Galicia or Galiza is a nationality in Spain that became a Spanish autonomous community in 1978. It is in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. It shares borders with Portugal to the South and the communities of Castile and León and Asturias to the east.

History
Galicia is a green country with Celtic features. Since re-gaining autonomy in 1978, Galicia has been governed by the Xunta de Galicia (government of Galicia). Galicia was strictly governed from 1990 until 2005, during the Manuel Fraga years. The Xunta de Galicia was then under a socialist president Emilio Perez Touriño, who had made Galicia more liberal than ever before, until 2009. From March 2009 Partido Popular (right-wing party) won power and the new president is Alberto Núñez Feijoo, who won a second term as president in 2012.

Language
Galicia has one main language:Galician "galego". It has many similarities with Portuguese. Galego and Portuguese have the same origin. Spanish is also spoken in Galicia, but mainly as a second language.

Cuisine
Galicia is very famous for its fishing industry and seafood remains an important part of its cuisine. A very popular dish in Galicia is polbo á feira, ("polbo" means octopus). There are many restaurants that serve seafood in Galicia.

Galicia (Spain)


Webb Canyon is located in Grand Teton National Park, in the U. S. state of Wyoming. The canyon was formed by glaciers which retreated at the end of the last glacial maximum approximately 15,000 years ago, leaving behind a U-shaped valley. Webb Canyon is south of Owl Peak and the entrance to the canyon is near the northern reaches of Jackson Lake. Moose Creek flows through much of the  long canyon and the Webb Canyon Trail traverses the length of the canyon to Moose Basin Divide.

See also
Canyons of the Teton Range
Geology of the Grand Teton area

References

Canyons and gorges of Grand Teton National Park

Webb Canyon


Gary Roger Rydstrom (born June 29, 1959) is an American sound designer and film director. He has been nominated for 20 Academy Awards for his work in sound for movies, winning 7.

Life and career
Rydstrom was born in Chicago. He graduated from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts in 1981.<ref name=USCalum>Notable Alumni , USC School of Cinematic Arts, Accessed August 10, 2008.</ref> He began his career at Skywalker Sound, Northern California in 1983. Offered the job by a college professor, he received the opportunity to work with his mentor, Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt.

After gaining invaluable experience as a sound technician in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Rydstrom went on to do sound design for the comedy Spaceballs. The sound design for Backdraft, prepared from scratch, would become the precursor for his sound for Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The original sound effects from Backdraft are constantly referenced and have been used for numerous other films including The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and Shrek.

He won an Academy Award for his work on Terminator 2: Judgment Day, for which he pioneered techniques still used today for creating realistic sound effects. Rydstrom also worked with Terminator 2 director James Cameron on a new 5.1 surround sound mix for the original Terminator.His sound work on Jurassic Park led to further innovations, as he and his team set out to create dinosaur sounds by mixing together numerous different animal vocalizations to make the audience feel as though giant bellowing prehistoric beasts surrounded them. The Oscar-winning film was the first motion picture to be presented in DTS. The T.RexrRoar created by Gary was later re-used for Dim in A Bug's Life, Thanator in Avatar and the Hydra in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.

He subsequently went on to work on sound for numerous films including Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report and Finding Nemo. He won an MPSE lifetime achievement award, and regularly speaks at various sound design forums sharing his extensive knowledge and enthusiasm with aspiring sound design artists.

He made his directorial debut with the Pixar short Lifted, for which he received his fourteenth Academy Award nomination. It was included in the Animation Show of Shows in 2006. His debut feature film for the studio, Newt, which was supposed to be about the adventure of two blue-footed newts, and their struggles to work together, was announced in 2008. It supposedly reached the early stages of production, until it was cancelled by Pixar in early 2011 due to story issues. He has also directed the Pixar short Hawaiian Vacation and the Lucasfilm animated feature Strange Magic.

Rydstrom has also served as English language director on Tales From Earthsea, Arrietty, From Up on Poppy Hill, and The Wind Rises, all of which were produced by the Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli.

Awards and nominations
Gary Rydstrom has been nominated for 20 Academy Awards (7 wins), 12 Golden Reel Awards (5 wins), 5 C.A.S Awards (2 wins), 5 BAFTA Awards (2 wins), and 1 Grammy (1 win).

Filmography
 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) audio technician
 Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985) audio technician
 Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985) foley
 Luxo Jr. (1986) sound designer
 Red's Dream (1987) sound designer
 Spaceballs (1987) sound designer
 Colors (1987) sound designer
 Captain EO (1987) sound designer
 Tin Toy (1988) sound designer
 Willow (1988) foley
 Always (1989) re-recording mixer
 Knick Knack (1989) sound designer
 The Neon Empire (1989) re-recording mixer
 Mars Navigator (1990) sound design/re-recording mixer (interactive video)
 F/X2 The Deadly Art Of Illusion (1991) sound design/re-recording mixer
 Backdraft (1991) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Single White Female (1992) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Jurassic Park (1993) sound designer/re-recording mixer (with Gary Summers and Shawn Murphy)
 Baby's Day Out (1994) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Casper (1995) sound designer
 Strange Days (1995) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Toy Story (1995) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Jumanji (1995) sound designer
 James and the Giant Peach  (1996) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Mission: Impossible (1996) re-recording mixer
 The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) sound designer/re-recording mixer (with Gary Summers and Shawn Murphy)
 Hercules (1997) re-recording mixer/sound designer
 Titanic (1997) sound designer (uncredited)/re-recording mixer
 Saving Private Ryan (1998) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 A Bug's Life (1998) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) sound designer (uncredited)/re-recording mixer
 Toy Story 2 (1999) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 The Terminator (1984, 2000s DVD release) sound designer consultant: sound restoration and re-mixing
 102 Dalmatians (2000) sound designer consultant/re-recording mixer
 Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) sound designer/re-recording mixer/supervising sound editor
 Monsters, Inc. (2001) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones sound designer (uncredited)/re-recording mixer
 Minority Report (2002) sound design consultant/re-recording mixer
 Punch-Drunk Love (2002) sound designer consultant/re-recording mixer
 Finding Nemo (2003) sound designer/re-recording mixer/supervising sound editor
 Hulk (2003) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Peter Pan (2003) sound designer/re-recording mixer/supervising sound editor
 Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004) special thanks
 Lifted (2006) director/writer/sound
 Tales from Earthsea (2010) director/ADR director (English-language version)
 Hawaiian Vacation (2011) director, screenplay
 Bully (2011) sound designer
 Super 8 (2011) additional sound designer
 The Adventures of Tintin (2011) sound designer consultant
 Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 War Horse (2011) sound designer/re-recording mixer/supervising sound editor
 From Up on Poppy Hill (2011) voice director
 The Secret World of Arrietty (2012) director (American English-language version)
 Brave (2012) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Wreck-it Ralph (2012) sound designer
 From Up on Poppy Hill (2013) director (English-language version)
 The Wind Rises (2014) director (English-language version)
 The Face of Love (2013) sound designer consultant
 Strange Magic (2015) director, screenplay
 Tomorrowland (2015) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Jurassic World (2015) sound designer/re-recording mixer (uncredited)
 Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) sound designer (uncredited)/re-recording mixer
 The BFG (2016) re-recording mixer
 The Post (2017) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Ready Player One (2018) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018) sound designer
 Ad Astra (2019) re-recording mixer
 Come Away (2020) re-recording mixer
 West Side Story (2021) sound designer/re-recording mixer
 The Fabelmans'' (2022) sound designer/re-recording mixer

References

External links
 Gary Rydstorm - Skywalker Sound

1959 births
Living people
American animated film directors
American people of Swedish descent
Best Sound Mixing Academy Award winners
Best Sound BAFTA Award winners
American audio engineers
American sound designers
USC School of Cinematic Arts alumni
Best Sound Editing Academy Award winners
American sound editors
American voice directors
CAS Career Achievement Award honorees
Artists from Chicago
Artists from Los Angeles
Disney people
Film directors from Illinois
Film directors from Los Angeles
Grammy Award winners

Gary Rydstrom


San José Church (), located in Old San Juan within the historic colonial zone of the capital of Puerto Rico, is one of the first significant works of architecture on the island. The church is one of the earliest surviving examples of 16th-century Spanish Gothic architecture in the Western hemisphere.

In 2013 it was added to the National Trust for Historic Preservation's list of 11 Most Endangered Historic Places of 2013.

History
The church was constructed from 1528 to 1735 by the Dominican Order as part of their Saint Aquinas monastery. It was renamed by the Jesuits who took over the monastery on September 2, 1858.

Juan Ponce de León, the first governor of Puerto Rico, was buried in the crypt of the church from 1559 to 1836, when his remains were exhumed and later transferred to the Cathedral of San Juan Bautista. However, his coat of arms is still located near the main altar. His grandson, Juan Ponce de Leon II is buried in the crypt beneath the Sanctuary's floor. Puerto Rican painter José Campeche is also buried in the church.

In 1972, the 15th-century painting Our Lady of Bethlehem disappeared from the church. In 2002, a restoration project on the structure began and several painted murals were discovered including a mid-19th century depiction of the Battle of Lepanto. In 2004, the church was listed on the 2004 World Monuments Watch by the World Monuments Fund, which helped the conservation effort.

Restoration of the church was completed in March 2021.

Gallery

See also
 Galería Nacional
List of the oldest buildings in Puerto Rico
Capilla del Cristo
Cathedral of San Juan, Puerto Rico
Casa Blanca (San Juan)

References

External links
Images and drawings from the Historic American Engineering Record.

Old San Juan, Puerto Rico
Tourist attractions in San Juan, Puerto Rico
Spanish Colonial architecture in Puerto Rico
Roman Catholic churches in San Juan, Puerto Rico
1735 establishments in New Spain
1730s establishments in Puerto Rico
Roman Catholic churches completed in 1735

San José Church


Stretford Grammar School is a grammar school located in Stretford, in the Trafford borough of Greater Manchester, England. It is located on a 15-acre plot in the heart of Stretford, Trafford.

Admissions
The school has a sixth form in addition to years 7 to 11. Almost two-thirds of the school's pupils are from minority ethnic backgrounds, and approximately 30% of all pupils have a first language other than English, significantly above the national average.

History
The first head master was Albert Dakin. The first foundation stone of the school was laid on 1 July 1927. The building was to cost £40,745, and was built by Lancashire County Council. The boys' school opened on 12 September 1928, being officially opened on 23 October 1928 by Eustace Percy, 1st Baron Percy of Newcastle, and was situated on Great Stone Road west of Lancashire's cricket ground. The girls' grammar school was called Stretford Girls' High School on Herbert Street which opened in 1923. In January 1941 the site of the girls' school was totally destroyed by bombing. Nearby Trafford Park produced important materials for the war, not least Rolls-Royce Merlin engines made at Ford's factory. A new girls' school was built on a different site near Longford Park and south of Edge Lane (A5145): the former site was turned into playing fields. The school was administered by the Stretford Divisional Executive of the Lancashire Education Committee. From April 1974, it was administered by Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council.

In 1959 at the boys' school, 18-year-old David Murray Jones of Urmston, a goalkeeper in a seven-a-side football match collapsed and died of a fractured skull. There was a meningitis outbreak at the former boys' school in December 1971.

Until its merger in 1986 with Stretford Grammar School for Boys, it had been known since 1960 as Stretford Grammar School for Girls (both schools change their name at the same time). The site of the boys' grammar school then became Stretford High School, a community secondary school.

In 1988 there were plans to build a CTC on the boys' school site, which were dropped. At the time of the merger, six secondary schools closed in Trafford, with the loss of 4,500 school places.

In 2012, the school announced a £250,000 project to renovate the school fields into a state-of-the-art sports facility. The current headteacher is Michael Mullins. The school has vastly improved under his leadership.

School crest
The school's crest is embroidered on blazers and jumpers. The original crest, designed by pupils in the late 1980s, consisted of a shield featuring a globe and books, with a fist clenching lightning, taken from the Stretford coat of arms. The motto beneath read "Power through Knowledge". That crest was replaced by a maroon circle containing the school's initials, in lower case: when the school was awarded Science College status in 2005, the logo was altered to include a symbolic atom above the initials. This logo is now defunct and has been replaced with a renewed version of the previous crest.

Academic performance
Academically the school exam results are above national averages, with 92% of pupils achieving A*–C in at least five GCSEs (including English and Mathematics). The school's value add score is below the local authority average. In March 2009, Stretford became the first grammar school in the UK to be placed under special measures, following a damning Ofsted report, which cited low level behaviour problems, inadequate teaching, and poor leadership and management.
The action came weeks after the then headmaster, Peter Cookson, resigned after a period of extended sick leave. The school had been assessed as "satisfactory" in its March 2006 Ofsted report, and left Special Measures Status in March 2010. In 2012, two-thirds of students achieved the difficult target of 5A/A* grades; in addition a quarter of students achieved at least 10 grades at A/A*.

Notable former pupils

 David Acheson MBE MStJ 1997–2004
 Kay Adshead, actress and director
 Air Chief Marshal Sir Anthony Bagnall GBE, KCB, Station Commander of RAF Leuchars from 1987 to 1990, AOC of No. 11 Group RAF from 1994 to 1996, and Commander-in-Chief of RAF Strike Command from 2000 to 2001
 Alfred Bates, Labour MP for Bebington and Ellesmere Port from 1974 to 1979 (later Trafford MBC councillor from 1992 to 2000)
 Ahmad Benali - former Manchester City footballer
 Brenda Dean, Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, trade unionist (left school at 16)
 Tony Lloyd, Labour MP for Stretford from 1983 to 1997 and Manchester Central from 1997, was a pupil from 1962 to 1969.
 Jonathan D'Laryea, footballer
 Nathan D'Laryea, footballer
  Ernest Marples, Baron Marples, UK Conservative Minister of Transport from 1959 to 1964, and MP for Wallasey from 1945 to 1964. Marples was responsible for introducing parking meters, yellow no-parking lines and motorways.
 Adie Mike, footballer
 Ian McShane, actor
 Debbie Moore OBE, businesswoman
 John Mulkern CBE, JP, managing director and board member British Airports Authority 1977–1987, Chairman British Airports International 1978–82, President Western European Airports Association 1981–83
 Peter Noone, singer Herman's Hermits, 1959–64
 Prof John Tomlinson CBE, Professor of Education from 1985 to 1997 at the University of Warwick, Director of Education for Cheshire from 1972 to 1984, and Chairman of National Institute for Careers Education and Counselling (NICEC, and part of the Careers Research and Advisory Centre) 1985–89
 Brian Trueman, presented Screen Test in the early 1980s and worked with Cosgrove Hall Films, narrating 1970s and 1980s cartoons
 Rear-Admiral John Trythall OBE CB
 Sir Arnold Wolfendale, Astronomer Royal
 Frederick Hodcroft, Founding Fellow of St Cross, Oxford

References

External links
 Official website
 EduBase

Grammar schools in Trafford
Educational institutions established in 1928
1928 establishments in England
Stretford
Foundation schools in Trafford

Stretford Grammar School


László Kozma (Miskolc, Hungary, 28 November 1902 − Budapest, Hungary, 9 November 1983) was a Hungarian electrical engineer, designer of the first Hungarian digital computer (1957), and a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Due to the regulations of numerus clausus his application to the Budapest University of Technology was rejected in 1921, and he started to work as an electrician. Between 1925 and 1930 he studied at the Brno University of Technology, where he graduated as an electrical engineer in 1930, then was hired by the Antwerp office of the International Telephone & Telegraph company to design automated telephone switchboards and electromechanical computers. He moved back to Hungary in 1942, but in 1944 he was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp. He returned in August 1945 in a very poor physical state, then worked for a Hungarian electrical company Standard Electrical Co. as designing engineer. He was arrested by the communist government in 1949, and sentenced to 15 years in the show trial Standard Gate. He was rehabilitated and released from prison in 1954 and taught as a professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics between 1955 and 1972.

His main researches were in the field of automatization of telephone technology, but he is more notable for the first Hungarian digital computer (called MESZ–1) which he designed and created between 1955 and 1957. He was a corresponding (1961), then a full member (1976) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Some important publications
The new digital computer of the Polytechnical University, Budapest. in: Periodica Polytechnica 1959. 321–343.
Távbeszélő technika I–II. [Telecommunication technologies.] Budapest, 1966–1967, 366 + 184 p. (with Béla Frajka)

References
A Magyar Tudományos Akadémia tagjai 1825–2002 II. [Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences 1825-2002.] Budapest, 2003.
 Biography at IEEE's 1996 Computer Pioneer Award

Hungarian electrical engineers
Cyberneticists
Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
1983 deaths
1902 births
Mauthausen concentration camp survivors

László Kozma


James Luther Bevel (October 19, 1936 – December 19, 2008) was a minister and leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the United States. As a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and then as its Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education, Bevel initiated, strategized, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era: the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, the 1965 Selma voting rights movement, and the 1966 Chicago open housing movement. He suggested that SCLC call for and join a March on Washington in 1963. Bevel strategized the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, which contributed to Congressional passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Prior to his time with SCLC, Bevel worked in the Nashville Student Movement, which conducted the 1960 Nashville Lunch-Counter Sit-Ins, the 1961 Open Theater Movement, and recruited students to continue the 1961 Freedom Rides after they were attacked. He helped with initiating and directing the 1961 and 1962 voting rights movement in Mississippi. In 1967, Bevel was chairman of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. He initiated the 1967 March on the United Nations as part of the anti-war movement. His last major action was as co-initiator of the 1995 Day of Atonement/Million Man March in Washington, D.C. For his work, Bevel has been called the strategist and architect of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and, with Dr. King, half of the first-tier team that formulated many of the strategies and actions to gain federal legislation and social changes during the 1960s civil rights era.

In 2005, Bevel was accused of incest by one of his daughters and abuse by three others. He was tried in April 2008, convicted of incest, sentenced to 15 years in prison, and fined $50,000. After serving seven months, he was freed awaiting an appeal; he died of pancreatic cancer in December 2008 and was buried in Eutaw, Alabama.

Early life and education (1936–1961)
Bevel was born in 1936 in Itta Bena, Mississippi, the son of Illie and Dennis Bevel. He was one of 17 children and grew up in rural LeFlore County of the Mississippi Delta and in Cleveland, Ohio. He worked on a cotton plantation for a time as a youth and later in a steel mill. He was educated at segregated local schools in both Mississippi and Cleveland. After high school he served in the U.S. Navy for a time and pursued a career as a singer.

Feeling an inner call to become a minister, he attended the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee from 1957 to 1961 and became a Baptist preacher. He joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. While at seminary, Bevel reread Leo Tolstoy's 1894 book The Kingdom of God Is Within You, which had previously inspired his decision to leave the military. Bevel also read several of Mohandas Gandhi's books and newspapers while taking off-campus workshops on Gandhi's philosophy and nonviolent techniques taught by James Lawson of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Bevel also attended workshops at the Highlander Folk School taught by its founder, Myles Horton, who emphasized grassroots organizing.

Leading the movements (1960s)

Nashville Student Movement (1960–1961) and SNCC

In 1960, along with James Lawson's and Myles Horton's students Bernard Lafayette, John Lewis, Diane Nash, C.T. Vivian and others, Bevel participated in the Nashville Sit-In Movement organized by Nash, whom he would later marry to desegregate the city's lunch counters. After the success of this action, and with the aid of SCLC's Ella Baker, activist students from Nashville and across the South developed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). While working on SNCC's commitment to desegregate theaters, Bevel successfully directed the 1961 Nashville Open Theater Movement.

The Open Theater Movement, led by Bevel, had success in Nashville, the only city in the country where SCLC activists had organized such an action. In this same period, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) had organized the 1961 Freedom Rides through the Deep South to challenge southern state laws and practices that interstate buses and their facilities remain segregated despite federal laws for equal treatment. After buses and riders were severely attacked, including a firebombing of a bus and beatings with police complicity in Birmingham, Alabama, CORE suspended the rides. Diane Nash, the Nashville Student Movement's chairman, urged the group to continue the Freedom Rides, and called for college volunteers from Fisk and other universities across the South. Bevel selected the student teams for the buses. He and the others were arrested after they arrived in Jackson, Mississippi and tried to desegregate the waiting rooms in the bus terminal. Eventually, the Freedom Riders reached their goal of New Orleans, Louisiana, generating nationwide coverage of the violence to maintain Jim Crow and white supremacy in the South.

While in the Jackson jail, Bevel and Bernard Lafayette initiated the Mississippi Voting Rights Movement. They, Nash, and others stayed in Mississippi to work on grassroots organizing. Activists encountered severe violence at that time and retreated to regroup. Later efforts in Mississippi developed as Freedom Summer in 1964, when extensive voter education and registration efforts took place. Lafayette and his wife, Colia Lidell, also opened an SNCC project in Selma, Alabama, to assist the work of local organizers such as Amelia Boynton.

Bevel and King join forces (1962)
In 1962, Bevel was invited to meet  in Atlanta with Martin Luther King Jr, a minister who was head of the SCLC. At that meeting, which had been suggested by James Lawson, Bevel and King agreed to work together on an equal basis, with neither having veto power over the other, on projects under the auspices of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). They agreed to work until they had ended segregation, obtained voting rights, and ensured that all American children had a quality education. They agreed to continue until they had achieved these goals, and to ask for funding from the SCLC only if the group was involved in organizing a movement.

Bevel soon became SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education to augment King's positions as SCLC's Chairman and spokesperson.

Birmingham Children's Crusade (1963)

In 1963, SCLC agreed to assist its co-founder, Fred Shuttlesworth, and others in their work on desegregating retail businesses and jobs in Birmingham, Alabama, where discussion and negotiations with city officials had yielded few results. Weeks of demonstrations and marches resulted in King, Ralph Abernathy, and Shuttlesworth being arrested and jailed. King wanted to fill the jails with protesters, but it was becoming more difficult to find adults to march. They were severely penalized for missing work and were trying to support their families.

Bevel suggested recruiting students in the campaign. King was initially reluctant, but agreed. Bevel spent weeks developing strategy, recruiting and educating students in the philosophy and techniques of nonviolence. Their meetings occurred at Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, and it was from there that  Bevel directed the students, 50 at a time, to peacefully walk to Birmingham's City Hall to talk to Mayor Art Hanes about segregation in the city. Almost 1,000 students were arrested on the first day. The following day, when more students arrived at the church and started to walk to city hall, Eugene "Bull" Connor, City Commissioner of Public Safety, ordered that German Shepherd dogs and high-pressure fire hoses be used to stop them. The national and international media covered the story, and photographs of the force used against schoolchildren generated public outrage against the city and its officials.

Dispute with President John F. Kennedy and the March on Washington

During what was later called the Birmingham Children's Crusade, President John F. Kennedy asked King to stop using children in the campaign. King asked Bevel to refrain from recruiting students, and Bevel instead said that he would organize the children to march to Washington D.C. to meet with Kennedy about segregation, and King agreed. Bevel went to the children and asked them to prepare to take to the highways for a march on Washington, with the goal of questioning the President about his plans to end legal segregation in America. Hearing of this plan, and in response to the city's violent treatment of the students, the Kennedy administration asked SCLC's leaders what they wanted in a comprehensive civil rights bill. Kennedy's staff, who already were drafted one, came to an agreement on its contents with SCLC's leadership. Bevel then called off plans for the children's march.

On August 28, 1963, SCLC participated in what became known as the March on Washington, an event organized by labor leader A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, who had planned an earlier 1941 March. Bevel and Nash did not attend, and instead watched Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech on television.

Three months after the March on Washington, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson became president.

Alabama Project and the Selma Voting Rights Movement (1965)

In September 1963, a bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham killed four young girls attending Sunday School and damaged the church. It was later proven that a Ku Klux Klan chapter was responsible. Bevel proposed organizing the Alabama Voting Rights Project, and co-wrote the project proposal with his wife Diane Nash. They moved to Alabama to implement the project along with Birmingham student activist James Orange.

At the turn of the 20th century, southern state legislatures had passed new constitutions and laws that effectively disenfranchised most blacks. Practices such as requiring payment of poll taxes and literacy tests administered in a discriminatory way by white officials maintained the exclusion of blacks from the political system in the 1960s. SNCC had been conducting a Voting Rights Project (headed by Prathia Hall and Worth Long) since the early 1960s, meeting with violence in Alabama. In late 1963 Bevel, Nash, and Orange also worked with local grassroots organizations to educate blacks and support them in trying to gain registration as voters, but made little progress. They invited King and other SCLC leaders to Selma to develop larger protests and actions, and work alongside Bevel's and Nash's Alabama Project. Together the groups became collectively known as the Selma Voting Rights Movement, with James Bevel as its director.

The Movement began to stage regular marches to the county courthouse, which had limited hours for blacks to register as voters. Some protesters were jailed, but the movement kept the pressure on. On February 16, 1965, Jimmie Lee Jackson, his mother, and grandfather took part in a nighttime march led by C. T. Vivian to protest the related jailing of activist James Orange in Marion, Alabama. The street lights were turned off by Alabama State Troopers who attacked the protesters. In the melee, Jackson was shot in the stomach while defending his mother from an attack. A young man, he died a few days later.

Bevel and others were grieved and outraged. He suggested a march from Selma to Montgomery, the capital, to protest Jackson's death and press Governor George Wallace to support voting rights for African Americans. As the first march reached the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge and passed out of the city, they were attacked by county police and Alabama State Troopers. The large group were bludgeoned and tear-gassed in what became known as "Bloody Sunday". SNCC Chairman John Lewis and Amelia Boynton were both injured.

In March 1965 protesters made a symbolic march, inspired by a fiery speech by Bevel at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, where much organizing was done. They were under an injunction by the state, so stayed within the city limits. Organizers appealed to the federal court against an injunction by the state against marching in order to complete their planned march to the capital. Judge Frank Johnson approved a public march. Following the nationwide publicity generated by Jackson's death and the previous attack on peaceful marchers, hundreds of religious, labor and civic leaders, many celebrities, and activists and citizens of many ethnicities traveled to Selma to join the march. By the time they entered Montgomery 54 miles away, the marchers were thousands strong. Even before the final march occurred, President Lyndon Johnson had gone on national television to address a joint session of Congress, appealing for passage of his administration-backed comprehensive Voting Rights Act.

In 1965 SCLC gave its highest honor, the Rosa Parks Award, to James Bevel and Diane Nash for their work on the Alabama Voting Rights Project.

Chicago Freedom Movement (1965–1966) and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement (1967)

In 1966, Bevel chose Chicago as the site of SCLC's long-awaited Northern Campaign. He worked to create tenant unions and build grassroots action to "end" slums. From previous discussions with King, and from work of American Friends Service Committee activist Bill Moyer, Bevel organized, and directed the Chicago open housing movement. Housing in the area was segregated in a de facto way, enforced by covenants and real estate practices. This movement ended within a Summit Conference that included Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.

As the Chicago movement neared its conclusion A. J. Muste, David Dellinger, representatives of North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, and others asked Bevel to take over the directorship of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Bevel was influential in gaining King's support for the anti-war movement, and with King agreeing to participate as a speaker, Bevel agreed to lead the antiwar effort.

He renamed the organization the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, recruited members of  many diverse groups, and organized the April 15, 1967 march from Central Park to the United Nations Building in New York City. Originally planned as a rally in Central Park, the United Nations Anti-Vietnam War March became the largest demonstration in American history to that date. During his speech to the crowd that day, Bevel called for a larger march in Washington D.C., a plan that evolved into the October 1967 March on the Pentagon. This rally was attended by tens of thousands of peace activists who followed the growing counterculture movement.

Memphis sanitation strike (1968)

Although he opposed King's and SCLC's participation in it, Bevel, along with King and Ralph Abernathy, helped lead the Memphis sanitation strike by organizing the protest and work stoppage. Due to the violence that ensued during the strike in which 60 people were injured and one was killed, Bevel was among those whom the city of Memphis filed a formal complaint against in the District Court.

King assassination (April 4, 1968)

In 1968 Dr. King objected to Bevel and other SCLC organizers' opposition to proceeding with King's planned Poor People's Campaign. Historian Taylor Branch quotes King in At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–1968 (2006) as saying that "Andrew Young had given in to doubt, Bevel to brains, and Jackson to ambition", and said that the movement had made them and now they were using the movement to promote themselves. "He confronted Bevel, who had been a mentor to Jackson and Young, as 'a genius who flummoxed his own heart'. 'You don't like to work on anything that isn't your own idea,' King said, 'Bevel, I think you owe me one.'"

Bevel was in the parking lot of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis and witnessed King's assassination on April 4, 1968. He reminded SCLC's executive board and staff that evening that King had left "marching orders" that, if anything should happen to him, he intended for Abernathy to take his place as SCLC's Chairman. Bevel continued to oppose the Poor People's Campaign, but served as its Director of Nonviolent Education. After King was assassinated, Bevel made a bizarre{{efn|as described by the New York Times}} claim that James Earl Ray was not the killer and that he had evidence that Ray was innocent. Bevel would not reveal the evidence, and Ray was convicted of the crime. SCLC's remaining Board of Directors removed Bevel from his leadership positions in 1969.

 Bevel in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s
After leaving the SCLC the year prior, Bevel created the Making of the Man Clinic in 1970.

In the 1980s, Bevel supported Ronald Reagan as president. In 1986, Bevel, Chicago alderman Danny K. Davis, singer-songwriter Kristin Lems, and others participated in an unsuccessful project of creating a summit in Chicago for Gorbachev and Reagan to bring peace and resolution to the ongoing Cold War.

In 1989, Bevel and Abernathy organized the National Committee Against Religious Bigotry and Racism. This was financially backed by the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon, which appeared to be trying to improve its controversial image by allying with such respected leaders. A year earlier, Bevel had denounced the deprogramming of a Moon follower and called for the protection of religious freedom. He also supported Unification Church members in their protest against news media use of the word "Moonie", which they considered offensive.

Bevel moved to Omaha, Nebraska, in November 1990 as the leader of the "Citizens Fact-Finding Commission to Investigate Human Rights Violations of Children in Nebraska", a group organized by the Schiller Institute. The commission was associated with conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche, and sought to persuade the state legislature to reopen its two-year investigation into the Franklin child prostitution ring allegations. Bevel never submitted the collected petitions and left the state the following summer.

In 1992, Bevel ran on LaRouche's ticket as the vice presidential candidate. At the time, he was living and working in Leesburg, Virginia, near LaRouche's headquarters. LaRouche, characterized as a perennial candidate, was serving a prison sentence for mail fraud and tax evasion. He engaged in LaRouche seminars on issues including "Is the Anti Defamation League the new KKK?" When Bevel introduced LaRouche at a convention of the 1996 National African American Leadership Summit, both men were booed off the stage. A fight broke out between LaRouche supporters and black nationalists.

 Criminal charges (2007–2008)
In May 2007, Bevel was arrested in Alabama on a charge of incest committed sometime between October 1992 and October 1994 in Loudoun County, Virginia. At the time, Bevel was living in Leesburg, Virginia, and working with LaRouche's group, whose international headquarters was a few blocks from Bevel's apartment.

The accuser was one of his daughters, who was 13–15 years old at the time and lived with him. At a family reunion, three other daughters had also alleged that Bevel sexually abused them. Virginia had no statute of limitations for the offense of incest. Bevel pleaded not guilty to the one count charged and maintained his innocence. During his four-day trial in 2008, the accusing daughter testified that she was repeatedly molested by him, beginning when she was six years old.

During the trial, prosecutors presented key evidence: a 2005 police-sting telephone call recorded by the Leesburg police without Bevel's knowledge. During that 90-minute call, Bevel's daughter asked him why he had sex with her the one time in 1993, and she asked him why he wanted her to use a vaginal douche afterward. Bevel said that he had no interest in getting her pregnant. At trial, Bevel denied committing the sexual act and his recorded statement was used against him.

On April 10, 2008, after a three-hour deliberation, the jury convicted Bevel of incest. His bond was revoked and he was taken into custody. On October 15, 2008, the judge sentenced him, based on the jury's recommendation, to 15 years in prison and fined him $50,000. After the verdict, Bevel claimed that the charges were part of a conspiracy to destroy his reputation, and said that he might appeal. He received an appeal bond on November 4, 2008, and was released from jail three days later, after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Six weeks later he died of cancer, at the age of 72, in Springfield, Virginia.

Bevel's attorney requested that the Court of Appeals of Virginia abate the conviction on account of Bevel's death. The Court of Appeals remanded the case to the trial court to determine whether there was good cause not to abate the conviction. The trial court found that abating the conviction would deny the victim the closure that she sought and denied the motion to abate. The Court of Appeals affirmed this judgment. Bevel's attorney appealed the denial of the abatement motion to the Supreme Court of Virginia. In an opinion issued November 4, 2011, the commonwealth's Supreme Court held that abatement of criminal convictions was not available in Virginia under the circumstances of Bevel's case. Because the executor of Bevel's estate had not sought to prosecute the appeal, the Court affirmed the dismissal of his appeal as moot.

Marriage and family
In 1961, Bevel married activist Diane Nash after he completed his seminary studies. They worked together on civil rights, and had a daughter and son together. They divorced after seven years. He married two other women in the following decades, and had told the court during his incest case that he had 16 children born of seven women.

 Cultural impact
Actor and rapper Common portrays Bevel in the 2014 film Selma.

See also

 African American founding fathers of the United States
 List of civil rights leaders
 List of peace activists
 Pacifism
 Timeline of the civil rights movement

 Notes

 References

External links

 James Bevel profile, The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute
 Statements by Rev. James L. Bevel, The Freedom Rides (see request for download at bottom of page). From the Helen L. Bevel Archives.
 SNCC Digital Gateway: James Bevel, Documentary website created by the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, telling the story of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and grassroots organizing from the inside-out

 Washington Post "A Father's Shadow" Les Carpenter; May 25, 2008Eyes on the Prize''; Interview with James Bevel, 1985-11-13,  American Archive of Public Broadcasting
 Bevel's Last Sermon, YouTube video by Seth McClellan, filmed 10 days before Bevel's death

1936 births
2008 deaths
1992 United States vice-presidential candidates
20th-century American criminals
20th-century American politicians
Activists for African-American civil rights
Activists from Chicago
African-American activists
American anti–Vietnam War activists
American Christian pacifists
American community activists
American conscientious objectors
American members of the clergy convicted of crimes
American people convicted of child sexual abuse
Deaths from pancreatic cancer in Virginia
COINTELPRO targets
Gandhians
Freedom Riders
LaRouche movement
Nashville Student Movement
Nonviolence advocates
People convicted of incest
People from Itta Bena, Mississippi
People from Leesburg, Virginia
Selma to Montgomery marches
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Tolstoyans

James Bevel


Francisco Candel Tortajada (May 31, 1925 in Casas Altas – November 23, 2007 in Barcelona, Spain), usually known as well as Paco Candel, was a Valencian-born writer and journalist who lived most of his life in Barcelona.

He was born in a town of the Spanish-speaking comarca of Rincón de Ademuz, Valencia. When he was a little child, his family moved to Barcelona.

Most of his contributions are devoted to studying the 20th-century Spanish migrations in the Barcelona metropolitan area.

The book which made him famous was Els altres catalans (The Other Catalans in Catalan), a journalistic and sociological study about the immigration, which heavily influenced final decisions of the Assemblea de Catalunya in 1971.
He wrote severals novels, tales, essays and articles. He also collaborated in several newspapers and magazines such as Tele/eXprés, Serra d'Or or Avui. He collaborated with Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC). In 1977, he was elected as senator in the Spanish Courts for Barcelona demarcation in Entesa dels Catalans candidature. In 1979, he became town councilor of Hospitalet de Llobregat as independent for PSUC, where he assumed the Culture department.

In 1983 he received the Creu de Sant Jordi. In 2003, Generalitat de Catalunya conceded him its Golden Medal.

He died, after a long illness.

Selected works

 1956: Hay una juventud que aguarda (There is a youth which awaits)
 1957: Donde la ciudad cambia su nombre (Where the city changes its name)
 1959: Han matado a un hombre, han roto el paisaje (They have killed a man, they have broken the landscape)
 1964: Els altres catalans (The other Catalans)
 1967: Parlem-ne (Let's talk about it)
 1973: Encara més sobre els altres catalans (Even more about the other Catalans)
 1979: Un charnego en el Senado (A charnego in the Senate)
 1981: El Candel contra Candel (Candel vs Candel)
 1985: Els altres catalans vint anys després (The other Catalans twenty years later)
 1988: La nova pobresa (The new poverty)

External links

 Paco Candel Foundation
 Piece of news about his decease
 Website about Francisco Candel's books

1925 births
2007 deaths
Catalan-language writers
Spanish male writers
Journalists from Catalonia

Francisco Candel Tortajada


A medical calculator is a type of medical computer software, whose purpose is to allow easy calculation of various scores and indices, presenting the user with a friendly interface that hides the complexity of the formulas. Most offer further helpful information such as result interpretation guides and medical literature references. Generally, such calculators are intended for use by health care professionals, and use by the general public is discouraged.

Medical calculators arose because modern medicine makes frequent use of scores and indices that put physicians' memory and calculation skills to the test. The advent of personal computers, the Internet and Web, and more recently personal digital assistants (PDAs) have formed an environment conducive to their development, spread and use.

Types of calculators

Hardware devices
Purpose-built devices for specific medical calculations are available from various commercial sources. Pharma-Insight Inc. in Canada is one of the only companies in the world that is able to make custom specific medical calculators built to perform a specific medical calculation to make dosing or other calculation easy. Some of the standard units they make include eGFR, CrCl, BMI, BSA, DAS and many other custom units designed for a specific purpose.  There are two ways to make a calculator using an array that looks up an answer based on a large array of data or where the calculator computes the answer using a mathematical equation.

PDA
Software-based medical calculators are available for various PDA-platforms, including the iPhone, Palm and Pocket PC. Handheld battery powered portable units are available and can be manufactured in smaller quantities than before thanks to OTP (one Time Programmable) chips.

Online Calculators
Various websites are available that provide calculations from a browser based input form.

References

Medical equipment
Medical software

Medical calculator


Drivers Hill is a ten hectare Site of Borough Importance for Nature Conservation, Grade II, in Mill Hill in the London Borough of Barnet. It is owned by the Jehovah's Witnesses, who built their national headquarters, Watch Tower House, on the site in 1955.  The house is a major printing works where 120 million Jehovah's Witnesses periodicals were printed in 2002.

Drivers Hill consists of a number of fields and two small woods. The fields contain some species of flower typical of old pasture, such as crested dog's tail, oval sedge and lady's bedstraw. The larger wood, which is at the north of the site, is called Wentworth Hall Wood, and has a canopy mainly of pedunculate oak and ash. The other wood, in the south-west corner, is dominated by oak and sycamore.

There is no public access, but the fields can be viewed from the end of Woodcote Avenue, and the south-west wood from Milespit Hill and Mill Hill Cemetery.

See also

Nature reserves in Barnet

References

Further reading

Nature reserves in the London Borough of Barnet

Drivers Hill


The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom, which was set up in 1975 to provide advice on applications from the most senior Crown servants who wish to take up outside appointments after they leave Crown service.  Since 1995 it has also provided advice to former Ministers on their employment in the two years after leaving office. The committee is chaired by Baroness Browning.

It was branded "toothless" in April 2017 by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee. The Committee's own Secretariat stated in a 2018 Freedom of Information (FOI) request that "ACOBA, which has no enforcement power and therefore depends upon voluntary cooperation from applicants..."

References

External links
Advisory Committee on Business Appointments

Cabinet Office (United Kingdom)
Non-departmental public bodies of the United Kingdom government


The Ghost Dance (Caddo: Nanissáanah, also called the Ghost Dance of 1890) is a ceremony incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. According to the teachings of the Northern Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka (renamed Jack Wilson), proper practice of the dance would reunite the living with spirits of the dead, bring the spirits to fight on their behalf, end American Westward expansion, and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to Native American peoples throughout the region.

The basis for the Ghost Dance is the circle dance, a traditional Native American dance. The Ghost Dance was first practiced by the Nevada Northern Paiute in 1889. The practice swept throughout much of the Western United States, quickly reaching areas of California and Oklahoma. As the Ghost Dance spread from its original source, different tribes synthesized selective aspects of the ritual with their own beliefs.

The Ghost Dance has been associated with Wovoka's prophecy of an end to colonial expansion while preaching goals of clean living, an honest life, and cross-cultural cooperation by Native Americans. Practice of the Ghost Dance movement was believed to have contributed to Lakota resistance to assimilation under the Dawes Act. The Lakota variation on the Ghost Dance tended towards millenarianism, an innovation that distinguished the Lakota interpretation from Jack Wilson's original teachings. The Caddo still practice the Ghost Dance today.

History

Paiute influence

The Northern Paiutes living in Mason Valley, in what is now the U.S. state of Nevada, were known collectively as the Tövusidökadö () at the time of European contact. The Northern Paiute community at this time was thriving upon a subsistence pattern of fishing, hunting wild game, and foraging for pine nuts and roots such as Cyperus esculentus.

The Tövusidökadö tended to follow various spiritual leaders and community organizers. Community events centered on the observance of seasonal ceremonies such as harvests or hunting. In 1869, Hawthorne Wodziwob, a Paiute man, organized a series of community dances to announce a vision. He spoke of a journey to the land of the dead and of promises made to him by the souls of the recently deceased. They promised to return to their loved ones within a period of three to four years.

Wodziwob's peers accepted this vision, likely due to his reputable status as a healer. He urged the populace to dance the common circle dance as was customary during a time of celebration. He continued preaching this message for three years with the help of a local "weather doctor" named Tavibo, father of Wovoka.

Prior to Wodziwob's religious movement, a devastating typhoid fever epidemic struck in 1867. This and other European diseases killed approximately one-tenth of the total population, resulting in widespread psychological and emotional trauma. The disruption brought disorder to the economic system and society. Many families were prevented from continuing their nomadic lifestyle.

Round Dance influence
A round dance is a circular community dance held usually around an individual who leads the ceremony. Round dances may be ceremonial or purely social. Usually, the dancers are accompanied by a group of singers who may also play hand drums in unison. The dancers join hands to form a large circle. The dancers move with a side-shuffle step to reflect the long-short pattern of the drum beat, bending their knees to emphasize the pattern.

During his studies of the Pacific Northwest tribes the anthropologist Leslie Spier used the term "prophet dances" to describe ceremonial round dances where the participants seek trance, exhortations and prophecy. Spier studied peoples of the Columbia plateau (a region including Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and parts of western Montana). By the time of his studies the only dances he was allowed to witness were social dances or ones that had already incorporated Christian elements, making investigation of the round dance's origin complicated.

The Prophet

Jack Wilson, the prophet otherwise known as Wovoka, was believed to have had a vision during a solar eclipse on January 1, 1889. It was reportedly not his first time experiencing a vision, but as a young adult, he claimed that he was then better equipped, spiritually, to handle this message. Jack had received training from an experienced holy man under his parents' guidance after they realized that he was having difficulty interpreting his previous visions. Jack was also training to be a "weather doctor", following in his father's footsteps. He was known throughout Mason Valley as a gifted and blessed young leader. Preaching a message of universal love, he often presided over circle dances, which symbolized the sun's heavenly path across the sky.

Anthropologist James Mooney conducted an interview with Wilson prior to 1892. Mooney confirmed that his message matched that given to his fellow Indians. This study compared letters between tribes. According to Mooney, Wilson's letter said he stood before God in heaven and had seen many of his ancestors engaged in their favorite pastimes, and that God showed Wilson a beautiful land filled with wild game and instructed him to return home to tell his people that they must love each other and not fight. He also stated that Jesus was being reincarnated on Earth in 1892, that the people must work, not steal or lie, and that they must not engage in the old practices of war or the traditional self-mutilation practices connected with mourning the dead. He said that if his people abided by these rules, they would be united with their friends and family in the other world, and in God's presence, there would be no sickness, disease, or old age.

Mooney writes that Wilson was given the Ghost Dance and commanded to take it back to his people. He preached that if the five-day dance was performed in the proper intervals, the performers would secure their happiness and hasten the reunion of the living and deceased. Wilson said that the Creator gave him powers over the weather and that he would be the deputy in charge of affairs in the western United States, leaving current President Harrison as God's deputy in the East. Jack claims that he was then told to return home and preach God's message.

Jack Wilson claimed to have left the presence of God convinced that if every Indian in the West danced the new dance to "hasten the event", all evil in the world would be swept away, leaving a renewed Earth filled with food, love, and faith. Quickly accepted by his Paiute brethren, the new religion was termed, "Dance In A Circle". Because the first European contact with the practice came by way of the Lakota, their expression "Spirit Dance" was adopted as a descriptive title for all such practices. This was subsequently translated as "Ghost Dance".

Spread of the prophet's message

Through Native Americans and some white settlers, Wilson's message spread across much of the western portion of the United States. Early in the religious movement, many tribes sent members to investigate the self-proclaimed prophet, while other communities sent delegates only to be cordial. Regardless of their initial motivations, many left as believers and returned to their homeland preaching his message. The Ghost Dance was also investigated by many Mormons from Utah, for whom the concepts of the Indian prophet were familiar and often accepted. While many followers of the Ghost Dance believed Wovoka to be a teacher of pacifism and peace, others did not.

An elaboration of the Ghost Dance concept was the development of ghost shirts, which were special clothing that warriors could wear. They were rumored to repel bullets through spiritual power. It is uncertain where this belief originated. Scholars believe that in 1890 Chief Kicking Bear introduced the concept to his people, the Lakota, while James Mooney argued that the most likely source is the Mormon temple garment (which Mormons believe protect the pious wearer from evil).

The Lakota interpretation drew from their traditional idea of a "renewed Earth" in which "all evil is washed away". This Lakota interpretation included the removal of all European Americans from their lands:

Political influence

In February 1890, the United States government broke a Lakota treaty by adjusting the Great Sioux Reservation of South Dakota (an area that formerly encompassed the majority of the state) and breaking it up into five smaller reservations. The government was accommodating white homesteaders from the eastern United States; in addition, it intended to "break up tribal relationships" and "conform Indians to the white man's ways, peaceably if they will, or forcibly if they must". On the reduced reservations, the government allocated family units on  plots for individual households. The Lakota were expected to farm and raise livestock, and to send their children to boarding schools. With the goal of assimilation, the schools taught English and Christianity, as well as American cultural practices. Generally, they forbade inclusion of Indian traditional cultures and languages.

To help support the Lakota during the period of transition, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was to supplement the Lakota with food and to hire white farmers as teachers for the people. The farming plan failed to take into account the difficulty that Lakota farmers would have in trying to cultivate crops in the semi-arid region of South Dakota. By the end of the 1890 growing season, a time of intense heat and low rainfall, it was clear that the land was unable to produce substantial agricultural yields. Unfortunately, this was also the time when the government's patience with supporting the so-called "lazy Indians" ran out. They cut rations for the Lakota in half. With the bison having been virtually eradicated a few years earlier, the Lakota were at risk of starvation.

The people turned to the Ghost Dance ritual, which frightened the supervising agents of the BIA. Those who had been residing in the area for a long time recognized that the ritual was often held shortly before battle was to occur. Kicking Bear was forced to leave Standing Rock, but when the dances continued unabated, Agent James McLaughlin asked for more troops. He claimed the Hunkpapa spiritual leader Sitting Bull was the real leader of the movement. A former agent, Valentine McGillycuddy, saw nothing extraordinary in the dances and ridiculed the panic that seemed to have overcome the agencies, saying:

Nonetheless, thousands of additional U.S. Army troops were deployed to the reservation. On December 15, 1890, Sitting Bull was arrested for failing to stop his people from practicing the Ghost Dance. During the incident, one of Sitting Bull's men, Catch the Bear, fired at Lieutenant "Bull Head", striking his right side. He instantly wheeled and shot Sitting Bull, hitting him in the left side, between the tenth and eleventh ribs; this exchange resulted in deaths on both sides, including that of Sitting Bull.

Wounded Knee

Spotted Elk (Lakota: Unpan Glešká – also known as Big Foot) was a Miniconjou leader on the U.S. Army's list of 'trouble-making' Indians. On December 29, 1890, he was stopped while en route to convene with the remaining Lakota chiefs. U.S. Army officers forced him to relocate with his people to a small camp close to the Pine Ridge Agency. Here the soldiers could more closely watch the old chief. That evening, December 28, the small band of Lakota erected their tipis on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek. The following day, during an attempt by the officers to collect weapons from the band, one young, deaf Lakota warrior refused to relinquish his arms. A struggle followed in which somebody's weapon discharged into the air. One U.S. officer gave the command to open fire, and the Lakota responded by taking up previously confiscated weapons; the U.S. forces responded with carbine firearms and several rapid-fire light-artillery Hotchkiss guns mounted on the overlooking hill. When the fighting had concluded, 25 U.S. soldiers lay dead, many killed by friendly fire. Among the 153 dead Lakota, most were women and children. Following the massacre, Chief Kicking Bear officially surrendered his weapon to General Nelson A. Miles.

Aftermath

Twenty U.S. soldiers received Medals of Honor for their actions (some sources state the number as 18 or 23). American Indian and human rights activists have referred to these as "Medals of Dis-Honor" and called for the awards to be rescinded, but none of them have ever been revoked.

Following the Wounded Knee Massacre, open participation in the Ghost Dance movement declined gradually for fear of continued violence against practitioners. Like most Indian ceremonies, it became clandestine rather than dying out completely.

Congress officially apologized for the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1990 but did not rescind any medals of honor at that time.

Rejection
Despite the widespread acceptance of the Ghost Dance movement, Navajo leaders described the Ghost Dance as "worthless words" in 1890. Three years later, James Mooney arrived at the Navajo reservation in northern Arizona during his study of the Ghost Dance movement and found the Navajo never incorporated the ritual into their society.

Kehoe believed the movement did not gain traction with the tribe due to the Navajo's higher levels of social and economic satisfaction at the time. Another factor was cultural norms among the Navajo, which inculcated a fear of ghosts and spirits, based on religious beliefs.

Today
The Wounded Knee massacre was not the end of the Ghost Dance religious movement. Instead, it went underground. Wovoka continued to spread its message, along with Kicking Bear, Short Bull and other spiritual leaders.

During the Wounded Knee incident of 1973, Lakota men and women, including Mary Brave Bird, did the ghost dance ceremony on the site where their ancestors had been killed. In her book Lakota Woman, Brave Bird wrote that ghost dances continue as private ceremonies.

See also
 Taki Unquy a millenarian spiritual movement of the Indigenous Andean peoples, that took expression in dancing and chanting, against the then recent and ongoing Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire.
 Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901), during which Boxers claimed that the spirits protected them from bullets.
 Caroline Weldon, an artist and activist helping Sitting Bull.
 Medicine man
 Millennarianism in colonial societies
 Native American Church
 Nemattanew, a captain of the Powhatan, died in 1622, who believed himself invulnerable to bullets.
 Nongqawuse, a Xhosa prophetess who in the 1850s led the Xhosa cattle-killing movement.
 Papa Isio, a shaman who led forces in the Philippine Revolution

References

Further reading
 Andersson, Rani-Henrik. The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. .
 Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2001. .
 DuBois, Cora. The 1870 Ghost Dance. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. .
 Gage, Justin. We Do Not Want the Gates Closed Between Us: Native Networks and the Spread of the Ghost Dance. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020. .
 Kehoe, Alice Beck. The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalization. Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press, 2006. .
 Osterreich, Shelley Anne. The American Indian Ghost Dance, 1870 and 1890. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991. .
 Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. .
 Warren, Louis S. God's Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America. New York: Basic Books, 2017. .

External links
"Communicating the Ghost Dance" on NativeAmericanNetworks.com
Ghostdance.us
Wovoka (Jack Wilson)
Speech by Kicking Bear
Short video about Wovoka and the Ghost Dance on YouTube.com
 Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture – Ghost Dance Religion

Articles containing video clips
Caddo
Circle dances
Eschatology

Lakota culture
Native American history of California
Native American history of Nevada
Native American music
Paiute
Religion in Oklahoma
Ritual dances

Ghost Dance


Water by the Spoonful (2011) is an American play by Quiara Alegría Hudes and the second part of the Elliot Trilogy. This play is set seven years after the first section of the trilogy, Elliot A Soldier's Fugue. Featuring veteran Elliott Ortiz, the play is set in both the virtual and physical worlds of Philadelphia, United States; Japan, and Puerto Rico.

The play won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Concept
Water by the Spoonful is the second part of Hudes's trilogy that began with Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue. The third part, The Happiest Song Plays Last, was planned to open in 2013 in Chicago.

The first part of the trilogy explored "a young Marine, Elliot Ortiz, coming to terms with his time in Iraq and his father's and grandfather's service in Vietnam and Korea". Water by the Spoonful takes place several years after Elliot, a wounded veteran, has returned to his home in Philadelphia. Ginny, his ailing adoptive mother,  dies soon after the play opens. As Elliot and his cousin Yaz attempt to process their loss, Ginny's sister Odessa, Elliot's biological mother, bonds with other recovering addicts on aNarcotics Anonymous support chat room that she moderates.

Characters
 Elliot Ortiz: A twenty-four-year-old Puerto Rican aspiring model and Iraq War vet with a limp. The biological son of Odessa and adopted son of Ginny (who does not appear in the play), he is plagued by hallucinations (PTSD) from his war service.
 Yazmin Ortiz: Elliot's twenty-nine-year-old cousin, niece to Odessa and adjunct professor at Swarthmore College.
 Odessa Ortiz: Elliot's birth mother, thirty-nine, who goes by the alias Haikumom on her Narcotics Anonymous site. She works as a janitor and still lives in poverty.
 Chutes&Ladders: A recovering addict on Haikumom's site. He is Clayton "Buddy" Wilkie, a fifty-six-year-old African-American IRS employee based in San Diego. He develops a close bond with Orangutan, a woman on the website.
 Orangutan: A recovering addict on Haikumom's site. Born Yoshiko Sakai, she was renamed as Madeleine Mays after being adopted as a baby from Japan by white American parents. She travels to Japan in her twenties to discover her identity.
 Fountainhead: An addict on Haikumom's site. John is a white Philadelphia Main Line resident denying his addiction; he is forty-one, and married with children.
 A Ghost: A manifestation of Elliot's first kill, he repeats the line "Can I please have my passport back?" in Arabic. The same actor also plays a Japanese policeman and a colleague of Yazmin at Swarthmore College, Arabic Studies Professor Aman.

Plot
Set seven years after Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue, the play features veteran Elliot Ortiz, who was wounded and has returned to his home town of Philadelphia. He works at a sandwich shop and cares for his ailing aunt Ginny, who raised him. He is coping with recurring bouts of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), characterized by visions of an apparition,  a man who continually offers a hand and repeats an Arabic phrase. Elliot's cousin Yazmin, a Swarthmore College music professor in the middle of a divorce, introduces him to Professor Aman, from Swarthmore's Arabic Studies department. Elliot wants to decipher the phrase the ghost repeats, but does not want to share its origin. Aman says that he will translate the phrase if Elliot agrees to contact a filmmaker friend of his who is making a documentary about the Iraq War. When Elliot accepts, Aman reveals that the phrase means, "Can I please have my passport back?".

Odessa is Elliot's birth mother and Ginny's sister. She had given up her son because of her crack addiction. In recovery, she uses the alias Haikumom to moderate an anonymous online message board for recovering addicts. These include Orangutan and Chutes&Ladders. Haikumom and Chutes&Ladders Orangutan, who has not logged into the site for three months. But she says that she is 90 days sober and has moved to Japan to meet her birth parents.

Fountainhead, a wealthy Philadelphian and addict-in-denial, soon sows discord on the message board. Odessa wants to welcome him, but Orangutan and Chutes&Ladders doubt his intentions, especially when he seeks help to avoid telling his wife about his addiction. Orangutan encourages Chutes&Ladders to visit her in Japan, but he refuses. He fears that the awkwardness of the meeting and the break from the routine he has built for himself might threaten his 10-year sobriety.

When Ginny dies, Elliot and Yazmin have limited funds to pay for her funeral. They seek money from the rest of the family. Odessa meets Fountainhead at a café to discuss rehab and treatment options. Yazmin and Elliot arrive and confront Odessa for her failure to contribute to her sister's funeral. Elliott reveals to Fountainhead that Odessa had a daughter who died of dehydration from the flu at the age of two. He blames Odessa, claiming that she was too busy getting high on crack to give his sister the "water by the spoonful" she needed to survive. Shamed, Odessa gives Elliot permission to pawn her personal computer for Ginny's funeral expenses. He and Yazmin go to Odessa's apartment to retrieve it. Elliot logs in and poses as her on the message board, where he insults Orangutan. Yazmin grabs the keyboard to explain it is Haikumom's son using the computer. Orangutan tells them that Haikumom has always spoken very highly of Elliot on the site. She had regretted her absence from his life due to her addiction.

Orangutan posts that she plans to visit her birth parents' address, but Chutes&Ladders attempts to dissuade her. He suggests that emotion might make her want to use again. Orangutan says that she prefers uncertainty about the future to Chutes&Ladders' strict routine, and leaves for the train to Kushiro, where her birth parents supposedly reside. That night Odessa relapses and the hospital calls Fountainhead, whom she listed as an emergency contact. In the morning, Orangutan reveals that she did not take the train to her birth parents. Chutes&Ladders says that he has decided to face his fears and has bought a ticket to Japan. Fountainhead enters the chat with the news about Odessa, and Chutes&Ladders convinces him that he has a duty to care for her. Fountainhead agrees and calls his wife, giving her the credentials to his profile on the message board, so that she can find out about his addiction struggles.

Orangutan and Chutes&Ladders meet in person in Japan. Yazmin and Elliot travel to Puerto Rico where they scatter Ginny's ashes. Yazmin plans to purchase Ginny's house there and to start a family. Elliot vows to pursue his acting dream in Los Angeles.

Productions
 The play was commissioned by Hartford Stage as part of Hudes's 2008-2009 Aetna New Voices Fellowship; it debuted at Hartford Stage in October 2011.

 The play premiered off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre on December 11, 2012 (previews), and ran to February 10, 2013. It was directed by Davis McCallum (who also directed the Hartford Stage production). The cast featured Armando Riesco, Liza Colón-Zayas and Zabryna Guevara.

 Second Stage Theatre on January 27, 2013, hosted a Hudes Elliot Trilogy, where Water by the Spoonful was done in full production and directed by David McCallum.

 The University of Iowa in 2013 produced the play, directed by Tlaloc Rivas at the David Thayer Theatre.

 Arden Theatre Company (Philadelphia) produced the play from January 16 to March 16, 2014, directed by Lucie Tiberghien on the Arcadia stage.

 The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2014 began an online streaming service for Water by the Spoonful, running September 1-25. This production was directed by Shishir Kurup. The cast featured Daniel Molina, Vilma Silva, and Nancy Rodriguez.

 In 2015, Theatre Twenty-Two in Seattle produced the play, directed by Julie Beckman, from October 23-November 14.

 In 2016, the Curious Theatre Company put on this production directed by Chip Walton from September 3rd to October 15th. The cast included Thony Mena, GerRee Hinshaw and Gabriella Cavellero.

 Center Theatre Group from January 31st to March 11th, 2018 ran this production directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz.

 In 2019, Indiana University Bloomington at Wells-Metz Theatre put on this production from November 8th to 16th which was directed by Rachel Nicole Pierce.

 Teatro Paraguas, Ironweed Productions, and Santa Fe Playhouse in 2019 put on the Elliot Trilogy, including Water by the Spoonful, directed by Valli Marie Rivera.

Critical response
 Pulitzer.org describes the play as "...an imaginative play about the search for meaning by a returning Iraq War veteran working in a sandwich shop in his hometown of Philadelphia." The Boston Globe describes it as a story of "...an Iraq war veteran struggling to find his place in the world..."

 David Ng of The Los Angeles Times says the play "follows an Iraq war veteran who is struggling with civilian life. His story runs in parallel with those of four individuals who connect on an online chatroom dedicated to recovering drug addicts."

  Erik Piepenburg of The New York Times describes the subject of the play as "..a Puerto Rican veteran of the Iraq war who faces personal demons when he returns to the United States".

 Charles McNulty, a theater critic with the LA Times, describes the play, "Water by the Spoonful," Quiara Alegría Hudes' Pulitzer Prize winner, is a family drama that redefines what family means for those struggling not to fall through the cracks of an increasingly fractured society.

 Chris Jones (drama critic), the chief theatre critic for the Chicago Tribune, says, "This play somehow drives to a quieter yet deeper depth, offering the wholly fulfilling sense that everyone on the stage is, by their creator, known."

 Peter Marks, a theatre critic with the Washington Post, wrote, "It's a sensitively wrought piece, with an ambitious range of concerns and some interesting observations about the families we're born into and the ones we create in a modern age, in therapeutic situations, and even online."

The play was published in 2012 by Theatre Communications Group. Hudes had won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical for her book of In the Heights.

References

External links
Pulitzer page
Internet Off-Broadway Database
Hartford Stage PR page

2011 plays
Off-Broadway plays
Pulitzer Prize for Drama-winning works
Hispanic and Latino American plays

Water by the Spoonful


Sentience is the ability to experience feelings and sensations. The word was first coined by philosophers in the 1630s for the concept of an ability to feel, derived from Latin sentiens (feeling), to distinguish it from the ability to think (reason). In modern Western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations. In different Asian religions, the word "sentience" has been used to translate a variety of concepts. In science fiction, the word "sentience" is sometimes used interchangeably with "sapience", "self-awareness", or "consciousness".

Some writers differentiate between the mere ability to perceive sensations, such as light or pain, and the ability to perceive emotions, such as fear or grief. The subjective awareness of experiences by a conscious individual are known as qualia in Western philosophy.

Philosophy and sentience
In philosophy, different authors draw different distinctions between consciousness and sentience. According to Antonio Damasio, sentience is a minimalistic way of defining consciousness, which otherwise commonly and collectively describes sentience plus further features of the mind and consciousness, such as creativity, intelligence, sapience, self-awareness, and intentionality (the ability to have thoughts about something). These further features of consciousness may not be necessary for sentience, which is the capacity to feel sensations and emotions.

Consciousness

According to Thomas Nagel in his paper "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", consciousness can refer to the ability of any entity to have subjective perceptual experiences, or as some philosophers refer to them, "qualia"—in other words, the ability to have states that it feels like something to be in. Some philosophers, notably Colin McGinn, believe that the physical process causing consciousness to happen will never be understood, a position known as "new mysterianism." They do not deny that most other aspects of consciousness are subject to scientific investigation but they argue that qualia will never be explained. Other philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett, argue that qualia are not a meaningful concept.

Regarding animal consciousness, according to the Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness, which was publicly proclaimed on 7 July 2012 at Cambridge University, consciousness is that which requires specialized neural structures, chiefly neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates, which manifests in more complex organisms as the central nervous system, to exhibit consciousness. Accordingly, only organisms that possess these substrates, all within the animal kingdom, are said to be conscious.

Phenomenal vs. affective consciousness

David Chalmers argues that sentience is sometimes used as shorthand for phenomenal consciousness, the capacity to have any subjective experience at all, but sometimes refers to the narrower concept of affective consciousness, the capacity to experience subjective states that have affective valence (i.e., a positive or negative character), such as pain and pleasure.

Recognition paradox and relation to sapience

While it has been traditionally assumed that sentience and sapience are, in principle, independent of each other, there are criticisms of that assumption. One such criticism is about recognition paradoxes, one example of which is that an entity that cannot distinguish a spider from a non-spider cannot be arachnophobic. More generally, it is argued that since it is not possible to attach an emotional response to stimuli that cannot be recognized, emotions cannot exist independently of cognition that can recognize. The claim that precise recognition exists as specific attention to some details in a modular mind is criticized both with regard to data loss as a small system of disambiguating synapses in a module physically cannot make as precise distinctions as a bigger synaptic system encompassing the whole brain, and for energy loss as having one system for motivation that needs some built-in cognition to recognize anything anyway and another cognitive system for making strategies would cost more energy than integrating it all in one system that use the same synapses. Data losses inherent in all information transfer from more precise systems to less precise systems are also argued to make it impossible for any imprecise system to use a more precise system as an "emissary", as a less precise system would not be able to tell whether the outdata from the more precise system was in the interest of the less precise system or not.

Empirical data on conditioned reflex precision
The original studies by Ivan Pavlov that showed that conditioned reflexes in human children are more discriminating than those in dogs, human children salivating only at ticking frequencies very close to those at which food was served while dogs drool at a wider range of frequencies, have been followed up in recent years with comparative studies on more species. It is shown that both brain size and brain-wide connectivity contribute to make perception more discriminating, as predicted by the theory of a brain-wide perception system but not by the theory of separate systems for emotion and cognition.

Eastern religions

Eastern religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism recognise non-humans as sentient beings. The term sentient beings is translated from various Sanskrit terms (jantu, bahu jana, jagat, sattva) and "conventionally refers to the mass of living things subject to illusion, suffering, and rebirth (Saṃsāra)". In some forms of Buddhism plants, stones and other inanimate objects are considered to be 'sentient'. In Jainism many things are endowed with a soul, jīva, which is sometimes translated as 'sentience'. Some things are without a soul, ajīva, such as a chair or spoon. There are different rankings of jīva based on the number of senses it has. Water, for example, is a sentient being of the first order, as it is considered to possess only one sense, that of touch.

In Jainism and Hinduism, this is related to the concept of ahimsa, non-violence toward other beings.

Sentience in Buddhism is the state of having senses. In Buddhism, there are six senses, the sixth being the subjective experience of the mind. Sentience is simply awareness prior to the arising of Skandha. Thus, an animal qualifies as a sentient being. According to Buddhism, sentient beings made of pure consciousness are possible. In Mahayana Buddhism, which includes Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, the concept is related to the Bodhisattva, an enlightened being devoted to the liberation of others. The first vow of a Bodhisattva states, "Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to free them."

Animal welfare, rights, and sentience

Sentience has been a central concept in the animal rights movement, tracing back to the well-known writing of Jeremy Bentham in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation: "The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"

Richard D. Ryder defines sentientism broadly as the position according to which an entity has moral status if and only if it is sentient. In David Chalmer's more specific terminology, Bentham is a narrow sentientist, since his criterion for moral status is not only the ability to experience any phenomenal consciousness at all, but specifically the ability to experience conscious states with negative affective valence (i.e. suffering). Animal welfare and rights advocates often invoke similar capacities. For example, the documentary Earthlings argues that while animals do not have all the desires and ability to comprehend as do humans, they do share the desires for food and water, shelter and companionship, freedom of movement and avoidance of pain.

Animal-welfare advocates typically argue that any sentient being is entitled, at a minimum, to protection from unnecessary suffering, though animal-rights advocates may differ on what rights (e.g., the right to life) may be entailed by simple sentience. Sentiocentrism describes the theory that sentient individuals are the center of moral concern.

Gary Francione also bases his abolitionist theory of animal rights, which differs significantly from Singer's, on sentience. He asserts that, "All sentient beings, humans or nonhuman, have one right: the basic right not to be treated as the property of others."

Andrew Linzey, founder of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics in England, considers recognising animals as sentient beings as an aspect of his Christianity. The Interfaith Association of Animal Chaplains encourages animal ministry groups to adopt a policy of recognising and valuing sentient beings.

In 1997 the concept of animal sentience was written into the basic law of the European Union. The legally binding protocol annexed to the Treaty of Amsterdam recognises that animals are "sentient beings", and requires the EU and its member states to "pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals".

Digital sentience

Digital sentience (or artificial sentience) means the sentience of artificial intelligences. The question of whether artificial intelligences can be sentient is controversial.

The AI research community does not consider sentience (that is, the "ability to feel sensations") as an important research goal, unless it can be shown that consciously "feeling" a sensation can make a machine more intelligent than just receiving input from sensors and processing it as information. Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig wrote in 2021: "We are interested in programs that behave intelligently. Individual aspects of consciousness -- awareness, self-awareness, attention -- can be programmed and can be part of an intelligent machine. The additional project making a machine conscious in exactly the way humans are is not one that we are equipped to take on."
Indeed, leading AI textbooks do not mention "sentience" at all.

Digital sentience is of considerable interest to the philosophy of mind. Functionalist philosophers consider that sentience is about "causal roles" played by mental states, which involve information processing. In this view, the physical substrate of this information processing does not need to be biological, so there is no theoretical barrier to the possibility of sentient machines. According to type physicalism however, the physical constitution is important ; and depending on the types of physical systems required for sentience, it may or may not be possible for certain types of machines (such as electronic computing devices) to be sentient.

The discussion on the topic of alleged sentience of artificial intelligence has been reignited in 2022 by the claims made about Google's LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) artificial intelligence system that it is "sentient" and had a "soul." LaMDA is an artificial intelligence system that creates chatbots – AI robots designed to communicate with humans – by gathering vast amounts of text from the internet and using algorithms to respond to queries in the most fluid and natural way possible. The transcripts of conversations between scientists and LaMDA reveal that the AI system excels at this, providing answers to challenging topics about the nature of emotions, generating Aesop-style fables on the moment, and even describing its alleged fears.

In 2022, the philosopher David Chalmers made a speech on whether large language models (LLMs) can be conscious, encouraging more research on the subject. He said that it is very plausible that the training of AI models can cause a world model to emerge in them. He personally estimated the chances that the most advanced LLMs are conscious to be less than 10% in 2022 and more than 20% in 2032, reaching around 50% if it attains "virtual perception, language, action, unified agents" exceeding the cognition level of a fish. He stated that "If you see conscious A.I. coming somewhere down the line, then that's going to raise a whole new important group of extremely snarly ethical challenges with, you know, the potential for new forms of injustice".

Nick Bostrom considers that while LaMDA is probably not sentient, being very sure of it would require having an extensive understanding of LaMDA and of the literature on consciousness. He also said about LLMs that "it's not doing them justice to say they're simply regurgitating text", noting that they "exhibit glimpses of creativity, insight and understanding that are quite impressive and may show the rudiments of reasoning". He thinks that "sentience is a matter of degree".

Sentience quotient
The sentience quotient concept was introduced by Robert A. Freitas Jr. in the late 1970s. It defines sentience as the relationship between the information processing rate of each individual processing unit (neuron), the weight/size of a single unit, and the total number of processing units (expressed as mass). It was proposed as a measure for the sentience of all living beings and computers from a single neuron up to a hypothetical being at the theoretical computational limit of the entire universe. On a logarithmic scale it runs from −70 up to +50.

See also

 Blindsight
 Binding problem
 Causality
 Ethics of uncertain sentience
 Explanatory gap
 Hard problem of consciousness
 Ideasthesia
 Mind–body problem
 Mirror test
 Omniscience
 Pain in invertebrates
 Philosophical zombie
 Philosophy of mind
 Problem of other minds
 Solipsism
 Turing test
 Vertiginous question
 Wisdom

Notes

a.  Quote: "The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates."

b.  Quote: "Granted, these animals do not have all the desires we humans have; granted, they do not comprehend everything we humans comprehend; nevertheless, we and they do have some of the same desires and do comprehend some of the same things. The desires for food and water, shelter and companionship, freedom of movement and avoidance of pain."

References

Further reading
 Sugunasiri, Suwanda H.J., The Whole Body, not Heart, as 'Seat of Consciousness': the Buddha's View', Philosophy East & West, vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 409–430). Prof. Sugunasiri is Founder of Nalanda College of Buddhist Studies, Toronto, Canada
 Jeremy Bentham - Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
 Book about A Theory of Sentience Readership: Philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists interested in sensation and perception. Authors, Austen Clark, Professor of Philosophy, University of Connecticut, Storrs
 D. Cole: Sense and Sentience SENSE5 8/18/90; rev. 1-19-98. (original 1983) copyright David Cole University of Minnesota, Duluth
 Science, policy and cultural implications of animal sentience, Suggested Reading, Compassion in World Farming
 "'Bees are sentient': inside the stunning brains of nature's hardest workers". Annette McGivney, The Guardian, April 2, 2023

17th-century neologisms
Animal ethics
Animal rights
Consciousness
Personhood
Concepts in the philosophy of mind
Subjective experience

Sentience


Copano () is a ghost town on the northwestern shore of Copano Bay in Refugio County, Texas. It is located  north of present-day Bayside, on Copano Point. The port, which holds the distinction as the first in South Texas, was founded in the early 18th century by the Spanish, and named for the Copane Indians who resided in the area. Initially, it was used as a port by smugglers and pirates, until 1785, when it was officially opened for use by the Spanish empire. The port was abandoned in the 1880s, following the settlement of the area after the Texas Revolution. Ruins of the town site can still be found, but are currently in danger of falling into Copano Bay.

History

Port usage

After its founding, El Copano was a common port used by pirates and smugglers. In 1785, it was officially opened by New Spain Viceroy Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez for entry into Texas. Around this time, a customshouse and freshwater tank were all that could be found on land, but the port was valued. General Juan Almonte described it as the deepest port on the Texas coast during an 1834 inspection for Antonio López de Santa Anna, and it was described as the "safest" on the coast, due to its protection by Copano Reef.  Copano was also used by many Irish emigrants from 1828 to 1835, many of whom landed at the port during their trek from New York City to the Irish colony of San Patricio. At least 200 of these settlers died of cholera upon arrival and were buried on Copano Beach.

During the Texas Revolution, the port was used by both the Mexican and Texian armies. General Martín Perfecto de Cos of Mexico, entered at Copano en route to the missions at San Antonio and Goliad in September 1835. It was fortified by the Texians the following month, and used to transport food and supplies until it was captured by Mexican General José de Urrea in March 1836. The Mexicans held on to the port until the end of the war, and used it to obtain reinforcements and send the injured and prisoners to Mexico. At the end of the war, several Mexican vessels, soldiers, and supplies were taken by the "Horse Marines" led by Texian Major Isaac Burton and the Texas Rangers.

Settlement
James Power and business partner James Hewetson were granted the land between the Lavaca River and the Nueces River as empresarios in 1825, to create an Irish and Mexican settlement. However, in 1828, the settlement was restricted to only include the area between the Guadalupe River and Lavaca. Although this restriction was reversed in 1829, land disputes with local citizens and hostilities between the Texians and Mexicans prevented any colonization attempts at Copano.

After signing the Texas Declaration of Independence and winning independence from Mexico, Power established a permanent settlement at Copano in 1836. The house of Joseph E. Plummer is believed to be the first of nearly a dozen homes that had been constructed, using oyster-shell concrete (shellcrete) obtained from Copano Beach. Power was completing a two-story house of his own at the site prior to his death in 1852. A school was built, as was a post office, which was used until 1864. Three wharves were built on the bay front to accommodate traders contributing to the prosperity of the settlement; their primary goods included cotton, hides, and tallow.

Decline
During the American Civil War, Copano continued to flourish, unlike other blockaded Confederate ports, because of its location on a point, which allowed goods to be shipped without being noticed by the Union forces. This came to an end in 1864, when a Union fleet anchored just off Copano, causing the settlers to leave for several days. After several failed attempts to build railroads to Goliad and San Antonio, and trouble maintaining a supply of fresh water, most settlers relocated to Refugio. The abandonment was complete by 1888 after a wave of destructive hurricanes.

Remains
The ruins of Copano can be accessed from the shore of Bayside by watercraft. However, it is currently located on private property owned by the descendants of empresarios. A historical marker was placed at the site in 1936, but was relocated  south at Bayside Park, after nearly falling into Copano Bay during a 1978 storm. An archeological survey by the TAMU Kingsville field school in 2005 found a cistern along with 10 shellcrete homes on the edge of a cliff off Copano Bay. The study concluded that the ruins would soon fall into the bay, noting that the shoreline had receded  since 1935. The Plummer residence is believed to have already sunk to the bottom of the bay. Copano is currently named as one of Texas's most endangered historical sites.

References

Further reading

Geography of Refugio County, Texas
Ghost towns in South Texas
Irish-American history and culture in Texas

Copano, Texas