Shaquille Rashaun "Shaq" O'Neal (born March 6, 1972 in Newark, New Jersey) is an American retired professional basketball player. He had a 19 year career in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Orlando Magic, Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat, Phoenix Suns, Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics. He is often considered one of the most well-known players in the history of the NBA. He stands at  and weighs , making him one of the heaviest players to ever play in the NBA.

Basketball career

Before playing in the NBA, O'Neal played college basketball at Louisiana State University.  Throughout his 18 year career, O'Neal has used his size and strength to help him play well. O'Neal won a scoring title, an MVP and three championships with the Los Angeles Lakers; he later won a championship with the Miami Heat. He first played for the Orlando Magic and later for the Phoenix Suns. O'Neal won a gold medal with the 1996 Dream Team. O'Neal is currently the oldest player in the NBA and is the only one of the 50 Greatest NBA players, as chosen in 1996, to still be playing in the NBA. He has scored the most points of anyone still in the NBA, and the fifth-most of any NBA player ever.  He also one of the best shooters in the history of the NBA, and has led the league in that category ten times.  He has been named All-NBA and an All-Star quite a few times. He retired from the NBA on June 1, 2011 and held a press conference on June 3, 2011 to officially announce his retirement. After Shaq's college career he had 1 child.

Music, TV and movie career
O'Neal has appeared in several films and music videos, often as himself. As an actor, O'Neal starred in movies such as Blue Chips and Kazaam.

As a rapper, he released five studio albums and 1 compilation album. His first album, Shaq Diesel, was released in 1993. It received platinum certification from the RIAA. He rapped on the song "2 Bad" on Michael Jackson's album HIStory. He later performed three songs on the Kazaam soundtrack. O'Neal also rapped on Aaron Carter's 2001 hit single "That's How I Beat Shaq".

He has hosted two TV shows, one where he helps kids lose weight and another where he competes against athletes from other sports. He made a fine career in Los Angeles teaming with Kobe Bryant.

Personal life
O'Neal is a Muslim.

References

Other websites
Profile on Cavaliers official website

1972 births
Living people
Actors from Newark, New Jersey
African American actors
African-American basketball players
African American musicians
American movie actors
American movie producers
American Muslims
Rappers from New Jersey
Musicians from Newark, New Jersey
Sportspeople from Newark, New Jersey
American television personalities
American television producers
Boston Celtics players
Cleveland Cavaliers players
Los Angeles Lakers players
Miami Heat players
Orlando Magic players
Businesspeople from Newark, New Jersey
National Basketball Association players with retired numbers
American basketball players
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees

Shaquille O'Neal


Besiktas (Turkish: Beşiktaş) is a district in the European part of İstanbul. Beşiktaş is on the coast of the Bosphorus.

Beşiktaş has a football team called Beşiktaş Jimnastik Kulübü (BJK) (English: Besiktas Gym Club). BJK is one of the biggest and one of the most popular football team in Turkey.

Historical buildings
Dolmabahçe Palace is an Ottoman palace located in Besiktas along the coast. This is the palace where the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, died.

Districts in Istanbul

Beşiktaş


Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women is a convention and one of the international human rights law adopted by United Nations General Assembly on 18 December 1979 and entered into force 3 September 1981 established to prohibit all discrimination against women and to ensure their human rights and freedom on a basis of equality with men. As of 2017, 189 countries had ratified this Convention, that is, have made promise to realize this Convention. Countries which had not ratified it were Iran, Somalia, South Sudan, Tonga, the United States and Vatican City.

Main Contents
Article 1 Discrimination against women means any distincting, excluding or limiting all kinds of the human rights and freedoms of women.

Article 2 Countries must prohibit all discrimination against women by anyone, any groups and any companies and must change any law to protect women from discrimination.

Article 4 Special measures to promote real equality between men and women and to protect mother women is not discrimination.

Article 5 Abolishing any prejudices and custom which are out of the idea insisting that either sex is inferior or superior or out of stereotyped roles for men and women.

Article 6 Protection women from all forms of human trafficking and prostitution.

Article 7 The right to vote of women and to take part in government policy.

Article 8 Rights of women to represent their government and take part in the work of international organisation.

Article 9 Rights of women to change nationality and in marriage to an alien, women are not changed automatically changed her nationality according to that of the husband and have equal right as men about the nationality of her child.

Article 10 Abolishing discrimination against women in the field of education;
a) The same conditions for career and guidance for profession
b) Access to the same education program, the same tests, and teaching staff
c) To abolish any stereotype of the role of men and women at all levels and all form of education.
d) The same chance to get scholarships
g) The same chance to take part in sports

Article 11
1. To abolish discrimination against women in the field of working

2. To prevent discrimination against women in marriage motherhood, and ensure their right to work, countries have
a) to prohibit sanction or dismissal because of being pregnant or maternity leave.
b) to give maternity leave with pay or social benefits without loss of former profession.
d) to protect pregnant women form harmful works.

Article 12 Abolishing discrimination in the field of health care.

Article 13
a) The rights to family benefits
b) The rights to bank loan and credit card

Article 14 Abolishing discrimination in rural areas.

Article 15 Equality of women with men before law, also in civil matters and legal capacity.

Article 16
a) The rights to enter into marriage
b) The same right freely choose a spouse
c) The same right and responsibility during marriage
d) The same rights and responsibility as parents
e) The same rights to decide freely and with responsibility on the number and spacing of their children
g) The same personal rights as husband and wife, also the right to choose a family name, a profession and work

From Article 19 to 30, about the Committee that watch the realisation of this Convention by countries. The Committee is composed of 23 members elected by countries. They must be "of high moral standing". Countries must submit a national report, at least every four years to the Committee and the Committee submit reports to the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

The committee also give suggestion to the countries on matter about the abolition of discrimination against women.

Optional Protocol
This Convention also have the "Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women". It admits women whose human rights written in this Convention are violated to claim to the Committee of the United Nations. Until now, September 2017, 109 countries have ratified it, that is, promised to United Nations to realize it.

Related pages
Woman
Women's rights
Discrimination
Right to education
United Nations Development Fund for Women

Other websites
The full text of the Convention
The Optional Protocol

History of the United Nations
Feminism
Discrimination
Human rights
1979


Litmus paper is a mixture which is made from different dyes which can be taken from lichens. It is water-soluble. It is used to tell whether a solution is an acid or an alkali.

Litmus paper is put onto filter paper. The paper can then be used to give a rough indication of the pH value of a solution. Blue litmus paper will turn red, when acid is present; red litmus paper will turn blue when alkalines are present. At room temperature, this usually happens for PH values between 4.5 and 8.3.

Alternatively, a solution can be prepared which works the same way, but does not need the paper.

Related pages
pH#Indicators

Chemical compounds
Analytical chemistry
Physical chemistry

Litmus paper


1957 is a year o the Gregorian calendar.

Events

 January: An Irish Republican Army attack on the Brookeborough police barracks leads tae the deaths o Seán Sou an Fergal O'Hanlon.

 5t January : The president Eisenhower demands tae the Congress special pawers tae struggle agains Communist menace in Near-East.

 9t January: Martin Luther King foonds the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

 23t January: Ku Klux Klan members farce the truck driver Willie Edwards tae spring off a bridge intae the Alabama Strict; he drowns as a result.

 February: Kenyan rebel leader Dedan Kimathi is executed by the British colonial government.

 25t Mairch: The Rome Treaty is ratified bi the Five Members o the Economic European Community.

 26 Mairch – 22-year-auld Elvis Presley buys Graceland on 3734 Bellevue Boulevard (Highway 51 South) far 100,000 US dollars. He and his family dwell from the housie on 1034 Audubon Drive.

 Mey: Gustavo Rojas Pinilla's goveirnment an he fall in Colombia.

 Kim Tu-bong, president o the People's Supreme Assembly, opponent o Kim Il-sung is killed in North Korea

 24t September: Nine black bairns are expelsit frae a schuil in Little Rock (Arkansas) bi alot o fowks. Eisenhower sends thoosand parachutists thair tae mak the schuil respect the law.

 The Saare (Saarland) is integrated bi the Federal Republic o Germany.

See awso

 Years o the XIXt an XXt centuries
 1957 an 1958 Packards
 The next year on calendar is 1958-The precedent is 1956.

Dates
1957

1957


Altamira is a municipality in the Mexican state o Tamaulipas. It is located immediately to the north o the municipalities o Tampico an Ciudad Madero, at the soothren tip of the state o Tamaulipas, on the Guwf o Mexico. Additionally, it borders the municipalities o González on the wast an Aldama on the north, as well as Pánuco in the state o Veracruz on the sootheast. Altamira can refer tae the ceety, foondit in 1749, that is its municipal seat an seicont-lairgest commonty. The municipality is primarily made up o the ceeties o Miramar an Altamira, in addition tae mony smawer ootlyin touns such as Cuauhtémoc. The municipality haes a total aurie of 1,666.53 km² (643.45 sq mi).

Accordin tae the INEGI 2010 census, the municipality haes a population o 212,001 fowk. The ceety o Miramar haed a population o 118,614 an the ceety o Altamira haed a population o 59,536.

The municipality is the industrial an port center for the region - although the Tampico docks on the Pánuco River are still in uise for loose cargo, the Port o Altamira handles aw the containerised cargos.

Altamira´s advantage is haein a Port wi a great territorial reserve o approximately 9500 hectares which allous it tae launch practically ony ktnd o ventur. Altamira haes land an rail connections tae communicate aw companies wi the main consumer mercats an production hubs in Mexico, heichlichtin the northeastren zone which includes the states o Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon an Coahuila.
Acause o its privilegit geographical location, the Port o Altamira is easily accesible tae the warld´s main shippin lines, enablin it tae reach ony mercat in ivery continent.
The Port o Altamira wis conceivit unner the Industrial Port Model; this means an industrial Park wi its awn Port. This situation results in multiple advantages for investors, syne there is enough space an capacity tae develop aw kynds o industries which will hae a sea port at their disposition, juist a few meters away, enablin them tae be constantly integratit wi their clients an suppleers globally, an they mak their logistic processes mair efficient, resultin in economic benefits.

There is a lairge industrial sector an aw, mainly involvit in petro-chemicals, that provides hintle employment an tax revenue, foreign companies such as DuPont, SABIC, BASF, POSCO, etc. The state is tryin tae encourage construction o a new ile refinery for further integration.

Education
 Tamaulipas Institute of Higher Education

References
Link to tables of population data from Census of 2005 INEGI: Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática
Tamaulipas  Enciclopedia de los Municipios de México

Municipalities o Tamaulipas

Altamira Municipality, Tamaulipas


Starcade is an American game show where contestants competed against one another by playing arcade video games. The series originally aired on WTBS from 1982 to 1983, followed by a run in syndication for the following season.

The series was first hosted by Mark Richards. Geoff Edwards replaced Richards after the first 23 shows, and continued until the show's cancellation.

Broadcast history
Starcade was produced by the JM Production Company to air on WTBS and later syndication by Turner Program Services (TPS). Starcade was the first video arcade game show, and set the blueprint for similar game shows like Video Power, Nick Arcade, and Arena. The show was used to sponsor and showcase brand new coin-operated machines of the golden age of arcade video games.

Shortly after the series' cancellation, a second JM-produced video arcade game show, The Video Game, was aired for a brief period from 1984 to 1985.

Starcade aired in repeats on the G4 network from its inception in 2002 to 2004, shortly before its merger with TechTV. It returned to the G4 lineup during the network's 2021 relaunch.

Format
Two players (or teams; age-regardless) competed. Three rounds were played.

Each round began with a video arcade-game related toss-up question. The player who buzzed in and answered correctly chose one of five free-standing arcade games in the studio and was given 40 seconds (later 60, then 50) to amass as high a score as possible. The opponent then played the same game, and whatever points the players earned were added to their overall scores. If a player's game ended before time ran out, the turn ended immediately and the player was credited with whatever points they had earned.

The second and third rounds were played identically, with 40 seconds (later 50) game playing time for the second round, and 30 seconds (later 40) for the third. Once a game was chosen for play in any round, it could not be chosen again. At the end of the second round (and third when the series began), the player in the lead played "Name the Game," attempting to identify four arcade games by viewing short video clips. The player won a prize for correctly identifying at least three of the games, with a second prize awarded for correctly naming all four.

When teams played, both players had to play one game each in round one.

One of the five games was the "mystery game," which awarded a prize (originally 500 extra points, in very early episodes) to the player who chose it in any of the three rounds.

The player in the lead at the end of the third and final round won the game and a bonus prize, and moved on to the bonus round.

Bonus round
The player selected one of the two games that had not yet been played, and was given 30 seconds to beat the average score of 20 other players on that game. If the player did so, he/she won the day's grand prize, which consisted of either an arcade game, a home entertainment robot, a jukebox, or even a vacation (in certain "invitational" episodes).

Production
The original pilot for Starcade was hosted by Olympic gold-medalist hockey player Mike Eruzione, taped at the studios of KRON-TV in San Francisco and featured an almost entirely different format. There were three rows of eight players (24 in total) and their own separate arcade game systems. All three rows featured a different video game; in this case, the first one featured eight Defender systems, the second one featured eight Centipede systems, and the third one featured eight Pac-Man systems.  Each player had 30 seconds to accumulate a relatively high total. Whoever had the highest out of all eight on their team was selected to play against the two other highest-scoring players on an arcade game (Berzerk in this case) for the grand prize – their very own arcade game (Asteroids Deluxe, in this case) and an Apple II Home Computer System.

The overall winner would then play a brand-new arcade game against a celebrity "just for fun". The winner, David Dyche, played the then-new game Donkey Kong against Larry Wilcox, best known to viewers as police officer Jon Baker on the NBC crime-drama CHiPs.

The original pilot aired as a special on a handful of syndicated stations, where it rated quite well. Three more pilots were then shot for NBC at Bridge Studios, formerly the facilities of KPIX-TV (the station relocated to Battery Street in 1979, and the complex was demolished in 2006), featuring a retooled format (more similar to the series as aired) and host Alex Trebek (who was suggested by NBC). The pilot was picked up by Ted Turner in 1982, and the show began its life on WTBS in December, still taping at Bridge Studios with Mark Richards as host (as Trebek was busy with NBC's Battlestars at the time).

Richards, however, appeared to be uncomfortable on-camera; more importantly to Turner, Richards did not appear to be interested in video games. Richards was replaced by veteran game-show host Geoff Edwards on the 24th WTBS episode. Though Edwards had had no previous experience with video games, he became a fan of them soon after taking the job, studying the games in the show's rotation and reading gaming magazines. He would frequently offer advice and hints to contestants, and he was once featured in a "Starcade Hotline" segment playing and beating the notoriously difficult game Sinistar. Edwards remained a fan of video games until his death in 2014.

The show's original theme was an eight-bit melody similar to those heard in various arcade games of the time. Halfway through Richards' run, the theme was changed to one composed by "Mindseed" (Ed and Joanne Anderson), who were also employed by Data East at the time and who also composed the music for Venture and Mouse Trap for Exidy.

Occasionally, special episodes were produced such as team episodes, and others in which only one game was played repeatedly through the entire episode. Games that were featured in an episode of their own were Cliff Hanger, Dragon's Lair, Pole Position II, Track & Field and the 1983 Star Wars game.

Certain segments of the show were set to the in-game theme music from the game Xevious.

The final first-run show aired on February 24, 1984, with reruns airing in syndication until September 1984. WTBS then reran episodes of Starcade on Sunday mornings until January 1985.

Episode status
All episodes except episode #35 are known to exist, according to the show's official website.

On December 25, 2020, Wink Martindale released one of the pilot episodes hosted by Alex Trebek on YouTube. It was only available for a short time before being removed due to a copyright claim from JM Productions.

Possible reboot
In January 2017, Shout! Factory announced it had acquired the rights to Starcade from Caruso and Arthur, and intends to work with JM Productions to reboot the series, along with additional projects. No broadcast date has been determined yet.

On November 15, 2022, during an Xplay reunion at Kinda Funny Games, Jirard "The Completionist" Khalil revealed that he had plans to reboot Starcade at G4. However, those plans never came to fruition, as G4 shut down in October 2022.

See also
 Esports

References

External links

 See classic episodes of Starcade
 Game Show Utopia: Starcade (Edwards version)
 Dragon's Lair Project - Starcade retrospective

1980s American children's game shows
TBS (American TV channel) original programming
First-run syndicated television programs in the United States
1982 American television series debuts
1984 American television series endings
Television shows about video games
Video game culture
Television shows set in San Francisco
Arcade video games
Esports television
English-language television shows
Alex Trebek

Starcade


Giuseppe Bianchi (13 October 1791 in Modena – 25 December 1866) was an Italian astronomer.

After studying mathematics, physics, and astronomy at Padua, Bianchi taught astronomy at the University of Modena starting in 1819, and under his direction the Observatory of Modena was built in 1826.  In 1859 he was transferred to the marchese Montecuccoli's private observatory at Modena for political reasons.

He took part in the Commissione dei Pesi e Misure (Commission for Weights and Measures) and numerous scientific academies, and was secretary of the "Società italiana delle Scienze" (Italian Society of Science).

In 1834 he published "Acts of the Reale Osservatorio of Modena", describing the Observatory and all the work and observations he had carried out up to that year.

1791 births
1866 deaths
19th-century Italian astronomers

Giuseppe Bianchi (astronomer)


हिंदु धरम मे, गंगा के पाबित्तर मानल गइल बा आ देबी के पदबी दिहल बाटे अउर माई मानल जाला। हिंदु धरम मे हेकर पुजाई होला आ अईसन मानल जाला जे एहमे डुबकी लगइला से पाप से मुक्ति मिल जाला। एहमे मुअल मनई के राख दहाइला से ओकर आत्मा के शांति मिलेला। नर्मदा नदी के एकर बहिन मानल जाला। अईसन मानल जाला जे हर गंगा सतमी के गंगा जी आवेली आ नर्मदा मे सनान करेली।

Several places sacred to Hindus lie along the banks of the Ganges, including Gangotri, Haridwar, Allahabad and Varanasi. During the Loy Krathong festival in Thailand, candlelit floats are released into waterways to honour Gautama Buddha and goddess Ganga for good fortune and washing away sins (pāpa in Sanskrit, used to describe actions that create negative karma by violating moral and ethical codes, which brings negative consequences.) Many religious people take bath in this river as it is believed that it cleans the body as well as the mind (from sins) and make them divine.

कथा
Bhagavata Purana depicts the birth of the Ganges. According to Bhagavata Purana, Lord Vishnu in one of his incarnations, appeared as Vamana in the sacrificial arena of Asura King Mahabali. Then in order to measure the universe, he extended his left foot to the end of the universe and pierced a hole in its covering with the nail of his big toe. Through the hole, the pure water of the Causal Ocean (Divine Brahm-Water) entered this universe as the Ganges River. Having washed the lotus feet of the Lord, which are covered with reddish saffron, the water of the Ganges acquired a very beautiful pink colour. Because the Ganges directly touches the lotus feet of Lord Vishnu (Narayana) before descending within this universe, Ganges is known as Bhagavat-Padi or Vishnupadi which means Emanating from the lotus feet of Bhagavan (God). It finally settles in Brahmaloka or Brahmapura, abode of Lord Brahma before descending to planet Earth at the request of Bhagiratha and held safely by Lord Shiva on his head to prevent destruction of Bhumi (Mother Earth). Then, the river Ganges was released from Lord Shiva 's hair to meet the needs of the country according to Hindu mythology. In other legends, Himavan fathered Parvati and Ganga.

गंगावतरण

Several years later, a king named Sagara magically acquired sixty thousand sons. One day, King Sagara performed a ritual of worship for the good of the kingdom. One of the integral parts of the ritual was a horse, which was stolen by the jealous Indra. Sagara sent all his sons all over the earth to search for the horse. They found it in the nether-world (or Underworld) next to a meditating sage Kapila tied by Lord Indra (the king of Swarg). Believing that the sage had stolen the horse, they hurled insults at him and caused his penance to be disturbed. The sage opened his eyes for the first time in several years and looked at the sons of Sagara. With this glance, all sixty thousand were burnt to death.

The souls of the sons of Sagara wandered as ghosts since their final rites had not been performed. For the moksha of all the sons of sagar, Anshuman (nephew of those 60,000 son) started to pray Brahma to bring Ganga to the earth till the end of his life, but was not successful. Then his son Dilip did the same but did not succeed. When Bhagiratha (Means, one who does great hard work- he got his name from his great hard work for bringing Ganga to earth), one of the descendants of Sagara, son of Dilip, learnt of this fate, he vowed to bring Ganga down to Earth so that her waters could cleanse their souls and release them to heaven.

Bhagiratha prayed to Brahma that Ganga come down to Earth. Brahma agreed and he ordered Ganga to go down to the Earth and then on to the nether regions so that the souls of Bhagiratha's ancestors would be able to go to heaven. Ganga felt that this was insulting and decided to sweep the whole Earth away as she fell from the heavens. Alarmed, Bhagiratha prayed to Shiva that he break up Ganga's descent.

Ganga arrogantly fell on Shiva's head. But Shiva calmly trapped her in his hair and let her out in small streams. The touch of Shiva further sanctified Ganga. As Ganga travelled to the nether-worlds, she created a different stream to remain on Earth to help purify unfortunate souls there. She is the only river to follow from all the three worlds – Swarga (heaven), Prithvi (Earth) and Patala (netherworld or hell). Thus is called "Tripathagā" (one who travels the three worlds) in Sanskrit language.

Because of Bhagiratha's efforts Ganga descended to Earth and hence the river is also known as Bhagirathi and the term "Bhagirath prayatna" is used to describe valiant efforts or difficult achievements.

Another name that Ganga is known by is Jahnavi ( జాహ౽వి) Story has it that once Ganga came down to Earth, on her way to Bhagiratha, her rushing waters created turbulence and destroyed the fields and the sadhana of a sage called Jahnu. He was angered by this and drank up all of Ganga's waters. Upon this, the Gods prayed to Jahnu to release Ganga so that she could proceed on her mission. Pleased with their prayers, Jahnu released Ganga (her waters) from his ears. Hence the name "Jahnavi" (daughter of Jahnu) for Ganga.

It is sometime believed that the river will finally dry up at the end of Kali Yuga (the era of darkness, the current era) just as with the Sarasvati river and this era will end. Next in (cyclic) order will be the Satya Yuga or the era of Truth.

देवी, शक्ति आ माता

Ganga is a consort to all three major male deities of Hinduism. As Brahma's partner she always travels with him in the form of water in his kamandalu (water-pot). She is also Vishnu's consort. She emanates from his foot as Vishnupadi in the avatarana story, and is also, with Sarasvati and Lakshmi, one of his wives. In one popular story, envious of being outdone by each other, the wives begin to quarrel. While Lakshmi attempts to mediate the quarrel, Ganga and Sarasvati heap misfortune on each other. They curse each other to become rivers, and to carry within them, by washing, the sins of their human worshippers. Soon their husband, Vishnu, arrives and decides to calm the situation by separating the goddesses. He orders Sarasvati to become the wife of Brahma, Ganga to become the wife of Shiva, and Lakshmi, as the blameless conciliator, to remain as his own wife. Ganga and Sarasvati, however, are so distraught at this dispensation, and wail so loudly, that Vishnu is forced to take back his words. Consequently, in their lives as rivers they are still thought to be with him.

It is Shiva's relationship with Ganga, that is the best-known in Ganga theology. Her descent, the avatarana is not a one time event, but a continuously occurring one in which she is forever falling from heaven into his locks and being forever tamed. Shiva is depicted in Hindu iconography as Gangadhara, the "Bearer of the Ganga," with Ganga, shown as spout of water, rising from his hair. The Shiva-Ganga relationship is both perpetual and intimate. Shiva is sometimes called Uma-Ganga-Patiswara ("Husband and Lord of Uma (Parvati) and Ganga"), and Ganga often arouses the jealousy of Shiva's better-known consort Parvati.

Ganga is the shakti or the moving, restless, rolling energy in the form of which the otherwise recluse and unapproachable Shiva appears on earth. As water, this moving energy can be felt, tasted, and absorbed. The war-god Skanda addresses the sage Agastya in the Kashi Khand of the Skanda Purana in these words:  One should not be amazed ... that this Ganga is really Power, for is she not the Supreme Shakti of the Eternal Shiva, taken in the form of water? This Ganga, filled with the sweet wine of compassion, was sent out for the salvation of the world by Shiva, the Lord of the Lords.  Good people should not think this Triple-Pathed River to be like the thousand other earthly rivers, filled with water.

The Ganga is also the mother, the Ganga Mata (mata="mother") of Hindu worship and culture, accepting all and forgiving all. Unlike other goddesses, she has no destructive or fearsome aspect, destructive though she might be as a river in nature. She is also a mother to other gods. She accepts Shiva's incandescent seed from the fire-god Agni, which is too hot for this world, and cools it in her waters. This union produces Skanda, or Kartikeya, the god of war. In the Mahabharata, she is the wife of Shantanu, and the mother of heroic warrior-patriarch, Bhishma. When Bhishma is mortally wounded in battle, Ganga comes out of the water in human form and weeps uncontrollably over his body.

The Ganga is the distilled lifeblood of the Hindu tradition, of its divinities, holy books, and enlightenment. As such, her worship does not require the usual rites of invocation (avahana) at the beginning and dismissal (visarjana) at the end, required in the worship of other gods. Her divinity is immediate and everlasting.

ऋग्वेद

Ganga is mentioned in the Rigveda, the earliest and theoretically the holiest of the Hindu scriptures. Ganga is mentioned in the nadistuti (Rigveda 10.75), which lists the rivers from east to west. In RV 6.45.31, the word Ganga is also mentioned, but it is not clear if the reference is to the river.

RV 3.58.6 says that "your ancient home, your auspicious friendship, O Heroes, your wealth is on the banks of the Jahnavi(JahnAvyAm)". This verse could possibly refer to the Ganges. In RV 1.116.18–19, the Jahnavi and the Ganges River Dolphin occur in two adjacent verses.

अन्य धार्मिक चीज

According to the Hindu scriptures like Skanda Purana, the goddess Ganga is foster-mother to Karttikeya (Subrahmanya, Murugan), who was actually a son of Shiva and Parvati.

Parvati who created an image of Ganesha out of her bodily impurities but which became endowed with life after immersion in the sacred waters of the Ganges. Therefore, Ganesha is said to have two mothers—Parvati and Ganga and hence called Dvaimatura and also Gangeya (the son of Ganga).

The Hindu epic, Mahabharata tells that the Vasus, cursed by Vashishta had requested Ganga to be their mother. Ganga incarnated and became the wife of King Shantanu on condition that at no stage shall he question her actions, or she would leave him. As seven Vasus were born as their children, one after the other, Ganga drowned them in her own waters, freeing them from their punishment and the king made no opposition. Only when the eighth was born did the king finally oppose his wife, who therefore left him. So the eighth son, Dyaus incarnated, remained alive, imprisoned in mortal form, and later became known in his mortal incarnation as Bhishma (Devavrata), who is one of the most respected characters of the Mahābhārata.

नोट

According to the mythology of Khandoba (form of lord Shiva) Ganga is considered to take the rebirth in the  of Banai (Banu) and marry Khandoba. She is also known as Jayadhri, one of the seven daughters of lord indra, the king of gods. Jayadhri is also considered to be a best friend of goddess Parvathi.

संदर्भ

 Vijay Singh: The River Goddess (Moonlight Publishing, London, 1994)

बाहरी कड़ी

The Life Of Ganga
 Ganga Ma: A Pilgrimage to the Source a documentary that follows the Ganges from the mouth to its source in the Himalayas.

हिंदू देवी
हिंदू तीर्थ
देवी
हिंदू कथा

हिंदू धर्म में गंगा


Pallas () was a Titan from Greek mythology. He was associated with war, killed by Athena in the contest to fight for Zeus. Most sources say he was the son of Crius and Eurybia, the brother of Astraeus and Perses, and the husband of Styx. He was the father of Zelus, Nike, Kratos, and Bia. In addition, he has been named as the father of Scylla, Fontes, and Lacus. Some say he was the son of Megamedes and father of Selene, and is also recorded as the father of Eos.

The city Pellene, in Achaea, was named after Pallas, as was the asteroid 2 Pallas.

Related pages
Athena, sometimes called "Pallas Athena"

Titans

Pallas


Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 - July 2, 1961) was an American writer. He wrote in a very simple way, which made him very popular. He also did many exciting things, which made many people respect him. He is usually thought to be a member of the Lost Generation.

He wrote seven stories, six short ones, and two non-fiction ones. Three of his stories, four collections of his short stories, and three non-fiction ones were released after he died. Because he did many exciting things, some people say that, of the many characters he created in his books, he was his best creation.

Hemingway's early life

Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899. He grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, near the midwestern city of Chicago. He was the second child in a family of six. His father was a doctor. His mother was a painter  and a pianist.

Each summer, the family traveled to their holiday home in northern Michigan. Ernest's father taught him how to catch fish, hunt, set up a camp, and cook over a fire.

At home in Oak Park, Ernest wrote for his school newspaper. He tried to write like a famous sports writer, Ring Lardner, and he made his writing skills better.

Start as a news reporter

In 1917, Hemingway decided not to go to a university. The United States had just entered World War I and he wanted to join the Army, but they rejected him because his eyesight was not good enough.

Ernest found a job with the Kansas City Star newspaper in Kansas City, Missouri. He reported news that happened at the hospital, police headquarters, and the railroad station. One reporter said: "Hemingway liked to be where the action was."

The Kansas City Star told its reporters to write short sentences, and to report unusual details of an incident. Hemingway quickly learned to do both.

His life outside of America
Hemingway worked for the newspaper for nine months. He then joined the Red Cross to help on the battle fields of Europe. His job was to drive an ambulance and to take wounded soldiers off the battlefield.

The Red Cross sent him to Italy. There, he soon saw the first wounded. This was when a weapons factory in Milan exploded. Later, he was sent to the battle front. He went close to the fighting to see how he could act in the face of danger. Soon, he was seriously wounded.

Soon after healing, the war ended. Hemingway returned to the United States. After less than a year he had changed forever: he needed to write about what he had seen. Hemingway wrote many short stories about people who experienced World War I.

Gone to Chicago
Some time later, Hemingway left home for Chicago to prove to himself, and to his family, that he could earn a living from his writing.

But he ran out of money and began to write for a newspaper again. The Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Star, loved his reports in Chicago. They hired him and paid him well.

In Chicago, Hemingway also met Sherwood Anderson. Anderson was one of the first American writers to write about common people. Hemingway saw that Anderson's stories showed life as it really was. This was similar to what he wanted to do.

Anderson gave Hemingway advice about his writing. He told Hemingway to move to Paris. Life was less costly there. Anderson said that Paris had many young artists and writers from many nations.

In Paris

Hemingway decided to move to Paris. Before he did, in America, he married a woman he had recently met. Her name was Hadley Richardson.

Paris was cold and grey when Hemingway and his new wife arrived in 1921. They lived in one of the poorer parts of the city. Their rooms were small and they did not have water from pipes. But the Toronto Star employed him as its European reporter, so they had enough money for the two of them to live. That job gave Hemingway time to write his stories.

Hemingway enjoyed exploring Paris, learning French customs, and meeting friends. Some of these new friends were artists and writers who had come to the city in the 1920s. Among them were poet, Ezra Pound, and writers Gertrude Stein, John Dos Passos, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Seeing that Hemingway was a good writer, they helped him publish his stories in the United States. He was thankful for their support at the time, but later denied that he had received their help.

Hemingway travelled all over Europe. He wrote about politics, peace conferences, and border disputes, as well as sports, skiing, and fishing. Later he would write about bullfighting in Spain. The Toronto Star was pleased with his work, and wanted more of his reports, but Hemingway was busy with his own writing.

He said this: "Sometimes, I would start a new story and could not get it going. Then I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think. I would say to myself: 'All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.' So finally, I would write a true sentence and go on from there. It was a wonderful feeling when I had worked well."

His first success in 1925
Hemingway's first book of short stories was called In Our Time. One of its stories, "Big Two Hearted River," told of the effects of war on a young man who was taking a long fishing trip in Michigan. Hemingway had learned from his father, when he was a boy, about living in the wild.

The story is about two kinds of rivers. One is calm and clear, and is where the young man fishes. The other is a dark, threatening swamp. The story shows its main character trying to forget his past, as well as the war. He does not talk much about the war. The reader learns about the young man, not because Hemingway tells his readers what the man thinks, but because he shows that man learning about himself. Many people believe it is one of the best modern American stories of all time. Because of this, "Big Two Hearted River" is often published in collections of best writing.

After the book was published in 1925, Hadley and Hemingway returned to the United States for the birth of their son, after which they quickly returned to Paris.

Writing The Sun Also Rises
Hemingway was working on a long story. He wanted to publish a novel so he would be recognized as a serious writer. And he wanted the money a novel would earn.

The novel was called The Sun Also Rises. It is about young Americans in Europe after World War One. The war had destroyed their dreams and had given them nothing to replace those dreams. The writer Gertrude Stein later called these people members of "The Lost Generation."

The book was an immediate success. At the age of 25 Ernest Hemingway was famous. Many people, however, did not like Hemingway's art because they did not like what he wrote about.

Hemingway's sentences were short, the way he had been taught to write at the Kansas City Star newspaper. He wrote about what he knew and felt. He used few descriptive words. His statements were clear and easily understood.

He had learned from earlier writers, like Ring Lardner and Sherwood Anderson, but Hemingway brought something new to his writing. He was able to paint in words what he saw and felt. In later books, sometimes he missed. Sometimes he even looked foolish. But when he was right he was almost perfect.

Marriage with Pauline Pfeiffer

With the success of his novel, Hemingway became even more popular in Paris. Many people came to see him. One was an American woman, Pauline Pfeiffer. She became Hadley's friend. Then Pauline fell in love with Hemingway.

Hemingway and Pauline saw each other secretly. One time, they went away together on a short trip. Years later, Hemingway wrote when he returned that "...I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone but her. She was smiling and the sun was on her lovely face."

But they wouldn't stay married. Hadley knew Hemingway was also in love with Pfeiffer. Hemingway was seeing her in secret, even though he was married with Pauline. Because of this, Ernest Hemingway and Hadley separated. She kept their son. He agreed to give her money he earned from his books. In later years, he said that his marriage to Hadley as the happiest time of his life.

At twenty-five, Hemingway was living in Paris. He was a famous writer. But the end of his first marriage made him want to leave the place where he had first become famous. Much later he said, "the city was never to be the same again. When I returned to it, I found it had changed as I had changed. Paris was never the same as when I was poor and very happy."

Hemingway and his new wife returned to the United States in 1928. They settled in Key West, an island with a fishing port near the southern coast of Florida.

His well-known books

Before leaving Paris, Hemingway sent a collection of his stories to New York to be published. The book of stories, called Men Without Women, was published soon after Hemingway arrived in Key West.

The Killers
One of the stories was called "The Killers." In it, Hemingway used a discussion between two men to create a feeling of tension and coming violence. This was a new way of telling a story. Here is an example:Nick opened the thingy and went into the room. Ole Andreson was lying on the bed with all his clothes on. He had been a heavyweight prizefighter and he was too long for the bed. He lay with his head on two pillows. He did not look at Nick.

"What was it?" He asked.

"I was up at Henry's," Nick said, "and two fellows came in and tied me up and the cook, and they said they were going to kill you."

It sounded silly when he said it. Ole Andreson said nothing, "they put us out in the kitchen," Nick went on. "They were going to shoot you when you came in to supper."

Ole Andreson looked at the wall and did not say anything. "George thought I ought to come and tell you about it."

"There is not anything I can do about it," Ole Andreson said.

Any new book by Hemingway was an important event for readers. But stories like "The Killers" shocked many people. Some thought there was too much violence in his stories. Others said he only wrote about gunmen, soldiers, fighters, and drinkers.

This made Hemingway angry. He felt that writers should not be judged by those who could not write a story.

Hemingway was happy in Key West. In the morning he wrote, in the afternoon he fished, and at night he went to a public house and drank. One old fisherman said: "Hemingway was a man who talked slowly and very carefully. He asked a lot of questions. And he always wanted to get his information exactly right."

A Farewell to Arms
Soon afterwards, he heard that his father had killed himself. Hemingway was shocked. He said, "My father taught me so much. He was the only one I really cared about."

When Hemingway returned to work there was a sadness about his writing that was not there before.

His new book told about an American soldier who served with the Italian army during World War One. He meets an English nurse, and they fall in love. They flee from the army, but she dies during childbirth. Some of the events are taken from Hemingway's service in Italy. The book is called A Farewell to Arms.

Part of the book talks about the defeat of the Italian army at a place called Caporetto:"At noon we were stuck in a muddy road about as nearly as we could figure, ten kilometres from Udine. The rain had stopped during the forenoon and three times we had heard planes coming, seen them pass overhead, watched them go far to the left and heard them bombing on the main highroad. . . ."Later we were on a road that led to a river. There was a long line of abandoned trucks and carts on a road leading up to a bridge. No one was in sight. The river was high and the bridge had been blown up in the center; the stone arch was fallen into the river and the brown water was going over it. We went up the bank looking for a place to cross. . . . we did not see any troops; only abandoned trucks and stores. Along the river bank was nothing and no one but the wet brush and muddy ground. "

Death in the Afternoon
A Farewell to Arms was very successful. It earned Hemingway a lot of money. Because of this money, he could travel to other places.

One place he visited was Spain, a country he loved. He said, "I want to paint with words all the sights and sounds and smells of Spain. And if I can write any of it down truly, then it will represent all of Spain."

He wrote a book called Death in the Afternoon. It describes the Spanish custom of bull fighting. Hemingway believed that bull fighting was an art, just as much as writing was an art. And he believed it was a true test of a man's bravery, something that always concerned him.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Hemingway also travelled to Africa. He had been asked to write a series of reports about African hunting. He said, "Hunting in Africa is the kind of hunting I like. No riding in cars, just simple walking and feeling the grass under my feet."

The trip to Africa resulted in a book called The Green Hills of Africa and many smaller stories.

One story is one of Hemingway's best. The story, called The Snows of Kilimanjaro, tells of Hemingway's fears about himself. It is about a writer who betrays his art for money and is unable to remain true to himself.

For Whom the Bell Tolls
In 1936, the Civil War in Spain gave him a chance to return to Spain and test his bravery again. He agreed to write about the war for an American news organization.

It was a dangerous job. One day, Hemingway and two other reporters were driving a car near a battlefield. The car carried two white flags to show they were not fighting. But rebel gunners thought the car was carrying enemy officers. Hemingway was almost killed. Later he said that "bullets are all the same. If they do not hit you, there is no story. If they do hit you, then you do not have to write it. "

The trip to Spain resulted in two works: a play called The Fifth Column, and a novel called For Whom the Bell Tolls. The novel tells the story of an American who has chosen to fight against the fascists. He realizes that there are lies and injustice on his side. But he sees no hope except the victory of his side. During the fighting, he escapes his fear of death and of being alone. He decides that "he can live as full a life in seventy hours as in seventy years."

Later days and his married life

The book was a great success. Hemingway enjoyed being famous. His second marriage was ending. He divorced Pauline and married reporter Martha Gellhorn. He had met her while they were working in Spain. They decided to live in Cuba, near the city of Havana. Their house looked out over the Caribbean Sea.

But this marriage did not last long. Hemingway was changing. He began to feel that whatever he said was right. Martha went on long trips to be away from him. He drank heavily to forget his loneliness.

When America entered World War Two, Hemingway went to Britain as a reporter. Later he took part in the invasion of Europe and the freeing of Paris.

During the war, Hemingway met another reporter, Mary Walsh. In 1945, when his marriage to Martha was legally over, he married Mary.

After the war, Hemingway began work on his last important book, The Old Man and the Sea. It is the story of a Cuban fisherman who refuses to be defeated by nature.

Hemingway said, "I was trying to show the experience of the fisherman so exactly and directly that it became part of the reader's experience."

In 1954, Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature. But he was too sick to take part in the ceremony.

Ernest Hemingway was 60 years old, but he said he felt like he was 86. Even worse, he felt that he no longer was able to write. He seemed to be living the story about the writer who had sold his writing skill in order to make money.

In 1961, Ernest Hemingway shot himself dead. Among the papers he left was one that described what he liked best:

"To stay in places and to leave. . . to trust, to distrust. . . to no longer believe and believe again. . . to watch the changes in the seasons. . . to be out in boats. . . to watch the snow come, to watch it go. . . to hear the rain. . . And to know where I can find what I want."

Ernest Hemingway owned many cats, especially cats with extra toes. Today these cats are sometimes called Hemingway cats in his honor. His house in Key West, Florida is now a home for his cats and their kittens.

The article above is a rewriting of public domain material, provided by Voice of America Special English

References

Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1961 part1 on VOA program "American Stories"
Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1961 part2 on VOA program "American Stories"

Other websites

Journalists from Chicago
American Nobel Prize winners
Military people from Chicago
Writers from Oak Park, Illinois
Suicides by firearm in the United States
Writers from Chicago
Writers who committed suicide
1899 births
1961 deaths

Ernest Hemingway


A metamorphic rock is a type of rock which has been changed by extreme heat and pressure. Its name is from 'morph' (meaning form), and 'meta' (meaning change).

The original rock gets heated (temperatures greater than 150 to 200 °C) and pressured (1500 bars). This causes profound physical and/or chemical change. The original rock may be sedimentary rock, igneous rock or another older metamorphic rock.

There is always more pressure and higher temperature under the Earth's surface. In the root of a mountain chain or a volcano these forces will be enough to change shape of the strata and the minerals it is made of. Sedimentary rock which has been near such forces often looks as if a giant had twisted it and heated it over a fire. Examples of metamorphic rock:
 Marble is a metamorphic rock formed from limestone.
 Slate is a metamorphic mudstone or shale.
 Quartzite is a metamorphic sandstone.

The recrystallisation of minerals after heating generally causes the destruction of any fossils the rocks might have contained. These rocks are formed when igneous or sedimentary rocks are subjected to extreme heat and pressure. As a result, they undergo a complete change in their form and characteristics. Rocks who have been changed in this way are called metamorphic rocks.

Types of metamorphism

Regional metamorphism

Regional metamorphism, or dynamic metamorphism, occurs in great masses of rock. Rocks can be metamorphosed just by being at great depths below the Earth's surface. There they get high temperatures and the great weight of the rock layers above.

Much of the lower continental crust is metamorphic, except for recent igneous intrusions. Horizontal tectonic movements such as the collision of continents create orogenic belts. High temperature, pressures and deformation occurs along these belts. If the metamorphosed rocks are later uplifted and exposed by erosion, they are seen as long belts or other large areas at the surface.

Contact metamorphism

Contact metamorphism occurs when magma is injected into the surrounding solid rock (country rock). The changes that occur are greatest where the magma comes into contact with the rock. The temperatures were highest there and decreased with distance from it.

Metamorphic minerals
Every mineral is stable only within certain limits. When certain minerals appear in metamorphic rocks this shows the approximate temperatures and pressures the rock experienced. These minerals are known as index minerals. Sillimanite, kyanite, staurolite, andalusite, and some garnet are examples.

Other minerals, such as olivines, pyroxenes, amphiboles, micas, feldspars, and quartz may be found in metamorphic rocks. These minerals formed during the crystallization of igneous rocks. They are stable at high temperatures and pressures and may remain chemically unchanged during the metamorphic process.

Related pages
 List of rocks
 Igneous rock
 Sedimentary rock
 List of minerals

References

Other websites

 Metamorphic textures - Middle East Technical University
 Metamorphism - U. of Alabama
 Types of metamorphism - Tulane U.
 Contact metamorphism example

Metamorphic rocks

Metamorphic rock


WHDH is a television station in Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. It is owned by Sunbeam Television and is an independent television station that used to carry NBC. It is received on Channel 7 in eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and southern New Hampshire.

In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, there was another television station in Boston with the name WHDH-TV. That station aired on Channel 5 and is now called WCVB-TV. There is no relationship between the two stations.

History
Channel 7 in Boston went on the air June 21, 1948 as WNAC-TV. It is the second oldest television station in Boston, and the third oldest in the New England states. The first owner was General Tire, which later became RKO General.  The station showed CBS network programs when it first went on the air. The station also showed some programs from the ABC network. However, when a new TV station in Boston, Channel 5, then known as WHDH-TV but now known as WCVB-TV, started in 1957, Channel 7 dropped all ABC programs, which were then aired on Channel 5.  In 1961, Channel 7 and Channel 5 switched networks, and Channel 7 became an ABC station, and Channel 5 became the CBS station for Boston. In 1972, the two channels switched again, and Channel 7 returned to being a CBS station, and Channel 5 an ABC station.

On May 21, 1982, RKO General lost the license to broadcast and Channel 7 was taken over by New England Television on May 22. The channel was renamed WNEV-TV. New England Television bought a radio station known as WHDH in 1989, and in January, 1990, channel 7 was renamed WHDH-TV. On January 2, 1995, Channel 7 stopped showing CBS programs and began showing NBC programs. Before then, NBC programs were shown on WBZ-TV, Channel 4, which now shows CBS programs. The reason for this switch is because WBZ-TV's owners merged with the CBS network.

In 1993, the station was sold to Sunbeam Television. In July, 2010, Channel 7 officially dropped the -TV from its name, becoming just WHDH.

In 2017, the station stopped carrying NBC programming, losing the affiliation to WBTS-CD, and became an independent television station.

American television stations
Boston
1948 establishments in the United States
1940s establishments in Massachusetts

WHDH


The Night Before Christmas (, Noch pered Rozhdestvom) is a 1913 silent film made in the Russian Empire by Ladislas Starevich, based on the 1832 tale of the same name by Nikolai Gogol. Unlike most of Starevich's films, it is mainly live-action.

Plot
The plot is, on the whole, close to Gogol's classic tale.

The action is set in a Ukrainian village. On Christmas Eve, a minor demon arrives to a local witch called Solokha. They both ride on the witch's broom, after which the demon steals the Moon and hides in an old rag. In the ensuing darkness, some inebriated Cossacks can't find their way to a shinok (tavern) and decide to go home. One by one, they each come to visit Soloha, who hides each one (starting from the demon) in bags so that none of them see each other.
At the same time, Solokha's son Vakula the Metalsmith (P. Lopukhin), tries to woo the beauty Oksana (Olga Obolenskaya), but she laughs at him and demands that he find her the shoes which the Tsarina wears. Vakula goes to Soloha in sadness, but upon coming there sees the bags and decides to take them to the forge. Getting tired along the way, he leaves the heaviest bags on the street, which are picked up by a caroling company. Vakula, who is left only with the bag containing the demon, goes to Patsyuk, a sorcerer, to ask him how to find a demon - only with the help of a demon can he hope to get Tsarina's shoes.

The Patsyuk answers that a person should not search for a demon if he has a demon behind his back. Vakula takes it as some kind of a murky wise say, but indeed eventually finds the demon in the bag and forces him to take him to St. Petersburg. There, Prince Potemkin takes him for an ambassador of the Zaporozhian Cossacks and gives him Tsarina's shoes. The demon takes Vakula home and Vakula lets him go. Oksana agrees to marry Vakula.

Cast
 Ivan Mozzhukhin as Devil (as Ivan Mosjoukine)
 Olga Obolenskaya as Oksana
 Lidiya Tridenskaya as Solokha
 Petr Lopukhin as Vakula (as P. Laphukin)
 Aleksandr Kheruvimov as Golova
 Pavel Knorr as Chub
 S. Sorin

Significance
 The first time that an adaptation of The Night Before Christmas was filmed which was true to the letter and spirit of the original.
 In this film Ladislas Starevich combined in one scene live action and stop motion animation. This occurs in the scene with the hopping galushkis at Patsyuk's place, and in the scene where the demon shrinks and hides in Vakula's pocket.

Critical reaction
From the journal "Kino-theatre and life" («Кино-театр и жизнь», 1913, № 2):
"The Night Before Christmas" (after Gogol) is a very well written and acted cinema piece; however, not without some deficiencies in the scenes of crowds. Of all artists, who by-and-large performed well, it is impossible not to distinguish the makeup and acting of Mr. Mozzhukhin in the role of the demon. The fantastic sections of Soloha's flight on a broom and Vakula's on the demon are not carried off well, but the spectacular trick of the demon's shrinking was skillfully done. This picture will have success in Russia as a live illustration to the work of literature well- known to all the Russian public.

From the journal "Cinematography news" («Вестник кинематографии», 1913, № 24):
Some scenes - such as, e.g., the scene at Soloha's, meeting the Stanitsa Head fetched out of the bag by Chub (a Cossack), Patsyuk's dinner and many others - shine with distinctively Gogolian humour and play over the incessant laughter of the public... The film is made excellently, including the minute details which create the reality of the Ukrainian life.

See also
 History of Russian animation
 List of stop-motion films
 The Night Before Christmas (1951 film)

External links

  (English subtitles)

1913 films
Russian black-and-white films
Russian Christmas films
1910s fantasy films
Films based on works by Nikolai Gogol
Films directed by Ladislas Starevich
Films of the Russian Empire
Russian silent films
Articles containing video clips
1910s Christmas films
Works based on Christmas Eve (Gogol)

The Night Before Christmas (1913 film)


A metronome is a small device that can be used by people who are practising instruments to help them to play in time. It is also something a composer can use to show the performer what speed to play.

A traditional metronome works by clockwork. It has a pendulum which makes a loud tick as it goes to and fro, like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. It has to be wound up after a few minutes of ticking. There is a weight on the pendulum which can be slid up or down and set to a particular speed. There are numbers on the metronome to which you can set it. These numbers mean the number of ticks per minutes. A speed of 60 will make it tick 60 times a minute (i.e. every second). The numbers usually go from 40 (slow) to 208 (very fast). Nowadays many people use electronic metronomes. These are very accurate, do not need to be wound and often have other helpful things like an A to tune to (see musical tuning). Some of them are hardly bigger than a credit card.

The metronome was invented by Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel in Amsterdam in 1812. A man called Johann Maelzel copied Winkel's ideas and improved them. He made a small, portable metronome which was patented in 1816.

The metronome made it possible for a composer to show the performer what speed he wanted. If the composer writes at the top of his music: Crotchet (quarter note) = 76, for example, then the metronome can be set at 76 and it will tick at the right speed for that piece of music. Sometimes they write "MM76". The "MM" stands for "Maelzel's Metronome". Beethoven was the first composer to use metronome markings, but he often gave very fast speed indications, and some people wonder whether he made mistakes or whether his metronome worked properly.

Related pages
 Beat (music)
 Rhythm

Musical equipment

Metronome


The 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup was the ninth edition of the ICC Cricket World Cup tournament.  It took place in the West Indies from 13 March to 28 April 2007.  It used the sport's One Day International format. There were a total of 51 matches played, three fewer than at the 2003 World Cup.

The 16 competing teams were first divided into four groups. The two best-performing teams from each group moved on to a "Super 8" format. From this, Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and South Africa went to the semi-finals. Australia beat Sri Lanka in the final to win their third consecutive World Cup.

Cricket World Cup
2007 in sports
2007 in North America

2007 Cricket World Cup


A capitalization table (or cap table) is a table providing an analysis of a company's percentages of ownership, equity dilution, and value of equity in each round of investment by founders, investors, and other owners.

Overview
In its simplest form, a capitalization table, or "cap table" as it is often abbreviated, is a ledger that tracks the equity ownership of a company's shareholders: that is, how its capitalization is composed. However, the term can refer to the way in which any company keeps track of all of the relevant information related to all of its stakeholders (including debt, convertible debt, option, warrant, and derivatives holders) and their claims on the company. Public companies primarily use transfer agents and a wide array of technologies and systems to keep track of their stakeholder information and therefore it is uncommon for public companies to refer to their stakeholder records and accounting as a "cap table". Private companies typically have a much simpler capital structure and more limited stakeholder accounting requirements. In the earliest stages of their development, private companies may track their shareholders in a simple document or spreadsheet. Cap tables are widely used by entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and investment bankers to model and to analyze events such as ownership dilution, issuing employee stock options, or issuing new securities. After several rounds of financing, a cap table can become highly complex.

Most cap tables are managed in spreadsheets, which may lack scalability—often, they are time-consuming to maintain and update and prone to human error. In recent years, cap table automation software has becoming popular with growing businesses with increasingly complex equity structures.

Relationship to company shares
In the past, companies would issue shares on paper stock certificates and then use the cap table as an accounting representation and summary of share ownership. Public companies have increasingly eliminated all paper stock certificates in a process called "dematerialization" to simplify and decrease transactions costs. Most global regulators have made and encouraged financial system changes to encourage dematerialization.

In the US and many other countries, companies can use their cap table as the only system of record for recording stock ownership. US state laws support a concept of uncertificated, or book entry shares where the cap table is the formal legal record of equity ownership.

Waterfall analysis
As a cap table becomes more complex, the ownership percentages indicated on the cap table can diverge from actual percentage of proceeds distributed to shareholders upon a liquidity event. Some industry commentators have called the difference between actual ownership percentage on the cap table and a shareholder's percentage of exit proceeds "accounting ownership" (actual ownership percentage on the cap table) vs. "economic ownership" (percentage of proceeds available to equity).

This situation leads to the concept of a "waterfall" or "waterfall analysis." A waterfall analysis details the exact payouts to every shareholder on a company's cap table based on a specific amount of proceeds available to equity in a particular liquidity scenario. Since a company often does not know if, when, or how it will achieve a liquidity event, waterfall analysis typically covers a range of liquidity assumptions. Liquidation preference charts extend the analysis, showing the economic outcome available to investors at all valuations across a range of outcomes, rather than focusing on a specific point or a discrete set of points.

References

External links
Capography Helps Entrepreneurs Manage Their Cap Table Without The Excel Headache
Sample capitalization table on a spreadsheet
Common cap table mistakes to avoid
Cap table of Everpix

Corporate finance

Capitalization table


The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is part of the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is approved and funded by the government of the United States. The NCBI is located in Bethesda, Maryland, and was founded in 1988 through legislation sponsored by US Congressman Claude Pepper.

The NCBI houses a series of databases relevant to biotechnology and biomedicine and is an important resource for bioinformatics tools and services. Major databases include GenBank for DNA sequences and PubMed, a bibliographic database for biomedical literature. Other databases include the NCBI Epigenomics database. All these databases are available online through the Entrez search engine. NCBI was directed by David Lipman, one of the original authors of the BLAST sequence alignment program and a widely respected figure in bioinformatics.

GenBank

NCBI had responsibility for making available the GenBank DNA sequence database since 1992. GenBank coordinates with individual laboratories and other sequence databases, such as those of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ).

Since 1992, NCBI has grown to provide other databases in addition to GenBank. NCBI provides the Gene database, Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, the Molecular Modeling Database (3D protein structures), dbSNP (a database of single-nucleotide polymorphisms), the Reference Sequence Collection, a map of the human genome, and a taxonomy browser, and coordinates with the National Cancer Institute to provide the Cancer Genome Anatomy Project. The NCBI assigns a unique identifier (taxonomy ID number) to each species of organism.

The NCBI has software tools that are available through internet browsers or by FTP. For example, BLAST is a sequence similarity searching program. BLAST can do sequence comparisons against the GenBank DNA database in less than 15 seconds.

NCBI Bookshelf
The NCBI Bookshelf is a collection of freely accessible, downloadable, online versions of selected biomedical books. The Bookshelf covers a wide range of topics including molecular biology, biochemistry, cell biology, genetics, microbiology, disease states from a molecular and cellular point of view, research methods, and virology. Some of the books are online versions of previously published books, while others, such as Coffee Break, are written and edited by NCBI staff. The Bookshelf is a complement to the Entrez PubMed repository of peer-reviewed publication abstracts in that Bookshelf contents provide established perspectives on evolving areas of study and a context in which many disparate individual pieces of reported research can be organized.

Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST)
BLAST is an algorithm used for calculating sequence similarity between biological sequences, such as nucleotide sequences of DNA and amino acid sequences of proteins. BLAST is a powerful tool for finding sequences similar to the query sequence within the same organism or in different organisms. It searches the query sequence on NCBI databases and servers and posts the results back to the person's browser in the chosen format. Input sequences to the BLAST are mostly in FASTA or GenBank format while output could be delivered in a variety of formats such as HTML, XML formatting, and plain text. HTML is the default output format for NCBI's web-page. Results for NCBI-BLAST are presented in graphical format with all the hits found, a table with sequence identifiers for the hits having scoring related data, along with the alignments for the sequence of interest and the hits received with analogous BLAST scores for these.

Entrez
The Entrez Global Query Cross-Database Search System is used at NCBI for all the major databases such as Nucleotide and Protein Sequences, Protein Structures, PubMed, Taxonomy, Complete Genomes, OMIM, and several others. Entrez is both an indexing and retrieval system having data from various sources for biomedical research. NCBI distributed the first version of Entrez in 1991, composed of nucleotide sequences from PDB and GenBank, protein sequences from SWISS-PROT, translated GenBank, PIR, PRF, PDB, and associated abstracts and citations from PubMed. Entrez is specially designed to integrate the data from several different sources, databases, and formats into a uniform information model and retrieval system which can efficiently retrieve that relevant references, sequences, and structures.

Gene
Gene has been implemented at NCBI to characterize and organize the information about genes. It serves as a major node in the nexus of the genomic map, expression, sequence, protein function, structure, and homology data. A unique GeneID is assigned to each gene record that can be followed through revision cycles. Gene records for known or predicted genes are established here and are demarcated by map positions or nucleotide sequences. Gene has several advantages over its predecessor, LocusLink, including, better integration with other databases in NCBI, broader taxonomic scope, and enhanced options for query and retrieval provided by the Entrez system.

Protein
Protein database maintains the text record for individual protein sequences, derived from many different resources such as NCBI Reference Sequence (RefSeq) project, GenBank, PDB, and UniProtKB/SWISS-Prot. Protein records are present in different formats including FASTA and XML and are linked to other NCBI resources. Protein provides the relevant data to the users such as genes, DNA/RNA sequences, biological pathways, expression and variation data, and literature. It also provides the pre-determined sets of similar and identical proteins for each sequence as computed by the BLAST. The Structure database of NCBI contains 3D coordinate sets for experimentally-determined structures in PDB that are imported by NCBI.
The Conserved Domain database (CDD) of protein contains sequence profiles that characterize highly conserved domains within protein sequences. It also has records from external resources like SMART and Pfam.
There is another database of proteins known as Protein Clusters database, which contains sets of proteins sequences that are clustered according to the maximum alignments between the individual sequences as calculated by BLAST.

Pubchem database
PubChem database of NCBI is a public resource for molecules and their activities against biological assays. PubChem is searchable and accessible by Entrez information retrieval system.

See also
 DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ)
 European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI)

References

External links

  of the National Library of Medicine]
  of the National Institutes of Health

Biotechnology organizations
Medical research institutes in Maryland
National Institutes of Health
Online databases
Online taxonomy databases


A smoke sensor or smoke detector is a device that can detect smoke, which may be an indicator of a fire. There are two basic systems: Simple, standalone sensors usually make a sound or flash a light when they detect smoke. More sophisticated sensors usually send a signal to an fire alarm panel, or system. Most smoke detectors use either an optical sensor, or they use a physical process called ionization. Many simple smoke sensors use batteries. Very often dead batteries are not replaced; when this happens, the smoke sensors stop working.  But, the detector may "chirp" when the battery is low to try and stop this from happening. There are also systems which are directly connected to electrical power; these may use batteries just as a backup.

Smoke detectors are housed in plastic enclosures, typically shaped like a disk about  in diameter and  thick, but shape and size vary. Smoke can be detected either  optically (photoelectric) or by physical process (ionization); detectors may use either, or both, methods. Sensitive alarms can be used to detect, and thus deter, smoking in areas where it is banned. Smoke detectors in large commercial, industrial, and residential buildings are usually powered by a central fire alarm system, which is powered by the building power with a battery backup. Domestic smoke detectors range from individual battery-powered units, to several interlinked mains-powered units with battery backup; with these interlinked units, if any unit detects smoke, all trigger even if household power has gone out.

Design

Photoelectric
Photoelectric smoke detectors rely on detecting a lack of light to set the alarm off. The light used could be infrared, visible light, or ultraviolet. When smoke blocks out the light inside a photoelectric smoke detector, the smoke detector detects that there is less light. Below a certain brightness, whether or not it comes from smoke or not, the photoelectric smoke detector will beep.

Ionization
Ionization smoke detectors use radioactive elements to ionize the air. Alpha particles are released from the radioactive element onto air particles so that those air particles become charged. An ionization smoke detector will detect smoke if there is a change in voltage. If smoke enters the smoke detector, some of the alpha particles will attach to the smoke instead of the air particles. This will change the voltage inside the smoke detector, so the smoke detector will beep.

Ionization smoke detectors are cheaper than photoelectric smoke detectors, but they cause more false alarms than photoelectric smoke detectors. Additionally, ionization smoke detectors are slower to react in real house fires.

References

Safety

Smoke detector


A kantele (frae the Finnish) is a tradeetional poukit string instrument frae Finland.  In some weys it is sib tae a zither.

The Instrument

The auldest kynds o kantele haes anerly five or sax strings made o cuddy-hair, eikit tae a widden bouk cairved frae the ae bit wid.  Mair modren kanteles haes metal strings, an the bouk is aften made frae mair nor the ae bit wid.  Modren concert kanteles (for ordinar uised in clessical muisic) can hae sae mony as 39 strings, tho maist modren kanteles haes 15 or fewer, an is for ordinar mair sib tae tradeetional shapes.  This anes is aften cried smaw kanteles.  Wi smaw kanteles, the langest strings (that's lawest in pitch) is furdest awa frae the muisickers body, but wi concert kanteles it is the ither wey aboot, wi the cutty, heich pitched strings bein furdest awa.  The instruments is uised for tae play strynds o muisic that's sib tae ilk ither but deeferent in mony weys.

Thare is sic a thing as the electric kantele an aw, that's a gey modren oncome.  It uises a pickup no sae deeferent frae them uised on electric guitars, an haes been uised bi a twa-three hivy metal baunds.

Kanteles haes a disteenctive, skellat-lik soond, an is played aither bi poukin wi the fingers or bi strummin wi a wee wand no unlik a matchstick.  The muisicker hauds the kantele aither on thair laips or on a wee buird afore thaim.

Kanteles in Kalevala
In the Finnish naitional epic, Kalevala, the weirdman Väinämöinen maks the first kantele frae the chowk-bane o a muckle ged an a few hairs frae a cuddy.  The muisic the kantele syne maks draws aw the shaw-beasties near tae it, for tae strange at hou bonny the muisic is.  Later, Väinämöinen maks a kantele o wid, strung wi the hairs o a maiden, an the glamoury it gies is juist as fell.  Whan he quats the laund o Kalevala (seen bi maist fowk as a seembol for the kythin o Christianity in Finland, he lea's ahint his kantele as the gift o muisic for his fowk.

Kanteles in Modren Muisic
Mony Fowk metal baunds, sic as Ensiferum uises kanteles in thair muisic, as an exemplar o the wey that tradeetional muisic an mair modren weys o playin hae been jyned thegither in the recent past.  The uiss o kanteles in modren forms o muisc (as weel as the growth in interest in makkin tradeetional kynds o muisic) is likely tae growe in the futur, syne kantele is teached in schuils in Finland the nou this will gar mair young muisickers tak tae the instrument.  It can nou be studied at aw levels, e'en tae The Sibelius Acadamy, the ae muisic varsity in Finland.

Fremmit Airtins
Ae exemplar o kantele playin
Anithir exemplar, this tyme wi American fowk muisic jyned wi the tradeetional Finnish instrument
Sibelius Academy
Finnish Kantele musician Eva Alkula
Kantele music

Baltic psaltery
Finnish muisical instruments
Naitional seembols o Finland

Kantele


Sigyn is a goddess in Norse mythology. She is the wife of Loki. Sigyn is described in the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda. She is said to be a very loyal wife. She is the goddess of fidelity and bonds who stays with Loki even during his final punishment. Her name means victorious and she is often depicted holding a bowl over Loki to catch the venom of a serpent to prevent it from burning him.

Norse gods and goddesses

Sigyn


Otto Ludwig Preminger (5 December 1905 – 23 April 1986) was an Austrian-American movie director and producer, theatre director, and actor.

Early life
Preminger was born on December 5, 1905 in Vyzhnytsia, Wiznitz, Austria–Hungary (present Vyzhnytsia, Ukraine) to Jews Markus and Josefa Preminger.

Career
After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature movies in a 50 year career. He rose to fame for his stylish movie mysteries such as Laura (1944) and Fallen Angel (1945). In the 1950s and 1960s, he directed a number of high-profile adaptations of popular novels and stage works.  Several of these pushed the boundaries of censorship by dealing with topics which were then taboo in Hollywood, such as drug addiction (The Man with the Golden Arm, 1955), rape (Anatomy of a Murder, 1959) and gay (Advise & Consent, 1962). He was twice nominated for the Best Director Academy Award. He also had a few acting roles.

Personal life
Preminger was married to Marion Mill from 1932 until they divorced in 1946. Secondly he married Mary Gardner from 1951 until they divorced in 1959. Lastly he married Hope Bryce from 1971 until his death in 1986.

Death
Preminger died in New York City, New York on April 23, 1986, from lung cancer and Alzheimer's disease, he was 80 years old. He was cremated and is buried in the Azalea Room of the Velma B. Woolworth Memorial Chapel at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York.

References

Other websites

 Cinema Retro: Keir Dullea Recalls Starring in Preminger's Bunny Lake is Missing
 Literature on Otto Preminger

1905 births
1986 deaths
American movie directors
American movie producers
American voice actors
Austrian Jews
Austrian movie directors
American theatre directors
Austrian stage actors
Deaths from Alzheimer's disease
Deaths from lung cancer
Golden Globe Award winning directors
Jewish American actors
Jewish businesspeople
Naturalized citizens of the United States
Ukrainian Jews

Otto Preminger


Wrath of the Titans is a 2012 action fantasy film and a sequel to the 2010 film Clash of the Titans. The film stars Sam Worthington, Rosamund Pike, Bill Nighy, Édgar Ramírez, Toby Kebbell, Danny Huston, Ralph Fiennes, and Liam Neeson, with Jonathan Liebesman directing a screenplay by Dan Mazeau and David Leslie Johnson from a story by them and Greg Berlanti. Wrath of the Titans takes place a decade after the events of the preceding film as the gods lose control over the imprisoned Titans (thanks to humanity's lack of prayers which also is draining their immortality) and Perseus is called, this time to rescue his father Zeus, overthrow the Titans, and save mankind.

Talk of a sequel began with the release of Clash of the Titans in March 2010. Writers Dan Mazeau and David Leslie Johnson were hired in June 2010 and director Jonathan Liebesman was brought on board in August 2010. The majority of the casting took place between January and February 2011. Principal photography began in London in March 2011. Like its predecessor, the film was converted to 3D in post-production. Wrath of the Titans was released in 2D and 3D on March 30, 2012, in the United States. The film received widespread negative reception from critics and was a box-office bomb, grossing just $302 million worldwide on a budget (not including marketing costs) of $150 million. A sequel entitled Revenge of the Titans was planned for a 2013 release, but was cancelled due to the two films' critical failures and too few ideas for the script.

Plot
Ten years after defeating Hades' Kraken, Perseus, the demigod son of Zeus, now lives as a fisherman with his young son Heleus, after the death of his wife Io. Zeus visits Perseus and asks for his help, saying that humans are not praying to the gods; as a result, the gods are losing their power and becoming mortal, meaning they can no longer sustain the walls of Tartarus which are holding back the imprisoned Titan Kronos from freedom. Perseus, valuing his family's safety, refuses to get involved.

Zeus meets his brothers Hades and Poseidon and his son Ares in Tartarus. He asks Hades's help in rebuilding Tartarus's walls, but Hades rejects the offer and attacks Zeus. Ares too, having decided to betray Zeus, attacks his father. Poseidon is fatally injured in the ensuing fight. Hades and Ares imprison Zeus, stealing his thunderbolt. They plan to make a deal with Kronos; in exchange for remaining immortal, they will drain Zeus's divine power to revive Kronos. The walls of Tartarus break, unleashing monsters onto the world.

After killing a two-headed Chimera that attacked his village, Perseus travels to meet his father. He instead finds a dying Poseidon who informs him of the situation and tells him to find his demigod son Agenor, who will lead him to Hephaestus, who knows the way into Tartarus. Poseidon then gives Perseus his trident and succumbs to his injuries. Perseus, Andromeda and Agenor set out to find Hephaestus on a hidden island.

Agenor explains that Hephaestus created three weapons which Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon wield: Zeus's thunderbolt, Hades's pitchfork, and Poseidon's trident, which can jointly form the Spear of Trium, the only weapon that can defeat Kronos. After an encounter with three 30 ft. Cyclopes, the travelers eventually meet the now-mortal Hephaestus and reach the entrance of a labyrinth leading to Tartarus. Hephaestus sacrifices himself during an attack by Ares to enable Perseus, Andromeda, and Agenor to enter the labyrinth. Once inside the labyrinth they encounter the Minotaur that attacks them, but Perseus manages to kill it.

The group eventually enters Tartarus. Meanwhile, Zeus has been almost entirely drained of power as Kronos awakens. Zeus apologizes to Hades for banishing him to the underworld and asks his forgiveness, as he has forgiven Hades for his actions. Hades decides to help Zeus and stop Kronos in contrast to Ares, who still wants to proceed to the former's revival. Perseus arrives and frees Zeus. Ares wounds Zeus with Hades' pitchfork, allowing Perseus to obtain it before he and the others escape Tartarus with Zeus.

Aiming to retrieve Zeus' thunderbolt from Ares in order to defeat Kronos, Perseus challenges him to a duel. Meanwhile, Andromeda's army is overwhelmed by the Makhai. Hades revives Zeus and together they defeat the creatures. Kronos appears and begins to attack Andromeda's army. Zeus and Hades hold off Kronos while Perseus duels Ares, eventually killing him with the thunderbolt. Combining the gods' weapons into the Spear of Trium, Perseus destroys Kronos by traveling to his heart and throwing the spear into it.

Zeus reconciles with Perseus and then dies of his wounds. Hades leaves, telling Perseus that he is now powerless. Perseus kisses Andromeda, and Heleus tells his father that he wants to return to his life as a fisherman, but Perseus tells him they cannot. Perseus encourages Heleus to be proud of himself, as he is the son of Perseus and the grandson of Zeus. The film ends with Perseus giving his sword to Heleus.

Cast
 Sam Worthington as Perseus, the demigod son of Zeus, who defeated the Kraken and saved humanity; Zeus enlists Perseus' help in order to defeat the Titan Kronos. None of Perseus' adventures in the film are based on mythological sources.
 Liam Neeson as Zeus, the king of the gods as well as the god of the sky, lightning and thunder. Also Perseus' father.
 Ralph Fiennes as Hades, the god of the underworld and the dead. Hades is a brother of Zeus who resents his brother for appointing him lord of the underworld.
 Rosamund Pike as Andromeda, who was saved by Perseus when she was a princess; now crowned Queen of Argos, she joins Perseus in his quest to defeat Kronos. Pike replaced Alexa Davalos in the role, due to a scheduling conflict. In classical mythology, Andromeda was a princess of Aethiopia, who marries Perseus after he saves her from the sea monster Cetus.
 Toby Kebbell as Agenor, the demigod son of Poseidon; he joins Perseus in his quest to defeat Kronos. The character is only very loosely based on the mythological Agenor, son of Poseidon and Libya, who was King of Tyre in Phoenicia.
 Bill Nighy as Hephaestus, god of metalworkers and blacksmiths who forged of the gods' weapons. He was called the "Fallen One" for taking Hades' side in a family dispute.
 Édgar Ramírez as Ares, the god of war and violence, who betrays his father Zeus to join Hades.
 Danny Huston as Poseidon, the god of the sea, Agenor's father. Huston had also played Poseidon in one scene in the previous film.

Lily James appears as Korrina, a female warrior from Argos, while Matt Milne plays another Argive soldier. Alejandro Naranjo plays the Argive general Mantius.

John Bell plays Helius, the young son of Perseus and Io. In classical Greek mythology, Helius was one of the sons of Perseus and Andromeda; not Io who lived hundreds of years before Perseus and was actually one of his ancestors.

Sinead Cusack plays the local healer and teacher Clea.

The Minotaur is performed by Spencer Wilding, with Martin Bayfield motion-captured the oldest of the three cyclopes, who are based on the mythological cyclopes Arges, Steropes, and Brontes, who assisted Hephaestes.

Production
Talks of a sequel to Clash of the Titans began as early as March 2010. Tamer Hassan, who played Ares in the first film, stated at the film's world premiere that, "They want this one to do well so they can go ahead with the sequel, Return of the Gods". In April 2010 it was reported that director Louis Leterrier would not return to direct, but would be an executive producer on the second installment. The report also stated that Sam Worthington was on board and that Greg Berlanti would write the story.

In June 2010, Warner Bros. hired David Leslie Johnson and Dan Mazeau to write the screenplay, with Basil Iwanyk returning as the producer. It was announced that the sequel would be filmed in 3D, rather than being converted to 3D as the first film was. In August 2010, it was reported that Jonathan Liebesman had signed on as director.

In September 2010, Liebesman confirmed that Sam Worthington, Gemma Arterton, Ralph Fiennes, and Liam Neeson would be returning. However, Arterton did not reprise her role for unknown reasons, leaving her character, Io, dead in the film. In December 2010, Neeson revealed that the film would be titled Wrath of the Titans and that filming was expected to begin next March.

In January 2011, it was reported that Édgar Ramírez and Toby Kebbell were in negotiations to play Ares and Agenor respectively. It was also reported that Bill Nighy was being courted to play Hephaestus. Additionally, Hayley Atwell was on the shortlist of actresses screen testing for the role of Andromeda, played in the previous film by Alexa Davalos who left due to a scheduling conflict. Other actresses being considered for Andromeda included Georgina Haig, Janet Montgomery, Dominique McElligott, and Clémence Poésy.

In February 2011, it was reported that Rosamund Pike was near a deal for the part. Also in February, Liebesman announced that Wrath of the Titans would be converted to 3D rather than shot in 3D as previously reported despite the negative criticism the first Clash of the Titans received for its use of post-conversion 3D. Liebesman explained, "I think what you have to remember is the first film was neither shot nor edited with 3D in mind. It was shot as a 2D movie and edited as a 2D film, and they decided to convert it with six or seven weeks to go until release, which is insane; the technology was not there. That's why we're conceiving it from the start, from the ground up, in 3D, editing in 3D for 3D." Liebesman also stated the reason behind the conversion was because he wants to shoot on film, which will give the film's imagery better texture than he would get shooting digitally.

Principal photography began on March 23, 2011. Filming took place in studios outside London and later shot on location in Coldharbour Surrey, South Wales and in the Canary Islands on the island of Tenerife and Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia.

Release
Wrath of the Titans premiered on March 26, 2012, at the AMC Lincoln Square Theater in New York City. Warner Bros. Pictures released the film in theaters in the United States on March 30, 2012.

Home media
Wrath of the Titans was released on Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray, DVD and digital download on June 26, 2012.

Reception

Box office

Wrath of the Titans earned $83.6 million in North America and $221.6 million internationally for a worldwide total of $301 million, less than the $493 million grossed by its predecessor. The film was co-financed by Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures for $150 million, about $25 million more than it cost to produce the original. It debuted day-and-date in 61 markets worldwide sans Japan and delivered a global opening of $110.3 million.

In the United States and Canada, the film was released in a total of 3,545 theaters with 2,900 3D locations (4,400 3D screens), and 290 IMAX locations. Initially, it was projected open around with $35–40 million. It opened Friday, March 30, 2012, with $1 million from midnight screenings in 1,490 theaters. The film went on to earn $34.2 million in North America over the weekend, finishing in second place behind The Hunger Games which was playing its second weekend. The opening was over half of the original's $61.2 million debut. It played well in IMAX representing $4.7 million of the total weekend's gross. The follow-up attracted a large male contingent on its opening weekend with 66%. Roughly 65% of the moviegoers – about 55% of whom were over the age of 25 – saw the film in 3D.

Dan Fellman, Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution, said the comparison between the opening of the first and second film was not fair because the original opened on Good Friday, when more teenagers were out on spring break. He lamented on the film's poor box office performance: "We made a decision to open a week before the holiday this time and generate positive word-of-mouth since we had issues with the last one regarding the 3-D conversion, we're gonna get there – we're just gonna get there in a different way." However, despite not opening on a holiday weekend, the film had the advantage of playing a week before Easter in which the company could avail the spring break, which was staggered over the next two weeks. However, all this didn't necessarily aid the film's further box office performance. Warner Bros. said they didn't expect the sequel to reach the same level.

Outside North America, the film had a more successful opening but this success later dwindled due to poor word of mouth and eventually was unable to topple the first film's final $332 million international gross. It opened in first place – dethroning The Hunger Games — with $76.1 million from 14,600 screens (9,766 of which were in 3D) in 60 territories. It debuted in first place in 46 markets, notably in nine of the top 12 international territories including South Korea ($4.3 million), France ($3.1 million) and Italy ($1.8 million). Its biggest opening territories were Russia and the CIS ($12.8 million, representing 18% of the total weekend foreign take), Mexico ($5.2 million) and Brazil ($4.1 million). The film was ranked No. 1 in 11 markets across Latin America. Also internationally, it had an IMAX opening of $4 million from 176 screens – or $22,000 per site – with Russia contributing about $55,000 per-screen at 19 IMAX locations.

Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that  of  surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is . The site's critical consensus reads, "Its 3D effects are an improvement over its predecessor's, but in nearly every other respect, Wrath of the Titans fails to improve upon the stilted acting, wooden dialogue, and chaos-driven plot of the franchise's first installment." Metacritic assigned the film an average score of 37 out of 100 based on 32 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". In CinemaScore polls conducted during the opening weekend, audiences gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, slightly better than the first film's "B" grade.

The film earned a Razzie Award nomination for Neeson as Worst Supporting Actor. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter called it, "A relentlessly mechanical piece of work that will not or cannot take the imaginative leaps to yield even fleeting moments of awe, wonder or charm". Roger Ebert, who gave the first film three stars, awarded Wrath with only two, remarking "It lacks a comprehensible story, and you won't need your CliffsNotes on the Greek myths. You get an idea of who the major players are, and then they spend a modest amount of time shouting laughable dialogue at one another while being all but forced off the screen by special effects.". Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times criticized, "Directed this time out by Jonathan Liebesman, the film lacks inspiration or zest in storytelling, performance or action. This is pure product, a movie desperately without energy or enthusiasm of any kind". However, there have been some positive reviews. Andrew Barker of Variety noted that, "The [Clash of the Titans] franchise has matured ever so slightly with Wrath of the Titans, hewing incrementally more faithfully to its Greek origins and trimming the fat in essential places". Richard Corliss of Time magazine wrote, "Wrath [of the Titans] radiates the straight-forward, straight-faced pleasures of the mytho-muscular epics, like Hercules and Jason and the Argonauts, produced in Europe a half-century ago". Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly commented, "For a movie that's basically all warmed-over pseudo-mythology and special effects, Wrath of the Titans is certainly more fun, in its solemnly junky way, than John Carter. It may also be a little more fun than its cheeseball predecessor, the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans".

Cancelled sequel
Following the film's release, a second sequel, called Revenge of the Titans, was in the pipeline. However, due to Wraths disappointing critical reception and box office returns, the project was later shelved. In May 2013, Worthington stated he did not think a third film would be made. In December 2013, producer Basil Iwanyk confirmed the sequel was not happening due to a lack of fresh ideas for the script.

Notes

References

External links

2012 films
2012 3D films
2010s action adventure films
2010s fantasy action films
2010s fantasy adventure films
2010s monster movies
IMAX films
American 3D films
American action adventure films
American fantasy action films
American fantasy adventure films
American films about revenge
American monster movies
Clash of the Titans (film series)
Fiction about deicide
English-language Spanish films
Films adapted into comics
Films based on classical mythology
Films directed by Jonathan Liebesman
Films produced by Basil Iwanyk
Films produced by Polly Cohen Johnsen
Films scored by Javier Navarrete
Films set in ancient Greece
Films shot in London
Films shot in Spain
Films shot in the Canary Islands
Films shot in Wales
Films with screenplays by Greg Berlanti
Films with screenplays by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick
Films with screenplays by Dan Mazeau
Greek and Roman deities in fiction
Legendary Pictures films
Spanish 3D films
Thunder Road Films films
Warner Bros. films
2010s English-language films
2010s American films

Wrath of the Titans


Digital electronics is a type of electronics. These make use of "boolean logic" and "discrete digital signals" for electronics, devices, and equipment.

Examples of such devices are computers, information appliances, digital cameras, digital televisions, flash memory, key USB memory, mobile phones, hard disks, and devices of computer memory. Digital signal processing works on analog signals after they have been converted to digital form.

Digital circuits
Digital electronics is a branch of electronics concerning digital circuits which  apply boolean logic  which are represented by electronic logic gates. True and false are represented by different binary values with 0 volts for true and 5 volts for false. Digital circuits are less vulnerable to noise but consume a lot of energy. Digital circuits were invented in the twentieth century and is the foundation for digital communications and computers.

Electronics

Digital electronics