Ala al-Dīn Ali ibn Muhammed (1403 – 16 December 1474), known as Ali Qushji (Ottoman Turkish : علی قوشچی, kuşçu – falconer in Turkish; Latin: Ali Kushgii) was a Timurid theologian, jurist, astronomer, mathematician and physicist, who settled in the Ottoman Empire some time before 1472. As a disciple of Ulugh Beg, he is best known for the development of astronomical physics independent from natural philosophy, and for providing empirical evidence for the Earth's rotation in his treatise, Concerning the Supposed Dependence of Astronomy upon Philosophy. In addition to his contributions to Ulugh Beg's famous work Zij-i-Sultani and to the founding of Sahn-ı Seman Medrese, one of the first centers for the study of various traditional Islamic sciences in the Ottoman Empire, Ali Kuşçu was also the author of several scientific works and textbooks on astronomy.

Biography

Early life and works
Ali Kuşçu was born in 1403 in the city of Samarkand, in present-day Uzbekistan. His full name at birth was Ala al-Dīn Ali ibn Muhammed al-Qushji. The last name Qushji derived from the Turkish term kuşçu—"falconer"—due to the fact that Ali's father Muhammad was the royal falconer of Ulugh Beg. Sources consider him Turkic or Persian.

He attended the courses of Qazi zadeh Rumi, Ghiyāth al-Dīn Jamshīd Kāshānī and Muin al-Dīn Kashi. He moved to Kerman, Iran (Persia), where he conducted some research on storms in the Oman sea. He completed Hall-e Eshkal-i Ghammar (Explanations of the Periods of the Moon) and Sharh-e Tajrid in Kirman. He moved to Herat and taught Molla Cami about astronomy (1423). After professing in Herat for a while, he returned to Samarkand. There he presented his work on the Moon to Ulugh Beg, who found it so fascinating that he read the entire work while standing up. Ulugh Beg assigned him to Ulugh Beg Observatory, which was called Samarkand Observatory at that time. Qushji worked there until Ulugh Beg was assassinated.

After Ulugh Beg's death, Ali Kuşçu went to Herat, Tashkent, and finally Tabriz where, around 1470, the Ak Koyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan sent him as a delegate to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II. At that time Husayn Bayqarah had come to reign in Herat but Qushji preferred Constantinople over Herat because of Sultan Mehmed's attitude toward scientists and intellectuals.

Constantinople era
When he came to Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), his grandson Ghutb al-Dīn Muhammed had a son Mirim Çelebi who would be a great mathematician and astronomer in the future. Ali Kuşçu composed "risalah dar hay'at" in Persian for Mehmed II at Constantinople in 1470. Also he wrote "Sharh e resalye Fathiyeh", "resalye Mohammadiye" in Constantinople, which are in Arabic on the topic of mathematics. He then finished "Sharh e tejrid" on Nasir al-Din al-Tusi's "Tejrid al-kalam". That work is called "Sharh e Jadid" in scientific community.

Contributions to astronomy

Qushji improved on Nasir al-Din al-Tusi's planetary model and presented an alternative planetary model for Mercury. He was also one of the astronomers that were part of Ulugh Beg's team of researchers working at the Samarqand observatory and contributed towards the Zij-i-Sultani compiled there. In addition to his contributions to Zij, Ali Kuşçu wrote nine works in astronomy, two of them in Persian and seven in Arabic. A Latin translation of two of Qushji's works, the Tract on Arithmetic and Tract on Astronomy, was published by John Greaves in 1650.

Concerning the Supposed Dependence of Astronomy upon Philosophy

Qushji's most important astronomical work is Concerning the Supposed Dependence of Astronomy upon Philosophy. Under the influence of Islamic theologians who opposed the interference of Aristotelianism in astronomy, Qushji rejected Aristotelian physics and completely separated natural philosophy from Islamic astronomy, allowing astronomy to become a purely empirical and mathematical science. This allowed him to explore alternatives to the Aristotelian notion of a stationary Earth, as he explored the idea of a moving Earth instead (though Emilie Savage-Smith asserts that no Islamic astronomers proposed a heliocentric universe). He found empirical evidence for the Earth's rotation through his observation on comets and concluded, on the basis of empirical evidence rather than speculative philosophy, that the moving Earth theory is just as likely to be true as the stationary Earth theory.

His predecessor al-Tusi had previously realized that "the monoformity of falling bodies, and the uniformity of celestial motions," both moved "in a single way", though he still relied on Aristotelian physics to provide "certain principles that only the natural philosophers could provide the astronomer." Qushji took this concept further and proposed that "the astronomer had no need for Aristotelian physics and in fact should establish his own physical principles independently of the natural philosophers." Alongside his rejection of Aristotle's concept of a stationary Earth, Qushji suggested that there was no need for astronomers to follow the Aristotelian notion of the heavenly bodies moving in uniform circular motion.

Qushji's work was an important step away from Aristotelian physics and towards an independent astronomical physics. This is considered to be a "conceptual revolution" that had no precedent in European astronomy prior to the Copernican Revolution in the 16th century. Qushji's view on the Earth's motion was similar to the later views of Nicolaus Copernicus on this issue, though it is uncertain whether the former had any influence on the latter. However, it is likely that they both may have arrived at similar conclusions due to using the earlier work of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi as a basis. This is more of a possibility considering "the remarkable coincidence between a passage in De revolutionibus (I.8) and one in Ṭūsī's Tadhkira (II.1[6]) in which Copernicus follows Ṭūsī's objection to Ptolemy's "proofs" of the Earth's immobility."

His works

Astronomy
 Sharḥ e Zîj e Ulugh Beg (In Persian)
 Risāla fī Halle Eshkale Moadeleye Ghamar lil-Masir (Arabic)
 Risāla fī aṣl al-Hâric yumkin fī al-sufliyyeyn (Arabic)
 Sharḥ ʿalā al-tuḥfat al-shāhiyya fī al-hayāt (Arabic)
 Risāla dar elm-i ḥeyāt (In Persian)
 Al-Fatḥīya fī ʿilm al-hayʾa (in Arabic)
 Risāla fi Hall-e Eshkal-i Ghammar (in Persian)
 Concerning the Supposed Dependence of Astronomy upon Philosophy (Arabic)

Mathematics
 Risāla al-muḥhammadiyya fi-ḥisāb (In Arabic)
 Risāla dār ʿilm al-ḥisāb: Suleymaniye (Arabic)

Kalam and Fiqh

 Sharh Tajrid al-I'tiqad
 Hashiye ale't-Telvîh
 Unkud-üz-Zevahir fi Nazm-al-Javaher

Mechanics
 Tazkare fi Âlâti'r-Ruhâniyye

Linguistics
 Sharh Risâleti'l-Vadiyye
 El-Ifsâh
 El-Unkûdu'z-Zevâhir fî Nazmi'l-Javâher
 Sharh e'Sh-Shâfiye
 Resale fî Beyâni Vadi'l-Mufredât
 Fâ'ide li-Tahkîki Lâmi't-Ta'rîf
 Resale mâ Ene Kultu
 Resale fî'l-Hamd
 Resale fî Ilmi'l-Me'ânî
 Resale fî Bahsi'l-Mufred
 Resale fî'l-Fenni's-Sânî min Ilmihal-Beyân
 Tafsir e-Bakara ve Âli Imrân
 Risâle fî'l-İstişâre
 Mahbub-al-Hamail fi kashf-al-mesail
 Tajrid-al-Kalam

Notes

 Yavuz Unat, Ali Kuşçu, Kaynak Yayınları, 2010.

References

External links

 (PDF version)

1403 births
1474 deaths
Asharis
Hanafi fiqh scholars
Maturidis
Turkish scientists
Turkish astronomers
Turkish mathematicians
Turkish physicists
Astronomers from the Ottoman Empire
Mathematicians from the Ottoman Empire
Date of birth unknown
15th-century Iranian astronomers
15th-century Iranian mathematicians
People from Samarkand
Medieval physicists
15th-century Muslims
15th-century writers from the Ottoman Empire
15th-century Persian-language writers
Arabic-language writers from the Ottoman Empire
Scholars from the Timurid Empire
Turkish Persian-language writers

Ali Qushji


An online database is a database accessible from a local network or the Internet, as opposed to one that is stored locally on an individual computer or its attached storage (such as a CD). Online databases are hosted on websites, made available as software as a service products accessible via a web browser. They may be free or require payment, such as by a monthly subscription. Some have enhanced features such as collaborative editing and email notification.

Cloud database
A cloud database is a database that is run on and accessed via the Internet, rather than locally. So, rather than keep a customer information database at one location, a business may choose to have it hosted on the Internet so that all its departments or divisions can access and update it. Most database services offer web-based consoles, which the end user can use to provision and configure database instances.

See also
 List of online databases
 Bibliographic databases
 Customer relationship management
 List of search engines
 List of academic databases and search engines

References
David Haynes (ed). "Online databases". Information Sources in Information Technology. Bowker-Saur. London, Melbourne, Munich, New York. 1990. Pages 151 to 158.
Richard Veit, Christopher Gould and Kathleen Gould. Writing, Reading, and Research. Cengage Learning. 2014. Page 311.
Robert J Muller. Productive Objects: An Applied Software Project Management Framework. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. San Francisco. 1998. Page 672.
Frey,  Botan, Friedman and Kreps. "Online Databases". Investigating Communication: An Introduction to Research Methods. Prentice Hall. 1991. Page 74 and 75. "Online Database" at page 347. See also page 348. Google
Arlene Rodda Quaratiello. "What is an Online Database?". The College Student's Research Companion. Neal-Schuman Publishers. 1997. Pages 79 and 80. See also pages 77, 78, 81 and 82. Google
Zane L Berge and Mauri P Collins (eds). "Online Databases and Online Journals". Computer Mediated Communication and the Online Classroom. Hampton Press. 1995. Volume 3 (Distance Learning). Page 33.
Database Journal, vols 11 to 13, p 23
Blodwen Tartar, "The Future of Online Full-Text Databases". Reviewed at "Free info threat?" (1986) 111 Library Journal 23
Rodes Trautman and Sara von Flittner. "An Expert System for Microcomputers to Aid Selection of Online Databases". Christine Roysdon and Howard D White (eds). Expert Systems in Reference Services. The Hawworth Press. New York and London. 1989. Page 207 et seq.
J Andrew Large. "Evaluation of Electronic Media as Reference Sources". Allen Kent (ed). Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. Marcel Dekker. 1991. Volume 48. Supplement 11. Pages 116 to 129.
(1987) 7 Small Computers in Libraries

Types of databases

Online database


Lucius Valerius Septimius Bassus (c. 328 - aft. 379 or 383) was a Roman politician.

Life
He was the son of Valerius Maximus and first wife Septimia Bassa.

He was praefectus urbi Romae under the emperors Gratian, Valentinian II and Theodosius I, between 379 (the year of Thedosius's ascension) and 383 (the year of Gratian's death).

He possibly married Adelphia, as their son's nomina and cognomen suggest, daughter of Clodius Celsinus Adelphius and wife Faltonia Betitia Proba, and had a son named Valerius Adelphius Bassus (fl. 383 and 392), vir consularis and consul. Venet. in 383 and in 392, in turn the father of Valerius Adelphius and the paternal grandfather of Adelphia, wife of Anicius Probus (fl. 424-459), son of Anicius Hermogenianus Olybrius and wife and cousin Anicia Juliana, praetor in 424 and vir illustris in 459, the parents of emperor Anicius Olybrius and another Anicius Probus.

Ancestry

References
 Jones, Arnold Hugh Martin, John Robert Martindale, John Morris, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, 1992, , pp. 723–724.

External links

320s births
Year of death unknown
Septimius Bassus, Lucius
Septimii
4th-century Romans
Urban prefects of Rome
Year of birth unknown

Lucius Valerius Septimius Bassus


Milbrodale is a village in the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia. It is in the local government area of Singleton Council.

Description

Milbrodale is set in a rural area 23 kilometres south of Singleton. To the north of Milbrodale is Darkey Creek, while to the east is Wollombi Brook. To the west is the rugged sandstone wilderness of the Wollemi National Park, the second-largest national park in New South Wales. Milbrodale is approximately twenty-nine kilometres from Singleton and seventy-eight kilometres from the city of Newcastle.

History

Milbrodale was first established by the Rev. Richard Hill in 1832. Hill had arrived from England to assist with the ministering of the colony at Sydney, and worked as assistant to the minister at St Philip's Church in Sydney. Later, he became minister at St James's Church, Sydney (designed by Francis Greenway). Eventually, Governor Lachlan Macquarie gave him a land grant of  in the Hunter Valley. After journeying along a track that was the beginning of the Great North Road, Hill arrived in the Hunter Valley and built a stone house at the junction of Wollombi Brook and Parsons Creek. He named his property Milbro Dale, after his mother (her name had been Marlborough, which was commonly shortened to Milbro). Hill died in 1836 and his wife Phoebe Sapphira returned to Sydney after selling the farm. The property changed hands several times over the years but eventually deteriorated and was demolished in 1978.

The village grew as time went by, but the local children had to go to school at the nearby village of Bulga, transported by a horse and cart service subsidised by the Government. A public school was finally opened at Milbrodale in 1921 on a  property obtained by Government grant.

Aboriginal site

The most significant feature of Milbrodale is an eighty-hectare site containing rock shelters with many signs of Aboriginal occupation. Excavations carried out by staff from the Australian Museum, Sydney, produced much evidence of the "Small Tool Phase" of Aboriginal history. One of the main features is a rock shelter popularly known as Baiame Cave, which contains a group of Aboriginal paintings. The central figure is a large male figure that may represent Baiame, the Sky Father. The site is on private property.

The cave is listed on the New South Wales Heritage Register.

Gallery

See also

 Aboriginal sites of New South Wales
 Great North Road, Australia
 Tuff Truck Challenge

References

Suburbs of Singleton Council
Towns in the Hunter Region

Milbrodale, New South Wales


The Catholic Church in Greece is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. Indigenous Roman Catholic Greeks numbered about 50,000-70,000 in 2022 and were a religious and not an ethnic minority. Most of them are a remnant of Venetian and Genoese rule in southern Greece and many Greek islands (in both the Aegean and Ionian seas) from the early 13th until the late 18th century, Greeks who converted to Catholicism or descendants of the thousands of Bavarians that came to Greece in the 1830s as soldiers and civil administrators, accompanying King Otto. One very old but still common term to reference to them is Φράγκοι, or "Franks", dating to the times of the Byzantine Empire, when medieval Greeks would use that term to describe all Catholics.

Since the early 1990s however, the number of Catholic permanent residents of Greece has greatly increased; as of 2002, they numbered 200,000 at the very least, and probably more. These Catholics are immigrants from Eastern Europe (especially Poland) or from the Philippines, but also include Western European expatriates that live permanently in Athens, Thessaloniki or the Greek islands (especially Crete, Syros, Rhodes and Corfu).

Today, the majority of Catholics live in Athens, a city of about four million people; the rest of them can be found all over Greece. Most indigenous Catholics live in the islands, and especially the Cyclades, where Syros and Tinos in particular have some entirely Catholic villages and parishes. Catholics can be found also in Corfu, Naxos, Santorini, Kefalonia, Zakynthos, Rhodes, Kos, Crete, Samos, Lesbos and Chios. In the mainland, Catholic communities are smaller, and include those of Patras (a city that was home to a large Italian community until World War II), Thessaloniki, Kavala, Volos etc. In addition to Roman Catholics who represent the vast majority of the faithful, there were about 5,000 members of the Greek Byzantine Catholic Church and a few hundred Armenian Catholics in 2002.

The Catholic Church itself states that "the total population of Catholics in Greece exceeds 350,000". Other estimates suggested that there were 133,000 Catholics in Greece (1.22% of the population) in 2020.

The Catholic Church is recognised by the Greek government and Catholic schools operate in the country.

History
Before the division of the church in 1054, there were structures of the Catholic Church in Greece. Since the 5th century, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Thessalonica led the Illyrian Vicariate of the Latin Church. Until 1054, there was mutual recognition between the Latin and Byzantine communities in Greece.

After the separation of churches in 1054, a split occurred between these communities. After the church split and the conquest of Greece by the Ottoman Empire, the Greek Catholics began to be called "Franks" (Greek Φράγκοι). This name of local Catholics came from the faith professed by the Franks. Orthodox Greeks, distinguishing themselves from the Franks, called themselves the "Romans" (Greek Ρωμαιοι), identifying themselves with the Byzantine Empire, which considered itself the successor to the Roman Empire.

After the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the residence of the Latin patriarch with 12 dioceses subordinate to him was established in Constantinople. In 1205, Pope Innocent III established the Latin Archdiocese in Athens. Other Latin church structures were established at the same time. In Greece, various Western monastic orders also operated.

After the conquest of Byzantium by the Ottoman Empire in 1453 in Greece, the activity of the Latin structures gradually ceased and the dioceses of the Latin rite became titular. At the same time, until the 18th century, there were numerous Venetian colonies in Greece, which possessed considerable freedom.

In 1830, a gradual restoration of Church hierarchy began in Greece. That year, Pope Gregory XVI established the first Catholic Church hierarchy, which was called the apostolic delegate. In 1834, Bishop Blancis was appointed apostolic delegate and the Holy See entrusted him with the care of Roman Catholics living in Greece. On 23 July 1875 Pope Pius IX established the archdiocese of Athens and the Peloponnese.

In 1856, a community of Greek Eastern Catholics was formed in Constantinople, which became the basis of the Greek Byzantine Catholic Church.

In 1979, the Holy See established diplomatic relations with Greece.

Popes from Greece

Pope Hyginus
Pope Eleutherius
Pope Sixtus II

Bishops' Conference
The Bishops' Conference of Greece (Hiera Synodos Katholikis Hierarkhias Hellados) has six members:
The archbishop of Corfu and apostolic administrator of Thessaloniki
The archbishop of Naxos and Tinos and apostolic administrator of Chios
The archbishop of Athens and apostolic administrator of Rhodes
The bishop of Syros and Santorini and apostolic administrator of Crete
The exarch of the Greek Catholics of Byzantine Rite (based in Athens)
The ordinary of the Armenian Catholics (based in Athens)

Papal representatives to Greece

Organization

Roman Catholic
Archdiocese of Athens
Archdiocese of Rhodos
Archdiocese of Corfù, Zante and Cefalonia
Archdiocese of Naxos, Andros, Tinos and Mykonos
Diocese of Chios
Diocese of Crete
Diocese of Santorini
Diocese of Syros and Milos
Apostolic Vicariate of Thessaloniki

Dioceses
Catholic Archdiocese of Corfu
Catholic Archdiocese of Rhodes
Catholic Archdiocese of Naxos - Tinos
Greek (Byzantine) Catholic  Exarchate

Parishes
Catholic parish of Heraklion
Catholic parish of Kavala
Catholic parish of Patras
Catholic parish of Thessaloniki
German-speaking Catholic community in Greece
Polish Catholic community in Greece

Others
Caritas Hellas
Jesuit Community in Greece

Notable Greek Roman Catholics
Demetrios Kydones, theologian
Ioannis Kyparissiotes, theologian
Thomas Palaiologos, Despot of Morea
Andreas Palaiologos, Despot of Morea
Basilius Bessarion, scholar, theologian and cardinal
Ioannis Argyropoulos, scholar
Ioannis Kottounios, scholar
Marcus Musurus, scholar
Francisco Leontaritis, composer
Vincenzos Cornaros, poet, playwright
Lorentzos Mavilis, poet and martyr
Ioannis Andreas Kargas, bishop of Syros
Dominikos Theotokopoulos ("El Greco"), painter
Constantine Gerachis (Phaulkon), adventurer
Ioannis Marangos, archbishop
Markos Vamvakaris, musician
Antonis Delatolas, publisher of To Pontiki
Maria Korinthiou, actress

Gallery

See also
Greek Byzantine Catholic Church
List of Greek popes
Religion in Greece
Greek Orthodox Church

References

External links
Catholic Church in Greece

Greece

Catholic Church in Greece


Valeriu Lazarov or Valerio Lazarov (born December 20, 1935, Bârlad, Romania – died August 11, 2009, Tres Cantos, Spain) was a Romanian-born television producer and director of several TV channels from Romania, Spain and Italy.

He defected to Spain in 1968, and was hired the same year by Juan José Rosón to work for RTVE. He became a Spanish citizen in 1972.

He was married seven times: twice in Romania before he defected to Spain in 1968, then in 1970, in Miami, to Cuban singer Elsa Baeza (with whom he has a son; they divorced in 1973), in 1978 to American actress Didi Sherman (they divorced in 1983), with whom he had two children, in 1989 to Italian Adonella Azzoni (divorced in 1996), with whom he has two children, to Sonia Costa (between 2001 and 2002), and in 2004, in Madrid, to Romanian Augusta Dumitraşcu, who is about 40 years his junior.

References

External links
Romanian TV Producer Valeriu Lazarov Dies At 73

Spanish television producers
Spanish people of Romanian descent
Romanian emigrants to Spain
People from Madrid
People from Bârlad
Romanian defectors
Romanian expatriates in Spain
1935 births
2009 deaths

Valeriu Lazarov


The 1991 Rutgers Scarlet Knights football team represented Rutgers University in the 1991 NCAA Division I-A football season. In their second season under head coach Doug Graber, the Scarlet Knights compiled a 6–5 record, scored 217 points, allowed 217 points, and finished in sixth place in the Big East Conference. The team's statistical leaders included Tom Tarver with 1,969 passing yards, Antoine Moore with 627 rushing yards, and James Guarantino with 740 receiving yards.

Schedule

References

Rutgers
Rutgers Scarlet Knights football seasons
Rutgers Scarlet Knights football


Kyrsten Lea Sinema ( ; born July 12, 1976) is an American politician and former social worker serving as the senior United States senator from Arizona, a seat she has held since 2019. A former member of the Democratic Party, Sinema became an independent in December 2022.

Sinema served three terms as a state representative for the 15th legislative district from 2005 to 2011, one term as the state senator for the 15th legislative district from 2011 to 2012, and three terms as the United States representative for the  from 2013 to 2019. She began her political career in the Arizona Green Party and rose to prominence for her progressive advocacy, supporting causes such as LGBT rights and opposing the war on terror. She left the Green Party to join the Arizona Democratic Party in 2004 and was elected to a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2012. After her election, she joined the New Democrat Coalition, the Blue Dog Coalition and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, amassing one of the most conservative voting records in the Democratic caucus. Sinema won the 2018 Senate election to replace the retiring Jeff Flake, defeating Republican nominee Martha McSally. She is the first bisexual and the second LGBT woman (after Tammy Baldwin) to be elected to Congress, in the House of Representatives in 2012 and in the Senate in 2018. She is also the first woman elected to the Senate from Arizona and the only religiously unaffiliated member of Congress.

Sinema is considered a key swing vote in the Senate, which was split 50–50 between Democrats and Republicans in the 117th U.S. Congress. She is one of three independents in the Senate, the others being Bernie Sanders and Angus King, both of whom also caucus with the Democrats.

Early life and education
Sinema was born in Tucson, Arizona, on July 12, 1976, to Marilyn (Wiley) and Dan Sinema. Sinema has an older brother and younger sister. Her father was an attorney. Her parents divorced when she was a child, and her mother, who had custody of the children, remarried. With her siblings, mother, and stepfather, Sinema moved to DeFuniak Springs, Florida, a small town in the Panhandle.

When her stepfather lost his job and the bank foreclosed on their home, the family lived for three years in an abandoned gas station. Sinema has said that for two years they had no toilet or electricity while living there. She later recalled, "My stepdad built a bunkbed for me and my sister. We separated our bunkbed from the kitchen with one of those big chalkboards on rollers. I knew that was weird. A chalkboard shouldn't be a wall. A kitchen should have running water."

According to journalist Jonathan Martin in The New York Times, Sinema has given "contradictory answers about her early life", and her mother and stepfather have filed court documents saying they had made monthly payments for gas, electricity, and phone bills, even though Sinema had said they had been "without running water or electricity". Asked whether she had embellished details from her childhood, Sinema said, "I've shared what I remember from my childhood. I know what I lived through."

Sinema was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). She graduated as valedictorian from Walton High School in DeFuniak Springs at age 16 and earned her B.A. from Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1995 at age 18. She left the LDS Church after graduating from BYU. Sinema returned to Arizona in 1995.

While employed as a social worker, Sinema completed a Master of Social Work degree at Arizona State University in 1999. In 2004, she earned a J.D. degree from Arizona State University College of Law and started working as a criminal defense lawyer. In 2012, she earned a Ph.D. in justice studies from Arizona State and in 2018, she completed an online M.B.A. from the W. P. Carey School of Business.

Career
In 2003, Sinema became an adjunct professor teaching master's-level policy and grant-writing classes at Arizona State University School of Social Work and an adjunct business law professor at Arizona Summit Law School, formerly known as Phoenix School of Law. Sinema began her political career in the Arizona Green Party before joining the Arizona Democratic Party in 2004, and called herself a "Prada socialist".

In 2000, Sinema worked on Ralph Nader's presidential campaign. In 2001 and 2002, she ran for local elected offices as an independent and lost. In 2002, The Arizona Republic published a letter from Sinema criticizing capitalism. She wrote: "Until the average American realizes that capitalism damages her livelihood while augmenting the livelihoods of the wealthy, the Almighty Dollar will continue to rule." In 2003, she protested Joe Lieberman's unsuccessful 2004 presidential bid, telling the Hartford Courant: "He's a shame to Democrats. I don't even know why he's running. He seems to want to get Republicans voting for him – what kind of strategy is that?"

While in the Green Party, Sinema was its local spokesperson, working to repeal the death penalty and organizing antiwar protests. She had organized 15 antiwar rallies by the time the Iraq War began. She also opposed the war in Afghanistan. During a February 15, 2003, protest in Patriots Square Park in Phoenix, a group led by Sinema distributed flyers portraying a U.S. service member as a skeleton "inflicting 'U.S. terror' in Iraq and the Middle East".

In a 2003 opinion piece, Sinema wrote that Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush were "the real Saddam and Osama lovers". When asked on a local radio show whether she would oppose someone joining the Taliban and fighting on its behalf, Sinema responded: "Fine ... I don't care if you want to do that, go ahead."

In a 2011 address to Netroots Nation, Sinema called Arizona the "meth lab of democracy".

Arizona State Legislature

Elections

In 2002, Sinema first ran for the Arizona House of Representatives as an independent affiliated with the Arizona Green Party. She finished in last place in a five-candidate field, receiving 8 percent of the vote.

Sinema joined the Democratic Party in 2004. That year, Sinema and David Lujan won the two seats for Arizona's 15th district, with 37 percent of the vote for Sinema and 34 percent for Lujan over incumbent representative Wally Straughn. Sinema was subsequently reelected three times with over 30 percent of the vote. In 2008, Sinema completed the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government program for senior executives in state and local government as a David Bohnett LGBTQ Victory Institute Leadership Fellow. In 2009 and 2010, Sinema was an assistant Minority Leader for the Democratic Caucus of the Arizona House of Representatives.

In 2010, Sinema was elected to the Arizona Senate, defeating Republican Bob Thomas, 63 to 37 percent.

Tenure
According to Elle, "her first public comment as an elected official came in 2005, after a Republican colleague's speech insulted LGBT people. 'We're simply people like everyone else who want and deserve respect', she passionately declared. Later, when reporters asked about her use of the first person, Sinema replied, 'Duh, I'm bisexual. In 2012, when running for U.S. House, Sinema said she did not remember disclosing her sexual orientation in 2005 and declined to discuss the significance of being the first openly bisexual member of the House.

In 2006, Sinema told a radio host that she was "the most liberal member of the Arizona State Legislature". Also in 2006, she sponsored a bill urging the adoption of the DREAM Act, and co-chaired Arizona Together, the statewide campaign that defeated Proposition 107, which would have banned the recognition of same-sex marriage and civil unions in Arizona. In 2008, a similar referendum, Proposition 102, passed.

In 2006, Sinema was asked about "new feminism", and responded: "These women who act like staying at home, leeching off their husbands or boyfriends, and just cashing the checks is some sort of feminism because they're choosing to live that life. That's bullshit. I mean, what the fuck are we really talking about here?" After facing criticism, Sinema apologized and said the interview format was intended to be a "lighthearted spoof", adding: "I was raised by a stay-at-home mom. So she did a pretty good job with me."

Sinema campaigned against Proposition 107, a referendum to ban the recognition of same-sex marriage and civil unions in Arizona. In 2008, she led the campaign against Proposition 102, another referendum that would have banned the recognition of same-sex marriage in Arizona. Proposition 102 was approved with 56% of the vote in the general election on November 4, 2008. Sinema chaired a coalition called Protect Arizona's Freedom, which defeated Ward Connerly's goal to place an initiative on the state ballot that would eliminate racial-preference programs.

In June 2009, Sinema was one of 32 state legislators appointed by President Barack Obama to the White House Health Reform Task Force, which helped shape the Affordable Care Act. "Thanks in part to her hard work in improving the bill", she was invited to attend the Obamacare bill signing at the White House in March 2010.

In 2010, Sinema sponsored a bill to give in-state tuition to veterans; it was held in committee and did not receive a vote. Also in 2010, Sinema was named one of Time magazine's "40 Under 40". The Center for Inquiry gave Sinema its Award for the Advancement of Science and Reason in Public Policy in 2011.

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

2012

In June 2011, Sinema said she was considering running for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012. She lived in the same Phoenix neighborhood as incumbent Democratic congressman Ed Pastor, but was adamant that she would not challenge another Democrat in a primary. On January 3, 2012, Sinema announced her bid for Congress, in the 9th congressional district. The district had previously been the 5th, represented by freshman Republican David Schweikert; it contained 60 percent of the old 5th's territory. Schweikert had been drawn into the 6th district—the old 3rd district—and sought reelection there.

Although Sinema was not required to resign her State Senate seat under Arizona's resign-to-run laws (since she was in the final year of her term), she did so on the same day that she announced her candidacy. On August 28, 2012, Sinema won the three-way Democratic primary with nearly 42 percent of the vote. Her opponents, state Senator David Schapira and former Arizona Democratic Party chairman Andrei Cherny, a former speechwriter in the Clinton administration, each finished with less than 30 percent of the vote.

In the general election, Sinema ran against Republican nominee Vernon Parker, the former mayor of Paradise Valley. She was endorsed by The Arizona Republic. The campaign was described as a "nasty", "bitterly fought race that featured millions of dollars in attack ads". Parker ran campaign ads that accused Sinema of being an "anti-American hippie" who practiced "Pagan rituals". The Republican-aligned outside group American Future Fund spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on attack ads against Sinema. When her religious views were raised as an issue, her campaign said that she simply believes in a secular approach to government.

The November 6 election was initially too close to call, because Arizona election authorities failed to count more than 25 percent of the votes on election day. Sinema held a narrow lead over Parker, while provisional and absentee ballots were still being counted. On November 12, when it was apparent that Sinema's lead was too large for Parker to overcome, the Associated Press called the race for Sinema.

Once all ballots were counted, Sinema won by 4 percentage points, over 10,000 votes. Libertarian Powell Gammill finished third with 7 percent of the votes.

Sinema is the first openly bisexual person and second openly LGBT woman (after Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin) elected to the United States Congress.

2014

Sinema ran for reelection in 2014 and was unopposed in the Democratic primary, which took place on August 26, 2014. She faced Republican Wendy Rogers in the general election.

According to Roll Call, Sinema considered herself bipartisan. It was drawn as a "fair-fight" district, and President Barack Obama won the district by four points in 2012. In September 2014, she was endorsed for reelection by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, becoming one of five Democrats to be endorsed by the Chamber in the 2014 congressional election cycle. She was reelected with approximately 55 percent of the vote, beating Rogers by 13 points.

2016

Unopposed in her primary, Sinema won the general election with 61 percent of the vote. Her opponent, Republican nominee Dave Giles, received 39 percent.

Tenure
Following her election to Congress, Sinema shifted toward the political center, joining the conservative Democratic Blue Dog Coalition and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and amassing a "reliably moderate-Democratic" voting record. Sinema worked for the adoption of the DREAM Act, hiring DREAM Act advocate Erika Andiola as a district outreach staffer.

On the House Financial Services Committee, Sinema supported the Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act of 2013, which sought to exempt certain financial instruments from some Dodd-Frank restrictions. Bank lobbyists drafted key amendments, which appeared word-for-word in the bill she supported in the committee and on the House floor. It passed the House, with only 119 Democrats and three Republicans opposing it, but failed to advance in the Senate banking committee.

Sinema co-sponsored other anti-regulation bills, including the Systemic Risk Designation Improvement Act of 2015, which includes provisions that Silicon Valley Bank President Gregory W. Becker called for in testimony before Congress that year. That measure also failed to pass.

After Donald Trump became president in 2017, Sinema and a majority of the House Financial Services Committee members backed the considerably more extensive Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act of 2018. The bill came before the full House on May 22, 2018, and passed, 258 to 159, with Sinema one of only 33 Democrats who voted for it. In her U.S. Senate campaign that year, she accepted more than $100,000 in financial industry campaign contributions, including from a trio of longtime Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) lobbyists.

Committee assignments
 Committee on Financial Services
 Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions
 Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations

Caucus memberships
 New Democrat Coalition
 Congressional Arts Caucus
 Veterinary Medicine Caucus
 Blue Dog Coalition
 Problem Solvers Caucus

U.S. Senate

Elections

2018

On September 28, 2017, Sinema officially announced her candidacy for the Class I United States Senate seat held by Republican incumbent Jeff Flake, who declined to seek reelection the next month.

In March 2018, Sinema donated to charity $33,800 in campaign contributions she had received from Ed Buck, a prominent Democratic donor who came under scrutiny after a homeless escort died of a drug overdose at his California home in 2017. She had previously donated to charity $53,400 in campaign contributions from people with ties to Backpage, a website that was seized by the United States Department of Justice after it was accused of knowingly accepting ads for sex with underage girls.

Federal Election Commission filings released in April 2018 showed Sinema had raised over $8.2 million, more than the three leading Republican primary contenders combined.

During the 2018 campaign, Sinema refused to debate her competitor in the Democratic primary, Deedra Abboud, an attorney and community activist. Sinema won the August Democratic primary for the Senate seat. Her Republican opponent in the general election was fellow Arizona U.S. Representative and eventual Senate colleague Martha McSally. Sinema received the endorsement of the Human Rights Campaign.

While Abboud said she would vote against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Sinema "said she wanted to delve deeper into Kavanaugh's writings and interview him personally before deciding". She said she was "running on the issues people care about most, including offering quality, affordable health care and promoting economic opportunity".

In the summer of 2018, Sinema said she would vote against Chuck Schumer for Minority Leader if elected to the U.S. Senate. "The Democratic leadership has failed Democrats across the country," she said. "I am unafraid to say what I believe about what I think our party needs to do and I think our party needs to grow and change."

Journalist Jonathan Martin wrote in The New York Times in September 2018 that Sinema was running "one of the most moderate-sounding and cautious Senate campaigns this year, keeping the media at arms-length and avoiding controversial issues", and said her campaign was generally reluctant to bring up President Donald Trump. According to Martin, both Republicans and Democrats said that Sinema had "few major legislative accomplishments to her record" and was running "on a political image that she has shaped and reshaped over the years. And nothing is more central to it now than her childhood homelessness."

On November 12, many news sources called the U.S. Senate race for Sinema, and the Republican nominee, Martha McSally, conceded. Sinema was sworn in with the 116th United States Congress on January 3, 2019.

Sinema is the first woman to represent Arizona in the United States Senate. She is also the first Democrat elected to represent Arizona in the chamber since Dennis DeConcini, who held her current seat from 1977 to 1995.

Tenure
Sinema was sworn in as a member of the U.S. Senate on January 3, 2019. During the oath of office ceremony, led by Vice President Mike Pence, she decided to be sworn in not on the traditional Bible, but on copies of the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Arizona. She is the senior U.S. senator from Arizona; the junior U.S. senator for Arizona is Democrat Mark Kelly. Kelly defeated Sinema's 2018 general election opponent, Martha McSally, who was appointed to fill the Senate seat vacated upon the resignation of Jon Kyl, who had been appointed to fill the Senate seat vacated upon the death of John McCain.

On February 14, 2019, Sinema voted to confirm William Barr as attorney general.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sinema was noted for her use of colorful wigs. Her spokeswoman explained that Sinema wore them to emphasize the importance of social distancing: by wearing wigs, she did not need to go to a hair salon.

Sinema voted to convict Donald Trump in both his first and second impeachment trials.

Sinema urged Senate colleagues to vote in favor of the proposed January 6 commission to further investigate the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. In a joint statement with Senator Joe Manchin, she said, "we implore our Senate Republican colleagues to work with us to find a path forward on a commission to examine the events of January 6th." Sinema was one of two Senate Democrats who did not vote on it, the other being Senator Patty Murray of Washington. Murray and Sinema both cited a "personal family matter" for their absence.

In October 2021, five of the veterans Sinema had selected for her advisory council as liaisons to the Arizona service member community resigned. Their resignation letter accused her of "answering to big donors rather than your own people" and criticized her opposition to key Democratic Party issues, such as abolishing the filibuster and aspects of Biden's Build Back Better Plan.

Sinema was the only U.S. elected official to attend the 2022 Bilderberg Conference, an annual private gathering of the European and North American political and business elite. About 120 high-level politicians, CEOs, national security experts, academics and journalists from 21 countries attended the closed-door meeting.

On January 22, 2022, the Arizona Democratic Party executive board voted to censure Sinema for voting with Senate Republicans to maintain the filibuster, preventing passage of a voting rights bill.

In December 2022, Sinema announced that she had left the Democratic Party and registered as an independent. She continued to caucus with the Democratic Party for committee assignments.

Committee assignments
Source:
 Committee on Appropriations
 Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
 Subcommittee on Aviation Safety, Operations, and Innovation (Chair)
 Subcommittee on Communications, Media, and Broadband
 Subcommittee on Space and Science
 Subcommittee on Tourism, Trade and Export Promotion
 Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
 Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight
 Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management (Chair)
 Committee on Veterans' Affairs
 Special Committee on Aging (116th Congress)
 Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (116th-118th Congress)
 Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance
 Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment
 Subcommittee on Economic Policy

Political positions
Sinema has been described as a moderate to conservative Democrat, being generally socially liberal but fiscally moderate-to-conservative. She has cited U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, as a role model.

In the House of Representatives, Sinema was a member of the Blue Dog Coalition and the Problem Solvers Caucus. According to the Bipartisan Index created by the Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy, Sinema was the sixth most bipartisan member of the U.S. House of Representatives during the first session of the 115th United States Congress. The National Journals 2013 vote ratings placed Sinema near the center of their liberal–conservative scale. In 2015, she voted with the majority of her party 73% of the time. In 2015 and 2016, Sinema did not vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker of the U.S. House. In 2016, the National Journal gave her a composite ideology score of 57% liberal and 43% conservative. She was one of the most conservative House Democrats during her House tenure.

According to GovTrack, Sinema has a centrist to center-right voting record in the Senate, to the right of Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. According to FiveThirtyEight, as of January 2021, Sinema had voted in line with Donald Trump's position on legislation about 50% of the time. As a result, the Arizona Democratic Party suggested censuring her. But after delaying the vote and watering down the resolution from a censure to an advisement, the Party ultimately tabled the resolution.

According to FiveThirtyEight, as of July 2022, Sinema had voted with President Biden's position on legislative issues 100% of the time.

In December 2022, Sinema changed her party registration to Independent.

Abortion
When asked about Roe v. Wade in 2018, Sinema said the ruling should not be overturned and that she supports a woman's right to have an abortion. In 2020, she had a 100% rating from the abortion-rights organization Planned Parenthood, and a 0% rating from the anti-abortion organization Campaign for Working Families. She was endorsed by EMILY's List, an abortion-rights-focused political action committee, until 2022, when she voted with Republicans against changing the filibuster to allow passage of the Freedom to Vote and John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act. That vote also cost her the support of the abortion-rights advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice America. After Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, Sinema said the decision "endangers the health and well-being of women in Arizona and across America."

Capital punishment
While working as a spokesperson for the Arizona Green Party, Sinema worked to repeal the death penalty. In her 2009 book, Unite and Conquer, she explained her stance on capital punishment, writing that she opposed it "because I think no civilized society should use it as a punishment", though "since we have the death penalty in Arizona, I want to ensure that it's being implemented as fairly and judiciously as possible".

According to The Arizona Republic, while serving in the Arizona State Legislature, she introduced more bills regarding the death penalty than bills regarding military or veterans' families. In 2007, she introduced HB 2278, which would require the Arizona Supreme Court to "strike" any prior death sentence and "enter in its place a sentence of natural life", as in life without parole.

Sinema has served as an Advisory Board Member of the Arizona Death Penalty Forum. She was also a presenter at their 2010 Spring Conference, which was co-sponsored by Amnesty International and the ACLU of Arizona.

In 2017, Sinema and 47 other House Democrats voted with the majority of House Republicans on H.R. 115, Thin Blue Line Act of 2017, which was opposed by the ACLU. The bill would "expand the list of statutory aggravating factors in death penalty determinations" to include the killing or targeting of a law enforcement officer, first responder, or firefighter.

Defense
On February 5, 2019, Sinema voted for a bill that would make improvements to certain defense and security assistance provisions, authorize the appropriation of funds to Israel, and reauthorize the United States-Jordan Defense Cooperation Act of 2015. On March 13, 2019, she voted to remove the United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.

Economics and taxes
Sinema has voted for federal stimulus spending. She has said: "Raising taxes is more economically sound than cutting vital social services."

In 2015, Sinema was one of just seven House Democrats to vote in favor of a Republican-backed bill to repeal the estate tax, which affects about 0.2% of Americans in the U.S. each year (estates of $5.43 million or more for individuals, or $10.86 million or more for couples). That same year, she voted to change the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's leadership from a single director to a bipartisan commission.

In 2016, with Republican congressman John Katko of New York, Sinema cosponsored the Working Parents Flexibility Act (H.R. 4699). This legislation would establish a tax-free "parental savings account" in which employers and parents could invest savings tax-free, with unused funds eligible to be "rolled into qualifying retirement, college savings or ABLE accounts for people with disabilities without tax penalties". In September 2018, she voted "to make individual tax cuts passed by the GOP [in 2017] permanent". She was one of three Democrats to break with her party and vote for the tax cuts being made permanent.

On July 30, 2019, Sinema and Senator Bill Cassidy released a proposal under which new parents would be authorized to advance their child tax credit benefits in order to receive a $5,000 cash benefit upon either birth or adoption of a child. The parents' child tax credit would then be reduced by $500 for each year of the following decade.

In 2022, several provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 were changed after negotiations with Sinema: a provision narrowing the carried interest loophole was dropped, a 1% excise tax on stock buybacks was added, and manufacturing exceptions were added to the corporate minimum tax.

Minimum wage
On February 12, 2021, Sinema became the second Democratic senator after Joe Manchin to announce her opposition to including a $15/hour minimum wage as part of a COVID-19 relief bill. On March 5, 2021, Sinema voted against an increase of the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. She did so by flashing a thumbs-down, and some commentators compared her demeanor to that of former Arizona senator John McCain, who had voted with a dramatic thumbs-down gesture in 2017; others compared her to former French queen Marie Antoinette, to whom the phrase "let them eat cake" is attributed. Sinema's office responded that any commentary on her clothes and demeanor was sexist. Her vote was at odds with that of fellow Democrat Mark Kelly, the junior Arizona senator, who supports a $15/hour minimum wage.

Education
In February 2019, Sinema was one of 20 senators to sponsor the Employer Participation in Repayment Act, enabling employers to contribute up to $5,250 to their employees' student loans.

Environment
In 2019, Sinema was one of four Democratic-caucusing senators to join all Republicans in voting against the Green New Deal, a stimulus program that aims to address climate change and economic inequality, while most other Democrats voted "present". In April 2019, Sinema was one of three Democrats who voted with Republicans to confirm David Bernhardt, a former oil executive, as Secretary of the Interior Department.

On February 12, 2019, Sinema voted along with the whole Senate for the Natural Resources Management Act, which provides for the management of the natural resources of the United States.

In 2022, Sinema voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, a major piece of climate and energy legislation designed to invest in renewable energy, which includes billions of dollars for drought relief.

Foreign policy
Sinema supports the use of military force to stop genocide, such as in Sudan, Somalia and Rwanda. She wrote a doctoral dissertation on the 1994 Rwandan genocide that Lexington Books published in 2015 under the title Who Must Die in Rwanda's Genocide?: The State of Exception Realized.

Sinema was opposed to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and helped organize anti-war protests while a law student at Arizona State University. Sinema was involved in organizing a Phoenix-area group called the Arizona Alliance for Peaceful Justice (AAPJ). According to Josh Lederman of The Hill, "The group's mission statement at the time called military action 'an inappropriate response to terrorism' and advocated for using the legal system—not violence—to bring Osama bin Laden and others to justice."

As an antiwar activist in the years after 9/11, Sinema "led a group that distributed flyers depicting an American soldier as a skeleton inflicting 'U.S. terror' in Iraq and the Middle East." The flyers "promoted a February 2003 rally organized by Local to Global Justice, an anti-war group Sinema co-founded". Sinema was described in news reports as an organizer and sponsor of the rally and was listed as the point of contact for the event. One flyer referred to "Bush and his fascist, imperialist war", saying, "Government is slavery", and describing laws as "cobwebs for the rich and chains of steel for the poor". CNN said that such positions were "a contrast from the more moderate profile she has developed since her 2012 election to Congress".

In 2005 and 2006, she co-hosted an Air America radio show with 9/11 truther Jeff Farias. In 2006, Sinema said she opposed "war in all its forms", and wrote: "As one of the core organizers against the war from day one (September 12, 2001), I have always and will always continue to oppose war in all its forms."

After joining Congress in 2012, she said her views on military force had "evolved", and that "you should never take military intervention off the table. When you do so, you give an out to a rogue nation or rogue actors." Lederman reported that "she said she favors aggressive diplomacy, crippling sanctions to combat proliferation, and swift, multilateral intervention as a last resort". Since joining Congress, she has voted against the Iran Nuclear Deal and supported Trump's missile attack on Syria.

Guns
Sinema favors gun control measures such as requiring background checks on gun sales between private citizens at gun shows, and requiring a license for gun possession. In 2014 and 2018 the NRA Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF), which opposes gun regulations, gave Sinema a "D" rating. Gun Owners of America gave her a 17% rating.

Health care

Sinema voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act, but has called for reforms to the law. In a 2012 congressional campaign debate, she said the health care law was not perfect, and that in Congress she would work to amend it to make it work effectively. Sinema voted to delay the imposition of fines on those who did not purchase insurance in 2014. She also voted to repeal the Medical Device Tax and for the Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013.

Speaking about healthcare policy, Sinema said, "I used to say that I wanted universal health-care coverage in Arizona, which went over like a ton of bricks. Turns out, Arizonans hear the word 'universal' and think 'socialism'—or 'pinko commie'. But when I say that I want all Arizonans to have access to affordable, quality health care, Arizonans agree wholeheartedly. Same basic idea, different language."

In 2021, Sinema opposed prescription drug pricing reform proposals in House and Senate versions of a Democrat-crafted spending bill. On October 8, 2021, Jacobin reported:
Early last month, a corporate front group called Center Forward purchased $600,000 worth of television and radio ads promoting Sinema in Arizona. The ads touted her "independence" and characterized her as "a bipartisan leader" in the mold of the late senator John McCain. As we reported, Center Forward has been heavily bankrolled by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the powerful Washington drug lobby. Two Center Forward board members lobby for PhRMA, as well as drugmakers Amgen, Bayer, Gilead Sciences, Eli Lilly, Merck, Novartis, and Sanofi. A few days after the ad campaign started, Sinema informed the White House she opposed the party's drug pricing plan.

Sinema and Senator Joe Manchin met with President Biden the same day to discuss their concerns with the bills. Observers have noted that Sinema is one of the largest beneficiaries of pharmaceutical political action committee money in Congress, and has been described as a "Pharma Favorite". KHN reported: "For the 2019-20 election cycle through March, political action committees run by employees of drug companies and their trade groups gave her $98,500 in campaign funds, Kaiser Health News' Pharma Cash to Congress database shows. That stands out in a Congress in which a third of the members got no pharma cash for the period and half of those who did got $10,000 or less." Sinema's haul was "twice that of Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, considered one of the most vulnerable Republicans in November, and approached that of fellow Democrat Steny Hoyer, the powerful House majority leader from Maryland." Senator Bernie Sanders indirectly called her out, saying: "Take a hard look at those people who are opposed to strong legislation to lower the cost of prescription drugs, and take a look at their campaign-finance reports. See where they get their money, how many of them get their money from the pharmaceutical industry, and the executives there. And I think there will be a direct correlation." On October 18, 2021, Politico reported:
Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia raked in cash last quarter from a bevy of corporations, executives and lobbyists working to pare back the Democratic reconciliation package that Sinema and Manchin have also been vocal opponents of, according to their latest campaign finance filings.... Sinema, who has emerged as the leading Democratic opponent in the Senate to her party's drug pricing proposal, received more than $27,000 from PACs of pharmaceutical companies, including Astellas, Sunovion, Takeda, Horizon, Eli Lilly, Abbvie, Alexion and Lundbeck.

LGBT rights
According to a profile in The Advocate, "Sinema has her sights set on advancing LGBT rights." She has a history of policy advocacy regarding LGBT rights and issues. In 2006, Sinema was among the leading opponents of a proposed amendment to the Arizona state constitution which would have banned same-sex marriages and civil unions. The proposal failed in Arizona, the first time that a state rejected a ban on same-sex marriage, but a second proposed amendment banning only same-sex marriage passed in 2008 with Sinema in opposition again. She supports same-sex marriage, domestic partnership recognition, and adding gender identity to anti-discrimination laws.

In 2013, Sinema co-sponsored Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney's letter, which opposed Saudi Arabia for "the use of torture and capital punishment against the LGBTQ community".

In December 2022, Sinema was a lead cosponsor and negotiator on the Respect for Marriage Act, which passed the Senate, 61–36.

Immigration

Sinema co-sponsored the Southwest Border Security Threat Assessment Act (H.R. 4482), a bill that calls for border threat analysis of terrorism, smuggling, and human trafficking every five years.

Sinema was one of 24 House Democrats to vote in favor of Kate's Law, a bill that would expand maximum sentences for foreigners who attempt to reenter the country, legally or illegally, after having been deported, denied entry or removed, and for foreign felons who attempt to reenter the country.

Sinema voted for the SAFE Act, which expanded the refugee screening process to require signatures from the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Director of National Intelligence for each refugee entering the country.

Sinema opposed Arizona SB 1070. She has argued that mass deportation of undocumented immigrants is not an option and supported the DREAM Act. Her 2012 campaign website stated that "we need to create a tough but fair path to citizenship for undocumented workers that requires them to get right with the law by paying back taxes, paying a fine and learning English as a condition of gaining citizenship." In July 2018, she broke with her party by voting with Republicans against abolishing ICE.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, a PAC that seeks to limit both legal and illegal immigration, gave Sinema a 33% rating in 2018, and UnidosUS, which supports a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, gave Sinema a score of 88% in 2014.

On March 14, 2019, Sinema voted against Trump's National Emergency declaration on border security.

On February 4, 2021, Sinema voted against providing COVID-19 pandemic financial support to undocumented immigrants.

Privacy
In June 2013, Sinema became one of 29 original cosponsors of the bipartisan LIBERT-E (Limiting Internet and Blanket Electronic Review of Telecommunications and Email) Act, along with Representative Justin Amash. The legislation would limit the National Security Agency (NSA) to only collecting electronic information from subjects of an investigation.

In July 2013, Sinema joined a bipartisan majority and voted against an amendment to a defense appropriations bill (offered by Amash) to prohibit the NSA from monitoring and recording details of U.S. citizens' telecommunications without a warrant.

Senate filibuster
Early in her career, Sinema expressed enthusiasm about evading the Senate filibuster through the reconciliation process.

On January 25, 2021, a spokesperson for Sinema told The Washington Post that she is "against eliminating the filibuster" and "not open to changing her mind" on the issue. Additionally, Sinema has spoken out on the elimination of the judicial filibuster as a key reason for increased politicization of the judiciary.

In January 2022, Sinema and Democratic Senate colleague Joe Manchin voted against changing the Senate filibuster rule. The proposed rule change, which would have allowed certain voting rights bills to advance to the Senate floor without meeting the Senate's 60-vote threshold, was voted down by a 52-48 margin. Days later, the Arizona Democratic Party executive committee censured Sinema for voting to retain the filibuster rule.

Telecommunications
In 2016, Sinema was one of five House Democrats to vote for a Republican-backed bill barring the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from regulating broadband rates. Her vote broke from her party; other Democrats were strongly opposed to the measure, and President Obama said he would veto it if it passed.

In 2019, Sinema was the sole Senate Democrat not to co-sponsor the Save the Internet Act, which would restore Obama-era regulations preventing ISPs from throttling consumers' website traffic. She worked with Senate Republican Roger Wicker to develop their own net neutrality bill.

Personal life

Sinema married, and later divorced, her BYU classmate Blake Dain. She is bisexual. She has been reported to be the only atheist member of Congress, although she has rejected the label.

Amateur athlete
Sinema has completed numerous marathons. In 2019, she completed a marathon in 3:28:17, which was fast enough for her (female) age group to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Two weeks before her Boston-qualifying race, she ran a three-mile race in 20:42, setting a record for women in Congress. In 2020, she set a personal record of 3:21:45 and later in 2021, she broke her right foot while running a marathon, requiring her to use a hands-free crutch.

On November 17, 2013, Sinema completed an Ironman Triathlon in a little over 15 hours. She was the second active member of Congress, after Senator Jeff Merkley, to finish a long-distance triathlon, and the first to complete an Ironman-branded race. She completed the 2015 Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii.

On December 25, 2013, Sinema climbed to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Electoral history

Selected works

See also
 List of LGBT firsts by year (2010s)
 List of LGBT members of the United States Congress
 List of United States senators who switched parties
 Women in the United States House of Representatives
 Women in the United States Senate

References

External links

 U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema official U.S. Senate website
 Kyrsten Sinema campaign funding tied to Jeffrey Epstein
 Kyrsten Sinema for U.S. Senate

 Kyrsten Sinema official Arizona Senate website (archived)

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Kyrsten Sinema


The Myth of Er (; , gen.: ) is a legend that concludes Plato's Republic (10.614–10.621). The story includes an account of the cosmos and the afterlife that greatly influenced religious, philosophical, and scientific thought for many centuries.

The story begins as a man named Er, son of Armenios (), of Pamphylia dies in battle. When the bodies of those who died in the battle are collected, ten days after his death, Er remains undecomposed. Two days later he revives on his funeral-pyre and tells others of his journey in the afterlife, including an account of reincarnation and the celestial spheres of the astral plane. The tale includes the idea that moral people are rewarded and immoral people punished after death.

Although called the Myth of Er, the word "myth" here means "word, speech, account", rather than the modern meaning. The word is used at the end when Socrates explains that because Er did not drink the waters of Lethe, the account (mythos in Greek) was preserved for us.

Er's tale

With many other souls as his companions, Er had come across an awe-inspiring place with four openings – two into and out of the sky and two into and out of the ground. Judges sat between these openings and ordered the souls which path to follow: the good were guided into the path into the sky, the immoral were directed below. But when Er approached the judges, he was told to remain, listening and observing in order to report his experience to humankind.

Meanwhile from the other opening in the sky, clean souls floated down, recounting beautiful sights and wondrous feelings. Those  returning from underground appeared dirty, haggard, and tired, crying in despair when recounting their awful experiences, as each was required to pay a tenfold penalty for all the wicked deeds committed when alive. There were some, however, who could not be released from underground. Murderers, tyrants and other non-political criminals were doomed to remain by the exit of the underground, unable to escape.

After seven days in the meadow, the souls and Er were required to travel farther. After four days they reached a place where they could see a shaft of rainbow light brighter than any they had seen before. After another day's travel they reached it. This was the Spindle of Necessity. Several women, including Lady Necessity, her daughters, and the Sirens were present. The souls – except for Er – were then organized into rows and were each given a lottery token.

Then, in the order in which their lottery tokens were chosen, each soul was required to come forward to choose his or her next life. Er recalled the first one to choose a new life: a man who had not known the terrors of the underground but had been rewarded in the sky, hastily chose a powerful dictatorship. Upon further inspection he realized that, among other atrocities, he was destined to eat his own children. Er observed that this was often the case of those who had been through the path in the sky, whereas those who had been punished often chose a better life. Many preferred a life different from their previous experience. Animals chose human lives while humans often chose the apparently easier lives of animals.

After this, each soul was assigned a guardian spirit to help him or her through their life. They passed under the throne of Lady Necessity, then traveled to the Plane of Oblivion, where the River of Forgetfulness (River Lethe) flowed. Each soul was required to drink some of the water, in varying quantities; again, Er only watched. As they drank, each soul forgot everything. As they lay down at night to sleep each soul was lifted up into the night in various directions for rebirth, completing their journey. Er remembered nothing of the journey back to his body. He opened his eyes to find himself lying on the funeral pyre early in the morning, able to recall his journey through the afterlife.

The moral
In the dialogue Plato introduces the story by having Socrates explain to Glaucon that the soul must be immortal, and cannot be destroyed. Socrates tells Glaucon the "Myth of Er" to explain that the choices we make and the character we develop will have consequences after death. Earlier in Book II of the Republic, Socrates points out that even the gods can be tricked by a clever charlatan who appears just while unjust in his psyche, in that they would welcome the pious but false "man of the people" and would reject and punish the truly just but falsely accused man. In the Myth of Er the true characters of the falsely-pious and those who are immodest in some way are revealed when they are asked to choose another life and pick the lives of tyrants. Those who lived happy but middling lives in their previous life are most likely to choose the same for their future life, not necessarily because they are wise, but out of habit. Those who were treated with infinite injustice, despairing of the possibility of a good human life, choose the souls of animals for their future incarnation. The philosophic life — which identifies the types of lives that emerge from experience, character, and fate — allow men to make good choices when presented with options for a new life. Whereas success, fame, and power may provide temporary heavenly rewards or hellish punishments, philosophic virtues always work to one's advantage.

The Spindle of Necessity
The myth mentions "The Spindle of Necessity", in that the cosmos is represented by the Spindle attended by sirens and the three daughters of the Goddess Necessity known collectively as The Fates, whose duty is to keep the rims of the spindle revolving. The Fates, Sirens, and Spindle are used in the Republic, partly to help explain how known celestial bodies revolved around the Earth according to the cosmology in the Republic.

The "Spindle of Necessity", according to Plato, is "shaped... like the ones we know"—the standard Greek spindle, consisting of a hook, shaft, and whorl. The hook was fixed near the top of the shaft on its long side. On the other end resided the whorl. The hook was used to spin the shaft, which in turn spun the whorl on the other end.

Placed on the whorl of his celestial spindle were 8 "orbits", whereof each created a perfect circle. Each "orbit" is given different descriptions by Plato.

Based on Plato's descriptions within the passage, the orbits can be identified as those of the classical planets, corresponding to the Aristotelian planetary spheres:

Orbit 1 – Stars
Orbit 2 – Saturn
Orbit 3 – Jupiter
Orbit 4 – Mars
Orbit 5 – Sun
Orbit 6 – Venus
Orbit 7 – Mercury
Orbit 8 – Moon

The descriptions of the rims accurately fit the relative distance and revolution speed of the respective bodies as would appear to an observer from Earth (aside from the Moon, which revolves around the Earth slightly more slowly than the sun).

Comparative mythology

Some scholars have connected the Myth of Er to the Armenian legend of Ara the Handsome (Armenian: Արա Գեղեցիկ Ara Gełec'ik). In the Armenian story, the king Ara was so handsome that the Assyrian queen Semiramis waged war against Armenia to capture him and bring him back to her, alive, so she could marry him. During the battle, Semiramis was victorious, but Ara was slain despite her orders to capture him alive. To avoid continuous warfare with the Armenians, Semiramis, reputed to be a sorceress, took Ara's body and prayed to the gods to raise him from the dead. When the Armenians advanced to avenge their leader, Semiramis disguised one of her lovers as Ara and spread the rumor that the gods had brought Ara back to life, convincing the Armenians not to continue the war. In one tradition, Semiramis' prayers are successful and Ara returns to life.

Armen Petrosyan suggests that Plato's version reflects an earlier form of the story where Er (Ara) rises from the grave.

See also
Allegorical interpretations of Plato
Axis mundi
Dante's Inferno
Daniil Andreev
Dream of Scipio
Near-death experience
The Gospel of Afranius
Zalmoxis

References

Further reading

External links
 The Myth of Er – text from Luke Dysinger, O.S.B.
 The Vision of Er, retelling by W. M. L. Hutchinson.

Platonism
Visionary literature
Religious cosmologies
Early scientific cosmologies
Ancient astronomy
Philosophical arguments

Myth of Er


The Patternist series (also known as the Patternmaster series or Seed to Harvest) is a group of science fiction novels by Octavia E. Butler that detail a secret history continuing from the Ancient Egyptian period to the far future that involves telepathic mind control and an extraterrestrial plague. A profile of Butler in Black Women in America notes that the themes of the series include "racial and gender-based animosity, the ethical implications of biological engineering, the question of what it means to be human, ethical and unethical uses of power, and how the assumption of power changes people."

Butler's first published novel, 1976's Patternmaster, was the first book in this series to appear. From 1977 until 1984, she published four more Patternist novels: Mind of My Mind (1977), Survivor (1978), Wild Seed (1980) and Clay's Ark (1984). Until Butler began publishing the Xenogenesis trilogy in 1987, all but one of her published books  were Patternist novels (1979's Kindred was the exception).

Butler later expressed a dislike for the novel Survivor, and declined to bring it back into print.

Plot summaries

Wild Seed (1980)
Chronologically, the series starts with the fourth novel published, Wild Seed. Set in the 17th and 18th centuries, the story involves the relationship between two immortals - Doro, a man born in Africa thousands of years ago, who survives by transferring his consciousness from one body to another (feeding on each new victim's mental energy in the process), and Anyanwu, a shape-shifting healer with perfect control over her body. They struggle to live together over generations as Doro attempts to create a new race through a selective breeding program.

Mind of My Mind (1977)
The series' history continues with Mind of My Mind, in which Doro's breeding program has created a society of networked telepaths that he struggles to control. By the end of the novel Doro's thousands-of-years long breeding program has succeeded, but he is killed in the process, and the first patternmaster takes his place as leader of the patternists, establishing control over the fictional city of Forsyth, California, which is still the seat of their power during the time of Patternmaster.

Clay's Ark (1984)

Clay's Ark, the last book of the series to be published, deals with a colony of people who have been mutated by a disease that astronauts brought back to Earth from outer space. The group struggles to keep itself isolated enough to keep the disease from spreading throughout humanity.

'A Necessary Being' (2014)

'A Necessary Being,' a short story found in Butler's papers written in the early 1970s but posthumously published in her Unexpected Stories collection, deals with the world explored in the repudiated Survivor before the humans arrive from Earth.

Survivor (1978)

Survivor, the now out-of-print book in the series that Butler later disowned, depicts the Clay's Ark disease ravaging the Earth, and Doro's telepathic descendants asserting control over what remains of humanity. One group of regular humans decides to escape Earth to a new planet, where they struggle to co-exist with the species that already live there.

Patternmaster (1976)
Patternmaster, the first book to be published but the last in the series' internal chronology, depicts a distant future where the human race has been sharply divided into the dominant Patternists, their enemies the "diseased" and animalistic Clayarks, and the enslaved "mutes", regular humans without any enhanced abilities. The Patternists, bred for intelligence and psychic abilities, are networked telepaths. They are ruled by the most powerful telepath, known as the Patternmaster. Patternmaster tells the coming-of-age story of Teray, a young Patternist who learns he is a son of the Patternmaster. Teray fights for position within Patternist society and eventually for the role of Patternmaster.

Patternmaster explores the creation and maintenance of social and genetic hierarchies. For Gregory Jerome Hampton, Patternmaster "presents several questions about how race works in a social structure and how gender works in the function of race."

Themes

Butler on her goals in the series:

 "I was trying to tell a good story about a strange community of people. I find myself doing that over and over again. That's not all I was trying to do. In each book, I was trying to do something a little different. But overall to gather these people and start this community that didn't work very well, if you noticed. There are people who think that they've won, so everything's fine. But they were really not very nice, the Patternists. When you get to Patternmaster, you'll see that. Really they were pretty awful. You wouldn't want to live in that society. And why were they so awful? Well, they were so awful because they had, shall we say, a bad teacher. And it didn't really occur to me until I had been working on the series for awhile that I might have been making some comment on Black America. Once the thought came to me, I realized that I probably was commenting on Black America. Then I had to ask myself how I felt about that – that I was perhaps making a comment on learning the wrong thing from one's teachers. I realized that maybe it was something that I needed to think about and maybe it was something that I needed to say, so I certainly wasn't going to stop saying it or deny having said it."

Compilations

Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay's Ark, and Patternmaster were published in a single volume titled Seed to Harvest in 2007.

References

Further reading
Bogstad, Janice. "Octavia E. Butler and Power Relations." Janus 4.4 (197879): 2829.
Buckman, Alyson R. ""'What Good Is All This To Black People?': Octavia Butler's Reconstruction of Corporeality."  FEMSPEC 4.2 (2004):  201-218. "Octavia Butler."  For Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy, Vol. 2.  Ed. Robin Reid.  Westport, CT:  Greenwood, 2007. Octavia Butler.  "Kindred."  In The Facts on File Companion to the American Novel. Edited by Abby H. P. Werlock.  New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2006.
Colema, Letetia F. "Octavia E. Butler's Patternist Series: A Cultural Analysis". Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences (DAIA): 58.6 (1997 Dec.), pp. 2201. 2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:9737929
Ferreira, Maria Aline. "Symbiotic Bodies and Evolutionary Tropes in the Work of Octavia Butler." Science Fiction Studies 37.3 [112] (2010): 401415.
Gant-Britton, Lisbeth. "Butler, Octavia (1947– )." African American Writers. Ed. Valerie Smith. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001. 95110.
Holden, Rebecca J. "'I Began Writing about Power Because I Had So Little': The Impact of Octavia Butler's Early Work on Feminist Science Fiction as a Whole (and on One Feminist Science Fiction Scholar in Particular)." Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler. Ed. Rebecca J. Holden and Nisi Shawl. Seattle, WA: Aqueduct, 2013. 1744. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 1 Feb. 2016.
"Patternmaster." Novels for Students. Ed. Sara Constantakis. Vol. 34. Detroit: Gale, 2010. 258281.
Pfeiffer, John R. "Butler, Octavia Estelle (b. 1947)." Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day. Ed. Richard Bleiler. 2nd ed. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.
Pfeiffer, John R. "The Patternist Series." Magill's Guide To Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature (vol. 3). 1996.
Pfeiffer, John R. "Octavia Butler Writes the Bible." Shaw and other matters: A festschrift for Stanley Weintraub on the occasion of his forty-second anniversary at the Pennsylvania State University. Ed. Susan Rusinko. Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1998. 140–154.

Smith, Frances Foster. "Octavia Butler's Black Female Fiction." Extrapolation, Vol. 23, No. 1, Spring, 1982, pp. 3749.

Patternist Series
Science fiction novel series
Novels by Octavia Butler

Patternist series


KIMA-TV (channel 29) is a television station in Yakima, Washington, United States, affiliated with CBS and The CW Plus. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside low-power, Class A Univision affiliate KUNW-CD (channel 2). Both stations share studios on Terrace Heights Boulevard (east of I-82) in Yakima, while KIMA-TV's transmitter is located on Ahtanum Ridge.

KIMA operates two semi-satellites–KEPR-TV (channel 19) in Pasco (serving the Tri-Cities) and KLEW-TV (channel 3) in Lewiston, Idaho. They simulcast all network and syndicated programming as provided through KIMA, but air separate commercial inserts, legal identifications and early evening newscasts, and have their own websites. Master control and some internal operations for the four stations are based at KOMO Plaza (formerly Fisher Plaza) in Seattle.

On satellite, Dish Network and DirecTV carry both KIMA-TV and KEPR-TV.

History
KIMA signed on July 19, 1953, as the 200th television station in the United States and the first in central Washington. The station was originally owned by Cascade Broadcasting Company along with KIMA radio (AM 1460, now KUTI). It carried programming from all four networks–CBS, NBC, ABC and DuMont–but has always been a primary CBS affiliate.

It lost DuMont when that network shut down in 1955, then lost ABC when KNDO signed on in 1959 as a primary ABC affiliate. When KNDO switched affiliations to NBC in 1965, the two stations shared ABC until 1970, when KAPP signed on and took over ABC, leaving KIMA to become a full-time CBS affiliate.

Just before KIMA signed on, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) collapsed all of central Washington–including the Tri-Cities–into one giant television market. It soon became apparent that channel 29 was not nearly strong enough to cover this vast and mountainous area by itself. With this in mind, in 1954 Cascade signed on KEPR-TV as the first satellite station in the United States. It was originally intended to be a full repeater of KIMA-TV, but due to popular demand it became more of a local station.

At one point, KIMA also had a satellite station in Ephrata, Washington. KBAS-TV signed on the air February 15, 1957, on channel 43; it moved to channel 16 in 1958. KBAS was owned by Basin TV Company, a subsidiary of Cascade Broadcasting, and this was reflected in its call letters. KBAS shut down on November 30, 1961.

Filmways agreed to purchase Cascade Broadcasting for $3 million in 1968; the sale was approved the following year. Cascade's previous owners retained the company's radio stations, which by this point also included the construction permit for KIMA-FM (107.3 FM, now KFFM), under the name Yakima Valley Communications. Filmways sold KIMA-TV, KEPR-TV, and KLEW-TV to NWG Broadcasting for $1 million in 1972. Retlaw Enterprises acquired the NWG stations for $17 million in 1986; the stations were operated as part of the Retlaw Broadcasting division.  Fisher Communications purchased the Retlaw owned stations in 1999.

On March 29, 2009, KIMA launched a digital subchannel affiliated with The CW to fill the void left by KCWK (channel 9) going dark at the end of May 2008 due to the Pappas Telecasting bankruptcy. The new channel took KCWK's former Channel 9 position on local cable systems and carries the CW Plus schedule.

On April 11, 2013, Fisher announced that it would sell its properties, including KIMA-TV, to the Sinclair Broadcast Group. The deal was completed on August 8, 2013.

News operation
KIMA offers the only local Yakima-focused newscast with a fully operational newsroom in Yakima weekdays on KIMA Action News at 5 and 6 p.m. KIMA's morning, 10 p.m. (on CW), 11 p.m. and weekend newscasts are shared with KEPR. There are no noon newscasts unlike most CBS affiliates. Branded as KIMA/KEPR Action News, they cover both the Yakima Valley and the Columbia Basin. Weather segments for KIMA's evening newscasts are pre-taped at KEPR.

Notable current on-air staff
 John Kennedy O'Connor – anchor

Technical information

Subchannels
The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Translator
 Ellensburg

See also
Channel 9 branded TV stations in the United States
Channel 29 virtual TV stations in the United States
Channel 33 digital TV stations in the United States

References

External links

Yakima/Tri-Cities CW 9

CBS network affiliates
TBD (TV network) affiliates
Television channels and stations established in 1953
1953 establishments in Washington (state)
IMA-TV
Mass media in Yakima, Washington
Sinclair Broadcast Group

KIMA-TV


Natmasses (singular natmas) were spirits worshipped in the ancient culture of the island of Aneityum, Vanuatu.
 "Natmas, the name given to every deity, signifies literally a dead man, and they all dwelt in Uma-atmas, the Land of the Dead. Theirs was the Worship of their Ancestors."
Natmasses were represented mainly in the form of stones:
 "Stones were the chief fetishes, or representatives of the natmasses, these were all sizes from that of a pebble to blocks of some tons weight. About a mile inland from our station are two blocks, each as large as the roof of a small cottage; both of them were recognized as natmasses. The one, the large one, was called the sun, and the other the moon. The sides of the larger rock are marked with some rude, sculptured figures of fishes and birds, and as one of the best fishing grounds could be seen from these rocks, certain incantations performed on these were believed to affect the success or non-success of the fishing. Every family had a basket containing a collection of natmasses of their own, a sort of penates or household gods, which they worshipped as a family." "On Aneityum the idols were all . . . of uncarved, unhewn stones. The only exception to this which we ever found was in the case of Tuatau, a natmas which I found at Anauunse and took home with me. Tuatau was of wood, a piece of a breadfruit tree."

 "I may here give a brief account of one of our natmasses, which may be accepted as a typical case. His name was Rangitafu; he belonged to Nohmunjap, a district to the west of our Mission station. Rangitafu was a block of whinstone, about five feet long, a foot and a half broad, and a foot thick. He was a sea-god, and presided over shipwrecks."

The word was therefore used to refer to gods, spirits of their forebears, or their forefathers themselves:
 "On Aneityum, there is a large system of irrigation, but of ancient date; . . . If you ask the natives who made these old canals for irrigation, they tell you they do not know; they suppose that they were made by the natmasses, that is, the gods, or, in other words, the spirits of their forebears, which, of course, means their forefathers themselves."

References

Vanuatu deities

Natmasses


John C. Browne (born July 29, 1942) is an American physicist.

Biography
He was born in Pottstown, Pennsylvania as the fifth child of Charles I. and Mary Agnes (Titzer) Browne. He received a B.S. in physics from Drexel University (1965). He received a Ph.D. in physics from Duke University (1969). His thesis was titled "Fine Structure of Analog States in 61,63,65-Cu".

After teaching at Duke University (1969–70), he joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, where he did research in basic and applied nuclear physics at a 100-MeV electron linac, including studies in nuclear fission and nuclear astrophysics.

He joined Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1979 as head of Group P-3, the neutron physics group in the LANL physics division, helping to start a new research effort in weak interaction physics. He became physics division leader in 1981, succeeding George A. Keyworth, who became President Ronald Reagan's science advisor. In 1984, he was appointed associate director for experimental physics by lab director Donald Kerr. When Siegfried Hecker became lab director in 1986, he appointed Browne to a series of posts. In 1986, Browne became associate director for research with responsibility for programs and divisions associated with the research funded by the DOE Office of Energy Research. He then served as associate director for defense research and applications (1986–91) where he was responsible for programs funded by the Department of Defense and the Intelligence community. In 1991, he became associate director for computational and information sciences. In 1993, he took over responsibilities for the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility, changing its name to the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE), reflecting its mission change to neutron science for materials science and for fundamental and defense-related neutron studies.

In 1997, he was appointed by the University of California to be the director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. During his tenure, he strengthened the science-based stockpile stewardship program, created in the mid 1990s by Victor H. Reis of the DOE, which emphasizes computational study of nuclear weapons in the absence of nuclear testing. During Browne's tenure, the Wen Ho Lee spy investigation by the FBI erupted onto the national scene, particularly after release of the Cox Report by the US House of Representatives in 1999.  Having started in the early 1990s, the controversy eventually culminated in Lee's release from prison.

Also during Browne's tenure, the laboratory experienced growth in nuclear weapons research, counter terrorism, and intelligence research programs, including two new buildings (Non-Proliferation and International Security Center and Nicholas Metropolis Supercomputing Center). He was also instrumental in creating support for the non-profit Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation, founded in 1997 to enhance the vitality of northern New Mexico through investing in education, learning, and community development. In January 2003, Browne resigned as laboratory director  during a controversy surrounding thefts of government property by several employees and accusations regarding the adequacy of administrative controls. The controversy prompted Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham to say: "... taken together, these problems have called into question the University of California's ability to run the Los Alamos National Laboratory." The University quickly installed Pete Nanos as succeeding director.

Browne is retired from Los Alamos and serves on a number of non-profit boards. He was appointed a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1987 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2000.

References

External links

 Oral history interview transcript for John C. Browne on 22 May 2020, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives

1942 births
Living people
21st-century American physicists
American nuclear physicists
Duke University alumni
Duke University faculty
Drexel University alumni
Fellows of the American Physical Society
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel

John C. Browne


The Stokes operator, named after George Gabriel Stokes, is an unbounded linear operator used in the theory of partial differential equations, specifically in the fields of fluid dynamics and electromagnetics.

Definition

If we define  as the Leray projection onto divergence free vector fields, then the Stokes Operator  is defined by

where  is the Laplacian.  Since  is unbounded, we must also give its domain of definition, which is defined as , where .  Here,  is a bounded open set in  (usually n = 2 or 3),  and  are the standard Sobolev spaces, and the divergence of  is taken in the distribution sense.

Properties

For a given domain  which is open, bounded, and has  boundary, the Stokes operator  is a self-adjoint positive-definite operator with respect to the  inner product.  It has an orthonormal basis of eigenfunctions  corresponding to eigenvalues  which satisfy

and  as .  Note that the smallest eigenvalue is unique and non-zero.  These properties allow one to define powers of the Stokes operator.  Let  be a real number.  We define  by its action on :

where  and  is the  inner product.

The inverse  of the Stokes operator is a bounded, compact, self-adjoint operator in the space , where  is the trace operator.  Furthermore,  is injective.

References

Constantin, Peter and Foias, Ciprian. Navier-Stokes Equations, University of Chicago Press, (1988)

Linear algebra
Differential equations

Stokes operator


The Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Lift Bridge is a railroad bridge with vertical-lift span in the U.S. state of Delaware.  It carries a Delmarva Central Railroad rail line across the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal.

This bridge was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as part of a canal expansion project and opened in 1966. The Canal Lift Bridge, the only drawbridge on the C & D Canal (other lift bridges, carrying vehicular traffic, had since been replaced with high-level crossings) was owned and operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad, Penn Central, and Conrail before Norfolk Southern acquired ownership of it in 1998 and the Delmarva Central Railroad took over in 2016.  The bridge is used primarily by Delmarva Central Railroad on its Delmarva Subdivision, which has a junction with Norfolk Southern north of the bridge in Porter.  Norfolk Southern trains use the bridge via trackage rights to interchange with the Delmarva Central Railroad in Clayton. It has also been used by Amtrak for special events held throughout the year including NASCAR races at Dover International Speedway and the Delaware State Fair, with the trains departing from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia and using Amtrak's Northeast Corridor to the Bell Junction near Edgemoor, then departing a short distance later on the Shellpot Branch and later the Delmarva Branch.

The bridge carries a single track across the canal and is kept open to allow the free flow of shipping traffic underneath.  If a freight train plans on crossing the canal in either direction, the engineer must contact the bridge operator at least 30 minutes before crossing, as to allow the bridge to be lowered.  Most canal crossings occur at night when most of the shipping traffic (along with Amtrak and SEPTA train traffic farther north) is at a minimum.  The northern approach to the Canal Lift Bridge bisects an abandoned section of the C & D Canal, which was bypassed in the 1960s with the current sea-level channel.

On March 18, 2020, it was announced that the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Lift Bridge would be refurbished as part of an $18.8 million federal grant to the Delmarva Central Railroad.

See also

 List of crossings of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal

References

Vertical lift bridges in the United States
Bridges completed in 1966
Chesapeake & Delaware Canal
Bridges in New Castle County, Delaware
Railroad bridges in Delaware
Towers in Delaware

Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Lift Bridge