No free lunch with vanishing risk (NFLVR) is a concept used in mathematical finance as a strengthening of the no-arbitrage condition. In continuous time finance the existence of an equivalent martingale measure (EMM) is no more equivalent to the no-arbitrage-condition (unlike in discrete time finance), but is instead equivalent to the NFLVR-condition. This is known as the first fundamental theorem of asset pricing.

Informally speaking, a market allows for a free lunch with vanishing risk if there are admissible strategies, which can be chosen arbitrarily close to an arbitrage strategy, i.e., these strategies start with no wealth, end up with positive wealth with probability greater zero (free lunch) and the probability of ending up with negative wealth can be chosen arbitrarily small (vanishing risk).

Mathematical definition
For a semimartingale , let

  where a strategy is called admissible if it is self-financing and its value process  is bounded from below.
 .

 is said to satisfy the no free lunch with vanishing risk (NFLVR) condition if , where  is the closure of C in the norm topology of .

A direct consequence of that definition is the following:

If a market does not satisfy NFLVR, then there exists  and sequences ,  such that  and . Moreover, it holds

  (vanishing risk)
  (free lunch)

In other words this means: There exists a sequence of admissible strategies  starting with zero wealth, such that the negative part of their final values  converge uniformly to zero and the probabilities of the events converge to a positive number.

Fundamental theorem of asset pricing

If  is a semimartingale with values in  then S does not allow for a free lunch with vanishing risk if and only if there exists an equivalent martingale measure  such that S is a sigma-martingale under .

References

Arbitrage
Financial markets
Mathematical finance
Financial economics

No free lunch with vanishing risk


Adriana Farmiga ( ; born July 17, 1974) is an American visual artist, curator, and professor based in New York City. She serves as a programming advisor for the non-profit La Mama Gallery in the East Village, and is the current Associate Dean at Cooper Union School of Art.

Early life
Farmiga was born and raised in a small Ukrainian community in Rosendale, New York. Her paternal first cousins are actresses Vera Farmiga and Taissa Farmiga. She was educated at Cooper Union, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1996. Farmiga went on to study at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, where she was taught by the late installation artist Maryanne Amacher; she received her Master of Fine Arts degree from Bard in 2004.

Career
Farmiga began teaching at Temple University's Tyler School of Art and at her alma mater Cooper Union. Additionally, she served as a visiting lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2013. In October 2017, Farmiga was appointed to the position of Assistant Dean at Cooper Union School of Art.

Farmiga has displayed her artwork at many solo exhibitions, including objects (2001) in New Orleans, 'Scape (2006) in Miami, and Versus (2012) in New York. In 2004, Farmiga was among a group of artists displaying their work in the exhibition The Reality of Things at Triple Candie in Harlem. In 2008, she received the Emerging Artist Fellowship from Socrates Sculpture Park.

In 2011, Farmiga worked as a curator and artist for her cousin Vera Farmiga's directorial debut film Higher Ground. That same year, her work appeared in Thisorganized, a group exhibit curated by painter Hope Gangloff, which was displayed at the Susan Inglett Gallery. In 2013, Farmiga was part of the Screen Play exhibition at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz. The following year, she was one of 16 artists chosen, from over 320 applicants, to display her work in the Worlds of Wonder exhibition, also shown at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art.

In December 2016, Farmiga's work as part of CIM began showing at the Ukrainian Museum, where it was exhibited until September 2017. From January to February 2017, her work as part of Abandoned Luncheonette was exhibited at the Jeff Bailey Gallery in Hudson, New York. In April 2018, it was announced that Farmiga was one of twelve visual artists whom had been granted a summer fellowship at the MacDowell Colony.

Exhibitions

Solo

Group

References

External links

1974 births
American women artists
American people of Ukrainian descent
Artists from New York City
Bard College alumni
Cooper Union alumni
Cooper Union faculty
Living people
People from Rosendale, New York
Temple University faculty
MacDowell Colony fellows
American women curators
American curators

Adriana Farmiga


The Genesis flood narrative (chapters 6–9 of the Book of Genesis) is a Hebrew flood myth. It tells of God's decision to return the universe to its pre-creation state of watery chaos and remake it through the microcosm of Noah's ark.

The Book of Genesis was probably composed around the 5th century BCE, although some scholars believe that Primeval history (chapters 1–11), including the flood narrative, may have been composed and added as late as the 3rd century BCE. It draws on two sources, called the Priestly source and the non-Priestly or Yahwist, and although many of its details are contradictory, the story forms a unified whole.

A global flood as described in this myth is inconsistent with the physical findings of geology, archeology, paleontology, and the global distribution of species. A branch of creationism known as flood geology is a pseudoscientific attempt to argue that such a global flood actually occurred. Some Christians have preferred to interpret the narrative as describing a local flood, instead of a global event.

Summary

The story of the flood occurs in chapters 6–9 of the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Ten generations after the creation of Adam, God saw that the earth was corrupt and filled with violence, and he decided to destroy what he had created. But God found one righteous man, Noah, and to him he confided his intention: "I am about to bring on the Flood ... to eliminate everywhere all flesh in which there is the breath of life ... ." So God instructed him to build an ark (in Hebrew, a chest or box), and Noah entered the Ark in his six hundredth year [of life], and on the 17th day of the second month of that year "the fountains of the Great Deep burst apart and the floodgates of heaven broke open" and rain fell for forty days and forty nights until the highest mountains were covered to a depth of 15 cubits, and all life perished except Noah and those with him in the Ark. After 150 days, "God remembered Noah ... and the waters subsided" until the Ark rested on the mountains of Ararat, and on the 27th day of the second month of Noah's six hundred and first year the earth was dry. Then Noah built an altar and made a sacrifice, and God made a covenant with Noah that man would be allowed to eat every living thing but not its blood, and that God would never again destroy all life by a flood.

Composition

The consensus of modern scholars is that Genesis was composed around the 5th century BCE, but as the first eleven chapters show little relationship to the rest of the book, some scholars believe that this section (the so-called Primeval History) may have been composed as late as the 3rd century BCE.

It is generally agreed that the history draws on two sources, one called the Priestly source, the other non-Priestly or Yahwist, and their interweaving is evidenced in the doublets (i.e., repetitions) contained within the final story. Many of these are contradictory, such as how long the flood lasted (40 days according to , 150 according to ), how many animals were to be taken aboard the ark (one pair of each in , one pair of the unclean animals and seven pairs of the clean in ), and whether Noah released a raven which "went to and fro until the waters were dried up" or a dove which on the third occasion "did not return to him again," or possibly both. But despite this disagreement on details the story forms a unified whole (some scholars see in it a "chiasm", a literary structure in which the first item matches the last, the second the second-last, and so on), and many efforts have been made to explain this unity, including attempts to identify which of the two sources was earlier and therefore influenced the other. Some scholars have even questioned whether the story is actually based on two different sources, noting that some of the doublets (such as the dove and raven) are not actually contradictory and in fact appear as linked motifs in other biblical and non-biblical sources, that the method of doublets is inconsistently applied in that the alleged sources themselves contain doublets, and that the theory assumes a redactor who combined the sources inconsistently (in some cases extensively editing together the text and in some cases faithfully preserving contradictory versions) for unclear reasons. Similarly, the complete Genesis flood story matches the parallel Gilgamesh flood story in a way which neither of the proposed biblical sources does.

Sources
The following table compares the proposed Yahwist and Priestly sources. Each provides a complete story-line, with introductions and conclusions, reasons for the flood, and theologies.

Comparative mythology

Scholars believe that the flood myth originated in Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian Period (c. 1880–1595 BCE) and reached Syro-Palestine in the latter half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Extant texts show three distinct versions, the Sumerian Epic of Ziusudra, (the oldest, found in very fragmentary form on a single tablet dating from about 1600 BCE, although the story itself is older), and as episodes in two Akkadian language epics, the Atrahasis and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The name of the hero, according to the version concerned, was Ziusudra, Atrahasis, or Utnapishtim, all of which are variations of each other, and it is just possible that an abbreviation of Utnapishtim/Utna'ishtim as "na'ish" was pronounced "Noah" in Palestine.

Numerous and often detailed parallels make clear that the Genesis flood narrative is dependent on the Mesopotamian epics, and particularly on Gilgamesh, which is thought to date from c.1300–1000 BCE.

Flood chronology

Numbers in the Bible often have symbolic or idiomatic meaning, and the 40 days and nights for which rain fell on the Earth indicates a complete cycle.

The flood begins on the 17th day of the second month when "the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened", and after 40 days the ark floats (Genesis 7:11–12). The waters rise and then recede, and on the 17th day of the seventh month (or the 27th day in the Greek version) the ark rests on the mountains (Genesis 8:4). The waters continue to fall, the ark is uncovered on the 1st day of the 1st month of Noah's 601st year, and is opened on the 27th day of his 601st year (Genesis 8:13–14).

The period from the beginning of the flood to the landing on the mountain is five months (the second month to the seventh, Genesis 7:11 and 8:4) and 150 days (8:3), making an impossible five months of 30 days each; the number is schematic, and is based on the Babylonian astronomical calendar of 360 days (12 months of 30 days each). This means that the flood lasts 36 weeks according to the flood calendar, in which an extra day is added to every third month. The number of weeks is symbolically significant, representing the biblical cypher for destruction (the number 6, expressed as 6x6=36), while the number 7 (the number of days in a week) represents the persistence of creation during this time of destruction.

Scholars have long puzzled over the significance of the flood lasting one year and eleven days (day 17 of year 600 to day 27 of year 601); one solution is that the basic calendar is a lunar one of 354 days, to which eleven days have been added to match a solar year of 365 days.

The "original", Jahwist narrative of the Great Deluge was modest; a week of ostensibly non-celestial rain is followed by a forty-day flood which takes a mere week to recede in order to provide Noah his stage for God's covenant. It is the Priestly source which adds more fantastic figures of a 150-day flood, which emerged by divine hand from the heavens and earth and took ten months to finally stop. That the Jahwist source's capricious and somewhat simplistic depiction of Yahweh is clearly distinguished from the Priestly source's characteristically majestic, transcendental, and austere virtuous Yahweh.

The Priestly flood narrative is the only Priestly text that covers dates with much detail before the Exodus narrative. This is perhaps due to a version of the flood myth that was available at the time. There is a text discovered from Ugarit known as RS 94.2953, consisting of fourteen lines telling a first-person account of how Ea appeared to the story's protagonist and commanded him to use tools to make a window (aptu) at the top of the construction he was building, and how he implemented this directive and released a bird. Antoine Cavigneaux's translation of this text made him propose that this fragment belongs to a Mesopotamian flood myth, perhaps Atrahasis or Tablet IX of Gilgamesh, which has a version found in Ugarit (RS 22.421) that contains a first person account of the flood. If this suggestion is correct, then RS 94.2953 represents a unique version of the Mesopotamian flood story. Line 1 of the text says "At the start of the time of the disappearance of the moon, at the beginning of the month". This reference to the lunar date giving the specific date the protagonist released the bird is significant as it is the only variant of the flood story giving a specific date and the rest do not attribute specific dates or calendrical details to the various stages of the flood. Both RS 94.2953 and Genesis 8 are about the flood protagonist releasing a bird on a specific calendrical date in order to find land in the midst of the flood.

Theology: the flood and the creation narrative
The primeval history is first and foremost about the world God made, its origins, inhabitants, purposes, challenges, and failures. It asks why the world which God has made is so imperfect and of the meaning of human violence and evil, and its solutions involve the notions of covenant, law, and forgiveness. The Genesis creation narrative (Genesis 1–2) deals with God's creation and God's repentance is the rationale behind the flood narrative, and in the Priestly source (which runs through all of Genesis and into the other four books of the Torah) these two verbs, "create" and "forgive", are reserved exclusively for divine actions.

Intertextuality is the way biblical stories refer to and reflect one another. Such echoes are seldom coincidental—for instance, the word used for ark is the same used for the basket in which Moses is saved, implying a symmetry between the stories of two divinely chosen saviours in a world threatened by water and chaos. The most significant such echo is a reversal of the Genesis creation narrative; the division between the "waters above" and the "waters below" the earth is removed, the dry land is flooded, most life is destroyed, and only Noah and those with him survive to obey God's command to "be fruitful and multiply."

The flood is a reversal and renewal of God's creation of the world. In Genesis 1 God separates the "waters above the earth" from those below so that dry land can appear as a home for living things, but in the flood story the "windows of heaven" and "fountains of the deep" are opened so that the world is returned to the watery chaos of the time before creation. Even the sequence of flood events mimics that of creation, the flood first covering the earth to the highest mountains, then destroying, in order, birds, cattle, beasts, "swarming creatures", and finally mankind. (This parallels the Babylonian flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where at the end of rain "all of mankind had returned to clay," the substance of which they had been made.) The Ark itself is likewise a microcosm of Solomon's Temple.

Later traditions

Jewish
In Jewish folklore, the kind of water that was pouring to the earth for forty days is not common rainfall; rather, God bade each drop pass through Gehenna before it fell to earth, which 'hot rain' scalded the skin of the sinners. The punishment that overtook them was befitting their crime. As their sensual desires had made them hot, and inflamed them to immoral excesses, so they were chastised by means of heated water.

Christianity

The Genesis flood narrative is included in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible (see Books of the Bible). Jesus and the apostles additionally taught on the Genesis flood narrative in New Testament writing (, , , , 2 Peter 3:6, ). Some Christian biblical scholars suggest that the flood is a picture of salvation in Christ—the Ark was planned by God and there is only one way of salvation through the door of the Ark, akin to one way of salvation through Christ. Additionally, some scholars commenting on the teaching of the apostle Peter (), connect the Ark with the resurrection of Christ; the waters burying the old world but raising Noah to a new life. Christian scholars also highlight that 1 Peter 3:18–22 demonstrates the Genesis flood as a type to Christian baptism.

Gnosticism
In the 3rd century Gnostic codex now referred to as the Hypostasis of the Archons, it is the corrupt rulers (Archons) who decide to flood the world in order to dispose of most of mankind. However, Noah is spared and told to build an ark. But when his wife Norea wants to board the ark, Noah attempts to not let her, thus she uses her divine power to blow on the ark, causing it to be consumed by fire. Noah later builds the ark a second time. When the Archons try to seize Norea, she calls out to God for help, then the angel Eleleth appears and scares away the Archons, revealing to Norea that she is a divine child of the great spirit. A different view is found in the Secret Book of John; instead of an ark, Noah hides in a bright cloud.

Mandaeism
Mandaeism teaches that the flood of Noah was the last of three events where the world's population was reduced to a single family. Thirty generations after Adam, most of the population was killed by pestilence and war, leaving only Ram and his wife Rud. Twenty-five generations later, most of the population was killed by fire, leaving only Shurbai and his wife Shurhabil. Fifteen generations later, most of the population was killed by flood, leaving only Noah and Shem, in addition to the latter's wife Nuraitha.

Islam
The story of Noah and the Great Flood is related in the Qur'an in the surah Nūḥ.

Historicity
Academic scholars and researchers consider the story in its present form to be exaggerated and/or implausible. However, it is notable that the story of the Deluge describes either a severe genetic bottleneck event or the origins of a founder effect among the descendants of the survivors, in that the survivors are related. As yet, there is no evidence of such a severe genetic bottleneck at that period of time (~7000 years before the present day) either among humans or other animal species; however, if the flood narrative is derived from a more localized event and describes a founder effect among one population of humans, certain explanations such as the events described by the Black Sea deluge hypothesis may elaborate on the historicity of the flood narrative.

Evidence does exist for localized catastrophic flooding in the geological record: the Channeled Scablands in the southeastern areas of the state of Washington have been demonstrated to have been formed by a series of catastrophic floods originating from the collapse of glacial dams of glacial lakes in the region, the last of which has been estimated to have occurred between 18,200 and 14,000 years ago.

Another geologic feature believed to have been formed by massive catastrophic flooding is the Tsangpo Gorge in Tibet. As with the Channeled Scablands of the state of Washington, breakthroughs of glacial ice dams are believed to have unleashed massive and sudden torrents of water to form the gorge some time between 600 and 900 AD.

The current understanding of the prehistoric cataclysmic flooding from the Altai Mountains is that several glacial lake outburst floods from the Altai Mountains caused massive flooding along the Katun River (in the present-day Altai Republic) some time between 12000 BC and 9000 BC, as demonstrated by the fact that much of the gravel deposited along the Katun valley lacks a stratigraphic structure, instead showing characteristics of a deposition directly after suspension in a turbulent flow.

Flood geology

The development of scientific geology had a profound impact on attitudes towards the biblical flood narrative by undermining the biblical chronology, which placed the Creation and the flood no more than a few thousand years back in history. In 1823 the English theologian and natural scientist William Buckland interpreted geological phenomena as Reliquiæ Diluvianæ (relics of the flood) "Attesting the Action of an Universal Deluge". His views were supported by others at the time, including the influential geologist Adam Sedgwick, but by 1830 Sedgwick considered that the evidence suggested only local floods. Louis Agassiz subsequently explained such deposits as the results of glaciation.

In 1862, William Thomson (later to become Lord Kelvin) calculated the age of the Earth at between 24 million and 400 million years, and for the remainder of the 19th century, discussion focused not on the viability of this theory of deep time, but on the derivation of a more precise figure for the age of the Earth. Lux Mundi, an 1889 volume of theological essays which marks a stage in the acceptance of a more critical approach to scripture, took the stance that readers should rely on the gospels as completely historical, but should not take the earlier chapters of Genesis literally.
By a variety of independent means, scientists have determined that the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old.

Flood geology (a pseudoscience which contradicts a number of principles and discoveries of fact in the fields of geology, stratigraphy, geophysics, physics, paleontology, biology, anthropology, and archaeology in an attempt to interpret and reconcile geological features on Earth in accordance with a literal understanding of the Genesis flood narrative) can be traced to "Scriptural geologists," a heterogeneous group of writers from the early 19th century, most of whom lacked any background in geology and also lacked influence even in religious circles. The geologic views of these writers were ignored by the scientific community of their time.

Flood geology was largely ignored in the 19th century, but was revived in the 20th century by the Seventh-day Adventist George McCready Price, who was inspired by the visions of Ellen G. White. As Price's career progressed, he gained attention outside of Seventh-day Adventist groups, and by 1929 he was a popular scientific author among Christian fundamentalists, though those who were not Seventh-day Adventists rejected his young Earth theories. Through the middle of the 20th century, despite debates between Protestant Christian scientists, Flood geology maintained traction amongst evangelical Christian circles. Historian Ronald Numbers argues that an ideological connection by evangelical Christians wanting to challenge aspects of the scientific consensus that they believe contradict their interpretation of religious texts was first established by the publication of the 1961 book, The Genesis Flood.

Most scientific fields, particularly those contradicted by flood geology, rely on Charles Lyell's established principle of uniformitarianism, which for much of their history was seen to contrast with the catastrophism inherent in flood geology. However, with the discovery of evidence for some catastrophic events, events similar to those on which the flood narrative may be based are accepted as possible within an overall uniformitarian framework. In relation to geological forces, uniformitarianism explains the formation of the Earth's features by means of mostly slow-acting forces seen in operation today.

Species distribution
By the 17th century, believers in the Genesis account faced the issue of reconciling the exploration of the New World and increased awareness of the global distribution of species with the older scenario whereby all life had sprung from a single point of origin on the slopes of Mount Ararat. The obvious answer involved mankind spreading over the continents following the destruction of the Tower of Babel and taking animals along, yet some of the results seemed peculiar. In 1646 Sir Thomas Browne wondered why the natives of North America had taken rattlesnakes with them, but not horses: "How America abounded with Beasts of prey and noxious Animals, yet contained not in that necessary Creature, a Horse, is very strange".

Browne, among the first to question the notion of spontaneous generation, was a medical doctor and amateur scientist making this observation in passing. However, biblical scholars of the time, such as Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) and Athanasius Kircher (c. 1601–1680), had also begun to subject the Ark story to rigorous scrutiny as they attempted to harmonize the biblical account with the growing body of natural historical knowledge. The resulting hypotheses provided an important impetus to the study of the geographical distribution of plants and animals, and indirectly spurred the emergence of biogeography in the 18th century. Natural historians began to draw connections between climates and the animals and plants adapted to them. One influential theory held that the biblical Ararat was striped with varying climatic zones, and as climate changed, the associated animals moved as well, eventually spreading to repopulate the globe.

There was also the problem of an ever-expanding number of known species: for Kircher and earlier natural historians, there was little problem finding room for all known animal species in the Ark. Less than a century later, discoveries of new species made it increasingly difficult to justify a literal interpretation for the Ark story. By the middle of the 18th century only a few natural historians accepted a literal interpretation of the narrative.

See also

 Biblical cosmology
 Chronology of the Bible
 Documentary hypothesis
 Mosaic authorship
 Noach (parsha)
 Panbabylonism

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

Further reading

Primeval history
Comparative mythology
Flood myths
Mesopotamian myths
Noach (parashah)

Genesis flood narrative


A sex doll (also called love doll or blow up doll) is a sex toy. It has the size of a sexual partner, and should help with masturbation.

Basically, there are two variations:
 Inflatable dolls; they can be filled with air before use
 Those modelled after mannequins; more expensive, but more realistic.

The openings in sex dolls are often fitted with vibrators. Prices for sex dolls range from about ten euros for an inflatable one, to several thousand euros for models with realistic skin.

Sex dolls can be used to bridge a period of loneliness. When the love of sex dolls becomes a fetish, this is known as pygmalionism or [agalmatophilia]].

Dolls
Sex toys

Sex doll


Yitzhak "Itzik" Mordechai (, born 22 November 1944) is an Israeli former general and politician. He served as a member of the Knesset between 1996 and 2001, and as Minister of Defense and Minister of Transport. He retired from political life after being indicted for sexual assaults during his military service and later periods.

Biography
Mordechai was born in the town of Akre, Kurdistan Region, to a Kurdish Jewish family, and made aliyah to Israel in 1949. He holds a BA in history from Tel Aviv University and an MA in Political Science from the University of Haifa. He is a divorced father of three.

Military career
In 1962 he enlisted to the Combat Engineering Corps of the Israel Defense Forces and later joined the Paratroopers Brigade. He remained in the military as an officer after finishing his compulsory military service. He fought in the Six-Day War, War of Attrition, and Yom Kippur War. During the Yom Kippur War, he participated in the Battle of the Chinese Farm. He was decorated with the Medal of Courage for his actions during the Yom Kippur War. In 1984, in what became known as the Kav 300 affair, Mordechai, then a Brigadier General, was framed for the killing of two Palestinian bus hijackers. Mordechai was tried, and acquitted when the truth became known. He was promoted to the rank of Major-General in 1986, and became known as the "General of the Three Commands", after serving as commander of all three territorial commands (North, Center and South). The First Intifada broke out in December 1987, when Mordechai was commander of the Southern Command. As head of the Northern Command he presided over Operation Accountability in 1993. Mordechai retired from active service in 1995 after 33 years of service, when new Chief of General Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak did not appoint him as his deputy.

Mordechai continued to hold the rank of Major General in the reserves following his retirement. After he was convicted of sexual harassment and assault, a military tribunal ruled that he would retain the rank of Major General in spite of his conviction. Military Advocate General Avichai Mandelblit appealed the decision, arguing that he should be demoted, but the Military Court of Appeals ruled that he could keep his rank.

Political career

In 1995 Mordechai joined Likud and was on the party's list for the elections the following year. After Binyamin Netanyahu won the election for Prime Minister, he appointed Mordechai as Defense Minister, where he became Lipkin-Shahak's boss.

In 1999, a public rift occurred between Mordechai and Netanyahu because of political rivalry and difference of opinion regarding the negotiations with Palestinians. Netanyahu dismissed Mordechai shortly before Mordechai would have reportedly resigned. On 23 February 1999 Mordechai left Likud along with several other members to establish the new Israel in the Centre party. However, despite strong initial poll results, the party fared badly in the 1999 elections, winning only six seats. Nevertheless, the party joined Ehud Barak's new Labor-led government and Mordechai became Minister of Transport.

Mordechai resigned from his ministerial position in 2000 after being indicted for sexual misconduct. He resigned from the Knesset in 2001.

Sexual assault convictions
In March 2000, a secretary in Mordechai's office accused him of sexual harassment and assault. Other women subsequently came forward with accusations of sexual misconduct. Police opened a probe into the sexual misconduct alleged by his secretary and by two other women, one of whom accused him of assaulting her in 1996 when he was Defense Minister and another who alleged an incident in 1992 when he was head of the Northern Command. There were other allegations, but police did not probe them as the statute of limitations had expired. Mordechai's wife left him after the allegations surfaced. In April 2000, police recommended that he be charged with three counts of sexual assault. Mordechai was subsequently indicted and tried. In March 2001, he was convicted on two counts of sexual assault. The judges acquitted him of assaulting his secretary, whose allegations had prompted the investigation, over "inconsistencies" in her testimony, but stressed that this was not a repudiation of her claim. Mordechai received an 18-month suspended sentence.

Awards and decorations

See also
 List of Israeli public officials convicted of crimes or misdemeanors

References

External links

1944 births
Living people
Centre Party (Israel) politicians
Iraqi emigrants to Israel
Iraqi Jews
Israeli generals
Israeli government officials convicted of crimes
Israeli people of Iraqi-Jewish descent
Israeli people of Kurdish-Jewish descent
Israeli politicians convicted of crimes
Jewish Israeli politicians
Kurdish Jews
Leaders of political parties in Israel
Likud politicians
Members of the 14th Knesset (1996–1999)
Members of the 15th Knesset (1999–2003)
Ministers of Defense of Israel
Ministers of Transport of Israel
People from Nineveh Governorate
Politicians convicted of sex offences
Recipients of the Medal of Courage
Tel Aviv University alumni
University of Haifa alumni

Yitzhak Mordechai


Heinrich Bongartz PlM, HOH, IC (31 January 1892 – 23 January 1946), was a German World War I fighter pilot and flying ace credited with 33 confirmed victories and one unconfirmed. He also served as a night fighter commander in World War II.

Early life
Heinrich Bongartz was born in Gelsenkirchen, Westphalia, on 31 January 1892. In civilian life, Bongartz was a schoolteacher. He came to the German air service after enlisting in the 16th Infantry Regiment in August 1914, transferring to the 13th Infantry Regiment as a Sturmoffizier, and seeing action in the Battle of Verdun. He transferred to the Luftstreitkräfte (German Air Service) for pilot training with Flieger-Abteilung (Flier Detachment) 5 and was commissioned a Leutnant in March, 1916. Upon graduation, he was posted to a reconnaissance unit, Kampfgeschwader (Tactical Bomber Wing) 5. From there, he had a short lived tour with Kampfstaffel (Tactical Bomber Squadron) 27; a unit that was soon to be recast as Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron) 8. Bongartz was finally assigned to flying fighter aircraft with Royal Prussian Jagdstaffel 36 in April 1917.

Service as a fighter pilot

His initial success as a fighter pilot came during Bloody April, so  called such because of the severe losses suffered by the Royal Flying Corps. Bongartz contributed to the British bloodshed by claiming four victories during April—a Spad VII, a Caudron and a pair of observation balloons. He became an ace on 2 May.

Bongartz's third, fourth, and sixth through eighth solo victories came over balloons, and the remainder of his victories were over aircraft. He accrued victims at a steady rate when he scored, with a triple victory day on 31 October, and three days on which he shot down two enemy aircraft.

On 12 July 1917, he shot down number 11; by now his aerial gallantry had earned him both classes of the Iron Cross. The next day, Bongartz was wounded for the first time, the first of five wounds he would receive during the war. Possibly because of this wound, he did not score again until 26 September. Also in September 1917, he succeeded to command of Jasta 36. In October, he scored eight times, raising his count to 20. In November 1917, he was wounded again, but still managed to down another five enemy aircraft, with one more unconfirmed. On 24 November 1917, he was awarded the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern.

On 23 December 1917, he was personally awarded the Pour le Mérite by Kaiser Wilhelm II. With two victories in December, one in January, and two on 5 February 1918, he had run his total to 30 confirmed victories. His final two victories came on 27 March. On 30 March 1918, he was downed by anti-aircraft fire. He was injured, and his plane was damaged.

On 25 April 1918  he was wounded yet again. Nevertheless, on the 29th, he took on several Royal Air Force planes of No. 74 Squadron single-handed. Bongartz had none other than Captain Mick Mannock on his tail, while Captain C. B. Glynn made a head-on firing pass at the German ace. Among the bullets that riddled Bongartz's Fokker Dr.1 Triplane was one which hit him in the left temple, took out his left eye, and stuck in his nose, obstructing his breathing. He spun almost to the ground before mastering his pain and regaining control. Despite excruciating pain and semiconsciousness, he managed a crash landing near Kemmel Hill, but flipped his plane over. He crawled from under it and still had the presence of mind to check his aircraft's damage and to bow an introduction to his rescuers and introduce himself. One German infantryman rescuer noted the grotesquerie of the eyeball dangling down Bongartz's cheek during the bow. He commented about his wound, "Yes, yes, we all take our turn."

It was the end of the war for both Bongartz and his plane. His partial blinding and loss of depth perception, ended Bongartz's war but not his aviation career. The airplane, so badly shot about that it had 28 bullet holes in the cowling alone, was scrapped.

After he recovered from his wound, he became the commander of the Aircraft Test Center at Aldershof. While serving as test pilot there, he wrote a report on the Dornier-Zeppelin D.I fighter prototype, which was the first plane to use a stressed skin/torsion box structure. Bongartz's estimate of it was, "Doesn't possess characteristics of a modern fighter. Ailerons too heavy." Nevertheless, the engineering originated by Claudius Dornier is still in use today.

Between the wars
Once the war ended, he served as a postwar Director of the German Aeroplane Inspectorate. After helping deactivate the air service in which he had served so gallantly, he went on to fight against the Spartakists who were attempting to overthrow the German government. The leg wound he suffered in this fight finally ended his military career.

In January 1921, he crashed while flying an exhibition flight, and was injured once more, but did not let it stop him from flying.

Later in life, he became the Director of German Air Trade. His book Luftmacht Deutschland was published in 1941.

World War II and beyond
During World War II, he originally served as an Oberstleutnant in supply during 1941 to 1942 at Pleskau on the Eastern Front. 1943 found him as a night fighter commander at Grove in Denmark. In 1944, he transferred to command of night fighter efforts in Finland. He transferred once more, and served through war's end.

He survived World War II, only to die of a heart attack on 23 January 1946, while in Rheinberg.

Inline citations

References

 Franks, Norman; Bailey, Frank W.; Guest, Russell. Above the Lines: The Aces and Fighter Units of the German Air Service, Naval Air Service and Flanders Marine Corps, 1914–1918. Grub Street, 1993. , .

1892 births
1946 deaths
German World War I flying aces
Luftstreitkräfte personnel
Military personnel from Gelsenkirchen
Military personnel from the Province of Westphalia
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (military class)
Recipients of the Iron Cross (1914), 1st class

Heinrich Bongartz


Syfy (a paraphrased neology of former name Sci-Fi Channel, later shortened to Sci Fi; stylized as SYFY) is an American basic cable television channel, which is owned by the NBCUniversal Media Group division and business segment of Comcast's NBCUniversal. Launched on September 24, 1992, the channel broadcasts programming relating to the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres. As of January 2016, Syfy is available to 92.4 million households in America.

History
In 1989, in Boca Raton, Florida, communications attorneys and cable TV entrepreneurs Mitchell Rubenstein and his wife and business partner Laurie Silvers devised the concept for the Sci-Fi Channel, and signed up 8 of the top 10 cable TV operators as well as licensing exclusive rights to the British TV series Doctor Who (which shifted over from PBS to Sci-Fi Channel), Dark Shadows, and the cult series The Prisoner. In 1992, the channel was sold by Rubenstein and Silvers to USA Networks, then a joint venture between Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures. Rubenstein and Silvers became vice-chairs of USA Networks. The channel was seen as a natural fit with classic films and television series that both studios had in their vaults, including Universal's Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Rod Serling TV series Night Gallery, along with Paramount's Star Trek television series. Star Treks creator Gene Roddenberry and author Isaac Asimov were recruited by Rubenstein and Silvers to serve on the initial advisory board, but both Gene Roddenberry and Isaac Asimov had died by the time the channel finally launched on September 24, 1992. Rubenstein recalled: "The first thing that was on the screen was 'Dedicated to the memories of Isaac Asimov and Gene Roddenberry'." Leonard Nimoy was master of ceremonies at the channel's launch party, held at the Hayden Planetarium in Manhattan. Asimov's widow Janet and Roddenberry's widow Majel Barrett were both in attendance. The first program shown on the network was the film Star Wars.

In 1994, Paramount was sold to Viacom, followed by Seagram's purchase of a controlling stake in MCA (of which Universal was a subsidiary) from the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company the next year. In 1997, Viacom sold its stake in USA Networks to Universal, who spun off all its television assets to Barry Diller the next year into the new company Studios USA. Three years later, Diller would sell Studios USA back to Universal, by then a subsidiary of Vivendi SA (at the time known as Vivendi Universal). Vivendi's film and television production and cable television assets were then merged with General Electric's NBC to form NBC Universal in 2004. In 2010, Comcast purchased Syfy's parent company NBCUniversal. Comcast was one of the original cable TV operators to carry the channel.

A high definition version of the channel launched on October 3, 2007, on DirecTV. In 2013, Syfy was given the James Randi Educational Foundation's Pigasus Award for what was described as questionable reality programming involving paranormal subjects.

Branding history

From 1992 to 1999, the network's first logo consisted of a planet with a ring, made to look like Saturn, with "SCI-FI CHANNEL" written on it. The network's second logo, which was used from 1999 to 2002, dropped the hyphen and the word "CHANNEL" from the name. The network's third and final "ringed planet" logo ran from 2002 to 2009, and was designed by Lambie-Nairn. The logo made its debut on December 2, 2002, with the launch of the Steven Spielberg miniseries Taken. The network also launched a new image campaign with the tagline "If", which expresses the limitless possibilities of the imagination. Identification bumps depicted surreal situations such as a baby breathing fire, as well as a woman in a stately sitting room kissing a bug-eyed, big-eared animal.

On March 16, 2009, NBCUniversal announced that Sci Fi was rebranding as "Syfy". Network officials also noted that, unlike the generic term "sci fi", which represents the entire genre, the term "Syfy" as a sensational spelling can be protected by trademark and therefore would be easier to market on other goods or services without fear of confusion with other companies' products. The only significant previous use of the term "Syfy" in relation to science fiction was by the website SyFy Portal, which became Airlock Alpha after selling the brand to an unnamed company in February 2009.

The name change was greeted with initial negativity, with people deliberately mispronouncing "Syfy" as   or   to make fun of the name change. The parody news anchor Stephen Colbert made fun of the name change on The Colbert Report by giving the channel a "Tip of the Hat" for "spelling the name the way it's pronounced" and noting that "the tide is turning in my long fought battle against the insidious 'soft C. The new name took effect on July 7, 2009. Syfy has since added reality shows and edged further from strictly science fiction, fantasy and horror programming.

The rebranding efforts at NBC Universal's Sci Fi Channels worldwide resulted in most rebranding as "Syfy" or "Syfy Universal"; however, over one-third of the channels did not take on "Syfy" as any part of their names: channels in Japan and the Philippines rebranded to or were replaced by Universal Channel, while each of the channels in Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia would become Sci Fi Universal. In Polish, "Syfy" does not suggest imagination or science fiction, but rather something gross, without value or even syphilis. In Australia, NBCUniversal was a partner in SF alongside Foxtel, CBS Studios International and Sony Pictures Television; after the channel shut down in 2013, NBCUniversal launched a local version of Syfy in 2014.

On May 11, 2017, in honor of the network's upcoming 25th anniversary, Syfy unveiled a major rebranding that took effect on-air June 19. The new branding was intended to re-position the channel back towards targeting fans of the fantasy and sci-fi genres. Network head Chris McCumber explained that the network's goal was to "put fans at the center of everything we do", and explained a stacked, square-shaped form of the logo as being akin to a "badge". Syfy also planned to place a larger focus on its genre news division Syfy Wire, disclosing the possibility of extending the website to television as well.

Programming

Syfy's original programming includes made-for-cable movies, miniseries, and television series. Under NBCUniversal ownership, the channel has expanded into general-interest programming outside of the sci-fi genre to target a more mainstream audience. Such programming has included crime dramas, WCG Ultimate Gamer, and professional wrestling from WWE (including ECW, NXT, and SmackDown).

Syfy has been used for overflow sports and sports entertainment programming from its sister networks. It has participated in NBC Sports' "Championship Sunday" effort to broadcast all matches on the final matchday of the Premier League soccer season across NBCUniversal cable networks. In February 2022, WWE Raw and NXT aired on Syfy for two weeks due to USA Network's broadcasts of the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Animation
During its early years, Syfy aired anime films and original video animations. On June 11, 2007, the channel launched a weekly two-hour programming block called "Ani-Monday", featuring English dubs of various anime series licensed by Manga Entertainment. During February 2008, the channel also aired anime on Tuesday nights in a second programming block. In July 2009, Syfy announced that they had renewed and expanded their licensing agreement with Manga Entertainment to add a two-hour block of horror anime (also called "Ani-Monday") to sister channel Chiller. Syfy's anime block was later moved to Thursday nights, starting March 14, 2011, where it remained until all anime programming was dropped on June 9, 2011.

On April 20, 2019, Syfy launched a new late night adult animation block called TZGZ which aired until March 13, 2021.

In October 2020, Syfy aired Monster House as part of their 31 Days of Halloween event.

Syfy original films

Sci Fi Pictures original films are independently-made B-movies with production budgets of $1 million to $2 million each. The initiative was spearheaded by Thomas Vitale in 2001, and was managed by Vitale, Chris Regina, and Ray Cannella, with the later additions of Karen O'Hara and Macy Lao. Syfy is also one of the sponsors for the Coalition for Freedom of Information.

Media

Websites and divisions

Syfy.com
Syfy's website launched in 1995, under the name The Dominion (though using scifi.com in its URL); it changed to SciFi.com in 2000. The site has won a Webby Award and a Flash Forward Award.

From 2000 to 2005, SciFi.com published original science fiction short stories in a section called "Sci Fiction", edited by Ellen Datlow, who won a 2005 Hugo Award for her work there. The stories themselves won a World Fantasy Award, the first Theodore Sturgeon Award for online fiction (for Lucius Shepard's novella "Over Yonder"), and four of the Science Fiction Writers of America's Nebula Awards, including the first for original online fiction (for Linda Nagata's novella "Goddesses").

On April 22, 2006, the site launched Sci Fi Pedia, a commercial wiki on topics including anime, comics, fandom, fantasy, games, horror, science fiction, toys, UFOs, genre-related art and audio, and the paranormal. In 2009, Sci Fi Pedia was shut down without explanation.

As part of the channel's rebranding in 2009, the URLand the site's namewas changed to Syfy.com. As of 2010, Syfy.com began to contain webisode series including Riese: Kingdom Falling (as of October 26, 2010), The Mercury Men (as of July 25, 2011), and Nuclear Family (as of October 15, 2012).

SyfyGames
SyfyGames.com is an online games portal which offers free-to-play MMO and casual games. The site features predominantly sci-fi and fantasy games from third-party developers. In April 2015, the News section of SyfyGames.com was rebranded to feature "news from G4".

In 2010, Syfy Games signed a deal with the now defunct publisher THQ to co-produce De Blob 2. Syfy Games would also co-produce Red Faction: Armageddon.

Syfy Wire
Syfy Wire (formerly Sci-Fi Wire and Blastr) is a website operated by Syfy featuring coverage of news in the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres. The site was rebranded in 2010 as Blastr, with the addition of feature articles, guest columnists (such as Phil Plait), popular science news and coverage, and video content. In December 2016, Blastr rebranded as Syfy Wire; editor-in-chief Adam Swiderski stated that this change was to closer associate the website with the Syfy television channel.

As of March 2018, Syfy Wire releases five regular podcasts, including two recap series following The Expanse and the final season of Colony, as well as The Fandom Files, which features interviews with public figures about their pop culture obsessions. Guests have included Leland Chee and Mike Daniels of the Green Bay Packers.

Periodicals

Sci Fi magazine
Sci Fi magazine was first published in June 1994, as Sci-Fi Entertainment, with the additional description "The Official Magazine of the Sci-Fi Channel" on the cover. The publisher from Volume 1, Issue 1, was Mark Hintz, with Carl A. Gnam Jr. as editorial director and Ted Klein as editor. Scott Edelman took over as editor with the December 1996 issue, holding that position until leaving after the June 2000 issue, by which point the magazine's name had already been shortened to Sci Fi, in keeping with the channel's name change to Sci Fi in 1999; Scott Edelman returned to be editor of the channel's online magazine, Science Fiction Weekly, moving back to editor of Sci Fi in February 2002. The magazine was published by Sovereign Media Co, based in Herndon, Virginia. As of October 2023, the magazine is still described at the Sovereign Media website, but the link to the publication is no longer active there, and no link is available at the Syfy.com site; the last functioning archived link from the Syfy.com page is for the issue available in October 2014.

Science Fiction Weekly
Science Fiction Weekly was an online magazine started on August 15, 1995, and edited by Craig Engler and Brooks Peck. In April 1996, it began appearing exclusively on "The Dominion" as part of a partnership with the site, before being sold to the Sci Fi Channel completely in 1999. The publication covered various aspects of science fiction, including news, reviews, original art, and interviews, until it merged with Sci-Fi Wire in January 2009.

See also

 CTV Sci-Fi Channel, a similar Canadian channel
 NBCUniversal International Networks
 Showcase (Canadian TV channel), produced a number of original series that were broadcast on Syfy

Notes

References

External links

 Syfy Games

  The story of a failed Sci Fi Channel venture.

1992 establishments in New York City
English-language television stations in the United States
Former Viacom subsidiaries
NBCUniversal networks
Television channels and stations established in 1992
Television networks in the United States

Syfy


High fantasy is a sub-genre of fantasy fiction. It is also called epic fantasy. High fantasy is normally set in fictional universes. These universes are created for the story or stories. High fantasy is not set in the real world.

Examples of high fantasy include The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) by George R. R. Martin, the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett and The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.

Fantasy
Fictional universes

High fantasy


John Tipton (August 15, 1730 – August 9, 1813) was an American frontiersman and statesman who was active in the early development of the state of Tennessee.  He is best remembered for leading the opposition to the State of Franklin movement in the 1780s, as well as for his rivalry with Franklinite leader John Sevier.  He served in the legislatures of Virginia, North Carolina, the Southwest Territory, and Tennessee, and was a delegate to Tennessee's 1796 constitutional convention. Tipton's homestead still stands and is managed as the Tipton-Haynes State Historic Site.

Early life

John Tipton was born in 1730 in Baltimore County, Maryland, one of eight children of Jonathan Tipton, a farmer, and Elizabeth (Edwards) Tipton. His ancestors hailed from England, and his paternal grandfather migrated to Maryland from Jamaica. In 1747, his family moved to the Shenandoah Valley, then on Virginia's western frontier.

Tipton married Mary Butler in 1751, and they had nine sons: Samuel, Benjamin, Abraham, William, Isaac, Jacob, John, Thomas and Jonathan. By the late 1750s, Tipton as a young man owned a  farm along the Shenandoah River in Frederick County, where he raised crops and livestock, and produced whiskey. In 1761, he supported George Washington's campaign for the House of Burgesses.

When Dunmore County (modern Shenandoah County) was created from Frederick in 1772, Tipton was appointed justice of the peace in the new county by Governor Lord Dunmore. In June 1774, Tipton was elected to the county's Committee of Safety and helped craft the Woodstock Resolutions, which denounced the British Crown's actions in closing the port of Boston. He was also elected to the county's seat in the House of Burgesses. During Dunmore's War later that year, Tipton served as a captain under Andrew Lewis and saw action at the Battle of Point Pleasant in October.

In the spring of 1776, Tipton, who had aligned with the growing Patriot cause, represented Dunmore County at the Virginia Conventions.  He was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates that year, where he served from 1776 to 1777, and from 1778 to 1781.  In 1777, he was reappointed justice of the peace by Governor Patrick Henry. Two years later, he was appointed recruiting officer for the Continental Army's Virginia line. In 1780, he was appointed Commissioner of the Provision of Law by Governor Thomas Jefferson.  As principal officer of the Shenandoah militia during the war, he obtained the title of colonel.

During the course of the American Revolution, Tipton suffered a number of personal tragedies. His wife, Mary, died in 1776 while giving birth. He married a widow, Martha (Denton) Moore. His son, Abraham, was killed while fighting under George Rogers Clark. When Tipton and his second wife had a son together, they named him Abraham, for the son who had died. His son, William, was badly wounded during the Siege of Savannah.

State of Franklin

In the 1770s, Tipton's brothers Jonathan and Joseph, along with their aging father, moved to the Tennessee frontier, which at the time was controlled by a fledgling government known as the Watauga Association. Jonathan Tipton (frequently confused with John Tipton by historians) signed the Watauga Petition in 1776 and fought at the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780. John Tipton followed his brothers to Watauga in 1783 and purchased what is now known as the Tipton-Haynes site in May 1784.

In June 1784, North Carolina ceded its lands west of the Appalachian Mountains (i.e., modern Tennessee) to the Continental Congress. Though the North Carolina legislature rescinded this cession in October, a movement to form a new state (eventually known as the State of Franklin) had already developed and had called for a convention to meet in December. At this convention, a resolution was introduced to move forward with the formation of a new state. Tipton voted against the resolution, but it passed, 28 to 15.

The supporters of the State of Franklin elected John Sevier as governor of the proposed state. Tennessee residents who sought to remain with North Carolina threw their support behind Tipton, electing him to Washington County's seat in the North Carolina Senate in 1786. The Franklinites and loyalists (the latter sometimes called "Tiptonites") set up parallel governments that gradually grew hostile to one another. They raided each other's courthouses and seized each other's court documents. At one point, Tipton and Sevier scuffled in the streets of Jonesborough.

The rivalry between Sevier and Tipton climaxed in late February 1788 in an incident known as the "Battle of Franklin". While Sevier was away campaigning against the Cherokee, Tipton ordered some of Sevier's slaves to be seized for taxes supposedly owed to North Carolina. When Sevier learned of what had occurred, he led around 150 militia to Tipton's farm and demanded he return the slaves. Tipton refused, and gunfire was briefly exchanged as Sevier's forces surrounded Tipton's house. Two days after the siege began, a Sullivan County militia loyal to North Carolina arrived on the scene and scattered Sevier's forces. Two of Sevier's sons were captured, and Tipton initially demanded they be hanged. He was persuaded to release them. Following this engagement, the State of Franklin movement largely collapsed.

Tipton attended North Carolina's Hillsboro Convention in March 1788, where he voted against the state's ratification of the newly proposed United States Constitution, arguing the document lacked a Bill of Rights. He was reelected to the state senate later that year.

In July 1788, Governor Samuel Johnston issued a warrant for Sevier's arrest. In October, Sevier was involved in a melee in Jonesborough, and Tipton was notified that he was staying in the home of Mrs. Jacob Brown. Tipton formed a posse and surrounded the Brown home. Mrs. Jacob Brown sat down in the doorway to prevent Tipton from entering, while Sevier stepped out through a side door and surrendered to a more amiable loyalist, Colonel Robert Love. Tipton sent Sevier to North Carolina to stand trial for treason. Upon his arrival in Morganton, however, he was promptly released.

Southwest Territory and Tennessee

In November 1789, North Carolina ratified the U.S. Constitution and passed a second cession act in December, ceding its trans-Appalachian lands to the new U.S. government.  The U.S. government organized the new lands into the Southwest Territory, and William Blount was appointed governor of the new territory.

Upon his arrival in East Tennessee, Blount sought to end the feud between Tipton and Sevier.  He initially offered Tipton a position as justice of the peace, but Tipton turned it down.  In March 1792, Blount visited Tipton's home and personally convinced him to curtail his enmity toward Sevier.  In Blount's presence, Tipton burned a petition that had been circulating to discredit Sevier.

In 1794, Tipton was elected to the territorial legislature, where he served on the Committee for Petitions and Grievances alongside James White and William Cocke.  In 1796, Tipton was a delegate from Washington County to the state constitutional convention, which crafted Tennessee's first constitution.  That same year, he was elected to the Tennessee Senate, in which he served until 1799.  He aligned with rising politician Andrew Jackson and tried to help Jackson and Governor Archibald Roane prove land fraud accusations against Sevier in 1803.

In 1795 and 1796, French botanist André Michaux stayed with Tipton while on a trip to study new plant species on the Appalachian frontier.  Tipton spent his later years at his home in Washington County, where he farmed and bred racehorses.  He died in August 1813 and was buried in a family plot on his farm.

Family and legacy

Tipton's eldest son, Samuel (1752–1833), is considered the founder of Elizabethton, Tennessee. He deeded the land on which the city was founded in the 1790s as Tiptonville. Tipton's son, Jacob (1765–1791), was killed at St. Clair's Defeat in 1791. He was the second son to die in war. Tipton County, Tennessee, is named in Jacob's honor.

In the early 19th century, Tipton's son, William (1761–1849), known as "Fighting Billy," acquired much of the land in Cades Cove, in the Great Smoky Mountains.  Tipton's in-law, Joshua Jobe, convinced John Oliver to become the Cove's first white settler in 1818.  The Tipton Place, built by Tipton's descendants in the 1880s, still stands along the Cades Cove Loop Road.

Tipton's great-nephew, John Tipton (1786–1839), fought at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. He was elected by the Indiana state legislature as a U.S. senator in the 1830s. He was a great-grandson of Tipton's uncle, William (1696–1726). Tipton County, Indiana; Tipton, Indiana, and Tipton, Iowa, are all named for him.

Tipton's farm, the Tipton-Haynes Place in Johnson City, is now designated as a state historic site. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. When the state acquired the farm in 1945, historian Samuel Cole Williams spoke at its dedication.

For years after Tipton's death, the leader was criticized by historians, most of whom held favorable views of his rival, Sevier. Sevier's early biographer, James B. Gilmore, was particularly hostile toward Tipton, and historian James Phelan, in his 1888 History of Tennessee, describes Tipton as a temperamental and jealous individual who "lacked intellectual force." Later historians, among them Theodore Roosevelt (Winning of the West), gave more nuanced accounts of the Tipton-Sevier feud.

References

External links
Tipton-Haynes State Historic Site

1730 births
1813 deaths
People from Baltimore County, Maryland
People from Washington County, Tennessee
House of Burgesses members
Members of the Virginia House of Delegates
Tennessee state senators
North Carolina state senators
Members of the Southwest Territorial Legislature
People of pre-statehood Tennessee
People from the State of Franklin
People of Virginia in the American Revolution
People in Dunmore's War
People from Johnson City, Tennessee

John Tipton (Tennessee frontiersman)


In Greek mythology, Halitherses  (Ἁλιθέρσης), son of Mastor, was an Ithacan prophet who warned the suitors of Penelope after interpreting the symbols that Zeus sent to "be wise in time, and put a stop to this wickedness before he comes." The suitors do not heed Halitherses' warning. After the suitors all die, Halitherses warns the suitors' families against action against Odysseus, saying they will bring evil on their heads for this action against the gods' will. Only half of them listen. The suitors' go on to try to kill Odysseus' family, but they are thwarted by the goddess Athena. Halitherses was one of Odysseus' dear friends back in Ithaca, along with Mentor. Both Halitherses and Mentor tried to stop the suitors, but were unable to. However, Penelope remained faithful to Odysseus.

See also
 The Odyssey

Note

References
Homer, The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. . Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.

Characters in the Odyssey
Mythological Greek seers

Halitherses


Elassoma is a genus of freshwater fish, the only member of subfamily Elassomatinae of the sunfish family Centrarchidae in the order Perciformes. It is sometimes classified as a separate family, the Elassomatidae, in a monotypic suborder, Elassomatoidei, in Perciformes.  The type species is E. zonatum, the banded pygmy sunfish. The Elassomatinae are known collectively as pygmy sunfishes, but are considered by some authorities not to be true sunfishes, which are members of family Centrarchidae. Some researchers believe they are related to sticklebacks and pipefishes (order Syngnathiformes) rather than Perciformes, though genetic research strongly implies a close relationship with the centrarchids. Currently the Integrated Taxonomic Information System classifies them in the family Elassomatidae rather than Centrarchidae.

The pygmy sunfishes grow to a maximum overall length of . They occur mostly in temperate and subtropical swamps, marshes, and other shallow, slow-moving, and heavily vegetated waters, across an area of the American South stretching from the Coastal Plain of North Carolina to central Florida, west along the Gulf Coast to eastern Texas, and north up the Mississippi River Valley to southern Illinois. The bluebarred, Carolina, and spring pygmy sunfishes have small localized populations and are considered Vulnerable.

The pygmy sunfishes are too small to be game fish, but are relatively popular as aquarium fish because of the males' iridescent colors and fascinating breeding behaviors. Eggs are laid on or beneath dense vegetation, and the male guards the nest area until the fry hatch and scatter. They adapt well to small aquaria and are relatively adaptable to a range of conditions, but seldom take conventional prepared fish foods, instead requiring small live worms, insects, or crustaceans as food.

Etymology
The generic name Elassoma derives from the Greek ελάσσων (elasson) meaning smaller and σώμα (soma) meaning body, in reference to the fishes' diminutive size compared to the typical sunfishes.

Species
The currently recognized species in this genus are:
 Elassoma alabamae Mayden, 1993 (spring pygmy sunfish)
 Elassoma boehlkei Rohde & R. G. Arndt, 1987 (Carolina pygmy sunfish)
 Elassoma evergladei D. S. Jordan, 1884 (Everglades pygmy sunfish)
 Elassoma gilberti Snelson, Krabbenhoft & Quattro, 2009 (Gulf Coast pygmy sunfish)
 Elassoma okatie Rohde & R. G. Arndt, 1987 (bluebarred pygmy sunfish)
 Elassoma okefenokee J. E. Böhlke, 1956 (Okefenokee pygmy sunfish)
 Elassoma zonatum D. S. Jordan, 1877 (banded pygmy sunfish)

See also
 List of fish families

References

Other sources
North American Native Fishes Association (NANFA) Elassoma forum  Pygmy Sunfishes - NANFA Forum
Duzen, Bill. "The Pygmy Sunfish." The Native Fish Conservancy Website.

Elassomatoidei
Centrarchidae
Fauna of the Southeastern United States
Taxa named by David Starr Jordan

Pygmy sunfish


Per Degaton is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. He is a known time-traveling villain who is a recurring enemy of the Justice Society of America.

A young version of the character was portrayed by Cory Grüter-Andrew on the first season of Legends of Tomorrow, while an unknown actor portrayed his older self.

Publication history
Per Degaton made his first appearance in All Star Comics #35 (June/July 1947) and was created by John Broome and Irwin Hasen.

Per Degaton was one of the six original members of the Injustice Society, who began battling the Justice Society of America in All Star Comics #37 (October 1947).

Fictional character biography

Pre-Crisis
Per Degaton has been obsessed with time travel ever since he was an assistant to the Time Trust, a group of scientists developing a time ray to go to the future and acquire an effective bombing defense for use during World War II. In 1941, the Justice Society of America is sent 500 years into the future to retrieve a formula that produces a bomb-proof shield. In a fit of jealousy, Per Degaton sabotages the formula, causing it to fail its second test, and leaves the Time Trust soon after.

By 1947 Degaton is assisting Professor Malachi Zee, a former member of the Time Trust who is developing a time machine. Degaton plans to take the machine for himself and shoots Zee. Several times Degaton tries without success to alter the course of history for his own benefit, including thwarting the course of historical events like the Battle of Arbela between Greece and Persia in 331 B.C., thus halting technological development and allowing him and his henchmen to conquer an America of ancient technologies with modern weapons which he had left in specially-prepared caves, safe from the alterations to the time stream. The JSA stop various plans by Degaton and history reverts to normal, with everyone losing the memory of these events, due to time paradoxes inherent in Zee's time machine. The story closes with Professor Zee in his lab with Per Degaton, who seems to remember some foolishness about him dreaming that he ruled the world. The JSA is able to learn of their own success through Wonder Woman's magic sphere.

Degaton's memory returns and, after again killing Zee, he attempts to change the circumstances of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Degaton tries to stop the JSA with the help of villains he has pulled back in time: the Monster, King Bee, Professor Zodiak, Sky Pirate, Solomon Grundy and Wotan, who imprisons the JSA in a magical aura. However, the All-Star Squadron get involved, and stop his attack on San Francisco. When Degaton tries to destroy the island where the JSA are imprisoned, the Spectre is released, who frees the other members, after which Degaton returns the villains to their own time periods and returns himself to 1947, again losing his memory of the events. The heroes likewise lose the memory of Degaton's involvement.

Shortly thereafter, Degaton remembers all prior attempts through a dream that happens the night before Zee tests the time-machine. Again killing Zee, Degaton attempts to acquire weapons and technology from the future to conquer the world of the 1940s, but discovers he can travel between alternate Earths after accidentally traveling to Earth Prime and then to the Limbo between universes, where he gets the Crime Syndicate of America (formerly of Earth-Three), to steal nuclear missiles from Earth-Prime's Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, which he brings to Earth-Two's 1942. They once again fight the JLA, the JSA, and the 1942 All-Star Squadron, but the combined forces of these heroes are enough to defeat Degaton. With his changes undone, he is again returned to 1947 with no memory of the events, while everyone else involved likewise lose their memories of events, and are returned to their proper times/worlds.

Once again, Degaton's memories eventually return and he attempts to kill Zee and steal the time machine. This time, however, Zee unexpectedly falls into the time machine, sending him 40 years into the future, where he will arrive on his 100th birthday. Degaton realizes that he simply must wait until the machine returns. Degaton begins a short career as an evil para-military commander and joins the Injustice Society of the World (ISW). Eventually, the ISW is defeated by the JSA and Degaton is sent to prison for 30 years.

After his release, Degaton roams the streets as a derelict until his old ally Brain Wave finds him homeless and in very poor health. Brain Wave decides to restore his vitality and create new bodies for himself and Degaton. Under cover of a series of natural disasters that he causes, Brain Wave uses a machine to sap the Justice Society's willpower and divert it to power Degaton's new body. After being defeated by the JSA, Degaton returns to prison (back in his original body), but is paroled ten years later due to advanced age, thanks to the intervention of Bruce Wayne.

Taking advantage of the revelation of "Batman's Diary", a document that supposedly convicted the Justice Society of treason, Degaton uses his remaining influence to attempt to indict the group in Congressional sub-committee. Degaton recognizes that this is likely his last chance to defeat his old enemies, since the return of Zee's time machine is close at hand. As the Congressional sub-committee becomes less and less convinced by evidence against the JSA, Degaton kidnaps Richard Grayson, Earth-2's Robin, and waits at the spot where the time machine should appear. It is revealed the diary was Batman's subliminal attempt to warn the Society about Degaton. The JSA, in pursuit of the captive Grayson, catch up to Degaton. The time machine re-appears and Zee staggers out, accusing Degaton of murder with his final breath. Surrounded by witnesses and facing prison for a 40-year-old murder charge at his advanced age, Degaton places the gun to his temple and fatally shoots himself.

Post-Crisis
Due to the events of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Per Degaton, following his stint with the Time Trust, is employed at another secret scientific group, Project M. During this time he meets the time traveling robot Mekanique, who enlists his aid in her war against the All-Star Squadron. In exchange for his help, Mekanique promises to give him the secrets of time travel. They fail in their attack on the All-Stars, and Mekanique's body is destroyed, but Degaton salvages her head. He keeps her head by his side for the next five years, and they fall in love.

By 1947 Degaton is assisting Professor Malachi Zee who, with Degaton and Mekanique's help, finishes a time machine. Degaton plans to take the machine for himself and shoots Zee, who falls into the machine, sending him 40 years into the future. Mekanique suggests that the two of them simply wait four decades for the machine to reappear, but this idea drives Degaton into a lunatic rage. He buries Mekanique's head, and makes new plans for himself.

Frustrated for being unable to harm the JSA, Degaton uses his time-traveling abilities to "watch life hurting [his enemies]". Sequentially confronting the JSA members, he tells them that he saw them die, and reveals some hints on their final moments. Now equipped with a time disc, Degaton has the ability to live "between seconds", apparently ageless in an intangible state, which he can only be removed from with the concentrated tachyons found in the hourglass of Hourman.

He mounts a new attack on the JSA after Rick Tyler changes history to save his father from his death at the hands of Extant, the change of history creating a weakness in the timestream that Degaton can use to mount an attack. He makes arrangements to ensure that the JSA's temporary 1950s dissolution would become permanent before setting up an attack on the White House that would culminate in the Atom 'self-destructing', reasoning that the death of President Truman due to a costumed hero would disgrace all masked crime-fighters and leave them branded as traitors, thus erasing from history all subsequent superheroes. Degaton is eventually stopped by an alliance of the 1950s JSA and the early-2000s JSA. The timeline is restored so that his changes never occurred.  However, Degaton retreats into the time-stream with his memories intact rather than being forced back to 1947 with his memories wiped, renewing his commitment to watching his enemies' deaths across time.

Following his release from prison, Degaton reconstructs Mekanique, and the pair battle Infinity, Inc., at the site where Zee's time machine is to arrive. When it reappears, it contains not only the dying Zee but a 1947 version of Degaton himself. It is revealed that when Degaton lunged at the disappearing machine in 1947, the machine's energies created two Degatons, one who lives a normal life and one who is carried along with the time machine. The older Degaton disintegrates instantly due to the paradoxical existence of two Degatons at one moment. Mekanique kills the younger Degaton as well as herself, fearing this Degaton would end up betraying her once more.

Degaton returns briefly in Justice League of America and then in Booster Gold as part of a team with the Ultra-Humanite, Despero, Supernova, and Black Beetle, who have formed "The Time Stealers", a supervillain group that appears to be manipulating the timestream to their advantage. This version of Per Degaton, along with Ultra-Humanite and Despero, is from an earlier period in the timeline, pulled from their respective moments in time by Black Beetle and returned in the Time Masters: Vanishing Point limited series.

Later an older version of Degaton appears, calling himself Prime Degaton, who seems to have been present during the earlier plans of Per Degaton. He tells his younger self that by combining all of his infinite selves across the time lines, he will become omnipotent, but that will require his younger selves to cease to exist. When the Justice Society make Monument Point their new base, he appears with greater power over time and battles them, warning Jesse Quick about the villain D'arken, a fallen god.

In 2016, DC Comics implemented another relaunch of its books called "DC Rebirth", which restored its continuity to a form much as it was prior to "The New 52". Per Degaton appears as a member of the Cabal alongside Amazo, Doctor Psycho, Hugo Strange, Queen Bee, and Teel.

Per Degaton was seen as a member of the Injustice Society when Hawkman and Hawkgirl recount their time in the 1940s when the Justice Society fought the Injustice Society. Hawkman faced off against Per Degaton. After Brain Wave unleashes a powerful psychic attack that knocks everyone down, Per Degaton and Vandal Savage prepare to finish off Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Hawkman and Hawkgirl throw their maces enough for them to collide. This enables the Justice Society to turn the tables against the Injustice Society.

In the pages of "The New Golden Age", Per Degaton was seen in an alternate timeline as he is glimpsed by a younger Helena Wayne. During that time, she referred to him as the "Stranger". After Batman was murdered and Helena became Huntress, she and her makeshift Justice Society of America group had their encounter with Per Degaton. He proceeds to murder Power Girl, Solomon Grundy, Gentleman Ghost, Harlequin's Son, Icicle II, Mist, and Red Lantern II in different ways until only Huntress remains. Catwoman arrives where she buys Huntress time to escape to an earlier time period and save the Justice Society of America. When Catwoman recognizes Per Degaton, he states that the snow globe in his daughter's possession is disrupting his ritual to make sure the Justice Society of America dies as he proceeds to kill Catwoman. In 1944, Easy Company raided the laboratory that Per Degaton was doing experiments on the local villagers in. The experiment threw Per Degaton to 1947 where he continued his experiments until he was stopped by the Justice Society of America. Per Degaton later arrives at the Justice Society of America's brownstone in the present where he is prepared to kill the Justice Society of America. As Per Degaton counters the attacks of Green Lantern, Flash, and Jakeem Thunder and Johnny Thunderbolt, he prepares to use his Kryptonite ring on Power Girl until Huntress shoots off the finger that had the Kryptonite ring. This caused Power Girl to attack him enough to retreat. Back in 1947, Per Degaton is confronted by an older version of himself who states that Huntress is the blind spot. Per Degaton arrives with various versions of himself throughout time as they attack Huntress, the JSA, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, Detective Chimp, and Batman. When Doctor Fate grabs the snow globe, he ends up summoning different versions of the JSA from the past, Huntress' future, and beyond. It took the different Doctor Fates to trap Per Degaton in the snow globe where he finds himself trapped in the Flashpoint reality. Once that was done, the other Per Degatons and the different JSA line-ups throughout time disappear back to their own time.

Powers and abilities
Per Degaton is skilled at armed combat and hand-to-hand combat. He is also a skilled tactician, possesses genius-level intellect, can become intangible, and is seemingly immortal.

Per Degaton possesses a limited "Time Vision", allowing him to know what will happen in the near future. He is out of phase with normal time, which renders him intangible. Hourman's tachyon-filled hourglass has been shown to blur his time vision and allow anyone possessing it to hit Degaton. He is also aware of changes to the timestream and has made mention of remembering events from before Crisis on Infinite Earths. However, it is unclear whether these are innate abilities Degaton acquired or if they are the result of his time disc.

Equipment
Per Degaton travels on a "time disc", a machine that allows him to travel through time as well as having fail-safes to return time to normal should his plans fail. He also uses small time discs which can speed up metabolism by variable amounts.

In other media

Animation
Per Degaton appears in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "The Golden Age of Justice!", voiced by Clancy Brown. This version participated in World War II, but vanished into an antimatter dimension after attempting to use the Spear of Destiny, which had been damaged by Black Canary. In the present day, Degaton's assistant Professor Zee revives him and he fights the Justice Society of America, but is defeated when the Spear backfires, turning him into an old man while Professor Zee is reduced to a baby.

Arrowverse
Per Degaton appears in Legends of Tomorrow, with his younger self portrayed by Cory Grüter-Andrew and his older self portrayed by an uncredited actor. This version is from Kasnia in the year 2133, and was manipulated by Vandal Savage into becoming a dictator who is ultimately blamed for Savage's act of unleashing a virus called "Armageddon" designed to kill most of the world population, leaving it smaller and weakened enough for him to later conquer the planet. The Legends' attempt to alter events lead to Degaton murdering his father Dor and assuming his reign earlier, before he is later betrayed and killed by Savage.

References

External links
 Per Degaton biography

DC Comics supervillains
DC Comics male supervillains
Earth-Two
Fictional characters with precognition
Fictional patricides
Golden Age supervillains
DC Comics Nazis
Comics about time travel
Comics characters introduced in 1947
Characters created by John Broome

Per Degaton


Joseph Morris Bachelor also known as Joseph Morris (May 17, 1887 near Sharonville, Ohio – December 5, 1947 in Hamilton, Ohio) was an American author, poet, editor and educator.

Bachelor was educated at Miami University (A.B., 1911) and Harvard University (A.M. 1912). As an undergraduate at Miami University, he joined a local organization which later became the national fraternity, Phi Kappa Tau.  He is considered the author of the fraternity's Ritual and wrote the lyrics to its first song, with Joseph W. Clokey writing the music.  After teaching English at Cornell College in Iowa (1913-1917), he worked as an editor for the Century Company in New York City where he was definitions editor of The New Century Dictionary in two volumes.  He returned in 1927 to teach at his alma mater, Miami University where he remained until his death in 1947.  He was a popular and rigorous professor teaching Shakespeare and a course he developed called "Words."  Upon his death, he bequeathed over  of woodland and streams, including Harker's Run, to Miami University. The land is today known as the Bachelor Wildlife and Game Reserve.  He collaborated with other professors on at least ten English textbooks and edited a series of poetry collections (under his pen name Joseph Morris) in collaboration with St. Clair Adams which included poems by Bachelor and Adams.

Bachelor fell ill at his Oxford, Ohio home and died in a Hamilton, Ohio hospital on December 5, 1947.  He was buried in the Bachelor family plot at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.

An academic building on the Miami University campus was named Bachelor Hall in 1979 as a memorial.

References

External links

1887 births
1947 deaths
Poets from Ohio
Miami University alumni
Harvard University alumni
Miami University faculty
Cornell College faculty
Burials at Spring Grove Cemetery
Infectious disease deaths in Ohio
20th-century American poets

Joseph M. Bachelor


The Hochmaderer is a prominent mountain, 2,823 metres high, in the  Silvretta in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, at the end of the Montafon valley. The multi-peaked block of primitive rock drops in mighty precipices to the south and east.

The mountain may be ascended from the lake of Vermuntsee (1,743 m / 3½ hours) or from the Tübinger Hut (2,190 m / 2¾ hours) up the little valley of Gantschettatäli (2,300 m) to the south and the Hochmadererjoch saddle (2,505 m / 1 hour).

Mountains of the Alps
Two-thousanders of Austria
Mountains of Vorarlberg
Silvretta Alps

Hochmaderer


Clement Vavasor Durell (born 6 June 1882, Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire, died South Africa, 10 December 1968) was an English schoolmaster who wrote mathematical textbooks.

Background and early life
A son of John Vavasor Durell (1837–1923), Rector of Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire, and his wife Ellen Annie Carlyon, Durell had four older brothers. He was educated at Felsted School and Clare College, Cambridge (1900–1904), where he gained a first class in part two of the mathematics tripos and was seventh wrangler.

Career
Assistant master at Gresham's School, Holt, 1904–1905
Assistant master at Winchester College, 1910
Lieutenant in Royal Garrison Artillery during First World War
Mentioned in Dispatches
Housemaster of Chernocke House, Winchester College, 1920–1927

In 1900 he joined the Mathematical Association and in the 1900s was contributing articles on teaching to its journal, The Mathematical Gazette. After the First World War, he found a substantial second career and income in writing textbooks.

After spending most of his career teaching and writing about mathematics at Winchester, Durell retired to East Preston, Sussex, wintering in Madeira and South Africa, where he died in 1968.

His estate at death amounted to £200,098, which in the 1960s was a large fortune for the son of a clergyman to amass as a schoolmaster.

Books
Durell's textbooks were hugely successful from the 1920s, and by 1935 his publisher, G. Bell & Sons, was claiming:
There can indeed be few secondary schools in the English-speaking world in which some at least of Mr Durell's books are not now employed in the teaching of mathematics.

He collaborated on books with masters from other schools, such as R. M. Wright of Eton, A. W. Siddons of Harrow, C. O. Tuckey of Charterhouse, Alan Robson of Marlborough and G. W. Palmer of Christ's Hospital.

Durell's books cover all areas of school mathematics, including algebra, calculus, mechanics, geometry, and trigonometry, and include:

Elementary Problem Papers (Arnold, London, 1906)
Readable Relativity (G. Bell & Sons, 1926)
The Teaching of Elementary Algebra (G. Bell & Sons, 1931)
General Arithmetic (G. Bell & Sons, 1936)
Elementary Geometry (G. Bell & Sons, 1948) First published 1925

References
Durell at the University of St Andrews web side, accessed June 2007
Durell, Clement Vavasor (1882–1968), mathematics teacher and textbook writer by Michael H. Price in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Clement Vavasor Durell, obituary by E. A. Maxwell in Mathematical Gazette, volume 53 (1969), pages 312–13

1882 births
1968 deaths
Schoolteachers from Cambridgeshire
People educated at Felsted School
Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge
Mathematics educators
British textbook writers
20th-century  English mathematicians
People from Fulbourn
People from East Preston, West Sussex

C. V. Durell


WMUG-LP (105.1 FM) is a low-powered, conservative Christian-formatted American radio station, licensed in the Pittsburgh suburb of Indiana, Pennsylvania and serving the Pittsburgh and Johnstown media markets. The station is owned by The Christian Witness, Inc.

History

The roots of WMUG can be traced back to as early as 1965, when Christian Witness founder J.D. Varner was healed from a life-threatening illness. Transformed by the experience, Varner began to search within himself for a gift that he could give back to God.

As a member of Toast Masters International, Varner entered a speech competition. A woman came up to him following his speech and said, "With a voice like that, you could say anything and people would listen." Her comment provided spiritual direction to Varner's life, and he later would act on it through radio ministry.

In February 1966, Varner began a Sunday interview program with average Christian people on local station WDAD AM 1450 in Indiana, Pennsylvania; the only radio station on the air in Indiana County at that time.  The program was then called "The Laymen's Witness".  Over the next 41 years, the program has expanded from a half hour to five hours, and today is called "The Christian Witness".  Varner's reputation in the community as a respected Christian aided in his winning election to the position of Indiana borough mayor in 1989.

Despite his highly successful program on WDAD, Varner for many years aspired to buy or build a radio station in his hometown that would serve the conservative Christian community on a full-time basis.  When the FCC opened a window for low-power FM broadcasters after the turn of the 21st century, Varner and a board of trustees he had assembled petitioned the FCC for an FM license.  The FCC granted The Christian Witness a non-commercial license to broadcast on 105.1 in 2002.  However, the station would not go on the air until almost two years later, largely due to the incredible expense of putting a brand-new station on the air, which required real estate, a studio building, and professional-grade broadcast equipment.

Nevertheless, The Christian Witness pressed onward and was able to secure a hilltop location on Coolspring Road, right at the Indiana borough limit.  The Christian Witness was able to choose 105 Coolspring Road (to match the assigned frequency) as the address for the undeveloped parcel of land, and local petroleum distributor William G. Satterlee provided the gift of a studio building (two converted mobile homes) for the new station.  Funding also had to be secured to pay Doug Varner Sound Company a modest fee for their excellent engineering and development work and to provide for the overall tower and antenna construction, as well as the transmitter installation.  A portion of the work was performed by volunteers who believe in the ministry's cause.

The work was finally completed in 2004.  On September 1, the station officially signed on the air.

WMUG-LP Today
Todd Marino served as WMUG's first station manager and  as the host of the afternoon "MUG" at the time of its sign-on.  Today he continues his duties as afternoon drive person on WMUG and as a co-host of "This Sunday Morning" on WDAD.

Doug Varner has been the morning mug host since the station went on the air and is currently on family leave, with Lillian Clemons in the morning position.

Former WDAD morning show host Bill Otto hosts a weekday program called "Music on the Menu", an hour-long easy-listening music show on WMUG.

WMUG founder J.D. Varner died Friday, May 19, 2023 at the age of 87.

External links
 WMUG-LP Online

Indiana County, Pennsylvania
MUG-LP
Radio stations established in 2004
MUG-LP

WMUG-LP


Hua Xiong () (died 191) was a military general serving under the warlord Dong Zhuo during the late Eastern Han dynasty of China.

Life
Little is recorded about Hua Xiong in history, apart from the fact that he served as a military officer under the warlord Dong Zhuo and held the position of Chief Controller (都督). In early 190, when a coalition of warlords from the east of Hangu Pass launched a military campaign in the name of freeing the Han central government from Dong Zhuo's control, Hua Xiong led Dong Zhuo's forces to engage the enemy. He was defeated and killed in a battle at Yangren (陽人; believed to be near present-day Wenquan, Ruzhou, Henan) against Sun Jian.

In Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Hua Xiong plays a more significant role in the 14th-century historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. He is described as a "stalwart man of fierce mien, lithe and supple as a beast. He had a round head like a leopard and shoulders like an ape's."

In Chapter 5, as warlords from the east of Hangu Pass form a coalition against Dong Zhuo, Hua Xiong stations at Sishui Pass to ward off the oncoming attack. When Lü Bu requests to lead troops to attack the enemy, Hua Xiong steps in and says, "An ox-cleaver to kill a chicken! There is no need for the General to go. I will cut off their heads as easily as I would take a thing out of my pocket!" Dong Zhuo then puts Hua Xiong in charge.

Having single-handedly slain four warriors from the coalition – Zu Mao (祖茂), Pan Feng (潘鳳), Bao Zhong (鮑忠), and Yu She (俞涉) – Hua Xiong seems invincible. Despite mistrust from many warlords of the coalition, most notably their leader Yuan Shao, Guan Yu volunteers to fight Hua Xiong. To convince them to give him the opportunity, he tells them that if he fails to defeat Hua Xiong, the coalition can take his head as punishment. When Cao Cao pours Guan Yu a cup of warm wine, Guan Yu puts it on hold and says he will return very soon victorious. As promised, Guan Yu returns quickly with Hua Xiong's head, whilst Cao Cao who was still holding the cup of wine, realised just how quickly it took Guan Yu to slay the notorious General Hua Xiong. Cao Cao then gives the cup of wine - still warm - to Guan Yu who gulps down the wine victoriously. This is known as "wen jiu zhan Hua Xiong" (溫酒斬華雄), which roughly translates to 'Slaying Hua Xiong while the wine remains warm'.

See also
 Lists of people of the Three Kingdoms

References

Works cited

Further reading
 Chen, Shou (3rd century). Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi).
 Fan, Ye (5th century). Book of the Later Han (Houhanshu).
 Luo, Guanzhong (14th century). Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo Yanyi).
 Pei, Songzhi (5th century). Annotations to Records of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi zhu).

Year of birth unknown
2nd-century births
191 deaths
Generals under Dong Zhuo

Hua Xiong


Tadhg Mór Ua Cellaigh, 36th King of Uí Maine and 1st Chief of the Name.

Background
Ua Cellaigh was the first King of Uí Maine to bear the surname Ua Cellaigh, derived from his grandfather, Ceallach mac Finnachta, who was in turn a sixth-generation descendant of Eoghan Finn, a descendant of the first king, Maine Mór. He succeeded Muirgus mac Domnaill, killed in battle in 986.

Career
He seems to have been present at the battles of Lough Ree (987), and the hosting to Tara in 999. Tadhg allied himself with Brian Boru against King of Mide Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill (975-1022) and two Kings of Connacht, Cathal mac Conchobar mac Taidg, (973-1010) and Tadg in Eich Gil (1010-1030).

He secured marriage alliances to Brian, as one of Tadhg's sisters is said to have become one of Brian's many wives. His position was bolstered with Brian's accession to the High-Kingship in 1002. He accompanied him to Dublin in 1014 where he fought and died at the Battle of Clontarf.

In folk memory

John O'Donovan recorded a tradition prevalent in the early 19th century concerning Tadhg Mór:

"There is a tradition among the O'Kellys of Hy-Many, that they have borne as their crest an enfield, since the time of this Tadhg Mor, from a belief that this fabulous animal issued from the sea at the Battle of Clontarf, to protect the body of O'Kelly from the Danes, til rescued by his followers. It is also recorded in the Irish annals, that this Tadhg or Teige O'Kelly was chief of Hy-Many in the year 1003 and was slain in the battle of Clontarf, fighting on the side of the monarch, Brian Borumha, 1014, and for this reason he is usually set down in the pedigrees as TADHG CATHA BHRIAIN, i.e., Teige of the Battle of Brian."

Descendants
All but one subsequent king of U%C3%AD Maine would either descend from Tadhg Mór or bear the surname Ua/Ó Cellaigh, until Feardorcha Ó Cellaigh resigned the title Ó Cellaigh in the late 16th century. His senior descendants in the 21st century are the Counts and Countesses of Grallagh and Tyrcooley, while Kelly is the second most common surname in County Galway, all of whom are direct descendants of Ceallach mac Finnachta.

See also
Kelly
O'Kelly

References

The Tribes and customs of Hy-Many, commonly called O'Kelly's country, John O'Donovan, 1843.
Annals of Ulster at CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts at University College Cork
Annals of Tigernach at CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts at University College Cork
Revised edition of McCarthy's synchronisms at Trinity College Dublin.
https://books.google.com/books?id=fzQFAAAAQAAJ&dq=the+tribes+and+costoms+of+Hy+many&pg=RA1-PA83
Byrne, Francis John (2001), Irish Kings and High-Kings, Dublin: Four Courts Press,

Nobility from County Galway
People from County Roscommon
Irish soldiers
10th-century Irish monarchs
11th-century Irish monarchs
Kings of Uí Maine
1014 deaths
Year of birth unknown
Tadhg Mor
Gaels

Tadhg Mór Ua Cellaigh