Abraham Lincoln: The Head of State (also called Seated Lincoln or Sitting Lincoln) is a  tall bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln in Grant Park, in Chicago. Created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and completed by his workshop in 1908, it was intended by the artist to evoke the loneliness and burden of command felt by Lincoln during his presidency.   The sculpture depicts a contemplative Lincoln seated in a chair, and gazing down into the distance.  The sculpture is set upon a pedestal and a  wide exedra designed by architect Stanford White.

Although not as well known as Saint-Gaudens' Standing Lincoln (in Lincoln Park), it does demonstrate the years of attention that the sculptor gave to capturing Lincoln in a most somber light.  Prior to being installed in Grant Park in 1926, the sculpture was displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and at the San Francisco World's Fair in 1915. The section of Grant Park, where this statue of Lincoln is located, was designated as the Court of Presidents in the plan for the park but, to date, this is the only such monument that has been erected.

History

In his will, the industrialist John Crerar bequeathed funds for the creation and maintenance of a free public library in Chicago to be called the John Crerar Library. He also bequeathed $100,000 (roughly equivalent to $ today) to his executors, Norman Williams and Huntington W Jackson, for the erection of a "colossal statue of Abraham Lincoln" at a location of their choosing. Crerar died in 1889, and in 1897 Saint-Gaudens was commissioned to sculpt the statue. In 1901 the Chicago city council approved an act for the construction of the John Crerar Library in Grant Park on a site bounded by Michigan Avenue, the Illinois Central railroad tracks, Monroe Avenue and Madison Street (the site of the Crown Fountain today). The act also allowed the trustees of the money bequeathed by Crerar to construct a statue of Lincoln to place the statue within the grounds of the library.

A fire at Saint-Gaudens studio in 1904 destroyed all of his drawings and models for the sculpture, however Saint-Gaudens was able to complete design work and begin casting before his death in 1907. Plans to build in Grant Park were opposed by Aaron Montgomery Ward, who in 1910 won a court battle to prevent the Crerar Library and the Field Museum of Natural History from being constructed in the park. The library was instead constructed at the northwest corner of Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue. Subsequent plans for the development Grant Park called for the statue to be located on reclaimed land between Van Buren Street and Congress Parkway, but delays in the construction of the park led to the statue being stored, first at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (from 1908 to 1913) and then in a building in Washington Park.

In 1924 it was announced that the South Park Commissioners had approved a location for the statue  east of the Illinois Central railroad tracks and north of Van Buren Street, and the statue was unveiled on May 31, 1926.

The statue's head was used for the commemorative postage stamp issued on the 100th anniversary of Lincoln's birth in 1909.

See also
 List of public art in Chicago
 List of statues of Abraham Lincoln
 List of sculptures of presidents of the United States

References

1908 sculptures
Statues of Abraham Lincoln
Bronze sculptures in Illinois
Outdoor sculptures in Chicago
Sculptures by Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Statues in Chicago
Sculptures of men in Illinois
Monuments and memorials to Abraham Lincoln in the United States

Abraham Lincoln: The Head of State


The history of dance is difficult to access because dance does not often leave behind clearly identifiable physical artifacts that last over millennia, such as stone tools, hunting implements or cave paintings. It is not possible to identify with exact precision when dance becomes part of human culture. Dance is filled with aesthetic values, making it distinct from one society to another and is shrouded in symbolism that expounds on the cultural heritage of a community accordingly being unique from one society to another. Dance can help tell a story, convey feelings and emotions, and connect with others and ourselves.

Early dance
The natural impulse to dance may have existed in early primates before they evolved into humans.
Dance has been an important part of ceremony, rituals, celebrations and entertainment since before the birth of the earliest human civilizations. Archaeology delivers traces of dance from prehistoric times such as the 10,000-year-old Bhimbetka rock shelters paintings in India and Egyptian tomb paintings depicting dancing figures from c. 3300 BC. Many contemporary dance forms can be traced back to historical, traditional, ceremonial and ethnic dances of the ancient period.

Means of social communication and bonding
Dance may have been used as a tool of social interaction that promoted cooperation essential for survival among early humans. Studies found that today's best dancers share two specific genes associated with a predisposition for being good social communicators.

Also, the term "kinesthetic" is the right term to help understanding how dance makes communication, and it means recognition of movement of one's own body, this word is a combination of two words (kinein=to move, aesthesis= perception). And dance in communication is like language, you can understand, feel, see and hear. When someone uses all the body muscles and feeling in a dance you will send like a message to the audience or who was watching. So dance moves and background sounds play a big role too. When there is a group performance by holding hands or shoulders or even dancing opposite each other makes them feel communicated and bonded.

As folk celebrations

Many dances of the early periods were performed as a ritual to the gods who ancestors believed needed to be kept entertained for world peace. Dance used in many celebrations and until now. Throughout  history we can notice that dance had many uses such as also community dance, harvesting and worship. Dance evolution started as folk origins to court presentations and now theater or even cinema movies.

In ceremonies and rituals

Dance may be performed in religious or shamanic rituals, for example in rain dance performed in times of drought. Shamans dancing for rain is mentioned in ancient Chinese texts. Dance is an important aspect of some religious rites in ancient Egypt,  similarly dance is also integral to many ceremonies and rites among African people. Ritual dances may also be performed in temples and during religious festivals, for example the Rasa ritual dances of India (a number of Indian classical dances may have their origin in ritual dances), and the Cham dances of Tibet.

As a method of healing
Another early use of dance may have been as a precursor to ecstatic trance states in healing rituals. Dance is used for this purpose by many cultures from the Brazilian rainforest to the Kalahari Desert. Medieval European danses macabres were thought to have protected participants from disease; however, the hysteria and duration of these dances sometimes led to death due to exhaustion.

According to a Sinhalese legend, Kandyan dances originated 2500 years ago from a magic dance ritual that broke the spell on a bewitched king to cure the king of a mysterious illness.

As a method of expression
One of the earliest structured uses of dances may have been in the performance and in the telling of myths. It was also sometimes used to show feelings for one of the opposite gender. It is also linked to the origin of "lovemaking." Before the production of written languages, dance was one of the methods of passing these stories down from generation to generation.

In European culture, one of the earliest records of dancing is by Homer, whose Iliad describes chorea (χορεία khoreia). The early Greeks made the art of dancing into a system, expressive of all the different passions. For example, the dance of the Furies, so represented, would create complete terror among those who witnessed them. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, ranked dancing with poetry, and said that certain dancers, with rhythm applied to gesture, could express manners, passions, and actions. The most eminent Greek sculptors studied the attitude of the dancers for their art of imitating the passion.

Cultural traditions

Asia

Indian classical dance

An early manuscript describing dance is the Natya Shastra on which is based the modern interpretation of classical Indian dance (e.g. Bharathanatyam).

During the reign of the last Mughals and Nawabs of Oudh, dance fell down to the status of 'nautch', an unethical sensuous thing of courtesans.

Later, linking dance with immoral trafficking and prostitution, British rule prohibited public performance of dance. Many disapproved it. In 1947, India won its freedom and created for dance an ambience where it could regain its past glory. Classical forms and regional distinctions were re-discovered, ethnic specialties were honored, and by synthesizing them with the individual talents of the masters in the line and fresh innovations, emerged dance with a new face but with classicism of the past.

In Sri Lanka, the ancient Sinhalese chronicle Mahavamsa states that when King Vijaya landed in Sri Lanka in 543 BCE he heard sounds of music and dancing from a wedding ceremony. The origins of the dances of Sri Lanka are dated back to the aboriginal tribes, and to the mythological times of aboriginal yingyang twins and "yakkas" (devils). The classical dances of Sri Lanka (Kandyan dances) feature a highly developed system of tala (rhythm) and provided by cymbals called thalampataa.

Chinese dance

There is a long recorded history of Chinese dances. Some of the dances mentioned in ancient texts, such as dancing with sleeve movements are still performed today. Some of the early dances were associated with shamanic rituals. Folk dances of the early period were also developed into court dances. The important dances of the ancient period were the ceremonial yayue dated to the Zhou dynasty of the first millennium BC. The art of dance in China reached its peak during the Tang dynasty, a period when dancers from many parts of the world also performed at the imperial court. However, Chinese opera became popular during the Song and Yuan dynasty, and many dances were merged into Chinese opera. The art of dance in women also declined from the Song dynasty onward as a result of the increasing popularity of footbinding, a practice that ironically may have originated from dancing when a dancer wrapped her feet so she may dance ballet-fashion. The best-known of the Chinese traditional dances are the dragon dance and lion dance.  Lion dance was described in the Tang dynasty in form that resembles today's dance.

Iranian dance

Prehistory

The people of the Iranian plateau have known dance in the forms of music, play, drama or religious rituals and have used instruments like mask, costumes of animals or plants, and musical instruments for rhythm, at least since the 6th millennium BC. Cultural mixed forms of dance, play and drama have served rituals like celebration, mourning and worship. And the actors have been masters of music, dance, physical acts and manners of expression. Artifacts with pictures of dancers, players or actors were found in many archaeological prehistoric sites in Iran, like Tepe Sabz, Ja'far Abad, Chogha Mish, Tall-e Jari, Cheshmeh Ali, Ismaeel Abad, Tal-e bakun, Tepe Sialk, Tepe Musian, tepe Yahya, Shahdad, Tepe Gian, Kul Farah, Susa, Kok Tepe, Cemeteries of Luristan, etc.

History

The earliest researched dance from historic Iran is a dance worshiping Mithra (as in the Cult of Mithras) in which a bull was sacrificed. This cult later became highly adhered in the Roman Empire. This dance was to promote vigor in life. Ancient Persian dance was significantly researched by Greek historian from Herodotus of Halikarnassos, in his work Book IX (Calliope), in which he describes the history of Asian empires and Persian wars until 478 BC. Ancient Persia was occupied by foreign powers, first Greeks, then Arabs, and then Mongols and in turn political instability and civil wars occurred. Throughout these changes a slow disappearance of heritage dance traditions occurred.

Religious prohibition of dancing in Iran came with the spread of Islam, but it was spurred by historical events. Religious prohibition to dancing waxed and waned over the years, but after the Iranian Revolution in 1979 dancing was no longer allowed due to its frequent mixing of the sexes. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was the end of a successful era for dancing and the art of ballet in Iran. The Iranian national ballet company was dissolved and its members emigrated to different countries. According to the principles of the "cultural revolution" in Iran, dancing was considered to be perverse, a great sin, immoral and corrupting. As a result, many of the talented Persian dancers moved to the West and spread out mainly in Europe and the United States and a new generation of Iranian dancers and ballet artists have grown up in the Diaspora.

Europe

15th–19th centuries: from court dancing to Romanticism
The origins of ballet dancing can be traced to the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century. Dance masters would teach the steps to nobility and the court would participate in performances as a form of social entertainment. This practice continued for several centuries. In the 17th century, courtly ballet reached its peak under the rule of King Louis XIV.

By the 18th century, ballet had migrated from the French and Italian royal courts to the Paris Opéra under the careful direction of composer/dancer Jean-Baptiste Lully. Lully sought to develop ballet into more serious art. Under his influence, ballet was turned into a recognized art that was performed by professional dancers rather than courtiers.

During the 18th century, ballet transitioned from a courtly dance of moving images as a spectacle to performance art in its own right. Ballet performances developed around a central narrative and contained an expressive movement that revealed the relationships between characters. This dramatic style of ballet became known as the ballet d'action. The ballet d'action strove to express, for the first time, human emotions drawn directly from the dancers themselves. Masks previously worn by performers were removed so that emotional content could be derived from facial expressions.

Costumes during this time were very restricting for dancers. Although a more expressive use of the body was encouraged, dancers' movements were still restricted due to heavy materials and corseted dresses. Costumes often covered a dancer's physique and made it difficult to see complex or intricate choreography. It was not until choreographer Jean Georges Noverre called for dance reforms in 1760 with his Letters on Dancing and Ballets that costumes became more conducive. Noverre urged that costumes be crafted using lightweight fabrics that move fluidly with the body, complementing a dancer's figure. In addition, dancers wore soft slippers that fit snugly along the foot. This shoe design instilled confidence within the ballerina, daring her to dance on her toes. Naturalistic costuming allowed dancers to push the boundaries of movement, eventually rising en pointe.

The era of Romanticism produced ballets inspired by fantasy, mystique, and the unfamiliar cultures of exotic places. Ballets that focused more on the emotions, the fantasy and the spiritual worlds and heralded the beginning of true pointe-work. Now, on her toes, the deified ballerina (embodied in this period by the legendary ballerina Marie Taglioni) seemed to magically skim the surface of the stage, an ethereal being never quite touching the ground. It was during this period that the ascending star of the ballerina quite eclipsed the presence of the poor male dancer, who was in many cases reduced to the status of a moving statue, present only in order to lift the ballerina. This sad state was really only redressed by the rise of the male ballet star Vaslav Nijinsky, with the Ballets Russes, in the early 20th century. Ballet as we know it had well and truly evolved by this time, with all the familiar conventions of costume, choreographic form, plot, pomp, and circumstance firmly fixed in place. Nijinsky brought athleticism into ballet. Although at that time his choreography was considered as controversial, now they are considered as one of the first contemporary ballets.

Early 20th century: from ballet to contemporary dance
Since the Ballets Russes began revolutionizing ballet in the early 20th century, there have been continued attempts to break the mold of classical ballet. Currently the artistic scope of ballet technique (and its accompanying music, jumper, and multimedia) is more all-encompassing than ever. The boundaries that classify a work of classical ballet are constantly being stretched, muddied and blurred until perhaps all that remains today are traces of technique idioms such as turnout.

The 20th century was indeed a period of breaking away from everything that ballet stood for. It was a time of unprecedented creative growth, for dancers and choreographers. It was also a time of the broadening of the definition of dance. Ballets Russes was a turning point to the future of ballet in the West and in the world. Collaborating with that era geniuses, such as Coco Chanel, Pablo Picasso and others. Ballets Russes brought together great music, design and dance together in a one complete performance.

Africa

African dance refers mainly to the dance styles of Sub-Saharan Africa, of which many are based on traditional rhythms and music traditions of the region. Modern African dance styles are deeply rooted in culture and tradition. Many tribes have a role solely for the purpose of passing on the tribe's dance traditions; dances which have been passed down through the centuries, often unchanged, with little to no room for improvisation. Each tribe developed its own unique style of dance, falling into three categories based on purpose. The first is religious dancing, which many tribes purport enhances peace, health, and prosperity. Religious dances often involved masqueraders, performing as both the spirits and those who placated them. Religion and spirituality infused every part of traditional African life, and continues to affect African dance today. The second is griotic, and was a type of dance that told a story. It is named after a griot, which is a term for a traditional storyteller in West Africa. Certain griotic dances were only danced by the tribe's griot; today, troupes perform the same dances that were once exclusive to the griot.  The third type is ceremonial. These dances are performed at ceremonies such as weddings, anniversaries, and rites of passage. However, many dances did not have only one purpose. Rather, there was often one primary purpose, that blended into many secondary purposes. Dance was often very important to the maintenance of a ruler's status in the tribal society. Colonialism and globalization have resulted in the eradication of certain styles of African dance. Other styles have been blended together, or mixed with dance styles outside of Africa.

 African dance in the context of slavery
As people were taken from Africa to be sold as slaves, especially starting in the 1500s, they brought their dance styles with them. Entire cultures were imported into the New World, especially those areas where slaves were given more flexibility to continue their cultures and where there were more African slaves than Europeans or indigenous Americans, such as Brazil. African dance styles were merged with new cultural experiences to form new styles of dance. For example, slaves responded to the fears of their masters about high-energy styles of dance with changing stepping to shuffling. However, in North America, slaves did not have as much freedom to continue their culture and dance. In many cases, these dances have evolved into modern dance styles, such as African-American dance and Brazilian dance. For example, the Calenda evolved in Brazil from tribal dance. The Calenda then evolved into the Cakewalk, which was danced originally to mock plantation owners; it then evolved into the Charleston. Capoeira was a martial art practiced originally in Africa which the enslaved Africans masked as a form of dance in order to not arouse the suspicion of plantation owners.

The late 20th and early 21st centuries

Postmodernism
After the explosion of modern dance in the early 20th century, the 1960s saw the growth of postmodernism. Postmodernism veered towards simplicity, the beauty of small things, the beauty of untrained body, and unsophisticated movement. The famous "No" manifesto, by Yvonne Rainer, rejecting all costumes, stories and outer trappings in favour of raw and unpolished movement was perhaps the extreme of this wave of thinking. However, it was not long before sets, décor and shock value re-entered the vocabulary of modern choreographers.

Street dance/Hip-hop dance
At the same time, mass culture experienced expansion of street dance. In 1973, famous group Jackson 5 performed on television a dance called Robot (choreographed by postmodern artist Michael Jackson), a dance form cultivated in Richmond, CA. This event and later Soul Train performances by black dancers (such as Don Cambell) ignited a street culture revolution, in a sense. B-boying in New York, Locking in L.A., Popping in Fresno, CA, Boogaloo in Oakland, CA, Robot in Richmond, CA, all had their own creative explosions happen around the late 60's – 70's. Each with their own histories, practices, innovators and foundations.

For the emergence of 20th-century modern dance see also: Mary Wigman, Gret Palucca, Harald Kreutzberg, Yvonne Georgi, and Isadora Duncan.

Hip-hop dance started when Clive Campbell, aka Kool DJ Herc and the father of hip-hop, came to New York from Jamaica in 1967. Toting the seeds of reggae from his homeland, he is credited with being the first DJ to use two turntables and identical copies of the same record to create his jams. But it was his extension of the breaks in these songs—the musical section where the percussive beats were most aggressive—that allowed him to create and name a culture of break boys and break girls who laid it down when the breaks came up. Briefly termed b-boys and b-girls, these dancers founded breakdancing, which is now a cornerstone of hip-hop dance.

See also
 History of ballet
 History of figure skating

References

Further reading
 Adshead-Lansdale, J. (ed.) (1994). Dance History: An Introduction. Routledge..
 Charman, S. Kraus, R, G. Chapman, S. and Dixon-Stowall, B. (1990). History of the Dance in Art and Education. Pearson Education. .
 Dils, A. (2001). Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader. Wesleyan University Press. .

 Wood, Melusine (1952). Some historical dances twelfth to nineteenth century; their manner of performance and their place in the social life of the time, London: Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing.

External links
 Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. from Project Gutenberg
 The history of pointe shoes and technique (ballet)

Dance research

History of dance


Rabana Chhaya is a form of shadow puppetry from the eastern Indian state of Odisha.

History
Rabana Chhaya literally means 'the shadow of Ravana' and is named after the eponymous evil king of the South Asian epic Ramayana. The lyrics for the performance are taken from the Bichitra Ramayana by the Odia poet Biswanatha Khuntia. That it has been named after the villain of the Ramayana has been ascribed variously to the influence of the Jains and the Tamils, both of whom view Rabana with greater sympathy than other Hindus. Alternately it has been suggested that it was not named after Rama as he is an incarnation of the god Vishnu and it would have been inauspicious to refer to him as a shadow.

Puppets
Puppets used in Rabana Chhaya are made of deerskin, range from 6 inches to 2 feet in height and are mounted on bamboo poles. A complete performance requires as many as 700 puppets with multiple puppets being used to depict a diversity of moods for individual characters. Besides these puppets, there are others that set the background and the stock characters of the village barber and his grandson. The puppets are not coloured, have no joints and have perforations that outline their figures and costumes. The puppeteer manipulates the puppets using a split bamboo stick that runs down the middle of the puppet. The puppeteers magnify the shadows by holding the puppets away from the screen. These puppets are treated ceremonially, being blessed before they are first used and are cremated and the ashes strewn in a river when they become worn out and unusable. Another feature of the puppets is that the puppet form of Rabana is much larger than that of Rama with greater dramatic impact and casts an impressive shadow on the screen.

Performances
Rabana Chhaya performances are held at night, the shadow of the puppets being projected onto a white curtain against the light of an oil lamp. The performance begins with the breaking of a coconut and with invocations to the Hindu gods Rama and Ganesha. The story of the performance is narrated in prose by a narrator, called gayak, who is accompanied by two singers. The performers traditionally belong to the Bhata community and the singing is accompanied by musical instruments including  (castanets),  (cymbals) and the , a kind of tambourine. The dialogues and the songs in the performance are accompanied by lively, rhythmic music that combines elements of folk and classical  Odissi music. Performances have little by way of dance or fight sequences, the action being limited by the jointless nature of the puppets, but the dramatic effect is elevated by the use of poetic language, music and the religious themes narrated. A full performance takes an entire week with a night each for each of the seven kandas of the Ramayana but in recent years performances have been shortened to only a few hours duration.

Influence and changes
Puppet theatre in South East Asia is thought to have emerged from India and the Javanese puppet theatre of Wayang has its origins in the Rabana Chhaya. In recent years it has seen changes in both content and performances with contemporary social and health issues also forming the themes of the performances. A rare art form, efforts have been made under the  Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Delhi to revive and promote it.

See also

 Tholpavakoothu
 Wayang Theatre

References

Puppetry in India
Odia culture
Shadow play
Ramayana

Rabana Chhaya


The Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, or YCSG, is a research center at Yale University at New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 2001 in order to "enrich the debate about globalization on campus and to promote the flow of ideas between Yale and the policy world".

The current director is Ernesto Zedillo, president of Mexico from 1994 to 2000. Its current sponsors include William Henry Draper III, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The program's main offices are located in Betts House, a university-owned mansion in the Prospect Hill Historic District.

From 2001 to 2013, the organization published YaleGlobal Online, an online magazine that explores globalization and implications of growing global interconnectedness in economics, security, trade, politics and the environment. Since 2013, the MacMillan Center at Yale has published YaleGlobal.

References

External links

Yale University


Northwest Indiana is a region in the state of Indiana.

Geography
Northwest Indiana is near Chicago.

Counties In Northwest Indiana
Counties in Northwest Indiana are:

 Porter County
 Lake County
 Jasper County
 Newton County

Culture
Northwest Indiana is more heavily influenced by Chicago, Illinois, than the rest of Indiana.

Political culture
Due to its proximity to Chicago, Northwest Indiana is more liberal than the rest of Indiana. One of the state´s two Democratic US Congress delegates was elected from a district in Northwest Indiana. Although only Lake County is really liberal, and the other three counties are either swing or conservative, Lake County does have a higher population than  the other three counties in Northwest Indiana combined, so Northwest Indiana is overall liberal-leaning.

Jasper/Newton
At the same time, Jasper and Newton Counties are very conservative.

Porter County
Porter County is a swing county, although it voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

Lake County
Lake County is overall quite liberal.

Population disparity
Lake County makes up over 60% of the population of Northwest Indiana, though taking up approximately 25% of Northwest Indiana's land.

Geography of Indiana

Northwest Indiana


Erucic acid is a monounsaturated omega-9 fatty acid, denoted 22:1ω9. It has the chemical formula :. It is prevalent in wallflower seed and other plants in the family Brassicaceae, with a reported content of 20 to 54% in high erucic acid rapeseed oil and 42% in mustard oil.  Erucic acid is also known as cis-13-docosenoic acid and the trans isomer is known as brassidic acid.

Uses
Erucic acid is a precursor to brassylic acid, a C13-dicarboxylic acid that is used to make specialty polyamides and polyesters.  The conversion entails ozonolysis, which selectively cleaves the C=C bond in erucic acid:

Amides of erucic acid are used as lubricants and surfactants.

Hydrogenation of erucic acid gives behenyl alcohol, , a pour point depressant (enabling liquids to flow at a lower temperature), and silver behenate, for use in photography.

Sources of erucic acid

The name erucic means "of or pertaining to Eruca",  which is a genus of flowering plants in the family Brassicaceae. The genus includes colewort (E. sativa), which today is better known as arugula (US) or rocket (UK).

Erucic acid is produced naturally (together with other fatty acids) across a great range of green plants, but especially so in members of the genus Brassica.  For industrial purposes and production of erucic acid, rapeseed is used; for food purposes a 'low-erucic acid rapeseed' (LEAR) has been developed (canola), which contains fats derived from oleic acid instead of erucic acid.

Biochemistry

Erucic acid is produced by elongation of oleic acid via oleoyl-coenzyme A and malonyl-CoA. Erucic acid is broken down into shorter-chain fatty acids in the human liver by the long-chain acyl CoA dehydrogenase enzyme.

Health effects
Studies done on laboratory animals in the early 1970s show that erucic acid appears to have toxic effects on the heart at high enough doses. However, more recent research has cast doubt on the relevance of rat studies to the human health of erucic acid. Rats are unusual in their inability to process erucic acid, and the symptoms in rats caused by a diet with high levels of erucic acid have not been observed in pigs, primates, or any other animals. An association between the consumption of rapeseed oil and increased myocardial lipidosis, or heart disease, has not been established for humans.  While there are reports of toxicity from long-term use of Lorenzo's oil (which contains erucic acid and other ingredients), there are no reports of harm to people from dietary consumption of erucic acid.

Publication of animal studies with erucic acid through the 1970s led to governments worldwide moving away from oils with high levels of erucic acid, and tolerance levels for human exposure to erucic acid have been established based on the animal studies.

In 2003, Food Standards Australia set a provisional tolerable daily intake (PTDI) for an average adult of about 500 mg/day of erucic acid, extrapolated based on "the level that is associated with increased myocardial lipidosis in nursing pigs." "There is a 120-fold safety margin between this level and the level that is associated with increased myocardial lipidosis in nursing pigs.  The dietary exposure assessment has concluded that the majority of exposure to erucic acid by the general population would come from the consumption of colza oil.  The dietary intake of erucic acid by an individual consuming at the average level is well below the PTDI; therefore, there is no cause for concern in terms of public health and safety.  However, the individual consuming at a high level has the potential to approach the PTDI.  This would be particularly so if the level of erucic acid in colza oil were to exceed 2% of the total fatty acids."

Food-grade rapeseed oil (also known as canola oil, rapeseed 00 oil, low erucic acid rapeseed oil, LEAR oil, and rapeseed canola-equivalent oil) is regulated to a maximum of 2% erucic acid by weight in the US and 2% in the EU (was 5% before 2019-11-19), with special regulations for infant food. Canola was bred from rapeseed cultivars of B. napus and B. rapa by Dr. Baldur Stefansson at the University of Manitoba, Canada in addition to being cultivated by ancient Chinese, Indian, and Japanese cultures. Canola oil is derived from a variety of rapeseed that is low in erucic acid, as opposed to colza oil.

References

External links
 Erucic acid MS Spectrum

Fatty acids
Alkenoic acids

Erucic acid


The Alamo bolide impact occurred 377–378 million years ago, when one or more hypervelocity objects from space slammed into shallow marine waters at a site that is now the Devonian Guilmette Formation of the Worthington Mountains and Schell Creek Range of southeastern Nevada; the event is named for breccias of metamorphosed crushed rock deposits, found near the town of Alamo, Nevada (the "Alamo Breccia"). This catastrophic impact event resulted in what is one of the best-exposed and has become the most accurately dated impact events; it occurred within the Frasnian age of the Devonian at about 377-378 Ma, a moment in time that was about 5.9 Ma prior to the Frasnian/Famennian extinction events, which it is unlikely to have affected.

The actual impact site has not yet been significantly documented—even its precise diameter and its internal structural features are not yet clear enough to make speculations on the mass and trajectory genuinely useful. The "tectonic overprint", the subsequent geologic modifications since the event, have distorted the picture; the distribution of the breccia has been compressed and skewed by  west-to-east thrust faults across the area. Insufficient detail does not permit a precise reconstruction of the Devonian paleogeography, beyond the fact that it was a "wet-target" impact in a reef front where carbonates were being built up in marine shallows.

The impact site contains megabreccia of gigantic displaced blocks, together with several attributes familiar from other impact sites: shocked quartz, elevated iridium levels, and spherical  lapilli. John E. Warme, one of the geologists who first recognized the geologic anomalies as the results of a bolide, estimates that the total volume of limestone reef deposits and bedrock that was smashed, deformed, partially melted or shifted during the Alamo event at 1,000 cubic kilometers. "Ensuing tsunamis rearranged much of the debris" he adds.

After initial resistance from the Geological Society of America, the first paper published concerning the Alamo Breccia was co-authored by John Warme, Brian Ackman, Yarmanto, and Alan Chamberlain in the 1993 Nevada Petroleum Society Field Conference Guidebook.

See also
Pahranagat Valley

References

J.A. Pinto and J.E. Warme, "Alamo impact crater documented", 2006. in Lunar and Planetary Science 37  (pdf file)
Brian Ackman, "The early history of the Alamo Breccia" Bibliography

Geology of Nevada
Geology of Utah
Devonian impact craters
Impact craters of the United States
Landforms of Lincoln County, Nevada
Landforms of Utah

Alamo bolide impact


James May's Top Toys is a BBC documentary in which James May explored and celebrated his favourite toys, including Etch-A-Sketch, Airfix model aeroplanes, Lego, Meccano, Top Trumps, Scalextric, model cars, and Hornby model trains.

The show included May dropping a parachuted Action Man from a helicopter after an actor named George Huxley dropped it from a window, proving the parachute did not work. Further exploits had May shooting the Action Man figure with an AR-15 type semi-automatic rifle in .22 lr, thereafter referring to the toy as "Killed-in-Action Man".

May also constructed an Airfix model of the battleship Bismarck. Upon completion, he took it out on a boating lake and shot at it with an air rifle, while pretending to be a British seaman firing a salvo at the battleship.

In the feature of the Etch-A-Sketch, Rose Pipette of The Pipettes is one of the students "etching" May on the toy.

A spin off of the show, James May: My Sisters' Top Toys, came on 23 December 2007. In October 2009, a series of 6 shows were broadcast, entitled James May's Toy Stories.

External links

 Review by Chris Warrell from the South East London Meccano Club

Top Toys
BBC television documentaries
2005 television specials

James May's Top Toys


Jacob Anton "Jaap" Zonneveld (2 June 1924 – 22 December 2016) was a Dutch programmer who, with Edsger W. Dijkstra, wrote the first Algol 60 compiler.

Education
Zonneveld's interest in the practical application of mathematics grew in World War II in order to be able to predict the place where a grenade will land (ballistics). In 1948 he obtained his bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics; in 1954 he received a doctorate in numerical mathematics, and in 1964 a promotion with the thesis "Automatic Numerical Integration".

Work environment
Zonneveld worked from 1948 at the CWI (later the Center for Mathematics and Computer Science) in Amsterdam. As a scientific assistant, he was responsible for converting calculation assignments into formulas that were then initially performed by people on a desk calculator.

In 1965, he headed a software research group at Philips' NatLab.

He retired in 1984.

Algol 60
In early 1960, he and Edsger W. Dijkstra started developing a compiler for the programming language Algol 60 day and night. They kept their notes in duplicate in separate locations to prevent them from being lost in the event of a disaster. During the development of the compiler, both developers grew beards. They agreed not to shave until compiler development was completed. Nothing was agreed as to what would happen after the completion; Dijkstra kept a beard for the rest of his life and Zonneveld shaved his off after a while.

The compiler was completed on 24 August of that year, making it the world's first Algol 60 compiler. The compiler was developed for the X1 computer from Electrologica. The code is preserved in F.E.J. Kruseman Aretz's book

Personal
Zonneveld met the mathematician Reina Mulder (1931-2009) at the Mathematics Center, whom he would later marry. Together they had 3 children. Jacob Anton Zonneveld passed away in 2016.

References

1924 births
2016 deaths
ALGOL 60
Dutch computer programmers

Jaap A. Zonneveld


Fort Verdala (), also known as Verdala Barracks, is a fortified barracks in Cospicua, Malta. It was built by the British in the 1850s within part of the bastions of the 17th century Santa Margherita Lines. The fort was used as a prisoner-of-war camp in both World Wars, and was later known as HMS Euroclydon. It remained in use by the British military until 1977.

History

Fort Verdala was built by the Royal Engineers between 1852 and 1856. It was built on the central part of the Santa Margherita Lines, incorporating St. Margherita Bastion and St. Helen Bastion. The fort was named after the Verdala Curtain, the curtain wall linking the two bastions. The fort itself consists of a barrack block surrounded by casemated walls, which are surrounded by a shallow ditch.

By 1886, the fort was armed with 24-pounder smooth-bore built by Frans il-Ħamallu, howitzers. These armaments were removed in the 1890s, when it was converted into a barrack complex. In World War I, it became a prisoner-of-war camp, housing captured German prisoners including Franz Joseph, Prince of Hohenzollern-Emden, Karl von Müller and Karl Dönitz. Mahmud Hasan Deobandi was interned here after the unsuccessful Silk Letter Movement against the British Raj.

In the interwar period, Fort Verdala housed the Royal Marines, before being converted into a naval store. In 1940, it was commissioned as a stone frigate with the name HMS Euroclydon, and was used as a school for children of Royal Navy personnel. The school was closed in 1943 due to the threat of aerial bombardment, and the fort became a POW camp once again. In 1945 it briefly served as a demobilisation centre, but was converted back into a naval school in 1947.

Although it was a school, the fort continued to house navy personnel and Maltese servicemen, and occasionally members of other Commonwealth navies such as the Royal Pakistan Navy.

The fort was decommissioned and handed to the Government of Malta in 1977. It is now divided into government housing as well as a school.

References

External links

National Inventory of the Cultural Property of the Maltese Islands
 The Verdala Story

Cospicua
Verdala
Barracks in Malta
Verdala
Buildings and structures completed in 1856
World War I prisoner-of-war camps
World War II prisoner-of-war camps
Schools in Malta
Royal Navy shore establishments
Limestone buildings in Malta
Military installations closed in 1977
National Inventory of the Cultural Property of the Maltese Islands
19th-century fortifications

Fort Verdala


Nushabad (, also Romanized as Nūshābād; also known as Noshābād) is a city in the Central District of Aran va Bidgol County, Isfahan province, Iran.

At the 2006 census, its population was 10,476 in 2,859 households. The following census in 2011 counted 10,904 people in 3,266 households. The latest census in 2016 showed a population of 11,838 people in 3,707 households.

Underground city
The underground city of Ouyi (Noushabad), located 5 km north of Kashan, Isfahan province, is considered a notable piece of ancient architecture. As Noushabad city is located in the central desert region of Iran, it experiences harsh weather. During the day, Noushabad has a very hot temperature and during the nights it gets notably cold.

The reason why this city is called Noushabad (meaning the 'city of cold tasty water') is because in ancient times, one of the Sassanian kings who were passing through this area stopped here to drink water from a well and he found this water extremely clear and cold. Therefore, he ordered the building of a city around this well and named it Anoushabad, which eventually turned into Noushabad.

One reason for this underground city being built is thought to be to offer an escape from the high daytime temperature of the region. However the main reason that the underground city of Noushabad was carved stemmed from the fact that in the past, this region was insecure, suffering from raids, and by forming an underground chain of passages beneath the entire city, the inhabitants could shelter there during such attacks. Through these passages they could reach any spot in the city without being seen.

The depth of this underground city varies from 4 to 18 meters. To reach the underground city there were several different openings. Some of these openings were located inside the houses of people and others were located in important gathering places, such as the main fort just outside the city. People could live in the underground passages for several days without the need of to go outside.

There are three levels in this underground city, planned in such a way that going to the different levels required moving from down to up. This made it easier for the people sheltering in the underground city to prevent enemies from getting to the upper levels. Another interesting feature of their architecture was the curvy passages that made it possible for the inhabitants to ambush enemies. Furthermore, there were several other tricks that were used to resist against the enemies, for instance digging deep holes in the middle of the rooms and covering them with rotating stones that would fall down if anyone stepped on them.

Gallery

References

Populated places in Aran va Bidgol County
Cities in Isfahan Province
Underground cities

Nushabad


Dalek Attack is a 1992 computer game based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who, in which the player controls the Doctor and fights recurring adversaries, the Daleks and other enemies.  In most versions of the game, the player can choose between playing as the Fourth, Fifth or Seventh Doctor; in the MS-DOS and Amiga versions, the player can play as the Second, Fourth or Seventh Doctor, and in the ZX Spectrum version only the Seventh Doctor was available.  A second player may play as the Doctor's companion (Ace or a UNIT soldier, although in the Spectrum version only Ace is available). K-9 also makes appearances later in the game as does Davros, creator of the Daleks in the TV series, as the final end of level boss.  The game is set in London, Paris, New York, Tokyo and Skaro.

The game was released on all major formats of the time except for the Amstrad CPC, which was announced but never released. It was designed and storyboarded by 221B Software Development.  Graphics were by John Gyarmati and Wayne Dalton.  Nick Kimberley programmed the PC, Spectrum and (unreleased) Amstrad versions.  The Amiga and Atari ST versions were programmed by Richard Turner.   Jason Heggie was in charge of the Commodore 64 version.  Music was by Paul Tankard.  On the PC and Amiga versions, there was a secret room behind some blocks. The room gave some of the programming credits for each game, in particular the graphics and music.  The credits were hidden in this way due to the BBC not wanting individual credits for the game development team to be included in the game.

The ZX Spectrum version was released in 1993 after a successful campaign by Your Sinclair readers as Alternative Software were unsure whether the Spectrum release would be commercially viable. Dalek Attack became the last full-price licensed game to be released for the machine.  It differed from all the others in its first level; in all the other releases the first level involved the Doctor on a hoverboard going along the sewer. The Spectrum version had the Doctor on foot running around collecting hostages and avoiding globes. The Spectrum version also lost out on other features such as different enemies; only the Robomen, Ogrons and standard Daleks featured. The end-level guardians were also different. Before its release Spectrum owners who wrote to Alternative Software pressing for a release received a letter back stating that the game was in production, and were sent a sticker depicting the game's box front emblazoned with the legend "I've Been Exterminated!"

Other versions of the game featured special Daleks such as hovering Daleks from the TV Century 21 comics strips of the 1960s. 1960s "movie" Daleks also made an appearance, as did the special weapons Dalek from Remembrance of the Daleks. Another special Dalek also featured, based on a sketch by Dalek designer Ray Cusick in an article from the 1989 Doctor Who Magazine 10th Anniversary Special showing how a Dalek might look in the 1990s.

The game was later re-released, first in a three pack compilation set called the Sci-Fi Collection with two other titles (Galactic Warrior Rats, Suburban Commando) for the PC. The front cover was in a "Y" shape with Dalek Attack in the bottom right and the instruction booklet was photocopied. This was followed in 1994/95 by another re-release, which was the same as the original except for a purple and black border added to the front and back covers.

References

External links

1992 video games
Alternative Software games
Amiga games
Atari ST games
Cancelled Amstrad CPC games
Commodore 64 games
Dalek stories
Daleks
Doctor Who multi-Doctor stories
DOS games
Fourth Doctor stories
Multiplayer and single-player video games
Second Doctor stories
Seventh Doctor stories
Video games based on Doctor Who
Video games developed in the United Kingdom
ZX Spectrum games

Dalek Attack


Jake Toranzo Austin Szymanski (born December 3, 1994), known professionally as Jake T. Austin, is an American actor. Beginning his career as a child actor at the age of seven, Austin is best known for his role as Max Russo on the Disney Channel series Wizards of Waverly Place, and as the voice of Diego on the Nickelodeon animated series Go, Diego, Go!. Austin was also the original actor who portrayed Jesus Foster on the ABC Family family/teen drama series The Fosters. His feature film credits include co-starring roles in Hotel for Dogs, New Year's Eve, Rio  and The Emoji Movie.

Early life
Austin was born in New York City, the son of Giny Rodriquez Toranzo and Joe Szymanski. His middle initial, "T", is taken from his mother's maiden name. His mother is of Puerto Rican, Argentine, and Spanish descent, and his father is of Polish, Irish, and English ancestry. Austin embraces his Puerto Rican heritage, though he has said that he is not fluent in Spanish. He has a younger sister, Ava.

Career

2002–2006: Beginnings

Austin's career began in 2002 when he appeared in commercials. A year later, he appeared in his first credited acting role as Kid 1698 in a comedy sketch on The Late Show With David Letterman. In 2005, he landed his first major role – voicing Diego, the cousin of Dora, on the hit Nickelodeon animated series Dora the Explorer. He continued to voice Diego on the spin-off series, Go, Diego, Go!, for three seasons. Along with voicing Diego, Austin was cast in multiple voice roles for the feature films The Ant Bully and Everyone's Hero – he was also cast in the Comedy Central special Merry F#%$in's Christmas. In 2006, Austin landed the lead role of Angel Macias in his first live-action feature film, The Perfect Game, which was based on a true story about the first non-U.S. team to win the 1957 Little League World Series. The film would not be released in the United States until more than three years later due to post-production financing difficulties.

2007–2011: Wizards of Waverly Place

Austin appeared in his first Walt Disney Company production in 2007 when he portrayed the role of Chris in the Disney Channel original film Johnny Kapahala: Back on Board. Later that same year, he was cast as Max Russo in the Disney Channel series Wizards of Waverly Place. He played the youngest sibling of a wizarding family, co-starring with Selena Gomez and David Henrie. Until the end of Wizards of Waverly Place in 2011, Austin appeared in multiple Disney productions. In the summer of 2009, he played the role of Max Russo in the Wizards on Deck crossover episode which included two other popular Disney shows, The Suite Life on Deck and Hannah Montana.

During the same summer, he starred in the made-for-television film Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie. The film was a ratings hit, becoming the second most-viewed Disney Channel film at that time, behind High School Musical 2. It was also the #1 scripted telecast of 2009. Austin made his live action feature film debut in 2009 with the role of Bruce, an orphan who hides numerous dogs in an abandoned hotel, in the DreamWorks film Hotel for Dogs. In the fall of 2010, Austin was named as one of the "25 Brightest Latino Stars Under 25" by Latina magazine. He wrote and sold his first screenplay, Kings of Suburbia, which he described as being written in the same vein as his favorite film Stand By Me.

2011–2015: The Fosters

In 2011, Austin voiced the role of Fernando, an orphaned Brazilian boy who is forced to capture exotic birds, in the 20th Century Fox animated musical film Rio. He reprised the role in the sequel, Rio 2. He was also in the romantic-comedy film New Year's Eve, released in December 2011. The following year, he had guest roles on the Lifetime comedy-drama Drop Dead Diva as Samuel Forman, a 16-year-old multimillionaire, and on the NBC legal drama series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Rob Fisher, the boyfriend of a girl whose family is murdered.

Austin landed his next major role in 2013, when he was cast as Jesus Foster in the ABC Family family/teen drama series The Fosters. The series tells the story of two moms raising both biological and foster children in a "multi-ethnic" household in San Diego, California. He played Jesus for two seasons until he left the show in the second-season finale in 2015. In a statement on his departure, Austin said: "I'm honored to have been a part of such a groundbreaking series ... Thank you for letting me be a part of your family, it's been a pleasure." His role was recast for the third season, with Noah Centineo.

2016–present
In 2016, he provided the voice for Jaime Reyes / Blue Beetle in the DC Comics animated direct-to-video film Justice League vs. Teen Titans. On August 30, 2016, Austin was revealed as one of the contestants who would compete on season 23 of Dancing with the Stars. He was partnered with professional dancer, Jenna Johnson. On September 20, 2016, Austin and Johnson were announced as the first couple to be eliminated from the competition.  In October 2018, it was announced that Austin joined the cast of Adverse, a neo-noir thriller starring Mickey Rourke. Adverse had its premiere at the opening of the Fantasporto Festival on February 28, 2020, in Portugal.

Personal life
Austin divides his time between living in Los Angeles and New York. He has two dogs, Bogey and Beju. His family owns a historic restaurant called The Clarksville Inn. The restaurant, located in West Nyack, New York, originally opened in 1840 as a hotel.

Austin devotes time to various charitable causes including the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which grants wishes to children who have life-threatening medical conditions; the Starlight Children's Foundation, which is dedicated to improving the quality of life for children with chronic and life-threatening medical conditions; and Variety Power of Youth initiative, which partners with young stars to help raise money for their chosen causes. He has also supported the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, stating "I know how important it is to have a supportive environment and feel good about yourself, especially as an adolescent."

In October 2020, Austin discussed his bi-racial familial heritage and the importance of voting in the upcoming US elections, "... whether it's via mail-in voting or at the polling place, becoming active in the electoral process is so important. Whether the person on the ticket is running for local, state or national positions, our role as their constituents starts with voting."

Filmography

Film

Television

Awards and nominations

References

External links

1994 births
Living people
American people of Polish descent
American people of Irish descent
American people of English descent
American actors of Puerto Rican descent
American people of Argentine descent
American people of Spanish descent
American male child actors
American male film actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
21st-century American male actors
Male actors from New York City
Hispanic and Latino American male actors

Jake T. Austin


Central School is a historic structure located in Lake City, Iowa, United States.  A bond referendum for a new school passed in February 1884.  The Des Moines architectural firm of Foster & Liebee designed the building in the Italianate style, and it was built by contractor Robert Harrison.  They based their plan on an example the school board found in Everett's School Architecture.  The exterior of the two-story structure is composed of locally produced brick and it cost $7,175 to build.  Two classrooms were located on each of the two floors.  A frame building to house the kindergarten was built in 1895, and the school board determined the following year to expand the building by four more classrooms.  In 1897 the addition was completed, as was another grade school building in town.  A high school was built in 1904, which took the pressure off the school's population. The building served as a school building until 1980.  It was acquired three years later by Central School Preservation Inc. and renovated for a historic-cultural center.  It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

References

School buildings completed in 1884
Lake City, Iowa
Italianate architecture in Iowa
School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa
National Register of Historic Places in Calhoun County, Iowa
Museums in Calhoun County, Iowa

Central School (Lake City, Iowa)


The inequality of wealth (i.e. inequality in the distribution of assets) has substantially increased in the United States in recent decades. Wealth commonly includes the values of any homes, automobiles, personal valuables, businesses, savings, and investments, as well as any associated debts.

Although different from income inequality, the two are related. Wealth is usually not used for daily expenditures or factored into household budgets, but combined with income, it represents a family's total opportunity to secure stature and a meaningful standard of living, or to pass their class status down to their children. Moreover, wealth provides for both short- and long-term financial security, bestows social prestige, contributes to political power, and can be leveraged to obtain more wealth. Hence, wealth provides mobility and agency—the ability to act. The accumulation of wealth enables a variety of freedoms, and removes limits on life that one might otherwise face.

Federal Reserve data indicates that as of Q4 2021, the top 1% of households in the United States held 32.3% of the country's wealth, while the bottom 50% held 2.6%. From 1989 to 2019, wealth became increasingly concentrated in the top 1% and top 10% due in large part to corporate stock ownership concentration in those segments of the population; the bottom 50% own little if any corporate stock. From an international perspective, the difference in the US median and mean wealth per adult is over 600%. A 2011 study found that US citizens across the political spectrum dramatically underestimate the current level of wealth inequality in the US, and would prefer a far more egalitarian distribution of wealth.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the wealth held by billionaires in the U.S. increased by 70%, with 2020 marking the steepest increase in billionaires' share of wealth on record.

Statistics

In 2007, the top 20% of the wealthiest Americans possessed 80% of all financial assets. In 2007 the richest 1% of the American population owned 35% of the country's total wealth, and the next 19% owned 51%.  The top 20% of Americans owned 86% of the country's wealth and the bottom 80% of the population owned 14%. In 2011, financial inequality was greater than inequality in total wealth, with the top 1% of the population owning 43%, the next 19% of Americans owning 50%, and the bottom 80% owning 7%.  However, after the Great Recession, which began in 2007, the share of total wealth owned by the top 1% of the population grew from 35% to 37%, and that owned by the top 20% of Americans grew from 86% to 88%.  The Great Recession also caused a drop of 36% in median household wealth, but a drop of only 11% for the top 1%, further widening the gap between the top 1% and the bottom 99%.

According to PolitiFact and other sources, in 2011, the 400 wealthiest Americans had more wealth than half of all Americans combined. Inherited wealth may help explain why many Americans who have become rich may have had a substantial head start. In September 2012, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, over 60 percent of the Forbes richest 400 Americans grew up in substantial privilege.

In 2013, wealth inequality in the U.S. was greater than in most developed countries, other than Switzerland and Denmark.  In the United States, the use of offshore holdings is exceptionally small compared to Europe, where much of the wealth of the top percentiles is kept in offshore holdings. According to a 2014 Credit Suisse study, the ratio of wealth to household income is the highest it has been since the Great Depression.

According to a paper published by the Federal Reserve in 1997, "For most households, pensions and Social Security are the most important sources of income during retirement, and the promised benefit stream constitutes a sizable fraction of household wealth" and "including pensions and Social Security in net worth makes the distribution more even."

In Inequality for All—a 2013 documentary, narrated by Robert Reich, in which he argues that income inequality is the defining issue of the United States—Reich states that 95% of economic gains following the economic recovery which began in 2009 went to the top 1% of Americans (by net worth) (HNWI).

A September 2017 study by the Federal Reserve reported that the top 1% owned 38.5% of the country's wealth in 2016.

According to a June 2017 report by the Boston Consulting Group, around 70% of the nation's wealth will be in the hands of millionaires and billionaires by 2021.

A 2019 study by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman found that the average effective tax rate paid by the richest 400 families (0.003%) in the US was 23 percent, more than a percentage point lower than the 24.2 percent paid by the bottom half of American households. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center found that the bottom 20 percent of earners pay an average 2.9 percent effective income tax rate federally, while the richest 1 percent paid an effective 29.6 percent tax rate and the top 0.01 percent paid an effective 30.6 percent tax rate. In 2019, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that when state and federal taxes are taken into account, however, the poorest 20 percent pay an effective 20.2 percent rate while the top 1 percent pay an effective 33.7 percent rate.

Using Federal Reserve data, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth reported in August 2019 that: "Looking at the cumulative growth of wealth disaggregated by group, we see that the bottom 50 percent of wealth owners experienced no net wealth growth since 1989. At the other end of the spectrum, the top 1 percent have seen their wealth grow by almost 300 percent since 1989. Although cumulative wealth growth was relatively similar among all wealth groups through the 1990s, the top 1 percent and bottom 50 percent diverged around 2000."

According to an analysis of Survey of Consumer Finances data from 2019 by the People's Policy Project, 79% of the country's wealth is owned by millionaires and billionaires.

Also in 2019, PolitiFact reported that three people (less than the 400 reported in 2011) had more wealth than the bottom half of all Americans.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the wealth held by billionaires in the U.S. increased by 70%. According to the 2022 World Inequality Report, "2020 marked the steepest increase in global billionaires' share of wealth on record."

As of late 2022, according to Snopes, 735 billionaires collectively possessed more wealth than the bottom half of U.S. households ($4.5 trillion and $4.1 trillion respectively). The top 1% held a total of $43.45 trillion.

Late 18th century
In the late 18th century, "incomes were more equally distributed in colonial America than in any other place that can be measured," according to Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson. The richest 1 percent of households held only 8.5% of total income in the late 18th century. The Gini coefficient, which measures inequality on a scale from 0 to 1(with 1 being very high inequality) was 0.367 in New England and the Middle Atlantic, as compared to 0.57 in Europe. Some reasons for this include the ease that the average American had in buying frontier land, which was abundant at the time, and an overall scarcity of labor in non-slaveholding areas, which forced landowners to pay higher wages. There were also relatively few poor people in America at the time, since only those with at least some money could afford to come to America.

19th century
Inequality grew in the 19th century; between 1774 and 1860, the Gini coefficient grew from 0.441 to 0.529. In 1860, the top 1 percent collected almost one-third of property incomes, as compared to 13.7% in 1774. There was a great deal of competition for land in the cities and non-frontier areas during this time period, with those who had already acquired land becoming richer than everyone else. The newly burgeoning financial sector also greatly rewarded the already-wealthy, as they were the only ones financially sound enough to invest.

Early 20th century
Simon Kuznets, using income tax records and his research-based estimates, showed a reduction of about 10% in the movement of national income toward the top 10% of wealth-owners, a reduction from about 45–50% in 1913 to about 30–35% in 1948. This period spans both The Great Depression and World War II, events with significant economic consequences. This is called the Great Compression. Franklin D. Roosevelt's establishment of social programs under the New Deal and efforts towards wealth redistribution also reduced wealth inequality.

1989 to 2020

Effect of stock market gains
The Federal Reserve publishes information on the distribution of household assets, debt, and equity (net worth) by quarter going back to 1989. The tables below summarize the net worth data, in real terms (adjusted for inflation), for 1989 to 2022, and 2016 to 2022. Journalist Matthew Yglesias explained in June 2019 how the ownership of stock has driven wealth inequality, as the bottom 50% has minimal stock ownership: "...[T]he bottom half of the income distribution had a huge share of its wealth tied up in real estate while owning essentially no shares of corporate stock. The top 1 percent, by contrast, wasn't just rich — it was specifically rich in terms of owning companies, both stock in publicly traded ones ("corporate equities") and shares of closely held ones ("private businesses")...So the value of those specific assets — assets that people in the bottom half of the distribution never had a chance to own in the first place — soared."

The National Public Radio, also known as NPR reported, in 2017 that the bottom 50% of U.S. households (by net worth) have little stock market exposure (neither directly nor indirectly through 401k plans), writing: "That means the stock market rally can only directly benefit around half of all Americans — and substantially fewer than it would have a decade ago when nearly two-thirds of families owned stock."

The table below shows changes from Q4 2016 (the end of the Obama Administration) to Q1 2022.

Wealth and income
There is an important distinction between income and wealth. Income refers to a flow of money over time, commonly in the form of a wage or salary; wealth is a collection of assets owned, minus liabilities. In essence, income is what people receive through work, retirement, or social welfare whereas wealth is what people own. While the two are related, income inequality alone is insufficient for understanding economic inequality for two reasons:
 It does not accurately reflect an individual's economic position.
 Income does not portray the severity of financial inequality in the United States.

In 1998, Dennis Gilbert asserted that the standard of living of the working and middle classes is dependent primarily upon income and wages, while the rich tend to rely on wealth, distinguishing them from the vast majority of Americans.

The United States Census Bureau formally defines income as money received on a regular basis (exclusive of certain money receipts such as capital gains) before payments on personal income taxes, social security, union dues, medicare deductions, etc. By this official measure, the wealthiest families may have low income, but the value of their assets may be enough money to support their lifestyle. Dividends from trusts or gains in the stock market do not fall under the aforementioned definition of income, but are commonly the primary source of capital for the ultra-wealthy. Retired people also have little income, but may have a high net worth, because of money saved over time.

Additionally, income does not capture the extent of wealth inequality. Wealth is most commonly obtained over time, through the steady investing of income, and the growth of assets. The income of one year does not typically encompass the accumulation over a lifetime. Income statistics cover too narrow a time span for it to be an adequate indicator of financial inequality. For example, the Gini coefficient for wealth inequality increased from 0.80 in 1983 to 0.84 in 1989. In the same year, 1989, the Gini coefficient for income was only 0.52. The Gini coefficient is an economic tool on a scale from 0 to 1 that measures the level of inequality. 1 signifies perfect inequality and 0 represents perfect equality. From this data, it is evident that in 1989 there was a discrepancy in the level of economic disparity; the extent of wealth inequality was significantly higher than income inequality. Recent research shows that many households, in particular, those headed by young parents (younger than 35), minorities, and individuals with low educational attainment, display very little accumulation. Many have no financial assets and their total net worth is also low.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1979 and 2007, incomes of the top 1% of Americans grew by an average of 275%. (Note: The IRS insists that comparisons of adjusted gross income pre-1987 and post-1987 are complicated by large changes in the definition of AGI, which led to households within the top income quintile reporting more of their income on their individual income tax form's AGI, rather than reporting their business income in separate corporate tax returns, or not reporting certain non-taxable income in their AGI at all, such as municipal bond income. In addition, IRS studies consistently show that a majority of households in the top income quintile have moved to a lower quintile within one decade. There are even more changes to households in the top 1%. Without including those data here, a reader is likely to assume households in the top 1% are almost the same from year to year.) In 2009, people in the top 1% of taxpayers made $343,927 or more. According to US economist Joseph Stiglitz the richest 1% of Americans gained 93% of the additional income created in 2010.

A study by Emmanuel Saez and Piketty showed that the top 10 percent of earners took more than half of the country's total income in 2012, the highest level recorded since the government began collecting the relevant data a century ago. People in the top one percent were three times more likely to work more than 50 hours a week, were more likely to be self-employed, and earned a fifth of their income as capital income. The top one percent was composed of many professions and had an annual turnover rate of more than 25%. The five most common professions were managers, physicians, administrators, lawyers, and teachers.

A 2022 study in PNAS found that earnings inequality in the United States did not increase over the preceding decade, marking the first reversal of rising earnings inequality since 1980. The reversal was due to a shrinking wage gap between low-wage workers and median-wage earners, which was due to broadly rising pay in low-wage professions. At the same time, the gap between median-wage workers and top earners widened.

U.S. stock market ownership distribution

In March 2017, NPR summarized the distribution of U.S. stock market ownership (direct and indirect through mutual funds) in the U.S., which is highly concentrated among the wealthiest families:
52% of U.S. adults owned stock in 2016. Ownership peaked at 65% in 2007 and fell significantly due to the Great Recession.
As of 2013, the top 1% of households owned 38% of the stock market wealth.
As of 2013, the top 10% own 81% of the stock wealth, the next 10% (80th to 90th percentile) own 11% and the bottom 80% own 8%.

The Federal Reserve reported the median value of stock ownership by income group for 2016:
Bottom 20% own $5,800.
20th-40th percentile own $10,000.
40th to 60th percentile own $15,500.
60th to 80th percentile own $31,700.
80th to 89th percentile own $82,000.
Top 10% own $365,000.

NPR reported that when politicians reference the stock market as a measure of economic success, that success is not relevant to nearly half of Americans. Further, more than one-third of Americans who work full-time have no access to pensions or retirement accounts such as 401(k)s that derive their value from financial assets like stocks and bonds. The NYT reported that the percentage of workers covered by generous defined-benefit pension plans has declined from 62% in 1983 to 17% by 2016. While some economists consider an increase in the stock market to have a "wealth effect" that increases economic growth, economists like Former Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher believe those effects are limited.

Causes of wealth inequality

Essentially, the wealthy possess greater financial opportunities that allow their money to make more money. Earnings from the stock market or mutual funds are reinvested to produce a larger return. Over time, the sum that is invested becomes progressively more substantial. Those who are not wealthy, however, do not have the resources to enhance their opportunities and improve their economic position. Rather, "after debt payments, poor families are constrained to spend the remaining income on items that will not produce wealth and will depreciate over time." Scholar David B. Grusky notes that "62 percent of households headed by single parents are without savings or other financial assets." Net indebtedness generally prevents the poor from having any opportunity to accumulate wealth and thereby better their conditions.

Economic inequality is also a result of difference in income. Factors that contribute to this gap in wages are things such as level of education, labor market demand and supply, gender differences, growth in technology, and personal abilities. The quality and level of education that a person has often corresponds to their skill level, which is justified by their income. Wages are also determined by the "market price of a skill" at that current time. Although gender inequality is a separate social issue, it plays a role in economic inequality. According to the U.S. Census Report, in America the median full-time salary for women is 77 percent of that for men. Also contributing to the wealth inequality in the U.S, both unskilled and skilled workers are being replaced by machinery. The Seven Pillars Institute for Global Finance and Ethics argues that because of this "technological advance", the income gap between workers and owners has widened.

Income inequality contributes to wealth inequality. For example, economist Emmanuel Saez wrote in June 2016 that the top 1% of families captured 52% of the total real income (GDP) growth per family from 2009 to 2015. From 2009 to 2012, the top 1% captured 91% of the income gains.

Nepotism perpetuates and increases wealth inequality. Wealthy families pass down their assets allowing future generations to develop even more wealth. The poor, on the other hand, are less able to leave inheritances to their children leaving the latter with little or no wealth on which to build. Wealthy parents often use their economic or political power to advantage their own children, such as by providing extra funding for education, excluding poor families from the local community or schools (usually through exclusionary zoning), using social connections to provide opportunities for advancement like internships, and allowing children to take entrepreneurial risks without risking homelessness or destitution.

Corresponding to financial resources, the wealthy strategically organize their money so that it will produce profit. Affluent people are more likely to allocate their money to financial assets such as stocks, bonds, and other investments which hold the possibility of capital appreciation. Those who are not wealthy are more likely to have their money in savings accounts and home ownership. This difference comprises the largest reason for the continuation of wealth inequality in America: the rich are accumulating more assets while the middle and working classes are just getting by. As of 2007, the richest 1% held about 38% of all privately held wealth in the United States. While the bottom 90% held 73.2% of all debt. According to The New York Times, the richest 1 percent in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.

However, other studies argue that higher average savings rate will contribute to the reduction of the share of wealth owned by the rich. The reason is that the rich in wealth are not necessarily the individuals with the highest income. Therefore, the relative wealth share of poorer quintiles of the population would increase if the savings rate of income is very large, although the absolute difference from the wealthiest will increase.

The nature of tax policies in America has been suggested by economists and politicians such as Emmanuel Saez, Thomas Piketty, and Barack Obama to perpetuate economic inequality in America by steering large sums of wealth into the hands of the wealthiest Americans. The mechanism for this is that when the wealthy avoid paying taxes, wealth concentrates to their coffers and the poor go into debt.

The economist Joseph Stiglitz argues that "Strong unions have helped to reduce inequality, whereas weaker unions have made it easier for CEOs, sometimes working with market forces that they have helped shape, to increase it." The long fall in unionization in the U.S. since WWII has seen a corresponding rise in the inequality of wealth and income.

Some tax policies subsidize wealthy people more than poor people; critics often argue the home mortgage interest deduction should be abolished because it provides more tax relief for people in higher tax brackets and with more expensive homes, and that poorer people are more often renters and therefore less likely to be able to use this deduction at all. Regressive taxes include payroll taxes, sales taxes, and fuel taxes.

A 2022 study in the American Economic Journal found that greater economic inequality in the United States than in Europe was not because of the nature of tax and transfer systems in the United States. The study found that the U.S. redistributes a greater share of its wealth to the bottom half of the income distribution than any European country. The study found instead that Europe had less economic inequality because it had been more successful at ensuring that the bottom half of the income distribution are able to get relatively well-paying jobs.

Racial disparities
The wealth gap between white and black families nearly tripled from $85,000 in 1984 to $236,500 in 2009.

A Brandeis University Institute on Assets and Social Policy paper cites the number of years of homeownership, household income, unemployment, education, and inheritance as leading causes for the growth of the gap, concluding homeownership to be the most important. Inheritance can directly link the disadvantaged economic position and prospects of today's blacks to the disadvantaged positions of their parents' and grandparents' generations, according to a report done by Robert B. Avery and Michael S. Rendall that pointed out "one in three white households will receive a substantial inheritance during their lifetime compared to only one in ten black households." In the journal Sociological Perspectives, Lisa Keister reports that family size and structure during childhood "are related to racial differences in adult wealth accumulation trajectories, allowing whites to begin accumulating high-yield assets earlier in life."

The article "America's Financial Divide" added context to racial wealth inequality, stating:

Relying on data from Credit Suisse and Brandeis University's Institute on Assets and Social Policy, the Harvard Business Review in the article "How America's Wealthiest Black Families Invest Money" stated:

According to Inequality.org, the median black family is only worth $1,700 when durables are deducted. In contrast, the median white family holds $116,800 of wealth using the same accounting methods. Today, using Wolff's analysis, the median African American family holds a mere 1.5 percent of median white American family wealth.

A recent piece on Eurweb/Electronic Urban Report, "Black Wealth Hardly Exists, Even When You Include NBA, NFL and Rap Stars", stated this about the difference between black middle-class families and white middle-class families:

Author Lilian Singh wrote on why the perceptions about black life created by media are misleading in the American Prospect article "Black Wealth On TV: Realities Don't Match Perceptions":

According to an article by the Pew Research Center, the median wealth of non-Hispanic black households fell nearly 38% from 2010 to 2013. During that time, the median wealth of those households fell from $16,600 to $13,700. The median wealth of Hispanic families fell 14.3% as well, from $16,000 to $14,000. Despite the median net worth of all households in the United States decreasing with time, as of 2013, white households had a median net worth of $141,900 while black house households had a median net worth of just $11,000. Hispanic households had a median net worth of just $13,700 over that time as well.

In 2023, the Federal Reserve Board published median and mean family wealth statistics for 2022, based on a nationwide survey of 4,602 families. The average white family's median net worth was $285,000. Hispanic families had a median net worth of $61,600, and for black families, this figure was $44,900. Although black families had the lowest median net worth of all racial groups, they experienced the greatest percent increase in net worth from 2019 to 2022, at 60 percent. For the first time, the survey calculated net worth for Asian families separately (Asian families had previously been grouped into an "other" category along with Native American, Pacific Islander, and multiracial families). Asian families had the highest median net worth, at $536,000.

Effect on democracy

A 2014 study by researchers at Princeton and Northwestern concludes that government policies reflect the desires of the wealthy, and that the vast majority of American citizens have "minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose." When  Janet Yellen, the chair of the Federal Reserve was questioned by Senator Bernie Sanders about the study at a congressional hearing in May 2014, she responded "There's no question that we've had a trend toward growing inequality" and that this trend "can shape [and] determine the ability of different groups to participate equally in a democracy and have grave effects on social stability over time."

In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty argues that "extremely high levels" of wealth inequality are "incompatible with the meritocratic values and principles of social justice fundamental to modern democratic societies" and that "the risk of a drift towards oligarchy is real and gives little reason for optimism about where the United States is headed."

Proposals to reduce wealth inequality

Estate tax
There is a political debate over the estate tax in the United States, which reduces inequality by taxing the estate of large quantities of wealth. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 doubled the exemption of estates by increasing the exemption from $5.49 million in 2017 to $11.18 million in 2018. This increase in estate exemption was estimated to affect about 3,200 estates in 2018.

A 2021 investigation using leaked IRS documents found more than half of the richest 100 Americans use grantor retained annuity trusts to avoid paying estate taxes when they die.

As of 2022 individual estates under $12.06 million, and $24.12 million for married couples, are exempt from federal tax.  Estates with values beyond $12.06 million are taxed on a sliding scale from 18% to 40%.  The lowest bracket of 18% affects estates from $12.06 to $12.07 million and quickly increases to 40% affecting estates $13.06 million and above.  The doubled exemption from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 is scheduled to expire in 2025, reducing the estate exemption to approximately $6.2 million. In addition, the maximum gift tax is scheduled to increase from 40% to 45% in 2026.

On top of the federal estate tax, 17 states have an estate or inheritance tax.

Increased tax
In President Joe Biden's proposed budget for 2023 there are two proposed tax changes for households with wealth above $100 million.  First, is a new "minimum tax" at death for unrealized capital gains above $1 million.  Second is to realized capital gains as ordinary income; which is expected to effectively raise the percent of capital taxed from 23.8% to 43.4%. Combined it is estimated that these tax changes will place these households at an effective tax rate of 61.1%, which is nearly double the effective tax rate in 2022.

Taxation of wealth
Senator Bernie Sanders pitched the idea of a wealth tax in the US in 2014. Later, Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed an annual tax on wealth in January 2019, specifically a 2% tax for wealth over $50 million and another 1% surcharge on wealth over $1 billion. Wealth is defined as including all asset classes, including financial assets and real estate.  In 2021, officials in the state of Washington considered proposals to tax wealthy residents within the state.

Warren's plan received both praise and criticism. Economist Paul Krugman wrote in January 2019 that polls indicate the idea of taxing the rich more is very popular.Two billionaires, Michael Bloomberg and Howard Schultz, criticized the proposal as "unconstitutional" and "ridiculous," respectively.  Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman analyzed the Warren's proposal and estimated that about 75,000 households (less than 0.1%) would pay the tax. The tax was expected to raise around $2.75 trillion over 10 years, roughly 1% GDP on average per year. This was expected to raise the total tax burden for those subject to the wealth tax from 3.2% relative to their wealth under current law to about 4.3% on average, versus the 7.2% for the bottom 99% families. For scale, the federal budget deficit in 2018 was 3.9% GDP and was expected to rise towards 5% GDP over the next decade. An analysis by the think tank Tax Foundation found that Warren's proposal would reduce long-term GDP by 0.37% and raise $2.2 trillion over a period of ten years, after factoring in macroeconomic feedback effects. It expected the tax to "face serious administrative and compliance challenges due to valuation difficulties and tax evasion and avoidance issues." It also expected foreign investors to replace American billionaires as the owners of capital.

Limiting stock buybacks
Senators Charles Schumer and Bernie Sanders advocated limiting stock buybacks to reduce income and wealth inequality in January 2019.

See also

 Affluence in the United States
 Distribution of wealth in Europe
 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
 Criticism of credit scoring systems in the United States
 Donor Class
 Income inequality in the United States
 Monetary policy
 Net worth
 Occupy movement
 Occupy Wall Street
 Oligarchy
 Panama Papers
 Paradise Papers
 Pareto principle
 Plutocracy
 Power elite
 Redistribution of wealth
 Tax policy and economic inequality in the United States
 The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
 Wealth concentration
 Wealth in the United States
 We are the 99%
 American upper class
 List of Americans by net worth

References

Further reading
 Alexandra Thornton and Galen Hendricks, Ending Special Tax Treatment for the Very Wealthy, Center for American Progress, June 4, 2019. Ending Special Tax Treatment for the Very Wealthy The report summarizes the problem (gross inequality) and its cause ("special tax treatment for the [extremely rich]"), and specific "ways to rebalance the tax code and put the economy on a better track."
 Moritz Kuhn, Moritz Schularick, and Ulrike I. Steins. 2020. "Income and Wealth Inequality in America, 1949–2016." Journal of Political Economy.

Capital (economics)
Wealth in the United States
Economic inequality in the United States
Distribution of wealth
Articles containing video clips

Wealth inequality in the United States


Christoph August Tiedge (14 December 1752, Gardelegen - 8 March 1841, Dresden) was a German poet.

Biography
Tiedge was the eldest son of the rector of the Gelehrten Stadtschule in Gardelegen and his wife, and studied law in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt.  In 1788 he went to Halberstadt, acting for four years as secretary to the Domherr von Steder.  After the Domherr died, Tiedge and his family moved to the vicinity of Quedlinburg.  After the death of his wife, von Steder, in 1797, he alternated between living in Halle and Berlin and (from 1805 to 1808) accompanying his friend Elisa von der Recke through Germany, Switzerland and Italy.  From 1819 Tiedge lived with Elisa in Dresden.  Placed beyond material care by his friend's last will, he continued to live there after her death until his.

Some singable lyrics, of which "Schöne Minka, ich muss scheiden" is an example, first established his reputation, and Urania über Gott, Unsterblichkeit und Freiheit (1800; 18th ed., 1862), a lyric-didactic poem, inspired by the ethics of Emanuel Kant, enjoyed wide popularity in the beginning of the nineteenth century. A kind of sequel to it were the Wanderungen durch den Markt des Lebens (1833). Among his other poetical efforts, the Elegien und vermischte Gedichte (1803) met with the greatest success. After his death, the Tiedge Foundation was established in Dresden for the purpose of caring for the poet's grave and of granting subventions to poets and artists or their widows and children. Administered by the Saxon Ministry of Public Instruction, its funds amounted to more than 662,000 marks in 1901.

Sources
  This work in turn cites:
 Falkenstein, Tiedges Leben und poetischer Nachlass (Leipzig, 1841)
 Eberhard, Blicke in Tiedges und Elisas Leben (Berlin, 1844)
 Kern, ''Beiträge zu einer Charakteristik des Dichters Tiedge (Berlin, 1896)

1752 births
1841 deaths
People from Gardelegen
German poets
Writers from Saxony-Anhalt
German male poets
University of Halle alumni

Christoph August Tiedge


Demon Stalkers: The Raid on Doomfane is an action role-playing video game released in 1987 for the Commodore 64 and in 1989 for IBM PC compatibles. The game is a top-down dungeon crawl about killing monsters during the descent. A sequel, Fire King, was released for the same systems.

Gameplay

The game can be played in either single player mode or two player co-operative mode, using two joysticks, or a joystick plus keyboard. Players can choose to control either the hero, armed with throwing knives, or the heroine, armed with a crossbow. During the game, players will find various relics which permanently increase attack power, defense, or magic power, as well as an arsenal of magic scrolls, and special amulets that create temporary effects. Food can be picked up to heal damage, but occasionally turns out to be poison which hurts the player. Similarly, some scrolls turn out to be a "slow death curse," which takes a way the player's health continuously until death, unless the exit from that level is found. Enemies in the game include rats, ghosts who can walk through walls, dervishes who can steal a player's possessions, snappers who remain dormant until disturbed, and mad mages, who shoot fireballs. These monsters emerge from special spawning areas called vortexes, which can be destroyed by the player with several shots, except for the rats, who emerge from indestructible sewer grates.

The dungeon consists of many interconnected maze-like levels which rooms, hallways, and doors. There are several multi-level mazes, where the player must ascend and descend between levels several times before finding the correct path. The collecting of keys to open doors is a fundamental part of the game, while fighting against a horde of monsters. Most of the levels entail some sort of puzzle solving, involving clues in the form of scrolls that are picked up along the way. These scrolls also tell the story of an unsuccessful group of adventurers who journeyed through the dungeon before the current players. This ill-fated party included members Arthur, Bloodaxe, Grindlewald, Furrowfoot, and Imelda, as well as Mellack, a mage whom the previous adventurers met along the way. Correctly answering some questions after each story section yields bonus health points.

Level 100 is unique in the game, as its geography includes large, irregularly shaped caves, rather than straight or diagonal walls as in the other levels. Level 100 also only features one enemy, the demon boss, Calvrak. Demon Stalkers includes its own level-editor, allowing the player to modify all levels except 100.

Reception
A review in Computer Gaming World, comparing the game to Gauntlet, noted "Gauntlet seemed to have ten times more monsters than Demon Stalkers. Thus, despite the similarities, Gauntlet is primarily an action game and Demon Stalkers is a search game with action thrown in." The review concluded by saying neither game would disappoint.

References

External links

Images of Commodore 64 version of Demon Stalkers box and manual at C64Sets.com

1987 video games
Action role-playing video games
Commodore 64 games
DOS games
Electronic Arts games
Multiplayer and single-player video games
Video games developed in Australia

Demon Stalkers


The White Diamond is a 2004 documentary film by Werner Herzog.  It illustrates the history of aviation and depicts the struggles and triumphs of Graham Dorrington, an aeronautical engineer, who has designed and built a teardrop-shaped airship which he plans to fly over the forest canopies of Guyana. It features music composed by Ernst Reijseger, which was re-used in Herzog's 2005 film The Wild Blue Yonder.

Most of the film focuses on Dorrington's flights near Kaieteur Falls, in Guyana. Dorrington discusses the mechanics of his flight, as well as his own struggles with uncertainty and the "heaviness" he feels after the death of the cinematographer Dieter Plage. The film also explores the Kaieteur Falls themselves, a local man named Marc Anthony Yhap, a diamond miner, and the white-tipped swifts (Aeronautes montivagus) which roost in an inaccessible cave behind the falls.

The film holds a score of 83 (based on 12 reviews) on the film review aggregator website Metacritic and a score of 90% (based on 20 reviews) on Rotten Tomatoes.

Soundtrack

References

External links

Documentary films about ballooning
2004 films
2004 documentary films
Films shot in Guyana
Films directed by Werner Herzog
2000s English-language films
English-language documentary films

The White Diamond