Chaos Walking is a young adult science fiction series written by American-British novelist Patrick Ness. It is set in a dystopian world where all living creatures can hear each other's thoughts in a stream of images, words, and sounds called Noise. The series is named after a line in the first book: "The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking." The series consists of a trilogy of novels and three short stories.

The three novels feature two adolescents, Todd Hewitt and Viola Eade, who encounter various moral issues and high stakes as the planet around them erupts into war. The Knife of Never Letting Go (2008) begins with Todd being forced to flee his town after discovering a patch of silence, free of Noise. In the second book, The Ask and the Answer (2009), tensions rise as a civil war between two opposing factions forms, and in the final book, Monsters of Men (2010), the indigenous species of New World rebels against the humans just as a ship full of new settlers is set to arrive on the planet. The first novel is narrated entirely by Todd, the second is told through the viewpoints of both Todd and Viola, and the third book is narrated by Todd, Viola and The Return.

The series has won almost every major children's fiction award in the UK, including the 2008 Guardian award, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and the Costa Children's Book Award. Monsters of Men won the Carnegie Medal in 2011. It has been praised for its handling of themes such as gender politics, redemption, the meaning of war, and the unclear distinction between good and evil, all threaded through its complex, fast-paced narrative.

Conception
Ness claims that the idea for Chaos Walking came from "one really serious idea and one fairly stupid idea": how information overload affects youth, and how most fictional talking dogs "never actually talk like... I think dogs would actually talk". Ness planned the series as a trilogy from the start, deciding to theme Knife about flight, Ask about tyranny and Monsters about war.

Series

The Knife of Never Letting Go

The Knife of Never Letting Go begins shortly before Todd Hewitt is to come of age and become a man. In Prentisstown, Todd has been brought up to believe that Noise is a result of a Spackle-created germ that killed all the women and unleashed Noise on the remaining men. After discovering a patch of silence out in the swamp, his surrogate parents immediately tell him that he has to run, leaving him with only a map of New World, his loyal yet mildly irritating dog Manchee, a message, and many unanswered questions. He soon discovers the source of the silence: a girl, named Viola. The two must hurry to warn other settlements of Prentisstown's preparations for war and escape Aaron, an insane preacher, as Mayor Prentiss prepares an army for conquest.

The Ask and the Answer

Following on from the events of the first book, The Ask and the Answer starts with the separation of Todd and Viola as they find out that the Mayor has reached Haven before them. Todd is locked up and forced to work with Davy Prentiss Jr. to overlook enslaved Spackle, while Viola undertakes an apprenticeship from a renowned healer, Mistress Coyle. However, Mistress Coyle also leads a terrorist organisation, the Answer, to retaliate against 'President' Prentiss, which drives Viola and Todd apart as they become further involved in the opposing factions.

Monsters of Men

In the final book of the Chaos Walking trilogy, a world-ending war erupts as three armies march into New Prentisstown. New World is in chaos as the Spackle and the settlers go to war, urged on by Mayor Prentiss and a rebel Spackle, 1017. Todd and Viola refuse to give up on each other or what they believe in, but to survive requires making difficult choices. The protagonists find that their decisions have dire consequences, and the stakes only get higher as all three sides fight for what they believe is right. Themes that were explored in previous books are finally brought to a head: whether redemption is possible, whether the lives of few are worth the lives of many, and what it takes to grow up in a world full of monstrous decisions.

Short stories
Ness has published three short stories set in the world of Chaos Walking. "The New World" was first published as a free download on 29 June 2009; "The Wide, Wide Sea" and "Snowscape" were published for free online on 16 May 2013. Each story is intended as a companion piece to the novels: "The New World" is intended to be read after The Knife of Never Letting Go; "The Wide, Wide Sea" after The Ask and the Answer; and "Snowscape" after Monsters of Men. The short stories were included in the 2013 UK editions of the novels.

The New World
"The New World" is a short prequel to the trilogy, detailing the events that led up to Viola's scout ship crashing into New World, before she met Todd Hewitt.

The Wide, Wide Sea
A prequel to the novels, "The Wide, Wide Sea" is set before the Spackle War during the last days of the fishing village Horizon. The story tells of a relationship between a teenage villager and a Spackle.

Snowscape
"Snowscape" is set after the events of Monsters of Men and is narrated by Lee. In the story, Lee and Wilf join an exploration party of new settlers travelling to the planet's northern frontier.

Setting
Chaos Walking is set on a planet called New World, which was colonised by a small group of religiously devout settlers from Old World (possibly Earth) twenty three years prior to the beginning of The Knife of Never Letting Go. New World is the home of the native, intelligent Spackle as well as giant sea creatures. New World was originally colonised to make "a new way of life, one clean and simple and honest and good". In particular, the colonists aimed to establish a church that would leave behind corruption in favour of purity. However, the germ, present in the planet's atmosphere, posed several problems that halted the development of this vision. A second ship convoy, under the assumption that the first did not survive, arrives at New World at the end of Monsters of Men.

Prentisstown
In the beginning, it is under the assumption that Prentisstown, populated only by males, is the sole human settlement on New World, and that all females were killed by a biological warfare disease during the war against New World's intelligent native species, called the Spackle. However, this is proved false with the revelation of the town's true history. Near the end of book one, it is discovered that all Prentisstown women had been killed in an act of insanity after the Spackle War, fuelled by the town mayor (Prentiss) and a deranged priest (Aaron).

Men following Prentisstown's mayor originally aimed to take over New World as revenge for being isolated for their crimes, accepting Mayor Prentiss as their absolute leader. As the series concludes countless of Prentiss' followers are killed, effectively cannon fodder in the final apocalyptic war against the Spackle. Countless Spackle, too, are killed, though the reader gains far deeper insight into their way of life and organisation, mainly through the authorial voices of The Sky and The Return. By now war is in Prentiss' hands serving now not so much the aim of revenge for past acts, but the satiation of his megalomaniacal desire for absolute control of the planet. This control, however, comes at the price of absolute knowledge, a Faustian burden that is in the end too great to bear.

Haven
Being the largest settlement on New World, Haven was the leading developer of technology and research. They had developed a cure for the Noise, and were the last town to be taken over by Prentisstown, to whom they surrendered. At the end of The Knife of Never Letting Go, the town was renamed New Prentisstown, and Mayor Prentiss quickly assumed the role of President. Prior to this, the residents of Haven had captured and kept Spackle as servants, The Burden, who have all been killed, aside from 1017. This spurred the war that took place in the final book, Monsters of Men.

Characters

 Todd Hewitt: The protagonist of the series. He is forced to flee from Prentisstown after discovering a 'hole' in the Noise. Brought up by his surrogate parents, Ben and Cillian, Todd was kept unaware of Prentisstown's true history until the end of the first book. Throughout the novels, he is faced with difficult moral decisions, and is known as "the boy who can't kill." He nearly dies in the last book, though he is revived.
 Viola Eade: The second protagonist of the series. Crash-landed on New World with her parents during a scouting mission sent ahead by a group of new settlers. She meets Todd when he detects her silence (on New World, women have no Noise) and they end up travelling together to warn the incoming settlers about the Mayor's gathering army. She later becomes one of the narrating characters starting from book two.
 Manchee: Manchee is Todd's pet dog. A gift from Cillian for Todd's twelfth birthday, his thoughts are audible because of the Noise germ. He is Todd's closest friend, and follows Todd unconditionally after they escape Prentisstown. He tragically dies at the hands of Preacher Aaron.
 Ben Moore: Ben is Todd's adoptive father who was a friend of his mother's. He and Cillian raised Todd and helped him escape when he discovered that it was possible to escape the Noise. He later rejoined him and told him and Viola the truth about Prentisstown. He is a great source of hope for Todd, and he ultimately stops him from becoming like the Mayor. Like Mayor Prentiss, he can hear all noise in the world, though he is more controlled.
1017/The Return: A Spackle who grew up domesticated in Haven. He is introduced in The Ask and the Answer. As a captive of The Ask's army, 1017 grows angry and vengeful, directing this hate at Todd (known to him as The Knife) due to Todd's lack of action on his moral beliefs. Later named 'The Return' when he arrives at the Spackle settlement, he eventually gathers a rebellion against the human settlers.
Mayor Prentiss: The series' main antagonist. He is the mastermind behind the takeover, and later becomes self-proclaimed President of New World. He is extremely charismatic and manipulative, often choosing to play mind games instead of resorting to brute force. He learns to control his Noise, and can even use it as a weapon. Despite his cruelties, a running theme throughout the trilogy is whether or not he can be redeemed. He becomes sea monster food after being able to hear all noise in the planet drives him insane.
Mistress Coyle: The leader of the Answer. She sets up a camp away from Haven, committed to removing Mayor Prentiss from power. She enlists Viola's help and shows members of the Answer how to set off homemade bombs. Although she does not resort to torture, she is just as manipulative and calculating as Mayor Prentiss. While she calls herself a freedom fighter, the members of The Ask label her as a terrorist. Despite being the head of an organisation with just intentions, she is willing to do anything to end the Mayor's regime, even at the cost of sacrificing lives, including her own. She blows herself up eventually.
Davy Prentiss: Mayor Prentiss' son. He begins as an antagonist, but as the story progresses it is revealed he craves his father's praise and attention, something he rarely receives. He also becomes more friendly with Todd, returning his stolen mother's book. During a standoff between the Mayor and Todd, Davy attempts to intervene but Todd threatens to shoot him unless the Mayor backs down. The Mayor reveals that he would not care anyway, and shoots Davy himself. He dies asking for Todd's forgiveness, revealing that he shot Ben.
The Sky: The leader of the spackle who is able to hear their entire population's noise. He is killed by Mayor Prentiss during the peace talks, conferring his leadership to 1017.
 Angharrad: Todd's horse.
 Acorn: Davy's horse. Davy Prentiss had an alternate name for her, Deadfall.

Reception
The Chaos Walking novels have been critically acclaimed.

On the overall series, the Costa Prize Judges said that they were "convinced that this is a major achievement in the making", while the Guardian stated that "I would press Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy urgently on anyone, anyone at all. It is extraordinary". In their review of the final book, Publishers Weekly called the series "one of the most important works of young adult science fiction in recent years." Robert Dunbar wrote in The Guardian that the series "will almost certainly come to be seen as one of the outstanding literary achievements of the present century, whether viewed as fiction for the young or for a wider readership."

The Knife of Never Letting Go was received with near universal praise for its originality and narration from critics such as Ian Chipman from Booklist and Megan Honig from The School Library Journal.
It went on to win several awards and recognitions, including the Guardian Award, and the 2008 James Tiptree, Jr. Award.

The second book was also received well, with praise from Publishers Weekly, Children's Literature and Kirkus Reviews, all noting the excellent plot and cast. It was named as one of "the best YA science fiction novels of the year" by Publishers Weekly while Kirkus called the characters "heartbreakingly real" and praised the questions brought up about "the meaning of war and the price of peace."
The book won the 2009 Costa children's fiction prize and was recognised widely for its success.

The third book, Monsters of Men, has received greatly positive reviews and won the 2011 Carnegie Medal. It was also nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke award for best science fiction novel, only the second time that a young adult novel made it on to the shortlist.

All three books have been shortlisted for the Carnegie Book Award.

Film adaptation

Lionsgate acquired worldwide distribution rights to a film adaptation of the Chaos Walking trilogy, which was produced by Doug Davison's production company Quadrant Pictures. Allison Shearmur and Davison produced, Doug Liman directed, and Daisy Ridley starred in the film alongside Tom Holland, Mads Mikkelsen and Nick Jonas. The screenplay was originally going to be written by Ness, Charlie Kaufman and John Lee Hancock, but Kaufman dropped out of the project before it was released, because of creative differences. Shooting started in August 2017 in Montreal. The original release date was intended to be 1 March 2019, however this was postponed until 5 March 2021 to accommodate for reshoots, after test screenings came with poor reception.

The film released on 5 March 2021, to generally negative reviews. Many critics noted that the film did not live up to the source material from the books.

References

Book series introduced in 2008
American novels adapted into films
British novels adapted into films
Novels set on fictional planets
Science fiction novel trilogies
Young adult novel series
Works by Patrick Ness

Chaos Walking


Darren Michael Webster (born 10 June 1968) is an English darts player nicknamed Demolition Man.

Career
Webster won the 2005 Open Oust Nederland, beating Co Stompé in the final.

Originally nicknamed The Sniper, Webster reached the quarter-finals of the 2007 PDC World Darts Championship, where he beat former champion Bob Anderson, Adrian Gray and South African Wynand Havenga, before being beaten 5–1 by Phil Taylor.

Webster reached the last 16 at the 2007 UK Open. He beat Andy Hamilton and James Wade, before losing to Alan Green.

In December 2013, Webster lost to James Wade in the first round of the 2014 World Championship, despite leading 2 sets to 1 (first to 3). He missed six darts to win the match, to which Wade responded in three straight legs, thus winning the match. He played in the World Matchplay for the first time since 2005 and was beaten 10–4 by Taylor in the first round. Webster's resurgence of form also saw him play in his first World Grand Prix and Grand Slam of Darts, but he lost in the opening round of the former and was defeated in all three of his group games in the latter. A final appearance in a major event of the year came at the Players Championship Finals where he missed two match darts in the deciding leg of the first round against Robert Thornton to lose 6–5.

Webster atoned for his misses against Wade a year earlier when he faced Simon Whitlock in the 2015 edition of the World Championship. From 1–1 in sets he only allowed the world number seven one more leg as he beat him 3–1. He won a trio of sets in deciding legs to lead Dean Winstanley 3–2 in the second round. However, Webster lost two sets in a row to be beaten 4–3. Webster twice reached the quarter-final stage of Players Championship events in 2015.

Webster saw off John Henderson 3–1 in the opening round of the 2016 World Championship, but Michael van Gerwen averaged 109.23 in their second round clash as Webster could only win one leg in a 4–0 defeat. A 9–8 win over Ricky Evans saw him reach the fifth round of the UK Open for the second time in his career and he lost 9–5 to Peter Wright. Webster's first semi-final in over two and a half years came at the ninth Players Championship and he was beaten 6–1 by Benito van de Pas. Another came at the 17th event, but he was whitewashed 6–0 by Van Gerwen. Webster was already eliminated from the Grand Slam of Darts before his third group game with Phil Taylor after losing his opening two matches, but nevertheless thrashed the 16-time world champion 5–0. Webster stated that the result would give him a confidence boost for the remainder of the year. He was right, because at the Players Championship Finals he saw off Jonny Clayton and Simon Whitlock both 6–3, Alan Norris 10–5 and Christian Kist 10–6 to reach the semi-finals of a PDC major for the first time. Webster stormed in to a 6–0 lead over Van Gerwen, but missed a dart to be 7–2 ahead as Van Gerwen closed to 6–6. Webster did take a one leg lead on two further occasions, but would ultimately be defeated 11–8.

Webster survived seven match darts from Stephen Bunting in the first round of the 2017 World Championship to progress with a 3–2 win. Webster had finishes of 157, 147 and 140 during the match. He described his second round 4–0 victory over Simon Whitlock as the moment of his career as Webster averaged 104.64 and closed the match with a 140 finish. He missed two darts to take the opening set in the third round against Van Gerwen and went 3–0 behind. He pulled a set back, but would be ousted 4–1.

Webster hit his first career nine-dart finish on 11 February 2017 in the 5th UK Open qualifier during a 6-5 win over Benito van de Pas. In July, he won his first players Championship title, defeating Daryl Gurney 6–1 in the final in Barnsley.

In the 2019 World Championship he suffered a surprise defeat and whitewash to Vincent van der Voort losing 3-0 in the Second Round.

Webster lost his tour card following the 2022 PDC World Darts Championship but regained it on the second day of the 2022 Q-School Final stage.

World Championship results

PDC

2006: First round (lost to Erwin Extercatte 2–3)
2007: Quarter-finals (lost to Phil Taylor 1–5)
2013: First round (lost to Mark Walsh 1–3)
2014: First round (lost to James Wade 2–3)
2015: Second round (lost to Dean Winstanley 3–4)
2016: Second round (lost to Michael van Gerwen 0–4)
2017: Third round (lost to Michael van Gerwen 1–4)
2018: Quarter-finals (lost to Jamie Lewis 0–5)
2019: Second round (lost to Vincent van der Voort 0–3)
2020: Third round (lost to Adrian Lewis 3–4)

Performance timeline

PDC European Tour

References

External links
Darren Webster's Official Website

1968 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Norwich
English darts players
Professional Darts Corporation current tour card holders
PDC ranking title winners

Darren Webster


The Collection is the county museum and gallery for Lincolnshire in England. It is an amalgamation of the Usher Gallery and the City and County Museum. The museum part of the enterprise is housed in a new, purpose-built building close by the Usher Gallery in the city of Lincoln.

History
The Collection has existed since 2005. It is a merger between the Usher Gallery, that was established in 1927, and the City and County Museum, that was founded in 1906. The first curator of the Lincoln City and County Museum was Arthur Smith (1869–1947), who was born in Leicester and raised in Grimsby and who was interested in natural history. After being appointed curator, he moved to Lincoln. He became the (honorary) secretary of the Lincolnshire Naturalists' Union (LNU), and acquired important collections, for example from J.E. Mason (Heteroptera, bugs), W. Wallace (Diptera, flies) and G.W. Mason (Lepidoptera, butterflies). The Museum also acquired important collections of bird specimen, for instance from George Henry Caton Haigh.

Smith retired as curator in 1935. He moved away from Lincoln and died in 1947.

Location
Lincoln consists of two parts, that at the top of the cliff and that in the Witham valley. The site of the collection is on the steep slope between the two and within the Roman colonia which linked the first century legionary fortress with the shipping and commerce in the river.

Buildings
The Usher Gallery was built to house the collection of James Ward Usher, using funds he bequeathed for the purpose. It was designed by the architect, Sir Reginald Blomfield and was officially opened on 25 May 1927 by the Prince of Wales. It is a simple building faced in stone with brick panels separated by simplified Tuscan pilasters above which is a frieze decorated with triglyphs and a roof line finished with a balustrade. The portico, central in the south façade, is topped by a broken pediment and urn finials. It stands in a small park on the hillside looking southwards across the lower town.

The Usher Gallery is the only purpose-built public art gallery in Lincolnshire and a Grade II* Listed Building. The Usher is owned by Lincoln City Council but leased to Lincolnshire County Council.

Following an architectural design competition managed by RIBA Competitions, Panter Hudspith Architects (project architect, Hugh Strange) designed the new building and it was opened in October 2005 after much hard work including an archaeological excavation. Despite the building having been designed to rest above the Roman horizon, at the foot of the pit for the lift shaft, was found the corner of a mosaic-paved passage which had been laid around a courtyard.

Much of the new building is faced and paved with Ancaster stone and borrows the concept of the glass-covered courtyard from the British Museum in a feature reminiscent of a medieval alley.

The main entrance is at the northern, uphill end and leads past, to the left, the café which faces south across a courtyard and to the right, the shop. Passing the reception desk leads to the orientation hall which is the glass-covered 'alley' passing east to west. From it, the visitor reaches auditorium where video or personal introductions to the museum or to education courses may be given; the education suite; the archaeological collection or the New Curtois Gallery, where touring exhibitions are housed. Below these last two, at the downhill end of the building, are the stores and workshops which service the whole.

Exhibits

The sample of mosaic, exposed by the pre-construction archaeological excavation is now on view inside as part of a display extending through all periods from the Ice age. The mosaic is the largest to be discovered in Lincoln for over a hundred years.

The archaeological exhibition in The Collection building is organised as a timeline from the stone age, through Roman, Anglo-Saxon (including the Horncastle boar's head) and Viking occupation to the Medieval.  Much of the Iron Age material is from the dig at Fiskerton, including the Fiskerton log boat.  It includes a satellite photograph of the county of Lincolnshire on a scale which permits fields and villages to be sought out while the picture's extent allows a general pattern of geology and the influence of the Roman roads to show through.

The long-established displays in the Usher Gallery include furniture, clocks and other forms of the decorative arts, from Usher's collection. There is a range of fine art works by J. M. W. Turner, John Piper and L. S. Lowry. The gallery's specialism is in the works of Peter De Wint, a former Lincoln resident. Other artists include works by: Ivon Hitchens, Charles Haslewood Shannon, Grayson Perry. Four galleries of various sizes are set aside for temporary exhibitions.

Modern and contemporary art programme
The Usher Gallery has an established programme of inviting contemporary curators and artists to exhibit modern and contemporary artwork in the main galleries alongside the Usher collection. In 2014, print works by Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Henri Matisse from the touring show Modern Masters went on display at the Museum. In 2013, conceptual artist and academic, Professor Raimi Gbadamosi was invited to curate the rehang display What's Going On, featuring loans from The Arts Council Collection, The British Art Medal Society and contemporary artists, Edward Allington, Kimathi Donkor, Amanda Francis, Permindar Kaur, Taslim Martin, Janette Parris, Ritu Sood, Susan Stockwell, Maiko Tsutsumi and Mark Woods

Gulbenkian Prize
In May 2006, The Collection was on a short list of four innovative museums being considered for the 2006 Gulbenkian Prize. The prize was awarded to SS Great Britain.

Possible closure of the Usher
Under 2019 proposals from Lincolnshire County Council, the Usher Gallery could be closed and the building turned into a wedding venue. The authority said it would look at moving some of the artwork to the neighbouring museum. The plans were criticised by art lovers. The county council was looking to save around £750,000 each year from its heritage budget. The council said it would save £100,000 per annum by ceasing to run the Usher as an art gallery. On 2 April 2019 a public meeting was held at Lincoln Minster School to discuss the issue, and on 13 April an art march was held.

Following discussions between the county council and the City of Lincoln Council, the Usher Gallery will remain open but the lease will be amended to enable third-party hire and ceremonies, and Lincoln's museum and art collections will remain in Lincolnshire.

References

External links

Brief for the new City and County museum
SLUG - Save Lincolnshire's Usher Gallery

1927 establishments in England
Art museums and galleries in Lincolnshire
Archaeological museums in England
City museums in the United Kingdom
Grade II* listed buildings in Lincolnshire
Grade II* listed museum buildings
Decorative arts museums in England
Museums established in 1927
Museums in Lincoln, England
Reginald Blomfield buildings

The Collection (Lincolnshire)


Jute is one of the most important natural fibers after cotton in terms of cultivation and usage. Cultivation is dependent on the climate, season, and soil.

Almost 85% of the world's jute cultivation is concentrated in the Ganges Delta. This fertile geographic region is shared by Bangladesh and India (mainly West Bengal). China also has a dominant place in jute cultivation. On a smaller scale, Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan also cultivate jute.

Cultivation

To grow jute, farmers first scatter the seeds on cultivated soil. When the plants are about 15–20 cm tall, they are thinned out. About four months after planting, harvesting begins. The plants are usually harvested after they flower and before the flowers go to seed. The stalks are cut off close to the ground, tied into bundles and soaked in water for about 20 days. This process softens the tissues and breaks the hard pectin bond between the bast and hurd (inner woody fibers) and permits the fibers to be separated. The fibers are then stripped from the stalks in long strands and washed in clear, running water. Then they are hung up or spread on thatched roofs to dry. After 2–3 days of drying, the fibers are tied into bundles. The suitable climate for growing jute is a warm and wet climate, which is offered by the monsoon climate during the fall season, immediately followed by summer. Temperatures ranging to more than 25 °C and relative humidity of 70%–90% are favorable for successful cultivation. Jute requires 160–200 cm of rainfall yearly with extra needed during the sowing period. River basins, alluvial or loamy soils with a pH range between 4.8 and 5.8 are best for jute cultivation. Jute cultivation in red soils may require high dosage of manure. Plain land or gentle slope or low land is ideal for jute cultivation. Since the jute seeds are small in size, land should be finely tilled, which can be done by careful ploughing.

Retting

Retting is the process of extracting fibers from the tough stem or bast of the bast fiber plants. The available retting processes are: mechanical retting (hammering), chemical retting (boiling & applying chemicals), steam/vapor/dew retting, and water or microbial retting. Among them, water or microbial retting is a centuries old, widely popular process of extracting fine bast fibers. However, choice of retting process depends on the availability of water and cost.

The stalks stay submerged in water for 20 days. However, the retting process may require less time if the quality of the jute is better. In most cases, the fiber extraction process of bast fibers in water retting is done by farmers while standing under water.

When the jute stalk is well retted, the stalks are grabbed in bundles and hit with a long wooden hammer to loosen the fibers from the jute hurd or core. After loosening the fibers, the fibers are washed with water and squeezed dry. The extracted fibers are further washed with water and allowed to dry on bamboo poles. Finally, they are tied into small bundles to be sold into the primary market.

Major producers

The Ganges delta contributes more than 80% of the jute production in the world. The Ganges delta can be sub-divided into the following geo-graphical regions in terms of jute cultivation:
 Jat area (Brahmaputra Alluvium): This comprises part of the districts of Dhaka, Mymensingh, Tangail, and Comilla of Bangladesh. The area annually receives fresh deposit of silts carried down by the flood water. Soils are acidic in, the texture varies from sand loam to clay loam. According to commercial quality, the best quality jute, the Jat type, grows in this area.
 District area (Ganges Alluvium): This comprises part of the districts of Kushtia, Jessore, Khulna, Rajshahi, Pabna, and Dhaka of Bangladesh and major portion of West Bengal of India. This area has soil of slight alkaline clay loam to light loam in gray to dark gray color. The type of jute grown in this area is known as District Jute, which is next to Jat Jute in order of quality. The jute fibre grown in this region is further divided into two major varieties, such as: Hard District Jute and Soft District Jute.
 ''Northern area'' (Teesta Silt): This comprises part of Dinajpur, Rangpur districts, East Bogra, and Sirajganj of Bangladesh and some parts of North Bihar Purnea and West Bengal of India. The region has sandy soil with low moisture retention capacity. Soil retention is slightly acidic. Northern type of Jute is inferior quality of the three commercial types.

Strengths of major jute producing countries

India is the world's biggest producer of jute, followed by Bangladesh. Jute is primarily grown in West Bengal, Odisha, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Andhra Pradesh.
 India has taken advantage of recent improvements in the cultivation of jute to become the largest producer or cultivator of jute in the world. Using advanced production techniques, India also has dominance over the worldwide jute product market. Due to national law to use jute as packaging materials, India is the largest consumer of jute in the world.
 Bangladesh is currently the second largest producer of jute fiber, now over taken by India. The Jat Area, popular for producing high quality jute fiber, is located in Bangladesh. Therefore, Bangladesh is able to supply the highest quality of jute fiber in the world. However, Bangladesh falls behind its other competitors in applying recent technological advancements. In terms of world export of jute fiber, Bangladesh's share is more than 70%, which makes Bangladesh the largest exporter of jute fiber in the world.
 China is the third largest in terms of jute cultivation. Due to China's huge population, the Chinese are not emphasizing the cultivation of jute, as it competes with other necessary crops. Due to modern effective agriculture, they have the highest yield of jute fiber in the world.

History
In classical antiquity, Pliny recorded that jute plants were used as food in Ancient Egypt.

For centuries, jute has been an integral part of the culture of East Bengal and some parts of West Bengal, precisely in the southwest of Bangladesh. Since the seventeenth century, the British started trading in jute. During the reign of the British Empire jute was also used in the military. British jute barons grew rich processing jute and selling manufactured products made from jute. Dundee Jute Barons and the British East India Company set up many jute mills in Bengal and by 1895 jute industries in Bengal overtook the Scottish jute trade. Many Scots emigrated to Bengal to set up jute factories. More than a billion jute sandbags were exported from Bengal to the trenches during World War I and also exported to the Southern United States region to bag cotton. It was used in the fishing, construction, art and the arms industry. Initially, due to its texture, it could only be processed by hand until it was discovered in Dundee that by treating it with whale oil, it could be treated by machine.

References

External links

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Jute industry

Jute cultivation


The Shroud of Turin is a piece of cloth that bears the negative image of a man. It was first mentioned in 1354.  Shortly afterwards, a Catholic bishop called it a fake. Since the 17th century, it has been kept in Turin, Italy. The shroud has the  negative image of a man. Some claim the image depicts Jesus of Nazareth and the fabric is the burial shroud in which he was wrapped after his Crucifixion.

Turin

Shroud of Turin


Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir (or Bakr) al-Hakim (1939 - August 29, 2003) was the foremost Shia Muslim leader in Iraq until his assassination in a terrorist bombing that killed him and 80 others as they were leaving a mosque in Najaf.  He was the son of Ayatollah Muhsin Al-Hakim, the worldwide leader of Shia Muslims from 1955 to 1970.

Al-Hakim co-founded the modern Islamist political movement in Iraq in the 1960s, along with Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir Al-Sadr, with whom he worked closely until the latter's death in 1980.  Though not among the most hard-line of Islamists, Al-Hakim was seen as dangerous by the ruling Baath regime, largely because of his agitation on behalf of Iraq's majority Shia population (the ruling regime was comprised mostly of Sunnis).  This led to his arrest in 1972, but he was released shortly thereafter.

He was partially blamed for the uprising in Najaf that occured in February 1977, and so was arrested again, and this time sentenced to life imprisonment. However, his sentence was commuted and he was released in July 1979. The subsequent eruption of war between Iraq and (largely Shia) Iran led to an ever-increasing distrust of Iraq's Shia population by the rulling Baath party; combined with his previous arrests, this convinced Al-Hakim that it was impossible to continue his Shia advocacy in Iraq, and in 1980 he fled to Iran.

Safely in Iran, Al-Hakim became an open enemy of the Baathists, forming the Supreme Council of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (SCIRI), a revolutionary group dedicated to overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime.  In 1983, Hussein responded by arresting 125 members of Al-Hakim's family who had remained in Iraq, and executing 18 of them.  This further embittered Al-Hakim's view of the Baathists in general and Hussein in particular.  With Iranian aid, SCIRI became an armed resistance group, periodically making cross-border attacks on Iraqi facilities, maintaining covert connections with resistance elements within the country, and generally being a perennial thorn in Hussein's side.

Al-Hakim returned to Iraq in May 2003 following the overthrow of Hussein's regime by the US-led invasion of Iraq.  There he emerged as one of the most influential Iraqi leaders, with his longtime opposition to Hussein gaining him immense credibility, especially among the majority Shia population.

Initially he was very critical of the US-led occupation of Iraq, saying "we do not put confidence in the Americans, they have always acted against the interests of the Iraqi people" and urging Iraqis not to follow the US's administration's dictates.  However, he did give the US credit for overthrowing the hated Baathist regime, and through the summer of 2003 indicated some willingness to work with the Americans in setting up a civilian government in Iraq.  By the time of his death, he remained distrustful, but urged Iraqis to abandon violence, at least for the time being, and give the interim government a chance to earn their trust.

It is unclear (as of late August 2003) who was behind the massive bomb attack that killed him.  A spokesman for SCIRI in London suggested that supporters of Saddam Hussein may have been behind the attack; others suggest it may have been orchestrated by Sunnis not necessarily connected to Hussein who are opposed to the increasing Shia influence in the country; a few suggest it may have been carried out by hard-line Shia groups critical of Al-Hakim's increasingly conciliatory line towards the United States.  However, as his assassination comes in the midst of a pattern of violence against Shia clerics in Najaf in recent weeks (Al-Hakim is the fourth to be assassinated), it is considered likely that the attack was motivated by anti-Shia sentiment rather than by a conflict between Shia moderates and hardliners.

1939 births
2003 deaths

Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim


Huge is the fourth studio album by American alternative rock band Caroline's Spine. Most of the tracks on the album were re-recorded when the band was signed with Hollywood Records for their fifth album, Monsoon. The B-side featured several acoustic tracks, which were a significant departure from the band's usual electric guitar onslaught. Lead guitarist Mark Haugh even took the reins, writing and performing lead vocals for the song "On the Ground".

Track listing
All songs written by Jimmy Newquist
 "King For a Day"
 "Ouch"
 "Sullivan"
 "Hippie Boy"
 "Psycho"
 "Monsoon"
 "Necro"
 "Wallflower"
 "Trio'pain"
 "Jumpship"
 "Good Afternoon"
 "My World"
 "Forget"
 "Think About Me"
 "She's Coming Home"
 "On The Ground" (Haugh)
 "61"

Personnel
Jimmy Newquist - Vocals, Guitar, Bass
Jason Gilardi - Drums
Mark Haugh - Guitar
Scott Jones - Bass

Production
Produced by Dan Calderone & Caroline's Spine
All words and music by James P. Newquist except "On the Ground," which was written and sung by Mark Haugh
Music published by Archaic Music (BMI)
Photos by Jocelyn Balthasar, Kim Kusler, Stephanie Thornton, Ivan Massar, Bob Newquist, plus any strangers we asked along the way.
Layout & Design: Mark Haugh, Jimmy Newquist, and Joe Statt for ANZA
Recorded, mixed, & mastered at ANZA, San Diego, CA

1996 albums
Caroline's Spine albums

Huge (Caroline's Spine album)


The Emma Hart Willard Memorial, is a public artwork designed by Marion Guild and Pierre Zwick. It was sculpted by T.A. Campbell who worked for the Houlihan Shop in Rutland, Vermont. Erected in 1941, the memorial is located in a triangular-shaped park at the intersection of route 30 and route 7 in downtown Middlebury, Vermont.

Description
The overall dimensions of this marble relief are  tall,  long, and  wide. It rests on a white marble double base. The upper base measures  tall,  long, and  wide. The lower base measures  tall,  long, and  wide.

The Emma Willard Memorial is a two sided slab of marble with straight sides and an arched top. One side is carved to depict educator and American women's rights advocate Emma Willard seated at a desk, and holding a pen as she writes. A globe, ink well, and books are depicted on the desk. The words "In memory of Emma Hart Willard Who Wrote at Middlebury in 1818 the Magna Carta for Higher Education of Women in America" are carved above the relief. On the opposite side of the memorial, the carved inscription reads, "Education Should Seek To Bring Its Subjects to the Perfection of their Moral, Intellectual and Physical Nature, in order that they May be of the Greatest Possible Use to Themselves and Others 1787 - Emma Hart Willard 1870".

The relief is unsigned.

Information

Emma Hart Willard (February 23, 1787 – April 15, 1870) came to Middlebury, Vermont in 1807 to run the Middlebury Female Seminary. She left her position at the Seminary in 1809 when she married a local doctor and banker John Willard. Due to a financial reversal in 1814, Emma Willard began to teach women at the collegiate level in her home, and, thus, is credited as being the start of women's collegiate education in the United States. The quote on the reverse side of the monument is taken from Willard's An Address to the Public, particularly to the Members of the Legislature of New York, proposing a Plan for Improving Female Education, published in 1819.

Acquisition
The sculpture was designed and sculpted with funding from the Federal Arts Project, and erected with funding from the Works Progress Administration. Since its dedication in 1941, the Emma Willard Memorial has been maintained by the Daughters of the American Revolution and is presently administered by the Daughters of the American Revolution, Ethan Allen Chapter, Middlebury, Vermont.

Artist
American artist/illustrator Marion Guild was employed by Pierre Zwick, a painter and director of arts for the state of Vermont under the Works Progress Administration, to create the memorial's design.   Guild is perhaps best known for creating the pop-up illustrations for the 1939 edition of Robert L. May's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Zwick was initially solely credited for the design of the memorial.

Condition
This sculpture was documented as well maintained in 1992 as part of Save Outdoor Sculpture!, a campaign organized by Heritage Preservation: The National Institute of Conservation partnered with the Smithsonian Institution, specifically the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Throughout the 1990s, over 7,000 volunteers cataloged and assessed the condition of over 30,000 publicly accessible statues, monuments, and sculptures installed as outdoor public art across the United States. In Vermont, the survey was sponsored by the Vermont Museum and Gallery Alliance from 1992 to 1993 where 110 volunteers surveyed 242 sculptures dating from 1740 to 1993. The archives from the project are maintained by the Vermont Historical Society.

See also
 Marble sculpture

References

1941 sculptures
Marble sculptures in the United States
Buildings and structures in Middlebury, Vermont
Monuments and memorials in Vermont
Outdoor sculptures in Vermont
Works Progress Administration in Vermont

Emma Willard Memorial


Bridgewater House is a townhouse located at 14 Cleveland Row in the St James's area of London, England. It is a Grade I listed building.

History
The earliest known house on the site was Berkshire House, built in about 1626–27 for Thomas Howard, second son of the Earl of Suffolk and Master of the Horse to Charles I of England when he was Prince of Wales. Howard was later created Earl of Berkshire.

After being occupied by Parliamentarian troops in the English Civil War, used for the Portuguese Embassy, and lived in by Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, the house was lived in by Charles II's mistress Barbara Villiers, who was made Duchess of Cleveland in 1670, following which the house was known as Cleveland House.  She refaced the old house and added new wings. After being owned for some years by a speculator, the house was sold in 1700 to John Egerton, 3rd Earl of Bridgewater, after which it passed by inheritance until 1948.

Cleveland House was re-designed in the Palazzo style by Sir Charles Barry in 1840. The rebuilding was completed and renamed in 1854 for Lord Ellesmere, heir of the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater. It is built in Bath stone with a slate roof in three storeys with a basement.

The building was damaged in the Second World War by a bomb in the street and was subsequently adapted for office use. It was sold by John Egerton, 6th Duke of Sutherland.  By 1979, it was the corporate head office of Tube Investments, the British engineering and metals conglomerate.

In 1981, Bridgewater House was purchased for £19 million and restored by Yiannis Latsis, a Greek shipping magnate, and it is still owned by his family.

Art collections
The Marquess of Stafford had Cleveland House extended in 1803–1806 by architect Charles Heathcote Tatham to accommodate the Stafford Gallery (renamed the Bridgewater Gallery in Bridgewater House), where the collections of paintings of the Duke of Bridgewater and his nephew and heir George Leveson-Gower, 1st Duke of Sutherland (whose second son Ellesmere was) were on at least semi-public display.

The collection included about 70 paintings from the famous Orleans Collection, some of which are now in the Sutherland Loan to the National Gallery of Scotland. The collection was opened in 1803, and it could be visited on Wednesday afternoons over four, later three, months in the summer by "acquaintances" of a member of the family, or artists recommended by a member of the Royal Academy.

The painting Charles I Insulted by Cromwell's Soldiers, thought lost in a World War II air raid, was rediscovered in 2009.

In popular culture
The exterior appears as Marchmain House in the 1981 television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited and as Grantham House, the Crawleys' London house, in the TV historical drama series Downton Abbey.

References

Bibliography

External links

 The house in the Victorian era

Grade I listed houses in London
Defunct art museums and galleries in London
Grade I listed buildings in the City of Westminster
Houses in the City of Westminster
Charles Barry buildings

Bridgewater House, Westminster


Viva Piñata is a computer-animated children's television series produced by 4Kids Productions and Bardel Entertainment in collaboration with Microsoft, and it is based on the Xbox 360 video game of the same name by Xbox Game Studios and Rare, which was released alongside the TV series. Lloyd Goldfine and Paul Griffin served as executive producers, with Mike deSeve acting as story editor and Anne Bernstein and David Steven Cohen among the series' writers.

Viva Piñata premiered on August 26, 2006 as part of the 4Kids TV programming block, later moving to The CW4Kids before being removed from the schedule on October 25, 2008. In Canada, the series aired on YTV, where its final episode was broadcast on May 18, 2009, and would continue to air in reruns until June 24, 2011. The series also aired on Nicktoons Network and CITV in the UK and on Nickelodeon and ABC Television in Australia.

Synopsis
On Piñata Island, piñatas of various species roam the gardens freely, eating candy and coexisting with one another in a peaceful society. When a piñata's candy inside reaches a high enough level, they are sent to a party via the Piñata Central Cannoñata, where they will be broken open by the partygoers before being repaired and returned to the island. The series follows a group of close piñata friends and their day-to-day lives on the island.

Characters

Main characters
 Hudson Horstachio (voiced by Dan Green): A horse piñata with a green teal body like a pistachio, Hudson is one of the most popular piñatas in the business. As a celebrity he sometimes has to disguise himself when in public. His friends often have to keep his ego in check. He enjoys dancing and making extravagant statements about himself.
 Paulie Pretztail (voiced by Rah Rah): A cross between a pretzel and a red-tailed fox, Paulie is a no-nonsense kind of pinata who could easily be considered to be "the clever-cloggs" of the main cast (besides Les). He is Fergy's best friend and shares his aversion towards being sent to parties (though it seems more of an annoyance to him, rather than Fergy's idea of thinking of going to a party as frightening). He seems to be good at cooking as shown in the episode ' Recipe for Disaster'.
 Fergy Fudgehog (voiced by David Wills): A cross between fudge and a hedgehog, Fergy loves candy, but fears parties. He is Paulie's best friend, and is frequently sought out by Langston to attend parties but always manages to escape his bugcatcher's net. His catchphrase is "Oh, fudge!"
 Franklin Fizzlybear (voiced by Marc Thompson): A brown grizzly bear with purple and yellow stripes. He enjoys surfing, and typically speaks with a surfer accent and related expressions. He is fairly laid back and occasionally has moments of intellectualism. He is not good at lying. He also draws portraits of the other pinatas. In the video game, his surfboard is an item that the player can purchase.
 Tina & Teddington Twingersnap (voiced by Kathleen Delaney and Jamie McGonnigal): A two-headed serpent crossed with gingersnap. They share a body, but argue a lot. They have both been shown to have sub-par gardening skills. Despite the fact that they appear to hate each other (after all, they are Brother and Sister), in one episode when they are accidentally separated, they end up greatly missing their other half. Teddington is the worst singer on Pinata Island and for some reason has a refined British accent.
 Ella Elephanilla (voiced by Rebecca Soler): A cross between an elephant and vanilla, Ella suffers from short-term memory loss, thus contradicting the saying that an elephant never forgets. She enjoys ballet. Because of her elegant moves, this caused Paulie and Fergy to both get huge, temporary crushes on her. They even asked her to a dance, but she forgot they had both asked her. No evidence has been shown that both Fergy and Paulie still have a crush on her, if they do, they are very subtle about it.
 Les Galagoogoo (voiced by Eric Stuart): A cross between a Galago and GooGoo, Les is smart and dextrous, however, when he speaks, it comes out as high-pitched gibberish. Les ranked second place in the 4Kids Viva Piñata character poll. It appears that the main cast may be able to understand him, but simply ignore him. In one episode, he was able to speak, but he was ignored as he always had been.
 Langston Lickatoad (voiced by Mike Pollock): A cross between a licorice and a toad, Langston operates the Cannoñata. He regularly tries to catch the stealthy duo Fergy and Paulie in order to send them to parties.
 Professor Pester (voiced by David Brimmer): A voodoo-like islander who was the main villain of the series. In all the episodes he appears in, he and his Ruffians try to capture and destroy a piñata, (usually Hudson) if not all of them, to obtain their candy. Note that he does not appear to be a piñata. When he had his personality reversed and happily gobbled up all of Fergy's candy, he was scanned on the way to the Cannoñata and found to have no candy. Nor do any of his ruffians appear to be piñatas; an episode shows that they resided on the island before the arrival of Pester and were partially responsible for the failure of his Sours experiment. His catchphrase is "I have no regrets", and he always says it when his plans backfire and he ends up losing. He and the Ruffians are the only non-pinatas from the games to have made it to the show, though to be noted Leafos makes a split second cameo in the theme song right when the announcer states "Welcome to Pinata Island" as the screen is panning over a field.

Recurring characters
 Beverly Badgesicle: Hudson's biggest, very obsessive fan.
 Cecil Cocoadile: Cecil is the only piñata on the island who thinks Chortles' jokes are funny, causing him to burst into tears laughing. In the piñata world, cocoadile tears make excellent fertilizer, so while laughing and crying at his bad jokes, he is also helping Chortles with his garden.
 Chortles Chippopotamus (voiced by Sean Schemmel): Chortles has a horrible sense of humor, but fantastic gardening skills. Only Cecil Cocoadile thinks his jokes are funny, and Chortles uses Cecil's tears to help his garden grow.
 Dr. Quincy Quackberry: A doctor and psychiatrist with a Groucho Marx-like personality. He wears glasses and a tie, and he customarily tells poor jokes.
 The Great Bonboon (or just "The Bonboon"): A creature who pretends to be an all-knowing guru to steal candy from gullible piñatas like Professor Pester. He is usually meditating, but when no one is present, he talks to his friend Sid on the phone in his normal voice. Paulie is the only pinata who sees through his ruse.
 King Roario (voiced by Dan Green): The King of Pinata Island.
 Mabel Moozipan: She owns a well-kept vegetable garden and despises trespassers. She is friends with Florence Fizzlybear.
 Pecky Pudgeon (voiced by Eric Stuart): Pecky takes photos for the local newspaper of Piñata Island, the Piñata Yada Yada. He loves gossiping about everyone and will go to great lengths to bring in a juicy scoop for the paper. He makes a cameo in the game taking a photo of Gretchen when she first appears.
 Pierre Parrybo (voiced by Pete Zarustica): Pierre organizes various activities on Piñata Island. He's also the DJ for a call-in radio show.
 Ruffians: Professor Pester's bumbling henchmen who usually ruin his plans, since they don't comprehend orders well. They waddle from side to side in their walk, and they love to prank one another. According to Pester, three are boys and one is a girl.
 Petunia Pretztail (voiced by Sieko Shih): A kung-fu warrior who is friends with Florence Fizzlybear, Francine Fudgehog, and especially Haily Hostachio, and teaches Fergy and Paulie how to find their own "fu".
 Prewitt Profitamole (voiced by Mike MacRae): A brilliant animal who seems to be the only mechanic on the island and he is a wonder at inventing. He also has a love for soaps, and watches them avidly.
 Shirley Shellybean: Shirly is optimistic and always is ready to start a new adventure.
 Simone Cinnamonkey (voiced by Rebecca Soler): Hudson's brisk and resourceful agent. She speaks very quickly, rapidly counting off Hudson's schedule. Sometimes, she seems to want her pay more than Hudson's fame, but she is occasionally shown to care for him in both stern and encouraging ways.

Episodes

Home media
Two episodes, "Chewnicorn in the Garden" and "Horstachio of a Different Color", were released for free download on the Xbox Live Marketplace as sneak peeks prior to the show's release. "Horstachio of a Different Color" was also featured on a bonus disc included with the Special Edition version of the Viva Piñata game.

Shout! Factory released two DVD volumes for Viva Piñata. The first, The Piñatas Must Be Crazy And Other Stories, was released in February 2009 and contains episodes 1-5.

"The Ghost Show," an internet radio show, usually shows various clips from episodes during the weekly broadcasts.

References

External links
 Official website (archive)

Viva Piñata
Fox Broadcasting Company original programming
2000s American animated television series
2006 American television series debuts
2009 American television series endings
2000s Canadian animated television series
2006 Canadian television series debuts
2009 Canadian television series endings
American children's animated comedy television series
American children's animated fantasy television series
American computer-animated television series
Animated television series about horses
Animated television series about hedgehogs
Animated television series about foxes
Animated television series about bears
Animated television series about elephants
Animated television series about birds
Animated television series about animals
Animated series based on video games
Works based on Microsoft video games
Canadian children's animated comedy television series
Canadian children's animated fantasy television series
Canadian computer-animated television series
CW4Kids original programming
YTV (Canadian TV channel) original programming
English-language television shows

Viva Piñata (TV series)


Howard Earl Gardner (born July 11, 1943) is an American developmental psychologist and the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. He was a founding member of Harvard Project Zero in 1967 and held leadership roles at that research center from 1972 to 2023. Since 1995, he has been the co-director of The Good Project.

Gardner has written hundreds of research articles and over thirty books that have been translated into over thirty languages.  He is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, as outlined in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.

Gardner retired from teaching in 2019. In 2020, he published his intellectual memoir A Synthesizing Mind. He continues his research and writing, including several blogs.

Early life
Howard Earl Gardner was born July 11, 1943, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Ralph Gardner and Hilde (née Weilheimer) Gardner, German Jewish immigrants who fled Germany just prior to World War II.

Gardner described himself as "a studious child who gained much pleasure from playing the piano". Although Gardner never became a professional pianist, he taught piano intermittently from 1958 to 1969.

Education was of the utmost importance in the Gardner home. While his parents had hoped that he would attend Phillips Academy in Andover Massachusetts, Gardner opted to attend a school closer to his hometown in Pennsylvania, Wyoming Seminary.  Gardner had a desire to learn and greatly excelled in school.

Career

Gardner graduated from Harvard College with highest honors in 1965 with a BA in Social Relations, and studied under the renowned Erik Erikson. After spending one year at the London School of Economics, he went on to obtain his PhD in developmental psychology at Harvard while working with psychologists Roger Brown and Jerome Bruner, and philosopher Nelson Goodman.

For his postdoctoral fellowship, Gardner worked alongside neurologist Norman Geschwind at Boston Veterans Administration Hospital and continued his work there for another 20 years. In 1986, Gardner became a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Since 1995, much of the focus of his work has been on The GoodWork Project, now part of a larger initiative known as The Good Project that encourages excellence, ethics, and engagement in work, digital life, and civic society.

In 2000, Gardner, Kurt Fischer, and their colleagues at the Harvard Graduate School of Education established the master's degree program in Mind, Brain, and Education. This program was thought to be the first of its kind around the world. Many universities in both the United States and abroad have since developed similar programs. Since then, Gardner has published books on a number of topics including Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People's Minds, Five Minds for the Future, Truth, Beauty and Goodness Reframed, and The App Generation (written with Katie Davis).

Since 2012, Gardner has been co-directing a major study of higher education in the United States with Wendy Fischman and several other colleagues. Information about the study, including several dozen blogs, is available on Gardner's website. In March 2022, MIT Press published Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner's book The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be.

Theory and criticism
According to Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, humans have several different ways of processing information, and these ways are relatively independent of one another. The theory is a critique of the standard intelligence theory, which emphasizes the correlation among abilities, as well as traditional measures like IQ tests that typically only account for linguistic, logical, and spatial abilities. Since 1999, Gardner has identified eight intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. Gardner and colleagues have also considered two additional intelligences, existential and pedagogical. Many teachers, school administrators, and special educators have been inspired by Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences.

Gardner's definition of intelligence has been met with some criticism in education circles as well as in the field of psychology.  Perhaps the strongest and most enduring critique of his theory of multiple intelligences centers on its lack of empirical evidence, much of which points to a single construct of intelligence called "g". Gardner has responded that his theory is based entirely on empirical evidence as opposed to experimental evidence, as he does not believe experimental evidence in itself can yield a theoretical synthesis.

Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences can be seen as both a departure from and a continuation of the 20th century's work on the subject of human intelligence.  Other prominent psychologists whose contributions variously developed or expanded the field of study include Charles Spearman, Louis Thurstone, Edward Thorndike, and Robert Sternberg.

In 1967, Professor Nelson Goodman started an educational program called Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, which began with a focus in arts education and now spans a wide variety of educational arenas. Howard Gardner and David Perkins were founding Research Assistants and later Co-Directed Project Zero from 1972 to 2000. Project Zero's mission is to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as a broad range of humanistic and scientific disciplines at the individual and institutional levels.

For over two decades, in collaboration with William Damon, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and several other colleagues, Gardner has been directing research at The Good Project on the nature of good work, good play, and good collaboration. The goal of his research is to determine what it means to achieve work that is at once excellent, engaging, and carried out in an ethical way. With colleagues Lynn Barendsen, Courtney Bither, Shelby Clark, Wendy Fischman, Carrie James, Kirsten McHugh, and Danny Mucinskas, Gardner has developed curricular toolkits on these topics for use in educational and professional circles.

Achievements and awards
In 1981 Gardner was the recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship. In 1990 he became the first American to receive the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education.   In 1985, The National Psychology Awards for Excellence in the Media, awarded Gardner The Book Award for Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.  In 1987, he received the William James Award from the American Psychological Association. SUNY Plattsburgh inducted Gardner selected Gardner for honoris causa membership in Omicron Delta Kappa in 1998. In 1999, Gardner received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 2000 he received a fellowship from the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.  Four years later he was named an Honorary Professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai. In the years 2005 and 2008 he was selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the top 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. In 2011, he won the Prince of Asturias Award in Social Sciences for his development of multiple intelligences theory. In 2015, he received the Brock International Prize in Education. In 2020, Gardner received the Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education Award from the American Education Research Association.

He has received honorary degrees from 31 colleges and universities around the world, including institutions in Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Italy, South Korea, and Spain. He is also a member of several honorary societies: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, National Academy of Education, and the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Personal life
Howard Gardner is married to Ellen Winner, Professor Emerita of Psychology at Boston College. They have one child, Benjamin. Gardner has three children from an earlier marriage: Kerith (1969), Jay (1971), and Andrew (1976); and five grandchildren: Oscar (2005), Agnes (2011), Olivia (2015), Faye Marguerite (2016), and August Pierre (2019).

References

Further reading

 Gordon, L. M. (2006). Howard Gardner. "The encyclopedia of human development." Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2, 552–553.

External links

 The Good Project
The Official Howard Gardner Website
The Official Website of Multiple Intelligences Theory
Howard Gardner Twitter
Project Zero
Faculty Profile — Harvard Graduate School of Education website

1943 births
American business theorists
American developmental psychologists
American educational psychologists
American educational theorists
American textbook writers
Creativity researchers
Intelligence researchers
Harvard College alumni
Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty
Living people
MacArthur Fellows
Members of the American Philosophical Society
New York University faculty
People from Scranton, Pennsylvania
Wyoming Seminary alumni

Howard Gardner


Pullinque Hydroelectric Plant  is a hydroelectric power station in Los Ríos Region, Chile. The plant uses water from Pullinque Lake and produces  of electricity. The plant was built by ENDESA in 1962 but is currently owned by  Pullinque S.A. On October 16 of 2003 about 40 Mapuches occupied the plant claiming that it was built on land stolen from them. The occupation ended with an agreement about meeting in one week to discuss the problem.

References

Energy infrastructure completed in 1962
Energy infrastructure in Los Ríos Region
Hydroelectric power stations in Chile

Pullinque Hydroelectric Plant


India Boyer (1907–1998) was an American architect who was the first woman to pass Ohio's architectural licensing exam. She also worked as head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' architecture department.

Early life and education
India Boyer was born on June 27, 1907, to Ethel and Calvin Boyer in Shelby County, Ohio. She was named after India Schoaff, a family friend. India's mother was the first woman to serve on the Perry Township Board of Education, while her father was an agriculturalist. She had two brothers, Ralph and Howard, one of whom became an engineer and the other a metallurgist. In 1925, India graduated as valedictorian of her class at Pemberton High School and, with the encouragement of her parents and brothers, went on to Ohio State University. The year she entered, Ohio State's Department of Architecture opened its doors to women for the first time, and India was one of the six who enrolled. Boyer was surprised to learn that military training was a requirement of the architectural program, but she refused to participate in it. The difficult workload eliminated the other women in the architectural field of study until only India Boyer remained.

Boyer's fellow students were cool towards her at first, but her perseverance earned their respect and eventually they warmed up enough to lend a hand with a critical design project towards the end of her time in the program. However, serious obstacles remained: at one point she learned that she was not eligible to take part in a competitive examination that allowed the winner to study architecture in France over the summer. She protested her exclusion and was told that the reason for it was that she "might win and there were no facilities for women there."

During her junior and senior year, she worked for local architect Joseph Bradford. She graduated in 1930 in a class of 1,450 students of whom only 11 were architects and Boyer the only woman.

Career
The Great Depression struck just as India entered the job market. She struggled for four years trying to make a career in a profession in which women were barely accepted before giving up and taking an exam for the U.S. Army Corps for Engineers. The Corps offered her a permanent job working on navigation and flood control projects, and in 1939 she was promoted to head of the Corps of Engineers' architecture department, a position she held for seven years. During World War II, she was involved in designing buildings for wartime needs, including hospitals, airports, supply depots, warehouses, and housing.

Boyer never gave up her dream of becoming an architect in private practice. In 1941, she made history as the first woman in Ohio to sit and pass the state architecture exam. After four more years with the Corps of Engineers, Boyer and colleagues Robert C. Vogt and William J. Ivers resigned and founded the architectural firm of Vogt, Ivers and Associates in Cincinnati, Ohio. Despite not being included in the firm's name, India became head of the firm and found herself up against tough competition from all-male practices. Boyer's interests ranged from commercial to industrial, recreational, educational buildings. She is known in the Cincinnati area for designing the Elmwood Place School and the Shawnee Park. During this time, the Ryerson Steel Company was expanding and Boyer helped with their architectural plans.

Later life
Boyer suffered a heart attack in 1975 and as a consequence had to retire early, although she continued to work as a consultant for the Hamilton County Park District, Elmwood Place School, and Shawnee Park. Even after she stopped being active in architecture, Boyer continued to receive local awards such as the YMCA Women of Achievement award and the Outstanding Alumnus Award from Ohio State University. In 1994 a group of women who considered her a role model established the India Boyer Guild of Women in Architecture in her honor. She died in Cincinnati on February 9, 1998, at the age of 90.

References

20th-century American architects
American women architects
1907 births
1998 deaths
20th-century American women artists

India Boyer


James Birdseye McPherson (November 14, 1828 – July 22, 1864) was a Union Army major general during the American Civil War. He was killed at the Battle of Atlanta during the Atlanta Campaign.

Early life

McPherson was born in 1828 near Clyde, Ohio. He was the eldest son of William and Cynthia (Russell) McPherson who were farmers. To help his family, in 1841 at age 12, McPherson entered an apprenticeship at a general store. He became a clerk for Robert Smith. McPherson was raised and tutored along with Smith's children. His father died in 1847 and Smith paid for McPherson's education at Norwalk Academy. In 1849 Smith arranged an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. McPherson spent much of his time tutoring his roommate John Bell Hood. McPherson graduated in 1853, first in his class.

Military career

He secured a posting as a second lieutenant with the United States Army Corps of Engineers. He worked on improvements to New York Harbor. He was assigned to the building of Fort Delaware. McPherson then directed worked on fortifications on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. In 1858 he was a first lieutenant. In 1861 when the Civil war broke out, he raised a company of volunteers to fight for the Union. Now a captain went to Boston to supervise the construction of harbor defenses. His former commander helped him by making McPherson his Aide-de-camp and promoted him to Lieutenant colonel.

In early 1861 McPherson was assigned to the staff of general Ulysses S. Grant as an engineering officer. In 1862 he impressed his superiors and was assigned to supervise military railroads in Mississippi. In this position he was a brigadier general of volunteers. After the Battle of Corinth McPherson was promoted to the rank of major general (8 October 1862). He became commander of Seventeenth Corps in the Army of the Tennessee. At the Battle of Raymond a small force of Confederates attacked his 10,000 man column. They were almost completely destroyed before they realized their mistake. He commanded his corps at the Siege of Vicksburg.

In January 1864 he succeeded general Sherman as commander of the Army of the Tennessee. As part of Sherman's Atlanta Campaign, on several occasions his army threatened the enemy's supply lines. McPherson's army was also used in flanking maneuvers. Sherman's combined armies kept moving towards Atlanta while the confederate armies, under Joseph E. Johnston, fell back. Finally Johnston retreated into Atlanta on July 9–10. Jefferson Davis the Confederate president, dismissed Johnston for not stopping the Union army. Davis gave command to general John B. Hood, McPherson's friend and former roommate. Hood had little chance of succeeding. Sherman's larger army, including McPherson's Army of the Tennessee, was five miles from the city when Hood took command.

His death

On learning of Johnson's replacement by Hood, and knowing Hood as well as he did, McPherson readied his army for an attack by Hood's confederates. McPherson's Army of the Tennessee was holding Sherman's left flank. On 22 July 1864, Hood directed his attack against McPherson's army. The battle went on for several hours. During a break in the fighting McPherson saw a gap developing in the Union lines. He rode out with a staff officer to close the gap. He came upon confederate skirmishers who ordered him to surrender. He turned and spurred his horse to escape, but was shot and killed. His body was returned to the Union lines for burial. Both Sherman and Hood mourned his death. McPherson was the second highest ranking Union officer killed in the civil war. He was buried in his hometown of Clyde, Ohio. Five years after his death President Rutherford B. Hayes presided over a ceremony where a bronze statue was placed over his grave.

References

Other websites
 McPherson Home
 American Civil War: Major General James McPherson

McPherson, James B.
McPherson, James B.
McPherson, James B.
Deaths by firearm in the United States
Military people killed in action
Military people from Ohio

James B. McPherson


Wilfred Kaplan (November 28, 1915 – December 26, 2007) was a professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan for 46 years, from 1940 through 1986. His research focused on dynamical systems, the topology of curve families, complex function theory, and differential equations. In total, he authored over 30 research papers and 11 textbooks.

For over thirty years Kaplan was an active member of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and served as president of the University of Michigan chapter from 1978 to 1985.

Early life

Education
Wilfred Kaplan was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Jacob and Anne Kaplan. He attended Boston Latin School and furthered his education at Harvard University, where he was granted his A.B. in mathematics in 1936 and graduated summa cum laude. Later that same year he received his master's degree at Harvard. Kaplan received a Rogers Fellow scholarship to study in Europe from 1936-1937, during his second year of graduate school. He was based out of Zürich, Switzerland where many of the mathematicians working on the applications of topology to differential equations were located. He also spent a month in Rome to work with famous mathematician Tullio Levi-Civita. Upon returning to the United States, Kaplan accepted a yearlong teaching fellowship at Rice Institute for the 1938-1939 school year, thus completing his graduate program. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1939 under the advisement of Hassler Whitney. His dissertation covered regular curve families filling the plane.

Personal life
While attending lectures at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich he met a fellow mathematician, Ida Roetting, whom he nicknamed Heidi and would eventually marry in 1938. The couple lived in Houston for a year after their wedding while Kaplan taught at the Rice Institute. The Kaplans had two children, Roland and Muriel. Wilfred Kaplan died at the age of 92 after a short illness.

Work

Teaching and research
After Kaplan's short teaching position at Rice Institute, he went on to teach at the College of William and Mary in Virginia for one year. In 1940 he was invited by T. H. Hildebrandt to join the faculty at the University of Michigan, after he had previously attended the Topology Congress. The mathematics department at this time was diminishing due to the effects of World War II. Enrollment was down and some of the faculty had been granted leaves to do military research. When asked to record his contribution to the war effort, Kaplan mentioned teaching math exclusively to Air Force pre-meteorology students in the spring and summer of 1943, as well as teaching Navy V-12 and Army ASTP students for the majority of the academic year 1943-44. In June 1944, Kaplan worked at Brown University as a researcher in an Applied Mathematics Group for the Taylor Model Basin, the Watertown Arsenal and the Bureau of Ordnance of the Navy Department. He continued his research at Brown for 17 months. In May 1947 he outlined a curriculum for a new Lectures on Mathematics Project sponsored by the Office of Naval Research.

His early research focused primarily on dynamical systems, and the topology of curve families. In 1955, he became especially interested in complex function theory and made a significant contribution to mathematics in his study of a special class of Schlicht functions, for which he showed that the Bieberbach Conjecture held. His later research took on a more applied approach as he returned once more to differential equations, this time engaging in a more global analysis. In total, Wilfred Kaplan authored about 30 research papers.

Kaplan was named assistant professor in 1944, associate professor in 1950 and full professor in 1956. His lectures were characterized by clarity and directness, a skill which allowed him to write several popular mathematics textbooks. An updated version of his Advanced Calculus textbook is still used widely today. A selection of Kaplan's books can be found in the bibliography.

Kaplan taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses during his time at Michigan, and further advised eight doctoral students. Kaplan's skillful teaching won him respect among students and coworkers. Donald Lewis, chair of the mathematics department and co-author said, "First and foremost, Wilfred Kaplan was a teacher. He enjoyed conveying the beauty and usefulness of mathematics, and his students responded enthusiastically. He was a superb expositor, and his ability to elegantly convey mathematical ideas explains the enormous impact of his textbooks. When we were writing our joint texts, he never came to a meeting without a new idea to be incorporated."

One of Kaplan's primary goals as an educator was bridging the gap between pure and applied mathematics. He sympathized with the plight of engineers who felt the pressure to master more and more math concepts and then master the additional skill of applying it to their field. Kaplan wrote math textbooks specifically for engineers, such as Advanced Mathematics for Engineers (1981), because he believed teachers needed to work on presenting mathematical knowledge more efficiently to this group. Furthermore, he argued that science students in general, but specifically engineers, needed to be given other resources such as textbooks and articles to further their study outside of lectures along with the tools to employ those resources appropriately. He urged other textbook authors to use clear and simple language whenever possible, in order to "make the more advanced material accessible to those with limited background."

He also taught a class called "Mathematical Ideas in Science and the Humanities," which focused on the use of math as an instrument to organize thinking about complex problems. More than just learning specific math content, Kaplan believed math was a medium through which to teach conciseness and how to recognize analogies, determine logical consequences of assumptions, and learn what questions need to be asked to tackle a given problem in any field.

AAUP
Wilfred Kaplan became a member of the national American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in 1946. He served as the vice president of the Michigan Conference AAUP from 1966 to 1968 and as president from 1969 to 1970. From 1973 to 1978, Kaplan served on the executive committee of the University of Michigan Chapter of the AAUP and took over as president in the years from 1978 through 1985. He continued being an active member even in his retirement, serving as executive secretary from 1985 to 2002. Kaplan received grievances from faculty members and supported collective bargaining (although the University faculty was never unionized). One of his primary concerns was  retired professors on fixed incomes who were suffering under rising inflation. He sought to obtain a grant to provide the required financial aid. He also argued that retirees should receive more information about the health care options available to them, and he secured increases in maximum coverage and the annual reinstatement amounts allowed to retirees under the university health plan.

In the 1980s, Kaplan wrote an extensive proposal for a study of higher education in the United States. He argued that there should be more research of the inevitable challenges that would arise and that the University of Michigan would be a great case study whose results would be relevant for many public universities. In the proposal he outlined a variety of topics to be explored in the study: the historical background of higher education including tuition rates, enrollment rates, and changes in social customs; a study of changing demographics; the economic need for college-trained people for the betterment of society; and a thorough account of the present resources available to higher education and how these could be modified for greater efficiency.

In the 1990s, Kaplan's correspondence and reports focused heavily on the "grave difficulties" between faculty government leaders (members of the Senate Assembly) and the top administration offices, specifically President Duderstadt and Provost Whitaker. Many faculty grievances were concerned with the many decisions being made without faculty input and included complaints that President Duderstadt had only "modest interest in the views of others within the faculty."

Additional clubs/Memberships
Kaplan was involved in a wide variety of other clubs as well. His interest in art lead him to become the president of the Washtenaw County Council for Arts. Kaplan also made a significant financial contribution to the ONCE Group, a group of artists, musicians, and film-makers known for their annual ONCE music festival in Ann Arbor; the group also spearheaded a film festival and a theatre ensemble in the 1960s.  He was also a member of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), the American Physical Society (APS), and the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). He was on the State's Higher Education Capital Investment Advisory Committee although little is known about his specific role there. He was also Vice Chair of the University's Senate Advisory Committee on Academic Affairs, a subcommittee of the Senate Assembly. Additionally, Kaplan served as the treasurer of the Ann Arbor Unitarian Fellowship from 1972 to 2002. In his later years he was president of the University of Michigan Retirees Association.

Awards
Kaplan was named collegiate professor by the Board of Regents of the university from 1973-1975 for his accomplishments as a teacher. In 1984, he received the Good Teaching Award, from what was then called the AMOCO foundation, now BP Amoco. The award recognized excellence in undergraduate instruction and sought to incentive great teaching. While serving on the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs, Kaplan received their Distinguished Faculty Governance Award in 1986.

Retirement
Wilfred Kaplan retired in May 1986 after 46 years of service to the university. It was then that he received the emeritus distinction. Despite his retirement, Kaplan was still involved with the university. In the years to come he would receive several requests from the University Regents Commission to return to active duty to teach specific classes in the mathematics department. In 1990 he helped establish the Academic Freedom Lecture Fund (AFLF), allowing professors that were suspended or fired during the McCarthy era to hold lectures on campus. The film Keeping in Mind, an account of the mistreatment of the three professors who were suspended for their unpopular views during the McCarthy era, was played in the spring of 1989. After an audience member suggested the University make amends for its mistreatment of the three professors, the AAUP pursued this goal. First, university officials were contacted and a proposal was sent to the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs in October 1989. The Senate Assembly established the Academic Lecture Freedom Fund which was funded, in part, by the national AAUP. Kaplan was on the AFLF's board of directors until his death.

After his wife's death in 2005, Kaplan wrote a book titled Bill and Heidi: Beginning of our Lives Together, which was a translated composition of all their early correspondence before their wedding. Kaplan died on December 26, 2007, after a short illness. After his death,  Walter Dublin, Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering, wrote about Kaplan in a letter to the editor of the Ann Arbor News that Kaplan "worked tirelessly to improve the faculty--and, de facto, the university--by his work on many committees, work that spanned multiple decades. While he was a leader, he was never domineering, but always logical. Often, he would quietly remind his associates when they had strayed from their stated purpose or point out a legal or historical obstacle to what was being considered. He was always up to date and on the mark until he died, many years after he had retired."

Selected bibliography
Kaplan, Wilfred. Advanced Calculus. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1952. Print.
Kaplan, Wilfred. Ordinary Differential Equations. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub., 1958. Print.
Kaplan, Wilfred, and Donald J. Lewis. Calculus and Linear Algebra. New York: Wiley, 1970. Print.
Kaplan, Wilfred. Advanced Mathematics for Engineers. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub., 1981. Print.
Kaplan, Wilfred. Operational Methods for Linear Systems. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub., 1962. Print.
Kaplan, Wilfred. "Regular curve-families filling the plane, I." Duke Mathematical Journal 7.1 (1940): 154–185. Web.
Kaplan, Wilfred. "Regular Curve-families Filling the Plane, II." Duke Mathematical Journal 8.1 (1941): 11-46. Web.
Kaplan, Wilfred. "Topology of Level Curves of Harmonic Functions." Transactions of the American Mathematical Society 63.3 (1948): 514. Web.
Kaplan, Wilfred. "Dynamics of Linear Systems (Vaclav Dolez Al)." SIAM Review 8.2 (1966): 246-2. ProQuest. Web. 21 Mar. 2015.
Kaplan, Wilfred. "Applications of Undergraduate Mathematics in Engineering (Ben Noble)." SIAM Review 10.3 (1968): 383-2. ProQuest. Web. 21 Mar. 2015.
Kaplan, Wilfred. "Topics in Mathematical System Theory (Rudolf E. Kalman, Peter L. Falb and Michael A. Arbib)." SIAM Review 12.1 (1970): 157-2. ProQuest. Web. 21 Mar. 2015.
Kaplan, Wilfred. "Topics in Ordinary Differential Equations: A Potpourri (William D. Lakin and David A. Sanchez)." SIAM Review 14.3 (1972): 508-2. ProQuest. Web. 21 Mar. 2015.
Kaplan, Wilfred. "Ordinary Differential Equations in the Complex Domain (Einar Hills)." SIAM Review 19.4 (1977): 749-1. ProQuest. Web. 21 Mar. 2015.
Kaplan, Wilfred. "Green's Functions and Boundary Value Problems (Ivar Stackgold)." SIAM Review 23.1 (1981): 117-2. ProQuest. Web. 21 Mar. 2015.

References

1915 births
2007 deaths
University of Michigan faculty
Harvard University alumni
People from Boston
Mathematicians from Massachusetts
Boston Latin School alumni

Wilfred Kaplan


Mohammad Reza Rahimi (, born on 11 January 1949) is an Iranian politician who served as the fifth first vice president from 13 September 2009 until 3 August 2013. His previous posts included governor of the Kurdistan province and vice president for parliamentary affairs.

On 15 February 2015, Rahimi was convicted of corruption and is currently jailed in Evin Prison. He was allegedly head of the "Fatemi Circle".

Early life and education
Rahimi was born into a Kurdish Shiite family on 11 January 1949 in a village, Serishabad, in Iran's Kurdistan province. He received a law degree from Tehran University. Rahimi also claims to hold a PhD from Oxford University but no record of his name has been found in the university and also this claim has been vastly disputed by many Iranian sources. Rahimi is considered to be the second high-ranking member of Ahmadinejad's administration to have lied about receiving a PhD from Oxford University, the other being Ali Kordan. He has also claimed to have a PhD from Belford University, characterized as "just one of hundreds of diploma mills easily accessible online." Alef, an Iranian site that belongs to Ahmad Tavakkoli, published documents purporting to show fraudulent documents created by Rahimi.

Career
Rahimi worked as a public prosecutor in Qorveh and Sanandaj. He headed the city council of Sanandaj, too. During this period, he taught law at the school of law at Tehran Azad University and served as head of the school for a short time.

Rahimi was elected as member of the Parliament of Iran from his province of birth Kurdistan in Legislative election of 1980 as a member of Islamic Republican Party. He was in Parliament until 1992 when he resigned from his seat. He held many positions when he was an MP such as head of arts commission and a member of foreign policy commission. Then he was appointed governor of the Kurdistan Province in August 1993 by then-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and was in office until August 1997 when Mohammad Khatami was elected as new president and named new governors. Rahimi was not in Khatami's list of governors. During his governorship, he firstly met Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

Ahmadinejad named Rahimi as his vice president for legal and parliamentary affairs in 2008. He was appointed as the 5th first vice president of Iran on 13 September 2009 in a declaration by the president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and succeeded Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei who was in office for a short time.

He was acting president of Iran from 20 April 2011 to 1 May 2011 when president Ahmadinejad boycotted his official duties. He run for the presidency of Iran in the 2013 elections, but withdrew his candidacy in May 2013. After the election of Hassan Rouhani as the president, his term ended as first vice president.

Corruption charges

Based on the claims of at least two members of the Iranian Parliament (Majlis), Rahimi was the head of a corruption band that became known as Fatemi Circle. This circle had an office in Fatemi street in Tehran.  Naderan, a member of Majlis who is close to Ahmad Tavakkoli, has criticized the judicial system for not arresting him. Motahari, another member of Majlis, has asked Ahmadinejad to cooperate with judicial system on this issue and called the accusations serious.

In January 2015, Iran's judiciary announced that Rahimi has been sentenced to 5 years in prison and an equivalent of $1 million fine.

Indictment
On 1 September 2014, Rahimi was sentenced to a prison term and a cash fine, convicted of yet unknown charges. The sentence needs to be finalized by a Court of Appeal for details of the indictment to be revealed.
On 21 January 2015, Iran's supreme court sentenced Rahimi to five years and 91 days in prison and fined him to pay 10 billion rials. Rahimi was also ordered to pay a compensation equivalent to 28.5 billion rials.

Statements on Jews and illegal drugs
At an international anti-drug conference held in Tehran with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on 26 June 2012, Rahimi delivered an antisemitic speech, at which at least 10 Western diplomats were present, blaming the Talmud for the spread of illegal drugs worldwide. Rahimi stated that the Talmud teaches "how to destroy non-Jews so as to protect an embryo in the womb of a Jewish mother" and that "Zionists" are in control of the illegal drug trade. He stated his "proof" is that there is not "one single Zionist who is an addict." The New York Times, which covered the conference marking a U.N.-sponsored International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, further quoted Rahimi as saying Zionists ordered gynaecologists to kill black babies and that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was started by Jews – although none, he was also quoted as saying, died in it. Rahimi's statements, which subsequently appeared on the official presidential website, were also broadcast by the Fars News Agency.

Responses
Rahimi's remarks drew sharp criticism from the international community.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, stated that "Here is yet another example of the fact that anti-Semitism is a pillar of the Mullahocracy in Tehran...on a day when nations are supposed to set aside their differences to combat illegal drugs, the Iranian government continues to malign the Jewish people and its religious traditions – all part of their ongoing campaign of demonizing the Jewish people and dehumanizing supporters of the Jewish state." Abe Foxman, the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, stated that "To all those who thought that anti-Semitism is a thing of the past, certainly this makes it very clear that it is alive and well again. What makes it more sinister and dangerous is the fact that it comes from a leader of a country that has vowed to destroy the Jewish state and is making efforts to obtain the means to do it."

John Baird, Canada's Foreign Minister condemned the remarks, stating that "Iran's ongoing use of UN forums to harass Israel and insult Jewish people around the world is completely unacceptable. Canada hopes the international community joins us in speaking out against, and utterly rejecting, such ridiculous and anti-Semitic assertions."

The European Union's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who leads nuclear talks with Iran on behalf of six world powers, released a statement, stating that she "is deeply disturbed by racist and anti-Semitic statements made by Iranian First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi. Such statements are unacceptable and should not be tolerated." Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi also condemned Rahimi's remarks, calling them "Disturbing and absolutely unacceptable." Alistair Burt, the British foreign minister for the Middle East, stated that "We condemn utterly the baseless comments from Iran's vice president Rahimi about the Talmud and the Jewish faith, made at a United Nations drugs control event in Tehran this week. Racism and anti-semitism are unacceptable in any circumstance, let alone at an event sponsored by the United Nations. We call upon Iran to correct this scandalous statement, and to ensure that its officials respect the proper international norms and standards in the future."

Alun Jones, spokesman for the Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, later stated that UNODC attended the Tehran conference as well as related events across the world on Tuesday, as mandated by the U.N. General Assembly, and that it could not anticipate what the Iranian hosts would say.

Affiliation
Rahimi reportedly "professed" allegiance to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani when he served in his administration, despite the fact he later became his "outspoken foe".

Naghmeh Sohrabi, a professor at Brandeis University, classifies Rahimi among "new guard" conservatives which came to mainstream political arena in 2005. She names Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei among the prominent figures of the faction. He was a member of the committee composed of 15 figures from different spectrum of conservative factions that planned establishment of the United Front of Principlists in 2008 elections. In November 2010, Rahimi was among 30 figures invited to a similar meeting of conservatives for 2012 parliamentary elections, although he did not attend.

References

1949 births
Living people
University of Tehran alumni
Iranian governors
Iranian businesspeople
Academic staff of the Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch
Academic staff of the Islamic Azad University
Iranian prosecutors
People from Kurdistan Province
First vice presidents of Iran
Iranian white-collar criminals
Spokespersons of the Government of Iran
Members of the 2nd Islamic Consultative Assembly
Members of the 3rd Islamic Consultative Assembly
Members of the 4th Islamic Consultative Assembly
Iranian politicians convicted of crimes
Vice Presidents of Iran for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs
Heads of government who were later imprisoned

Mohammad Reza Rahimi


NVC community CG3 (Bromus erectus grassland) is one of the calcicolous grassland communities in the British National Vegetation Classification system. It is one of four communities of rank, tussocky grassland associated with low levels of grazing, within the lowland calcicolous grassland group.

It is a comparatively widely distributed community. There are four subcommunities.

Community composition

The following constant species are found in this community:
 Upright Brome (Bromus erectus)
 Glaucous Sedge (Carex flacca)
 Sheep's Fescue (Festuca ovina)
 Bird's-foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus)
 Ribwort Plantain (Plantago lanceolata)
 Salad Burnet (Sanguisorba minor)

The following rare species are also associated with the community:

 Man Orchid (Aceras anthropophorum)
 Purple Milk-vetch (Astragalus danicus)
 Dwarf Sedge (Carex humilis)
 Spotted Cat's-ear (Hypochoeris maculata)
 Perennial Flax (Linum perenne subsp. anglicum)
 Round-headed Rampion (Phyteuma tenerum)
 Chalk Milkwort (Polygala calcarea)
 Pasqueflower (Pulsatilla vulgaris)
 Field Fleawort (Senecio integrifolius ssp. integrifolius)
 Bastard-toadflax (Thesium humifusum)
 Large Thyme (Thymus pulegioides)

Distribution

This community is found in lowland limestone grassland throughout England.

Subcommunities

There are four subcommunities:
 the so-called typical subcommunity:
 the Centaurea nigra subcommunity
 the Knautia arvensis - Bellis perennis subcommunity
 the Festuca rubra - Festuca arundinacea subcommunity

References

 Rodwell, J. S. (1992) British Plant Communities Volume 3 - Grasslands and montane communities  (hardback),  (paperback)

CG03

British NVC community CG3