Virtual inheritance is a C++ technique that ensures only one copy of a base classs member variables are inherited by grandchild derived classes. Without virtual inheritance, if two classes B and C inherit from a class A, and a class D inherits from both B and C, then D will contain two copies of As member variables: one via B, and one via C. These will be accessible independently, using scope resolution.

Instead, if classes B and C inherit virtually from class A, then objects of class D will contain only one set of the member variables from class A.

This feature is most useful for multiple inheritance, as it makes the virtual base a common subobject for the deriving class and all classes that are derived from it. This can be used to avoid the diamond problem by clarifying ambiguity over which ancestor class to use, as from the perspective of the deriving class (D in the example above) the virtual base (A) acts as though it were the direct base class of D, not a class derived indirectly through a base (B or C).

It is used when inheritance represents restriction of a set rather than composition of parts. In C++, a base class intended to be common throughout the hierarchy is denoted as virtual with the virtual keyword.

Consider the following class hierarchy.

struct Animal {
    virtual ~Animal() = default;    // Explicitly show that the default class destructor will be made.
    virtual void Eat() {}
};

struct Mammal: Animal {
    virtual void Breathe() {}
};

struct WingedAnimal: Animal {
    virtual void Flap() {}
};

// A bat is a winged mammal
struct Bat: Mammal, WingedAnimal {};
As declared above, a call to bat.Eat is ambiguous because there are two Animal (indirect) base classes in Bat, so any Bat object has two different Animal base class subobjects. So, an attempt to directly bind a reference to the Animal subobject of a Bat object would fail, since the binding is inherently ambiguous:
Bat bat;
Animal& animal = bat;  // error: which Animal subobject should a Bat cast into,
                // a Mammal::Animal or a WingedAnimal::Animal?

To disambiguate, one would have to explicitly convert bat to either base class subobject:
Bat bat;
Animal& mammal = static_cast<Mammal&>(bat);
Animal& winged = static_cast<WingedAnimal&>(bat);

In order to call Eat, the same disambiguation, or explicit qualification is needed: static_cast<Mammal&>(bat).Eat() or static_cast<WingedAnimal&>(bat).Eat() or alternatively bat.Mammal::Eat() and bat.WingedAnimal::Eat(). Explicit qualification not only uses an easier, uniform syntax for both pointers and objects but also allows for static dispatch, so it would arguably be the preferable method.

In this case, the double inheritance of Animal is probably unwanted, as we want to model that the relation (Bat is an Animal) exists only once; that a Bat is a Mammal and is a WingedAnimal, does not imply that it is an Animal twice: an Animal base class corresponds to a contract that Bat implements (the "is a" relationship above really means "implements the requirements of"), and a Bat only implements the Animal contract once. The real world meaning of "is a only once" is that Bat should have only one way of implementing Eat, not two different ways, depending on whether the Mammal view of the Bat is eating, or the WingedAnimal view of the Bat. (In the first code example we see that Eat is not overridden in either Mammal or WingedAnimal, so the two Animal subobjects will actually behave the same, but this is just a degenerate case, and that does not make a difference from the C++ point of view.)

This situation is sometimes referred to as diamond inheritance (see Diamond problem) because the inheritance diagram is in the shape of a diamond. Virtual inheritance can help to solve this problem.

The solution
We can re-declare our classes as follows:
struct Animal {
    virtual ~Animal() = default;
    virtual void Eat() {}
};

// Two classes virtually inheriting Animal:
struct Mammal: virtual Animal {
    virtual void Breathe() {}
};

struct WingedAnimal: virtual Animal {
    virtual void Flap() {}
};

// A bat is still a winged mammal
struct Bat: Mammal, WingedAnimal {};
The Animal portion of Bat::WingedAnimal is now the same Animal instance as the one used by Bat::Mammal, which is to say that a Bat has only one, shared, Animal instance in its representation and so a call to Bat::Eat is unambiguous. Additionally, a direct cast from Bat to Animal is also unambiguous, now that there exists only one Animal instance which Bat could be converted to.

The ability to share a single instance of the Animal parent between Mammal and WingedAnimal is enabled by recording the memory offset between the Mammal or WingedAnimal members and those of the base Animal within the derived class. However this offset can in the general case only be known at runtime, thus Bat must become (vpointer, Mammal, vpointer, WingedAnimal, Bat, Animal). There are two vtable pointers, one per inheritance hierarchy that virtually inherits Animal. In this example, one for Mammal and one for WingedAnimal. The object size has therefore increased by two pointers, but now there is only one Animal and no ambiguity. All objects of type Bat will use the same vpointers, but each Bat object will contain its own unique Animal object. If another class inherits from Mammal, such as Squirrel, then the vpointer in the Mammal part of Squirrel will generally be different to the vpointer in the Mammal part of Bat though they may happen to be the same if the Squirrel class be the same size as Bat.

Additional Example of Several Ancestors
This example to illustrates a case where base class A has a constructor variable msg and an additional ancestor E is derived from grandchild class D.
  A
 / \
B   C
 \ /
  D
  |
  E
Here, A must be constructed in both D and E. Further, inspection of the variable msg illustrates how class A becomes a direct base class of its deriving class, as opposed to a base class of any intermediate deriving classed between A and the final deriving class. The code below may be explored interactively here.#include <string>
#include <iostream>

class A                     {
    private:
        std::string _msg;
    public:
        A(std::string x): _msg(x) {}
        void test(){ std::cout<<"hello from A: "<<_msg <<"\n"; }
};

// B,C inherit A virtually
class B: virtual public A   { public: B(std::string x):A("b"){}  };
class C: virtual public A   { public: C(std::string x):A("c"){}  };
// Compile error when :A("c") is removed (since A's constructor is not called)
//class C: virtual public A   { public: C(std::string x){}  };
//class C: virtual public A   { public: C(std::string x){ A("c"); }  }; // Same compile error

// Since B, C inherit A virtually, A must be constructed in each child
class D: public         B,C { public: D(std::string x):A("d_a"),B("d_b"),C("d_c"){}  };
class E: public         D   { public: E(std::string x):A("e_a"),D("e_d"){}  };

// Compile error without constructing A
//class D: public         B,C { public: D(std::string x):B(x),C(x){}  };

// Compile error without constructing A
//class E: public         D   { public: E(std::string x):D(x){}  };

int main(int argc, char ** argv){
    D d("d");
    d.test(); // hello from A: d_a

    E e("e");
    e.test(); // hello from A: e_a
}

Pure Virtual Methods

Suppose a pure virtual method is defined in the base class. If a deriving class inherits the base class virtually, then the pure virtual method does not need to be defined in that deriving class. However, if the deriving class does not inherit the base class virtually, then all virtual methods must be defined. The code below may be explored interactively here.#include <string>
#include <iostream>

class A                     {
    protected:
        std::string _msg;
    public:
        A(std::string x): _msg(x) {}
        void test(){ std::cout<<"hello from A: "<<_msg <<"\n"; }
        virtual void pure_virtual_test() = 0;
};

// since B,C inherit A virtually, the pure virtual method pure_virtual_test doesn't need to be defined
class B: virtual public A   { public: B(std::string x):A("b"){}  };
class C: virtual public A   { public: C(std::string x):A("c"){}  };

// since B,C inherit A virtually, A must be constructed in each child
// however, since D does not inherit B,C virtually, the pure virtual method in A *must be defined*
class D: public B,C {
    public:
        D(std::string x):A("d_a"),B("d_b"),C("d_c"){}
        void pure_virtual_test() override { std::cout<<"pure virtual hello from: "<<_msg <<"\n"; }
};

// it is not necessary to redefine the pure virtual method after the parent defines it
class E: public D {
    public:
    E(std::string x):A("e_a"),D("e_d"){}
};

int main(int argc, char ** argv){
    D d("d");
    d.test(); // hello from A: d_a
    d.pure_virtual_test(); // pure virtual hello from: d_a

    E e("e");
    e.test(); // hello from A: e_a
    e.pure_virtual_test(); // pure virtual hello from: e_a
}

References

Class (computer programming)
C++

Virtual inheritance


Daan Utsav was formerly known as The Joy of Giving Week. The Joy of Giving Week (JGW) is a "festival of philanthropy" that aims to become a part of the Indian ethos, with the Week being celebrated every year covering Gandhi Jayanti by engaging people through "acts of giving" - money, time, resources and skills - spanning the corporate, NGO and government sectors, schools, colleges and the general public. Originally called "India Giving Week", the name "Joy of Giving Week" emerged from a set of choices provided by the ad agency, Euro RSCG India, which provided PR, creative and media services for the 'Joy of Giving Week'.
This initiative was supported by many NGO's and Corporates. Corporate participate with this venture to fulfill their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) function.

Initiatives undertaken

Several corporates, celebrities and organizations have undertaken efforts towards awareness, volunteering and fundraising events that they will organize during the Joy of Giving Week. A brief outline on some of the initiatives that have taken place during the Week in 2009.

FOR CHANGE

The Design for Giving School Contest inspires children between the age group 10-13 from over 10,000 private and government schools all over India to design solutions to India's problems and implement them during the Week. Presented by Riverside School in Ahmedabad, NID, Stanford Design School and IDEO, in partnership with hundreds of educational NGOs and schools across India.

Clothes collection drive

Goonj runs a Vastradaan initiative that provides clothes and other amenities to the far-flung villages, collecting on an average 20,000 kg or about 1.2 lac units of clothing every month, processing it and distributing it through a unique clothes for work program.  For the Joy of Giving Week, Goonj has undertaken a massive clothes collection drive in over 25 cities, targeting to collect at least 1 crore units of clothing during the week.

Stories of Joy

Stories of Joy brings together five short films that carry the message of Joy of Giving through interesting stories.

A Real Joy Ride

College Joyfest

A "College Joyfest" to promote awareness and sensitivity among youth of 300+ college campuses in India catalyzing as fundraisers for the partner with local NGOs during the cultural festivals. The initiative was being led by JAM Magazine JAM Magazine and was being supported by MTV India.

7Days7Gifts

7Days7Gifts, a simple idea where people will be encouraged to do random acts of kindness to people they don't know for every day of the week. The 7 Day gifting challenge aims to take the focus away from you on to others. The only real condition here is that each gift should be meaningful and some thought should have gone into it.

Battle of the Buffet

"Battle of the Buffet" events by the 5 star Hotels in Chennai and Hyderabad, where they provided their most lavish spreads free of cost to NGOs of the city, who worked together as a city and sell donor passes to raise funds for their work.

Hi5 Club

Hi5 Club is an event by Bhumi and volunteers.org to engage college students and young people in volunteering for a cause of their choice for five hours during Daan Utsav. Students can volunteer either on the structured opportunities provided by Bhumi (5 hrs of teaching, cleaning a beach/park, visiting an elderly home, making educational aids, sorting out clothes or doing a collection drive, etc.), or can identify their own activity.

Celebrities Support for the Week

Celebrities from various facets supported various initiatives during the week.
 Sports - Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Geet Sethi, Prakash Padukone, Gopichand
 Cinema - Shahrukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Nandita Das, Imtiaz Ali, Shriya Saran, Surya Sivakumar, Madhavan, Mini Mathur
 Corporate - Narayana Murthy, Kumar Birla, KV Kamath, Adi Godrej, Deepak Parekh, Ajay Piramal

References

Other websites
 Joy Of Giving Week

Entertainment events in India

Daan Utsav


Vijendra Kumar Singh is a neuroimmunologist who formerly held a post at Utah State University, prior to which he was a professor at the University of Michigan. While affiliated with both institutions, he conducted some controversial autism-related research focusing on the potential role of immune system disorders in the etiology of autism. For example, he has testified before a US congressional committee that, in his view, "three quarters of autistic children suffer from an autoimmune disease."

Career
Singh originally worked at a children's hospital in Vancouver, and is the author of over 100 scientific publications. The original focus of his research was neurochemistry, but his interest in the role of the immune system in neurodevelopmental disorders was sparked after reading an article on the mind-body relationship, which proposed a biological mechanism to explain the signaling taking place both in the brain and in the immune system. In 2004, Singh gave a talk before the Institute of Medicine in which he recommended testing for immune disorders before vaccinating children, a proposal which was declined, according to Singh, because of its high cost (almost $100 per child). As of 2009 he was working at the Brain State International Research Center in Scottsdale, Arizona. He is currently affiliated with Neuro Immune Biotechnology Solutions, as the organization's scientific director. He is also a member of the Autism Autoimmunity Project.

Research
In 1998, Singh, while affiliated with the University of Michigan, coauthored a paper in Clinical Immunology and Immunopathology reporting the presence of antibodies to myelin basic protein in autistic children and arguing that a virally triggered autoimmune response might cause autism. In 2002, Singh et al. published a paper in the Journal of Biomedical Science in which it was reported that 75 of 125 autistic children had an abnormal measles antibody, whereas none of the non-autistic children did. In addition, the study concluded that "...an inappropriate antibody response to MMR, specifically the measles component thereof, might be related to pathogenesis of autism." The results were reported on by the Daily Telegraph, which noted that the study did not prove that the MMR vaccine caused autism; rather, "autism may be responsible for the unusual response to the MMR antibodies."

Singh's findings on autism have been criticized by other scientists as flawed, unreproducible, or dubious. Mary Ramsay of the Health Protection Agency wrote that the evidence for the "specific" MMR-type antibody Singh claims to have detected was "not credible." Paul Offit wrote in Autism's False Prophets that "...a closer look at Singh's science revealed two critical flaws: children with autism didn't have evidence of nerve cell damage, and, according to measles experts, the test that Singh had used to detect measles antibodies didn't actually detect them." A 2006 review of literature on vaccines and autism found that Singh's results "have been called into question due to issues of cross-contamination, as well as the use of unsubstantiated and un-validated biochemical techniques", citing a report by the World Health Organization, and a number of other studies have failed to find a difference in immune response to the measles virus between autistic and neurotypical children. Peter Lachmann, the president of the Academy of Medical Sciences, United Kingdom, stated: "Singh's work in these papers is not particularly reproducible or good... There are many diseases which show raised antibodies to measles, for example chronic active hepatitis or multiple sclerosis, yet there is nothing to associate these with MMR. There is no persuasive evidence that autism is caused by autoimmunity."

Testimony
In 2000, Singh testified before the Committee on Government Reform, led by Dan Burton, regarding the potential role of autoimmunity as a cause of autism. Part of his testimony centered on his findings of brain autoantibodies in autistic children.

Alternative autism therapies
Singh endorses the treatment of autism with nutraceuticals, transfer factors and glyconutrients. In addition, Singh "recommends treating autistic children with a range of immunological treatments, including steroids, intravenous immunoglobulin, plasmapheresis, and sphingomyelin."

Selected publications

References

Bibliography

External links

 Autism May Be Caused By An Immune System Response To A Virus

Living people
Autism researchers
Utah State University faculty
University of British Columbia alumni
Year of birth missing (living people)
MMR vaccine and autism

Vijendra K. Singh


Andrzej Wasowski (January 24, 1919 – May 27, 1993) was a Polish classical pianist.

Life
Andrzej Wasowski was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1919 [various sources incorrectly state 1924]. His father's family owned estates in Podolia and sugar refineries and mining interests in Silesia. His mother, Princess Maria Glińska Wąsowska was professor of piano at the Warsaw Conservatory. She, in her turn, had studied piano with Richard Baumeister, a pupil of Franz Liszt.

Andrzej began his piano studies with his mother at the age of four. In 1931 he was admitted to the Warsaw Conservatory where he studied with Margerita Trombini-Kazuro, who had studied with one of Liszt's disciples, Giovanni Sgambati. He graduated from the conservatory in 1939 with one of its highest awards, the Grand Prix d'Interpretation.

Lwów, where he was living at the time, was overrun by the Russian army in 1939. On hearing him play, they packed him off to give concerts in the Soviet Union where he performed 186 times, giving up to nine concerts in a three-day period. While in the Soviet Union, he studied with Konstantin Igumnov in Moscow.

He returned to his native city in 1942. He was permitted to give concerts to benefit war relief organisations, but was not permitted to play Polish music. Since the Nazis forbade performance of Polish music, Wasowski played clandestinely in basements for handfuls of Poles who risked their lives to hear Chopin. When he refused to play concerts for the Nazis, he was put to work in a slave battalion. He escaped Poland and settled in Vienna.

After the Second World War, all of his family's possessions were seized by the communists, and the 26-year-old Wasowski became a stateless refugee. His post-war career began in Austria (1945-1946), Italy (1946), Belgium, France, Netherlands and Great Britain (1947). Entering various piano competitions, he placed third in the 1951 Marguerite Long International Piano Competition in Paris, third ex aequo in the Viotti International Music Competition and second in the 1952 Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano. He toured western Europe extensively in the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1951 he played in Venezuela eventually becoming a citizen of that country. In 1956 he married Countess Maria Grocholska in Cannes. He continued to tour extensively in Europe, South and Latin America including Mexico. He returned to his native Poland for a series of concerts in 1959 and 1960.

His U.S. debut was in New York's Carnegie Hall in 1965. In the fall of 1967, he took up a teaching post at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His letters of references included a handwritten note from Leopold Stokowski and Arthur Rubinstein.

Mr. Wasowski's family joined him from France in September 1969. During breaks from the school year he travelled back to Europe, South America and throughout the United States to perform. On January 7, 1981, Wasowski played Chopin's complete mazurkas in Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. William Zakariasen of the New York Daily News in his review described it as "one of the most revelatory Chopin recitals heard in decades."

In 1983 he settled in Washington D.C. where he played at the Terrace Theater of the Kennedy Center numerous times. He died in Washington and is buried in Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery.

Legacy
During the 1950's Wasowski made three recordings with the clarinetist Antoine-Pierre de Bavier for Deutsche Grammophon, including works by Johannes Brahms, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Albert Roussel and Carl Maria von Weber. In 1954, with the addition of Walter Müller on viola, a fourth record featuring works by Schumann, Weber, Debussy, Ravel, Ferruccio Busoni and Roussel was released.

Disques Alpha, a Belgian classical music label, also released two Wasowski records of Frédéric Chopin works in the 1950's.

In 1971 Wasowski recorded Chopin's 24 Preludes, Opus 28 for the Spanish RCA Red Seal label.

The U.S. based Concord Records, re-issued Wasowski's 1980 recordings of Chopin's complete mazurkas (previously issued by Finnadar Records) and his 1989 recordings of the complete nocturnes. These recordings were hailed by critics. Bernard Sherman, reviewing the mazurkas for the New York Times described Wasowski as "one of those artists the broad international public neglects but critics and colleagues rave about". Another critic, Charles Michener praised the Mazurkas as "full-blooded and intoxicating, almost shocking in their use of rubato, the freedom with which they shake the pieces' rhythmic structures".

Critical acclaim for the nocturnes (recorded in just two days, 30 September and 1 October 1989) was equally marked. The recording received the 1997 Critics Choice Award from National Public Radio, and the critic Jessica Duchen writing in BBC Music Magazine (May 1997) said "These performances of the Chopin Nocturnes, recorded in 1989, are really rather extraordinary ... a glorious singing tone of great clarity, eloquence and purity, with beautifully balanced accompaniment and inner voices ... they moved me to tears".

Wasowski's recordings show a novel approach to rhythm, especially in the mazurkas. Being familiar with the dances themselves, his readings are informed by the rhythmic conventions of Polish music, resulting in interpretations that differ markedly from the literal notation, but which are perhaps more in keeping with Chopin's own performance (see an extensive discussion in Sherman's review in the external links section).

Of his own playing, he said "In my conviction, Chopin is not a sentimentalist. On the contrary when I am at the piano I feel his power and anguished revolutionary might."

See also
List of Poles

References

Some biographical material is from a biography which was included with his recordings of the Chopin mazurkas.
Other biographical and recording information provided by family.

External links
"Putting the Dance Back Into Mazurka" By Bernard D. Sherman
The New York Times review by Theodore Libby Jr

Polish classical pianists
Male classical pianists
Oral Roberts University faculty
Uninsky, Alexander
Uninsky, Alexander
Concord Records artists
20th-century classical pianists
20th-century male musicians
Polish emigrants to the United States

Andrzej Wasowski


Raymond Queneau (; 21 February 1903 – 25 October 1976) was a French novelist, poet, critic, editor and co-founder and president of Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle), notable for his wit and cynical humour.

Biography
Queneau was born at 47, rue Thiers (now Avenue René-Coty), Le Havre, Seine-Inférieure, the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot. After studying in Le Havre, Queneau moved to Paris in 1920 and received his first baccalauréat in 1925 for philosophy from the University of Paris. Queneau performed military service as a zouave in Algeria and Morocco during the years 1925–26.
During the 1920s and 1930s Queneau took odd jobs for income such as bank teller, tutor, translator and some writing in a column entitled, "Connaissez-vous Paris?" for the daily Intransigeant.

He married Janine Kahn (1903–1972) in 1928 after returning to Paris from his first military service. Kahn was the sister-in-law of André Breton, leader of the surrealist movement. In 1934 they had a son, Jean-Marie, who became a painter.

Queneau was drafted in August 1939 and served in small provincial towns before his promotion to corporal just before being demobilized in 1940. After a prolific career of writing, editing and critique, Queneau died on 25 October 1976. He is buried with his parents in the old cemetery of Juvisy-sur-Orge, in Essonne outside Paris.

Career
Queneau spent much of his life working for the Gallimard publishing house, where he began as a reader in 1938. He later rose to be general secretary and eventually became director of l'Encyclopédie de la Pléiade in 1956. During some of this time, he also taught at l'École Nouvelle de Neuilly. He entered the Collège de 'Pataphysique in 1950, where he became Satrap.

In 1950, Juliette Gréco recorded "Si tu t'imagines", a song by Joseph Kosma with lyrics by Queneau.

During this time, Queneau also acted as a translator, notably for Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard (L'Ivrogne dans la brousse) in 1953. Additionally, he edited and published Alexandre Kojève's lectures on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Queneau had been a student of Kojève during the 1930s and was, during this period, also close to writer Georges Bataille.

As an author, Queneau came to general attention in France with the publication in 1959 of his novel Zazie dans le métro. In 1960 the film adaptation directed by Louis Malle was released during the Nouvelle Vague movement. Zazie explores colloquial language as opposed to "standard" written French. The first word of the book, the alarmingly long "Doukipudonktan" is a playful phonetic transcription of "D'où qu'il pue / qu'ils puent donc tant?" – "Why does it / does he / do they stink so much?".

Before he founded the Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (Oulipo) in 1960, Queneau was attracted to mathematics as a source of inspiration. He became a member of la Société Mathématique de France in 1948. In Queneau's mind, elements of a text, including seemingly trivial details such as the number of chapters, were things that had to be predetermined, perhaps calculated. This was an issue during the writing of A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, also known as, 100,000,000,000,000 Poems. Queneau wrote 140 lines in 10 individual sonnets that could all be taken apart and rearranged in any order. Queneau calculated that anyone reading the book 24 hours a day would need 190,258,751 years to finish it. While Queneau was completing this work, he asked mathematician François Le Lionnais for help with issues he was having, and their conversation led to a role of mathematics in literature, which led to the creation of the Oulipo.

A later work, Les fondements de la littérature d'après David Hilbert (1976), alludes to the mathematician David Hilbert, and attempts to explore the foundations of literature by quasi-mathematical derivations from textual axioms. Queneau claimed this final work would prove "a hidden master of the automaton." Pressed by GF, his interlocutor, Queneau confided that the text "could never appear, but had to hide to glorify that without agency."

One of Queneau's most influential works is Exercises in Style, which tells the simple story of a man's seeing the same stranger twice in one day.  It tells that short story in 99 different ways, demonstrating the tremendous variety of styles in which storytelling can take place.

The works of Raymond Queneau are published by Gallimard in the collection Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.

Queneau and Surrealists
In 1924 Queneau met and briefly joined the Surrealists, but never fully shared their penchants for automatic writing or ultra-left politics. Like many surrealists, he entered psychoanalysis—however, not in order to stimulate his creative abilities, but for personal reasons, as with Leiris, Bataille, and Crevel.

Michel Leiris describes, in Brisees, how he first met Queneau in 1924, while vacationing in Nemours with André Masson, Armand Salacrou and Juan Gris. A common friend, Roland Tual, met Queneau on a train from Le Havre and brought him over. Queneau was a few years younger and felt less accomplished than the other men. He did not make a big impression on the young bohemians. After Queneau came back from the army, around 1926–7, he and Leiris met at the Café Certa, near L'Opera, a Surrealist hang-out. On this occasion, when conversation delved into Eastern philosophy, Queneau's comments showed a quiet superiority and erudite thoughtfulness. Leiris and Queneau became friends later while writing for Bataille's Documents.

Queneau questioned Surrealist support of the USSR in 1926. He remained on cordial terms with André Breton, although he also continued associating with Simone Kahn after Breton split up with her. Breton usually demanded that his followers ostracize his former girlfriends. It would have been difficult for Queneau to avoid Simone, however, since he married her sister, Janine, in 1928. The year that Breton left Simone, she sometimes traveled around France with her sister and Queneau.

By 1930, Queneau separated himself significantly from Breton and the Surrealists. Eluard, Aragon and Breton had joined the French Communist party in 1927; Queneau did not, and instead participated in Un Cadavre (A Corpse, 1930), a vehemently anti-Breton pamphlet co-written by Bataille, Leiris, Prévert, Alejo Carpentier, Jacques Baron, J.-A. Boiffard, Robert Desnos, Georges Limbour, Max Morise, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, and Roger Vitrac.

Queneau also joined the Democratic Communist Circle founded by Boris Souvarine and took up numerous left-wing and anti-fascist causes. He defended the Popular Front in France and the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. Under the Nazi occupation of France, he published in many left-wing journals associated with the Resistance. After World War II, Queneau continued to lend his support left-wing manifestos and petitions, and condemned McCarthyism and anti-communist persecution in Greece.

He wrote more scientific than literary reviews: on Pavlov, Vernadsky (from whom he got a circular theory of sciences), and a review of a book on the history of equestrian caparisons by an artillery officer. He also helped with writing passages on Engels and a mathematical dialectic for Bataille's article, "A critique of the foundations of Hegelian dialectic."

Legacy and honors
 1951, elected to the Académie Goncourt
 1952, elected to the Académie de l'humour
 1955–57, invited to jury of the Cannes Film Festival

Bibliography

Novels
 Le Chiendent (1933). The Bark-Tree, trans. Barbara Wright (Calder & Boyars, 1968); later published as Witch Grass (New York Review Books, 2003; )
 Gueule de pierre (1934). Gob of Stone
 Les Derniers Jours (1936). The Last Days, trans. Barbara Wright (Dalkey Archive, 1990; )
 Odile (1937). Trans. Carol Sanders (Dalkey Archive, 1988; )
 Les Enfants du Limon (1938). Children of Clay, trans. Madeleine Velguth (Sun & Moon, 1998; )
 Un rude hiver (1939). A Hard Winter, trans. Betty Askwith (J. Lehmann, 1948)
 Les Temps mêlés (Gueule de Pierre II) (1941)
 Pierrot mon ami (1942). Pierrot, trans. Julian Maclaren-Ross (J. Lehmann, 1950) and Barbara Wright (Dalkey Archive, 1987; )
 Loin de Rueil (1944). The Skin of Dreams, trans. H.J. Kaplan (New Directions, 1948; ) and Chris Clarke (New York Review Books, 2024; )
 On est toujours trop bon avec les femmes (1947). We Always Treat Women Too Well, trans. Barbara Wright (J. Calder, 1981; )
 Saint-Glinglin (1948). Trans. James Sallis (Dalkey Archive, 1993; )
 Le Journal intime de Sally Mara (1950)
 Le Dimanche de la vie (1952). The Sunday of Life, trans. Barbara Wright (J. Calder, 1976; )
 Zazie dans le métro (1959). Zazie in the Metro, trans. Barbara Wright (Harper, 1960; )
 Les Fleurs bleues (1965). The Blue Flowers, trans. Barbara Wright (Atheneum, 1967; ); also published as Between Blue and Blue (The Bodley Head, 1967)
 Le Vol d'Icare (1968). The Flight of Icarus, trans. Barbara Wright (Calder & Boyars, 1973; )

Poetry
 Chêne et chien (1937). Trans. Madeleine Velguth (P. Lang, 1995; )
 Les Ziaux (1943)
 L'Instant fatal (1946)
 Petite cosmogonie portative (1950)
 Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes (1961). Hundred Thousand Billion Poems
 Le chien à la mandoline (1965)
 Battre la campagne (1967). Beating the Bushes
 Courir les rues (1967). Hitting the Streets, trans. Rachel Galvin (Carcanet, 2013)
 Fendre les flots (1969)
 Morale élémentaire (1975). Elementary Morality

Essays and articles
 Joan Miró; ou, Le poète préhistorique (1949)
 Bâtons, chiffres et lettres (1950)
 Pour une bibliothèque idéale or For an Ars Poetica (1956)
 Entretiens avec Georges Charbonnier (1962)
 Bords (1963)
 Une Histoire modèle (1966)
 Le Voyage en Grèce (1973)
 Traité des vertus démocratiques (1955)

Other
 Un Cadavre (1930) with Jacques Baron, Georges Bataille, J.-A. Boiffard, Robert Desnos, Michel Leiris, Georges Limbour, Max Morise, Jacques Prévert, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, and Roger Vitrac.
 En passant (1944) – theatre.
 Exercices de style (1947). Exercises in Style, trans. Barbara Wright (Gaberbocchus Press, 1958; )
 La Mort en ce Jardin (1956). Death in the Garden – with Luis Buñuel, screenplay for the Franco-Mexican film production.
 Les fondements de la littérature d'après David Hilbert (1976)
 Contes et propos (1981) – a collection of short tales or sketches.
 Journal 1939–1940 (1986)
 Journaux 1914–1965 (1996)

Compilations in English

 The Trojan Horse & At the Edge of the Forest (Gaberbocchus Press, 1954). Trans. Barbara Wright.
Pounding the Pavements, Beating the Bushes, and Other Pataphysical Poems (Unicorn Press, 1985). Trans. Teo Savory.
 Five Stories (Obscure Publications, 2000). Trans. Barbara Wright. Compiles: "Panic"; "Dino"; "At the Edge of the Forest"; "A Blue Funk"; and "The Trojan Horse"
Stories & Remarks (University of Nebraska Press, 2000). Trans. Marc Lowenthal.
Letters, Numbers, Forms: Essays, 1928-70 (University of Illinois Press, 2007). Trans. Jordan Stump.
EyeSeas: Selected Poems (Black Widow Press, 2008). Trans. Daniela Hurezanu and Stephen Kessler.

In other art
 Zazie dans le métro (1960), released as film adaptation
 Pierre Bastien has made a CD with the bilingual pun title Eggs Air Sister Steel, based on Exercices de Style (which "Eggs Air Sister Steel" sounds like when spoken).
 A typographic interpretation of the German version of Exercices de Style, "Stilübungen – visuelle Interpretationen" by the graphic designer Marcus Kraft, was published in 2006.
 Spanish-Canadian composer José Evangelista wrote the song cycle "Exercises de style" setting texts from Queneau's titular book in 1997.

See also
 Georges Perec
 Miroglyph

References

Further reading
 Raymond Queneau by Richard Cobb (Clarendon, 1976)

External links

  Queneau's former website
 Periodicals, Gallimard
 Article
 Université McGill: le roman selon les romanciers (French) Inventory and analysis of Raymond Queneau's essays writings about the novel
 Letterism papers, 1946–1965. Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California

1903 births
1976 deaths
Writers from Le Havre
University of Paris alumni
Oulipo members
Pataphysicians
French surrealist writers
Prix des Deux Magots winners
Postmodern writers
20th-century French novelists
20th-century French poets
French male poets
French male novelists
20th-century French male writers

Raymond Queneau


"(Not Just) Knee Deep" is a funk song, with a running time of 15 minutes, 21 seconds, on Side 1 of Funkadelic's 1979 album Uncle Jam Wants You.

Song information
An edited version of the song, appearing as Side A on the single release, reached number one on the Billboard Black Singles chart. The song was written by George Clinton (credited on some releases as "George Clinton, Jr."); the recording was arranged by Walter "Junie" Morrison and produced by Clinton under the alias "Dr. Funkenstein".

The Funkadelic version is sung by Clinton and several other group members, including Philippé Wynne, who was a former lead singer of the rhythm and blues group, The Spinners, which he left two years earlier.

The song is widely regarded as a funk classic, peaking at No. 77 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topping the US R&B charts in 1979.  The lyrics tell of a "girl" who "was a freak of the week" and the man who was dancing with her. He was unimpressed by the Jerk, the Monkey, the Chicken, and the Moose, but was turned on by the Freak.

Personnel

Lead vocals: George Clinton, Garry Shider, Walter Morrison, Jessica Cleaves, Philippé Wynne
Lead guitar: Michael Hampton, Walter "Junie" Morrison
Keyboards/Synth Bass : Walter "Junie" Morrison
Drums: William "Bootsy" Collins
Percussion: Larry Fratangelo
Background vocals: Larry Heckstall, Sheila Horne, Ron Ford, Jeanette McGruder, Dawn Silva, Mike Payne, Greg Thomas, Ray Davis, Mallia Franklin, Lige Curry, James Wesley Jackson, Greg Boyer, Jerome Rogers, Linda Shider

Sampled in other music

The song has been heavily sampled by many artists. Hip hop group De La Soul sampled the intro to the song in their hit "Me Myself and I", which reached #34 on the Billboard Pop Charts and #1 on the R&B Charts.

Also LL Cool J ("Nitro"), Everlast ("Never Missin A Beat"), Tone Lōc ("Funky Cold Medina"), MC Hammer & Deion Sanders ("Straight to My Feet"), The rap group Mass 187 ("Swang Your Hips)", G-Funk Intro & his unreleased track "Do U Remember". Tha Dogg Pound used the sample in their unreleased track "Can't C Us". Geto Boys sampled the intro for "Homie Don't Play That". The Black Eyed Peas also used the beat behind it to remix their hit single "Shut Up". X Clan sampled the song in "Funkin' Lesson". It was also interpolated in the song "Get Away" by Bobby Brown. In 2014, it was sampled in Jessie J's "Seal Me with a Kiss".

EPMD sampled it in their song "Gold Digger", and Digital Underground used it in two of their songs, "Kiss You Back" and "Bran Nu Swetta".

Rapper 2Pac sampled the song for his "Intro/Bomb First (My Second Reply)" and his Dr. Dre produced track "Can't C Me".

In 1997, Vanessa Williams sampled "Knee Deep" for her song "Happiness".

Dr. Dre's song, "Fuck wit Dre Day (And Everybody's Celebratin')", is based on "Knee Deep".

South Korean girl band Mamamoo song "Um Oh Ah Yeh" from their third mini-album Pink Funky was influenced from it.

Appearances in other media
Featured in the 1979 episode of Diff'rent Strokes "The Rivals" (Season 2; Episode 10)
Frequently played by Paul Shaffer and The World's Most Dangerous Band as bumper music on episodes of Late Night with David Letterman (1982-1993).  The song was the basis of an extended sketch, aired on 20 October 1983, in which Letterman, Shaffer and Larry "Bud" Melman argued about who played the guitar solo on the original recording.  Melman proves that it was Michael "Kidd Funkadelic" Hampton—then robs Dave and Paul at gunpoint.
In the 1997 Paramount Pictures Nickelodeon film Good Burger during the insane asylum scene, George Clinton cameos as one of the mental patients who complains about the boring music on the radio, and asks Ed, played by Kel Mitchell, to change the station. Ed finds a station playing this song, and the patients subsequently dance to it.
Featured in the 2001 movie The Wash.
Featured in the 2003 video game True Crime: Streets of LA.
Performed by George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars on the FOX television series New York Undercover in 1995.
Performed by George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars on "Late Night with David Letterman" on June 25, 1991.
Performed by an animated version of George Clinton (played by himself) in The Cleveland Show episode "When a Man (or a Freight Train) Loves His Cookie."
Featured in the 2015 N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton.

References

External links
 [ Song Review] at AllMusic

Funkadelic songs
1979 singles
Songs written by George Clinton (funk musician)
1979 songs
Songs about dancing

(Not Just) Knee Deep


An online advertising network or ad network is a company that connects advertisers to websites that want to host advertisements. The key function of an ad network is an aggregation of ad supply from publishers and matching it with the advertiser's demand. The phrase "ad network" by itself is media-neutral in the sense that there can be a "Television Ad Network" or a "Print Ad Network", but is increasingly used to mean "online ad network" as the effect of aggregation of publisher ad space and sale to advertisers is most commonly seen in the online space. The fundamental difference between traditional media ad networks and online ad networks is that online ad networks use a central ad server to deliver advertisements to consumers (ad serving), which enables targeting, tracking and reporting of impressions in ways not possible with analog media alternatives.

Overview

The advertising network market is a large and growing market, with Internet advertising revenues expected to grow from $135.42 bn in 2014 to $239.87 bn in 2019.  Digital advertising revenues in the United States alone are set to reach $107.30 bn in 2018 which is an 18.7% increase from 2017 ad spend. This growth will result in many new players in the market and encourage acquisitions of ad networks by larger companies that either enter the market or expand their market presence. Currently, there are hundreds of ad networks worldwide and the landscape changes daily.

The inventory of online advertising space comes in many different forms, including space on the desktop and mobile websites, in RSS feeds, blogs, instant messaging applications, mobile apps, adware, e-mails, and other media. The dominant forms of inventory include third-party content websites, which work with advertising networks for either a share of the ad revenues or a fee, as well as search engines, mobile, and online video resources.

An advertiser can buy a run of network package, or a run of category package within the network. The advertising network serves advertisements from its central ad server, which responds to a site once a page is called. A snippet of code is called from the ad server, that represents the advertising banner.

Large publishers often sell only their remnant inventory through ad networks. Typical numbers range from 10% to 60% of total inventory being remnant and sold through advertising networks.

Smaller publishers often sell all of their inventory through ad networks. One type of ad network, known as a blind network, is such that advertisers place ads, but do not know the exact places where their ads are being placed.

Types
There are several criteria for categorizing advertising networks. In particular, the company's business strategy, as well as the quality of the networks' traffic and volume of inventory can serve as bases for categorization.

Based on business strategy
Online advertising networks can be divided into three groups based on how they work with advertisers and publishers:

 Vertical networks: They represent the publications in their portfolio, with full transparency for the advertiser about where their ads will run. They typically promote high-quality traffic at market prices and are heavily used by brand marketers. The economic model is generally revenue share. Vertical Networks offer ROS (Run-Of-Site) advertising across specific Channels (example: Auto or Travel) or they offer site-wide advertising options, in which case they operate in a similar fashion to Publisher Representation firms.
 Blind networks: These companies offer good pricing to direct marketers in exchange for those marketers relinquishing control over where their ads will run, though some networks offer a "site opt out" method. The network usually runs campaigns as RON or Run-Of-Network. Blind networks achieve their low pricing through large bulk buys of typically remnant inventory combined with conversion optimization and ad targeting technology.
 Targeted networks: Sometimes called "next generation" or "2.0" ad networks, these focus on specific targeting technologies such as behavioral or contextual, that have been built into an ad server. Targeted networks specialize in using consumer clickstream data to enhance the value of the inventory they purchase. Further specialized targeted networks include social graph technologies which attempt to enhance the value of inventory using connections in social networks.

Based on the number of clients and traffic quality
Ad networks can also be divided into first-tier and second-tier networks. First-tier advertising networks have a large number of their own advertisers and publishers, they have high quality traffic, and they serve ads and traffic to second-tier networks. Examples of first-tier networks include the major search engines. Second-tier advertising networks may have some of their own advertisers and publishers, but their main source of revenue comes from syndicating ads from other advertising networks.

While it is common for websites to be categorized into tiers, these can be misleading because tier 1 and tier 2 networks might perform differently based on different metrics, such as reach versus impressions.

Ad targeting and optimization
One aspect of ad-serving technology is automated and semi-automated means of optimizing bid prices, placement, targeting, or other characteristics.  Significant methods include:
 Behavioral targeting — using a profile of prior behavior on the part of the viewer to determine which ad to show during a given visit. For example, targeting car ads on a portal to a viewer who was known to have visited the automotive section of a general media site.
 Contextual targeting — (also known as Semantic Marketing) refers to the optimum ad placement as a result of analyzing information from the entire Web page where the ad is being served. This concept was introduced as a way of improving the 'keyword approach' to ad placement were issues surrounding ambiguity in relation to a word's meaning in the prescribed context.  The concept of analyzing the 'entire' Webpage in order to promote relevant advertising material is to benefit both the viewer of advertising content and the source of the ad. Keywords (or Adwords) are not always relevant in the context in which the word is intended. Therefore, by analyzing the entire page rather than just the keyword, the ambiguity is removed and a more relevant and accurate ad is promoted into the advertising slot on the Web page.
 Creative optimization — using experimental or predictive methods to explore the optimum creative for a given ad placement and exploiting that determination in further impressions.

Mobile and video ad networks
Ad networks often support a wide spectrum of ad formats (e.g. banners, native ads) and platforms (e.g. display, mobile, video). This is true for most ad networks. However, there also are ad networks that focus on particular kinds of inventory and ads:
 Mobile ad networks, focus on the traffic generated via mobile web and mobile apps, and work with the corresponding ad formats.
 Video ad networks serve ads via inventory, associated with online video content.

Video and mobile ad networks can be acquired by larger advertising companies, or operate as standalone entities.

Issues

 Positioning: Most ad networks don't disclose impressions per site. This means that advertisers or media agencies aren't sure where their ads will run. This can be a dangerous proposition if your ad turns up on a website that you don't want to be associated with.
 Malware: Some ad networks have been implicated in aiding the distribution of malware due to allowing malicious advertisers to buy inventory across their partner sites without enough scrutiny.
 Price transparency: Let's examine a scenario. An ad network packages display inventory to an agency at say $10 CPM (cost per mille – or cost per thousand impressions). The ad network would then buy a very small portion of the inventory on premium publications at $50 CPM and a large portion of the long tail inventory at $2 CPM. The real eCPM (effective CPM) of the campaign for the ad network is around $2.50, and is far from the agency's claim of premium inventory. The marketer is however appeased with screen grabs of his ads appearing in premium positions, oblivious of the masquerade while the ad network walks away with a big margin.
 Ad relevance: More often than not, the ads were out of relevance with the website content as a fall out of point 1, and also because there weren't intelligent contextual engines built into the ad servers (the server system that churns out the ads) of these ad networks.

Online ad networks and advertising publishers
Most online ad-network platforms offer website owners and marketers to signup as advertising publishers. Publishers can then display ads shared by the advertising network and the revenue is shared between both the advertising network and publisher. When the beginners could not pass through the minimum criteria for publishing advertisements, ad placement services could ban the publisher for not fulfilling the requirements. Some networks demand strict terms and conditions while there are other ad publishing alternatives times commissions vary on what sells otherwise user still to earn a good commission when one matches the criteria, and the publisher is allowed to display and share ads provided by the platform earns a good revenue. Getting approved as a publisher of the best advertising platform is a thorough process. Websites with a clean interface, more traffic and engagements are preferred to be selected as ad network publishers by the advertising platforms.

History
The first central ad server was released by FocaLink Media Services and introduced on July 17, 1995, for controlling the delivery of online advertising or banner ads. Although most contemporary accounts are no longer available online, the Weizmann Institute of Science published an academic research paper documenting the launch of the first ad server. The original motherboard for the first ad server, assembled in June 1995, is also preserved. FocaLink re-launched the ad server under the name SmartBanner in February 1996. The company was founded by Dave Zinman, Andrew Conru, and Jason Strober, and is based in Palo Alto, California. In 1998, the company changed its name to AdKnowledge and was purchased by CMGI in 1999.  The AdKnowledge name was subsequently purchased by a company in Kansas City in 2004, which now operates under the brand name AdKnowledge.

The first local ad server was released by NetGravity in January 1996 for delivering online advertising at major publishing sites such as Yahoo! and Pathfinder. The company was founded by Tom Shields and John Danner, and is based in San Mateo, California. In 1998, the company went public on NASDAQ (NETG), and was purchased by DoubleClick in 1999. NetGravity AdServer was then renamed to DART Enterprise. In March 2008 Google acquired DoubleClick. Google has continued to improve and invest in DART Enterprise. The latest version of the product was renamed and shipped as DoubleClick Enterprise 8.0 on September 28, 2011.

See also
 Affiliate marketing
 Ad exchange
 Contextual advertising
 Digital marketing
 Landing page
 Online advertising
 Pay-per-click
 Pay per play
 Surveillance capitalism
 Website monetization
 View-through rate

References

Online advertising

Advertising network


National Instruments Corporation, doing business as NI, is an American multinational company with international operation. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, it is a producer of automated test equipment and virtual instrumentation software. Common applications include data acquisition, instrument control and machine vision. Since October 2023, NI operates as Emerson Electric's Test and Measurement business unit after getting acquired.

In 2022, the company sold products to more than 35,000 companies with revenues of US$1.66 billion.

History

Founding
In the early 1970s, James Truchard, Jeff Kodosky, and Bill Nowlin were working at the University of Texas at Austin Applied Research Laboratories. As part of a project conducting research for the U.S. Navy, the men were using early computer technology to collect and analyze data. Frustrated with the inefficient data collection methods they were using, the three decided to create a product that would enable their task to be done more easily. In 1976, working in the garage at Truchard's home, the three founded a new company. They attempted to incorporate under several names, including Longhorn Instruments and Texas Digital, but all were rejected. Finally they settled on the current name of National Instruments.

With a $10,000 loan from Interfirst Bank, the group bought a PDP-11/04 minicomputer and, for their first project, designed and built a GPIB interface for it. Their first sale was the result of a cold call to Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio. The three were still employed by the University of Texas. In 1977 they hired their first full-time employee, Kim Harrison-Hosen, who handled orders, billing, and customer inquiries. By the end of the year they had sold three boards, and to attract more business, the company produced and sent a mailer to 15,000 users of the PDP-11 minicomputer. As sales increased, they were able to move into a real office space in 1978, occupying a  office at 9513 Burnet Road in Austin.

1980s
At the end of the 1970s, the company booked $400,000 in orders, recording a $60,000 profit. In 1980 Truchard, Kodosky, and Nowlin quit their jobs to devote themselves full-time to National Instruments, and at the end of the year moved the company to a larger office, renting  of office space. To assist in generating revenue, the company undertook numerous special projects, working on a fuel-pump credit-card system and a waveform generator for U.S. Navy sonar acoustic testing. By 1981, the company reached the $1 million sales mark, leading them to move to a  office in 1982.

In 1983 National Instruments reached an organizational milestone, developing their first GPIB board to connect instruments to IBM PCs. With the arrival of the Macintosh computer, however, the company felt ready to take advantage of the new graphical interfaces.  Kodosky began a research initiative with the assistance of student researchers at the University of Texas into ways to exploit the new interface. This led to the creation of NI's flagship product, the LabVIEW graphical development platform for the Macintosh computer, which was released in 1986. The software allows engineers and scientists to program graphically, by "wiring" icons together instead of typing text-based code. By allowing people to use a more intuitive, less-structured development environment, their productivity greatly increased, making LabVIEW quite popular. The following year, a version of LabVIEW, known as LabWindows, was released for the DOS environment.

The company had 100 employees by 1986. As part of the company's decision to begin direct sales of its products, NI opened its first international branch, in Tokyo in 1987.

1990s

After growing their staff enough to take over almost the entire building they were renting, in 1990 NI moved to a new building at 6504 Bridge Point Parkway, which the company purchased in 1991. The building, located along Lake Austin near the Loop 360 Bridge, became known as "Silicon Hills = Bridge Point."

NI received their first patent for LabVIEW in 1991. Later in the same year, they introduced Signal Conditioning eXtensions for Instrumentation (SCXI) to expand the signal-processing capabilities of the PC, and in 1992 LabVIEW was first released for Windows-based PCs and Unix workstations. To further assist their customers, NI also created the National Instruments Alliance Partner program, attracting a worldwide selection of third-party developers, systems integrators, and consultants who could extend the capabilities of the NI hardware and software.

With LabVIEW now available to a much larger audience, in 1993 the company reached the milestone of $100 million in annual sales. To attract C/C++ programmers, later that year NI introduced LabWindows/CVI. The following year an industrious employee began experiments with the relatively new World Wide Web and developed natinst.com, the company's very first web page.  As the company continued to grow, they began to run out of room in their approximately  campus. In 1994, NI broke ground on a new campus, located at a  site along North Mopac boulevard in northern Austin. By this time, NI had reached 1000 employees.

The new NI campus, which opened in 1998, was designed to be employee-friendly. It contains dedicated "play" areas, including basketball and volleyball courts, an employee gym, and a campus-wide walking trail. Each of the buildings on the campus are lined with windows and feature an open floor plan, so that the employees seated in cubicles throughout the building are never far from the sun and views of northwest Austin. Focusing on equality among the employees, even "Dr. T", as the employees call their CEO, sits in an open cubicle and does not have an assigned parking space.

Employees had been granted stock in the privately held company as part of their compensation packages. When the company chose to go public in 1995, over 300 current and former employees owned stock. The company is now listed on the Nasdaq exchange as NATI.

By the late 1990s, customers had begun using LabVIEW in industrial automation applications. With LabVIEW and the more advanced DAQ boards provided by the company, engineers could now replace expensive, fixed-function, vendor-defined instruments with a custom PC-based system that would acquire, analyze, and present data with added flexibility and a lower cost. With the company's acquisition of Georgetown Systems Lookout software, NI products were further incorporated into applications run on the factory-floor. By 1996, the company had reached $200 million in annual sales, and was named to Forbes magazine's 200 Best Small Companies list.

Over the next several years, the engineers at NI continued to stretch the boundaries of virtual instrumentation, releasing machine vision software and hardware, which allow cameras to act as sensors, and motion control hardware and software. NI also introduced the CompactPCI-based PXI, an open industry standard for modular measurement and automation, and NI TestStand, which provides for tracking high-volume manufacturing tests.

2000s
User traffic and e-commerce rapidly improved after the company acquired the ni.com domain and began investing in web technologies to better highlight their products. The company quickly introduced online configuration tools to help customers decide which NI products would best interact to solve their problem. They introduced NI Developer Zone, which provides the end-user developers access to example programs, sample code, and development tips, as well as forums in which users and NI employees could help answer questions about the products.

In the 2000s, NI began exporting most of its manufacturing overseas by first opening its first international manufacturing plant in Debrecen, Hungary. This  plant helped to diversify the company's manufacturing capabilities, which had been centered at company headquarters in Austin. NI now manufactures nearly 90% of its production in Debrecen and has expanded several times in the last decade. In 2011, with a multimillion-dollar grant from the government, NI increased production in Debrecen by approximately 20%. With state-of-the-art automation processes, headcount increased by only 2%.

In 2002, the company dedicated the  Building C on their Mopac campus, which became the headquarters for the company's R&D operations. Upon completion of this building, the NI campus finally had enough capacity to move all Austin-based employees to a single location.

Following the company model of selling directly to customers, by 2006 NI had opened 21 sales offices in Europe and 12 offices in the Asia/Pacific region, as well as a multitude of offices in the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East.  Research and Development centers are located in the United States, Germany, India, Romania, China, Canada, and Malaysia.

2010s
In January 2013, National Instruments acquired all outstanding shares of Digilent Inc., which became a wholly owned subsidiary. Digilent was founded in 2000 by two Washington State University electrical engineering professors, Clint Cole and Gene Apperson and grew to become a multinational corporation in the engineering education sector, with sales of test and development products to thousands of universities. Digilent developed the open standard Pmod Interface.

2020s
On June 16, 2020, National Instruments announced that they were officially changing the company's name to "NI". On May 4, 2021, NI announced the acquisition of monoDrive, a provider of ultra-high fidelity simulation software for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicle development. In March 2022, it was announced that NI had completed the acquisition of Heinzinger Automotive GmbH, the electronic vehicle systems business of Rosenheim-based Heinzinger electronic GmbH.

After months of failed negotiations to purchase NI, industrial conglomerate Emerson Electric announced a hostile takeover bid of NI in an appeal directly to shareholders in early 2023. In April 2023, NI agreed to be sold for $8.2billion in an all-cash deal. which was completed in Oct. 2023. Within Emerson, NI will now operate as a new Test & Measurement business group, headquartered in Austin, TX.

Products
National Instruments' engineering software includes:
 LabVIEW, a graphical development environment
 LabVIEW Communications System Design Suite, A design environment designed for rapid deployment of communication systems.
 LabWindows/CVI, an ANSI C programming environment
 Measurement Studio, a set of components for Microsoft Visual Studio
 NI TestStand, for test execution sequencing
 NI VeriStand for real-time test
 NI DIAdem for data management
 NI Multisim for circuit design
 NI Ultiboard for PCB design
 NI Vision Builder for Automated Inspection
 NI LabVIEW SignalExpress for data logging
 NI Switch Executive for switch management
 NI Requirements Gateway for requirements tracking

National Instruments' hardware platforms include:
 NI CompactRIO, programmable FPGA-based industrial controller
 NI roboRIO, a robotics controller used standard in the FIRST Robotics Competition
 NI CompactDAQ, data acquisition systems for USB and Ethernet
 PXI and PXIe Platforms, a modular instrumentation standard with more than 1,500 products
 STS, a production-ready ATE solution for RF, mixed-signal, and MEMS
 NI ELVIS, a multi-instrument lab station for teaching technology

Groups

Electronics Workbench Group
The National Instruments Electronics Workbench Group is responsible for creating the electronic circuit design software NI Multisim and NI Ultiboard, which was previously a Canada-based company that first produced MultiSIM, and integrated ULTIboard with it.

Interactive Image Technologies was founded in Toronto, Ontario by Joe Koenig, and specialized in producing educational movies and documentaries. When the government of Ontario needed an educational tool for teaching electronics in colleges, the company created a circuit simulator called Electronics Workbench. In 1996, Interactive Image Technologies appointed its vice president Roy Bryant to Chief Operating Officer to oversee day-to-day operations of the company and to grow the companies Electronic Design Automation (EDA) products. Bryant is credited with "overseeing the development and marketing of the company's Electronics Workbench EDA product". By 1999, Electronics Workbench was the most popular EDA in the world. In 1998 the company started a strategic partnership with another electronic design automation company named Ultimate Technology from Naarden, Netherlands who was the European market leader in printed circuit board design software, with their package ULTIboard. Like Electronics Workbench, founder James Post had focused heavily on the educational market and gained PR fame when he organized the distribution of 180,000 demo floppy disks via electronics magazines in Europe.

In 1999 the companies merged, and renamed itself after its most well known product, Electronics Workbench. Then the product line consisted of schematic capture and a simulation product named MultiSIM and the printed circuit board software called Ultiboard. Soon thereafter the combined product suite became worldwide leader in PC based computer-aided design.

In 2005 the company was acquired by National Instruments, and rebranded as National Instruments Electronics Workbench Group.

Community
Beginning in 1995, National Instruments has held an annual developer conference in Austin, NIWeek. Engineers and scientists from around the world attend the week-long conference at the Austin Convention Center. Activities there center on technical sessions on the company's products as well as the underlying technologies, presented both by NI employees and external presenters. An exhibition hall allows selected industry integrators and suppliers to showcase their products, and various customers or university students also present papers on their work with NI tools.

See also
 List of companies based in Austin, Texas
 Mechatronics

References

External links

1976 establishments in Texas
1995 initial public offerings
2023 mergers and acquisitions
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq
Electronic test equipment manufacturers
Electronics companies established in 1976
Electronics companies of the United States
Manufacturing companies based in Austin, Texas

National Instruments


The Domino Principle is a 1977 neo-noir thriller film starring Gene Hackman, Candice Bergen, Mickey Rooney and Richard Widmark. The film is based on the novel of the same name and was adapted for the screen by its author Adam Kennedy. It was directed and produced by Stanley Kramer.

Kramer wrote in his memoirs that he "wouldn't be surprised" if Hackman, Bergen and Widmark "would prefer to remain as anonymous as the conspirators" in the film, adding "if I'm right, it's a feeling I share."

Plot
Roy Tucker, serving time in San Quentin for the murder of his wife's first husband, is introduced to a man named Tagge by Warden Ditcher. Over a series of interviews with Tagge and an associate named Pine, Tucker learns the two men represent a mysterious organization, and Tagge presents him with an offer: in exchange for helping him escape and start a new life, Tucker must work for the organization for a few weeks. Tucker is initially wary of the offer and confides in his cellmate Oscar Spiventa, who warns him that he is being groomed as an expendable hitman by "them", a nameless cabal that runs the country from the shadows. Tucker dismisses Spiventa as paranoid.

In the end, Tucker is unable to resist the prospect of reuniting with his wife Ellie and decides to accept the offer. Spiventa turns down Tucker's invitation to come along during the escape, but changes his mind at the last second. With arrangements made for the prison staff to turn a blind eye, the two convicts are driven out the main gate in a bread delivery truck to a rendezvous point underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The two organization agents there immediately kill Spiventa and take Tucker to the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, where he meets General Tom Reser, a confederate of Tagge and Pine. Tucker is allowed to enjoy himself in the city before he is taken to his wife. He learns from news broadcasts that Spiventa's body was found and authorities believe Tucker himself escaped to Canada. He also surreptitiously meets with his lawyer, Schnaible, only for Schnaible to turn up dead soon afterward. Tucker is flown to Puntarenas, Costa Rica, where he is given a bank account with $200,000 and a house to share with Ellie, who was led to believe that Tucker had been released from prison pending a new trial. After a few idyllic days, Tagge, Pine, and Reser return the couple to Los Angeles. Tucker is prepared for his task by being directed by Reser to shoot tin cans with a rifle while riding a helicopter with military livery, after which the helicopter does a flyby of a rural estate. He realizes that he is expected to assassinate a politician and tries to back out. The organization retaliates by kidnapping Ellie, and Tucker submits.

The next morning, Tucker shoots the target as planned, though the getaway is marred by the target's security detail damaging the helicopter, forcing it to be abandoned in the mountains. At a hideout, Tucker takes Pine hostage, demanding a plane and the return of his wife. Tagge complies. At Hollywood Burbank Airport, Tucker tells Tagge that he deliberately fired short, so he knows someone else killed the target. Tagge reveals that two other shooters were in place, including Spiventa, who is not only still alive but was recruited in 1961; Tucker himself has been manipulated by the organization for over a decade. Tucker asks, "Is it over?", to which Tagge replies that it all depends on the man who gave the original order for the assassination: "If he panics, then the dominoes start to fall."

Aboard the plane with Ellie, Tucker spots someone planting a toolbox in the back of Tagge's car. Unable to get the pilot to abort takeoff, Tucker watches helplessly as Tagge is blown up with his car. The couple return to Costa Rica where Tucker sees his new life dismantled as quickly as it was assembled: his false passport destroyed, his bank account emptied, and Ellie killed. Spiventa and Pine arrive to kill Tucker, but he gets the drop on them and dumps their bodies in the ocean. The film closes with a resolute Tucker vowing not to give up as he walks down a beach with a rifle, unaware he is in the crosshairs of yet another assassin.

Cast
 Gene Hackman as Roy Tucker
 Candice Bergen as Ellie Tucker
 Richard Widmark as Marvin Tagge
 Mickey Rooney as Oscar Spiventa
 Edward Albert as Ross Pine
 Eli Wallach as General Tom Reser
 Ken Swofford as Warden Ditcher
 Neva Patterson as Helen Gaddis
 Jay Novello as Captain Ruiz
 Joseph V. Perry as Bowkemp
 Ted Gehring as Arnold Schnaible
 Majel Barrett as Mrs. Schnaible

Production

Development
The Domino Principle was based on the sixth novel by former actor Adam Kennedy. New American Library purchased the paperback rights for $250,000 and there was considerable interest in the film rights before publication. The novel came out in 1975. The Los Angeles Times praised the book's "power and originality". The New York Times praised Kennedy as "a fine writer who maintains suspense until the end."

In November 1975 Stanley Kramer announced he had purchased the rights for a reported $250,000. Kramer said the novel "is not only an exciting adventure but also stresses that such things could happen here."

In March 1976 Kramer announced he had signed a two picture deal with Lew Grade to make the film, the first of which was to be The Domino Principle with Gene Hackman and Candice Bergen, and the second of which was to be The Sheikhs of Araby, a comedy with Sid Caesar and Don Rickles. (That film would ultimately never be made.)

Kramer said he never identified who hired the assassin or their target because "that is not the point of the picture. The point I tried to make is that there are powerful, undetected forces that affect our destiny without even us suspecting they exist."

Filming
Filming took place in April and May 1976. On the first day of location filming in San Quentin Prison, a guard was stabbed by an inmate.

Hackman later said "we had a lot of problems on that film; I had arguments with Stanley Kramer." Hackman later read a published diary written by Kramer during the making of the film which described Hackman's behavior on set. The actor called the diary "embarrassing but I have to say it was accurate. And he was probably right in his remarks about me. The film we were making just wasn't worth the difficulties I was giving him. The truth is I was in trouble on that film and I got scared."

In December 1976 Bergen said about the film, "thanks to Gene it turned out to be the best part I've ever done. I said, 'I have such a long way to go before I can become that woman, Gene. I just can't do it unless you help me.' He was incredibly generous with his time and energy, his enthusiasm and his outrageous skill. For the first time I took a risk and didn't rely on my looks." However Bergen later called the film "terrible" and said she only did it "because it gave me the chance to play an ordinary woman. I put on a sappy wig and wore sappy clothes and for once in my life I didn't look like Candice Bergen and they [the critics] creamed me for that saying I looked like Shelley Winters."

Reception

Critical response
The film opened to mostly negative reviews and lasted only two to three weeks in theaters, dooming Kramer's first attempt at directing a thriller.

Film critic Vincent Canby of The New York Times (which wasn't full of praise for the film) focused on the fact that the film's plot made no sense, noting at one point that when Hackman's character said "I've done a lot of bad things in my life, but I ain't going to do that" the question of "What is he not going to do?" was neither established nor answered.

The Variety Staff wrote in their review: "The Domino Principle is a weak and tedious potboiler starring Gene Hackman as a tool of mysterious international intrigue, and a barely recognizable Candice Bergen in a brief role as his perplexed wife. Stanley Kramer's film contains a lot of physical and logistical nonsense."

James Monaco wrote that The Domino Principle don't do much but play with paranoia.

Box Office
According to Lew Grade, who helped finance the film, it "broke even."

"I'm told a lot of people didn't understand it," said Hackman later. "I didn't understand it either."

Release
The Domino Principle was released on VHS on January 1, 1998, by Avid Home Entertainment. The film was released on DVD on January 24, 2006, by Lionsgate Home Entertainment.

Legacy
Stanley Kramer and Kennedy were later going to reunite on an adaptation of Raise the Titanic! for Lew Grade, which replaced Araby as Kramer's second film under his deal with Grade. However Kramer left that project.

References

External links

1977 films
Films directed by Stanley Kramer
Films produced by Stanley Kramer
Films scored by Billy Goldenberg
American political thriller films
Films based on American novels
1970s thriller films
ITC Entertainment films
Embassy Pictures films
American neo-noir films
1977 drama films
1970s English-language films
1970s American films

The Domino Principle


The East Asian model, pioneered by Japan, is a plan for economic growth whereby the government invests in certain sectors of the economy in order to stimulate the growth of specific industries in the private sector. It generally refers to the model of development pursued in East Asian economies such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. It has also been used by some to describe the contemporary economic system in Mainland China after Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms during the late 1970s and the current economic system of Vietnam after its Đổi Mới policy was implemented in 1986.

The main shared approach of East Asian economies is the role of the government. For East Asian governments have recognized the limitations of markets in allocation of scarce resources in the economy, thus the governments have used interventions to promote economic development. They include state control of finance, direct support for state-owned enterprises in strategic sectors of the economy or the creation of privately owned national champions, high dependence on the export market for growth and a high rate of savings. It is similar to dirigisme, neomercantilism, & Hamiltonian economics.

Although there is a common theme, there is not one single approach to the economies of Asian countries, and it widely varies in economic structure as well as development experiences among the East Asian economies, especially between Northeast and Southeast Asian countries (e.g. Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand relied much more on FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) than Taiwan or Singapore).

Success of the model
East Asian countries saw rapid economic growth from the end of the Second World War to the East Asian financial crisis in 1997. For instance, the percentage of annual average growth between 1970-96 was 3-5% in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore. Within this period, developing East Asian countries were growing at three times the rate of growth of the world economy. Hence these countries attracted a significant amount of foreign and private capital inflows. During this period, East Asian countries also achieved dramatic reductions in poverty; the greatest example is Indonesia, where the percentage of people living below the official poverty line fell from 60% to 12% between 1970 and 1996. Furthermore, Indonesia's population increased from 117 to 200 million. Equally impressive is the growth of real wages between 1980 and 1992, with average wages in newly industrialized Asian countries increasing at a rate of 5 percent a year, whereas at the same time employment in manufacturing increased by 6 percent a year. The growth period in East Asian countries saw a large improvement in overall standards of living.

Causes of GDP growth
Behind this success is export-oriented economies which brought high foreign direct investment and greater technological developments which caused significant growth of GDP. Big companies like LG, Hyundai, Samsung etc. were successful due to huge government support and its intervention into the banking sector in order to direct banks to give credit to big companies. The governments in those countries were crucial in controlling trade unions, provisions, justice and also in providing necessary public infrastructure (roads, electricity, good education etc.). All this just made these countries more attractive for foreign investors. Along investors, Asian countries got foreign aid from the West (especially from the United States in order to discourage communism as a Cold War Containment policy) and get better access to the Western markets.

Examples
"Eight countries in East Asia–Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia–have become known as the East Asian miracle." Beside successes of the East Asian economy mentioned above in the success of the model, there are two other examples why they are called 'Asian miracles'.

 Japan: The East Asian model of capitalism was first used in Japan after The Second World War in 1950. After war and American occupation, recovered Japan was considered a developing country (e.g. In 1952 Japan had lower total export value than India). The main development was between 1950 and 1980. It took Japan about 25 years, a non-competitive country (in steel production), to overcome Germany in producing cars (Germany was at that time the largest exporter of automobiles in the world). 5 years later, Japan produced more automobiles than the US. In a post-war period, the Korean War (1950-1953) can be seen as a turning point for the Japanese economy, as the country moved from depression to economic recovery. Japan, being occupied by the US military, was a staging place for the US-led United Nations forces deployed in the Korean peninsula. The country found itself in a good position to make a profit as Japanese goods and services were procured by the UN troops. This, along with economic reform, gave an initial boost for the economy that would experience rapid growth for the next half-century. In the 1950s and early 1960s average annual growth rates were around 10% and later will even climb to 13%. In the early post-war years Japan initiated economic reform, Zaibatsu corporations were dismantled, empowering small agricultural producers to earn profit as opposed to the pre-war years where big land lords were owners of agricultural land. In 1960s Japan developed a consumer-oriented economy, with industry orienting towards production of high-quality technological products aimed for export, as well as the domestic market. Japanese exports rose rapidly and in subsequent years it became a world leader in car manufacturing, shipbuilding, precision optical devices, and high technology. Beginning in 1965 Japan started having a trade surplus and the next decade saw Japan having the third-largest gross national product in the world. In the 1970s the growth will significantly slow down partly due to the oil crisis, as the country was heavily dependent on oil and food imports. In the 1980s Japan diversified its raw material sources, due to economic misfortunes of the previous decade, and shifted its production's emphasis towards telecommunication and computer technologies. Even though Japanese economic expansion ended in the early 1990s, today Japan is the leader in highly sophisticated technology along with its traditional heavy industry products. Tokyo is one of the world's most important financial centres, home to the Japan Stock Exchange Group's Tokyo Stock Exchange and Tokyo Commodity Exchange, among others.

 Korea: Korea followed Japan and despite its lower industrial development, was in nearly 40 years able to compete in chip manufacturing, surpassing the United States. In the 1950s South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world, heavily dependent on foreign help, provided mostly by the US. Beginning in the early 1960s, the country's autocratic leadership initiated economic development reforms that paved the way for rapid economic expansion. Heavy protectionist policies only allowed imports of raw materials, which initiated domestic production of consumer goods. By 1990 average annual growth was around 9%. Family businesses (chaebol) that turned into big conglomerates (i.e. Samsung, Hyundai) had government financial help, for instance in a form of tax breaks, thus spearheading economic growth. South Korea became a highly industrialised country with a skilled workforce and along with Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong ended up being one of the Four Asian Tigers. However, in the 1990s economic growth significantly slowed, which resulted in huge financial aid from the International Monetary Fund of 57 billion USD, which was the IMF's largest intervention. In the early 21st century South Korea enjoyed a stable economy and the country initiated slow liberalisation.

Ersatz capitalism
Ersatz capitalism is Kunio Yoshihara's analysis of Southeast Asian economic development as a sort of 'pseudo-capitalism', referring to governments and businesses pushing their citizens to undertake economic activities that provide their country comparative advantage. These activities include capital investments and technologically intensive production.

Crisis
Besides many secondary actors in bringing out a crisis (such as a property price bubble, macroeconomic mistakes or a fall in a rate of growth of experts) the core of the crisis was in The East Asian model itself. The over-investment, misallocation of foreign capital inflows (big corporations getting money from each other, whether investment was sufficient or not), and other problems in the financial sector. Another side of the government-controlled market was massive corruption, which was due to close relationship between government and business. This so called "crony capitalism" (which means influence of government and businessmen) led to a crisis of confidence in the economies, firstly in Thailand and then other Asian countries, causing the financial crisis in 1997. Because of the crisis GDP and exports collapsed, unemployment & inflation both went up, and as result of all this the governments accumulated huge foreign debt.

Limitations
South Korea: Due to government interventions such as directed credits, regulations, explicit and implicit subsidies, the market had a lack of discipline which has contributed to the problem of unproductive or excessive investment which had contributed in causing the crisis.

Indonesia: "Trade restriction, import monopolies and regulations have impeded economic efficiency, competitiveness, reduced the quality and productivity of investment."

Thailand: Political connectivity with the market have led to giving priority to political affairs at the expense of the economic decisions. For instance, delaying the implementation of necessary policy measures due to the general election in November 1996. In this and other cases, special interest has often influenced the allocation of budgetary resources and other public policy actions.

Overall in a number of countries, there were inadequate disclosure of information and data deficiencies, direct lending. In general, there has also often been a lack of transparency in policy implementation, for example decisions with regards to public infrastructure projects and ad hoc tax exemptions.

IMF
In order to manage crisis and repay debt East Asian countries asked International Monetary Fund and World Bank for economic aid.

See also
 American school (economics)
 Autarky
 Corporatism
 Chinese model
 Developmental state
 Dirigisme
 Economic interventionism
 Four Asian Tigers
 Tiger Cub Economies
 Nordic model
 Singapore model
 State capitalism
 Hamiltonian economic program

Further reading
 Kristen E. Looney. 2021. "Mobilization Campaigns and Rural Development: The East Asian Model Reconsidered." World Politics.
Shiping Hua, Ruihua Hu. 2015. East Asian Development Model

References

Capitalist systems
Economy of East Asia
Political-economic models

East Asian model


The Liberal Party (, Jiyūtō) was a political party in Japan.

History
The party was established in March 1950 as a merger of the Democratic Liberal Party led by Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida (which held a majority in the House of Representatives) and 22 MPs from the Alliance faction of the Democratic Party, although Alliance leader Takeru Inukai did not join the new party. In the April 1950 House of Councillors elections, it won 52 of the 132 seats.

In August 1952, Ichirō Hatoyama was allowed to rejoin the party, having been banned from politics as a result of the purge. A former leader of the original post-war Liberal Party, he expected Yoshida to allow him to take over the party again, but was rebuffed. This led to increasing tensions within the party, splitting it into Hatoyama and Yoshida factions.

Although the party won a majority of seats in the House of Representatives in the October 1952 elections, winning 242 of the 466 seats, Yoshida's government lost a vote of no-confidence in March 1953, leading to early elections. Prior to polling day, the Hatoyama faction broke away to form Liberal Party–Hatoyama, which won 35 seats in the elections as the Liberal Party was reduced to 202 seats. The simultaneous House of Councillor elections also saw the party lose is majority in the upper house. However, Yoshida was able to form a minority government, and later in the year Hatoyama and 25 other Liberal Party–Hatoyama MPs rejoined the Liberal Party.

Another split occurred in November 1954 when 35 MPs left the Liberal Party to merge with the Japan Liberal Party and the Kaishintō to form the Japan Democratic Party (JDP). A no-confidence motion was passed shortly afterwards, resulting in the resignation of Yoshida and Hatoyama, now a member of the JDP, becoming the new Prime Minister.

In the February 1955 general elections, the party was reduced to 114 seats as it was defeated by the JDP. On 15 November that year the two parties merged to form the Liberal Democratic Party.

Leaders

Election results

House of Representatives

House of Councillors

References

Defunct political parties in Japan
Political parties established in 1950
1950 establishments in Japan
Political parties disestablished in 1955
1955 disestablishments in Japan

Liberal Party (Japan, 1950)


Haim Ben-Asher (; 10 July 1904 – 14 July 1998) was an Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Mapai between 1949 and 1955.

Biography
Born Haim Finkel in Odessa in the Russian Empire (today in Ukraine), Ben-Asher studied at a heder. He made aliyah to Mandatory Palestine in 1924, and studied at the Hebrew University. A member of the Ein Harod platoon in the city, he was amongst the founders of kibbutz Givat Brenner in 1928, although he later moved to Netzer Sereni after the split in the HaKibbutz HaMeuhad movement. He also worked as an emissary of the HeHalutz movement in Germany and Poland. During World War II he enlisted in the Jewish Brigade. Whilst in the army, he edited The Soldier newspaper and the Jewish Bridage's magazine, HaMa'avak.

A member of Mapai's central committee, in the first Knesset elections in 1949 he won a seat on the party's list. He was re-elected in 1951, but lost his seat in the 1955 elections. In 1959 he published a book, The Future World of Yesterday. Ben-Asher also served as director of Beit Berl Academic College.

He died in 1998 at the age of 94.

External links
 The personal papers of Haim Ben-Asher are kept at the   Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem. The notation of the record group is A292.

1904 births
1998 deaths
Mapai politicians
Members of the 1st Knesset (1949–1951)
Members of the 2nd Knesset (1951–1955)
Odesa Jews
Soviet emigrants to Mandatory Palestine
Jewish Brigade personnel

Haim Ben-Asher


422 (CDXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar.

Events

Roman Empire
 End of the Roman–Sassanid War: Emperor Theodosius II signs a 100-year peace treaty with Persia after 2 years of war. Both give freedom of religion in their territories.
 March 3 – Theodosius II issues a law to form provisions in peacetime. Theodosius pays an annual tribute of 350 pounds of gold to the Huns to buy peace.
 Theodosius II receives a statue at Hebdomon. On its base (fragments are now in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum), writing praises him as "everywhere and forever victorius."
 The walls of Rome's Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum) crack during an earthquake.

Europe
 The Roman army invade Gaul. They capture and execute the Frankish king Theudemeres with his family.

Asia
 Shao Di, age 16, eldest son of Wu Di succeeds his father as emperor of the Liu Song Dynasty (China).

By topic

Art
 Petrus, bishop of Illyria, starts construction of Church of Santa Sabina (approximate date).

Religion
 September 4 – Pope Boniface I dies after a 4-year reign. His time was interrupted for 15 weeks by the faction of the antipope Eulalius. He is succeeded by Celestine I as the 43rd pope.

Births

 Casper, ruler of the Maya city of Palenque
 Genevieve, patron saint (approximate date)
 Licinia Eudoxia, Roman empress (d. 462)

Deaths

 Abraham of Cyrrhus, Syrian hermit and bishop
 Fa-Hien, Chinese Buddhist monk and traveler (approximate date)
 September 4 – Pope Boniface I
 Theudemeres, king of the Franks (approximate date)
 Wu Di, emperor of the Liu Song Dynasty (b. 363)

References

420s

422


The Justice and Development Party is a socially conservative political party in Turkey advocating nationalism, neo-Ottomanism (wanting the country to be like the Ottoman Empire), privatization of certain government services, etc. Although officially not an Islamist political party (because religious parties are officially not allowed in Turkey), it has its roots in Islamism, because its founders and many of its members are Islamists and also advocate Islamism. It has been the goverment after the  2002 general elections in Turkey till today. It was formed in 2001 by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is the leader of the party, and was the Prime Minister of Turkey between 2003-2014 and is the President of Turkey since 2014.

Political parties in Turkey
Conservative parties

Justice and Development Party (Turkey)


Bento Manuel Ribeiro (Sorocaba, 1783 – Porto Alegre, 1855) was a Brazilian military officer, who participated in some key military campaigns of the history of Brazil such as the Cisplatine War and the Ragamuffin War.

Biography
Bento Manuel Ribeiro was the son of Manuel Ribeiro de Almeida, a tropeiro, and Ana Maria Bueno. On December 1, 1800 he enlisted in the Rio Pardo militia regiment. He fought in the War of 1801 against the Spaniards as a soldier, accompanied by his brother Captain Gabriel Ribeiro de Almeida. Under the leadership of Colonel Patrick Camera Strap, he participated in the expulsion of the Spanish troops from Batovi and from the fortress of Santa Tecla.

He participated in the First Cisplatine Campaign (1811–1812), such as quartermaster, being promoted to lieutenant in 1813. In the War against Artigas he served under the command of General Joaquim Xavier Curado.

During the Ragamuffin War he switched sides twice, ending on the Imperial one; he was described as faithful at the balance of the conflict. In the Guerra Grande (Great War), also during the Ragamuffin War, he led the Farroupilha that supported Fructuoso Rivera.

Personal life
He married in Caçapava do Sul on September 15, 1807 with Maria Manso da Conceição, daughter of Antonio Manso Monteiro and Ana Maria Martins. He was the grandfather of Bento Manuel Ribeiro Carneiro Monteiro, mayor of the city of Rio de Janeiro and also a military commander.

Bento Manuel Ribeiro died in Porto Alegre in 1855, being a rich estancieiro. His grave is located at the entrance of the cemetery in Uruguaiana.

References

Bibliography

External links
Bento Manuel Ribeiro at 'Página do Gaúcho, quoting O exército farrapo e seus chefes Vol I'' by Bento, Cláudio Moreira

1783 births
1855 deaths
Marshals of Brazil
Brazilian people of Portuguese descent
People of the Cisplatine War
People from São Paulo

Bento Manuel Ribeiro


Galeazzo Malatesta (1385–1461) was an Italian condottiero and lord of Pesaro and Fossombrone.

He was the elder son of Malatesta IV Malatesta and Elisabetta da Varano. In 1405 he married Battista da Montefeltro. He was nicknamed "the inept" due to his lack of courage and, differently from most of the male members of the family, he did not prove skilled in the art of war.

In 1413, together with his father, he took part in the failed attack to Capodimonte, near Ancona. In 1416 he was at the battle of Sant'Egidio, collaborating with his cousin Carlo I Malatesta. They were both taken as prisoners. Freed, Galeazzo followed his cousin in other battles until 1429, the year of the deaths of both his father and Carlo I. Galeazzo subsequently became lord of Pesaro. In 1430 he supported a rebellion against his kinsman, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta. In 1431 he was ousted from Pesaro together with his brother Carlo, due to his poor government, and took refuge in Venice. After a series of battles against the Papal States, he was able to return in Pesaro in 1433.

In 1433 he hired Federico III da Montefeltro to defend Pesaro and Fossombrone against his cousin Sigismondo Pandolfo from Rimini. Although he was able to keep his territories, and overwhelmed by the debts made to hire other condottieri, in 1444 he sold Pesaro to Alessandro Sforza in exchange of 20,000 florins. Two years later he gave Fossombrone to Federico da Montefeltro, for 13,000 florins. This caused the Pope to excommunicate him, since he had sold two towns which were nominally under papal rule.

In 1448 he made peace with his cousins, Sigismondo Pandolfo and Domenico Malatesta, who pushed him to attack Pesaro. However, Galeazzo's attempt was thwarted by the intervention of Florence. He later lived in Florence, where he died in 1461.

Sources

External links
Page at Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani

1385 births
1461 deaths
Galeazzo
15th-century condottieri
People excommunicated by the Catholic Church
Lords in Italy
People from le Marche

Galeazzo Malatesta


Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus (c. 116 – soon after 56 BC), younger brother of the more famous Lucius Licinius Lucullus, was a supporter of Lucius Cornelius Sulla and consul of ancient Rome in 73 BC. As proconsul of Macedonia in 72 BC, he defeated the Bessi in Thrace and advanced to the Danube and the west coast of the Black Sea. In addition, he was marginally involved in the Third Servile War (a.k.a. Spartacus' War).

Roman people
Roman generals
110s BC births
50s BC deaths

Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus


A pun is a joke which is a "play on words." People make puns in order to make other people laugh. Many jokes are actually puns. A pun usually uses a word which can have more than one meaning, even if the spelling is different:

Sometimes a pun may use a whole phrase that can be heard in more than one way, as in the following knock-knock joke:

 "Knock Knock!"
 "Who's There?"
 "Dishwasher."
 "Dishwasher Who?"
 "Dishwasher way I ushed to shpeak before I got my falsh teesh".
(The last sentence is supposed to mean: "This was the way I used to speak before I got my false teeth").

There is a joke about a man who sent ten different puns to friends in the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.

(The joke here is on "no pun intended," which is said when a person unintentionally says a pun by coincidence, and announces the find ).

There are many websites and books which have jokes, very often with puns.

Puns are easier to make in some languages than others. Languages with many homophones (words which sound the same but have a different meaning) such as the Chinese language are most suitable for puns.

Puns do not have to be about homonyms. They can sometimes be a double entendre using both a literal sense of the word and a metaphor (figurative use). For example, if a young man joins the Navy and someone says that he "sailed through his exams", this is a joke because: 1) the expression "to sail through something" means "to do it easily", but 2) the Navy is about sailing in ships. It is possible to say something like that without realizing that it is a pun.

Another example is a story about two boys growing up and eating more and more food. One of the parents just began a new job and the other says, "I hope you can start bringing home the bacon!" In this example, bacon is a play on words meaning both money and the food, bacon.

Many British people love making puns, especially bad puns (where a word has to be mispronounced to make the joke work). Lewis Carroll made many puns in his books Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass.

These are also a few examples of different puns:

Really cool songs were heard as the rock band played on the iceberg,

"You're fired!" said the boss to the man shot from a gun.
Figures of speech
Humor
"How is your vineyard doing?" a neighbour asked. The woman replied, "It's growing grape!"  (play on words: "It's going great!")

Pun