The Abebe Bikila Award is an annual prize given by the New York Road Runners club (NYRR) to honour individuals who have made a significant contribution to the sport of long-distance running. The first recipient of the award was Ted Corbitt, a founder of both NYRR and the Road Runners Club of America, who received the honour on October 27, 1978. The award is named in honour of the two-time Olympic marathon winner Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia.

Past winners of the award include: Olympic gold medallists Frank Shorter, Rosa Mota and Lasse Virén; world record breakers Paula Radcliffe, Khalid Khannouchi and Paul Tergat; and multiple major marathon winners Grete Waitz, Alberto Salazar and Joan Samuelson.

While the award has typically been associated with elite level runners, particularly marathon runners, it has also been given to non-athletes. Fred Lebow – creator of the New York Marathon – became the first person to win the award who was not a professional athlete in 1995. The 2001 award was given to Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani on the basis of his dedication to the city in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. The 2009 winner, long-time road running organiser and event director Allan Steinfeld, was the third non-professional athlete to receive the award. The Rudin family, long-time sponsors of the New York Marathon, were the first non-individual recipients of the award in 2012.

The award is closely linked with NYRR's annual International Friendship Run, a four-mile fun run from United Nations Plaza to Central Park, which is held immediately following the official award presentation event.

Recipients

References

External links

Sport of athletics awards
American sports trophies and awards
Awards established in 1978
Road running in the United States
1978 establishments in New York City

Abebe Bikila Award


The Shawinigan-Falls Cataracts are a defunct minor professional ice hockey team that was based in Shawinigan Falls, Quebec. The team played in the Quebec Hockey League from 1954 to 1958, and the operated as a farm team for the Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey League for the 1955–56 season.

During their four seasons of play, the Cataracts played 258 games and compiled a record of 137 wins, 101 losses, and 20 ties. They achieved their best win-loss record during the 1955–56 season when they earned 89 points in 64 regular season games.

References

Defunct ice hockey teams in Canada

Shawinigan-Falls Cataracts


Finnis Dawson McCleery (December 25, 1927 – July 11, 2002) was a United States Army soldier and a recipient of the United States military's highest decoration—the Medal of Honor—for his actions in the Vietnam War.

Biography
McCleery joined the Army from San Angelo, Texas, and by May 14, 1968, was serving as a platoon sergeant in 1st Platoon, Company A, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment. During an assault on that day during the Battle of Landing Zone Center, in Quang Tin Province, Republic of Vietnam, McCleery single-handedly attacked and destroyed several enemy bunkers despite being wounded twice.

McCleery left the Army while still a platoon sergeant. He died at age 74 and was buried in Belvedere Memorial Cemetery, San Angelo, Texas.

McCleery was married to Lena Mae McCleery and had seven children, Jack Hollis, Roger McCleery, Curtis McCleery, Lisa Power, Donna St.Clair, Deena Moore, and Darla Piper. He was a grandfather and great grandfather at the time of his death.

Medal of Honor citation
Platoon Sergeant McCleery's official Medal of Honor citation reads:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. P/Sgt. McCleery, U.S. Army, distinguished himself while serving as platoon leader of the 1st platoon of Company A. A combined force was assigned the mission of assaulting a reinforced company of North Vietnamese Army regulars, well entrenched on Hill 352, 17 miles west of Tam Ky. As P/Sgt. McCleery led his men up the hill and across an open area to close with the enemy, his platoon and other friendly elements were pinned down by tremendously heavy fire coming from the fortified enemy positions. Realizing the severe damage that the enemy could inflict on the combined force in the event that their attack was completely halted, P/Sgt. McCleery rose from his sheltered position and began a 1-man assault on the bunker complex. With extraordinary courage, he moved across 60 meters of open ground as bullets struck all around him and rockets and grenades literally exploded at his feet. As he came within 30 meters of the key enemy bunker, P/Sgt. McCleery began firing furiously from the hip and throwing hand grenades. At this point in his assault, he was painfully wounded by shrapnel, but, with complete disregard for his wound, he continued his advance on the key bunker and killed all of its occupants. Having successfully and single-handedly breached the enemy perimeter, he climbed to the top of the bunker he had just captured and, in full view of the enemy, shouted encouragement to his men to follow his assault. As the friendly forces moved forward, P/Sgt. McCleery began a lateral assault on the enemy bunker line. He continued to expose himself to the intense enemy fire as he moved from bunker to bunker, destroying each in turn. He was wounded a second time by shrapnel as he destroyed and routed the enemy from the hill. P/Sgt. McCleery is personally credited with eliminating several key enemy positions and inspiring the assault that resulted in gaining control of Hill 352. His extraordinary heroism at the risk of his life, above and beyond the call of duty, was in keeping with the highest standards of the military service, and reflects great credit on him, the Americal Division, and the U.S. Army.

See also

List of Medal of Honor recipients
List of Medal of Honor recipients for the Vietnam War

References

1927 births
2002 deaths
United States Army personnel of the Vietnam War
United States Army Medal of Honor recipients
People from Stephenville, Texas
Recipients of the Silver Star
United States Army soldiers
Vietnam War recipients of the Medal of Honor

Finnis D. McCleery


Ole Amundsen Buslett (May 28, 1855 – June 5, 1924) was a Norwegian-born American author, newspaperman, and politician.

Background
Ole Amundsen Buslett was born in Gausdal, Oppland, Norway. Buslett was the oldest of eight children born to Amund Halvorsen Buslett and Netta (Kalstad) Ringsrud. He migrated to the United States with his family in 1868 and settled in the town of Iola, in Waupaca County, Wisconsin.

Career
In 1888, Buslett opened a country store and post office in Northland, Wisconsin. He served as postmaster, justice of the peace, and town clerk. In 1893, he became editor and part owner of Varden then later  served as editor of Folkevennen. Both publications were Norwegian-language newspapers published in La Crosse, Wisconsin. In August 1894, he became editor of Normannen in Stoughton, Wisconsin. In March 1896, the publication was sold to Chicago-based Amerika. He held political offices in Waupaca County and was a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly from 1909 until 1910.

Buslett wrote in Norwegian. His writings included novels, stories, poems, and plays. His works primarily portrayed the lives of Norwegian immigrants in Wisconsin. He also wrote a history of the 15th Wisconsin Volunteer Regiment. Det Femtende Regiment Wisconsin Frivillige was published in 1894. It was translated into English and published as The Fifteenth Wisconsin in 1999.

He died at his home in Northland on June 5, 1924.

Selected works
Fram (1882)
Leilighets digte (1882)
Skaars skjæbne (1882)
Øistein og Nora (1884)
De to veivisere, et dramatisk digt i seks handlinger (1885)
Snip-Snap-Snude (1889)
Et dødens døgn, sørgespill (1890)
Rolf Hagen ( 1893)
Torstein i nybygden (1897)
Sagastolen, fortælling fra det norske Amerika (1908)
I Parnassets lunde (1911)
Amerika-Paul  (1913)
Veien til Golden Gate (1915)
Benediktus og Jacobus (1920)

References

Primary sources
Øverland, Orm The Western Home : A Literary History of Norwegian America  (Chapter 10, Ole Amundsen Buslett, Romantic Idealist. Norwegian American Historic Association. 1996)
Hustvedt, Lloyd Ole Amundsen Buslett, 1855-1924 (from "Makers of an American Immigrant Legacy: Essays in Honor of Kenneth O. Bjork",  Odd S. Lovoll, editor, Norwegian-American Historical Association, 2001)

External links
Portrait of Ole Amundsen Buslett
The Road to the Golden Gate by Hustvedt, Lloyd
Veien til Golden Gate Jul i Vesterheimen (Minneapolis, 1913)

1855 births
1924 deaths
People from Gausdal
Norwegian emigrants to the United States
Wisconsin state court judges
Republican Party members of the Wisconsin State Assembly
Novelists from Wisconsin
19th-century American novelists
People from Iola, Wisconsin
20th-century American novelists
American male novelists
19th-century American male writers
20th-century American male writers

Ole Amundsen Buslett


Salisbury East ( ) is a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia, located 20 kilometres north of the Adelaide CBD. The residential part of the suburb is in the local government area (LGA) of the City of Salisbury, however the eastern part of the Cobbler Creek Recreation Park is in the boundaries of the City of Tea Tree Gully.

Demographics
In the 2021 census, Salisbury East had a population of 9,273. Its median age was 40, lower than 41 for all South Australia, but higher than 38 for all Australia and 39 for Greater Adelaide. 49% of the population were male and 51% were female. 40% reported being of English ancestry and 30.3% being of Australian ancestry; the next most common backgrounds were Scottish (7%), German (6.1%), and Irish (6.1%). Around three-quarters only spoke English at home, but a number of languages were better-represented in Salisbury East than the general South Australian population; these were Hazaragi (2.3% vs 0.4%), Hakha Chin (1.3% vs 0.1%), and Dari (1.2% vs 0.2%). Arabic and Italian were the other two most spoken non-English languages.

10.5% of the population of Salisbury East reported holding a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to 22.7% of South Australians and 26.3% of Australians. 12.9% and 10.5% reported having left school in year 10 or 11 respectively, above the average for South Australia (9.4% and 8.7%) and Australia (10% and 4.6%). Nearly one in ten had less than a year 10 education. 53.5% of Salisbury East residents reported being in the labour force, while 42.4% were not, compared to 60% and 35.5% for South Australia. The unemployment rate was 7.8%, compared to 5.4% for the state and 5.1% for the country. Amongst employed residents, the most common reported employment categories were "technicians and trade workers" (16.3%), "clerical and administrative workers" (14.8%), and "labourers" (14.4%). 11.8% were employed as "professionals", against 21.5% of South Australians and 24% of Australians. The median weekly individual and household incomes respectively were AU$599 and AU$1,163, while the equivalents for all South Australians were AU$734 and AU$1,455.

40.4% of Salisbury East residents reported having no religious affiliation, while 6.1% did not answer the question. Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Islam were the main reported religions, at 14.2%, 8.3%, and 6.5% respectively. Salisbury East had a proportionately larger Muslim population than South Australia (2.3%) or Australia (3.5%).

See also
 List of Adelaide suburbs

References

Suburbs of Adelaide

Salisbury East, South Australia


Albert Bastiaan (Ab) Harrewijn (22 November 1954, in Giessen-Nieuwkerk – 13 May 2002, in Utrecht) was a Dutch GreenLeft politician.

Harrewijn was a preacher who was a member of the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN). He was strongly committed to helping people in the lowest ranks of society: the homeless, social security claimants and addicts. He was active in the CPN at the municipal and provincial level.

On 1 February 1995 Harrewijn became partijvoorzitter (chairman) of the GreenLeft Party, which had emerged after a merger of the CPN, the Christian left Evangelical People's Party and Political Party of Radicals and the left-socialist Pacifist Socialist Party in 1991.  He remained in that position until the 1998 elections when he was elected to the House of Representatives of the Netherlands.  Here he focused on defence and social affairs. This earned him the nickname "General Ab". As GreenLeft defence spokesperson, he was a member of the temporary committee on decision-making procedures for military operations.

Harrewijn stood again in the 2002 elections.  However, a few days before the 15 May election date he suffered a massive stroke, which ended his life two days before the election (the stroke may have been induced by the stress of the 6 May 2002 announcement of the murder of Pim Fortuyn). The Leftwing Cheek, the GreenLeft platform for religion and politics, instituted an Ab Harrewijn Prize in his honour, for creative, small initiatives for people in the lowest ranks of society. The National Client Council organizes a yearly lecture in his honour. In 2006 the Harrewijn Law was adopted. This was based on an initiative of Harrewijn and fellow GreenLeft MP Paul Rosenmöller, which seeks to inform works councils of the salaries of the top levels of management and its Board of directors.

References

 The Ab Harrewijn Prize web site.
 Ab Harrewijn-lecture

1954 births
2002 deaths
Christian communists
Neurological disease deaths in the Netherlands
Dutch Christian socialists
Dutch communists
GroenLinks politicians
Members of the House of Representatives (Netherlands)
Chairmen of GroenLinks
People from Giessenlanden
Calvinist and Reformed Christian socialists

Ab Harrewijn


STENAPA (an acronym for St. Eustatius National Parks) is the national parks organisation of Sint Eustatius, a small Dutch island in the Caribbean. The island is situated within the inner arc of the Leeward Island chain of the Lesser Antilles, West Indies. Sint Eustatius is south of the island of Saba and north of the island of  Saint Kitts. The island of St. Eustatius is now part of the country of the Netherlands, as a bijzondere gemeente or "special municipality".

STENAPA is a non-profit, non-governmental foundation (in Dutch a stichting) which was founded in 1988, and registered in 1995. The function of this foundation is environmental protection. STENAPA currently manages the National Marine Park, the Quill / Boven National Park, and the Botanical Garden. STENAPA is one of the members of the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance.

The headquarters, the National Parks Office and Visitor Centre, is situated next to the harbour in Lower Town, which is the waterfront part of the capital Oranjestad, most of which is higher up, on top of a cliff. The more southerly part of Lower Town faces onto Gallows Bay, on the western or Caribbean Sea coast of the island.

The National Parks
This non-profit foundation is responsible for the management of three parks. Two parks are on the land surface of the island; the remaining park is marine and surrounds the island. The combined area of the parks is 33 square km.
 The Marine Park surrounds the island from the high-water mark down to 30 meters depth, and also encompasses two Marine Park Reserves.
 The Quill / Boven National Park comprises two different areas or subsectors. One is the dormant stratovolcano known as the Quill, which is in the southern part of the island. The other area is a group of five hills in the northern part of the island: Bergje, Boven (the highest of the five), Venus, Gilboa Hill and Signal Hill. These five hills are the remnants of another stratovolcano.
 The Miriam C. Schmidt Botanical Garden was started in 1998. The main emphasis is on species that are or were native to the island and the surrounding islands. There is also an experimental area where researchers are studying methods of controlling the problematic invasive species Antigonon leptopus, the corallita vine.

Staff
STENAPA is governed by a board. The board members do not receive any wages. The foundation employs eight staff members who administer the foundation and manage the parks. The staff members work with interns and volunteers from the island or abroad.

References
Notes

Bibliography
 Davis J.E. (2003). "Population Assessment of Queen Conch, Strombus gigas, in the St. Eustatius Marine Park, Netherlands Antilles". St. Eustatius Marine Park.

External links
 Official website
 St. Eustatius tourism website

National park administrators
Nature conservation organizations based in North America
1988 establishments in the Netherlands Antilles
Organisations based in Sint Eustatius
Organizations established in 1988

STENAPA


The Companhia de Diamantes de Angola (Diamang) was a company exploiting diamond mines in Angola. Diamang was formed on 16 October 1917 by financial investors from Angola's then colonial master Portugal, and also from Belgium, United States, Great Britain and South Africa. The company was formally dissolved on 17 February 1988.

History
On June 6, 1918, the mining rights of the Companhia de Pesquisa Mineira de Angola (PEMA), which was formed on 6 September 1912, were transferred to Endiama. PEMA got these mining rights on 31 March 1913. On 4 December 1920, the Portuguese High Commissioner for Angola signed a contract with Endiama, giving the company exclusive rights for diamond prospection and mining.

On 28 February 1970, Diamang and De Beers Consolidated formed the joint venture Condiama for the commercialization of diamonds.

After Angola gained independence, the major part of Endiama's capital was nationalized, by decrees 61/77 of 24 August 1977, and 255/79 of 11 December 1979. From 1978 to 1986, the British company MATS managed and serviced the operations of Diamang.

Diamond mining in Angola and Diamang's operations were severely interrupted by the Angolan civil war, where UNITA, after losing the direct support from the South African Apartheid regime, financed its operations by bartering uncut diamonds for weaponry, which was sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1173 and subsequent resolutions.

See also

 Forminière

References

Diamond mining companies
Mining companies of Angola
Companies established in 1917
Companies disestablished in 1988

Diamang


Mie Kering or Makassar Dried Noodle is a Chinese Indonesian cuisine, a type of dried noodle served with thick gravy and sliced chicken, shrimp, mushrooms, liver, and squid. It is somewhat similar to Chinese I fu mie, only the noodle is thinner.

The recipe was devised by a Chinese descent, Ang Kho Tjao. He opened his noodle shop to sell his dried noodle and it gaining popularity in Makassar since early 1970s. Ang Kho Tjao passed his knowledge of the recipe to his three children namely Hengky, Awa', and Titi. After Ang Kho Tjao died, dried noodle shop business was continued by his three children who separately opened their own shop. Titi's are the most popular in Makassar, hence the name of "Mie Titi" become synonymous with Makassar dried noodle. Mie Kering is one of the most famous Makassar dishes, the others are Coto Makassar and Konro.

See also

 Mie goreng
 Bakmi

References

Indonesian Chinese cuisine
Makassar cuisine
Indonesian noodle dishes

Mie kering


The Réunion scops owl (Otus grucheti), also known as the Réunion owl or Réunion lizard owl, was a small owl that occurred on the Mascarene island of Réunion, but became extinct before any living birds were described; it is only known from subfossil bones. One of the three Mascarene owls, it was formerly classified in the genus Mascarenotus, and most likely was similar to a long-eared owl in size and appearance, but with nearly naked legs. However, according to recent studies, it and its relatives belong to the genus Otus, and is likely descended from the Otus sunia lineage.

Compared to the Mauritius scops owl and the Rodrigues scops owl, it was the most terrestrial species of the genus, with long legs and possibly somewhat reduced flight capability; more probably though it was simply smaller than the Mauritius bird – between that species and the one from Rodrigues in size – but had equally long legs: the only suitable food available in quantity on Réunion were small birds. It can be assumed to have preyed on sleeping songbirds in the manner of the unrelated but convergent Grallistrix "stilt-owls" from Hawaii.

Extinction
As the bird is not mentioned by any contemporary report, it was either very secretive or became extinct earlier than its congeners. Notably, it is not contained in the comprehensive listing of local fauna that Dubois made in 1671–72. At that time, the only introduced predators were pigs. Inferring from the local ecology, it is likely that the birds succumbed to predation by rats and perhaps also cats as they must have been flight worthy enough to avoid the pigs, and thus only became extinct after Dubois' visit, at some date closer to the year 1700. If the bird was ground-nesting, however, it might have been extinct even by the time Dubois did not record it, but this hypothesis does not seem to agree what can be inferred from the rather long survival of its Mauritius relative.

References

 Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile; Bour, Roger; Moutou, François & Ribes, Sonia (1994): Mascarenotus nov. gen. (Aves, Strigiformes), genre endémique éteint des Mascareignes et M. grucheti n. sp., espèce éteinte de La Réunion. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris sér. II 318: 1699–1706.

Otus (bird)
Extinct birds of Indian Ocean islands
Holocene extinctions
Birds of Réunion
Birds described in 1994
Taxa named by Cécile Mourer-Chauviré
Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN

Réunion scops owl


Marouflage is a technique for affixing a painted canvas (intended as a mural) to a wall, using an adhesive that hardens as it dries, such as plaster or cement.

History

A French word originally referring to sticky, partly hardened scraps of paint, marouflage is a 3,000-year-old technique. Historically, artists used several types of adhesives including a rabbit-skin glue. White lead ore was used in the 19th and 20th centuries in the mixture to help it dry.

A thin coat of the adhesive is applied to both the wall and the canvas. Once the canvas is mounted to the wall, pressure is exerted with rubber hand rollers to smooth the canvas and remove any bubbles.

Uses

Conservation
In art conservation, the word can be term of art meaning the removal of the painted surface from its underlying support, usually a stretched canvas. The process is more typically called transferring and can cause significant damage. Twenty-first century conservators seldom need to resort to this technique.

Murals
Intended murals are normally painted on large canvas in the studio and attached to the wall on site, using a starch based glue (applied to the wall only), the murals can then be moved (by a professional) and re-instated elsewhere if required.  The damage caused to the painting if removed using this technique is minimal.

See also

 Grande fresque de la gare de Lyon

References

Mayer, Ralph. The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques Viking Adult; 5th revised and updated edition, 1991.

Painting techniques
Conservation and restoration of paintings

Marouflage


Adam Storey Farrar, DD (1826–1905) was an English churchman and academic, Professor of Divinity and Ecclesiastical History at the University of Durham from 1864.

Life
Born in London on 20 April 1820, he was son of Abraham Eccles Farrar, president of the Wesleyan conference, by his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Adam Storey of Leeds. Educated at the Liverpool Institute, he matriculated in 1844 at St. Mary Hall, Oxford, obtaining a first class in the final classical school and a second in mathematics, and graduating B.A. in 1850. In 1851 he was the first winner of the prize founded in memory of Thomas Arnold, with an essay on The Causes of the Greatness and Decay of the Town of Carthage, and in the following year proceeded M.A. and was elected Michel fellow of The Queen's College. In two successive years, 1853 and 1854, he won the Denyer prize for a theological essay, on The Doctrine of the Trinity, and Original Sin.

Ordained deacon in 1852 and priest in 1853, Farrar became tutor at Wadham College in 1855, and acted both as mathematical moderator and examiner in classics in 1856. He was appointed preacher at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall (1858) and Bampton lecturer (1862); and became B.D. and D.D. in 1864.

In 1864 Farrar was appointed professor at Durham, and in 1878 he became canon of Durham Cathedral. He was elected an honorary fellow of Queen's College, Oxford in late 1902.

Farrar married in 1864 Sarah Martha Wood (1824–1905), daughter of Robert Wood, a Wesleyan minister. He died at Durham on 11 June 1905, without issue.

Works
While at Oxford Farrar published his major work, Science in Theology, Sermons before the University of Oxford, in 1859, followred by A Critical History of Free Thought, the Bampton Lectures in 1862. In the former he sought "to bring some of the discoveries and methods of the physical and moral sciences to bear upon theoretic questions of theology".

Notes

Attribution

External links

1826 births
1905 deaths
19th-century English Anglican priests
Fellows of The Queen's College, Oxford
Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford
Academics of Durham University

Adam Storey Farrar


The Viola Concerto by William Walton was written in 1929 and first performed at the Queen's Hall, London on 3 October of that year by Paul Hindemith as soloist and the composer conducting. It had been written with the violist Lionel Tertis in mind, and he took the work up after initially rejecting it. The concerto established Walton as a substantial figure in British music and has been recorded by leading violists internationally. Walton revised the instrumentation of the concerto in 1961, lightening the orchestral textures.

Background and first performances

In 1929 William Walton was regarded as an avant-garde composer, best known for Façade (1923), which had been a succès de scandale at its premiere. His exuberant and harmonically edgy concert overture Portsmouth Point (1926) maintained his reputation as an enfant terrible. Towards the end of 1928 the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham suggested that Walton should write a concerto for the violist Lionel Tertis, for whom composers including Vaughan Williams and Bax had written major works. After some preliminary discussion Walton agreed. He wrote the concerto while wintering in Amalfi, Italy, with his friends and patrons the Sitwells. He wrote in December 1928 that he was working hard on the piece, and in February 1929 that he had finished the second movement. He said he considered the concerto potentially his finest work to date, although whether this assessment would hold true would depend on how the third movement turned out.

On his return to England in the spring of 1929, Walton sent the completed concerto to Tertis, who immediately rejected it because of its modernity. Tertis later realised his error and wrote in his autobiography:

Walton was so disappointed by Tertis's refusal that he considered recasting the concerto for violin and orchestra. It is not clear where the suggestion came from that the German composer and violist Paul Hindemith should be invited to premiere the work. In 1974 Tertis wrote in his memoirs that he had recommended Hindemith to Walton, but Walton had recalled in 1962 that the idea came from Edward Clark of the BBC music department. Clark sent the manuscript to Hindemith, who agreed to give the first performance.

The first performance was at the Proms at the Queen's Hall, London, on 3 October 1929; Hindemith was the soloist and the Henry Wood Symphony Orchestra was conducted by the composer. Hindemith did not possess an immaculate technique, but played with strong character, a full tone and great emotion. The composer later wrote that Hindemith's "technique was marvellous, but he was rough—no nonsense about it. He just stood up and played." Tertis, who attended the premiere, realised that he had made a mistake in rejecting the concerto and soon took it up. When it was selected for performance at the International Society for Contemporary Music festival in Liège in September 1930, Tertis was the soloist, with Walton conducting. Over the next three years Tertis gave five more performances of the concerto.

1961 revision
Walton was given to revising his works after their first performances, and in 1961 he thinned the orchestration of the Viola Concerto, reducing the woodwind from triple to double, omitting one trumpet and the tuba, and adding a harp. The revised version was first performed at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on 18 January 1962, with John Coulling as soloist and the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. There is some uncertainty about the solo part in this version. The violist Frederick Riddle, with whom Walton performed the work many times, made some adjustments to the solo line. He understood that Walton approved his changes and intended to incorporate them in the score of the revision, but when it was published, in 1962, the original line remained intact. In a 2006 study of the concerto, James F. Dunham attributes the omission of Riddle's revisions to a mistake by the publishers. A 2001 biography of Walton reports the composer's specific preference for his original version, without Riddle's alterations.

Analysis
The concerto carries the dedication "To Christabel" (the Hon. Mrs Henry McLaren, with whom Walton had a romantic though platonic friendship). The original scoring is for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, cor anglais, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani and strings. The 1961 revision (published in 1962) stipulates three flutes (one doubling piccolo), oboe, cor anglais, two clarinets (second doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons,  four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, harp and strings. The playing time of the concerto is about 25 minutes.

In his study of Walton, Michael Kennedy comments that in its design the Viola Concerto resembles Elgar's Cello Concerto in beginning with a slow ("or at any rate ruminative") movement followed by a quick scherzo, and concentrating most weight into the finale, "which ends in a mood of pathos by recalling the principal theme of the first movement". Influences suggested by other writers are Prokofiev in his First Violin Concerto (1923), and Hindemith in his Kammermusik No. 5 (1927).

1. Andante comodo
The first movement, marked andante comodo, is in what Howes describes as a regular but condensed sonata form. After a three-bar introduction in which muted strings and low clarinet establish the tonality of A minor the viola enters with a melancholy  theme, in the middle register of the instrument. The theme is passed to the oboe, with the viola accompanying; then the viola repeats the theme in the high register. The pace quickens and a series of viola chords leads to the second subject, a tranquil theme in D minor, for the viola in its lower register. The themes are developed at varying dynamics and speeds, with solo viola and orchestra handing the themes to and fro and playing them in canon at times. There is no formal cadenza. After a vigorous tutti the movement ends quietly with the melancholic theme with which it began, clashing A Major over A Minor harmonies and unsettling the listener before quietly dying away.

2. Scherzo and trio
The second movement, unusually for a concerto, has the character of a scherzo. The first part, is in a quartal harmony, but strongly suggesting an E minor tonality. The tempo marking vivo con moto preciso, is in a basic  time but with many changes of metre. There is a climactic section for the full orchestra.

3. Finale – allegro moderato
In the words of the musicologist Christopher Palmer, "Here Walton pulls out all the stops". It is the longest of the three movements and as Frank Howes puts it in his study of Walton's music, it gathers up the mercurial emotions of the first two movements and reveals their serious purpose. The first theme is lively, elongating the rising fourths heard in the scherzo to rising fifths. It is introduced by the bassoon, followed by the viola over a pizzicato bass line, and is continued by the winds in contrapuntal lines. The second subject, deriving from the rocking figure of the first movement, is in the minor key. The development section mainly features on the first theme, gradually dividing it into fragments accompanying a long cantabile theme for the viola and later the woodwind. In the recapitulation, the first theme is given to the full orchestra, and the second to woodwinds and horns, with a viola counter-theme. A development passage leads to the coda that draws the earlier themes into a characteristic Walton fugal treatment, leading to the climactic synthesis of the themes.

Critical reception
The work was greeted with enthusiasm. It brought Walton to the forefront of British classical music. In The Manchester Guardian, Eric Blom wrote, "This young composer is a born genius" and said that it was tempting to call the concerto the best thing in recent music of any nationality. The musical scholar Sir Donald Tovey wrote:

In 1931 the teenage Benjamin Britten, later a friend but not an uncritical admirer of Walton, wrote in his diary about "Walton's wonderful Vla Concerto (beautifully played by Tertis) … a work of genius". A dissenting voice was that of Sir Edward Elgar, who heard the concerto at the Three Choirs Festival in 1932 – the only time the two composers met. Elgar did not like the work and is said to have expressed dismay privately that "such music should be thought fit for a stringed instrument".

Ballet
In 1972 the choreographer Joe Layton used the concerto for a ballet about Oscar Wilde, O.W., given by the Royal Ballet at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London. The prologue of the ballet was danced to music from Walton's The Quest, and for the main section the Viola Concerto was used. At the premiere Riddle was the viola soloist.

Recordings

The Riddle, Primrose and Power versions use the original scoring.
Source: Naxos Music Library.

Notes, references and sources

Notes

References

Sources

External links
 Video – William Walton – Viola Concerto (26:23).

Walton
Compositions by William Walton
1929 compositions
1961 compositions

Viola Concerto (Walton)


Lewis Edward Buxton (born 10 December 1983) is an English former professional footballer who played as a defender.

Buxton began his career with Portsmouth where he progressed through the youth ranks at the club. He gained first team experience with loan spells at Exeter City and AFC Bournemouth. He joined Stoke City in January 2005 in order to find first team football. His time at the Britannia Stadium was hampered by injury and he left for Sheffield Wednesday in October 2008. With the Owls Buxton established himself as a regular member of the team and spent seven years, making 207 appearances.

Career

Portsmouth
A promising young defender, after working his way up through the Portsmouth youth ranks, Buxton made his first team debut at the beginning of the 2001–02 season, aged 17, in a 1–0 win at Stockport County. He was soon a regular in Graham Rix's squad.

However, following Harry Redknapp's appointment as manager at the club, and the subsequent influx of new players, Buxton found games harder to come by. He was loaned out to Exeter City for October 2002, but upon his return to Fratton Park still found the competition too great. In January he was loaned to AFC Bournemouth for the remainder of the season. He played 18 games whilst at Bournemouth, and helped them achieve promotion.

He returned to Portsmouth for the 2003–04 season, but by October he was again not in the first team picture, and so returned to Bournemouth for the season, this time playing 28 games for the Cherries. It was a similar story during the 2004–05 season when Buxton failed to break into the team on a regular basis.

Stoke City
After turning down several loan offers he decided to call time on his Portsmouth career and transferred to Football League Championship club Stoke City in January 2005. He scored his first senior goal in Stoke's 3–1 defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers in September 2005.

He was sidelined for the first 2 months of the season due to a back injury, but he made his first start of the season in Stoke City's 1–0 win at Ipswich Town as a centre-half. However, he required an operation on his back, which kept him out for the remainder of the 2006–07 season. He since recovered and was ready for pre-season training, prior to the start of the 2007–08 season. He made his comeback as a substitute for Stephen Wright in the 33rd minute of Stoke's 2–1 win over Charlton Athletic on 18 August 2007. Buxton only appeared fleetingly in the 2007–08 season, however he impressed when called upon putting in a man of the match performance against Queens Park Rangers.

Sheffield Wednesday
On 17 October 2008 Buxton moved to Sheffield Wednesday on an initial one-month loan deal. This was made a full deal on 26 January 2009 after Buxton expressed his desire to leave Stoke and move to Wednesday. He signed a -year contract. On 31 January 2009, Buxton scored his first goal for Wednesday against Birmingham City. He has played in many different positions at Hillsborough. These are Right Back, Left Back, Centre Back, Right Wing and Centre Midfield. He achieved promotion to the Championship with Wednesday in May 2012.

In 2012–13, Buxton was voted player of the year by the Sheffield Wednesday supporters. This was following a consistency across over 40 games in a regularly changed Wednesday defensive unit. Buxton was released by Wednesday at the end of the 2014–15 season.

Rotherham United
In June 2015 Buxton signed for Rotherham United on a one-year contract with the option of a further year. After Rotherham had succeeded in surviving from relegation in the Championship, finishing one place above the drop in 21st, the club decided to opt in not keeping Buxton for a further season, and instead let his contract run out, releasing him.

Bolton Wanderers
On 5 August 2016, following a successful trial with Charlton Athletic, Buxton turned down a one-year contract signing in favour of a one-year contract to join Bolton Wanderers. On 11 May 2017 the club confirmed that Buxton would be leaving at the end of his contract on 30 June. Buxton retired from playing football after leaving the Trotters.

Post Retirement
After retiring Buxton co-founded Human Experience Coaching, working with players in the Premier League, Championship, and Major League Soccer and also wrote a book named "The Athlete's Bible"https://www.amazon.co.uk/Athletes-Bible-High-Performance-Mindset-ebook/dp/B087TKYG73

Career statistics
Source:

A.  The "Other" column constitutes appearances and goals in the Football League play-offs and Football League Trophy.

Honours
Bournemouth
 Football League Two runner-up: 2002–03

Stoke City
 EFL Championship runner-up: 2007–08

 Sheffield Wednesday
 Football League One runner-up: 2011–12
 Player of the Year 2012–13

 Bolton Wanderers
EFL League One runner-up: 2016–17

References

External links

(Note: the soccerbase records are shared over two different pages)

1983 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Newport, Isle of Wight
English men's footballers
Footballers from the Isle of Wight
Men's association football defenders
Portsmouth F.C. players
Exeter City F.C. players
AFC Bournemouth players
Stoke City F.C. players
Sheffield Wednesday F.C. players
Rotherham United F.C. players
Bolton Wanderers F.C. players
English Football League players

Lewis Buxton


The Discourses on Livy, also Discourses or Discorsi, was written around 1517 and published in 1531 by Niccolò Machiavelli.

It is a discussion about the history of early Ancient Rome. Although it strays very far from this and also uses modern political examples to illustrate points. Machiavelli presents it as a series of lessons on how a republic should be started and structured.

While it more openly explains the advantages of republics, it also has many similar themes from his other works. For example, Machiavelli said that to save a republic from corruption, it is needed to return it to a "kingly state" using violent means. He excuses Romulus for killing his brother Remus and co-ruler Titus Tatius to gain absolute power for himself in that he made a "civil way of life". Commentators disagree about how much the two works agree with each other, as Machiavelli often refers to leaders of republics as "princes". Machiavelli even sometimes acts as an advisor to tyrants. Other scholars have pointed out the power-hungry and imperialistic features of Machiavelli's republic. Nevertheless, it became one of the central texts of modern republicanism.

16th-century books

Discourses on Livy


Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (; 20 February 1844 – 5 September 1906) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. His greatest achievements were the development of statistical mechanics, and the statistical explanation of the second law of thermodynamics. In 1877 he provided the current definition of entropy, , where Ω is the number of microstates whose energy equals the system's energy, interpreted as a measure of statistical disorder of a system. Max Planck named the constant  the Boltzmann constant.

Statistical mechanics is one of the pillars of modern physics. It describes how macroscopic observations (such as temperature and pressure) are related to microscopic parameters that fluctuate around an average. It connects thermodynamic quantities (such as heat capacity) to microscopic behavior, whereas, in classical thermodynamics, the only available option would be to measure and tabulate such quantities for various materials.

Biography

Childhood and education
Boltzmann was born in Erdberg, a suburb of Vienna into a Catholic family. His father, Ludwig Georg Boltzmann, was a revenue official. His grandfather, who had moved to Vienna from Berlin, was a clock manufacturer, and Boltzmann's mother, Katharina Pauernfeind, was originally from Salzburg. Boltzmann was home-schooled until the age of ten, and then attended high school in Linz, Upper Austria. When Boltzmann was 15, his father died.

Starting in 1863, Boltzmann studied mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna. He received his doctorate in 1866 and his venia legendi in 1869. Boltzmann worked closely with Josef Stefan, director of the institute of physics. It was Stefan who introduced Boltzmann to Maxwell's work.

Academic career
In 1869 at age 25, thanks to a letter of recommendation written by Josef Stefan, Boltzmann was appointed full Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Graz in the province of Styria. In 1869 he spent several months in Heidelberg working with Robert Bunsen and Leo Königsberger and in 1871 with Gustav Kirchhoff and Hermann von Helmholtz in Berlin. In 1873 Boltzmann joined the University of Vienna as Professor of Mathematics and there he stayed until 1876.

In 1872, long before women were admitted to Austrian universities, he met Henriette von Aigentler, an aspiring teacher of mathematics and physics in Graz. She was refused permission to audit lectures unofficially. Boltzmann supported her decision to appeal, which was successful. On 17 July 1876 Ludwig Boltzmann married Henriette; they had three daughters: Henriette (1880), Ida (1884) and Else (1891); and a son, Arthur Ludwig (1881). Boltzmann went back to Graz to take up the chair of Experimental Physics. Among his students in Graz were Svante Arrhenius and Walther Nernst. He spent 14 happy years in Graz and it was there that he developed his statistical concept of nature.

Boltzmann was appointed to the Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Munich in Bavaria, Germany in 1890.

In 1894, Boltzmann succeeded his teacher Joseph Stefan as Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Vienna.

Final years and death

Boltzmann spent a great deal of effort in his final years defending his theories. He did not get along with some of his colleagues in Vienna, particularly Ernst Mach, who became a professor of philosophy and history of sciences in 1895. That same year Georg Helm and Wilhelm Ostwald presented their position on energetics at a meeting in Lübeck. They saw energy, and not matter, as the chief component of the universe. Boltzmann's position carried the day among other physicists who supported his atomic theories in the debate. In 1900, Boltzmann went to the University of Leipzig, on the invitation of Wilhelm Ostwald. Ostwald offered Boltzmann the professorial chair in physics, which became vacant when Gustav Heinrich Wiedemann died. After Mach retired due to bad health, Boltzmann returned to Vienna in 1902. In 1903, Boltzmann, together with Gustav von Escherich and Emil Müller, founded the Austrian Mathematical Society. His students included Karl Přibram, Paul Ehrenfest and Lise Meitner.

In Vienna, Boltzmann taught physics and also lectured on philosophy. Boltzmann's lectures on natural philosophy were very popular and received considerable attention. His first lecture was an enormous success. Even though the largest lecture hall had been chosen for it, the people stood all the way down the staircase. Because of the great successes of Boltzmann's philosophical lectures, the Emperor invited him for a reception at the Palace.

In 1905, he gave an invited course of lectures in the summer session at the University of California in Berkeley, which he described in a popular essay A German professor's trip to El Dorado.

In May 1906, Boltzmann's deteriorating mental condition described in a letter by the Dean as "a serious form of neurasthenia" forced him to resign his position, and his symptoms indicate he experienced what would today be diagnosed as bipolar disorder. Four months later he died by suicide on 5 September 1906, by hanging himself while on vacation with his wife and daughter in Duino, near Trieste (then Austria).
He is buried in the Viennese Zentralfriedhof. His tombstone bears the inscription of Boltzmann's entropy formula: .

Philosophy
Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases seemed to presuppose the reality of atoms and molecules, but almost all German philosophers and many scientists like Ernst Mach and the physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald disbelieved their existence. Boltzmann was exposed to molecular theory by the paper of atomist James Clerk Maxwell entitled "Illustrations of the Dynamical Theory of Gases" which described temperature as dependent on the speed of the molecules thereby introducing statistics into physics. This inspired Boltzmann to embrace atomism and extend the theory.

Boltzmann wrote treatises on philosophy such as "On the question of the objective existence of processes in inanimate nature" (1897). He was a realist.

Physics
Boltzmann's most important scientific contributions were in the kinetic theory of gases based upon the Second law of thermodynamics. This was important because Newtonian mechanics did not differentiate between past and future motion, but Rudolf Clausius invention of entropy to describe the second law was based on Disgregation or dispersion at the molecular level so that the future was one-directional. Boltzmann was twenty-five years of age when he came upon James Clerk Maxwell's work on the kinetic theory of gases which hypothesized that temperature was caused by collision of molecules. Maxwell used statistics to create a curve of molecular kinetic energy distribution from which Boltzmann clarified and developed the ideas of kinetic theory and entropy based upon statistical atomic theory creating the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution as a description of molecular speeds in a gas. It was Boltzmann who derived the first equation to model the dynamic evolution of the probability distribution Maxwell and he had created. Boltzmann's key insight was that dispersion occurred due to the statistical probability of increased molecular "states". Boltzmann went beyond Maxwell by applying his distribution equation to not solely gases, but also liquids and solids. Boltzmann also extended his theory in his 1877 paper beyond Carnot, Rudolf Clausius, James Clerk Maxwell and Lord Kelvin by demonstrating that entropy is contributed to by heat, spatial separation, and radiation. Maxwell–Boltzmann statistics and the Boltzmann distribution remain central in the foundations of classical statistical mechanics. They are also applicable to other phenomena that do not require quantum statistics and provide insight into the meaning of temperature.

Most chemists, since the discoveries of John Dalton in 1808, and James Clerk Maxwell in Scotland and Josiah Willard Gibbs in the United States, shared Boltzmann's belief in atoms and molecules, but much of the physics establishment did not share this belief until decades later. Boltzmann had a long-running dispute with the editor of the preeminent German physics journal of his day, who refused to let Boltzmann refer to atoms and molecules as anything other than convenient theoretical constructs. Only a couple of years after Boltzmann's death, Perrin's studies of colloidal suspensions (1908–1909), based on Einstein's theoretical studies of 1905, confirmed the values of the Avogadro constant and the Boltzmann constant, convincing the world that the tiny particles really exist.

To quote Planck, "The logarithmic connection between entropy and probability was first stated by L. Boltzmann in his kinetic theory of gases". This famous formula for entropy S is An alternative is the information entropy definition introduced in 1948 by Claude Shannon. It was intended for use in communication theory but is applicable in all areas. It reduces to Boltzmann's expression when all the probabilities are equal, but can, of course, be used when they are not. Its virtue is that it yields immediate results without resorting to factorials or Stirling's approximation. Similar formulas are found, however, as far back as the work of Boltzmann, and explicitly in Gibbs (see reference).

where  is the Boltzmann constant, and ln is the natural logarithm.  (for , a German word meaning "probability") is the probability of occurrence of a macrostate or, more precisely, the number of possible microstates corresponding to the macroscopic state of a system – the number of (unobservable) "ways" in the (observable) thermodynamic state of a system that can be realized by assigning different positions and momenta to the various molecules. Boltzmann's paradigm was an ideal gas of  identical particles, of which  are in the th microscopic condition (range) of position and momentum.  can be counted using the formula for permutations

where  ranges over all possible molecular conditions, and where  denotes factorial. The "correction" in the denominator account for indistinguishable particles in the same condition.

Boltzmann could also be considered one of the forerunners of quantum mechanics due to his suggestion in 1877 that the energy levels of a physical system could be discrete, although Boltzmann used this as a mathematical device with no physical meaning.

Boltzmann equation

The Boltzmann equation was developed to describe the dynamics of an ideal gas.

where  represents the distribution function of single-particle position and momentum at a given time (see the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution),  is a force,  is the mass of a particle,  is the time and  is an average velocity of particles.

This equation describes the temporal and spatial variation of the probability distribution for the position and momentum of a density distribution of a cloud of points in single-particle phase space. (See Hamiltonian mechanics.) The first term on the left-hand side represents the explicit time variation of the distribution function, while the second term gives the spatial variation, and the third term describes the effect of any force acting on the particles. The right-hand side of the equation represents the effect of collisions.

In principle, the above equation completely describes the dynamics of an ensemble of gas particles, given appropriate boundary conditions. This first-order differential equation has a deceptively simple appearance, since  can represent an arbitrary single-particle distribution function. Also, the force acting on the particles depends directly on the velocity distribution function . The Boltzmann equation is notoriously difficult to integrate. David Hilbert spent years trying to solve it without any real success.

The form of the collision term assumed by Boltzmann was approximate. However, for an ideal gas the standard Chapman–Enskog solution of the Boltzmann equation is highly accurate. It is expected to lead to incorrect results for an ideal gas only under shock wave conditions.

Boltzmann tried for many years to "prove" the second law of thermodynamics using his gas-dynamical equation – his famous H-theorem. However the key assumption he made in formulating the collision term was "molecular chaos", an assumption which breaks time-reversal symmetry as is necessary for anything which could imply the second law. It was from the probabilistic assumption alone that Boltzmann's apparent success emanated, so his long dispute with Loschmidt and others over Loschmidt's paradox ultimately ended in his failure.

Finally, in the 1970s E. G. D. Cohen and J. R. Dorfman proved that a systematic (power series) extension of the Boltzmann equation to high densities is mathematically impossible. Consequently, nonequilibrium statistical mechanics for dense gases and liquids focuses on the Green–Kubo relations, the fluctuation theorem, and other approaches instead.

Second thermodynamics law as a law of disorder

The idea that the second law of thermodynamics or "entropy law" is a law of disorder (or that dynamically ordered states are "infinitely improbable") is due to Boltzmann's view of the second law of thermodynamics.

In particular, it was Boltzmann's attempt to reduce it to a stochastic collision function, or law of probability following from the random collisions of mechanical particles. Following Maxwell, Boltzmann modeled gas molecules as colliding billiard balls in a box, noting that with each collision nonequilibrium velocity distributions (groups of molecules moving at the same speed and in the same direction) would become increasingly disordered leading to a final state of macroscopic uniformity and maximum microscopic disorder or the state of maximum entropy (where the macroscopic uniformity corresponds to the obliteration of all field potentials or gradients). The second law, he argued, was thus simply the result of the fact that in a world of mechanically colliding particles disordered states are the most probable. Because there are so many more possible disordered states than ordered ones, a system will almost always be found either in the state of maximum disorder – the macrostate with the greatest number of accessible microstates such as a gas in a box at equilibrium – or moving towards it. A dynamically ordered state, one with molecules moving "at the same speed and in the same direction", Boltzmann concluded, is thus "the most improbable case conceivable...an infinitely improbable configuration of energy."

Boltzmann accomplished the feat of showing that the second law of thermodynamics is only a statistical fact. The gradual disordering of energy is analogous to the disordering of an initially ordered pack of cards under repeated shuffling, and just as the cards will finally return to their original order if shuffled a gigantic number of times, so the entire universe must some-day regain, by pure chance, the state from which it first set out. (This optimistic coda to the idea of the dying universe becomes somewhat muted when one attempts to estimate the timeline which will probably elapse before it spontaneously occurs.) The tendency for entropy increase seems to cause difficulty to beginners in thermodynamics, but is easy to understand from the standpoint of the theory of probability. Consider two ordinary dice, with both sixes face up. After the dice are shaken, the chance of finding these two sixes face up is small (1 in 36); thus one can say that the random motion (the agitation) of the dice, like the chaotic collisions of molecules because of thermal energy, causes the less probable state to change to one that is more probable. With millions of dice, like the millions of atoms involved in thermodynamic calculations, the probability of their all being sixes becomes so vanishingly small that the system must move to one of the more probable states.

Ludwig Boltzmann's legacy and impact on modern science

Ludwig Boltzmann's contributions to physics and philosophy have left a lasting impact on modern science. His pioneering work in statistical mechanics and thermodynamics laid the foundation for some of the most fundamental concepts in physics. For instance, Max Planck in quantizing resonators in his Black Body theory of radiation used Boltzmann's constant to describe the entropy of the system to arrive at his formula in 1900. However, Boltzmann's work was not always readily accepted during his lifetime, and he faced opposition from some of his contemporaries, particularly in regards to the existence of atoms and molecules. Nevertheless, the validity and importance of his ideas were eventually recognized, and they have since become cornerstones of modern physics. Here, we delve into some aspects of Boltzmann's legacy and his influence on various areas of science.

Atomic theory and the existence of atoms and molecules
Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases was one of the first attempts to explain macroscopic properties, such as pressure and temperature, in terms of the behavior of individual atoms and molecules. Although many chemists were already accepting the existence of atoms and molecules, the broader physics community took some time to embrace this view. Boltzmann's long-running dispute with the editor of a prominent German physics journal over the acceptance of atoms and molecules underscores the initial resistance to this idea.

It was only after experiments, such as Jean Perrin's studies of colloidal suspensions, confirmed the values of the Avogadro constant and the Boltzmann constant that the existence of atoms and molecules gained wider acceptance. Boltzmann's kinetic theory played a crucial role in demonstrating the reality of atoms and molecules and explaining various phenomena in gases, liquids, and solids.

Statistical mechanics and the Boltzmann constant
Statistical mechanics, which Boltzmann pioneered, connects macroscopic observations with microscopic behaviors. His statistical explanation of the second law of thermodynamics was a significant achievement, and he provided the current definition of entropy (S = k_B ln Ω), where k_B is the Boltzmann constant and Ω is the number of microstates corresponding to a given macrostate.

Max Planck later named the constant k_B as the Boltzmann constant in honor of Boltzmann's contributions to statistical mechanics. The Boltzmann constant plays a central role in relating thermodynamic quantities to microscopic properties, and it is now a fundamental constant in physics, appearing in various equations across many scientific disciplines.

The Boltzmann Equation and Modern Uses
Because the Boltzmann equation is practical in solving problems in rarefied or dilute gases, it has been used in many diverse areas of technology. It is used to calculate Space Shuttle re-entry in the upper atmosphere. It is the basis for Neutron transport theory, and ion transport in Semiconductors.

Influence on quantum mechanics

Boltzmann's work in statistical mechanics laid the groundwork for understanding the statistical behavior of particles in systems with a large number of degrees of freedom. In his 1877 paper he used discrete energy levels of physical systems as a mathematical device and went on to show that the same could apply to continuous systems which might be seen as a forerunner to the development of quantum mechanics. One biographer of Boltzmann says that Boltzmann's approach "pav[ed] the way for Planck."

The concept of quantization of energy levels became a fundamental postulate in quantum mechanics, leading to groundbreaking theories like quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory. Thus, Boltzmann's early insights into the quantization of energy levels had a profound influence on the development of quantum physics.

Works

Awards and honours
In 1885 he became a member of the Imperial Austrian Academy of Sciences and in 1887 he became the President of the University of Graz. He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1888 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1899. Numerous things are named in his honour.

See also

 Thermodynamics
 Statistical Mechanics

References

Further reading
 Roman Sexl & John Blackmore (eds.), "Ludwig Boltzmann – Ausgewahlte Abhandlungen", (Ludwig Boltzmann Gesamtausgabe, Band 8), Vieweg, Braunschweig, 1982.
 John Blackmore (ed.), "Ludwig Boltzmann – His Later Life and Philosophy, 1900–1906, Book One: A Documentary History", Kluwer, 1995.
 John Blackmore, "Ludwig Boltzmann – His Later Life and Philosophy, 1900–1906, Book Two: The Philosopher", Kluwer, Dordrecht, Netherlands, 1995.
 John Blackmore (ed.), "Ludwig Boltzmann – Troubled Genius as Philosopher", in Synthese, Volume 119, Nos. 1 & 2, 1999, pp. 1–232.

 Boltzmann, Ludwig Boltzmann – Leben und Briefe, ed., Walter Hoeflechner, Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt. Graz, Oesterreich, 1994
 Brush, Stephen G. (ed. & tr.), Boltzmann, Lectures on Gas Theory, Berkeley, California: U. of California Press, 1964
 Brush, Stephen G. (ed.), Kinetic Theory, New York: Pergamon Press, 1965

 Ehrenfest, P. & Ehrenfest, T. (1911) "Begriffliche Grundlagen der statistischen Auffassung in der Mechanik", in Encyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften mit Einschluß ihrer Anwendungen Band IV, 2. Teil ( F. Klein and C. Müller (eds.). Leipzig: Teubner, pp. 3–90. Translated as The Conceptual Foundations of the Statistical Approach in Mechanics. New York: Cornell University Press, 1959.

  English translation by Morton Masius of the 2nd ed. of Waermestrahlung. Reprinted by Dover (1959) & (1991).
 Sharp, Kim (2019). Entropy and the Tao of Counting: A Brief Introduction to Statistical Mechanics and the Second Law of Thermodynamics (SpringerBriefs in Physics). Springer Nature.
  Reprinted: Dover (1979).

External links

 Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics Chapter One: Girlhood in Vienna gives Lise Meitner's account of Boltzmann's teaching and career.
 Eftekhari, Ali, "Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906)." Discusses Boltzmann's philosophical opinions, with numerous quotes.

1844 births
1906 suicides
1906 deaths
Scientists from Vienna
19th-century Austrian physicists
Thermodynamicists
Fluid dynamicists
Burials at the Vienna Central Cemetery
University of Vienna alumni
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Corresponding members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences
Suicides in Austria-Hungary
Foreign Members of the Royal Society
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Mathematical physicists
Theoretical physicists
Rectors of universities in Austria
19th-century Austrian philosophers
20th-century Austrian philosophers
Members of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities

Ludwig Boltzmann


The chemical elements beyond lead are radioactive, and they do not have stable isotopes. This means that they will decay into other elements. As their atomic number (the number of protons in their nucleus) increases, the time it takes for them to decay tends to get shorter, going from billions of years to less than one millisecond. There is a theory in physics that says that after a number of elements with short half lives, there will be others with longer half lives. These are generally known as "islands of stability". These elements are expected to have isotopes that decay in several minutes.The theory is that, similarly to electron shells, the nucleus of an atom is made of "shells" (which can be thought of as layers of protons and neutrons), and that when a nucleus has entirely filled shells, it is significantly more stable.

A filled shell would have "magic numbers" of neutrons and protons, known magic numbers are 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126; however, further numbers are predicted to exist. One element that is predicted to be quite stable is unbihexium, in particular, its isotope unbihexium-310, which would be "doubly magic" (both its atomic number of 126 and neutron number of 184 are thought to be magic) and so would be the most likely to be very stable. The next lightest doubly magic isotope of an element is lead-208, the heaviest stable isotope of any element and the most stable heavy metal.

Isotopes have been produced with enough protons to put them on an island of stability but with too few neutrons. It is possible that these elements possess unusual properties and, if they have isotopes with long enough lifespans, would be available for various uses (such as particle accelerator targets and neutron sources).

References

Chemical elements

Island of stability


The Eastren Front o Warld War II wis a theatre o conflict atween the European Axis Pouers an co-belligerent Finland agin the Soviet Union (USSR), Poland, an ither Allies, that teuk place across Central Europe, Eastren Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics) an Sootheast Europe (Balkans) frae 22 Juin 1941 til 9 Mey 1945. It wis kent as the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union an some o'ts successor states, whiles awhaur else it wis cried the Eastren Front.

Eastren Front (Warld War II)


The HK21 is a German 7.62 mm general-purpose machine gun, developed in 1961 by small arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch and based on the G3 battle rifle. The weapon is in use with the armed forces of several Asian, African and Latin American countries. It was also license-manufactured by Fábrica de Braço de Prata in Portugal as the m/968 and in Mexico by SEDENA as the MG21. In the German military (Bundeswehr) and the federal police (Bundespolizei) it is designated "G8".

Design details

Operating mechanism

The HK21 is a selective fire roller-delayed blowback-operated firearm with a semi-rigid locking mechanism designed to retard the rearward movement of the bolt. This delay was achieved by artificially increasing the inertia of the bolt by using an angular, interposed transmission system, installed symmetrically to the bore axis, with two cylindrical rollers acting as transmission elements against a movable locking piece which drives the heavy bolt carrier. The two-piece bolt assembly consists of a bolt head, which contains the aforementioned rollers, and a supporting locking piece and bolt carrier. During the "unlocking" sequence, the bolt head receives the recoil impulse from the ignited cartridge and exerts rearward pressure against the rollers, seated in recesses in the barrel extension. The rollers are driven inward against angled ramps of the barrel extension and interact with the wedge-shaped locking piece, projecting it backwards. Thus a chambering dependent (4:1 for 7.62×51mm NATO) or (3:1 for 5.56×45mm NATO) transmission ratio is maintained (as long as the rollers move on the inclined surfaces of the barrel extension and locking piece) of the bolt carrier and locking piece relative to the bolt head; the bolt head carrier travels backwards significantly faster than the bolt head, ensuring a safe drop of pressure within the barrel prior to extraction. Since extraction is carried-out under relatively high pressure, the barrel's chamber received a series of flutes designed to help free the bloated cartridge casing from the chamber wall.
Like the G3 and HK33 assault rifle bolts the HK21 bolt features an anti-bounce mechanism that prevents the bolt from bouncing off the barrel's breech surface. The "bolt head locking lever" is a spring-loaded claw mounted on the bolt carrier that grabs the bolt head as the bolt carrier group goes into battery. The lever essentially ratchets into place with friction, providing enough resistance to being re-opened that the bolt carrier does not rebound. The spring-powered claw extractor is also contained inside the bolt while the lever ejector is located inside the trigger housing (actuated by the recoiling bolt).

The reliable functioning of roller-delayed blowback mechanisms is limited by specific ammunition and arm parameters like bullet weight, propellant charge, barrel length and amount of wear. For obtaining a proper and safe functioning parameters bandwidth Heckler & Koch offer a variety of locking pieces with different mass and shoulder angles. The angles are critical and determine the unlock timing and pressure curve progression as the locking pieces act in unison with the bolt head carrier.

Features

The HK21 uses a modified G3 receiver that has been extended to the front sight base and is equipped with a detachable bipod (mounted either in front of the feed mechanism or at the muzzle) and tripod and vehicle mounting points. The HK21 has close to a 48% parts interchangeability with the G3.
The bolt features a spring-powered extractor and an anti-bounce device that prevents the bolt head from glancing off the barrel extension upon forward return of the locking assembly. The lever-type ejector system is contained in the trigger group housing and is actuated with every shot by the recoiling bolt. The weapon has a hammer striker and is fired from the closed bolt position, rare for general purpose machine guns. Firing from a closed bolt contributes to accurate fire, but is disadvantageous for heat dissipation. The trigger group, which is integrated with the pistol grip and hinged from the receiver, is equipped with a fire control selector switch (selector lever in the "E" or "1" position – semi-automatic fire, "F" or "20" – continuous fire mode) that doubles as a manual safety (rotating the lever into the "S" or "0" setting disables the trigger, weapon is considered "safe").

The HK21 has a free-floating, heavy, quick-change barrel fitted with a slotted flash suppressor. The firearm is equipped with an iron sight line that consist of a rotary rear drum and hooded front post. The rear aperture sight is mechanically adjustable for both windage and elevation from  in  increments for 7.62×51mm NATO models or  in  increments for 5.56×45mm NATO models.

By simply swapping out several components such as the barrel, bolt and feed plate unit, the weapon can be quickly converted to the intermediate 7.62×39mm and 5.56×45mm NATO chamberings.

Feeding
The machine gun feeds from the left-hand side through a variety of disintegrating metallic link ammunition belt types: the American M13 linked belt, the German DM6 counterpart to the M13 or the German non-disintegrating metallic link DM1 belt. The ratcheting wheel feed unit was designed as an easily removable module that is inserted into the bottom portion of the feed block (installed in place of the standard magazine well), below the barrel axis. As a result of this configuration (the bolt passes over the belt), the ammunition belt is aligned upside down compared to most other belt-fed weapons (that is, the links face downward). The feed mechanism is actuated by the reciprocating movement of the bolt; a curved cam slot on the bottom of the bolt engages an actuator in the feed mechanism, rotating the double sprockets and positioning a new round in the feed path. Simple conversion from belt to magazine feed is possible by installing an adapter in the feed block which enables the use of H&K's proprietary 20-round box magazine (from the G3 rifle) or a 50-round drum magazine.

Variants

G8 and G8A1
The German Army, German Navy and the Federal Police use a variant of the HK11 designated the Gewehr-8 (or G8). It is tapped for telescopic sights and has a quick-change barrel with a bipod that uses either a heavy match-grade bull-barrel or a heavy barrel for automatic fire. It was designed to use G3-type 10- or 20-round box magazines in the designated marksman role, but could also use a special 50-round drum magazine for sustained supporting or suppressing fire. The modified G8A1 adopted the improvements of the HK11A1 series and was only able to feed from magazines and drums.

GR-series
The GR-series were "sanitized" (i.e., having no serial numbers or identifying marks) Heckler & Koch weapons used by special operations forces. They differed from the stock weapons in that they had optical sights, no provisions for iron sights, and came standard in Woodland (-C suffix) or Desert (-S suffix) camouflage.
GR-6 Automatic Rifle (HK13).
GR-9 Light Machinegun (HK23).

HK21A1
In the early 1970s the HK21's design was simplified and the feed mechanism was modified. The machine gun's weight was increased, a carrying handle and a hooked buttstock with improved buffer mechanism were also added. The barrels were internally revised to polygonal rifling. Since then, the HK21 was offered in two main variants: the HK21A1 general-purpose machine gun (with a different belt feed mechanism) and the HK11A1 light machine gun. (optimized for magazine feed only). The HK11A1 proved more successful in export sales and was adopted by the Hellenic Army and several African and Asian armies. Both weapons, as in the original HK21, can be converted to chamber the 5.56×45mm NATO round by replacing the appropriate components.

HK21E
During the 1980s both the HK21A1 and HK11A1 were modernized based on user and testing feedback, resulting in a new modular family of machine guns that share the same receiver, trigger group and interchangeable barrels and feed units, consisting of:
HK11E light machine gun (magazine fed, chambered in 7.62×51mm NATO)
HK13E light machine gun (magazine fed, chambered in 5.56×45mm NATO)
HK21E general-purpose machine gun (belt-fed, 7.62×51mm NATO)
HK23E light machine gun (belt-fed, 5.56×45mm NATO).
The "E" simply stands for "Export" model. They use STANAG rather than HK proprietary magazines and come with different optics than German military models.

The E model is a thoroughly revised variant aimed to improve the reliability, efficiency and service life of the weapon. For this the length of the receiver was increased by  to provide additional recoil length for the bolt group. The recoil reduction improved accuracy of fire. Reinforcing bars were added to the receiver to provide additional strength and a guaranteed 60,000 rounds minimum service life. The bolt head, extractor and locking roller holder were completely redesigned as were the bolt carrier and recoil spring assembly, belt feed unit, buffer, barrel and trigger group. The redesigned belt feed mechanism transports the ammunition belt in two steps reducing stress on the feed and ammunition belt.

Compared to the older HK21A1 and HK11A1, the modernized "Export" weapons also feature a longer barrel shroud, extended by  towards the front, which also resulted in a longer sight radius; the barrel extension was modified (the HK21E also received a longer barrel); a burst fire mode was incorporated into the trigger group as the fourth selector setting (3-round burst); a polymer barrel handle was added; space for a cleaning kit was added in the grip; the rear sight was modified with an adjustable drum; a bipod with a 3-position height adjustment and 30-degree tilt mechanisms replaced the simple folding bipod; the feed mechanism was modified to provide continuous feeding (by moving the belt in two stages, during both forward and rear movement of the bolt), a forward assist for silent loading was provided and the machine guns were adapted to use NATO-standard optical sight mounts.

When employed in the light machine gun (infantry assault) role, the HK21E stores its ammunition belt in a 100-round sheet metal container, fastened to the bottom of the feed mechanism (as in the HK21A1). The ability to use G3 or STANAG (for HK23E) box or drum magazines is available with an optional feed module kit that consists of the bolt, recoil spring and belt feed module or magazine well.
When employed in the belt-fed medium machine gun (fire support) role the HK21E provides a cook-off rate in excess of 1,000 rounds fired in quick succession. The shock-absorbing tripod weighs .

HK25
A heavy machine gun variant of the HK21 chambered in .50 BMG/12.7×99mm NATO was proposed but never went into production.

HK51B
An aftermarket conversion of an HK21 general purpose machinegun into a belt-fed short carbine created by gunsmiths F. J. Vollmer & Company Inc. The barrel is 8.9 inches long, has an overall length of 21 inches, weighs about 11 lbs. unloaded, and has a rate of fire of 950 to 1,000 rounds per minute. Fixed barrel models have a "Tropical" MP5-style handguard with ventilation slots. Quick-change barrel models have a four-position Picatinny Rail handguard (usually used with a vertical foregrip). It feeds from a 100-round HK21 belt box and uses either the American M13 or German DM6 disintegrating link belt. Vollmer only made 30 guns, 2 of which had quick-change barrels.

Users

:HK23E variant used by Comandos Anfibios
: HK11A1 and HK21A1 variants.
:HK21E variant issued to special forces,  HK21A1 variant in use by BOPE

: HK21A1 variant.
: HK21 variant.
: HK21A1 variant

: HK11A1 variant. Made under license.
: HK21E variant.
: HK21A1 variant.
: HK21E variant issued to Zemessardze National Guard units.
: HK11A1 and HK21E variants.
: HK21E1 variant.
: HK21A1 variant.
: HK21E variant. Made under license.
: HK11 and HK21 variants.
: HK21 variant.

: HK21 variant.
: HK21 variant.
: HK11 and HK21 variants.
: HK21 variant used by 32nd Battalion during South African Border War.
: HK21 variant.
 Trials for Home Guard only.

: HK23E variant is employed by the Turkish Gendarmerie.

: HK23E variant.
: HK21 was used by the Navy SEALs in the Vietnam War and also used by the Delta Force in Operation Eagle Claw.

Former users

 : HK21E variant, made under license Replaced in 2019 by 5.56×45mm FN Minimi Mk3 machine guns.

References

Citations

General bibliography

External links

 HKPRO

7.62×51mm NATO machine guns
General-purpose machine guns
Roller-delayed blowback firearms
Heckler & Koch machine guns
Light machine guns
Machine guns of Germany
Cold War weapons of Germany
Weapons and ammunition introduced in 1961
Modular firearms

Heckler & Koch HK21


South Dakota Department of Transportation Bridge No. 63-210-282 was a historic bridge in rural Turner County, South Dakota, carrying 461st Avenue across the East Fork Vermillion River southwest of Centerville. Built in 1909, it was a well-preserved example of bridges built for the county by the Iowa Bridge Company. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.  The bridge's original Pratt through main span was replaced by a steel girder span in 2009–10.

Description and history
South Dakota Department of Transportation Bridge No. 63-210-282 was located about  west and  south of Centerville, carrying 461st Avenue over the East Fork Vermillion River just north of 296th Street. It was a three-span structure, with timber-framed approach spans on either side of a central Pratt through truss. The main span was , and rested on steel tubular piers, while the outermost supports were timber crib abutments. The truss elements were riveted together, and the bridge's deck support consisted of two layers of wooden planking set on timber beams laid over steel I-beams, which were riveted to hangar plates on the trusses.

The bridge was built in 1909 by the Iowa Bridge Company of Des Moines, Iowa. The county had a contract with that company to provide its steel truss bridges between 1905 and 1911, apparently as part of a common but illegal practice of "pooling", in which companies divided the state into areas where they did not compete against one another. This bridge was a typical example of the company's work.  It was replaced between 2009 and 2010.

See also

National Register of Historic Places listings in Turner County, South Dakota
List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in South Dakota

References

National Register of Historic Places in Turner County, South Dakota
Bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in South Dakota
Bridges completed in 1909
Transportation in Turner County, South Dakota


PTT Bulletin Board System (PTT, , telnet://ptt.cc) is the largest terminal-based bulletin board system (BBS) based in Taiwan. It was founded by Yi-Chin Tu and other students from the National Taiwan University in 1995 as Professional Technology Temple, and it is currently administered by the Electronic BBS Research Society as a non-commercial and open-source BBS.

PTT has more than 1.5 million registered users, with over 150,000 users online during peak hours. The BBS has over 20,000 boards covering a multitude of topics, and more than 20,000 articles and 500,000 comments are posted every day.

Background
Using the TELNET protocol, PTT provides a quick, free of charge, and open online forum community. Currently, PTT has two branch sites, PTT2 () and PTT3 (). Of the three sites, the main site PTT is largest in scale and capacity, currently handling up to 150,215 visitors online at a time (9 September 2008), making it the largest Chinese language-based BBS in the world.

The main site was founded on 9 September 1995 by Yi-Chin Tu ( Dù Yìjǐn), then a sophomore in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taiwan University. PTT2 was founded in 2000, with the aim of providing a similar system centered around groups and individuals. PTT3, powered by MediaWiki, was founded in 2004 in Washington, D.C., United States for Taiwanese students studying abroad. PTT also provides wiki and blog services for registered users. The PTTwiki service was activated on 5 February 2004 and powered by Tavi wiki system. It is the main wiki service for individuals in Taiwan.

Since 2000, PTT has become the largest online forum in Taiwan due to its increasing number of users. Various issues are enthusiastically discussed on PTT, even to a profound extent generating social impacts in reality. The newspaper and television media started to report on PTT, with journalists assigned to monitor PTT for the latest updates.

PTT is an open source project. The source code is released under GPL 2.0.

Organization
PTT is registered as a student organization at the National Taiwan University. The BBS Technology Research Club () was founded in 1999 by several BBS sites at NTU, with Yi-Chin Tu as its leader. In 1999 and 2000, the club held public events on campus for BBS users.

Although PTT is a club and the most famous BBS site in Taiwan, it is not the official BBS site for NTU. The machines and other hardware used to set up PTT was obtained by the administrators without the help of the university, and hence it operates with a high level of freedom. However, it still operates on the NTU network, and hence must abide by its rules and regulations.

System

PTT runs under Linux, while PTT2 runs under FreeBSD 4.11.
The BBS system used by PTT, PTT2, PTT3 is called Open PTT, and is under the GPL.

Development
The code for PTT was originally forked from MapleBBS 2.36 that operated the Sun of Beach BBS. Many programmers and system administrators contributed to the PTT project, with the goals of making PTT efficient in terms for memory usage and disk access and allowing as many users on the system at a single time as possible. The code is licensed under GPL 2.0.

Open PTT

Open PTT is a BBS implementation known for its ease of installation, which is why many BBSes directly run Open PTT as their system. It can be set up with little manual configuration, and it is well documented.

Current PTT

Another fork of the PTT code is known as Current PTT, which is documented at the PttCurrent board. This is the version of the code that runs PTT and PTT2, with many additional features. It currently supports the FreeBSD and Linux platforms.

Commenting: commendation and criticism

PTT implements an article commendation () and criticism () scheme as its article rating and commenting system, in place since 25 May 2002. PTT was the first Chinese-language BBS to implement such a system. Under this system, users can evaluate an article by giving it a tuei (), adding a point, or a hsü (), subtracting a point. Individual boards can turn off this feature or set a minimum amount of waiting time between comments.

Sticky posts
Sticky posts reside at the bottom of the forum, right after the most recent posts.

Guardian Angels
The Guardian Angels is a group of experienced PTT users who act as mentors and help answer questions that new users might have. The guardian angels remain anonymous. This system has been in place since May 2004. The 29th of every month is Guardian Angel Day, during which users express their gratitude towards their guardian angels.

PTT Culture

PTT culture and lingo
  pinyin: Wǔ lóu (fifth floor) — the fifth comment of a post, which is often regarded as words of wisdom; also  (fifth floor, please rate this post)
  pinyin: Xiāng mín (villager) — Refers to PTT users. Comes from the line  in the Stephen Chow movie Hail the Judge. This term can also be pejorative, suggesting that users blindly follow other users.
  pinyin: Xīn jǐngchá (rookie police officer) — refers to new users (like the term "newbie").
  pinyin: Kē kē  (kk) — A chuckle, normally , but changed to  when the use of bopomofo is prohibited.
  pinyin: Zhòngkěn (to hit home) and  — A pun on , meaning "to hit home", referring to efforts of the Chen Shui-bian government to replace the character  (China) with  (Taiwan).
 Pictures — PTT users often ask for pictures.  (wtf, where's the picture?),  (pics or it didn't happen), similar to some western online communities
  pinyin:Yuán po shìzhèng mèi (the original poster is a pretty girl)
  pinyin: Háizi de xuéxí bùnéng děng (our children's education cannot wait)
  pinyin: Dīngdīng shìgè réncái (Tinky Winky is talented) Said ironically, to insinuate someone is stupid
  pinyin: Nǎocán (brain-damaged)
  pinyin: Shǎn kāi ràng zhuānyè de lái (Step aside, let the pro do the job)

Some of the popular lingo used by PTT users are vulgar, which has caused public concern, while others believe that as long as this behavior is contained online and does not affect the user's real-life behavior this is nothing to be concerned about.

Aligned comments and comment art
Aligned comments () is a cultural phenomenon in which users align their comments for special effect. Comment art () is a phenomenon inspired by the 2chAA community, in which lines of comments collectively form a picture. Since comment art is sometimes perceived as waste of system resources, some of the forums prohibit its use.

PTT blood drive
In 2004, PTT activities coordinator Huan-Yu Chen () teamed up with an on-campus organization NTU Blood-Donating Bus () to hold a blood drive to solicit blood donations in exchange for PTT money, which led to the creation of the Donate-Blood forum.

PTT logo design contest 2018
The management team of PTT held a logo design contest from May 6, 2018, to July 15, 2018. Users could submit their logo designs by posting on the contest board with their PTT ID as the title of the post. The submission session was May 6, 2018 to June 15, 2018. All PTT users had two weeks (June 16, 2018 – June 30, 2018) to vote for their favorite design. The management team then together decided three winners of this contest from ten most voted designs (July 3, 2018 – July 13, 2018). The champion (announced on July 15, 2018) was awarded 1,000,000 P coins (currency on PTT) along with other souvenirs. The champion design was posted on the official Facebook page and website for a year.

PTT Boards
The forums are subdivided into boards (看板 pinyin:Kànbǎn, noticeboard or bulletinboard) and named by a string of alphanumeric characters. These boards can be searched as well as ordered by popularity. They can also be added to a user's list of favorite boards.

Incidents and Controversy
As PTT is a liberal platform for public opinions, it allows netizens to access and comment on social matters easily, including news or specific persons, based on their personal perspective and/or agenda. However, since netizens on PTT do not need to disclose their real names while citing news or publishing their opinions, some netizens abuse their status of anonymity and make undesirable comments. PTT, therefore, is easily used for publishing fake news and for inciting cyberbullying. The death of Cindy Yang (楊又穎) is an occurrence of this, and it is the first time netizens in PTT were made aware of this issue. Cindy Yang, a model and actress, committed suicide in 2015, after suffering from taunts and accusations from various social media, notably PTT.
The news about Yang's suicide triggered a heated discussion. Some netizens began to self-examine the bullying culture in PTT. The targets of bullying in PTT are often celebrities and politicians, as well as their families. The most notorious example might be the bullying of Chen Hsing-Yu (陳幸妤), daughter of a former president. She and her boyfriend's (now husband's) relationship became the cover story of the first issue of The Next Magazine. Subsequently,  corruption incidents attributed to her father, and insider trading allegations against her partner were leveraged for harassment by users of PTT for several years.
Additionally, in 2017, the Islamic Association of Taiwan publicly criticized PTT allowing the users to spread fake news and post hate speech about Muslims, and calling it names such as "garbage religion" or "Muslims are trash" thus the Islamic Association of Taiwan protested against the government to voice concern about abuse of anonymity in PTT. Much of the fake news is copied and recycled by tabloids and even mainstream media and causes foreign media to be confused in particular during election times.

Moreover, anonymity led to more irrational and extreme behavior in other aspects. For example, in 2009, Dell Computer has mispriced  its LCD monitor and notebook products on its official website and this aroused lots of netizens on PTT to go fishing for cheap deals. They mobilized ten and thousands of netizens to order the mispriced items and ordered Dell computer to sell its products at a fraction of its original cost within just a few hours. At the beginning, some netizens ordered a small amount of the mispriced product. Many netizens later began to post photos about their orders and therefore led other netizens in PTT to behave irrationally and extremely. A PTT account with the username "connyli", for instance, posted the photo showing his orders  were valued more than NT$360 million. By 7:00 a.m. the next morning, when Dell urgently closed its online order system, more than 43,000 orders, valued at NT$2 billion, had been placed from PTT causing Dell computer to almost collapse. The court, however, finally ruled against the PTT members of trying to take advantage of erroneous information to force Dell computer to sell below their cost. Thus the case was dismissed.
But the mob rallying effects of the PTT went on full display in this incident.

The death of Taiwan's representative in Osaka
Like all other anonymous or semi-anonymous internet communities in Taiwan, there's plenty of fake news and many acts of cyberbullying on PTT. In recent years, the most notable is one of Su Chii-Cherng (蘇啟誠), Taiwan's representative in Osaka, who committed suicide in 2018. Su Chii-Cherng left a letter saying he was suffering from hate speech received. His office was accused of not assisting Taiwanese tourists stranded at the Kansai International Airport in the wake of Typhoon Jebi.
During the Typhoon Jebi crisis, fake news said that the Taiwanese tourist had to identify themselves as Chinese in order to be allowed to board China's bus that was used during the rescue efforts, and therefore led the other netizens in PTT to begin to criticize Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), Taiwan's representative in Japan. However, soon, a PTT account with the username "idcc" posted messages that claimed the Osaka office was out of Frank Hsieh's control and criticized the Osaka office should take all responsibility for the crisis. This was an untrue because the Osaka office directly reports to Frank Hsieh's office which was in fact the highest ranking government office of Taiwan in Japan, It was the Taiwan Representative Office. Yet, the Osaka office took the blame from the media and netizens. Su finally found it unbearable and decided to commit suicide. Prosecutors later found that the account's IP address could be linked directly to Slow Yang (楊蕙如), who is considered as pro-DPP figure and a member of Frank Hsieh's faction. Furthermore, Slow Yang was accused of paying and asking others to post such fake news in order to protect Frank Hsieh at the expense of Mr. Su's life.

Manipulation of public opinion by political parties
According to the interviews from Common Wealth Magazine, one of the biggest business magazines in Taiwan, people try to form public opinions in PTT and seek to influence the larger society especially during an election year.

Han Kuo-Yu and FFASIC
In April 2019, a PTT account with the username "ken4645" posted an article titled "Is Wang Jin-Pyng (王金平) and Han Kuo-Yu (韓國瑜) related to China's online warriors?" This article, along with several fake photos, alleged and accused that Farmers' and Fishermen's Association South Information Center (FFASIC) and KMT presidential candidate Han Kuo-Yu received funds from China and tried to purchase Facebook pages for spreading misleading information in order to affect public opinion related to the election. However, the article was later proved to be false. The user spreading the said fake news proved to be linked to the pro-DPP group and thereafter was investigated by the prosecutor.

Tsai Ing-wen' dissertation
In June 2019, the Taiwan People News published a column written by Cao Chang-Qing (曹長青) which alleged that President Tsai Ing-Wen (蔡英文) paid off officials at the London School of Economics (LSE) to obtain her Ph.D. This article raised thousands of comments in PTT where many netizens gave their opinions based on this news. However, after several months, LSE officially stated Tsai was correctly awarded a Ph.D. degree in 1984 and proved it is false. But the authenticity of LSE notification is in question.

See also

 2channel
 4chan
 Digg
 Diigo
 Delicious
 Fark
 Imgur
 MetaFilter
 Reddit
 StumbleUpon
 Slashdot
 Social bookmarking
 Social news
 Web 2.0

References

External links

Ptt WebBBS
PTT: ptt.cc (ssh site)
PTT2: ptt2.cc (ssh site; group and personal boards)
PTT3: ptt3.cc (telnet site; for students studying abroad)
PTT Wiki
PTT Blog
PTT Source (source code)
PTT Video

Bulletin board systems
Taiwanese culture
Free communication software

PTT Bulletin Board System


"The Opposite" is the 22nd and final episode of the fifth season of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. It aired on May 19, 1994. This is the last episode Tom Cherones directed. Andy Ackerman took over as the primary director the following season and held that role until the end of the show's run.

Plot
Elaine gets a raise at Pendant Publishing, which is merging with a Japanese conglomerate to avoid bankruptcy, and is going to publish Kramer's coffee table book. She has also reunited with her boyfriend Jake Jarmel. George remarks to Jerry in Monk's Café that every decision he has ever made has been wrong, and that his life is the exact opposite of what it should be. Jerry convinces him that "if every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right". George experiments with doing the complete opposite of what he would do normally. He orders the opposite of his normal lunch, and introduces himself to a beautiful woman who happens to order the same lunch, saying, "My name is George. I'm unemployed and I live with my parents." She is impressed and agrees to date him.

Jerry loses a stand-up gig and five minutes later is asked to perform another one on the same night, for the same pay, prompting Kramer to call him "Even Steven". This causes Jerry to start noticing how everything always ends up turning out exactly the same for him as originally planned, never losing or gaining. George continues to do the Opposite on his date with Victoria. He stops shaving, yells at noisy cinema-goers, and declines to come up to her apartment. Elaine, upon hearing that Jake has been in an accident, buys some Jujyfruits from a theater concession stand before heading to the hospital. Jake takes extreme exception to her Jujyfruit detour and breaks up with her.

The next day, Kramer appears on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee to promote his book. After kissing Kathie Lee on the mouth, he is disgusted by taste of the coffee and spits it all over Kathie Lee. This leads to his book tour being cancelled by Pendant Publishing, which arranged his tour. Thanks to his date, George gets an interview at the New York Yankees' headquarters, where he also does the opposite of his instincts and criticizes George Steinbrenner about his management practices, thus landing him the job of Assistant to the Traveling Secretary. He moves out of his parents' house. Enraptured with his success, he comes to regard the Opposite as his personal philosophy.

Elaine finds out that she is being kicked out of her apartment building. The list of grievances includes putting Canadian quarters into the washing machine and buzzing a jewel thief and a group of Jehovah's Witnesses past security. When her boss (Mr. Lippman) forgets his handkerchief in her office, Elaine tries to tell him, but cannot speak intelligibly with her mouth full of Jujyfruits. Later, when he sneezes without his handkerchief, he will not shake hands with his Japanese counterpart (and spread germs); the Japanese executive takes this as a sign of disrespect and refuses to close the deal, thus putting an end to Pendant Publishing. Elaine claims that she has "become George". Jerry can only marvel at how things always even out for him: first, Elaine was up and George was down; now, George is up and Elaine is down, but Jerry's life is exactly the same.

Production
According to Jerry Seinfeld, the line from George's angry rant at the movie theater – "...we're gonna take it outside and I'm gonna show you what it's like!" – is taken almost verbatim from a Buddy Rich bootleg tape on which he berates his big band players for playing too loud.

Regis Philbin, as recounted in his memoir How I Got This Way, was embarrassed and disappointed with Jerry Seinfeld and the show's writing crew after his repeated line, "This guy's bonkos!" bombed with the audiences. Philbin had objected to the line prior to the taping of the episode and wanted it removed, a request which Seinfeld and the writing staff ignored.

References

External links

Seinfeld (season 5) episodes
1994 American television episodes
Television episodes written by Larry David
Television episodes written by Jerry Seinfeld

The Opposite