In economics, the Jevons paradox (; sometimes Jevons effect) occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost of use induces increases in demand enough that resource use is increased, rather than reduced. Governments typically assume that efficiency gains will lower resource consumption, ignoring the possibility of the paradox arising.

In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons observed that technological improvements that increased the efficiency of coal use led to the increased consumption of coal in a wide range of industries. He argued that, contrary to common intuition, technological progress could not be relied upon to reduce fuel consumption.

The issue has been re-examined by modern economists studying consumption rebound effects from improved energy efficiency. In addition to reducing the amount needed for a given use, improved efficiency also lowers the relative cost of using a resource, which increases the quantity demanded. This may counteract (to some extent) the reduction in use from improved efficiency. Additionally, improved efficiency increases real incomes and accelerates economic growth, further increasing the demand for resources.  The Jevons paradox occurs when the effect from increased demand predominates, and the improved efficiency results in a faster rate of resource utilization.

Considerable debate exists about the size of the rebound in energy efficiency and the relevance of the Jevons paradox to energy conservation. Some dismiss the effect, while others worry that it may be self-defeating to pursue sustainability by increasing energy efficiency. Some environmental economists have proposed that efficiency gains be coupled with conservation policies that keep the cost of use the same (or higher) to avoid the Jevons paradox. Conservation policies that increase cost of use (such as cap and trade or green taxes) can be used to control the rebound effect.

History

The Jevons paradox was first described by the English economist William Stanley Jevons in his 1865 book The Coal Question. Jevons observed that England's consumption of coal soared after James Watt introduced the Watt steam engine, which greatly improved the efficiency of the coal-fired steam engine from Thomas Newcomen's earlier design. Watt's innovations made coal a more cost-effective power source, leading to the increased use of the steam engine in a wide range of industries. This in turn increased total coal consumption, even as the amount of coal required for any particular application fell. Jevons argued that improvements in fuel efficiency tend to increase (rather than decrease) fuel use, writing: "It is a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth."

At that time, many in Britain worried that coal reserves were rapidly dwindling, but some experts opined that improving technology would reduce coal consumption. Jevons argued that this view was incorrect, as further increases in efficiency would tend to increase the use of coal. Hence, improving technology would tend to increase the rate at which England's coal deposits were being depleted, and could not be relied upon to solve the problem.

Although Jevons originally focused on coal, the concept has since been extended to other resources, e.g., water usage.  The Jevons paradox is also found in socio-hydrology, in the safe development paradox called the reservoir effect, where construction of a reservoir to reduce the risk of water shortage can instead exacerbate that risk, as increased water availability leads to more development and hence more water consumption.

Cause

Economists have observed that consumers tend to travel more when their cars are more fuel efficient, causing a 'rebound' in the demand for fuel. An increase in the efficiency with which a resource (e.g. fuel) is used causes a decrease in the cost of using that resource when measured in terms of what it can achieve (e.g. travel). Generally speaking, a decrease in the cost (or price) of a good or service will increase the quantity demanded (the law of demand). With a lower cost for travel, consumers will travel more, increasing the demand for fuel. This increase in demand is known as the rebound effect, and it may or may not be large enough to offset the original drop in fuel use from the increased efficiency. The Jevons paradox occurs when the rebound effect is greater than 100%, exceeding the original efficiency gains.

The size of the direct rebound effect is dependent on the price elasticity of demand for the good. In a perfectly competitive market where fuel is the sole input used, if the price of fuel remains constant but efficiency is doubled, the effective price of travel would be halved (twice as much travel can be purchased). If in response, the amount of travel purchased more than doubles (i.e. demand is price elastic), then fuel consumption would increase, and the Jevons paradox would occur. If demand is price inelastic, the amount of travel purchased would less than double, and fuel consumption would decrease. However, goods and services generally use more than one type of input (e.g. fuel, labour, machinery), and other factors besides input cost may also affect price. These factors tend to reduce the rebound effect, making the Jevons paradox less likely to occur.

Khazzoom–Brookes postulate

In the 1980s, economists Daniel Khazzoom and Leonard Brookes revisited the Jevons paradox for the case of society's energy use. Brookes, then chief economist at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, argued that attempts to reduce energy consumption by increasing energy efficiency would simply raise demand for energy in the economy as a whole. Khazzoom focused on the narrower point that the potential for rebound was ignored in mandatory performance standards for domestic appliances being set by the California Energy Commission.

In 1992, the economist Harry Saunders dubbed the hypothesis that improvements in energy efficiency work to increase (rather than decrease) energy consumption the Khazzoom–Brookes postulate, and argued that the hypothesis is broadly supported by neoclassical growth theory (the mainstream economic theory of capital accumulation, technological progress and long-run economic growth). Saunders showed that the Khazzoom–Brookes postulate occurs in the neoclassical growth model under a wide range of assumptions.

According to Saunders, increased energy efficiency tends to increase energy consumption by two means. First, increased energy efficiency makes the use of energy relatively cheaper, thus encouraging increased use (the direct rebound effect). Second, increased energy efficiency increases real incomes and leads to increased economic growth, which pulls up energy use for the whole economy. At the microeconomic level (looking at an individual market), even with the rebound effect, improvements in energy efficiency usually result in reduced energy consumption. That is, the rebound effect is usually less than 100%. However, at the macroeconomic level, more efficient (and hence comparatively cheaper) energy leads to faster economic growth, which increases energy use throughout the economy. Saunders argued that taking into account both microeconomic and macroeconomic effects, the technological progress that improves energy efficiency will tend to increase overall energy use.

Energy conservation policy

Jevons warned that fuel efficiency gains tend to increase fuel use. However, this does not imply that improved fuel efficiency is worthless if the Jevons paradox occurs; higher fuel efficiency enables greater production and a higher material quality of life. For example, a more efficient steam engine allowed the cheaper transport of goods and people that contributed to the Industrial Revolution. Nonetheless, if the Khazzoom–Brookes postulate is correct, increased fuel efficiency, by itself, will not reduce the rate of depletion of fossil fuels.

There is considerable debate about whether the Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate is correct, and of the relevance of the Jevons paradox to energy conservation policy. Most governments, environmentalists and NGOs pursue policies that improve efficiency, holding that these policies will lower resource consumption and reduce environmental problems. Others, including many environmental economists, doubt this 'efficiency strategy' towards sustainability, and worry that efficiency gains may in fact lead to higher production and consumption. They hold that for resource use to fall, efficiency gains should be coupled with other policies that limit resource use. However, other environmental economists argue that, while the Jevons paradox may occur in some situations, the empirical evidence for its widespread applicability is limited.

The Jevons paradox is sometimes used to argue that energy conservation efforts are futile, for example, that more efficient use of oil will lead to increased demand, and will not slow the arrival or the effects of peak oil. This argument is usually presented as a reason not to enact environmental policies or pursue fuel efficiency (e.g. if cars are more efficient, it will simply lead to more driving). Several points have been raised against this argument. First, in the context of a mature market such as for oil in developed countries, the direct rebound effect is usually small, and so increased fuel efficiency usually reduces resource use, other conditions remaining constant. Second, even if increased efficiency does not reduce the total amount of fuel used, there remain other benefits associated with improved efficiency. For example, increased fuel efficiency may mitigate the price increases, shortages and disruptions in the global economy associated with crude oil depletion. Third, environmental economists have pointed out that fuel use will unambiguously decrease if increased efficiency is coupled with an intervention (e.g. a fuel tax) that keeps the cost of fuel use the same or higher.

The Jevons paradox indicates that increased efficiency by itself may not reduce fuel use, and that sustainable energy policy must rely on other types of government interventions as well. As the imposition of conservation standards or other government interventions that increase cost-of-use do not display the Jevons paradox, they can be used to control the rebound effect. To ensure that efficiency-enhancing technological improvements reduce fuel use, efficiency gains can be paired with government intervention that reduces demand (e.g. green taxes, cap and trade, or higher emissions standards). The ecological economists Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees have suggested that any cost savings from efficiency gains be "taxed away or otherwise removed from further economic circulation. Preferably they should be captured for reinvestment in natural capital rehabilitation." By mitigating the economic effects of government interventions designed to promote ecologically sustainable activities, efficiency-improving technological progress may make the imposition of these interventions more palatable, and more likely to be implemented.

Other examples

Agriculture
Increasing the yield of a crop, such as wheat, for a given area will reduce the area required to achieve the same total yield. However, increasing efficiency may make it more profitable to grow wheat and lead farmers to convert land to the production of wheat, thereby increasing land use instead.

See also
 Andy and Bill's law, new software will always consume any increase in computing power that new hardware can provide
 Downs–Thomson paradox, increasing road capacity can make traffic congestion worse
 Tragedy of the commons, a phenomenon in which common resources to which access is not regulated tend to become depleted
 Wirth's law, faster hardware can trigger the development of less-efficient software

References

Further reading

Eponymous paradoxes
Paradoxes in economics
Industrial ecology
Energy policy
Energy conservation
Environmental social science concepts

Jevons paradox


The Rajmahal Hills are located in the Santhal Pargana division of Jharkhand, India. They were located on the northern margin of the Gondwana supercontinent, and its hills are today inhabited by the Sauria Paharia people whilst its valleys are dominated by the Santhal people. The hills span over an area of .

Volcanic activity during the Jurassic resulted in the formation of the Rajmahal Traps. The hills are approximately located at .

The Rajmahal hills are named after the town of Rajmahal which lies in the eastern Jharkhand. The hills trend north-south with an average elevation of , from the Sahibganj district to the Dumka district. The River Ganges wanders around the hills changing the direction of flow from east to south.

Francis Buchanan-Hamilton travelled through the Rajmahal hills in the early 19th century. He described the hills that seemed impenetrable in a zone where few travellers had been. He wrote that everywhere people were hostile, apprehensive of officials and unwilling to talk and, in some cases, left their villages and absconded.

Fossils
The plant fossil bearing inter-trappean beds of the Rajmahal Formation have been declared National Geological Monuments of India by the Geological Survey of India (GSI), for their protection, maintenance, promotion and the enhancement of geotourism. The Rajmahal hills contain plant fossils which are .  The fossils here have attracted geologists and palaeobotanists from all over the world. The Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany in Lucknow has a collection of them. There are fears of these fossils disappearing, as the state government in 2018 gave a mining lease in the area to private companies.

References

Hills of Jharkhand
National Geological Monuments in India

Rajmahal hills


Trash Fire is a 2016 American black comedy film written and directed by Richard Bates Jr. and starring Adrian Grenier, Angela Trimbur, Fionnula Flanagan, AnnaLynne McCord, Matthew Gray Gubler, and Sally Kirkland. The film had its world premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2016, and was released in a limited release and through video on demand on November 3, 2016, by Vertical Entertainment and Orion Pictures.

Plot
Suffering from depression and longstanding guilt over a fire that killed his parents and disfigured his younger sister Pearl, Owen Roberts struggles through relationship issues with his girlfriend Isabel Sullivan. Together with Isabel and on his own, Owen regularly sees uninterested psychiatrist Florence and takes medication for sudden seizures that include flashbacks to the fateful house fire he blames himself for.

After alienating Isabel's devoutly religious brother Caleb as well as Isabel's friends Sheldon and Amiee, Owen further frustrates Isabel when she reveals she is pregnant and he callously insists on abortion immediately. Owen has a change of heart and expresses a newfound desire to start a family. As a condition of forgiveness and acceptance, Isabel insists that Owen first make amends with his estranged grandmother Violet and sister Pearl, whom he abandoned to live with Isabel following the fire. Owen agrees, but warns Isabel about his grandmother's abrasive disposition.

Devoutly religious, Violet greets the couple coldly, insists they sleep apart, and repeatedly refers to Isabel as a whore. A recluse whom Violet insists remain in her room because of her appearance, Pearl remains hidden away and refuses to see Owen. Isabel wants to leave because of Violet's constant verbal abuse, but Owen insists on staying until he can reconnect with Pearl. While Owen and Violet are out grocery shopping, Isabel privately bonds with Pearl. Later, Isabel repeats her wish to leave after another outburst from Violet at the dinner table, though Pearl visits Isabel during the night trying to convince her to stay.

Violet tampers with Owen's medication. She then goes to see Pastor Sterling at her local church to tell him of haunting visions that she began experiencing when Owen returned. Violet claims that she hears a voice she believes to be God telling her to kill the rest of her family. She confesses that she set the fire that killed her daughter and son-in-law, and convinced Owen he was responsible in order to drive him to suicide. Horrified, Pastor Sterling insists that Violet is delusional. Violet threatens to expose Pastor Sterling for having sex with Owen's mother when she was just fifteen if he goes to the police. Violet then steals a rattlesnake from an aquarium tank in the pastor's office before leaving.

Back at home, Violet hides the snake in the toilet bowl and masturbates while watching an evangelist preach on television. Meanwhile, Owen pays an emotional visit to the site where his family's house once stood. Isabel screams when she discovers the snake. Pearl rushes into the bathroom, kills the snake with her bare hands, and thrusts it at her grandmother in the kitchen. Violet makes Owen go into the crawlspace underneath her house under the pretense of repairing a piping hole where the snake came through. Violet tries starting a fatal fire while Owen is under the porch, but is physically unable to strike the match. Owen and Pearl finally speak to each other. Pearl refuses to forgive Owen for abandoning her.

During the night, Violet enters Pearl's room and points a gun at her granddaughter. Pearl responds by pointing a shotgun at Violet. Violet laughs and leaves the room. Owen takes the tainted medication and collapses in the kitchen. Violet enters and points her gun at Isabel as Isabel cries on the floor over Owen. Pearl comes in with her shotgun and kills both Violet and Owen. While Isabel sits against the wall in shock, Pearl comes over and lays her head on Isabel's pregnant stomach, smiling.

Cast
 Adrian Grenier as Owen Roberts.
 Brayden Austin as young Owen
 Angela Trimbur as Isabel Sullivan
 Fionnula Flanagan as Violet Roberts
 AnnaLynne McCord as Pearl Roberts
 Ruby Lightfoot as young Pearl
 Sally Kirkland as Florence
 Matthew Gray Gubler as Caleb Sullivan
 Ezra Buzzington as Sterling
 Molly McCook as Aimee
 Ray Santiago as Sheldon

Release
Trash Fire premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2016. Shortly after, Vertical Entertainment acquired distribution rights to the film. The film was released in a limited release and through video on demand on November 3, 2016.

Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 69% based on 26 reviews, with an average rating of 6.66/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Trash Fire has a confidently scabrous appeal, although its unsympathetic characters and nihilistic black comedy may leave a sour taste with some viewers." Metacritic reports a weighted average score of 42 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

References

External links

2016 films
2016 black comedy films
American black comedy films
American independent films
Films shot in Los Angeles
Vertical Entertainment films
Orion Pictures films
2016 comedy films
2016 independent films
2010s English-language films
Films directed by Richard Bates Jr.
2010s American films

Trash Fire


The Michigan Merit Exam (MME) is a replacement for the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) test, a minimum-competency test for high school students. It was optional for class of 2007 (i.e., it could be taken instead of the MEAP) but was required for the class of 2008 and beyond. The MME is used to measure "Adequate yearly progress" as required under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Part of the MME is the SAT (originally, the MME included the ACT from 2007 to 2015). In addition, there are Michigan-specific sections, including one on social studies and science, known as the M-STEP, and the WorkKeys test.

Juniors are generally not expected to attend afternoon classes after completion of Michigan Merit Exam, though some exceptions do exist.

Sections
Students' MEAP scores are divided into four performance levels: Exceeded Expectations, Met Expectations, Basic, and Apprentice.  Students who place in either the Met Expectations or Exceeded Expectations levels are considered to be "proficient" in that subject.  Those who place in the Apprentice or Basic levels are deemed to be "not proficient." The student must score a 1100 to earn the label "Met Expectations."

English
The English portion of the exam is broken into three sub-scores: reading, writing, and "English Language Arts". This portion tests very basic elementary school English in a multiple choice format. No knowledge of literature is required.

A sample question would be:
Read this passage carefully: parts inside a computer include:
CPU
Hard drive
RAM
Graphics card

What would you not find inside a computer:
 A:CPU
 B:Hard drive
 C:RAM
 D:Graphics card
 E:Television

The answer is E:Television

Math

Social Studies

Science
Which one is an organic compound
A: NaCl
B: NO
C: NH3
D: CH4

The answer is D: CH4

WorkKeys
The WorkKeys test is a section of the MME which tested students' ability to handle everyday business work: reading forms, handling addresses, scheduling, and similar.

It was added as a requirement for members of the class of 2007 who took the MEAP.

Scholarship eligibility
Students who took and passed the MME were eligible for the Michigan Promise Scholarship, which provides up to $4,000 for post secondary education in Michigan or a military service academy. However, the allocated funding for this program was withheld due to the state budget cuts in PA 132 of 2009 for the 2009-2010 fiscal year, thus rendering said scholarship non-existent for students graduating later than 2007.

References

External links
 Michigan Merit Exam (MME) (from the student aid department)
 MDE - Michigan Merit Exam (from the Michigan Department of Education)

Education in Michigan
Standardized tests in the United States

Michigan Merit Exam


Lexicostatistics is a method of comparative linguistics that involves comparing the percentage of lexical cognates between languages to determine their relationship. Lexicostatistics is related to the comparative method but does not reconstruct a proto-language. It is to be distinguished from glottochronology, which attempts to use lexicostatistical methods to estimate the length of time since two or more languages diverged from a common earlier proto-language. This is merely one application of lexicostatistics, however; other applications of it may not share the assumption of a constant rate of change for basic lexical items.

The term "lexicostatistics" is misleading in that mathematical equations are used but not statistics. Other features of a language may be used other than the lexicon, though this is unusual. Whereas the comparative method used shared identified innovations to determine sub-groups, lexicostatistics does not identify these. Lexicostatistics is a distance-based method, whereas the comparative method considers language characters directly. The lexicostatistics method is a simple and fast technique relative to the comparative method but has limitations (discussed below). It can be validated by cross-checking the trees produced by both methods.

History
Lexicostatistics was developed by Morris Swadesh in a series of articles in the 1950s, based on earlier ideas. The concept's first known use was by Dumont d'Urville in 1834 who compared various "Oceanic" languages and proposed a method for calculating a coefficient of relationship. Hymes (1960) and Embleton (1986) both review the history of lexicostatistics.

Method

Create word list
The aim is to generate a list of universally used meanings (hand, mouth, sky, I). Words are then collected for these meaning slots for each language being considered. Swadesh reduced a larger set of meanings down to 200 originally. He later found that it was necessary to reduce it further but that he could include some meanings that were not in his original list, giving his later 100-item list. The Swadesh list in Wiktionary gives the total 207 meanings in a number of languages. Alternative lists that apply more rigorous criteria have been generated, e.g. the Dolgopolsky list and the Leipzig–Jakarta list, as well as lists with a more specific scope; for example, Dyen, Kruskal and Black have 200 meanings for 84 Indo-European languages in digital form.

Determine cognacies
A trained and experienced linguist is needed to make cognacy decisions. However, the decisions may need to be refined as the state of knowledge increases. However, lexicostatistics does not rely on all the decisions being correct. For each pair of words (in different languages) in this list, the cognacy of a form could be positive, negative or indeterminate. Sometimes a language has multiple words for one meaning, e.g. small and little for not big.

Calculate lexicostatistic percentages
This percentage is related to the proportion of meanings for a particular language pair that are cognate, i.e. relative to the total without indeterminacy. This value is entered into an  table of distances, where N is the number of languages being compared. When completed, this table is half-filled in triangular form. The higher the proportion of cognacy the closer the languages are related.

Create family tree
Creation of the language tree is based solely on the table found above. Various sub-grouping methods can be used but that adopted by Dyen, Kruskal and Black was:
 all lists are placed in a pool
 the two closest members are removed and form a nucleus which is placed in the pool
 this step is repeated
 under certain conditions a nucleus becomes a group
 this is repeated until the pool only contains one group.

Calculations have to be of nucleus and group lexical percentages.

Applications
A leading exponent of lexicostatistics application has been Isidore Dyen. He used lexicostatistics to classify Austronesian languages as well as Indo-European ones. A major study of the latter was reported by Dyen, Kruskal and Black (1992). Studies have also been carried out on Amerindian and African languages.

Pama-Nyungan
The problem of internal branching within the Pama-Nyungan language family has been a long-standing issue for Australianist linguistics, and general consensus held that internal connections between the 25+ different subgroups of Pama-Nyungan were either impossible to reconstruct or that the subgroups were not in fact genetically related at all. In 2012, Claire Bowern and Quentin Atkinson published the results from their application of computational phylogenetic methods on 194 doculects representing all major subgroups and isolates of Pama-Nyungan. Their model "recovered" many of the branches and divisions that had erstwhile been proposed and accepted by many other Australianists, while also providing some insight into the more problematic branches, such as Paman (which is complicated by the lack of data) and Ngumpin-Yapa (where the genetic picture is obscured by very high rates of borrowing between languages). Their dataset forms the largest of its kind for a hunter-gatherer language family, and the second largest overall after Austronesian (Greenhill et al. 2008 ). They conclude that Pama-Nyungan languages are in fact not exceptional to lexicostatistical methods, which have successfully been applied to other language families of the world.

Criticisms
People such as Hoijer (1956) have showed that there were difficulties in finding equivalents to the meaning items while many have found it necessary to modify Swadesh's lists. Gudschinsky (1956) questioned whether it was possible to obtain a universal list.

Factors such as borrowing, tradition and taboo can skew the results, as with other methods. Sometimes lexicostatistics has been used with lexical similarity being used rather than cognacy to find resemblances. This is then equivalent to mass comparison.

The choice of meaning slots is subjective, as is the choice of synonyms.

Improved methods
Some of the modern computational statistical hypothesis testing methods can be regarded as improvements of lexicostatistics in that they use similar word lists and distance measures.

See also

Basic English
Cognate
Comparative linguistics
Comparative method
Global Lexicostatistical Database
Glottochronology
Historical linguistics
Indo-European studies
Intercontinental Dictionary Series
Linguistic distance
Mass lexical comparison
Proto-language
Swadesh list
Word list

References

Further reading
 Dobson, Annette (1969). Lexicostatistical Grouping. Anthropological Linguistics 7, 216-221.
 Dobson, Annette and Black, Paul (1979). Multidimensional Scaling of some Lexicostatistical Data. Mathematical Scientist 1979/4, 55-61.
 McMahon, April and McMahon, Robert (2005). Language Classification by Numbers. Oxford University Press.
 Sankoff, David (1970). "On the Rate of Replacement of Word-Meaning Relationships." Language 46.564-569.
 Wittmann, Henri (1969). "A lexico-statistic inquiry into the diachrony of Hittite." Indogermanische Forschungen 74.1-10.
 Wittmann, Henri (1973). "The lexicostatistical classification of the French-based Creole languages." Lexicostatistics in genetic linguistics: Proceedings of the Yale conference, April 3–4, 1971, dir. Isidore Dyen, 89-99. La Haye: Mouton.

External links

 The Global Lexicostatistical Database, part of the Evolution of Human Languages project
 IE database
 A simplified explanation of the difference between glottochronology and lexicostatistics.

Historical linguistics
Comparative linguistics
Quantitative linguistics

Lexicostatistics


Luis Zúñiga is an Ecuadorian writer. He was born in Quito in 1955. He studied anthropology in Ecuador and Italy, and has worked extensively in the Andes region. He has also been a diplomatic and cultural emissary in Cuba.

He is the author of five novels:
 Manuela (1991), a historical novel about Manuela Saenz which won the Premio Nacional de novela Joaquín Gallegos Lara, and was published in Ecuador and in Colombia, Cuba, Peru and Venezuela
 Rayo (1997), Primera Mención del Jurado de la Bienal de la Novela ecuatoriana
 Extasia (2007), jury mention at the Premio Nacional Joaquín Gallegos Lara
 Un As de alto vuelo (2010)
 Karaoke

He has also written for the theatre, for example, the dramatic monologue La celebración (2009). As a poet, he has published three collections:
 Ruidos intercostales (1982)
 Del barrio a la ciudad (1985)
 Versiones (1996).

References

Ecuadorian writers
1955 births
Living people

Luis Zúñiga


Please Stand By is a 2017 American comedy-drama film directed by Ben Lewin and based on the 2008 short play of the same name by Michael Golamco, who also wrote the screenplay. The film stars Dakota Fanning, Toni Collette, Alice Eve, River Alexander and Patton Oswalt, and was distributed by Magnolia Pictures.

An autistic young woman, determined to participate in a script-writing contest, goes on a journey to deliver her script in person before the deadline.

After playing at various film festivals, the film was simultaneously released theatrically and on-demand on January 26, 2018.

Plot

Wendy—an autistic young woman who has a fixation on Star Trek—lives a routine life in a San Francisco group home where she is monitored by the house manager, Scottie. She spends her time writing a 450-page Star Trek script to enter in Paramount Pictures' screenwriting contest for the $100,000 prize.

Wendy is visited by her sister Audrey, who shows her pictures of her infant daughter, Ruby, and reveals that she is selling their childhood home. Wendy asks her to take her home, arguing that she will be able to buy back the house and help care for Ruby once she wins the screenwriting contest. Audrey refuses, informing Wendy she is not capable of caring for a baby. Wendy has a meltdown and she leaves the group home weeping.

After Wendy misses the mail-in date to send her script to Paramount Pictures, she decides to deliver the script herself. She leaves the group home early the next morning and is followed by the group home's small dog, Pete. They board a bus to Los Angeles, but are left by the side of the road as Pete urinates on the bus.

Wendy then wanders into a shanty town, where she is robbed of most of her money. She then wanders to a nearby shop and is nearly swindled out of the last of her money by an employee. Luckily, elderly woman Rose intervenes to stop the employee from exploiting Wendy. Rose sympathizes with her as her grandson is also autistic, and lets Wendy accompany her on the senior citizens' bus. However, the driver falls asleep at the wheel, crashing the bus.

Following the bus crash, Wendy wakes up in a hospital in Bakersfield. Still determined to deliver her script as planned, she leaves Pete at the hospital and escapes. During her escape, Wendy loses part of her script by chance. She gathers used paper and begins rewriting it.

Simultaneously, Audrey and Scottie have realized Wendy is missing. They begin to search for her and file a missing persons report. After correctly deducing that Wendy left for LA to personally deliver her script, Scottie and her son Sam leave on the road. The Bakersfield hospital notifies Scottie and Audrey of Wendy's whereabouts; police continue the search from there. Scottie and Sam find the missing script pages while scouring the hospital.

Wendy then attempts to buy a bus ticket to LA, but is unable as she has no money. She ultimately stows away on the next bus there, stowing away inside the baggage compartment. Upon her arrival to LA, Wendy wanders around until two police officers recognize her from the missing persons report. Fortunately, Officer Frank gains Wendy's trust by speaking to her in Klingon. They bring her to the police station, where she is reunited with Audrey and Scottie. They drive Wendy to Paramount Pictures so she can deliver her script as planned.

Despite being stonewalled by a bad-mannered mailroom worker, Wendy is able to sneak past security and submit the script to the turn-in box. Satisfied that she has completed her mission, Wendy informs her sister she did this to prove that she was more capable than Audrey thought.

Wendy returns to the group home where she later receives a letter from Paramount Pictures informing her that her script was not chosen, but encouraging her to continue writing. Despite the rejection, she is satisfied with everything she has accomplished. Wendy visits Audrey at their childhood home and holds her niece in her arms for the first time, while Audrey embraces her.

Cast

Release
It had its world premiere at the Austin Film Festival on October 27, 2017. It was theatrically released on January 26, 2018 and on VOD by Magnolia Home Entertainment on May 1, 2018.

Reception

Box office
Please Stand By grossed $9,868 in the United States and Canada, and $396,864 in other territories, for a worldwide total of $406,732. Sales of its DVD/Blu-ray releases have grossed an estimated $145,291.

Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 58% based on 38 reviews, and an average rating of 5.86/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Please Stand By hits a number of familiar coming-of-age beats, but adds just enough of a Trek-fueled twist to keep things interesting." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 49 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

References

External links

2017 films
2017 comedy-drama films
2017 independent films
2010s American films
2010s English-language films
2010s coming-of-age comedy-drama films
American coming-of-age comedy-drama films
American films based on plays
Films about autism
Films about runaways
Films about sisters
Films directed by Ben Lewin
Films scored by Heitor Pereira
Films set in San Francisco
Films set in Los Angeles
Star Trek fandom
Works about Star Trek

Please Stand By


The River Crake is a short river in the English Lake District. The name probably derives from the Celtic languages (most likely Brythonic languages; ie Cumbric language) and means rocky stream. The river drains Coniston Water from its southernmost point and flows for about 6 miles (9.5 km) in a southerly direction before joining the upper estuary of the River Leven at Greenodd. The river is in the historic county of Lancashire, but in an area that formed part of the county Cumbria after the 1974 reorganisation of local government.

The villages of Water Yeat, Blawith, Lowick Bridge, Spark Bridge and Penny Bridge are located close to the river in the Crake Valley. As well as receiving the outflow from Coniston the river also drains Beacon Tarn in the Blawith Fells above the southern end of Coniston.

In the 19th century numerous industries including a cotton mill and iron foundry flourished along the river, making use of the fast flowing water to
drive machinery. A bobbin mill at Spark Bridge, which manufactured wooden bobbins for the Lancashire cotton industry, used water-powered lathes to turn the wood. The factory survived into the 1970s using Gilkes water turbines to generate electricity and turn the lathes. The factory was eventually forced to close by the punitive water usage charges levied by the North West Water Authority. Today there are no obvious signs of any of the riverside industries.

The Crake is a noted salmon river.

The River Crake is the model for the Amazon River in Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series of children's novels according to Hugh Brogan, although the Crake flows out of Coniston Water but the Amazon flows into the Lake. The Allan Tarn at the beginning of the river became the Octopus Lagoon.

Rivers of Cumbria
Furness
1Crake

River Crake


Frankenstein is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the Death Race franchise. Within the film universe, the character is an alias taken on by other characters who participate in the titular race. The character has been played by David Carradine, Jason Statham, Luke Goss, Dougray Scott, Manu Bennett, and Velislav Pavlov.

Character biography

Death Race 2000 (1975)
In the original 1975 film, Frankenstein is portrayed as the reigning champion of the Transcontinental Road Race, an annual gladiator-style cross-country race. A symbol of the ruling totalitarian government, he is a feared racer who is purported to be half-man, half-machine.

In reality, it turns out that there have been several Frankensteins over the years – each one recruited by the government to replace their injured or killed predecessors. In this way, with each man donning the same alias and disguise, Frankenstein seems to be an unkillable opponent who survives any crash or injury. The current Frankenstein (David Carradine) is disillusioned with the government, as well as the race, and he plans to assassinate the tyrannical Mr. President (Sandy McCallum). Although his plans to win the race and destroy the government are nearly ruined by the actions of a Resistance movement, he eventually succeeds in both winning the race and killing Mr. President. He then assumes the office of President himself and puts an end to the race.

Death Race (2008)
In the 2008 remake of the 1975 film, ex-race driver Jensen Ames (Jason Statham) is imprisoned on Terminal Island after he is framed for his wife's murder. Terminal Island is home to a televised gladiator-style race called the Death Race, and Ames soon finds himself forced to race by the tyrannical Warden Hennessey (Joan Allen). Ames must assume the mantle of Frankenstein, the current leading racer, whose appearance is covered by a mask. The previous Frankenstein was killed in a fiery crash, though the prison population believes he has simply spent the last six months recovering in the infirmary. The previous Frankenstein had already won four out of five races necessary to secure freedom, requiring Ames to only win one more race. Hennessey explains that Frankenstein is the most popular racer in the history of the race, and ratings would take a sharp hit if his death were announced.

Ames soon learns that Hennessey was behind his wife's murder, using Ulrich (Jason Clarke), the lead guard, and Pachenko (Max Ryan), a fellow racer. Ames decides to win the Death Race and use it as a means of revenge. With only his pit crew knowing the truth about Frankenstein, Ames goes on to uncover what happened to his predecessor, kills Pachenko during the race, and ultimately succeeds in using the race to escape, along with his chief rival, Machine-Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson). Afterwards, Coach (Ian McShane), a member of his pit crew, detonates a bomb in Hennessey's office, killing both her and Ulrich. It is unknown if the Frankenstein mantle was resurrected by the next warden.

Death Race 2 (2010)
The first prequel to the 2008 film reveals the origins of Frankenstein. Getaway driver Carl "Luke" Lucas (Luke Goss) is captured after a bank robbery gone bad, in which he was to protect the nephew of crime boss Markus Kane (Sean Bean). Although loyal and refusing to cooperate with the authorities, Lucas is marked for death by Kane because he knows too much. He is sent to Terminal Island and recruited to compete in the Death Match, a brutal gladiator-style show, ostensibly run by the aging warden but, in reality, controlled by producer September Jones (Lauren Cohan). His fight results in a large-scale prison riot and ultimately spells the end of the controversial show.

The Death Match is replaced by the Death Race, a gladiatorial race that uses custom cars and unused space along the island's outer edges. The prize for winning five races is freedom. Lucas initially does well, but is targeted by the other drivers due to the bounty on his head. When he saves the life of fellow driver 14K (Robin Shou), 14K pays back this favor by killing Kane. Ultimately, Lucas is driven off the track and ends up in a seemingly fatal crash. However, he returns under a new identity created by Jones, Frankenstein, a horribly scarred racer who wears a mask. However, at the start of his next race, he rams and kills Jones, to the pleasure of her many enemies.

Death Race 3: Inferno (2013)
In the second prequel, a direct bridge to the 2008 film, Lucas' (Luke Goss) appearance is restored with reconstructive surgery, but he still does not reveal his identity to his pit crew.  However, they discover that Lucas is Frankenstein after his mask is knocked off during a brawl at Kalahari Prison in South Africa, where Lucas and his crew are sent to compete in the first International Death Race. The new race is the brainchild of British billionaire Niles York (Dougray Scott). Because Lucas has won four of the five races required for his freedom, York demands that he throw the final race or face death.

At the end of the race, Lucas crashes his car into the operations center, where York has been handcuffed to a table by his producer, incensed by York firing and replacing her. York is horribly burned in the fiery crash, and the world at large is then led to believe that York is the survived Frankenstein, despite his protestations. Lucas and his crew stage their deaths and escape, while the disfigured York, resigned to the fact that everyone believes that he is Frankenstein, adopts the mantle. The film ends with York, now using an American accent (strongly implying that it is he who is the Frankenstein killed at the start of the 2008 film), stating in voiceover, "I am Frankenstein. And I will have my revenge."

Death Race: Beyond Anarchy (2018)
In the first sequel of the remake series, a new Frankenstein (played by Bulgarian actor Velislav Pavlov and voiced by Nolan North) has become the ruler of a prison colony called the Sprawl and has won seven races, despite the race now being illegal. Weyland International had tried to have Frankenstein killed several times, all without success.

Frankenstein takes an interest in newly-arrived prisoner Connor (Zach McGowan) when the man not only beats up several of Frankenstein's henchmen, but also shows no fear or respect towards him when he confronts him personally. After observing Connor win a qualifying match in the Death Pit by gruesomely defeating his henchman the Butcher, Frankenstein has Connor brought to him and tells him that if he wins the Death Race, he will become king of the Sprawl, and asks if he is ready for that responsibility.

The next day, Frankenstein discovers that Connor is actually Sergeant Connor Gibson, a soldier sent by Weyland International with the purpose of killing him. He outs Connor in front of the prison populace and declares that Connor will be allowed to take part in the Death Race, earning Connor much hate from the populace.

At the starting line of the Death Race, Frankenstein reveals to Connor that he has made Jane (Christine Marzano), the prison bartender who has become Connor's love interest, his new co-pilot as an "insurance policy" against Connor. Throughout the Death Race, competitors are taken out one by one until at the final stretch, when Connor finally catches up to Frankenstein, Connor runs out of gas. Despite pleading from Jane, Frankenstein chooses to run Connor down with his car when he is suddenly T-boned by the other remaining runner-up, Gypsy Rose (Yennis Cheung), who shoots him dead, revealing herself to also be a soldier sent by Weyland International.

In the aftermath, Connor is convinced by Sprawl resident Baltimore Bob (Danny Glover) to take up the mantle and become the new Frankenstein, which he does.

Portrayals
In each film, Frankenstein is played by one or more characters and, thus, actors.
 In the original film version, Death Race 2000, Frankenstein was portrayed by David Carradine.
 In the opening scene of the first film of the remake series, Death Race, Frankenstein is played by an unknown character/actor and voiced by David Carradine in a nod to the original 1975 film. For the rest of the film, the role is taken up by Jason Statham's character, Jensen Garner Ames.
 In the first prequel of the remake series, Death Race 2, the Frankenstein persona is introduced near the end of the film and is named Carl "Luke" Lucas (Luke Goss).
 At the end of the second prequel of the remake series, Death Race 3: Inferno, billionaire Niles York is forced to assume the Frankenstein mantle and is portrayed by Dougray Scott.
In the sequel to the original film version, Death Race 2050, Frankenstein is portrayed by Manu Bennett.
In the first sequel of the remake series, Death Race: Beyond Anarchy, the mantle of Frankenstein is taken up by an otherwise unnamed character, played by Bulgarian actor Velislav Pavlov and voiced by Nolan North. The new Frankenstein is an antagonist, instead of a protagonist. At the end of the film, Sergeant Connor Gibson, a soldier sent by Weyland International who is portrayed by Zach McGowan, takes his mantle and becomes the new Frankenstein.

Appearances

Films

Original series
 Death Race 2000 (1975), directed by Paul Bartel
 Death Race 2050 (2017), directed by G. J. Echternkamp

Remake series
 Death Race (2008), directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
 Death Race 2 (2010),  directed by Roel Reiné
 Death Race 3: Inferno (2013), directed by Roel Reiné
 Death Race: Beyond Anarchy (2018), directed by Don Michael Paul

References

Death Race (franchise)
Thriller film characters
Fictional English people
Film characters introduced in 1975
Fictional heads of state
Fictional racing drivers
Fictional murderers

Frankenstein (Death Race)


Android KitKat is the codename for the eleventh Android mobile operating system, representing release version 4.4. Unveiled on September 3, 2013, KitKat focused primarily on optimizing the operating system for improved performance on entry-level devices with limited resources. The first phone with Android KitKat was the Nexus 5.

 1.39% of Android devices run KitKat. On July 24, 2023, Google announced that Google Play Services would no longer support KitKat in August of that year.

History
Android 4.4 "KitKat" was officially announced on September 3, 2013. The release was internally codenamed "Key lime pie"; but John Lagerling, director of Android global partnerships, and his team, decided to drop the name, arguing that "very few people actually know the taste of a key lime pie". Aiming for a codename that was "fun and unexpected", his team pursued the possibility of naming the release "KitKat" instead. Lagerling phoned a representative of Nestlé, who owns the Kit Kat brand and produces the confectionery (outside the United States, where it is produced by The Hershey Company under license), and quickly reached a preliminary deal for a promotional collaboration between the two companies, later finalized in a meeting at Mobile World Congress in February 2013. The partnership was not revealed publicly, or even to other Google employees and Android developers (who otherwise continued to internally refer to the OS as "KLP"), until its official announcement in September.

As part of the promotional efforts, Kit Kat bars in the shape of the Android robot logo were produced, while Hershey ran a contest in the United States with prizes of Nexus 7 tablets and Google Play Store credit.

The Nexus 5, developed by LG Electronics, was unveiled on September 30, 2013, as the launch device for KitKat.

Up to October 2017, Android 4.4 was still supported with security patches by Google for the source code.

Development
Continuing on from the focus on improving visual performance and responsiveness on Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean", the main objective of Android 4.4 was to optimize the platform for better performance on low-end devices, without compromising its overall capabilities and functionality. The initiative was codenamed "Project Svelte", which Android head of engineering Dave Burke joked was a weight loss plan after Jelly Bean's "Project Butter" added "weight" to the OS. To simulate lower-spec devices, Android developers used Nexus 4 devices underclocked to run at a reduced CPU speed with only a single core active, 512 MB memory, and at 960×540 display resolution—specifications meant to represent a common low-end Android device.

A development tool known as ProcStats was developed in order to analyze the memory usage of apps over time, especially those that run background services. This data was used to optimize and decouple Google apps and services found to be inefficient, thus helping to reduce the overall memory usage of Android. Additionally, 4.4 was designed to be more aggressive in managing memory, helping to guard against apps wasting too much memory.

Features

User experience
The overall interface of KitKat further downplays the "Holo" interface appearance introduced on 4.0, replacing remaining instances of blue accenting with greys and white (such as the status bar icons), and getting rid of the Wi-Fi upstream and downstream traffic indicators (triangles pointing up and down), though they can still be seen in the quick control center menu.

The Wi-Fi icon colour when only a connection to an access point with no Internet access has been established has changed from grey to orange.

The appearance may deviate in custom vendor distributions such as TouchWiz.

Apps may trigger a translucent status and navigation bar appearance, or trigger a full screen mode ("Immersive mode") to hide them entirely. The launcher also received a refreshed appearance, with the implementation of the translucent navigation bars, and the replacement of the black backdrop in the application drawer with a translucent backdrop. Additionally, action overflow menu buttons in apps are always visible, even on devices with the deprecated "Menu" navigation key. In the Settings menu, users can now specify a default Home (launcher) and text messaging app.

On stock devices, the Messaging and Movie Studio apps were removed; the former was replaced by Google Hangouts, which supported SMS. The AOSP Gallery app was also deprecated in favor of Google+ Photos.

Platform
A new runtime environment known as the Android Runtime (ART), intended to replace the Dalvik virtual machine, was introduced as a technology preview in KitKat. ART is a cross-platform runtime which supports the x86, ARM, and MIPS architectures in both 32-bit and 64-bit environments. Unlike Dalvik, which uses just-in-time compilation (JIT), ART compiles apps upon installation, which are then run exclusively from the compiled version from then on. This technique removes the processing overhead associated with the JIT process, improving system performance.

Devices with 512 MB of RAM or less report as "low RAM" devices. Using an API, apps may detect low RAM devices and modify their functionality accordingly. KitKat also supports zram. WebView components were updated to utilize a version of the Google Chrome rendering engine. A new Storage Access Framework API allows apps to retrieve files in a consistent manner; as part of the framework, a new system file picker (branded as "Documents") allows users to access files from various sources (including those exposed by apps, such as online storage services).

A public API was introduced for creating and managing text messaging clients. Sensor batching, step detection and counter APIs were also added. KitKat supports host card emulation for near-field communications, which allows apps to emulate a smart card for activities such as mobile payments.

See also
 Android version history
 iOS 7
 Windows Phone 8
 Windows 8
 OS X Mavericks

References

External links

Android (operating system)
2013 software

Android KitKat


Great Contemporaries is a collection of  25 short biographical essays about famous people, written by Winston Churchill.

The original collection was published in 1937 and included 21 essays mainly written between 1928 and 1931.  Four were added to the book in the 1939 edition,  about Lord Fisher, Charles Stewart Parnell, Lord Baden-Powell and Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1941 the essays on Boris Savinkov and Leon Trotsky were removed from editions published at that time, since they had been opponents of Joseph Stalin, who as leader of Russia was now officially an ally of Britain against Germany in World War II, and the article on Roosevelt was removed in 1942 when America also became officially an ally of Britain with Roosevelt as president. The Odhams edition of 1947 reinstated the three essays after the war.

Other subjects of the essays were Earl of Rosebery, Kaiser Wilhelm II, George Bernard Shaw,  Joseph Chamberlain, Sir John French, John Morley, Hindenburg,  H. H. Asquith, Lawrence of Arabia, the Earl of Birkenhead, Marshal Foch, Alfonso XIII, Douglas Haig, Arthur James Balfour,  Adolf Hitler, George Nathaniel Curzon, Philip Snowden, Georges Clemenceau, and  George V.

References
 The Churchill Centre  List of publications by Winston Churchill
 Great Contemporaries (1941) at Internet Archive

Books by Winston Churchill
Books about military history
British non-fiction literature
Baden-Powell Scouts' Association
Paul von Hindenburg
T. E. Lawrence
Georges Clemenceau
George V
Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig
Alfonso XIII of Spain
Leon Trotsky
Books about Adolf Hitler
George Bernard Shaw
Wilhelm II, German Emperor
Books about Franklin D. Roosevelt
1937 non-fiction books
Odhams Press books
Books written by prime ministers of the United Kingdom
English essay collections
H. H. Asquith
Arthur Balfour
Cultural depictions of T. E. Lawrence
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery

Great Contemporaries


The Hallucinogenic Toreador (Spanish:  El Torero Alucinógeno) is a 1969–1970 multi-leveled oil painting by Salvador Dalí which employs the canons of his particular interpretation of surrealist thought. It is currently being exhibited at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

In The Hallucinogenic Toreador Dalí transmits his wife's dislike for bullfighting by combining symbolism, optical illusions, and estranging yet familiar motifs. Dali used his paranoiac-critical method to create his own visual language within the painting, and combined versatile images as an instructive example of his artistic ability and vision.

Description
The entire scene is contained within a bullfighting ring, submerged under a barrage of red and yellow tones, alluding tentatively to the colors of the Spanish flag. In the upper left section we observe a representational portrait of Dali's wife, Gala, to whom the artist has dedicated this piece. Her serious, rigid expression could be interpreted as a pictorial representation of her deep-seated dislike for bullfighting. In the bottom left section there is a pattern of multicolored circles. This rectangular-shaped burst of colors immediately grasps the viewer's attention and steers it down towards the visibly emerging shape of a dying bull's head (probably Islero), dripping blood and saliva from its mouth.

This pool of blood transforms itself into a sheltered bay where a human figure on a yellow raft comes into sight. The lower section of the bay takes on the shape of a Dalmatian. The slain bull slowly rises to become the landscapes of Cap de Creus, around Dalí's living place. It was said that concern for an increase in tourism led Dalí to embrace its features in the painting. The mountain is mimicked on the right; however, this time, the mountain bears greater resemblance to the precipitous mountains around the town of Roses, near Dalí's studio.

An old anecdote lies behind the painter's desire to represent the sculpted figure of Venus de Milo, seen 28 times in the painting. Dalí decided to incorporate these particular silhouettes in his paintings after a visit to New York, where he purchased a box of pencils with a reproduction of the goddess on the cover. Dalí uses negative spaces to produce an image, alternate and complementary to the Venus de Milo. This complementary image encourages the eye to contemplate the painting in such a way as to introduce the quasi-hypnotic array of forms that inhabit the canvas. Examined from a distance, the body of the second Venus reveals the face and torso of the toreador (bullfighter, likely Manolete). Her breasts as his nose, while her face transforms into his eye. Their long skirts make up his white shirt and red scarf of the Toreador. The green layer makes up his necktie. His eye is found within the face of the second Venus. The soft white area unveils a tear slipping from his eye.

The gadflies of Saint Narcissus of Gerona march over the arena in seemingly straight and parallel lines, forming the cap, hairnet and cape of the toreador. Situated on the lower right hand corner, the whole spectacle is being watched by an infant boy dressed in a sailor's suit who is said to represent Dalí as a youth.

When the painting was exhibited in a New York City gallery in the late 1960s as a work in progress, it was accompanied by an illustration of the design, matting out the areas not relevant to the Toreador so the Toreador was easier to see.  It was labeled explicitly, "How to see the toreador."

See also
 List of works by Salvador Dalí

References

Paintings by Salvador Dalí
1970 paintings
Cattle in art
Paintings in St. Petersburg, Florida
Insects in art
Bullfighting in art

The Hallucinogenic Toreador


Gerald Westheimer AM FRS (born 13 May 1924) is an Australian scientist at University of California, Berkeley researching the eye, its optics, and how we see details in space and in three dimensions.

Life and career
Westheimer was born on 13 May 1924 in Berlin into an observant Jewish family—long settled in Germany and traced back at least Joseph Aaron Westheimer who had been born in 1768 in Menzingen, Baden (Joseph was granted special residential status as a "protected Jew".) Westheimer is the younger of two sons. In 1938, state-sanctioned attacks against Jews in Nazi Germany prompted the family to emigrate to Australia, settling in Sydney.

Shortly after arriving in Sydney, Westheimer completed high-school by self-study and enrolled in the professional Optometry program at the Sydney Technical College, from which he graduated with honours and the College Medal in 1943. While practising optometry he pursued further study, leading to a BSc in mathematics and physiology from Sydney University and submission of a thesis for the Fellowship of the Sydney Technical College.

In 1951, Westheimer went to the US, first as a graduate student at Ohio State University (PhD, Physics-Physiological Optics) with Glenn A. Fry, influenced by Paul Fitts, and then in various professorial ranks in optometry schools of the University of Houston, Ohio State and University of California, Berkeley, interrupted by post-doctoral studies at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and at the Physiological Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. In 1960, he was appointed as an associate professor at the School of Optometry at Berkeley, becoming professor in 1963. In 1967, he joined Berkeley's Department of Physiology-Anatomy, later merged into the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, in which he established and headed the Division of Neurobiology until becoming professor in the Graduate School in 1994. Since 1994 he has also been a member of the adjunct faculty of the Laboratory of Neurobiology of Rockefeller University in New York.

Westheimer never relinquished the Australian citizenship gained by naturalisation. Appointment to membership in the Order of Australia in 2009 recognised his continued identification with the country that provided refuge from the holocaust.

Appreciations of Gerald Westheimer's scientific and academic contributions have appeared at various stages of his career.

 In addition there is an autobiographical sketch.

Research

Even as a boy, Westheimer was interested in astronomy, optics, and the eye.  He pursued these interests, mainly in human vision, in his long research career.

As of May 2014, Westheimer has published over 200 scientific papers. He has an h-index, based on Web of Science, of 39. Publications include:
 Westheimer, G. (1957). Kinematics of the eye. Journal of the Optical Society of America, 47, 967–974.
 Westheimer, G. (1960), Modulation thresholds for sinusoidal light distribution on the retina. Journal of Physiology, 152, 67–74.
 Westheimer, G., & Campbell, F. W. (1962). Light distribution in the image formed by the living human eye. Journal of the Optical Society of America, 52, 1040–1045.
 Westheimer, G. (1965). Spatial interaction in the human retina during scotopic vision. Journal of Physiology, 181, 881–894.
 Westheimer, G. (1966). The Maxwellian view. Vision Research, 6, 669–682.
 Westheimer, G. (1967). Spatial interaction in human cone vision. Journal of Physiology, 190, 139–154.
 Westheimer, G. (1975). Visual acuity and hyperacuity. Investigative Ophthalmology, 14, 570–572.
 Gilbert, C., Ito, M., Kapadia, M., & Westheimer, G. (2000 ). Interactions between attention, context and learning in primary visual cortex. Vision Research, 40, 1217–1226.
 Westheimer, G. (2005). The resolving power of the eye. Vision Research, 45, 945–947.

Music and Philanthropy
Gerald Westheimer is an accomplished recreational violinist  and has donated a number of fine 19th-century violins to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music,  along with an endowment for their upkeep.  According to Westheimer,  the purpose of this collection is to "enable talented young Australian artists studying at the Conservatorium to perfect their performance skills on high quality instruments".

Recognitions
Scientific
1978  Tillyer Medal, Optical Society of America
1979 Proctor Medal, Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO)
1984 Fellow, Royal Society of London
1986 von Sallman International Prize in Vision and Ophthalmology, Columbia University
1986 C.F. Prentice Medal, American Academy of Optometry
1988 Bicentennial Medal, Australian Optometric Association
1992 Ferrier Lecture, Royal Society of London
1994 Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2010 Barry Collin Research Medal, Optometrists Association of Australia

2021 Ken Nakayama Medal for Excellence in Vision Science
Academic
Honorary Doctorates in Science and Medicine
 General
Order of Australia, member of General Division

References

External links
 Berkeley web site to honour Westheimer's 90th birthday https://web.archive.org/web/20140514231638/http://vision.berkeley.edu/?p=4459
 Westheimer's Berkeley web page https://mcb.berkeley.edu/faculty/NEU/westheimerg.html
 April 2021 interview with Westheimer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBqAcIkLkwQ

1924 births
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to Australia
Members of the Order of Australia
Fellows of the Royal Society
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Australian neuroscientists
Australian optometrists
University of California, Berkeley faculty
People from Berlin
Living people
Vision scientists
Australian expatriates in the United States

Gerald Westheimer


Poltavka culture () was an early to middle Bronze Age archaeological culture which flourished on the Volga-Ural steppe and the forest steppe in 2800—2200 BCE.

The Poltavka culture emerged as an eastern outgrowth of the Yamnaya culture, neighboring the Catacomb culture, another Yamnaya successor, in the west. It has been considered ancestral to later cultures that are identified as Indo-Iranian . The Poltavka culture influenced the later emergence of the Potapovka culture, Abashevo culture, Sintashta culture and Srubnaya culture.

Origins
The Poltavka culture emerged ca. 2800 BC, as an eastern successor of the Yamnaya culture. The western successor of the Yamnaya culture was the Catacomb culture.

Along with the Sredny Stog culture, the Yamnaya culture and the Catacomb culture, the Poltavka culture is among the cultures of the Pontic steppe sharing archaeological characteristics with the Afanasievo culture of the eastern steppe.

Distribution
The Poltavka culture flourished on the Volga-Ural steppe and the forest steppe. It is contemporary with the Catacomb culture, which was located on the Pontic steppe to its southwest. It seems to have co-existed at times with the Abashevo culture.

The Poltavka culture appears to have expanded eastwards throughout its existence. It is probable that Poltavka herders explored areas of the Kazakh Steppe. The arrival of Poltavka people onto the Kazakh Steppe is associated with various technological innovations in the area. Poltavka pottery has been discovered in northern Kazakhstan.

Successors
The Poltavka culture lasted until 2200-2100 BC. It seems to be an early manifestation of the Srubnaya culture. It marks the transition of the Yamnaya culture to the Srubnaya culture. Genetic studies suggest that the end of the Poltavka culture is associated with major population changes.

The Abashevo culture appears to have emerged partially through influence from the Poltavka culture. Along with the Abashevo culture, it also appears to have influenced the emergence of the Potapovka culture.

The above mentioned eastward expansion of the Poltavka culture is associated with the emergence of the Sintashta culture and the later Andronovo culture, the Abashevo culture, the Multi-cordoned ware culture and the Catacomb culture.

Morphological data suggests that the Sintashta culture might have emerged as a result of a mixture of steppe ancestry from the Poltavka culture and Catacomb culture, with ancestry from Neolithic forest hunter-gatherers.

Characteristics

Poltavka settlements are very rare. They are confined to sand dunes in the lower Volga area.

The flat-bottomed ceramics of the Poltavka culture differ from the pointed or round-based ceramics of the Yamnaya culture. The decorative motifs of the ceramics of the later Sintashta culture and Andronovo culture are very similar to those of the Poltavka culture.

The economy of the Poltavka culture was mobile pastoral, a continuation of the economy of the Yamnaya culture.

The Poltavka people carried out horse burials, a custom that had inherited from the Yamnaya culture, the Khvalynsk culture and Samara culture respectively.

The Poltavka culture shares many characteristics with the contemporaneous Sintashta culture. This includes similar pottery, metal types, weapons, horse sacrifices, chariot-driving gear and similar graves. It is common for new Poltavka settlements to be constructed on top of older ones, and the later Sintashta culture would in turn construct settlements on top of earlier Poltavka ones.

Metal
The Poltavka culture is distinguished from the Yamnaya culture by its marked increase in metallurgy. Metals were probably acquired from centers in the southern Urals.

The presence of gold and silver rings and bronze axes similar to those of the Maykop culture, testify to North Caucasian influences on the Poltavka culture.

Certain metal objects of the Poltavka culture and the Catacomb culture appear to have been copied by the Abashevo culture.

Burials
The Poltavka culture is primarily known from its burials. These were situated in cemeteries along river terraces.

Poltavka graves differ slightly from those of the Yamnaya culture. Burial pits sometimes had a timber cover. They were generally inserted into kurgans of the Yamnaya culture. Poltavka kurgans were typically surrounded by a circular ditch, with a single grave with ledges.

80 percent of Poltavka graves contain males. Almost a third of Poltavka skulls show signs of wounds, often mortal. Both male and female dead were buried on their left side or back on an organic mat, with the head oriented towards the east. On occasion the body was covered with ocher, however, less common than in the earlier Yamnaya culture.

Poltavka burials are characterized by an increased presence of ornaments and weapons. This is interpreted as evidence of increased social stratification. Other grave goods include pottery and stone scepters. A Poltavka burial in the Volga region is notable for containing a large copper club.

The funeral customs of the Poltavka culture influenced the customs of the Abashevo culture further north.

Genetics
Mathieson et al. (2015) analyzed six skeletons of the Poltavka culture. Five of them showed Y-haplogroup R1b1a2 and its subclades. One outlier belonged to Y-hg R1a1a1b2a. which notably was not included in the standard rich R1b burials. All were probably closely related to people of the Yamnaya culture and the Afanasievo culture.

Narasimshan et al. (2019) obtained seven times y-hg R1b 101 a2a (Z2103) and one R1a 1a1 (Z93-Z94), all from Samara. The authors noted  a significant infusion of Central European ancestry into the steppe during the transition from the Poltavka culture to the Potapovka culture.

Other genomic studies suggest that the Poltavka culture was closely genetically related to both the peoples of the eastern Yamnaya culture and the later Sarmatians.

Physical type
The physical type of the Poltavka resemble that of the preceding Yamnaya, who were tall and massively built Europoids. A similar type prevails among the succeeding Catacomb culture and Potapovka culture. Skulls of the Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture, Abashevo culture, Sintashta culture, Srubnaya culture and western Andronovo culture are more dolichocephalic than those of the Poltavka, Yamnaya and Potapovka cultures. The physical type of the Srubnaya culture appears to have emerged as a result of mixing between Sintashta and Poltavka people.

Linguistics
The Poltavka culture has been considered ancestral to what would later develop into Indo-Iranian cultures.

See also

 Corded Ware culture
 Bell Beaker culture

Notes

References

Sources

External links

Indo-European archaeological cultures
Archaeological cultures of Europe
Bronze Age cultures of Europe
Archaeological cultures in Russia
Nomadic groups in Eurasia
Ancient peoples

Poltavka culture


Maquinna (also transliterated Muquinna, Macuina, Maquilla) was the chief of the Nuu-chah-nulth people of Nootka Sound, during the heyday of the maritime fur trade in the 1780s and 1790s on the Pacific Northwest Coast. The name means "possessor of pebbles". His people are today known as the Mowachaht and reside today with their kin, the Muchalaht, at Gold River, British Columbia, Canada.

History
Maquinna was a powerful chief whose summer coastal village, Yuquot, became the first important anchorage in the European jockeying for power and commerce as the era of the maritime fur trade began. Yuquot became known as Friendly Cove after the British explorer Captain James Cook visited in 1778. Cook did not record the name of the chief of Yuquot, who may not have been Maquinna in 1778, even though writers have often assumed it was. Imperial Spain had sent two voyages to the region before Cook's visit, including Juan Pérez, who in 1774 had anchored in or near the entrance of Nootka Sound. In response to Russian activity in Alaska and the increasing visits by British fur-traders, Spain, which claimed the coast from Mexico to Alaska, asserted its authority by launching further voyages to the Pacific Northwest, including scientific and surveying expeditions. In 1788, John Meares explored Nootka Sound and the neighboring coasts and claimed to have bought some land from Maquinna, where he built a trading post. In 1789, Esteban José Martínez of the Spanish Navy occupied and claimed Nootka Sound for Spain. He built Fort San Miguel and a settlement called Santa Cruz de Nuca. Ensuing events led to Martínez's seizure of the British subject James Colnett and several British ships, which provoked an international episode known as the Nootka Crisis.

The Spanish settlement and fort were abandoned at the end of 1789 and rebuilt one year later, in 1790, by Francisco de Eliza and Pere d'Alberní i Teixidor. Both were abandoned in 1795 after the third Nootka Convention came into force. Maquinna and his people reoccupied their coastal village.

Maquinna played a key role in relations between the Spanish envoy, Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, and his British counterpart, Captain George Vancouver, who negotiated the settlement of the Nootka affair and enjoyed Maquinna's hospitality at length. The title by which he is described, "Hyas Tyee", which was to find its way into the vocabulary of the Chinook Jargon, is the same as that used for king (although it simply means important chief).

One story tells how he and his people performed a masquerade for Vancouver and Bodega y Quadra in which the noble brothers acted out a pantomime of European dress and manners, improvising mock-Spanish and mock-English dialogue, all set in the customary style of the great potlatch theatre-dance culture of the Northwest Coast. Maquinna also had an army of 300–400 men.

Relations were not always easy. Maquinna's brother Callicum (sometimes spelled Kelekem) expressed his anger at the Spanish seizure of British ships in 1789 and was shot dead by Esteban José Martínez or one of Martínez's sailors.

Maquinna worshipped at the Yuquot Whalers Shrine, performing ritual purification to gain spiritual strength to hunt whales and attract drift whales to his beaches.

European slaves

Maquinna is notable also for having kept European slaves on a number of occasions.  The most detailed account is told in the writings of John R. Jewitt, one of two slaves kept for several years after the crew of the ship Boston was massacred by Maquinna and his men.  A Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt, only survivor of the crew of the ship Boston, during a captivity of nearly three years among the savages of Nootka Sound: with an account of the manners, mode of living, and religious opinions of the natives is one of the first published glimpses into the social and cultural life of the Pacific Northwest peoples. Jewitt refers to Maquinna throughout as "king" and those beneath him as "chiefs". Maquinna required Jewitt to learn the Nuu-chah-nulth language, and told him that the ship Boston was taken in response to several depredations committed by earlier American and Spanish visitors. Jewitt was rescued in 1805 by Samuel Hill, captain of the brig Lydia.

The Narrative also describes an earlier, less fortunate, group of European slaves who were eventually sentenced to death by Maquinna after they attempted to escape to the lands of the Tla-o-qui-aht (Clayoquot) whose chief was Maquinna's rival, Wickaninnish.  The one slave who had not tried to escape was eventually sold to Chief Wickaninnish and reportedly died shortly after hearing of the taking of the Boston.

Legacy
Maquinna has been memorialized in various ways:
Maquinna Marine Provincial Park, which contains Hot Springs Cove.
Maquinna Elementary School in Port Alberni.
Chief Maquinna Elementary School in Vancouver.
Maquinna is an active submarine mud volcano located 16-18 kilometers west of Vancouver Island.

References

First Approaches to the North West Coast, Derek Pethick, University of Washington Press, July 1977
The Nootka Connection: The Northwest Coast,, Derek Pethick, University of Washington Press 1980
British Columbia Chronicle, Vol I: Adventures by Sea and Land, G.P.V. Akrigg

External links
 Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, by Robin Fisher
On-line original edition of The Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt
Mowachaht-Muchalaht First Nation Webpage

Further reading

Indigenous leaders in British Columbia
History of Vancouver Island
Nuu-chah-nulth people
Pre-Confederation British Columbia people
18th-century indigenous people of the Americas

Maquinna


Kersti Merilaas ( in Narva – 8 March 1986 in Tallinn) was an Estonian poet and translator. In addition, she wrote poems and prose for children and plays.

Early life and education
Kersti Merilaas was born Eugenie Moorberg in Narva, in the Saint Petersburg Governorate (now Estonia) shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. She spent her early childhood in St. Petersburg, Russia with her mother, Anna Moorberg and sister. The family returned to Estonia in 1917 because of the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. From 1921 to 1927 she attended school in the village of Kiltsi, then furthered her studies in Väike-Maarja and Rakvere in Lääne-Viru County. In 1932, she completed high school in Tapa, Estonia.

Career
In 1935, she made her literary debut with a collection of poems titled Loomingus.

In 1936, Merilaas married the Estonian writer and translator August Sang (1914–1969) and the couple had a son named Joel Sang in 1950 who would go on to become a poet, literary critic, linguist, translator and publicist.

From 1936, Merilaas lived in Tartu, where she was employed as a librarian. She was a member of the influential group of Estonian poets brought together in 1938 by literary scholar Ants Oras who was greatly influenced by T. S. Eliot. The small circle of poets became known as Arbujad ("Soothsayers") and included Heiti Talvik, Paul Viiding, Betti Alver, Uku Masing and Bernard Kangro That year, her anthology of poetry Maantee tuuled was published to much critical acclaim, particularly for its lyrical preoccupation with love and nature. Also in 1938 she joined the Estonian Writers' Union.

After the Soviet occupation and annexation of Estonia in 1944, Merilaas' work was viewed by authorities as disreputable and promoting "bourgeois nationalism". In 1950, Merilaas was forced to resign from the Soviet Writers Association of Estonia. During this time, Merilaas was allowed to continue writing children's literature. In 1960, after the relaxation of Soviet authorities, Merilaas was again permitted to write literature for adults.

Besides poetry and prose, Merilaas wrote libretti for three operas by Estonian composer Gustav Ernesaks and translated German works of Bertolt Brecht, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe into the Estonian language.

Merilaas died in Tallinn, Estonia in 1986 at the age of 72.

Selected works
Poetry
Loomingus (1935)
Maantee tuuled (1938)
Rannapääsuke (1963)
Kevadised koplid (1966)
Kuukressid (1969)
Antud ja võetud (1981)

Children's Books
Munapühad (1940)
Kallis kodu (collection of poems, 1944)
Päikese paistel collection of poems (1948)
Turvas (1950)
Veskilaul (1959)
Lugu mustast ja valgest (1962)
Lumest lumeni (1982)
Kui vanaema noor oli (poetry anthology, 1983)
Kindakiri. – Варежки (poem in Estonian and Russian, 1986)
Siit siiani. Piksepill (collection of poems, 1989. Posthumous)

Plays
Kaks viimast rida (1973)
Pilli-Tiidu (1974)

Awards
In 1976, Kersti Merilaas was awarded the Friedebert Tuglas Short Story Award for her work Eilsete perest.

Further reading
Kiin, Sirje: Kersti Merilaas: luuletaja elu. (in Estonian). Eesti Raamat. Tallinn 1989
Hasselblatt, Cornelius: Geschichte der estnischen Literatur. (in German). Walter de Gruyter. Berlin, New York. 2006.

References

1913 births
1986 deaths
People from Narva
People from Yamburgsky Uyezd
20th-century Estonian poets
Estonian translators
Estonian women poets
20th-century women writers
20th-century translators
Soviet poets
Soviet translators
Honoured Writers of the Estonian SSR

Kersti Merilaas


Art and Remembrance: The Legacy of Felix Nussbaum is a 1993 documentary directed by Barbara Pfeffer, which explores the life of Jewish artist, Felix Nussbaum.

Synopsis
Nussbaum is similar to many prominent artists throughout the ages, in that he gained fame for his pieces only after his death.  However, his story is different from most in that the cause of his death was the subject of his work.  A victim of the Auschwitz gas chambers, Nussbaum left behind paintings that give unique insight into the plight of European Jews who lived and died under the Nazi regime.

"The suffering of the people you can't read in books. You can't imagine by knowledge. You have to see it," says Peter Junk, a librarian in Nussbaum's hometown of Osnabrück, Germany. "But here in Osnabrück there are no people any longer who can tell what the paintings can."  Nussbaum's paintings depict the terrifying social and psychological ramifications of Nazi genocide. Simple in form, but emotionally powerful, they serve as a reflection of both the artist and the turbulent times in which he lived.

These works often include representations of Nussbaum himself and help frame the story of his life. We see his development as a young artist through early landscapes and character studies, but it is the paintings from Nussbaum's final years that define him and his artistic legacy. They bear names like "Fear," "The Refugee," "Prisoner," "The Damned" and "The Triumph of Death" — titles reflecting his own experiences in the ghetto and Nazi concentration camps.

Most of Nussbaum's surrealist paintings went unseen by the wider world for the first 25 years following his July 1944 arrest in Nazi-occupied Brussels. When he went into hiding in Belgium, Nussbaum entrusted the bulk of his paintings to a family friend, who ended up keeping them in a damp attic for decades. In 1971, due to the efforts of one of Nussabaum's only surviving relatives, the paintings were reclaimed, restored and exhibited in a retrospective, reminding the world of Nussbaum's talent — and of the tragedy that befell him.

Art and Remembrance is narrated by Christian Jacque, who was only a boy when his parents hid Nussbaum and his wife, Felka Platek, in their Brussels home. Jacque recalls how the compounding effects of exile, imprisonment and prevailing antisemitism caused Nussbaum to load his later work full of "apprehension, anxiety and fear." These feelings proved well-founded. Jacque tells of the morning the secret police broke down the door to his parents' home, arrested the Nussbaums, and put them on the last train to Auschwitz.

At the time of the film's release, there were no Jews living in Osnabrück. Those who survived the Holocaust did not return to this small German town whose citizens had passively watched as their Jewish neighbors were assembled in the courtyard of Osnabrück castle and then loaded into cars bound for death camps.

But now, captured in the film's fascinating latter portion, the grandchildren of those non-Jewish Osnabrück citizens come together in a classroom to study Nussbaum's paintings and share their thoughts about the Holocaust and Jews in general. While many confess respect for Nussbaum's work and shame about the genocide, there is an undercurrent of lingering distrust of Jews, whose origins seem hazy at best, especially when a show of hands reveals that none of the teens interviewed has even one Jewish acquaintance.

According to Jacque, such mixed reactions to Nussbaum's work are not unusual in Germany, because his paintings have become "a testament and a catalyst forcing the people to confront the past and the denial of that past." Despite misgivings amongst some Germans, that confrontation gained a permanent home in 1998, with the opening of the Felix Nussbaum Museum in Osnabrück, where his paintings are on display.

To fully appreciate each of Felix Nussbaum's masterpieces for their own merits would take far longer than the 29 minutes of Art and Remembrance, but taken together within the confines of a short time, they convey a better, more visceral understanding of the life, death and legacy of a man and a people who were taken too soon.

Notes

References

External links
 The Jewish Channel

1993 films
Documentary films about painters
Documentary films about the Holocaust
Documentary films about Jews and Judaism
1993 documentary films
American documentary films
1990s English-language films
1990s American films


Sverre Holmsen (1906–1992) was a Swedish writer born in Transvaal, South Africa and brought up in Norway and Sweden. He became a Swedish citizen 1912.

In 1945 he married the artist and writer Agda Göthlin (1920–1975). He was previously married to Margit Holm in 1928. Since 1922 he travelled and worked all around the world and was an avid supporter of global unity.

The main part of his books draws inspiration from Polynesia. Sverre Holmsen lived in Tahiti for several years. He very much admired the people in the Pacific region, along with their habits, history and culture.
Sverre Holmsen was also an early environmentalist. In the main part of his works he points out the dangers of modern ways of living. Even in his earliest works he expressed critical views about technical development and the exploitation of natural resources.

In a similar way he was also advocating democracy and Human rights.

17 of his books have been published in Swedish language and have been translated to 12 languages.

He is the older brother of Egil Holmsen, Swedish film director, screenwriter, journalist, author and actor.

In his latter years he became a Bahá'í follower.

Books
1966 "Morialand" (in Swedish)
1969 "De upplysta horisonterna" (in Swedish)
1961 "Globen runt" ( in Swedish)
1949 "Polynesian Trade Wind" London, J.Barrie. 1949.
1952 "The Island beyond the Horizon" London, J. Barrie . 1952.
1951 "Singing Coral". London. J.Barrie .1951.

See also
 Swedish literature

1906 births
1992 deaths
South African emigrants to Sweden
Swedish Bahá'ís

Sverre Holmsen


The Hainigturm is a tower and tourist attraction in the Vogelsbergkeis, (Hesse, Germany). It is located between Lauterbach and Angersbach. The tower, which now consists of stones, used to be made completely out of wood. However the wood got rotten so the tower had to be rebuilt in 1907.

In 2007 the Lauterbach celebrated the 100th anniversary of the tower.

Buildings and structures in Vogelsbergkreis
Observation towers in Hesse
Round towers

Hainigturm


Soriška Planina Ski Resort is a family Slovenian ski resort located in municipality of Železniki. Closest city is Kranj and 60 km away from Ljubljana.

Resort offers has 6 km of ski slopes (slalom, giantslalom and downhill slope,...) and 5 km of cross-country skiing tracks. There is also a natural sledding slope and one sledding slope for competitions. You can be hiking in summer.

Resort statistics
Elevation
Summit - 1600 m / 5,084 ft
Base - 1000 m / 4,287 ft

Ski Terrain
0,25 km2 (62 acres) - covering  of ski slopes on one mountain.

Slope Difficulty
-expert (1 km)
-intermediate (2 km)
-beginner (3 km)

Vertical Drop
- 157 m / (515 ft) in total

Longest Run: 1,64 km

Average Winter Daytime Temperature:

Average Annual Snowfall:

Lift Capacity: 3,500 skiers per hour (all together)

Ski Season Opens: December

Ski Season Ends: March

Snow Conditions Phone Line: +386 0 (4) 5117835

Ski lifts

External links
 Official website
 Litostroj hut at Soriska mountain steep

Ski areas and resorts in Slovenia

Soriška Planina Ski Resort