Investment is traditionally defined as the "commitment of resources to achieve later benefits". If an investment involves money, then it can be defined as a "commitment of money to receive more money later". From a broader viewpoint, an investment can be defined as "to tailor the pattern of expenditure and receipt of resources to optimise the desirable patterns of these flows". When expenditure and receipts are defined in terms of money, then the net monetary receipt in a time period is termed as cash flow, while money received in a series of several time periods is termed as cash flow stream.

In finance, the purpose of investing is to generate a return from the invested asset. The return may consist of a gain (profit) or a loss realized from the sale of a property or an investment, unrealized capital appreciation (or depreciation), or investment income such as dividends, interest, or rental income, or a combination of capital gain and income. The return may also include currency gains or losses due to changes in the foreign currency exchange rates.

Investors generally expect higher returns from riskier investments. When a low-risk investment is made, the return is also generally low. Similarly, high risk comes with a chance of high losses.

Investors, particularly novices, are often advised to diversify their portfolio. Diversification has the statistical effect of reducing overall risk.

Investment and risk
An investor may bear a risk of loss of some or all of their capital invested. Investment differs from arbitrage, in which profit is generated without investing capital or bearing risk.

Savings bear the (normally remote) risk that the financial provider may default.

Foreign currency savings also bear foreign exchange risk: if the currency of a savings account differs from the account holder's home currency, then there is the risk that the exchange rate between the two currencies will move unfavourably so that the value of the savings account decreases, measured in the account holder's home currency.

Even investing in tangible assets like property has its risk. And similar to most risks, property buyers can seek to mitigate any potential risk by taking out mortgage and by borrowing at a lower loan to security ratio.

In contrast with savings, investments tend to carry more risk, in the form of both a wider variety of risk factors and a greater level of uncertainty.

Industry to industry volatility is more or less of a risk depending. In biotechnology, for example, investors look for big profits on companies that have small market capitalizations but can be worth hundreds of millions quite quickly. The risk is high because approximately 90% of biotechnology products researched do not make it to market due to regulations and the complex demands within pharmacology as the average prescription drug takes 10 years and US$2.5 billion worth of capital.

History

In the medieval Islamic world, the qirad was a major financial instrument. This was an arrangement between one or more investors and an agent where the investors entrusted capital to an agent who then traded with it in hopes of making a profit.  Both parties then received a previously settled portion of the profit, though the agent was not liable for any losses. Many will notice that the qirad is similar to the institution of the commenda later used in western Europe, though whether the qirad transformed into the commenda or the two institutions evolved independently cannot be stated with certainty.

In the early 1900s, purchasers of stocks, bonds, and other securities were described in media, academia, and commerce as speculators. Since the Wall Street crash of 1929, and particularly by the 1950s, the term investment had come to denote the more conservative end of the securities spectrum, while speculation was applied by financial brokers and their advertising agencies to higher risk securities much in vogue at that time. Since the last half of the 20th century, the terms speculation and speculator have specifically referred to higher risk ventures.

Investment strategies

Value investing

A value investor buys assets that they believe to be undervalued (and sells overvalued ones). To identify undervalued securities, a value investor uses analysis of the financial reports of the issuer to evaluate the security. Value investors employ accounting ratios, such as earnings per share and sales growth, to identify securities trading at prices below their worth.

Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham are notable examples of value investors. Graham and Dodd's seminal work, Security Analysis, was written in the wake of the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

The price to earnings ratio (P/E), or earnings multiple, is a particularly significant and recognized fundamental ratio, with a function of dividing the share price of the stock, by its earnings per share. This will provide the value representing the sum investors are prepared to expend for each dollar of company earnings. This ratio is an important aspect, due to its capacity as measurement for the comparison of valuations of various companies. A stock with a lower P/E ratio will cost less per share than one with a higher P/E, taking into account the same level of financial performance; therefore, it essentially means a low P/E is the preferred option.

An instance in which the price to earnings ratio has a lesser significance is when companies in different industries are compared. For example, although it is reasonable for a telecommunications stock to show a P/E in the low teens, in the case of hi-tech stock, a P/E in the 40s range is not unusual. When making comparisons, the P/E ratio can give you a refined view of a particular stock valuation.

For investors paying for each dollar of a company's earnings, the P/E ratio is a significant indicator, but the price-to-book ratio (P/B) is also a reliable indication of how much investors are willing to spend on each dollar of company assets. In the process of the P/B ratio, the share price of a stock is divided by its net assets; any intangibles, such as goodwill, are not taken into account. It is a crucial factor of the price-to-book ratio, due to it indicating the actual payment for tangible assets and not the more difficult valuation of intangibles. Accordingly, the P/B could be considered a comparatively conservative metric.

Growth investing
Growth investors seek investments they believe are likely to have higher earnings or greater value in the future. To identify such stocks, growth investors often evaluate measures of current stock value as well as predictions of future financial performance. Growth investors seek profits through capital appreciation – the gains earned when a stock is sold at a higher price than what it was purchased for. The price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple is also used for this type of investment; growth stock are likely to have a P/E higher than others in its industry. According to Investopedia author Troy Segal and U.S. Department of State Fulbright fintech research awardee Julius Mansa, growth investing is best suited for investors who prefer relatively shorter investment horizons, higher risks, and are not seeking immediate cash flow through dividends.

Some investors attribute the introduction of the growth investing strategy to investment banker Thomas Rowe Price Jr., who tested and popularized the method in 1950 by introducing his mutual fund, the T. Rowe Price Growth Stock Fund. Price asserted that investors could reap high returns by "investing in companies that are well-managed in fertile fields."

A new form of investing that seems to have caught the attention of investors is Venture Capital. Venture Capital is independently managed dedicated pools of capital that focus on equity or equity-linked investments in privately held, high growth companies.

Momentum investing
Momentum investors generally seek to buy stocks that are currently experiencing a short-term uptrend, and they usually sell them once this momentum starts to decrease. Stocks or securities purchased for momentum investing are often characterized by demonstrating consistently high returns for the past three to twelve months. However, in a bear market, momentum investing also involves short-selling securities of stocks that are experiencing a downward trend, because it is believed that these stocks will continue to decrease in value. Essentially, momentum investing generally relies on the principle that a consistently up-trending stock will continue to grow, while a consistently down-trending stock will continue to fall.

Economists and financial analysts have not reached a consensus on the effectiveness of using the momentum investing strategy. Rather than evaluating a company's operational performance, momentum investors instead utilize trend lines, moving averages, and the Average Directional Index (ADX) to determine the existence and strength of trends.

Dollar cost averaging

Dollar cost averaging (DCA), also known in the UK as pound-cost averaging, is the process of consistently investing a certain amount of money across regular increments of time, and the method can be used in conjunction with value investing, growth investing, momentum investing, or other strategies. For example, an investor who practices dollar-cost averaging could choose to invest $200 a month for the next 3 years, regardless of the share price of their preferred stock(s), mutual funds, or exchange-traded funds.

Many investors believe that dollar-cost averaging helps minimize short-term volatility by spreading risk out across time intervals and avoiding market timing. Research also shows that DCA can help reduce the total average cost per share in an investment because the method enables the purchase of more shares when their price is lower, and less shares when the price is higher. However, dollar-cost averaging is also generally characterized by more brokerage fees, which could decrease an investor's overall returns.

The term "dollar-cost averaging" is believed to have first been coined in 1949 by economist and author Benjamin Graham in his book, The Intelligent Investor. Graham asserted that investors that use DCA are "likely to end up with a satisfactory overall price for all [their] holdings."

Micro-Investing
Micro-investing is a type of investment strategy that is designed to make investing regular, accessible and affordable, especially for those who may not have a lot of money to invest or who are new to investing.

Intermediaries and collective investments
Investments are often made indirectly through intermediary financial institutions. These intermediaries include pension funds, banks, and insurance companies. They may pool money received from a number of individual end investors into funds such as investment trusts, unit trusts, and SICAVs to make large-scale investments. Each individual investor holds an indirect or direct claim on the assets purchased, subject to charges levied by the intermediary, which may be large and varied.

Approaches to investment sometimes referred to in marketing of collective investments include dollar cost averaging and market timing.

Investment valuation

Free cash flow measures the cash a company generates which is available to its debt and equity investors, after allowing for reinvestment in working capital and capital expenditure. High and rising free cash flow, therefore, tend to make a company more attractive to investors.

The debt-to-equity ratio is an indicator of capital structure. A high proportion of debt, reflected in a high debt-to-equity ratio, tends to make a company's earnings, free cash flow, and ultimately the returns to its investors, riskier or volatile. Investors compare a company's debt-to-equity ratio with those of other companies in the same industry, and examine trends in debt-to-equity ratios and free cashflow.

See also

Capital accumulation
Capital gains tax
Climate-related asset stranding
Diversification (finance)
Divestment
EBITDA
Foreign direct investment
Fundamental analysis
Legal Alpha
List of countries by gross fixed investment as percentage of GDP
List of economics topics
Market sentiment
Mortgage investment corporation
Rate of return
Socially responsible investing
Specialized investment fund
Time value of money
Time-weighted return

References

External links

Investment


A coefficient of utilization (CU) is a measure of the efficiency of a luminaire in transferring luminous energy to the working plane in a particular area. The CU is the ratio of luminous flux from a luminaire incident upon a work plane to that emitted by the lamps within the luminaire.  As a ratio, the coefficient of utilization is unitless.

For example, some of the light emitted by a luminaire may exit away from the desired plane and is therefore wasted. A CU measures the light actually reaching the desired plane as a percentage of the total light produced by the fixture. The value for direct lighting varies from 0.2 to 0.5 while that of indirect lighting varies from 0.1 to 0.3

See also
Luminous efficacy
Wall-plug efficiency

Photometry
Lighting

Coefficient of utilization


A dodecahedron is a polyhedron (a three-dimensional shape) that has 12 faces. Each face is a pentagon (a polygon with five edges). It has 20 corners (also called vertices) and 30 edges altogether.

A regular dodecahedron, which looks exactly the same from all faces, is a Platonic solid. The dual of a dodecahedron is an icosahedron.

Surface area and volume

If a is the length of one of its edges, the surface area and volume of a regular dodecahedron are:

Platonic solids

Dodecahedron


Richard McKeon (; April 26, 1900 – March 31, 1985) was an American philosopher and longtime professor at the University of Chicago. His ideas formed the basis for the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Life, times, and influences
McKeon obtained his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1920, graduating at the early age of 20 despite serving briefly in the U.S. Navy during the First World War. Continuing at Columbia, he completed a Master's thesis on Leo Tolstoy, Benedetto Croce, and George Santayana, also in 1920, and a doctoral thesis on Baruch Spinoza in 1922. In his doctoral studies, McKeon's mentors were Frederick J. E. Woodbridge and John Dewey. From Woodbridge, McKeon would later write, he learned that "what philosophers meant might be comparable or even identical, despite differences in their modes of expression," while Dewey taught him how "to seek the significance of philosophic positions in the problems they were constructed to solve." He then studied philosophy in Paris, where his teachers included Étienne Gilson, until he began teaching at Columbia in 1925.

In 1934, McKeon was appointed visiting professor of History at the University of Chicago, beginning a 40-year association with that university. The following year, he assumed a permanent position as professor of Greek philosophy, a post he filled for twelve years. As professor and, also starting in 1935, as Dean of the Humanities, McKeon was instrumental in developing the distinguished general education program of the Hutchins era at the University of Chicago. He later founded Chicago's interdisciplinary Committee on the Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods. He presided over the Western division of the American Philosophical Association in 1952, and over the International Institute of Philosophy from 1953 to 1957. In 1966, he gave the Paul Carus Lectures. He retired in 1974.

McKeon was a central intellectual figure in United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) early years. He advised UNESCO when (1946–48) it studied the foundations of human rights and of the idea of democracy. These studies supplied much of the material for the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. In 1954, under the auspices of UNESCO and the Indian Philosophical Congress, he conducted a series of eighteen roundtable discussions at Indian universities on human relations and international obligations.

McKeon was a pioneer American scholar of medieval philosophy and the history of science. He was also a prominent figure in the revival of rhetoric as an intellectual art, exploring the often problematic relation between philosophy and rhetoric. He taught Aristotle throughout his career, insisted that his was a Greek Aristotle, not one seen through the eyes of later philosophers writing in Latin. McKeon's interests later shifted from the doctrines of individuals to the dialectic of systems. He investigated pluralism, cultural diversity, and problems of communication and community, at a time when such subjects were less than fashionable.

McKeon was a founding member of "The Chicago School" of literary criticism because of his influence on several of its prominent members (e.g., Wayne Booth). Notwithstanding, McKeon distanced himself from "The Chicago School," which was mainly concerned with Neo-Aristotelian poetic theory. As a pluralist, he wished to disassociate himself from any attempt to propagandize any particular ideology, philosophy, or theorist.

A series of three volumes of "Selected Writings" from his widely scattered articles is planned by The University of Chicago Press, of which Vol. 1 ("Philosophy, Science and Culture," 1998) and Vol. 2 ("Culture, Education and the Arts," 2005) have appeared.  A collection of essays about McKeon, his pluralist philosophy, and its applications, "Pluralism in Theory and Practice:  Richard McKeon and American Philosophy" (Eugene Garver and Richard Buchanan, eds.), was written and published by his students and colleagues in 2000.

Critique of Modern Philosophy
McKeon holds that the renaissance revolt against scholasticism involved Aristotle in an "associated discredit", and few outstanding modern philosophers took the pains to examine the grounds of the criticism or to re-examine the philosophy of Aristotle.  He credits Leibniz and Hegel as exceptions. In 1941 he notes that "Aristotle has become a force again in contemporary discussions", and that his writings have "disclosed greater applicability in present day philosophic problems than they have in centuries".

Legacy

Former students of McKeon have praised him and proved influential in their own right, including novelist Robert Coover, authors Susan Sontag and Paul Goodman, theologian John Cobb, philosophers Richard Rorty and Eugene Gendlin, classicist and philosopher Kenneth A. Telford, sociologist and social theorist Donald N. Levine, anthropologist Paul Rabinow, literary theorist Wayne Booth, and poets Tom Mandel and Arnold Klein. He was also father to the literary critic Michael McKeon. Richard McKeon and the Committee on the Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods appear under thin disguise in Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Philosophy and pluralism

McKeon published 158 articles over the span of seven decades. The evidence of his pluralist influence is not evident in one particular doctrine or system, but rather in a plurality of all his articles. The scope of his work extends to virtually all philosophies and to the whole cultural history of the Western world while being ordered by semantic schema.

Early in his academic career, McKeon recognized that truth has no single expression. His understanding of philosophical and historical semantics led him to value philosophies quite different from his own. He viewed the aim of pluralism as not achieving a monolithic identity but rather a diversity of opinion along with mutual tolerance. He characterized his philosophy as a philosophy of culture, but it is also humanistic, a philosophy of communications and the arts, and a philosophical rhetoric.

The value of a philosophic position is determined by demonstrating its value as an explanation or as an instrument of discovery. The pragmatism of Richard Rorty owes much to McKeon, his teacher. McKeon's operational method is a method of debate which allows one to refine their positions, and in turn, determining what limits their perception of an opponent's argument. Opposition provides a necessary perspective. Notwithstanding, it does not necessarily acquire characteristics from the perspectives with which it is opposed; his philosophy, by nature, resists being pinned down by a single name. It is not meant to affirm the value or credibility of any and all philosophies. Essentially, pluralism is closely related to objectivity; a desired outcome of communication and discussion and a fundamental goal and principle of being human.

Human beings come together around common issues and/or problems and their different interests and perspectives are often an obstacle to collective action. McKeon's pluralism insists that we understand what a person means by what they say. He believes that proper discussion can lead to agreement, courses of action, and in some cases to mutual understanding, if not, an eventual agreement on issues of ideology or philosophic belief. The work of Jürgen Habermas has close affinities to that of McKeon. Conflicting concepts, interests, and assumptions which concern society form an ecology of culture. Discussion forms an object, which is the transformation of the subject into a product that is held in common as the outcome. McKeon's philosophy is similar to rhetoric as conceived by Aristotle, whereby it has the power to be employed in any given situation as the available means of persuasion.

The pluralism of perspectives is an essential component to our existence. Nonetheless, the effort to form our individual perspectives through thought and action brings us into touch with being human and being with other individuals. For McKeon, an understanding of pluralism gives us access to whatever may be grasped of being itself.

The New Rhetoric

In the later stages of McKeon's academic career, he started giving more attention to world problems (see UNESCO). He sought to improve individual disciplines as he felt that they were meant to improve mankind. Refurbishing rhetoric was necessary, he argued, because outlining the needs for, antecedents of, tasks imposed upon, and general character and affiliations of rhetoric would both solve problems and communicate solutions for people everywhere.

As our age produces new data and experiences, we require a new, expanded rhetoric which takes into account technology. The modern world has progressed quite far but it has not yet found a logos which is able to make sense of techne (technology = techne + logos). The sciences alone cannot hope to be productive without reincorporating rhetoric otherwise they would only be analytic. For McKeon a new rhetoric is the only means of bridging the gap between arts and sciences. Incorporating rhetoric may permit the further development of new fields of arts and sciences. Rhetoric is able to navigate among the various kinds of arts and sciences providing an opportunity to interrelate them and set new ends which makes use of both spheres. The new rhetoric can order all the other arts and sciences resulting in new discoveries. Mckeon deemed a very forceful rhetorical strategy capable of avoiding relativism as with a very forceful rhetorical strategy a solidarity is gained as people are supposedly unified via a forceful rhetoric. Relativism is avoided according to McKeon via the force of a rhetorical strategy rather than via access to a Platonic realm.

McKeon borrows traditional rhetorical terms (see Aristotle and Quintilian) to outline the principles of the new rhetoric (creativity/invention; fact/judgment; sequence/consequence; objectivity/intersubjectivity) and then leads them toward brighter avenues of discovery by enlarging Aristotle's traditional rhetorical categories (epideictic, judicial, deliberative) and reintegrating philosophical dialectic. He believes that the materials for doing this are topoi and schemata. The new rhetoric must be universal, objective, reformulate the structure and program of verbal rhetoric and its subjects, and its applications must be focused on the particular now. For McKeon the now is to be 'mined' to contribute to the future resolution of an important problematic. Here again the impact of McKeon on Richard Rorty is evident. Along with John Dewey, McKeon (as Rorty does) deemed philosophy to be basically a problem-solving endeavor. Basically there are two sorts of solidarity sought by those who employ a rhetorical strategy: the solidarity of those who have a goal and the solidarity of those who have 'values'. In other words, solidarity can be sought by those who have no 'values' but rather a rhetoric or by those who have no goal but rather 'values'.

New data may cause new problems for rhetoric, but it will still continue to produce categories and attempt to find new kinds of topoi which will produce new classifications and create new interdisciplinary fields. Rhetoric helps to figure out how to create these fields, or how to decide which existing fields are appropriate for various data. The new rhetoric will find new kinds of ends, by putting technology in the service of ends in collaboration with other arts rather than allowing technology to lead us to restricted and potentially harmful ends. Whatever 'values' are deemed to lead to the solution of a problem are rhetorically deemed worthy. The problematic is all for McKeon, and rhetoric is supposed to contribute to the solution of the problematic. Clearly rhetoric is unable to come up with a clear plan for a solution, rhetoric being rhetoric. Rather via rhetoric, 'values' are enunciated which are supposed to eventually gain the goal. One who employs rhetoric to gain a goal is basically attempting via brute force to gain an end.

Assuming a goal is gained, a corollary of rhetoric is that those who had the end as an end now abandon the end, eschew the end as a 'value', and now develop new goals and new rhetorics. This is getting way ahead of the game, though, given the track record of rhetoric. Rhetoric has been repeatedly tried down the centuries  and has repeatedly been associated with disaster though this is irrelevant for those attempting a rhetoric, as rhetoric is deemed to achieve goals by brute force by those who practice rhetoric, but rhetoric has also failed to achieve ends. Those who have espoused a rhetoric have achieved valued though precarious positions. The work of Richard McKeon shows that, despite multiple, great failures, even up to the 20th century, rhetoric following Aristotle continued to 'put a spell over people'.

Cultural influence
McKeon was cited extensively in Marshall McLuhan's 1943 doctoral dissertation The Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning of His Time (since published as ).

In Robert Pirsig's 1974 novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he is the "Chairman of the Committee".

Philosopher Marjorie Grene, writing in her "Philosophical Autobiography" about the 1944 termination of her seven-year teaching role at the University of Chicago, stated bluntly (without elaborating) that "McKeon had me fired."

Bibliography
1928: The Philosophy of Spinoza: The Unity of His Thought.
1929: Selections from Medieval Philosophers
Vol. 1 Augustine to Albert the Great
Vol. 2 Roger Bacon to William of Ockham
1941: .
1947: Introduction to Aristotle.
1951: Democracy in a World of Tensions: A Symposium Prepared by UNESCO.
1952: Freedom and History: The Semantics of Philosophical Controversies and Ideological Conflicts.
1954: Thought, Action, and Passion. University of Chicago Press.  Reprinted 1974.
1957: The Freedom to Read: Perspective and Program.
1959: The Edicts of Asoka. With N.A. Nikam.  University of Chicago Press.
1971: Gli studi umanistici nel mondo attuale.
1976: Peter Abailard, Sic et Non: A Critical Edition.
1987: Rhetoric: Essays in Invention and Discovery. Edited with introduction by Mark Backman. Ox Bow Press.
1990. Freedom and History and Other Essays: An Introduction to the Thought of Richard McKeon. Edited by Zahava K. McKeon. University of Chicago Press.
1994. On Knowing—The Natural Sciences.  Edited by David B. Owen and Zahava K. McKeon. University of Chicago Press.
1998. Selected Writings of Richard McKeon, Vol. 1. McKeon, Zahava K., and William G. Swenson, eds. University of Chicago Press.
2005. Selected Writings of Richard McKeon, Vol. 2. McKeon, Zahava K., and William G. Swenson, eds. University of Chicago Press.

See also
 American philosophy
 List of American philosophers

Notes and references

Further reading
 Baranowski, Brad. "The unending conversation: Kenneth Burke and Richard McKeon's aesthetic pragmatism, 1920–1960." Modern Intellectual History 15.1 (2018): 153-184 online.
Garver, Eugene, and Buchanan, Richard, 2000. Pluralism In Theory and Practice. Vanderbilt University Press.
Kimball Plochman, George, 1990. Richard McKeon. University of Chicago Press.
Levine, Donald,  2007. Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Learning. University of Chicago Press.
Obermiller, Tim Andrew, December 1995, "Richard McKeon," The University of Chicago Alumnae Magazine.
 Rosenboim, Or. The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order in Britain and the United States, 1939–1950 (2017) pp 170–210 on "Writing a World Constitution."
 Selinger, William. "The Forgotten Philosopher: A Review Essay on Richard McKeon." Review of Politics 80.1 (2018): 137–150
 Simonson, Peter. "Richard McKeon in the Pragmatist Tradition." in Recovering Overlooked Pragmatists in Communication. (Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2019) pp. 23–51.

External links
Kissel, Adam, 2006, "Richard McKeon ," The University of Chicago. Bibliography of, and excerpts from, McKeon.
"Richard McKeon: Episteme; Philosophic Semantics and Philosophic Inquiry." Information on McKeon.
"richardmckeon.org" Biographical Information, Bibliography, and Selected Publications.
Guide to the Richard Peter McKeon Papers 1918-1985 at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center

1900 births
1985 deaths
People from Hudson County, New Jersey
Columbia College (New York) alumni
Robert M. Pirsig
University of Chicago faculty
American historians of philosophy
Historians of science
Rhetoric theorists
20th-century American philosophers
Metaphysicians
American scholars of ancient Greek philosophy
Scholars of medieval philosophy
20th-century American historians
Presidents of the Metaphysical Society of America
American male non-fiction writers
Aristotelian philosophers
Historians from New Jersey
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni

Richard McKeon


Armida is an opera in three acts by Josef Mysliveček set to a libretto by Giovanni Ambrogio Migliavacca based on an earlier libretto by Philippe Quinault. It is one of many operas set at the time of the Crusades that is based on characters and incidents from Torquato Tasso's epic poem La Gerusalemme liberata. This opera (and all the rest of Mysliveček's operas) belong to the serious type in Italian language referred to as opera seria.  It incorporates many elements from the operatic "reform" movement of the 1770s, including short vocal numbers and short choruses incorporated into the fabric of the drama and lavish use of accompanied recitative.

Performance history

The opera was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 26 December 1779 to open the theater's operatic carnival season of 1780 as one of the earliest operas ever performed there. It was a spectacular failure that necessitated the substitution of many of the arias for works of Giuseppe Sarti and Francesco Bianchi.  The first performance of the opera since its first run in Milan took place in Lisbon on 22 May 2015 in the form of a semi scenic version sponsored by the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa.

There is no reason to believe that an anonymous production of Armida staged in Lucca in 1778 made use of any of Mysliveček's music, in spite of multiple claims in the musicological literature that it constituted the original version of the Milan opera of 1780.

Connection with Mozart

One of the arias substituted out of the production was "Il caro mio bene" (Act III, scene 1), sung by Mysliveček's friend and professional collaborator Luigi Marchesi in the role of Rinaldo. As musicologist Paolo V. Montanari discovered, this aria (which may or may not be by Mysliveček) was a favourite of Luigi Marchesi, who inserted it in other productions, such as Il trionfo della pace (Turin, 1782) by Francesco Bianchi and Angelica e Medoro (Venice, 1791) by Gaetano Andreozzi, adapting it to the new texts. In Il trionfo della pace the aria was sung with the words "Ridente la pace". Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart must have heard Luigi Marchesi performing the aria with these words, probably in 1785, when Luigi Marchesi was singing Giuseppe Sarti's Giulio Sabino in Vienna, and he transcribed it for voice and piano. Mozart's widow found this manuscript after Mozart's death and had it published as an original work of his husband. In this form, it was catalogued as K. 152 (210a) and became one of Mozart's most frequently-performed concert arias.
The tenor Valentin Adamberger, who would create the role of Belmonte in Mozart's opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail in Vienna in 1782, was also present as a cast member in Mysliveček's Armida in the role of Idraote.

Roles

Vocal set pieces
(taken from the score in the Ajuda Palace in Lisbon,
the only complete score of the opera)

Act I, scene 1 - Aria of Fenicia, "Perche d'affano oppressa"
Act I, scene 2 - Aria of Sidonia, "Vuoi che turbi"
Act I, scene 3 - Aria of Armida, "So che amor lusinga"
Act I, scene 4 - Aria of Idraote, "Molto soffrir condanna"
Act I, scene 6 - Chorus with Fenicia, "L'orme seguiam d'Armida"
Act I, scene 7 - Duet for Armida and Idraote, "Ah, del fellon nel sangue"
Act I, scene 8 - Aria of Rinaldo, "Dal mio core amor"
Act I, scene 8 - Accompanied recitative for Idraote, "Qui si dimori"
Act I, scene 9 - Accompanied recitative for Rinaldo, "Più queste spiaggie"
Act I, scene 9 - Aria of Rinaldo, "Più non vi sento in seno"
Act I, scene 10 - Aria of Artemidoro, "Se amica vuoi la sorte"
Act I, scene 10 - Chorus with naiad and shepherdess, "Nel più felice tempo"
Act I, scene 11 - Accompanied recitative for Armida, "Qual turbame"
Act I, scene 11 - Aria of Armida, "Cedo l'armi il cor"

Act II, scene 1 - Aria of Ubaldo, "Di luce un raggio"
Act II, scene 3 - Aria of Fenicia, "Arta vanta d'ogn'altra maggiore"
Act II, scene 4 - Aria of Rinaldo, "Ah, disponi di mia sorte"
Act II, scene 5 - Accompanied recitative for Armida, "Vieni, odio implacabile"
Act II, scene 5 - Chorus of furies
Act II, scene 6 - Aria of Armida, "Se il mio duolo, se il mio fato"
Act II, scene 7 - Aria of Odio, "Mi chiamerai ma in vano"
Act II, scene 9 - Chorus with Lucinda, "Ecco la calma"
Act II, scene 9 - Cavatina of Lucinda, "Qui senza stento"
Act II, scene 9 - Duet for Lucinda and the Cavalier Danese, "Qual v'a più bel piacer"
Act II, scene 11 - Cavatina of Melissa, "Perche veder deggio"
Act II, scene 11 - Aria of Ubaldo, "Ah, troppo barbara ragion tiranna"
Act II, scene 12 - Duet for Armida and Rinaldo, "È felice la mia sorte"

Act III, scene 1 - Aria for an "Amante fortunata" with chorus, "Il piacer tranquillo"
Act III, scene 1 - Aria of Rinaldo, "Il caro mio bene"
Act III, scene 2 - Aria of the Cavalier Danese, "Vieni ormai"
Act III, scene 3 - Aria of Armida, "Idol mio, serena i rai e consola il tuo dolor"
Act III, scene 4 - Accompanied recitative for Armida, "Il traditor Rinaldo"

References

Freeman, Daniel E. Josef Mysliveček, "Il Boemo." Sterling Heights, Mich.: Harmonie Park Press, 2009.

Italian-language operas
Operas by Josef Mysliveček
1780 operas
Opera seria
Operas
Operas based on works by Torquato Tasso
Opera world premieres at La Scala
Operas set in the Levant

Armida (Mysliveček)


Caterina Cittadini (28 September 1801 - 5 May 1857) was an Italian Roman Catholic religious from Bergamo who established the Ursuline Sisters of Saint Jerome Emiliani. The order was dedicated to the education of girls in Bergamo and in the surrounding areas and has since expanded outside of the Italian nation. Cittadini was orphaned as a child and cultivated her faith among fellow children in an orphanage where the spiritual direction was strong. Her order came in part of her devotion to Saint Jerome Emiliani as well as the Blessed Mother.

Cittadini's reputation increased as the decades went on due to her fame as a passionate and inspiring educator who instilled in girls both a civic and a religious education that was the basis of her educational career and her beliefs.

Her beatification was celebrated on 29 April 2001 once Pope John Paul II recognized a healing that was believed to be attributed to Cittadini's direct intercession. Her feast is celebrated on an annual basis on the date of her death.

Life
Caterina Cittadini was born in Bergamo on 28 September 1801 to Giovanni Battista Cittadini and Margherita Lanzani; her sister was Giuditta (1803-1840). She was baptized the following 30 September in the parish of San Alessandro in Colonna. Her mother died in 1808 and her father abandoned the sisters after being widowed.

The sisters were taken in and grew up in the orphanage of Bergamo where both sisters developed a strong and ardent faith; in her case it meant a strong devotion to both the Blessed Mother and to Jerome Emiliani. The sisters left the orphanage in 1823 in order to live with their paternal priest cousins Giovanni and Antonio Cittadini in Calolzio.

Cittadini became a teacher at a public girls school in Somasca in 1824 at the time she and Giuditta felt called to the religious life. Their spiritual director Giuseppe Brena - from their time at the orphanage - advised them to remain in Somasca to instead become the basis of a new religious congregation devoted to the education of girls both children and adolescents. To that end the pair bought in 1826 a house in Somasca and also bought and furnished a building that became a female boarding school in October 1826. Cittadini taught the students religious education and managed the school on a simultaneous level; at this stage word of her success spread and she attracted dozens of students from the surrounding areas. The Cittadini sisters opened two private schools in 1832 and in 1836.

Giuditta directed these schools until her sudden death in 1840 which had put an emotional strain upon her older sister. This was exacerbated with the death of her cousin Antonio in 1841 and her spiritual director not long after that. The rapid losses that she incurred ruined her health to the point where she neared death in 1842 but she believed she was cured through the intercession of Jerome Emiliani.

She quit public teaching in 1845 in order to just manage the schools themselves and she also took three companions under her wing to assist her in both that task and also in the care of orphans. In 1850 she received the papal approval of Pope Pius IX to build a chapel to house the Eucharist at her boarding school and in 1851 applied for the approval of a new religious congregation to the Bishop of Bergamo Carlo Gritti Morlacchi. In 1854 the new Bishop Pietro Luigi Speranza encouraged her work and instructed her to write the Rule of her new order - her first attempt was based on those of the Milanese Ursulines and was rejected. She persisted in writing the Rule once more which was accepted on 17 September 1854 bearing the name of her new congregation.

Cittadini died in 1857 after a period of ill health; her reputation for holiness and for her ardent faith spread across the northern Italian cities and led to calls for her cause of beatification to be introduced.

Post-mortem
Six months after her death - on 14 December 1857 - the Bishop of Bergamo gave his approval for the order to be recognized of diocesan right while on 8 July 1927 the congregation received the official papal approval of Pope Pius XI; this meant the congregation was now universal and was recognized of pontifical right to exercise its functions.

The order now operates in Asia in nations such as India and the Philippines and in Europe in both Belgium and Switzerland amongst others.

Beatification
The process for beatification commenced on 21 April 1967 under Pope Paul VI with the title Servant of God being bestowed upon her. Preparations for the cause commenced at this point and all culminated in the diocesan process in which her life and her works were investigated; this complex process spanned from 5 August 1971 until 14 December 1978. Her writings were placed under investigation in order to ensure her beliefs and her life itself was not in contradiction to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and were approved in 1981.

Historical consultants met to discuss the cause on 19 December 1989 and had to issue their approval to it - which did take effect - in order for the cause to proceed to the so-called "Roman Phase" in Rome; this would see the Congregation for the Causes of Saints launching their own line of investigation into Cittadini's life and virtues. The Positio - documenting both her virtues and life - was submitted to the latter in 1990 while the diocesan process was ratified on 19 September 1991.

On 17 December 1996 she was proclaimed to be Venerable after Pope John Paul II acknowledged the fact that Cittadini had indeed lived a model Christian life of heroic virtue which she exercised to a favorable degree.

The miracle required for her beatification was investigated on a local level and was ratified in 1997. It received papal approval on 20 December 1999 and allowed for the beatification to take place. John Paul II celebrated Cittadini's beatification on 29 April 2001.

References

External links
Hagiography Circle
Saints SQPN

1801 births
1857 deaths
19th-century venerated Christians
19th-century Italian people
19th-century Italian women
19th-century Italian educators
Beatifications by Pope John Paul II
Founders of Catholic religious communities
Founders of educational institutions
Italian beatified people
Italian educators
Italian schoolteachers
Religious leaders from Bergamo
Spiritual teachers
Venerated Catholics by Pope John Paul II
19th-century women educators

Caterina Cittadini


Coca-Cola Consolidated, Inc., headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the largest independent Coca-Cola bottler in the United States.

The company makes, sells and distributes Coca-Cola products along with other beverages, distributing to a market of 65 million people in 14 states. Coca-Cola Consolidated is based in the southeast, midwest, and mid-atlantic portion of the United States. The Company has 13 manufacturing facilities, 80 distribution and warehouses, with corporate offices located in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Corporate history
In 1902, the company that later became Coca-Cola Bottling Company Consolidated was founded by the current chairman's great-grandfather, J. B. Harrison. That company was merged with other bottlers to form Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated in 1973. The company was incorporated in 1980, acquired Wometco in 1985, and acquired Sunbelt Coca-Cola in 1991.

In 2018, the company announced a major expansion into Kentucky.

Discontinuation of Tab
In October 2018, Coca-Cola Bottling Consolidated denied it had discontinued distribution of Tab, though it admitted it had reduced its distribution.

Financials

As of January 1, 2017, The Coca-Cola Company owns approximately 35% of the Company's total outstanding common stock, representing approximately 5% of the total voting power of the Company's combined Common Stock and Class B Common Stock. J. Frank Harrison III, the Chairman of the Board and the Chief Executive Officer of the Company, owns shares of Common Stock and Class B Common Stock representing approximately 86% of the total voting power of the Company's combined stock and Class B Common Stock.

Tax Incentives
In June 2018, Kentucky governor Matt Bevin announced tax incentives of $3.5 million for Consolidated to expand in Erlanger. The incentives were part of a deal for Consolidated expansion in the area.

Worker strife
The company, some of which its locales are unionized by the Teamsters, has seen strike initiatives.

Community involvement
Coca-Cola Consolidated sponsors local events and many community organizations, including the YMCA. Since 2008, Coca-Cola Consolidated has partnered with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to promote sustainable water policies, including water reuse practices, to protect and restore aquatic diversity.  Following the October 2015 North American storm complex Consolidated donated bottled water to flood victims. It also supports public school teachers in Arkansas.

References

External links

Coca-Cola bottlers
Companies based in Charlotte, North Carolina
Companies based in Greensboro, North Carolina
American companies established in 1902
Food and drink companies established in 1902
Companies listed on the Nasdaq
Drink companies of the United States

Coca-Cola Consolidated


The Delaware Plan is a proposed system to reorganize the state presidential primary elections amongst the 50 states and the several territories of the United States.  In brief, the Plan divides the states and territories into four groups, and has the territories and smallest states voting first and the largest states voting last.

The plan
The Delaware Plan is an attempt to provide states with meaningful input into the electoral process.  The states and territories are divided into four groups, by population.  The smallest 12 states and all the territories by population would be the first group, or "pod".  The smallest thirteen of the remaining states would be the second group, the next thirteen the third group, and the largest twelve states would form the final group.

The first group, consisting of the smallest states, would vote on one day in March.  Though small, they would clearly play a major role in providing momentum to successful candidates.  And, as small states, a candidate with limited resources might well find it easier to run the type of door-to-door campaign traditionally run in New Hampshire.  However, unlike the current system, it would be difficult for a campaign without large resources to run in all states, as these small states are as widely spread (from Delaware to Alaska) as any in the nation.

The second and third groups would vote on a single day in April and May, respectively.  The meaningfulness of their role in the process is secured by the fact that no candidate will be able to achieve a majority of delegates even by the end of the third group's vote in May.  Every delegate won will be attached to a candidate that is guaranteed to still be "in the running".

The fourth group, that of the largest states, vote on a single day in June.  These twelve states, though needing to wait to vote last, will nonetheless determine the winner, as between them they control more than 50% of the delegates to the national conventions.  (Thus, even a last minute entry into the campaign could theoretically win the nomination even if they only ran at the end.)  By voting together as a bloc, none of the large states is rendered irrelevant (as was the case for California from 1976 to 2000, after which California moved its voting up to an earlier date).

Origins
Since 1952, New Hampshire has held the first state primary election in the presidential process, and since 1972, Iowa has held the first caucuses in the presidential nominating process.  Other states followed in nearly random order, as determined by the individual state legislatures.  Originally, the New Hampshire primary was held in mid-March of the election year, and the Iowa caucuses a week or two earlier.  The final primary elections would typically be held the first or second Tuesday in June, completing the initial stage of the election process about five weeks before the first presidential nominating convention.

For decades, this was considered a desirable system.  Having two small states "lead off" the campaign made it easier for candidates—particularly those with limited resources—to get their campaigns started.  It was common for candidates to spend many months in New Hampshire in the year prior to the primary, in the hopes of building momentum by winning the first primary.

But many states, particularly larger states, began to desire to play a bigger role in the nominating process, and states began to move their primaries earlier and earlier.  By the time of the 2000 campaign, despite the wide open field involving many serious candidates, George W. Bush had secured the nomination by mid-March, many months before the convention.  Worse yet, in the eyes of many observers, many voters in large states which would not vote until April (or later) would have no say in the nominating process.

Opposition and criticism

Boomerang effect

The plan was originally proposed by the Republican National Committee in the spring of 2000, to take effect in the 2004 campaign.  However, it was voted down by the general convention that summer.  There was some opposition from Iowa delegates, as Iowa would not have been in the first group.  More significantly, Republican leaders worried that, if they acted unilaterally, that they would be handing a huge advantage to the Democrats.  If the Republicans did indeed use this plan, it would be almost impossible to know who the GOP nominee would be until early or mid-June.  But if the Democrats maintained their primary schedule unchanged, then the identity of the Democratic nominee might well be clear in March.  This, said some Republican strategists, would provide the Democrats with a three-month "head start" on the general election.

Conservative bias

Also, there is criticism that the Delaware Plan may be biased against more liberal candidates from either party.  Although the first round of the primaries is pretty evenly split between Blue States and Red States, the second round has 2 Blue States to 10 Red, and the third round has 4 Blue States to 9 Red.  This could bias both parties toward more conservative candidates within their ranks.  For this reason, the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee rejected the plan in 2000.

Other alternatives

Others do not so much oppose the Delaware Plan as support other alternatives to the status quo.  For example, many favor a system of regional primaries or a lottery system that allows a mix of large and small population states while preserving the possibility of retail politicking in the early phases of the campaign.

See also
 United States presidential primary
 United States presidential election
 United States presidential election debates
 American presidential debate
 United States presidential nominating convention
 United States Electoral College
Early Votes
 Ames (Iowa) Straw Poll on a Saturday in August prior to the election year, since 1979
 Iowa caucus first official election year event since 1972
 New Hampshire primary first national primary stop since 1952
Reform Plans
 United States presidential primary reform proposals
 Graduated Random Presidential Primary System
 Rotating Regional Primary System
 Interregional Primary Plan
 National Primary

References

External links
 FairVote.org
 USA Today
 University of Virginia Center for Politics

United States presidential primaries
Electoral reform in the United States

Delaware Plan


Paul Chato  is a Canadian comedian and writer, the president of a web design company, and a former television executive. He was born in 1954 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Hungarian parents. Chato grew up in the first planned community in North America, Don Mills. Graduating from Don Mills Collegiate in 1973, he went on to graduate from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Radio Television Arts.

From Ryerson, he went on to become an art director with Kelly's Stereo Mart and from there joined Rick Green to form Green and Chato, a two-man comedy team. In 1979, Green and Chato joined up with Dan Redican and Peter Wildman to form the comedy group The Frantics.

From 1989 to 1991, Chato was head of television comedy at CBC Television.

Apart from his continued association with The Frantics, Chato is the president of Your Web Department (formerly Electramedia), an international web development company.

Chato posts an IT-related comedy tech vlog on YouTube and Odysee under the name Call Me Chato.

External links

 Biography entry from The Official Frantics Web Site
 Paul Chato on Odysee
Paul Chato on YouTube
 Paul Chato website

Notes

1954 births
Living people
Canadian television personalities
Businesspeople from Toronto
Toronto Metropolitan University alumni
Canadian people of Hungarian-Jewish descent
Canadian sketch comedians
Canadian YouTubers
Comedians from Toronto
Canadian male comedians
Canadian Comedy Award winners
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation people
Canadian radio writers
Comedy YouTubers
Commentary YouTubers
Writers from Toronto
YouTube critics and reviewers

Paul Chato


Simon de Cramaud  (c. 1345 – 19 January 1423, in Poitiers) was a Catholic bishop, titular Latin Patriarch of Alexandria, and cardinal during the Great Western Schism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Simon was born before 1360 near Rochechouart, Haute-Vienne, a younger son in a family of minor nobles. He studied law at Orléans and became a well-known canonist.  Simon taught canon law at the University of Paris, attracting the attention of John, Duke of Berry, one of the uncles of King Charles VI of France.  As a counselor of the duke, Simon performed both administrative and diplomatic tasks. In 1382, he was appointed Bishop of Agen, but was transferred to Béziers in 1383, and finally to Poitiers in 1385.  He was also appointed to Sens in 1390, but never occupied the see – instead he became the titular Latin Patriarch of Alexandria and Administrator of the Diocese of Avignon the following year. In 1409, he was made Archbishop of Reims and subsequently a cardinal in 1413. From then until his death, he served as the administrator of the Diocese of Poitiers.

Cramaud was a prominent figure in the struggles of the fourteenth-century church, and a partisan of the Avignon Papacy.  He championed Avignon Pope Clement VII, but fought Clement's successor, Benedict XIII, any way he could. He presided at the Council of Pisa in 1409, and proclaimed the deposition of both Gregory XII and Benedict XIII, thus securing the election of Alexander V. At the Council of Constance, he was largely responsible for the success of its election method, which granted a vote to certain national delegates along with the cardinals. He is considered by some to be a precursor to both theological and political Gallicanism.  Simon died on 19 January 1423.  He was buried at the Poitiers Cathedral.

His treatise  (1397), offering multiple lines of reasoning for bringing the Schism to an end, was edited by Howard Kaminsky in 1984. Simon argued that Benedict's followers could withdraw obedience to compel him to seek a solution to the Schism.

Notes

References

Kaminsky, Howard, Simon de Cramaud and the Great Schism (New Brunswick, NJ) 1983.
Kaminsky, Howard. "The Early Career of Simon De Cramaud". Speculum, vol. 49, no. 3, 1974, pp. 499–534., www.jstor.org/stable/2851753.
 Simon de Cramaud, De substraccione obediencie, ed. Howard Kaminsky, Cambridge, MA: the Medieval Academy of America, 1984.

1422 deaths
People from Haute-Vienne
15th-century French cardinals
Latin Patriarchs of Alexandria
Bishops of Agen
Bishops of Avignon
Bishops of Béziers
Bishops of Carcassonne
Bishops of Poitiers
Archbishops of Reims
Canon law jurists
Year of birth uncertain
15th-century peers of France

Simon of Cramaud


The Mersey and Irwell Navigation was a river navigation in North West England, which provided a navigable route from the Mersey estuary to Salford and Manchester, by improving the course of the River Irwell and the River Mersey. Eight locks were constructed between 1724 and 1734, and the rivers were improved by the construction of new cuts several times subsequently. Use of the navigation declined from the 1870s, and it was ultimately superseded by the Manchester Ship Canal, the construction of which destroyed most of the Irwell section of the navigation and the long cut between Latchford and Runcorn.

History

The idea that the Rivers Mersey and Irwell should be made navigable from the Mersey Estuary in the west to Manchester in the east was first proposed in 1660, and revived in 1712 by Thomas Steers.  In 1720 the necessary bills were tabled.  The Act of Parliament (7 Geo. 1. St. 1 c. 15) for the navigation was received in 1721. The construction work was undertaken by the Mersey & Irwell Navigation Company. Work began in 1724, and by 1734 boats "of moderate size" could make the journey from quays in Water Street, Manchester,  to the Irish Sea.  The navigation was suitable only for small ships, and during periods of drought, or when strong easterly winds held back the tide in the estuary, there was not always sufficient draft for a fully laden boat.

Eight weirs were constructed along the length of the route, and some shortcuts were made around shallower parts of the river, with locks, to enable the passage of boats.  Some difficult turns along the river were also removed.

The navigation was modified and improved on a number of occasions.  A canal section known as the Runcorn and Latchford Canal was added in 1804, to bypass part of the lower reaches.  In 1740 the company built quays and warehouses along Water Street in Manchester.

In 1779 a group of businessmen from Manchester and Liverpool purchased the navigation, and began making improvements.  A difficult section below Howley lock was cut out by the building of the Runcorn to Latchford Canal, and at Runcorn a basin was built for boats to wait for the tide.

An aqueduct was built from Woolston Cut, to replace water lost from the locks that were used to raise boats into the new canal section.

The completion of the Bridgewater Canal in 1776, followed in 1830 by the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, meant increasing competition for the carriage of goods, and in 1844 the navigation was purchased on behalf of the Bridgewater Canal Company, for £550,800.  In 1846 ownership was transferred to the canal company.

The company in charge of the navigation was known by several names.  These include "The Old Navigation", "Old Quay Company", and "Old Quay Canal".

Decline
In 1872, the navigation was sold to the newly formed Bridgewater Navigation Company for £1,112,000, but it had by then fallen into disrepair.  In 1882 it was described as being "hopelessly choked with silt and filth", and was open to 50-ton boats for only 47 out of 311 working days.

Economic conditions deteriorated during the mid-1870s, in what has been called the Long Depression. The dues charged by the Port of Liverpool, and the railway charges from there to Manchester, were perceived to be excessive; it was often cheaper to import goods via Hull, on the other side of England, than it was to use Liverpool, about  away. A ship canal was proposed as a way to reverse Manchester's economic decline by giving the city direct access to the sea for its imports and exports of manufactured goods.

Closure
The construction of the Manchester Ship Canal obliterated large parts of the earlier navigation, including almost the whole of the Irwell part of the course (except for a short length upstream of Pomona Docks, which is the only surviving part of the navigation today).

A short way downstream of the confluence with the Mersey, the ship canal followed a more southerly course than the old navigation, which remained in use as late as 1950 from Rixton Junction downstream.

The lower reaches of the ship canal from Eastham to Latchford obliterated a large section of the Runcorn to Latchford Canal, leaving just a short stub joining the navigation to the canal near Stockton Heath.  The Woolston New Cut, excavated in 1821, is still visible although completely dry.  Woolston Old Cut, built in 1755, still exists although the lock is gone.

Design and construction

Locks
There were originally eight locks along the navigation.  Each lock chamber was 13 feet wide by 65 feet long.

Throstles Nest Lock was the highest on the navigation.  It was followed by Mode Wheel lock.  Lock 3 was at Barton-upon-Irwell, next to James Brindley's original Barton Aqueduct.  The remains of the lock island appear to be situated in the same location as the island presently used for the swing aqueduct.  Stickins Lock followed, in a  cut.  There were further locks named Holmes Bridge, Calamanco, Holmes Bridge and finally Howley Tidal.

Further locks were added throughout the route's history.  These include a new Stickins Lock, Sandywarps Lock in a cut located close to the confluence of the Irwell and Mersey, Butchersfield Locks (located on a short cut known as the Butchersfield Canal), Woolston New (located at the upper end of Woolston New Cut), Paddington Lock (lower end of Woolston New Cut), Woolston Old Lock, Latchford, and Old Quay Sea Locks.

See also

Canals of the United Kingdom
History of the British canal system

References
Notes

Citations

Bibliography

Rivers of Greater Manchester
Rivers of the Metropolitan Borough of Bury
Rivers of Manchester
Rivers of Salford
River navigations in the United Kingdom
Former or disused inland waterways
Canals in Greater Manchester
Canals in Manchester
Rivers of Cheshire
Canals in Cheshire
Canals opened in 1734

Mersey and Irwell Navigation


Giorgos Sikeliotis (1917-1984) was a Greek painter and engraver.

Born in Smyrna in 1917, he graduated in 1939 from the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASKT), where he was taught by Parthenis and Vikatos. His first solo exhibition was in 1954 in the lobby of To Vima. From then until his death in Athens in 1984, he took part in many group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, including Ottawa, Rome, Toronto, Montreal, Alexandria, Helsinki and New York City, where he had a solo exhibition in 1965 and was nominated for a Guggenheim award.

Works of Sikeliotis are to be seen in the National Gallery of Athens and the Municipal Art Gallery of Rhodes. Others are in New York, bought by the World House Gallery, and in many other private collections in Greece and abroad.

External links
 Municipal Gallery of Rhodes

Greek artists
1917 births
1984 deaths
Smyrniote Greeks
Emigrants from the Ottoman Empire to Greece

Giorgos Sikeliotis


Edward William Proxmire (November 11, 1915 – December 15, 2005) was an American politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a United States Senator from Wisconsin from 1957 to 1989. He holds the record for being the longest-serving Senator from Wisconsin.

Proxmire was a member of the Senate Banking Committee, the Senate Appropriations Committee, and the Joint Economic Committee. In all of them he was an aggressive critic of wasteful government spending. On the Joint Economic Committee, he exposed numerous instances of wasteful spending on military programs such as the C-5 aircraft and the F-16 fighter, as well as other government programs such as the development of a supersonic transport airplane (SST).

Early life
The son of Dr. Theodore Stanley Proxmire, a Chicago-area surgeon, and Adele (Flanigan) Proxmire, Edward William Proxmire was born in Lake Forest, Illinois, on November 11, 1915.  He later used "William" rather than "Edward" out of admiration for actor William S. Hart.  He graduated from The Hill School (in Pottstown, Pennsylvania) in 1933, Yale University in 1938 (B.A.), Harvard Business School in 1940 (M.B.A.), and Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration in 1948 (M.P.A.).  While at Yale, Proxmire joined the Chi Psi fraternity.  During 1940 and 1941 Proxmire was a student clerk at J.P. Morgan & Co. and studied public speaking at Columbia University.

During World War II he joined the United States Army as a private, and advanced through the ranks to master sergeant. Proxmire later received a commission in the Military Intelligence branch. Most of his service involved counterintelligence work in the Chicago area, where members of his unit investigated individuals suspected of subversive activity. He served from 1941 to 1946, and was discharged as a first lieutenant.  While in the Army, Proxmire also continued to study public speaking at Northwestern University.  After discharge, he was an executive trainee at J. P. Morgan before returning to Harvard.

After getting his second master's degree while working as a teaching fellow at Harvard, Proxmire moved to Wisconsin to be a reporter for The Capital Times in Madison and to advance his political career in a favorable state. "They fired me after I'd been there seven months, for labor activities and impertinence," he once said.  When he ran successfully for the state legislature in 1950, Proxmire was working as the business manager of the Union Labor News, a publication of the Madison Federation of Labor.

Wisconsin State Assembly

Proxmire served as a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly from 1951 to 1953. During his Assembly service, Proxmire was one of few members who maintained a perfect attendance record, a trait that he later continued in the U.S. Senate. While in the Assembly, he was employed as president of Artcraft Press of Waterloo. Proxmire was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Wisconsin in 1952, 1954 and 1956.

U.S. Senator
In August 1957, Proxmire won the special election to fill the remainder of the U.S. Senate term vacated by the May 2, 1957 death of Joseph McCarthy. After assuming his seat, Proxmire did not pay the customary tribute to his predecessor and stated instead that McCarthy was a "disgrace to Wisconsin, to the Senate, and to America."

Proxmire was reelected in 1958, 1964, 1970, 1976 and 1982 by wide margins, including 71 percent of the vote in 1970, 73 percent in 1976 and 65 percent in 1982. In both of his last two campaigns, Proxmire refused contributions and spent less than $200 out of his own pocket, which covered the expenses related to filing re-election paperwork, and he mailed back unsolicited contributions. He was an early advocate of campaign finance reform.  Throughout his Senate career, Proxmire also refused to accept reimbursements for travel expenses related to his official duties.

Consecutive roll call votes
Proxmire holds the U.S. Senate record for consecutive roll call votes cast: 10,252 between April 20, 1966, and October 18, 1988. In doing so, he surpassed the previous record of 2,941, which was held by Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine. In January 2016, Chuck Grassley broke Proxmire's record for longest amount of time between missed votes, but during his time without missing a roll call, Grassley had cast about 3,000 fewer votes than Proxmire.

Committee memberships
Proxmire served as the Chair of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs from 1975 to 1981 and again from 1987 to 1989. During his first tenure in this position, Proxmire was instrumental in devising the financial plan that saved New York City from bankruptcy in 1976–77.  Proxmire's subcommittee memberships included Financial Institutions, Housing and Urban Affairs, and International Finance and Monetary Policy.

In addition to his work on the Banking Committee, Proxmire rose through seniority to become a high-ranking member of the Appropriations Committee and was active on several subcommittees, including Defense, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Related Agencies, and Postal Service and Related Agencies.

Issues and legislation
In October 1961, Proxmire issued a statement opposing a planned $22 million renovation of the U.S. Capitol by arguing that a "large part of the space created by the extension" would be used "to house private hideaway offices" for 23 senators. Proxmire continued to oppose the renovation, and the debate continued until the project was completed in the early 1970s.

In March 1964, Proxmire charged that political concerns, not national defense needs, were keeping too many naval shipyards open, which resulted in a waste of federal funds: "On the basis of every statistical study, both by the Navy and independent groups. private shipyards can build, repair or modernize five ships for the same number of dollars needed to turn out four ships in navy shipyards." Proxmire unsuccessfully favored proposals that awarded contracts to the lowest bidder to save money and close unneeded facilities, and he pointed out that "the advantages of this free enterprise approach" had been recognized by Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense and a former corporate chief executive officer.

From 1967 to 1986, Proxmire gave daily speeches noting the necessity of ratifying the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. He gave that speech every day that the Senate was in session for 20 years, for a total of 3,211 times. On February 11, 1986 the U.S. Senate ratified the convention.

In March 1969, Proxmire introduced legislation that would have regulated the credit life and disability insurance industries. He declared that Americans were being overcharged $220 million a year.

Proxmire was an early and outspoken critic of the Vietnam War and frequently criticized Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. On the Senate Armed Services Committee, he exposed wasteful military spending and was instrumental in blocking military pork barrel projects. Despite his support of budgetary restraint, he regularly sided with dairy interests and supported dairy price supports.

Proxmire was head of the campaign to cancel the American supersonic transport and particularly opposed to space exploration and ultimately to eliminate spending on such research from NASA's budget. In response to a segment about space colonies run by the CBS program 60 Minutes, Proxmire stated that; "it's the best argument yet for chopping NASA's funding to the bone.... I say not a penny for this nutty fantasy." Proxmire introduced an amendment into the 1982 NASA budget that effectively terminated NASA's nascent SETI efforts before a similar amendment to the 1994 budget, by Senator Richard Bryan, terminated NASA's SETI efforts for good. With those positions, Proxmire drew the enmity of many space advocates and science fiction fandom. Arthur C. Clarke attacked Proxmire in his short story "Death and the Senator" (1960). Later, the short story "The Return of William Proxmire" (1989) by Larry Niven and the novel  Fallen Angels (1991), written by Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael F. Flynn, were directed against the senator.

In May 1971, Proxmire charged the Food and Drug Administration with violating federal law by authorizing residues of a cancer‐inducing hormone to come into contact with consumers, asserted the move to be in violation of the Delaney amendment in the Food Additives Amendment of 1958, and called for an immediate ban on Diethylstilbestrol.

In September 1971, Proxmire asserted the safety margin of the C‐5A cargo plane was threatened in spite of doubling costs and charged the US Air Force with not disclosing information on the costs to Congress.

In 1972, Proxmire urged the Air Force to recall to General John D. Lavelle to active duty for the purpose of court-martial. Lavelle had been forced to retire as a major general due to alleged misconduct concerning Vietnam War bombing missions while he served as commander of Seventh Air Force. Lavelle was not recalled or court-martialed, and in 2007, newly-declassified and released information exonerated Lavelle by showing that President Richard M. Nixon had authorized the bombing missions.

In November 1973, after Attorney General Elliot Richardson resigned, and Robert Bork took over as Acting Attorney General, Proxmire wrote in a letter that Bork was serving illegally as Acting Attorney General since 30 days had passed with him being in office and not having a confirmation by the Senate. He said that any actions taken by Bork in the period after the 39 had passed could be met by challenge, and he called on President Nixon to rectify the situation. Assistant Attorney General Robert G. Dixon Jr. disputed Proxmire's claim by saying that similar occurrences of Acting Attorneys General that went over 30 days without Senate confirmations had happened six times earlier.

In January 1977, Proxmire was one of five Democrats to vote against Griffin Bell, President Jimmy Carter's nominee for United States Attorney General.

In January 1978, Carter wrote Proxmire on the responsibilities of New York City denizens in his plan to have the city avoid bankruptcy. In April, after New York Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jacob Javits introduced a Carter administration bill that would provide New York City with $2 billion in loan guarantees, Javits stated that he did not believe Proxmire would try killing the measure by bottling it up in committee.

In May, Proxmire announced his willingness to hold hearings on continued federal aid to New York City prior to municipal labor unions having their contracts negotiated and that the Senate Banking Committee would wait as long as possible to secure information on the labor settlement's impact. Proxmire stated it was not aware of when the labor contracts would reach a settlement, and the potentially-years-long process could prevent the Senate Banking Committee from taking any action. June 1978 had four days of scheduled hearings by the Senate Banking Committee on continued federal aid to New York City. After the June 6 hearing, Proxmire stated he had maintained an open mind in spite of leaning toward opposition, a shift from his prior position of unwavering disagreement with continued aid and that he was not against a favorable vote on the legislation by the Banking Committee that would authorize the remainder of the Senate to consider the subject. He admitted that the committee was split in the opinions of its members. Days afterward, Proxmire told reporters that the labor bill's continued filibuster made the chances of the Senate acting on the legislation by the end of the month unlikely since unanimous consent was required to end the filibuster. Later that month, along with Texas Republican John Tower and Utah Republican Jake Garn, Proxmire was one of the three senators voting against reporting out the bill authorizing $1.5 billion of long‐term loan guarantees for New York City. Proxmire added that he believed that the measure would pass through the Senate in a similar manner to the panel vote.

In February 1978, after President Carter nominated G. William Miller for Chair of the Federal Reserve, Proxmire was noted to be a reliable source of contention but predicted from the start of his confirmation process that Miller would meet little opposition. At the end of the month, eleven members of the Senate Banking Committee pressed for a confirmation of Miller as Federal Reserve Chair, a motion that Proxmire rejected while he was scheduling the vote for another day, and he admitted that the nomination would be easily confirmed by the panel and the full chamber. On March 2, Proxmire cast the sole dissenting vote against the Miller nomination and called him unqualified for the office since he was without experience in economic or monetary affairs.
Proxmire acknowledged Miller's business success and was joined by ranking Republican, Edward W. Brooke, in indicating that the Carter administration had influenced members of the panel to hasten the confirmation process.

In February 1978, Proxmire said that the Navy and the Air Force had spent "at least $42,000 in the last year transporting 3,500 local community leaders to 31 military bases to lobby for military programs" and labeled the trips an example of local citizens being lobbied for military programs. Proxmire added that the trips had included the Air Force favoring production of the B‐1 bomber and gave an estimate cost of 42,000, as the Air Force had turned down on specifying the price.

In February 1979, Proxmire sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury W. Michael Blumenthal to call on the Treasury Department to withhold federal loan guarantees from New York City until incumbent Mayor Ed Koch agreed to larger cuts in the budget for the following year. He charged the budgetary assumptions of the city as being too reliant on federal aid increases.
In March, Proxmire sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Miller on his reservations on the establishment of a free trade zone to allow international banking activity in New York City and advocated for the proposal to be first submitted to Congress, as opposed to unilateral regulatory action.

Proxmire was the only senator to vote against the August 1979 nomination of G. William Miller as United States Treasury Secretary and said that was based on Miller's "unwillingness to open a full-scale investigation of allegations that Textron, the company he once headed, paid bribes to numerous foreign officials while Mr. Miller was in charge." Proxmire acknowledged a lack of evidence to show that Miller had been personally involved in bribes.

In October 1979, Proxmire wrote head of the General Accounting Office Elmer B. Staats to request the GAO to investigate claims that the Department of Housing and Urban Development had authorized the P.I. Properties to steal funds from the federal government and low income tenants. The same day, Proxmire delivered a speech on the Senate floor that condemned the failure of the Housing and Urban Development Department to act on recommendation from staff members to terminate funding for the P.I. Properties' 285-unit project at 14th and Clifton Streets in Washington, DC.

Golden Fleece Award

Proxmire was noted for issuing his Golden Fleece Award, which was presented monthly between 1975 and 1988 to focus media attention on projects that he viewed as self-serving and wasteful of taxpayer dollars.  Winners of the Golden Fleece Award included governmental organizations like the United States Department of Defense, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service.

The first Golden Fleece Award was awarded in 1975 to the National Science Foundation for funding an $84,000 study on why people fall in love. Other Golden Fleece awards over the years were awarded to the Justice Department for conducting a study on why prisoners wanted to get out of jail, the National Institute of Mental Health to study a Peruvian brothel ("The researchers said they made repeated visits in the interests of accuracy," reported The New York Times), and the Federal Aviation Administration for studying "the physical measurements of 432 airline stewardesses, paying special attention to the 'length of the buttocks.'"

Proxmire's critics said that some of his Golden Fleece awards went to basic science projects that led to important breakthroughs. In some circles, his name has become a verb for unfairly obstructing scientific research for political gain, as in "the project has been proxmired." In 1987, Stewart Brand accused Proxmire of recklessly attacking legitimate research for the crass purpose of furthering his own political career, with gross indifference as to whether his assertions were true or false as well as the long-term effects on American science and technology policy. Proxmire later apologized for several canceled projects, including SETI.

It is widely but incorrectly believed that Proxmire gave the award to Edward F. Knipling for his study of the sex life of the screwworm fly, the results of which were used to create sterile screwworms that were released into the wild and eliminated this major cattle parasite from North and Central America, which reduced the cost of beef and dairy products across the globe. In fact, there is no evidence for this claim in the Proxmire papers held by the Wisconsin Historical Society. In addition, the United States Department of Agriculture funded research on the sex life of the screwworm fly took place in the 1930s to the 1950s, long before the Golden Fleece era of the 1970s and 1980s, when Proxmire largely targeted contemporary research.

One winner of the Golden Fleece Award, Ronald Hutchinson, sued Proxmire for defamation in 1976. Proxmire claimed that his statements about Hutchinson's research were protected by the Speech or Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that that clause does not immunize members of Congress from liability for defamatory statements made outside of formal congressional proceedings (Hutchinson v. Proxmire, ). The case was eventually settled out of court.

Personal life
In 1946, Proxmire married Elsie Stillman Rockefeller, a great-granddaughter of William Rockefeller, brother and partner of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller. They had two children, a son, Theodore, and a daughter, Elsie Stillman (Proxmire) Zwerner. Elsie Proxmire received an uncontested divorce in 1955.

In 1956, Proxmire married Ellen Imogene Hodges Sawall, who brought two children of her own to the marriage. Together, the couple had two sons, one of whom died in infancy.

Proxmire was the first United States Senator to get hair transplants for his pattern hair loss. The treatment he was receiving for a couple of months began on February 22, 1972. His 1972 tax return which was published in the Congressional Record revealed that he paid $2,758 for his hair transplant and claimed the operation as a medical expense.

Known for his devotion to personal fitness, which included jogging and push-ups, Proxmire earned the moniker "Push Up". In 1973, he published a book about staying in shape, entitled You Can Do It: Senator Proxmire's Exercise, Diet and Relaxation Plan. After leaving Congress, Proxmire had an office in the Library of Congress.

In 1998, Proxmire announced that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He died on December 15, 2005, aged 90, at a nursing home in Sykesville, Maryland, where he had lived for more than four years. He was buried at Lake Forest Cemetery in Lake Forest, Illinois.

Written works
  Can Small Business Survive? H. Regnery Co., 1964;
 (with Paul H. Douglas) Report from Wasteland; America's Military-Industrial Complex. Praeger Publishing, 1970
  Uncle Sam – The Last of the Bigtime Spenders. Simon & Schuster, 1972;
  You Can Do It!: Senator Proxmire's Exercise, Diet and Relaxation Plan. Simon & Schuster, 1973;
  Can Congress Control Spending? American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington DC, 1973;
  The Fleecing of America. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980;
  Your Joy Ride to Health. Proxmire Publishing Co. 1994;

See also
 Advocacy group
 Agricultural policy of the United States

References

External links

 Senator William Proxmire Collections | Wisconsin Historical Society

 "As senator, a tenacious Proxmire had a good run", The Boston Globe

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1915 births
2005 deaths
20th-century American male writers
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20th-century American politicians
American exercise and fitness writers
American male non-fiction writers
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Burials at Lake Forest Cemetery
Chi Psi
Deaths from Alzheimer's disease
Deaths from dementia in Maryland
Democratic Party United States senators from Wisconsin
Democratic Party members of the Wisconsin State Assembly
Harvard Business School alumni
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William Proxmire


Davydd Greenwood (born 1942) is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Institute for European Studies at Cornell University.

Known action researcher, Greenwood has conducted studies in the Spanish Basque Country, where he analysed Mondragón Corporation, empowerment and cooperatives phenomena. He currently focuses on the future of university idea, in the era of corporate culture.

Greenwood was elected Corresponding Member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.

Publications
 Davydd Greenwood, Morten Levin (1998) Introduction to Action Research: Social Research for Social Change. Thousand Oaks, California, Sage Publications, Inc
  Davydd Greenwood, José Luis González (1992) Industrial Democracy as Process: Participatory Action Research in the Fagor Cooperative Group of Mondragón, (co-authors Julio Cantón Alonso, Ino Galparsoro Markaide, Alex Goiricelaya Arruza, Isabel Legarreta Nuin, and Kepa Salaberría Amesti), Assen-Maastricht, Van Gorcum Publishers.

References

 Davydd Greenwood - Goldwin Smith Professor of Anthropology. Cornell University. Accessed 2014-02-27.
 Town Twinning. Cornell University Institute for European Studies. Accessed 2011-01-04.

American anthropologists
Mondragon Corporation
Living people
1942 births
Cornell University faculty

Davydd Greenwood


Henry Jervis-White-Jervis (1825 – 22 September 1881) was a British army officer and a Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1859 to 1880.

Jervis-White-Jervis was the third son of Sir Henry Meredith Jervis White-Jervis, 2nd baronet and his wife Marian Campbell daughter of William Campbell of Fairfield, Ayrshire. He was educated at Harrow School and at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He joined the Royal Artillery as 2nd lieutenant in December 1844. He became 1st Lieutenant in  1846 and captain in September 1853. He was employed on special service under the Board of Ordnance in the United States in 1855

Jervis-White-Jervis stood for parliament unsuccessfully at Harwich in 1857. At a by-election in March 1859 he was elected Member of Parliament for Harwich.

Jervis-White-Jervis continued his military career and  held various appointments dealing  with the armaments of the service until January 1866 when he became Brevet-Major. In December 1867 he became lieutenant-colonel.  He authored several books including Manual of Field Operations, History of Corfu and of the Ionian Islands, The Enfield Rifle, and Our Engines of War.

In February 1863 Jervis-White-Jervis was elected deputy chairman of the Great Eastern Railway with specific responsibilities for chairing the stores and Traffic committees within that organisation. In August 1865 Jervis-White-Jervis issued an appeal raising concerns about the management of the railway. This prompted an internal investigation and in a board meeting at the end of the month, an absent Jervis-White-Jervis was replaced by William Shaw as deputy chairman. The internal investigation concluded that many of Jervis-White-Jervis's concerns were relevant and in a meeting in January the following years many of the directors were duly replaced (by members of the investigating committee). However Jervis-White-Jervis did not escape unscathed being subject to a motion of censure.

He remained in parliament until 1880.

Jervis-White-Jervis died at the age of 56. (1881)

Jervis-White-Jervis married in 1855  Lucy Cobbold, daughter of John Chevalier Cobbold M.P. for Ipswich and had several children.

References

External links

1825 births
1881 deaths
Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
UK MPs 1857–1859
UK MPs 1859–1865
UK MPs 1865–1868
UK MPs 1868–1874
UK MPs 1874–1880
Royal Artillery officers
British non-fiction writers
People educated at Harrow School
Graduates of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich
British male writers
Directors of the Great Eastern Railway
Male non-fiction writers

Henry Jervis-White-Jervis


The Cliff May Experimental House was built by Cliff May in the early 1950s as his family's fourth house and developed to push his ideas of "bringing the outdoors in" and open interior planning.  The one-story, 1800-sf house is a simple rectangle in plan with a 288-square foot open skylight in the center. May's family of five created different rooms by using movable partitions. The family resided in the home for two years, while May determined how the sizeable skylight and open plan functioned for the residents there. From this experience, the home "Mandalay" was designed by May, which became the last home for his family.

This house is located at 1831 Old Ranch Road in the Riviera Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles.  The house is located behind a locked gate and is not publicly accessible.  Thomas D. Church & Associates, Landscape Architects.  Peggy Galloway, Interior Designer.  It was recognized as a City of Los Angeles Historic Cultural Landmark in 2002. In 2007, design firm Marmol Radziner restored the historic home, re-establishing the open floor plan, replacing the roof, and bringing the home up to current code. The firm also provided landscape design and interior design services.

See also

References

Editorial staff of Sunset Magazine and Books.  Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May.  Menlo Park, CA:  Lane Publishing Company, 1954.  Pages 126-131.
van Balgooy, Mary A. "Designer of the Dream: Cliff May and the California Ranch House."  Southern California Quarterly 86:2 (summer 2004): pages 127-144.

Architectural design
Houses in Los Angeles
Houses completed in the 20th century
1950s establishments in California

Cliff May Experimental House


John Kenneth Cook (born December 18, 1958 in Van Nuys, California) is an American former international motorcycle speedway rider. He was represented the USA in several World Team Cup Finals.

Career
Cook is mainly remembered for his spell at the Ipswich Witches teams from 1981–1982 and 1984–1986 where he walked out on the club mid-season on both occasions. He also had further spells at Hull Vikings, King's Lynn Stars, Poole Pirates.

Cook was a showman and continued in this vein for the whole of his career, whilst not always riding in the British League, he was a regular rider in the Swedish League with Indianerna where he attained Swedish citizenship in the early 1990s and in fact was the Swedish Champion in 1992 winning all of his rides. He is also attributed with introducing Jet Ski watercraft to Australia, New Zealand and Europe where he became the first European Champion in closed course competition. During a speedway hiatus, he also competed as an American Expert Jet Ski racer and was ranked #4 in the World while racing underpowered craft.

Cook continued to ride well into his 40s and almost qualified for the Speedway Grand Prix Series for 2002, only failing at the 2001 Intercontinental Final stage.

Cook surfaced again on the international Speedway front in 2006 where he was indeed a member of the USA squad for the 2006 Speedway World Cup, however he was not required to ride in the actual competition.

In October 2006 Cook suffered a serious motocross accident while racing at Washougal Washington in which he hurt his back quite badly and had to have metal rods inserted. The rods were later removed as Cook began to make a recovery but he has had to retire from racing and remains retired in his longtime home of Sacramento, California.

National Titles
 1985 American Speedway Champion
 1992 Swedish SM Speedway Champion

World final appearances

Individual World Championship
 1985 -  Bradford, Odsal Stadium - 7th - 9pts
 1987 -  Amsterdam, Olympic Stadium - 8th - 15pts

World Team Cup
 1984 -  Leszno, Alfred Smoczyk Stadium (with Shawn Moran / Kelly Moran / Lance King / Bobby Schwartz) – 3rd – 20pts (2)
 1985 -  Long Beach, Veterans Memorial Stadium (with Shawn Moran / Bobby Schwartz / Lance King / Sam Ermolenko) – 2nd – 35pts (1)
 1987 -  Prague, Marketa Stadium (with Shawn Moran / Rick Miller / Kelly Moran)  - 3rd - 93pts (6)

References

Living people
1958 births
American speedway riders
Ipswich Witches riders
Poole Pirates riders
King's Lynn Stars riders
Hull Vikings riders
People from Van Nuys

John Cook (speedway rider)