturbances on the  (in this episode he was mistakenly credited as being Danish-born).

Roll was invited by J. B. Rhine to join the Parapsychology Laboratory of Duke University, where he worked from 1957 to 1964. In 1964, he became president of the Parapsychological Association. In 1958, he coined the term "recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis" (RSPK) in a research paper written with J. G. Pratt that dealt with their investigation of objects moving in a home in Seaford, Long Island, New York USA, that was centered on a 12-year-old son of an affected family.

In 1961, Roll became project director of the Psychical Research Foundation (PRF), an offshoot of J. B. Rhine's Laboratory. After Rhine's retirement from Duke, the PRF left the Duke campus, but in 1969 it returned to Duke as a sponsored program of the School of Electrical Engineering.

Roll received a PhD in psychology from Lund University in 1989 for a thesis entitled, "This World or That: An Examination of Parapsychological Findings Suggestive of the Survival of Human Personality After Death".

In the 1980s and 1990s, Roll held various positions at the University of West Georgia, including Professor of Psychology and Psychical Research, assistant professor, and instructor. In later years, Roll retired from teaching, though he taught a course in parapsychology at the University of West Georgia in 2007, and continued to write, speak at conferences, and conduct occasional investigations. He was awarded the Parapsychological Award for a Distinguished Career in Parapsychology in 1996 and the Dinsdale Memorial Award from the Society of Scientific Exploration in 2002.

Roll's most famous case was as the lead investigator on the 1984 "Columbus Poltergeist" case, in which remarkable color photos were taken by a veteran newspaper photographer for the Columbus Dispatch newspaper, Fred Shannon, which allegedly showed spontaneous telekinesis events in action occurring in the home of Columbus, Ohio, teenager Tina Resch.

Roll died at the age of 85, in a nursing home in Normal, Illinois. Prior to that, he had a long residence in the state of Georgia in the Southeastern United States with his wife. He is survived by his adult children, grandchildren, and his wife.

Seaford poltergeist

In Seaford, New York, strange poltergeist events were reported by James M. Herrmann and his family in their house. In 1958, Roll investigated the case with the parapsychologist Joseph Gaither Pratt and suggested that although some of the phenomena may have been pranks from Hermann's twelve-year-old son James Jr, some of the events were the result of "recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis" (RSPK). However, RSPK has never been accepted by mainstream science and there is no evidence it exists.

The case was later re-evaluated by the skeptic Joe Nickell who concluded that all the phenomena could be explained by deliberate trickery from Hermann's son James Jr. According to Nickell, both Pratt and Roll were rather credulous and had little understanding of magic trickery. Nickell concluded that "Taken as a whole, the evidence strongly points to twelve-year-old James Hermann Jr. as having been the deliberate cause of the Seaford "poltergeist" outbreak. The motive, means, and opportunity were his, and the case was unwittingly prolonged by the credulousness of adults."

Reception

Roll's theory that poltergeists are the result of psychokinetic activity has drawn criticism from magicians and skeptics. Roll is notable for endorsing Tina Resch a central figure in a series of incidents that came to be called the Columbus poltergeist case, who he spent a week investigating. Magician and skeptical investigator Bob Couttie has written:

Roll's report has been heavily criticised. For instance, a picture fell from a bedroom wall and Roll started to replace it by hammering in a nail with a pair of pliers. As he did this, he was watching Tina out of the corner of his eye, or so he says, yet Roll is very short-sighted and it takes a brave man to hammer in a nail and attend to very poor peripheral vision at the same time. While he was doing this, Roll's tape- recorder was moved from a dresser that was immediately behind him. He turned to pick up the machine, which had come to rest between 7ft and 9ft behind him. As he did this his pliers were moved to a far wall. It is difficult to accept that Tina was sufficiently closely observed to preclude her moving the tape-recorder and pliers.

Resch was detected utilizing trickery by James Randi, but Roll had endorsed her phenomena as genuine. Henry Gordon has stated that parapsychologists such as Roll and Nandor Fodor took a speculative approach to the poltergeist subject, ignoring the rational explanation of deception in favor of a belief in the paranormal.

Publications

The Poltergeist (1972, 2004 edition, Paraview Special Editions)
Theory and Experiment in Psychical Research (1975)
Psychic Connections (1995) [with Lois Duncan]
Unleashed: Of Poltergeists and Murder: The Curious Story of Tina Resch (2004, Pocket Books)

References

External links
 William G. Roll papers. Annie Belle Weaver Special Collections, Ingram Library, University of West Georgia
 Member bio on William G. Roll
 Paraview Pocket Books - publisher's website on "Unleashed" with author Roll's bio

1926 births
2012 deaths
20th-century American psychologists
21st-century American psychologists
20th-century American writers
21st-century American writers
People from Bremen (city)
American parapsychologists
Poltergeists
American expatriates in Denmark
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Academics of the University of Oxford
Duke University faculty
Lund University alumni
University of West Georgia faculty

William G. Roll


Angammedilla National Park (; ) is one of the new national parks in Sri Lanka. The region was designated national park on 6 June 2006. Originally Angammedilla was a forest reserve within the Minneriya-Girithale Sanctuary declared on 12 February 1988. The park is declared mainly to protect the drainage basin of Parakrama Samudra. Angammedilla also secures the drainage basins of Minneriya and Girithale irrigation tanks, water sources in Sudu Kanda (Sinhala for "White hill") and habitats and wildlife of the adjacent forests. It is located  away from Colombo in Polonnaruwa District.

Physical features
Amban river which is sourced by Sudu Kanda forms the southern border of the park. A mountain range stretches across the park from Girithale to Minneriya. In the drought period the park is very dry. In the rainy season, mountainous area receives more rainfall than the plains. Since a mix wet and dry climate persists in the park the vegetation is a mix of wet zone and dry zone plants.

In the ancient times water has irrigated from Amban river to Parakrama Samudra in a canal done in stone. The rocky wall of the canal called royal wall by the villagers.

Flora and fauna
The vegetation of the park is predominantly dry evergreen forests. Diospyros ebenum is one of the dominant plant species in the forest. Manilkara hexandra (Palu), Cholorocylon swetenia (Burutha), Vitex pinnata (Milla), and Adina cordifolia (Kolon) are common in natural vegetation.

Mesua ferrea trees are grown in communities.

Sri Lankan elephant, Sri Lankan sambar deer, Indian muntjac, Sri Lankan axis deer, water buffalo, wild boar, and peafowl are common within the park. However Sri Lanka leopard, sloth bear, grizzled giant squirrel and Sri Lanka junglefowl are sometimes seen. The primate species red slender loris, tufted gray langur, and purple-faced langur are seen also.

See also

Protected areas of Sri Lanka

References

Sri Lanka dry-zone dry evergreen forests
National parks of Sri Lanka
Protected areas established in 2006
Protected areas in North Central Province, Sri Lanka

Angammedilla National Park


A hull can be:
 Husk or hull, the outer covering of a fruit or vegetable
 Hull (watercraft), the body or frame of a ship
 The main body of an armored tank
 in economics, the Hull-White model of interest rates

In mathematics:
 the affine hull in affine geometry
 the convex hull in geometry
 Carathéodory's theorem for convex hulls
 the holomorphically convex hull in complex analysis
 the injective hull of a module
 the Skolem hull of mathematical logic

Other places:
 Kingston upon Hull (Usually abbreviated to Hull), a city in England named after the River Hull.
 Hull, a former city in Québec, Canada (now part of the city of Gatineau)
 Orona, an island in Kiribati was formerly called Hull Island.
 Hull, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, USA
 Hull, Walker County, Alabama, USA
 Hull, Florida, USA
 Hull, Georgia, USA
 Hull, Illinois, USA
 Hull, Iowa, USA
 Hull, Massachusetts, USA
 Hull, Minnesota, USA
 Hull, North Dakota, USA
 Hull, Ohio, USA
 Hull, Texas, USA
 Hull, West Virginia, USA
 Hull, Marathon County, Wisconsin, USA
 Hull, Portage County, Wisconsin, USA

There are several people named Hull:
 Hull, Blair, an American businessman and politician,
 Hull, Bobby, a former Canadian ice hockey player
 Hull, Brett, a former Canadian ice hockey player, and son of Bobby Hull
 Hull, Cordell, United States Secretary of State from 1933 to 1944 under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945
 Hull, Isaac, Early United States Naval officer, Captain of the USS Constitution during the battle with HMS Guerriere
 Hull, John, a Professor of Derivatives and Risk Management at the University of Toronto
 Hull, Merlin, Congressman
 Hull, William, an American general during the American Revolutionary War and War of 1812.

There is also:
 Hull House, Settlement house in Chicago, Illinois
 River Hull, for which Kingston upon Hull is named
 Hull City A.F.C., an English football (soccer) team
 Hull RLFC, rugby league club formed in 1865, based in the West of the City
 Hull Kingston Rovers, rugby league club formed in 1882, based in the East of the City
 The University of Hull, a university in England
 USS Hull, any of four U.S. Navy ships

Hull