The Motion Picture Association film rating system is used in the United States and its territories to rate a motion picture's suitability for certain audiences based on its content. The system and the ratings applied to individual motion pictures are the responsibility of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), previously known as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) from 1945 to 2019. The MPA rating system is a voluntary scheme that is not enforced by law; films can be exhibited without a rating, although most theaters refuse to exhibit non-rated or NC-17 rated films. Non-members of the MPA may also submit films for rating. Other media, such as television programs, music and video games, are rated by other entities such as the TV Parental Guidelines, the RIAA and the ESRB, respectively.

Introduced in 1968, following the Hays Code of the classical Hollywood cinema era, the MPA rating system is one of various motion picture rating systems that are used to help parents decide what films are appropriate for their children. It is administered by the Classification & Ratings Administration (CARA), an independent division of the MPA.

Ratings

MPA film ratings
The MPA film ratings are as follows:

In 2013, the MPA ratings were visually redesigned, with the rating displayed on a left panel and the name of the rating shown above it. A larger panel on the right provides a more detailed description of the film's content and an explanation of the rating level is placed on a horizontal bar at the bottom of the rating.

Content descriptors
Film ratings often have accompanying brief descriptions of the specifics behind the film's content and why it received a certain rating. They are displayed in trailers, posters, and on the backside of home video releases. Film rating content descriptors are exclusively used for films rated from PG to NC-17; they are not used for G-rated films because the content in them is suitable for all audiences even if containing mild objectionable content.

Other labels
If a film has not been submitted for a rating or is an uncut version of a film that was submitted, the labels Not Rated (NR) or Unrated (UR) are often used. Uncut/extended versions of films that are labeled "Unrated" also contain warnings saying that the uncut version of the film contains content that differs from the theatrical release and might not be suitable for minors.

If a film has not yet been assigned a final rating, the label This Film Is Not Yet Rated is used in trailers and television commercials.

Regulation of promotional materials and releases

The MPA also rates film trailers, print advertising, posters, and other media used to promote a film.

Theatrical trailers

Rating cards appear at the head of trailers in the United States which indicate how closely the trailer adheres to the MPA's standards.

 Green band: When the trailer accompanies another rated feature, the wording on the green title card states, as of May 2013, "The following preview has been approved to accompany this feature." For trailers hosted on the Internet, the wording is tweaked to "The following preview has been approved for appropriate audiences." Until April 2009, these cards indicated that they had been approved for "all audiences" and often included the film's MPA rating. This signified that the trailer adheres to the standards for motion picture advertising outlined by the MPA, which include limitations on foul language and violent, sexual, or otherwise objectionable imagery. In April 2009, the MPA began to permit the green band language to say that a trailer had been approved for "appropriate" audiences, meaning that the material would be appropriate for audiences in theaters, based on the content of the film they had come to see. In May 2013, the MPA changed the trailer approval band from "for appropriate audiences" to "to accompany this feature", but only when accompanying a feature film; for bands not accompanying a feature film, the text of the band remained the same. The font and style of the text on the graphic bands (green and red) was also changed at the time the green band was revised in 2013.
 Yellow band: A yellow title card, introduced around 2007,  exists solely to indicate trailers with restricted content that are hosted on the Internet, with the wording stipulating "The following preview has been approved only for age-appropriate Internet users." The MPAA defines "age-appropriate Internet users" as visitors to sites either frequented mainly by adults or accessible only between 9:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. (i.e., 21:00 through 04:00 local time). The yellow card is reserved for trailers previewing films rated PG-13 or stronger. Although official, this practice appears to have never been widespread. However, yellow band trailers are occasionally created, a notable example being the trailer for Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007).
 Red band: A red title card is issued to trailers which do not adhere to the MPAA's guidelines. It indicates that the trailer is approved for only "restricted" or "mature" audiences, and when it accompanies another feature, the wording states "The following restricted preview has been approved to accompany this feature only." For trailers hosted on the Internet, the wording is tweaked to "The following restricted preview has been approved for appropriate audiences." The red title card is reserved for trailers previewing R and NC-17 rated films: these trailers may include nudity, profanity, or other material deemed inappropriate for children. These trailers may only be shown theatrically before R-rated, NC-17-rated, or unrated movies. Trailers hosted on the Internet carrying a red title card require viewers to pass an age verification test which entails users aged 17 and older to match their names, birthdays, and ZIP Codes to public records on file. However, many YouTube channels which exist to syndicate film and television trailers often do not have this check, and release these trailers without any type of restriction, to some criticism from groups such as Common Sense Media.

Releases

The MPA also creates blue feature tags for theatrical and home media use. Theatrical releases show the blue tag after the film, with home media releases showing it prior to the film. They feature the rating block and any content descriptors as assigned by the Classification and Rating Administration, the MPA logo, and links to MPA websites along the bottom.

History

Replacement of the Hays Code
Jack Valenti, who had become president of the Motion Picture Association of America in May 1966, deemed the Motion Picture Production Code, which had been in place since 1930 and rigorously enforced since July 1, 1934, out of date and bearing "the odious smell of censorship". Filmmakers were pushing at the boundaries of the code with some even going as far as filing lawsuits against "Hay's Code" by invoking the First Amendment. Valenti cited examples such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which used prohibited language including "hump the hostess", and Blowup, which was denied Code approval due to nudity, resulting in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, then a member studio of the MPAA, releasing it through a subsidiary. Valenti revised the Code to include the "SMA" (Suggested for Mature Audiences) advisory as a stopgap measure. To accommodate "the irresistible force of creators determined to make 'their films', and to avoid "the possible intrusion of government into the movie arena", he developed a set of advisory ratings which could be applied after a film was completed.

On November 1, 1968, the voluntary MPAA film rating system took effect, with three organizations serving as its monitoring and guiding groups: the MPAA, the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), and the International Film Importers & Distributors of America (IFIDA). Only films that premiered in the United States after that date were affected by this.  Walter Reade was the only one of 75 top U.S. exhibitors who refused to use the ratings. Warner Bros.-Seven Arts' The Girl on a Motorcycle was the first film to receive the X rating, and was distributed by their Claridge Pictures subsidiary. Two other films were rated X by the time the MPAA published their first weekly bulletin listing ratings: Paramount's Sin With a Stranger and Universal's Birds in Peru. Both films were subsequently released by subsidiaries.

The ratings used from 1968 to 1970 were:
 Rated G: Suggested for general audiences.
 Rated M: Suggested for mature audiences - Parental discretion advised.
 Rated R: Restricted – Persons under 16 not admitted, unless accompanied by parent or adult guardian.
 Rated X: Persons under 16 not admitted.

This content classification system originally was to have three ratings, with the intention of allowing parents to take their children to any film they chose. However, the National Association of Theatre Owners urged the creation of an adults-only category, fearful of possible legal problems in local jurisdictions. The "X" rating was not an MPAA trademark and would not receive the MPAA seal; any producer not submitting a film for MPAA rating could self-apply the "X" rating (or any other symbol or description that was not an MPAA trademark).

From M to GP to PG
In 1970, the ages for "R" and "X" were raised from 16 to 17. Also, due to confusion over whether "M"-rated films were suitable for children, "M" was renamed to "GP" (for General audiences, Parental guidance suggested), and in 1971, the MPAA added the content advisory "Some material not generally suitable for pre-teenagers". On February 11, 1972, "GP" was revised to "PG".

The ratings used from 1970 to 1972 were:
 Rated G: All ages admitted – General audiences.
 Rated GP: All ages admitted – Parental guidance suggested. [Sometimes a disclaimer would say "This film contains material which may not be suitable for pre-teenagers."]
 Rated R: Restricted – Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
 Rated X: No one under 17 admitted.

The ratings used from 1972 to 1984 were:
 Rated G: General audiences – All ages admitted.
 Rated PG: Parental guidance suggested – Some material may not be suitable for [pre-teenagers (1972-1977)] / [children (1977-1984)].
 Rated R: Restricted – Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
 Rated X: No one under 17 admitted.

Addition of the PG-13 rating
In the 1980s, complaints about violence and gore in films such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins, both of which received PG ratings, refocused attention on films seen by younger children. According to author Filipa Antunes, this revealed the conundrum of a film that "could not be recommended for all children but could also not be repudiated for all children uniformly," leading to speculation that the rating system's PG classification "no longer matched a notion of childhood most parents in America could agree on." Steven Spielberg, director of Temple of Doom and executive producer of Gremlins, suggested a new intermediate rating between "PG" and "R". The "PG-13" rating was introduced on July 1, 1984, with the advisory "Parents Are Strongly Cautioned to Give Special Guidance for Attendance of Children Under 13 – Some Material May Be Inappropriate for Young Children". The first film to be released with this rating was the John Milius war film Red Dawn.  In 1985, the wording was simplified to "Parents Strongly Cautioned – Some Material May Be Inappropriate for Children Under 13". Around the same time, the MPAA won a trademark infringement lawsuit against the producers and distributors of I Spit on Your Grave over a fraudulent application of its R rating to the uncut version of the film, and forced its member studios and several other home video distributors to put MPAA ratings on the packaging of MPAA-rated films via a settlement that would come into effect by fall that year.

The ratings used from 1984 to 1990 were:
 Rated G: General audiences – All ages admitted.
 Rated PG: Parental guidance suggested – Some material may not be suitable for children.
 Rated PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned – Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
 Rated R: Restricted – Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
 Rated X: No one under 17 admitted.

Tennessee law
In 1989, Tennessee state law set the minimum age to view a theatrically exhibited R-rated film without adult accompaniment at 18, instead of 17, and categorized the admission of minors to X-rated films as a misdemeanor. The statute remained in force until 2013, when it was ruled to be in violation of the First Amendment. The law was amended in 2013 as to prohibit persons under the age of 18 only if the film was considered "harmful to minors".

X replaced by NC-17

In the rating system's early years, "X"-rated films such as Midnight Cowboy (1969) and A Clockwork Orange (1971) were understood to be unsuitable for children, but non-pornographic and intended for the general public. However, pornographic films often self-applied the non-trademarked "X" rating, and it soon became synonymous with pornography in American culture. In late 1989 and early 1990, respectively, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, two critically acclaimed art films featuring strong adult content, were released. Neither film was approved for an MPAA rating, limiting their commercial distribution and prompting criticism of the rating system's lack of a designation for such films.

In September 1990, the MPAA introduced the rating NC-17 ("No Children Under 17 Admitted"). Henry & June, previously to be assigned an X rating, was the first film to receive the NC-17 rating instead. Although films with an NC-17 rating had more mainstream distribution opportunities than X-rated films, many theaters refused to screen them, most entertainment media did not accept advertising for them, and many large video outlets refused to stock them.

The ratings used from 1990 to 1996 were:
 Rated G: General audiences – All ages admitted.
 Rated PG: Parental guidance suggested – Some material may not be suitable for children.
 Rated PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned – Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
 Rated R: Restricted – Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
 Rated NC-17: No children under 17 admitted.

In 1996, the minimum age for NC-17-rated films was raised to 18, by rewording it to "No One 17 and Under Admitted". The ratings used since 1996 are:
 Rated G: General audiences – All ages admitted.
 Rated PG: Parental guidance suggested – Some material may not be suitable for children.
 Rated PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned – Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
 Rated R: Restricted – Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
 Rated NC-17: Adults Only – No one 17 and under admitted.

Since September 1990, the MPAA has included explanations, or "descriptors", of why each film received an "R" rating, allowing parents to know what type of content the film contained. For example, some films' descriptors may read "Rated R for strong/graphic violent content, disturbing material, sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use, and pervasive language".

By the early 2000s, the MPAA began applying rating explanations for PG, PG-13, and NC-17-rated films as well.

Rating components

Violence
Depictions of violence are permitted under all ratings but must be moderated for the lower ones. Violence must be kept to a minimum in G-rated films and must not be intense in PG-rated films. Depictions of intense violence are permitted under the PG-13 rating, but violence that is both realistic and extreme or persistent will generally require at least an R rating.

Language
Snippets of language that go "beyond polite conversation" are permitted in G-rated films, but no stronger words are present. Profanity may be present in PG rated films, and use of one of the harsher "sexually-derived words" as an expletive will initially incur at least a PG-13 rating. More than one occurrence will usually incur an R rating as will the usage of such an expletive in a sexual context. Known as the "automatic language rule", the rule has been applied differently depending on the subject matter of the film. For example, All the President's Men (1976) received a PG rating after appealing it from an R, despite multiple instances of strong language, likely because of its historic subject matter. The automatic language rule is arguably the rule that can most often be successfully appealed. The ratings board may award a PG-13 rating passed by a two-thirds majority if they believe the language is justified by the context or by the manner in which the words are used.

It is sometimes claimed that films rated PG-13 are only able to use the expletive fuck once to avoid an R rating for language. There are several exceptional cases in which PG-13-rated films contain multiple occurrences of the word fuck: Adventures in Babysitting, where the word is used twice in the same scene; Antwone Fisher which has three uses; The Hip Hop Project, which has seventeen uses; and Gunner Palace, a documentary of soldiers in the Second Gulf War, which has 42 uses of the word with two used sexually. Both Bully, a 2011 documentary about bullying, and Philomena—which has two instances of the word—released in 2013, were originally given R ratings on grounds of the language but the ratings were dropped to PG-13 after successful appeals. The King's Speech, however, was given an R rating for one scene using the word fuck several times in a speech therapy context; the MPAA refused to recertify the film on appeal, despite the British Board of Film Classification reducing the British rating from a 15 rating to a 12A on the grounds that the uses of the expletive were not directed at anyone.

This was satirized in the 2005 film Be Cool, in which the movie producer Chili Palmer (John Travolta) says: "Do you know that unless you're willing to use the R rating, you can only say the 'F' word once? You know what I say? Fuck that. I'm done." Often film producers will use the word for a scene of gravitas or humor and then blur out any further instances with sound effects.

Some forms of media are cut post-release so as to obtain a PG-13 rating for home media release or to feature on an Internet streaming service that will not carry films rated higher than PG-13. In 2020, a recording of Hamilton was released on Disney+ after cuts by Lin-Manuel Miranda to remove two of the three instances of fuck in the musical to qualify it as PG-13 under MPAA guidelines.

A study of popular American teen-oriented films rated PG and PG-13 from 1980 to 2006 found that in those films, teenaged characters use more and stronger profanity than the adult characters in the same movies. However, the study found that the overall amount of such language had declined somewhat since the 1980s.

Substances

Drug use content is restricted to PG-13 and above. An example of an otherwise PG film being assigned a PG-13 rating for a drug reference (momentary, along with brief language) is Whale Rider. The film contained only mild profanity, but was rated PG-13 because of a scene where drug paraphernalia were briefly visible. Critic Roger Ebert criticized the MPAA for the rating and called it "a wild overreaction".

In May 2007, the MPAA announced that depictions of cigarette smoking would be considered in a film's rating. Anti-smoking advocates stated that the child-friendly PG rating was inappropriate for the 2011 Nickelodeon-animated film Rango, which included over 60 depictions of characters smoking.

Nudity
Nudity is restricted to PG and above, and anything that constitutes more than brief nudity will require at least a PG-13 rating. Nudity that is sexually oriented will generally require an R rating. Since 2006, films have been flagged by the MPAA for carrying nudity. In 2010, the MPAA flagged three films specifically for "male nudity", precipitated by parental pressure in response to Brüno. In 2018, MPAA Ratings Chair Joan Graves clarified the MPA's position by stating that "we don't usually define [nudity] as male or female ... usually, we just mention partial nudity, [or] graphic nudity."

Sex
The MPAA does not have any explicit criteria for sexual content other than excluding sex scenes from G-rated films.

Effects of ratings

The Exorcist
Prior to the release of The Exorcist at the end of 1973, CARA president Aaron Stern took the unusual step of calling director William Friedkin to tell him that since it was an "important film", it would be rated R and could be released without any cuts. The film drew huge crowds upon its release, many of whom vomited and/or fainted; a psychiatric journal would later document four cases of "cinematic neurosis" induced by the film.

Among those patrons were many children, not always accompanied by adults. This left many commentators incredulous that the ratings board would have found that a film with disturbing scenes such as a possessed 12-year-old girl masturbating with a crucifix was acceptable for children to see. Roy Meacham, a Washington, D.C., critic who had praised the film while admonishing parents not to take their children to it, recalled those children he did see leaving showings "drained and drawn afterward; their eyes had a look I had never seen before." Authorities in Washington invoked a municipal ordinance that would have prevented any minors from seeing the film, threatening theater owners with arrest if they did.

Meacham insinuated that the board had succumbed to pressure from Warner Brothers, which had spent $10 million, more than twice its original budget, making the film; an X rating would have seriously limited The Exorcists commercial prospects. New Yorker critic Pauline Kael echoed his criticism. "If The Exorcist had cost under a million or been made abroad," she wrote, "it would almost certainly be an X film. But when a movie is as expensive as this one, the [board] doesn't dare give it an X."

In 1974, Richard Heffner took over as president of the board. During his interview process, he had asked to screen recent films that had sparked ratings controversies, including The Exorcist. "How could anything be worse than this?" he recalled thinking later. "And it got an R?" After he took over as head, he would spearhead efforts to be more aggressive with the X rating, especially over violence in films. In 1976, he got the board to give the Japanese martial arts film The Street Fighter an X rating for its graphic violence, the first time a film had earned that rating purely for violence.

Commercial viability of the NC-17 rating
The NC-17 rating has been described as a "kiss of death" for any film that receives it. Like the X rating it replaced, NC-17 limits a film's prospects of being marketed, screened in theaters and sold in major video outlets. In 1995, MGM/UA released the big-budget film Showgirls; it became the most widely distributed film with an NC-17 rating (showing in 1,388 cinemas simultaneously), but it was a box office failure that grossed only 45% of its $45 million budget. Some modest successes can be found among NC-17 theatrical releases, however; Fox Searchlight Pictures released the original NC-17-rated American edition of the European film The Dreamers (2003) in theaters in the United States, and later released both the original NC-17 and the cut R-rated version on DVD. A Fox Searchlight spokesman said the NC-17 rating did not give them much trouble in releasing this film (they had no problem booking it, and only the  Salt Lake City newspaper Deseret News refused to take the film's ad), and Fox Searchlight was satisfied with this film's United States box office result. Another notable exception is Bad Education (2004), an NC-17 foreign-language film that grossed $5.2 million in the United States theatrically (a moderate success for a foreign-language film).

In 2000, the Directors Guild of America called the NC-17 rating an "abject failure", for causing filmmakers to re-edit films to receive an R rating, rather than accept an NC-17 rating. They argued that this was "not only compromising filmmakers' visions, but also greatly increasing the likelihood that adult-oriented movies are seen by the very groups for which they are not intended." As of March 2007, according to Variety, MPAA chairman Dan Glickman had been made aware of the attempts to introduce a new rating, or find ways to reduce the stigma of the NC-17 rating. Film studios have pressured the MPAA to retire the NC-17 rating, because of its likely impact on their film's box office revenue.

During the controversy about the MPAA's decision to give the film Blue Valentine (2010) an NC-17 rating (The Weinstein Company challenged this decision, and the MPAA ended up awarding the same cut an R rating on appeal). Actor Ryan Gosling, who stars in the film, noted that NC-17 films are not allowed wide advertisement and that, given the refusal of major cinema chains like AMC and Regal to show NC-17 rated movies, many such films will never be accessible to people who live in markets that do not have art house theatres.

Legal scholar Julie Hilden wrote that the MPAA has a "masterpiece exception" that it has made for films that would ordinarily earn an NC-17 rating, if not for the broader artistic masterpiece that requires the violence depicted as a part of its message. She cites Saving Private Ryan, with its bloody depiction of the D-Day landings, as an example. This exception is troubling, Hilden argues, because it ignores context and perspective in evaluating other films and favors conventional films over edgier films that contribute newer and more interesting points to public discourse about violence.

Issuance of "R Cards"
Starting in 2004, GKC Theatres (since absorbed into AMC Theatres) introduced "R Cards", which parents could obtain for their children under 17 to see R-rated films without adult accompaniment. The cards generated much controversy; MPAA president Jack Valenti said in a news article: "I think it distorts and ruptures the intent of this voluntary film ratings system. All R-rated films are not alike." John Fithian, the president of the National Association of Theatre Owners, also said that the cards can be harmful. He noted in a news article for the Christian Science Monitor that the R rating is "broad enough to include relatively family-friendly fare such as Billy Elliot and Erin Brockovich (which were both rated R for language) along with films that push the extremes of violence, including Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill".

Criticisms

Emphasis on sex and language versus violence
The film rating system has had a number of high-profile critics. Film critic Roger Ebert called for replacing the NC-17 rating with separate ratings for pornographic and non-pornographic adult film. Ebert argued that the system places too much emphasis on sex, while allowing the portrayal of massive amounts of gruesome violence. The uneven emphasis on sex versus violence is echoed by other critics, including David Ansen, as well as many filmmakers. Moreover, Ebert argued that the rating system is geared toward looking at trivial aspects of the film (such as the number of times a profane word is used) rather than at the general theme of the film (for example, if the film realistically depicts the consequences of sex and violence). He called for an A (adults only) rating, to indicate films high in violence or mature content that should not be marketed to teenagers, but do not have NC-17 levels of sex. He also called for the NC-17 rating to be removed and to have the X rating revived. He felt that everyone understood what X-rated means, while fewer people understood what NC-17 meant.

MPAA chairman Dan Glickman has disputed these claims, stating that far more films are initially rated NC-17 for violence than for sex, but that these are later edited by studios to receive an R rating.

Despite this, an internal critic of the early workings of the ratings system is film critic and writer Stephen Farber, who was a CARA intern for six months during 1969 and 1970. In The Movie Ratings Game, he documents a prejudice against sex in relation to violence. The 2006 documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated also points out that four times as many films received an NC-17 rating for sex as they did for violence according to the MPAA's own website, further mentioning a bias against homosexual content compared to heterosexual content, particularly with regards to sex scenes. Filmmaker Darren Stein further insists that his tame teen comedy G.B.F., which features multiple same-sex kisses but no intercourse, strong language, violence, or nudity, was "rated R for being gay."

The 2011 documentary Bully received an R rating for the profanity contained within the film, which prevented most of the intended audience, middle and high schoolers, from seeing the film. The film's director, Lee Hirsch, has refused to recut the film, stating, "I feel a responsibility as a filmmaker, as the person entrusted to tell (these kids') stories, to not water them down." A petition collected more than 200,000 signatures to change the film's rating and a version with less profanity was finally given a PG-13 rating. The same, however, could not be said about the 1995 teen drama Kids, which director Larry Clark wanted rated R so parents could take their kids to it for educational purposes, but the MPAA rated it NC-17 due to its content of teen sex and turned down Clark's appeal. The film was then released unrated by Miramax (under Shining Excalibur Films because Miramax, formerly owned by Disney, hesitated to release it as an NC-17 film).

Inconsistent standards, especially for independent studios
Many critics of the MPA rating system, especially independent distributors, have charged that major studios' releases often receive more lenient treatment than independent films.

Disney's 1996 adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame has been criticized for its depiction of lust, antiziganism, and genocide, as well as its use of the words hell and damnation despite being rated G. Twenty-five years after its release, one of the screenwriters for the film, Tab Murphy, talked about its rating in an interview with The New York Times, saying, "That's the most R-rated G you will ever see in your life." Pixar's 2011 film Cars 2 has been criticized similarly for featuring on-screen gun violence and a torture scene despite being rated G. In contrast, critics of the system accuse the ratings board of giving PG ratings to family-friendly films such as Frozen and Finding Dory for no reason.

The independent film Saints and Soldiers, which contains no nudity, almost no sex (although there is a scene in which a German soldier is about to rape a French woman), very little profanity, and a minimum of violence, was said to have been rated R for a single clip where a main character is shot and killed, and required modification of just that one scene to receive a PG-13 rating. Eric Watson, producer of the independently distributed, NC-17-rated Requiem for a Dream complained that the studios are paying the budget of the MPAA, which gives the studios leverage over the MPAA's decisions.

The comedy Scary Movie, released by Dimension Films, at the time a division of The Walt Disney Company, contained "strong crude sexual humor, language, drug use and violence," including images of ejaculation, fellatio and an erect penis, but was rated R, to the surprise of many reviewers and audiences; by comparison, the comparatively tame porn spoof Orgazmo, an independent release by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, contained "explicit sexual content and dialogue" and received an NC-17 (the only on-screen penis seen in the film is a dildo). Parker and Stone did not have the time and money to edit the film, so it retained its NC-17 rating. In contrast, Parker and Stone's second feature film, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, was distributed by a major studio (Paramount Pictures) and, after multiple submissions and notes from the MPAA, received an R rating.

Call for publicizing the standards
Many critics of the system, both conservative and liberal, would like to see the MPAA ratings unveiled and the standards made public. The MPAA has consistently cited nationwide scientific polls (conducted each year by the Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, New Jersey), which show that parents find the ratings useful. Critics such as Matt Stone in Kirby Dick's documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated respond this proves only that parents find the ratings more useful than nothing at all. In the film, it is also discussed how the MPAA will not reveal any information about how or why certain decisions are made, and that the association will not even reveal to the filmmaker the specific scenes that need to be cut in order to get an alternative rating.

Accusation of "ratings creep"
Although there has always been concern about the content of films, the MPAA has been accused of a "ratings creep", whereby the films that fall into today's ratings categories now contain more objectionable material than those that appeared in the same categories two decades earlier. A study put forward by the Harvard School of Public Health in 2004 concluded that there had been a significant increase in the level of profanity, sex and violence in films released between 1992 and 2003. Kimberly Thompson, director of the study, stated: "The findings demonstrate that ratings creep has occurred over the last decade and that today's movies contain significantly more violence, sex, and profanity on average than movies of the same rating a decade ago."

Questions of relevance
/Film managing editor David Chen wrote on the website: "It's time for more people to condemn the MPAA and their outrageous antics. We're heading towards an age when we don't need a mommy-like organization to dictate what our delicate sensibilities can and can't be exposed to. I deeply hope that the MPAA's irrelevance is imminent."

Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips wrote that the MPAA ratings board "has become foolish and irrelevant, and its members do not have my interests at heart, or yours. They're too easy on violence yet bizarrely reactionary when it comes to nudity and language."

See also

 List of highest-grossing R-rated films
 List of NC-17 rated films
 Australian Classification Board
 Brazilian advisory rating system
 Common Sense Media
 Classification Office (New Zealand)
 Entertainment Software Rating Board
 Film Advisory Board
 Film and Publication Board
 Green Sheet (filmmaking)
 National Audiovisual Institute (Finland)
 Parental Advisory
 Pink permits
 TV Parental Guidelines
 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film and Broadcasting
 Film censorship in the United States

References

External links

 Classification and Ratings Administration Official Website with ratings database
 MPA Film Ratings website

Motion picture rating systems
Film rating system
Film censorship in the United States
Certification marks
Cinema of the United States
Rating systems
1968 introductions
1968 establishments in the United States


Vinícius da Silva Bristott, also known as Gaúcho, is a Brazilian professional basketball player. Bristott was born in Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil.

Previous teams
Before signing with Araldite/Univille, Bristott has played for these teams:
Unisanta (Santos-SP)
AD Guarujá (Guarujá-SP)
Blumenau (Blumenau-SC)
Videira (Videra-SC)

Araldite/Univille - Joinville
Right after Joinville beat Bristott's previous team (Videira) in the state championship final, Bristott was hired to make part of Joinville's squad to compete in the 2009-2010 NBB season. He was mostly used as a 3rd option forward, coming in for Jefferson Sobral or Audrei Parisotto. For the first round in the 09-10 playoffs, Joinville had many injured players. Manteguinha, the starting point guard, Joao Victor, a center, and players like Sobral and Vezaro were doing some work away from Joinville. Their absences created extra time for players from the bench, and Bristott got some extra time on the court. He helped Joinville beat Vila Velha/CETAF in a 3-0 series, scoring 8 PPG, and playing for 8.4 MPG.

NBB Stats

Regular season Stats

|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Joinville
| 10 || 0 || 10.4 || .565 || .600 || .727 || 2.4 || 0.6 || .8 || .000 || 7.00

Jogo das Estrelas
In early 2010, NBB hosted an All-Star weekend event in Uberlândia-MG. Vinícius Bristott was the selected player from Joinville to participate in the Slam Dunk contest. Bristott was eliminated on the first round, having a score only 2 points away from being able to move on to the final round. He successfully made a double-handed windmill, even though he can also do the one-handed windmill, and the eastbay dunk, as he has shown in pre-game warm-ups.

References

1981 births
Living people
Brazilian men's basketball players
Forwards (basketball)
People from Passo Fundo

Vinícius Bristott


Cisnes (Spanish for: "port swans") is a Chilean commune located in the Aysén Province, Aysén del General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo Region. The commune spans an area of .

Demographics
According to data from the 2002 Census of Population and Housing, Cisnes had 5,353 inhabitants; of these, 2,507 (43.7%) lived in urban areas and 3,232 (56.3%) in rural areas. At that time, there were 3,414 men and 2,325 women.

Administration
As a commune, Cisnes is a third-level administrative division of Chile administered by a municipal council, headed by an alcalde who is directly elected every four years. The 2008–2012 alcalde (mayor) is Luis Valdés Gutiérrez (PS).

Within the electoral divisions of Chile, Cisnes is represented in the Chamber of Deputies by René Alinco (PDC) and David Sandoval (UDI) as part of the 59th electoral district, which includes the entire Aysén del General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo Region. The commune is represented in the Senate by Antonio Horvath Kiss (RN) and Patricio Walker Prieto (PDC) as part of the 18th senatorial constituency (Aysén del General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo Region).

Notes and references

External links
  Municipality of Cisnes

Communes of Chile
Populated places in Aysén Province

Cisnes


The Los Amigos Biological Station is a research station in lowland Amazonian forest at the base of Peru's southern Andes, at 270 masl in Department of Madre de Dios. The station's official name in Spanish is Centro de Investigación y Capacitación Río Los Amigos (Los Amigos Research and Training Center). It is commonly known by its Spanish acronym, CICRA.

The station sits on a high terrace at the confluence of the Madre de Dios River and Los Amigos River. CICRA's small private property is contiguous to the Los Amigos Conservation Concession (LACC), which protects a diversity of upland and lowland forest types and aquatic habitats in 1,450 km² of the lower Los Amigos watershed. Population density in a 5 km radius of the station is approximately 2 persons per square kilometer, mostly itinerant gold miners working concessions along the Madre de Dios River; the 30-person village of Boca Amigos is 2 km from the station. Within the LACC, population density is zero, with the exception of occasional visits by uncontacted indigenous groups.

Research and training facilities at CICRA include lodging for 50 visitors, 250 m² of laboratory space, a lecture hall, a >50-km trail system, a 60-m radio tower, satellite internet access, access to online scientific literature and databases, high-resolution digital aerial photos of >200,000 ha of surrounding forests, a digital flora of >2,500 plant species collected on-site, a 470-volume scientific library, a weather station dating to 2000, and field guides to fish, amphibians and reptiles, and plants. Off-site resources include two smaller satellite stations, each with their own laboratories and lodging, 3 and 25 km from the main station; a GIS laboratory in nearby Puerto Maldonado; and two additional 60-m radio towers inside the conservation concession.

The station was established in 2000 by two non-governmental organizations: the Peruvian NGO Asociación para la Conservación de la Cuenca Amazónica (ACCA) and the US-based Amazon Conservation Association (ACA). The station is administered by ACCA, in partnership with ACA and a third NGO, the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research (ACEER). The long-term vision of these groups is to make CICRA the leading field destination for researchers and students in Amazonia.

In 2005–2009, CICRA was the most active research station in the Amazon basin, hosting an average of 24 researchers and assistants per day. During the same period, it was likely also the most intensively studied site in the Amazon, hosting 145 different research projects spanning animal behavior, biogeochemistry, botany, conservation biology, geology, hydrology, zoology, as well as biological inventories of 31 different taxa, ranging from copepods to marsupials. These numbers place CICRA behind Panama's Barro Colorado Island and Costa Rica's La Selva Biological Station—the leading Neotropical research stations—but ahead of other field stations in the Amazon basin. Most research visitors are associated with universities in Peru or abroad, and many receive funding to visit the station through ACA and ACCA's grant programs.

Los Amigos is also a leading training site for young Amazonian scientists and conservationists. From 2002 to 2009 the station hosted 19 field courses, ranging from introductory courses on Amazonia to specialized courses on plant identification, ornithology, and arthropod biology. More than 70% of the >300 students who participated in these courses were Latin American.

Through 2006, the station received the majority of its funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Additional funds have come from ACEER, the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, the National Geographic Society, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and private donors. Since mid-2005, the station has covered its operating expenses with station fees from visiting researchers and courses.

See also
 Cocha Cashu Biological Station
 Wayqecha Biological Station

External links

  Newspaper article on CICRA.

Conservation projects
International research institutes
Environment of Peru
Biological stations

Los Amigos Biological Station


The Highland Mountains, highest point Table Mountain, el. ,  are a small mountain range southwest of Whitehall, Montana in Silver Bow and Madison County, Montana.

The Continental Divide winds through the range. A 21,000-acre roadless area encompasses the core of the range, which includes Red Mountain, also over 10,000'. Nutritious alpine forage in the Highlands gives area bighorn sheep the fastest horn growth of any herd in Montana. The green-tinted waters of Emerald Lake provide a nice contrast to the red rock of Red Mountain. A smaller roadless area of about 10,000 acres in the Basin Creek drainage protects Butte's municipal watershed. Lodgepole pine and Douglas-fir are common tree species.

See also
 List of mountain ranges in Montana

Notes

Mountain ranges of Montana
Landforms of Madison County, Montana
Landforms of Silver Bow County, Montana

Highland Mountains


The Mississauga train derailment, also known as the Mississauga Miracle, occurred on November 10, 1979, in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, when a CP Rail freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed and caught fire. More than 200,000 people were evacuated in the largest peacetime evacuation in North America until Hurricane Katrina. The fire was caused by a failure of the lubricating system. No deaths resulted from the incident.

Causes
A CP Rail freight train, led by three EMD F40PH diesel locomotives loaned from GO Transit, was eastbound from Windsor, Ontario. The train consisted of 106 cars that carried multiple chemicals and explosives, including styrene, toluene, propane, caustic soda, and chlorine. On the 33rd car, heat began to build up in an improperly-lubricated journal bearing on one of the wheels, resulting in the condition known among train workers as a "hot box". (This was one of the few still in use at that time as most had long since been replaced with roller bearings.) Residents living beside the tracks reported smoke and sparks coming from the car, and those who were close to Mississauga thought the train was on fire. The friction eventually burned through the axle and bearing, and as the train was passing the Mavis Road level crossing, near the intersection with Dundas Street, a wheelset (one axle and pair of wheels) fell off completely.

Explosion and evacuation
At 11:53 p.m., at the Mavis Road crossing, the damaged bogie (undercarriage) left the track, causing the remaining parts of the train to derail. The impact caused several tank cars filled with propane to burst into flames.

The derailment also ruptured several other tankers, spilling styrene, toluene, propane, caustic soda, and chlorine onto the tracks and into the air. A huge explosion resulted, sending a fireball  into the sky which could be seen from  away. As the flames were erupting, the train's brakeman, Larry Krupa, 27, at the suggestion of the engineer (also his father-in-law), managed to close an air brake angle spigot at the west end of the undamaged 32nd car, allowing the engineer to release the air brakes between the locomotives and the derailed cars and move the front part of the train eastward along the tracks, away from danger. This prevented those cars from becoming involved in the fire, important as many of them also contained dangerous goods. Krupa was later recommended for the Order of Canada for his bravery, which a later writer has described as "bordering on lunacy."

After more explosions, firefighters concentrated on cooling cars, allowing the fire to burn itself out, but a ruptured chlorine tank became a cause for concern. With the possibility of a deadly cloud of chlorine gas spreading through suburban Mississauga, more than 200,000 people were evacuated. A number of residents (mostly the extreme west and north of Mississauga) allowed evacuees to stay with them until the crisis abated. Some of these people were later moved again as their hosts were also evacuated. The evacuation was managed by various officials including the mayor of Mississauga, Hazel McCallion, the Peel Regional Police and other governmental authorities. McCallion sprained her ankle early during the crisis, but continued to hobble to press conferences.

Aftermath
Within a few days Mississauga was practically deserted, until the contamination had been cleared, the danger neutralized and residents were allowed to return to their homes. The city was finally reopened on the evening of November 16. The chlorine tank was emptied on November 19.

It was the largest peacetime evacuation in North American history until the evacuation of New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and remained the second-largest until Hurricane Irma in 2017. It was the last major explosion in the Greater Toronto Area until the Sunrise Propane blast in 2008.

Due to the speed and efficiency with which it was conducted, many cities later studied and modelled their own emergency plans after Mississauga's.

As a result of the accident, rail regulators in both the U.S. and Canada required that any line used to carry hazardous materials into or through a populated area have hotbox detectors.

Larry Krupa was inducted into the North America Railway Hall of Fame for his contribution to the railway industry. He was recognized in the "National" division of the "Railway Workers & Builders" category.

The city of Mississauga sued CP in hopes of holding the railroad responsible for the massive emergency services bill. However, the city dropped its suit after CP dropped its longstanding opposition to passenger service on its trackage near Mississauga. This cleared the way for GO Transit to open the Milton line two years later.

Hazel McCallion, in her first term as mayor at the time of the accident, was continuously re-elected until her retirement in 2014 at age 93.

In popular culture

The song Trainwreck 1979 by Canadian band Death From Above 1979 is about the derailment:

It ran off the track, 11-79
While the immigrants slept, there wasn't much time
The mayor came calling and got 'em outta bed
They packed up their families and headed upwind
A poison cloud, a flaming sky, 200,000 people and no one died
And all before the pocket dial, yeah!

See also

 List of rail accidents (1970–79)
 List of rail accidents in Canada

References

 "Miracle of Mississauga", Toronto Sun Publishing, 1979.

History of Mississauga
Explosions in Canada
Explosions in 1979
Gas explosions
Railway accidents in 1979
Train and rapid transit fires
Accidents and incidents involving Canadian Pacific Railway
Mississauga Train Derailment, 1979
Disasters in Ontario
Environmental disasters in Canada
1970s fires in North America
1979 fires
1979 in the environment
Derailments in Canada
1979 in Ontario
November 1979 events in Canada
Railway accidents and incidents in Ontario

1979 Mississauga train derailment


White Hills is a section of the city of Shelton, Connecticut. It is one of the oldest parts of the city, with historical buildings dating to the early 18th century. It is the most rural part of Shelton, though much of it is now suburban.

White Hills got its name for the higher altitude it has compared with the rest of Shelton. The rolling hills in the area were named White for several reasons: The snow melted slower in the spring, the visible lyme rock, and the wild dogwood blossoms.

White Hills is bordered by Monroe to the north and west, the Housatonic River to the east, the "downtown" to the southeast, and Huntington to the southwest. Its road borders are roughly East Village Road to the east and north, Beardsley Road to the north, and Route 110 (Leavenworth and Shelton Roads) to the west and south. However, Maple Avenue (to the southwest) is considered part of Lower White Hills, but claimed by both Huntington and White Hills.

The Lower White Hills Cemetery (1700) is on Maple Avenue, just west of Route 110.

White Hills has a volunteer fire department, Shelton Fire Company 5. The fire company was formed in 1947 and the first truck was purchased in 1948, costing $7,000.  Members signed personal notes to assure the payment of the new vehicle.   They also held two-day country fairs to help in the payment for the new fire truck.  Those two-day fairs were a tremendous amount of work. Some of the attractions were, animals and produce on exhibit, there was a baked goods table, white elephant table, snack bar, games of chance, raffles, square dancing, and many other attractions. The department has frequently won honors at local marching parades. White Hills has both a rural character and access to nearby shopping areas. The section of town is equidistant from Monroe center, Huntington center, and downtown Shelton. There is a recreational facility in the area called East Village Park, established in the early 1980s.

Landmarks:

 Lincoln Spruce
 French's Corner

See also

References

Neighborhoods in Connecticut
Shelton, Connecticut

White Hills (Shelton)


Marija Makarovič, née Jagodic, (born 15 August 1930) is a Slovene ethnologist.

Makarovič was born in Ljubljana in 1930. After graduating from the University of Ljubljana in 1953 she worked as a curator at the Slovene Ethnographic Museum from 1953 until 1989. From 1993 to 1997 she led the Urban Jarnik Slovene Ethnographic Institute in Klagenfurt. In 2001 she was one of the co-founders of Centre for Biographic Research in Ljubljana together with Prof. Dr. Mojca Ramšak.

In 1979 she won the Levstik Award for her book Kmečka abeceda and Kmečko gospodarstvo na Slovenskem (The Farmer's Alphabet and Farm Management in Slovenia).

In 2014 she won the Deklica s Piščalko Award, which is awarded by county Kočevje for professionalism in the fields of art, culture, and humanitarian sciences.

References

1930 births
Living people
Slovenian ethnologists
Women ethnologists
Levstik Award laureates
University of Ljubljana alumni
Writers from Ljubljana

Marija Makarovič


The tambori ( ) is a percussion instrument of about 10 centimetres diameter, a small shallow cylinder formed of metal or wood with a drumhead of skin. Its usual function is to accompany the playing of the flabiol in a cobla band, beating the rhythm of the sardana, the traditional dance of Catalonia.

It is attached to the elbow of the left arm and struck with a little drumstick called a broqueta held by the right hand, while the flabiol can be played at the same time with the left hand.

See also
Pipe and tabor

External links
El testament n'Amèlia Video of a performance of this sardana (composer Joan Lamote de Grignon) by the cobla "Comptat d'Empúries" at the Castelló d'Empúries.  The flabiol player can be seen tapping the tamborí after playing the theme tune as an extended introduction.

European percussion instruments
Catalan musical instruments
Spanish musical instruments
Andorran musical instruments
Sardana

Tambori


Bob Holman is an American poet and poetry activist, most closely identified with the oral tradition, the spoken word, and poetry slam. As a promoter of poetry in many media, Holman has spent the last four decades working variously as an author, editor, publisher, performer, emcee of live events, director of theatrical productions, producer of films and television programs, record label executive, university professor, and archivist. He was described by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in The New Yorker as "the postmodern promoter who has done more to bring poetry to cafes and bars than anyone since Ferlinghetti."

Early years
Holman was born in LaFollette, Tennessee in 1948 and raised in Harlan, Kentucky, the child of "a coal miner's daughter and the only Jew in town." His father committed suicide when Holman was two. After his mother remarried, Holman was raised in rural Ohio. He attended Columbia College and graduated in 1970 with a degree in English. At Columbia, Holman studied with Kenneth Koch, Eric Bentley, and Michael Wood but claims that his "major poetry schooling," was "the Lower East Side, with Allen Ginsberg, John Giorno, Anne Waldman, Miguel Piñero, Hettie Jones, Ed Sanders, Amiri Baraka, Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Pedro Pietri, David Henderson, Steve Cannon, et al."

Live poetry

St. Mark's Poetry Project
Since its founding by Paul Blackburn in 1966, the St. Mark's Poetry Project in New York has been (according to John Ashbery) "a major force in contemporary American literature."  Holman coordinated the readings at the Poetry Project from 1977 through 1984 and was on the Project's board of directors from 1980 through 1984.

Words to Go
As part of the Cultural Council Foundation's CETA Artists Project, Holman participated in "Words to Go," a mobile troupe of writers and poets that toured New York City in 1978 and 1979. Other members of the troupe included Sandra María Esteves, Roland Legiardi-Laura, Madeleine Keller, Nathan Whiting and Cassia Berman. An anthology of these poems, edited by Bob Stokes, was published by CCF.

Nuyorican Poets Café
Since its founding by Miguel Algarín in 1973, the Nuyorican Poets Café's purpose "has always been to provide a stage for the artists traditionally under-represented in the mainstream media and culture." As co-director of the Nuyorican, Holman introduced slam poetry to the café in 1988 and emceed the venue's slams through 1996. In 1993, he founded the Nuyorican Poets Café Live!, a touring company of poets.

"Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café"
Holman and Algarin were co-editors of the anthology entitled "Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café." Published in 1994, "Aloud!" was a winner of the 1994 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.

Bowery Poetry Club
Holman is the founder and proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club, which opened to the public in September 2002. Billed as "a Home for Poetry," the club sponsors poetry events every night, and workshops and readings in the afternoons. In an interview with The New York Times shortly after the club's opening, Holman said, "They say no one has ever gone broke running a bar in New York, but we're going to give it a shot." In 2004 the club won a Village Award from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. The awards are given "to help . . . recognize the people, places, and businesses that make a significant contribution to the legendary quality of life in Greenwich Village, The East Village and NoHo."

Bowery Poetry Books
In conjunction with YBK Publishers, Holman founded Bowery Poetry Books in 2005. Since then the imprint has published 13 titles, including works by Taylor Mead, Janet Hamill, Fay Chiang, Paul L. Mills and Black Cracker. It also published an anthology entitled "The Bowery Bartenders Big Book of Poems."

Bowery records
In 2007 Holman released a CD entitled "The Awesome Whatever" – produced, and with music, by Vito Ricci—on the Bowery Records label.

Poets Theater
Holman has directed and/or produced a steady stream of plays during his career, most of them written by poets. These include:

 Ted Berrigan's "Clear the Range" at St. Clement's Episcopal Church Theater, 1977
 "4 Plays by Edwin Denby" at the Eye and Ear Theater, March 1981
 Ed Friedman's "The White Snake" at the Eye and Ear Theater, May 1982
 W. H. Auden's "Paid on Both Sides", at the Eye and Ear Theater, May 1983
 A series produced at St. Mark's Church between 1988 and 1990 comprising Millicent Dillon's "She Is in Tangiers: Life and Work of Jane Bowles", Vladimir Mayakovsky's "Mayakovsky, a Tragedy," Tristan Tzara's "The Gas Heart", Antonin Artaud's "Jet of Blood", and Holman's own collaboration with Bob Rosenthal, "The Cause of Gravity"/"The Whore of the Alpines"/"Bicentennial Suicide."
 D. Zhonzinsky's "Stop at Nothing" at The Kitchen, 1992
 Pedro Pietri's "Eat Rocks" at New Dramatists NYC
 Ed Sanders's "A Night at the Rebel Café" at the Bowery Poetry Club, 2003

At WNYC-TV and WNYC-FM
Between 1987 and 1993 Holman was the producer and host of "Poetry Spots" for WNYC-TV, a public television station in New York City. In a foreshadowing of the technique used in "The United States of Poetry," each "Poetry Spot" was a short film built around a single poet performing a poem. The "Poetry Spots" series won New York Emmy Awards in 1989 and 1992.

In 2004–2005, Holman was Poet-in-Residence at WNYC-FM, a storied public radio station in New York City.

Nuyo Records/Mouth Almighty Records
In 1994 Holman, Sekou Sundiata, Bill Adler and Jim Coffman co-founded NuYo Records, a record label devoted to the spoken word. Its first two releases, distributed in conjunction with Imago Records, included "Grand Slam: Best of the National Poetry Slam"

This venture was revived in 1996 as Mouth Almighty Records under the auspices of Mercury Records. Over the course of the next three years the label released 18 titles, including recordings by the Last Poets, Allen Ginsberg, and Sekou Sundiata, two CDs of short fiction from The New Yorker magazine, and a two-CD set of readings of Edgar Allan Poe produced by Hal Willner. Mouth Almighty's four-CD box set of readings by William Burroughs, produced by the poet John Giorno, was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1999.

In 1997, the Mouth Almighty slam team, coached by Holman, won the National Poetry Slam.

In 1998 Mouth Almighty released Holman's own "In With the Out Crowd," produced by Hal Willner.

"United States of Poetry"
In 1996 Holman, director Mark Pellington, and producer Joshua Blum teamed up to create "The United States of Poetry," a critically acclaimed five-part PBS television series.  The program featured over 60 poets, rappers, cowboy poets, American Sign Language poets and Slammers. In a review for The New York Times, John J. O'Connor wrote, "Wandering all over the map, geographical and literary, 'The United States of Poetry' unabashedly celebrates the Word.  These days, that's downright courageous." Identified as "the brainchild of Bob Holman," the series is described as "an excellent presentation of 20th Century poetry" on the website of the Academy of American Poets.

The television series was accompanied into the market-place by a book and a soundtrack recording.  The book, published by Abrams Books, was co-edited by Holman, Pellington, and Blum, with an introduction by Holman.

The soundtrack, underscored with music by tomandandy, was issued by Mouth Almighty Records.  In a review for 'The New York Times', Stephen Holden wrote, "The [soundtrack] illustrates how thoroughly the lines between literature and popular culture have dissolved over the last 40 years."

Teaching positions
Among Holman's first teaching jobs was a stint in July 1991 at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, which had been founded at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado by Chogyam Trungpa, Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman in 1974.  Holman's course was entitled "From Rap to Zap." Between 1993 and 1996 Holman was a Professor of Writing at The New School for Social Research, and from 1998 through 2002 a Visiting Professor of Writing and Integrated Arts at Bard College. In 2003 Holman relocated to Columbia University's School of the Arts where, as a Visiting Professor of Writing, he taught the graduate course "Exploding Text: Poetry Performance." In 2007, as a Visiting Professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Holman began teaching a course called "Art and the Public Sphere." From 2010 to 2016, Holman suspended his teaching activities to focus on the Endangered Language Alliance. Holman taught his oral poetry syllabus "Exploding Text: Poetry and Performance" at Princeton University in the fall of 2017.

Endangered Language Activism

Endangered Language Alliance
In 2010, in cooperation with linguists Daniel Kaufman and Juliette Blevins, Holman founded the Endangered Language Alliance.  The work, he says, comprises a mission:  "We are so in awe of the power of the book that we've forgotten the power of sound and the magic of sense nested in sound. Everybody's fighting for the preservation of species, but who's fighting for the preservation of languages, which are in fact the souls...of culture itself?" The project has so far generated "On the Road With Bob Holman:  A Poet's Journey Into Global Cultures and Languages," a three-part documentary DVD focused on West Africa and Israel. Bob Holman features on Welsh artist Gai Toms' 2012 album Bethel, on which he performs an improvised scat.

KHONSAY: Poem of Many Tongues
In 2015, with City Lore's Steve Zeitlin as producer, Holman directed the poetry film KHONSAY: Poem of Many Tongues. Supported by the NEA and NYSCA, KHONSAY documents 50 speakers of endangered, minority, or treasure languages in the cento form, with one line from each speaker.

Language Matters with Bob Holman
Produced by David Grubin, Language Matters with Bob Holman aired nationally on PBS in January 2015. The documentary film focuses upon the rapid extinction of many of planet Earth's human languages and the multifarious struggles and efforts to save and preserve them. Holman states that "There are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages spoken in the world today. Languages have always come and gone but what is happening today is "a global crisis of massive proportions."

In his review for the journal Literary Kicks, Levi Asher called Language Matters "a delightful and captivating two-hour documentary...Language Matters appears to be a television documentary about remote cultures and faraway peoples. It turns out to be a show about us all."

In 2015,Alonzo Holman was awarded Ford Foundation funding to tour Language Matters throughout Alaska, and to organize poetry workshops that included speakers of Alaska's Native Languages. The screening tour and workshops were detailed by Holman in a chapter in "Language and Globalization: An Autoethnographic Approach", edited by Maryam Borjian and due for publication by Routledge in 2017.

LINES Ballet Collaboration
Holman is currently creative consultant to Alonzo King's LINES Ballet company, who are producing a ballet inspired by endangered languages which will be performed in spring 2017.

Bob Holman Audio/Video Poetry Collection

New York University's Fales Library is the home of The Bob Holman Audio/Video Poetry Collection, a multimedia collection documenting spoken word performances and productions between the years 1977 and 2002.  Key items include spoken word projects featuring and/or produced by Holman himself. Marvin Taylor, director of the Fales Library, has said Holman's collection "is a magnificent resource for anyone who cares about New York's spoken word scene during the last 40 years.  No one else has such documentation."

Collaboration With Musicians
Holman performs poetry on a periodic basis with griot and kora player Papa Susso.

In June 2017, Holman performed with Serhiy Zhadan as part of the show "1917–2017: Tychyna, Zhadan and The Dogs" at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, directed by Virlana Tkacz.

Filmography
 The United States Of Poetry, (Directed by Mark Pellington), PBS, 1995
 On The Road With Bob Holman, Rattapallax, 201,
 Witness Downtown Rising Renga, (Directed by Nikhil Melnechuk), 2012,
 KHONSAY: Poem of Many Tongues, (Directed by Bob Holman and Produced by Steve Zeitlin), 2015
 Language Matters With Bob Holman, (Directed by David Grubin) PBS, 2015

Bibliography

 Bicenntential Suicide: a novel to be performed, w/ Bob Rosenthal, Frontward Books, 1976.
  The Rainbow Raises Its Shoulder/When a Flower Grows, Chinatown Planning Council, 1979
 Tear to Open: This this this this this this, Power Mad Press, 1979.
  8 Chinese Poems, Peeka Boo Press, 1981
  SWEAT&SEX&Politics!, Peeka Boo Press, 1981
 PANIC*DJ: Performance Text, Poems Raps Songs, Larry Qualls and Associates/University Arts Resources, 1988.
 Cupid's Cashbox (with drawings by Elizabeth Murray), Jordan Davies, 1988.
 Aloud: Voices From The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, (Co-edited with Miguel Algarín), Holt Paperbacks, 1994
 Bob Holman's The Collect Call of the Wild, John Macrae/Henry Holt & Company, 1995.
 Beach Simplifies Horizon (with illustrations by Robert Moskowitz), The Grenfell Press, 1998.
 Picasso in Barcelona, Paper Kite Press, 2011
 Crossing State Lines: An American Renga, (Co-edited with Carol Muske-Dukes), Farrar, Stauss and Giroux, 2011
 A Couple of Ways of Doing Something (a collaboration with Chuck Close), Aperture, 2006.
 Sing This One Back To Me, Coffee House Press, 2013.
 The Cutouts (Matisse), Peek A Boo Press, 2017

Personal life
Holman was married to artist Elizabeth Murray until her death in 2007. The couple had two daughters, both born in the early 1980s: Sophia Murray Holman and Daisy Murray Holman.

References

External links

Bowery Poetry Club
The Fales Library Guide to the Bob Holman Audio/Video Poetry Collection
Bob Holman on discogs.com

1948 births
Living people
Columbia College (New York) alumni
Slam poets
American spoken word poets
American male poets
Bard College faculty
People from Harlan, Kentucky
Poets from Kentucky
Poets from Ohio
20th-century American poets
20th-century American male writers
21st-century American poets
21st-century American male writers
People from LaFollette, Tennessee

Bob Holman


The Act on Health Sector Database, also known as Act on Health Sector Database, No. 139/1998, the Health Sector Database Act and in media by other colloquial names, was a 1998 act of the Icelandic Parliament which allowed the Icelandic government to grant a license to a private company for the creation of a national biological database to store health information which could be used for research. The act was noted for boldly introducing policy related to biobanks and was the subject of controversy.

deCODE genetics did most of the lobbying for the act and was the beneficiary of the license to create the database.

Controversies
The passing of this act spurred international discussion about what policies were already in place and what differences in policy existed among biobanks.

The establishment of a national database for all Icelandic citizens raised discussion about the nature of the informed consent process for the project.

References

External links
, English translation
World Health Organization summary

Biobanks
Health law in Iceland
Government databases
Biological databases
Database law
Databases
Science and technology in Iceland
1998 in Iceland
1998 in law

Act on Health Sector Database


Angeliki Papoulia (; born 1975) is a Greek actress and theatre director. In film, she is most notable for her roles in Dogtooth, Alps and The Lobster by Yorgos Lanthimos, and A Blast and The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea by Syllas Tzoumerkas. For her part in Dogtooth she was awarded with a Heart of Sarajevo for Best Actress (together with Mary Tsoni).

Life and career
Papoulia was born in 1975 in Athens, Greece. She graduated from the Embros drama school. Right after her graduation she collaborated with Greek theatre directors Michail Marmarinos, Lefteris Voyatzis and Yannis Houvardas in various performances, most notably National Anthem'', School of Women, and Romeo and Juliet.

In 2004, Papoulia founded with fellow actors Christos Passalis and Yorgos Valais the blitz theatre group. Since then, she co-directed, co-written and acted in all of the group's performances in Athens and across Europe: Motherland (Bios theatre, Athens), Joy Division (Bios theatre, Athens), New Order (Bios theatre, Athens), Faust (National Theatre of Greece), Katerini (Athens and Epidaurus Festival), Guns! Guns! Guns! (National Theatre of Greece), Cinemascope (Athens and Epidaurus Festival and Bios theatre, Athens), Galaxy (Michalis Cacoyannis Institute, Athens & Schaubuhne, Berlin), Don Quixote (Athens & Epidaurus Festival), Late Night (Onassis Cultural Center and La Filature), Vanya - Ten years After (Technis theatre in co-production with La Comédie de Reims and Théâtre Dijon-Bourgogne), 6am How To Disappear Completely (Onassis Cultural Center in co-production with Sao Luiz Teatro Municipal, Lisbon, La Filature, La Comédie De Reims, Théâtre De La Ville - Paris, Nouveau Théâtre De Montreuil, Ligne Directe - Paris and Festival d' Avignon). One of the most celebrated Greek theatre ensembles, the blitz theatre group define their basic principles as following: "theatre is a field where people meet each other and exchange ideas in the most essential way, not a field for virtuosity and ready made truths. There is a need for answers to what society asks from art today and what theatrical structures stand for in the dawn of the 21st century. All members are equal throughout conception, writing, direction and dramaturgy process, everything is under doubt, there is nothing to be taken for granted, neither in theatre nor in life."

Parallel to her theater work, Papoulia started her film acting career with short films and a minor part in feature film Alexandreia by Maria Iliiou. In 2002, she appeared in Yannis Economidis' debut film "Matchbox" in the part of Kiki.

In 2008, Papoulia had the leading part of 'Older Daughter' in Yorgos Lanthimos' Oscar nominated and Cannes film festival awarded Dogtooth. Her collaboration with Lanthimos continued in his next film Alps that was awarded with the Best Screenplay Award at the Venice International Film Festival. In 2014, Angeliki Papoulia had the leading part of 'Maria' in Syllas Tzoumerkas' A Blast which premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival. In 2015, she appeared as the 'Heartless Woman' in Yorgos Lanthimos' Cannes awarded and Oscar nominated The Lobster. In 2019, her second collaboration with Tzoumerkas, thriller The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea'' premiered at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival. For her performances in these five films, Angeliki Papoulia was widely praised by the international press, with Der Spiegel calling her "one of the most fearless European actresses working today'.

In 2016, Papoulia was a member of the Locarno International Film Festival Pardi di domani Jury and of the Sarajevo International Film Festival Competition Jury.

Filmography

Theatre work

References

External links

1975 births
21st-century Greek actresses
Actresses from Athens
Greek film actresses
Greek stage actresses
Greek television actresses
Living people

Angeliki Papoulia


The Servants of Jesus and Mary (Servi Jesu et Mariae – SJM) are a Roman Catholic congregation which was founded in 1988 by Andreas Hönisch, a former Jesuit, expelled by his congregation due to his traditional views of the Catholic doctrine and pedagogy.

The first members were the German Catholic Scouts of Europe founded in Giessen 1976. Until today the pastoral care of European scout groups and youth work is one of the main priorities of the congregation. The first priests were trained and formed at the seminary of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter and at the seminary of the Diocese of Fulda, but now they have their own seminary in Blindenmarkt in Lower Austria.

On 16 July 1994, cardinal Antonio Innocenti recognised Servi Jesu et Mariae as a Congregation of Papal Law, attached to the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei. According to themselves they try to fulfill the pre-conciliar life of the Society of Jesus. In accordance with that goal they celebrate the Tridentine Mass, but also use the current missal of Pope Paul VI. Since 2014, Paul Schindele heads the congregation.

References

External links
 Homepage of the Servi Jesu et Mariae

Ecclesia Dei
Catholic religious institutes established in the 20th century
Scouting and Guiding in Germany
Christian organizations established in 1988
Society of Jesus

Servants of Jesus and Mary


A Wolf spider is a member of the group of spiders whose scientific name is the Lycosidae. Lycos means "wolf" in Greek. These spiders get their name from the way they hunt, which the people who named them thought was like the way wolves hunt. However, wolves hunt in packs but spiders are solitary animals. Their way of hunting is more like that of solitary cats such as the cheetahs. They generally wait for their prey to wander close by, and then they rush in to kill it.

The wolf spiders belong to a large group. The smallest are less than 0.04 inches (1 mm) in body length. The largest are around 1.5 inches (38 mm) in body length. Some wolf spiders spend all of their lives above ground (taking the best shelter they can find), others dig burrows but come out of the burrows to wander about and hunt, and some spend almost all of their lives waiting for passing insects in their burrows.

One species of wolf spider gives us the name that is now used in English for an entirely different kind of spider. This is Hogna tarantula because it found around Taranto, a city in Italy. People there once believed that if a human were bitten by one of these wolf spiders, they would surely die unless made to do a wild dance. Actually, Hogna tarantula does not give bites that need medical help. Any deaths from spiders in the area of Taranto probably came from the local Widow spider.

After a female wolf spider mates, she creates a clear space on the ground, lays down a rough sheet of silk, and on top of that sheet she makes a silken cup in which she lays her eggs. She next closes the cup, making a round ball, and holds onto it using her spinnerets until the babies begin to hatch. She then opens the silk ball and lets the baby spiders come out. They all run up her legs and cover the top part of her body.. There may be more than one hundred baby spiders on her back.

As you can see from the second photograph, mother wolf spiders carry their baby spiders around on their backs. They protect the babies for a few days, and then the babies leave her and go off on their own.

Is it a wolf spider?

There are several kinds of spiders that look almost like wolf spiders. The best way to be sure is to look at the eyes. There are four small eyes at the bottom, then two very large eyes, then two somewhat smaller eyes.

Various kinds of wolf spider

Wolf spiders come in various sizes, ranging from 2 millimeter to 40 millimeter in size (more than an inch in body size).

References

Lycosidae

Wolf spider


Underwater breathing apparatus is equipment which allows the user to breathe underwater.
The three major categories of ambient pressure underwater breathing apparatus are:
Open circuit scuba, where the diver carries the gas supply, and exhaled gas is exhausted to the environment
Diving rebreather, where the diver carries the gas supply, and exhaled gas is recycled for further use, and
Surface-supplied diving equipment, where the gas supply is provided from the surface through a hose, usually in a diver's umbilical, but also sometimes from a simple air hose.
Two other types may also be identified:
Escape sets provide a limited amount of breathing gas to allow the user to reach the surface from a disabled vessel or vehicle.
Atmospheric pressure underwater breathing apparatus is also used in the form of armoured atmospheric diving suits, which maintain an internal pressure approximating surface pressure.

Classification
Underwater breathing apparatus can be classified as open circuit, semi-closed circuit, (including gas extenders) or closed circuit (including reclaim systems), based on whether any of the exhaled gas is recycled, and as self-contained or remotely supplied (usually surface-supplied, but also possibly from a lock-out submersible or an underwater habitat), depending on where the source of the primary breathing gas is located. It may also be classified as ambient pressure or atmospheric pressure systems, and by purpose, between diving equipment and escape equipment.

Open circuit scuba

A scuba set is any self-contained breathing apparatus that is carried entirely by an underwater diver and provides the diver with breathing gas at the ambient pressure. Although strictly speaking the scuba set is only the diving equipment which is required for providing breathing gas to the diver, general usage includes the harness by which it is carried, and those accessories which are integral parts of the harness and breathing apparatus assembly, such as a jacket or wing style buoyancy compensator and instruments mounted in a combined housing with the pressure gauge. In open-circuit demand scuba, the diver expels exhaled air to the environment, and requires each breath be delivered on demand by a diving regulator, which reduces the pressure from the storage cylinder. The breathing air is supplied through a demand valve when the diver reduces the pressure in the demand valve during inhalation.

Rebreather scuba

A diving rebreather recirculates the breathing gas already used by the diver after replacing oxygen used by the diver and removing the carbon dioxide metabolic product. Rebreather diving is used by recreational, military and scientific divers in applications where it has advantages over open circuit scuba, and surface supply of breathing gas is impracticable. The main advantages of rebreather diving are extended gas endurance, and lack of bubbles. Rebreathers are generally used for scuba applications, but are also occasionally used for bailout systems for surface supplied diving. Rebreathers are more complex to use than open circuit scuba, and have more potential points of failure, so acceptably safe use requires a greater level of skill, attention and situational awareness, which is usually derived from understanding the systems, diligent maintenance and overlearning the practical skills of operation and fault recovery.

Surface-supplied diving equipment

The essential aspect of surface-supplied diving is that breathing gas is supplied from the surface, either from a specialized diving compressor, high-pressure cylinders, or both. In commercial and military surface-supplied diving, a backup source of breathing gas should always be present in case the primary supply fails. The diver may also wear an emergency gas supply cylinder called a "bail-out bottle," which can provide self-contained breathing gas in an emergency. The surface-supplied diver is much less likely to have an "out-of-air" emergency than a scuba diver as there are normally two alternative breathing gas sources available. Surface-supplied diving equipment usually includes communication capability with the surface, which improves the safety and efficiency of the working diver.

Surface-supplied diving includes diving using an umbilical with gas supply hose, lifeline strength member and communications cable, using a helmet or full-face mask, and diving with a simple air line, also known as hookah equipment.

Open and closed circuit systems

Surface-supplied air is provided on an open-circuit system, as it is simpler and more economical than recycling, and when supplied from the ambient atmosphere by a low pressure compressor, is practically unlimited.

For gas mixtures based on helium, the cost of the helium for open circuit use is a significant part of the operational costs, and helium can be difficult to source as well as expensive, so methods to extend the use of the helium diluent by a semi-closed circuit system or reclaim exhaled helium mixtures from the divers and recycle the gas at the surface by a closed circuit system have been developed to reduce waste.

Escape sets

An escape set is a self-contained breathing apparatus that allows its wearer to survive for a time in an environment without breathable air, which would allow escape through to the surface. Early escape sets were rebreathers and were typically used to escape from disabled submarines that were unable to surface. Escape sets are also used ashore, e.g. in the mining industry, and for escape from tanks (Amphibious Tank Escape Apparatus). The small open-circuit scuba Helicopter Aircrew Breathing Device has the similar purpose of providing breathing gas to escape from a ditched helicopter. A diver's bailout set has a similar function, and is used to escape from an underwater situation where the primary breathing apparatus has failed for any reason.

Atmospheric diving suits

An atmospheric diving suit (ADS) is a small one-person articulated anthropomorphic submersible which resembles a suit of armour, with elaborate pressure joints to allow articulation while maintaining an internal pressure of one atmosphere. Atmospheric diving suits can be used for very deep dives of up to  for many hours, and eliminate the majority of significant physiological dangers associated with deep diving; the occupant need not decompress, there is no need for special gas mixtures, nor is there danger of decompression sickness or nitrogen narcosis. Divers do not even need to be skilled swimmers as it is not possible to swim in these suits.

Current atmospheric suits use closed circuit breathing gas systems,  because it would be necessary to vent open circuit gas to the surface through a low pressure hose or pump the gas out to the water at ambient pressure, and to provide a system to prevent high-pressure flooding in the event of an umbilical rupture. A simple atmospheric pressure closed circuit oxygen rebreather system avoids these complications.

See also

References

Diving environmental protection equipment

Underwater breathing apparatus


Terence Michael Blake (19 October 1921 – 6 March 1998) was an early British trampoline pioneer.

Following the development of modern trampolines in the USA by George Nissen, Ted Blake was a major contributor to their nascence in the United Kingdom and in developing International Competition for trampolining.

In his early years Blake went to the Latymer School in London and on leaving there held a variety of jobs before joining the army in 1939.  During war years he trained as a Physical Training Instructor, transferring from the Essex Regiment to the Army Physical Training Corps in 1941 and rose to the rank of Company Sergeant Major Instructor (CSMI) by the time of his discharge in 1946.  For most of his army life Blake was based at the Essex Regiment's depot at Brentwood.

Having left the army, Blake spent the next 3 years attending courses to become a teacher.  Starting out at the Loxford School in Ilford, Essex in 1949 he soon introduced a single second-hand Nissen trampoline. Whilst at the Loxford School, Blake developed a trampoline squad of sufficient skill that they were invited to do a demonstration at the Festival of Britain in 1951. Blake remained at Loxford School until 1956 when he left to establish the UK operation of Nissen.

Blake subsequently became managing director for the Nissen UK business based at their factory in Hutton Industrial Estate, Brentwood, Essex. Together with Kurt Baechler of Switzerland, Blake was credited with the introduction of trampolining to Europe.

Being passionate about trampolining he was not only involved in their commercial development but heavily involved in developing the competitive trampolining framework we see today.

It is likely that Blake was heavily involved in the UK National Championships which are credited, in 1958, with being the first televised national championships.

In 1964 Blake organised the first World Championships (financed by George Nissen) which were held in the Royal Albert Hall, London. That same year, following these first World Championships, he attended an inaugural meeting of prominent trampolinists in Frankfurt to discuss the formation of an International Trampoline Federation. This was launched as the (FIT) in Twickenham in 1965 and Blake became its first vice-president, a position he held until 1967. So influential was Blake at the time that three of the first four World Championships were organised by him and held in London - at this time they took place every year.

Having delivered at the Senior level, Blake continued to be heavily involved in promoting competition, and in 1973 working with Bob Bollinger and George Nissen created the World Age Group Competition, which now runs alongside the World Championships every two years.

Blake appeared, however, to not always be comfortable with authority and in 1972 was scathing about the FIT he had originally developed, questioning why it was so bureaucratic and gymnastics oriented in an international publication of that time.

One of few Britons so honoured, in 1976 he was recognised by the United States Trampoline & Tumbling Association for his major influence on developing modern trampolining by being added to their Hall of Fame.

Blake left Nissen in mid-1980 having spent many years staving off the pressure from Nissen's then-owners to cease manufacturing trampolines because of fears of litigation.  They had previously ceased manufacture in USA many years before for this very reason.  Blake continued to give talks and lectures, however and soon became a leading light in the UK Leisure Management Industry.

References

Brentwood (Essex town)
1921 births
1998 deaths
Military personnel from London
British male trampolinists
People educated at The Latymer School
British Army personnel of World War II
Essex Regiment soldiers
Royal Army Physical Training Corps soldiers

Ted Blake


A 2011 poll showed that 66% of Finnish respondents considered Finland to be a racist country but only 14% admitted to being racist themselves. Minority groups facing the most negative attitudes were Finnish Kale, Somalis, and ethnic groups mostly consisting of Muslims. Many Finnish people believe that Finns played little or no role in colonialism, a view known as "Finnish exceptionalism". However, Finns did settle while not an independent people the Sámi land and in the north and were involved in European colonial projects in Africa and North America. Finns at the time were colonial subjects of Sweden and had no choice in this regard.

In December 2012, the Finnish Police reported an increase in cases of racism and related physical abuse. In February 2013, researchers of racism and multiculturalism reported an increase in the number of threats and abuse. In January 2013, Save the Children reported that immigrant children were facing an increasing amount of racist abuse. In June 2011, a researcher reported an increase in the amount of racist violence targeting children and teenagers.

According to the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) of the Council of Europe, neither Finland's Non-Discrimination Ombudsman nor its advisory board for Non-Discrimination have the financial and human resources to effectively perform according to their mandates. There is a National Discrimination Tribunal, but it cannot order compensation for victims of racial discrimination. The legal provisions of Finland's Aliens' Act are discriminatory and subject ethnic minorities to racial profiling by the police.

According to ECRI, the majority of people in Finland don't know enough about the Sámi people (an Indigenous ethnic minority in Finland) and are not taught enough about Sámi people and culture in school. ECRI has criticized Finland for not having ratified the ILO-convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples.

The Somali community in Finland as well as the Finnish Roma face discrimination and racism. Russians in Finland are discriminated against in employment.

Helsinki Regional Transport Authority case
According to a report from Iltalehti, an alleged incident of racism and police brutality occurred on the evening of 4 July 2020 at the Central Railway Station of Helsinki Metro. The incident centers on two youths, one white male and one black male, who were apprehended together for not having a valid ticket. According to eyewitness accounts and unverified footage of the incident that was circulating on social media, the white youth was calmly spoken to by the police before being allowed to leave, however, the black teenager was allegedly thrown down onto the floor by security staff and placed in handcuffs. One security staff member was allegedly seen pressing his knee down on the teenager's neck, at which point the victim could be seen yelling out "I can't breathe" in English, which has clearly evoked images on social media in the case of George Floyd in the United States.  According to security staff and HSL department chief Janne Solala, the white youth was cooperative, provided his ID when asked and didn't try to resist so force wasn't needed.  Meanwhile, after getting caught, the black teenager refused to provide his ID or any other information about himself and tried to flee from the scene. Finnish ticket inspectors have a right written in law to prevent a suspect from leaving if caught travelling without a valid ticket, and by the same law a person travelling without a ticket is required to provide their ID to the ticket inspector. According to Solala, this situation had nothing to do with racism, race or gender because security staff will use similar force on anyone who is resisting and uncooperative, ethnic Finns included. Also, written statements and security camera footages indicated that excessive force was not used in this situation by the security staff.

Purra's writings case

In July 2023, online comments of Riikka Purra, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance of the Orpo Cabinet, written in 2008 prior to her political career to Jussi Halla-aho's Scripta blog emerged in the media. In the comments, using the username riikka, she frequently used derogatory language about immigrants, and wrote about a confrontation on a suburban train with a group of young immigrants: "If they gave me a gun, there'd be bodies on a commuter train, you see." Purra originally refused to confirm whether she was behind the nickname and also said that she had no intention of resigning or regretting her past actions. However, after the comments were condemned by some representatives from the ruling parties and President Sauli Niinistö had called for the government to adopt a clear zero-tolerance stance on racism, Purra apologized for the comments. Soon after, Purra's newer writings from 2019 started to circulate in social media, in which she referred to women in burqa as "unrecognizable black sacks" in context of criticizing the clothing practice as dehumanizing. Prime Minister Orpo called an excerpt from the writings unacceptable, but considered that Purra's earlier apology was enough. Orpo later clarified that he considers the writings to advocate for women's rights.

By 13 July 2023, all opposition parties had demanded that Speaker of the Parliament Jussi Halla-aho would recall parliament from summer break to hold a vote of confidence in Purra. On 15 July, Halla-aho responded by stating that the matter wasn't urgent enough to recall parliament. According to a survey conducted in between 14.–19.7.2023, 47% of Finns thought that Purra should resign, while 40% thought that she shouldn't.

See also

Environmental racism in Europe
Finnish Resistance Movement
Kohti Vapautta!
Nordicism

References

Works cited

Finland
Racism in Europe

Racism in Finland


Webinar is a term used for different teleconferencing solutions: Usually, it consists of someone holding a presentation, which other people can follow over the internet. The solution usually allows these people to interact with the speaker, for example to ask questions about the presentation. Finally, there is a means of access control, to limit who can take part.

Internet communication

Webinar


Urbano Pio Francesco Rattazzi (29 June 1808 – 5 June 1873) was an Italian statesman.

He was born in Alessandria (Piedmont). He studied law at Turin and in 1838 began working as a lawyer. He began his political career in 1848, when he was elected deputy of the Kingdom of Sardinia.

Urbano Rattazzi served as President of the Chamber of Deputies three times: twice in the Kingdom of Sardinia (from 11 May 1852 to 27 October 1853 and from 10 January 1859 to 21 January 1860) and once in the Kingdom of Italy (from 18 February 1861 to March 3 1862).

Very moderate member of the "Historical Left", he was twice Prime Minister of Italy: from March 3 1862 to December 8 of the same year and from 10 April 1867 to 27 October of the same year.

When Giuseppe Garibaldi tried to join Rome to Italy with a forceful action, Rattazzi ordered that he be arrested. However, "the hero of two worlds" escaped: consequently, Rattazzi was forced to resign and retire from political life.

Rattazzi was also several times Minister and deputy, both in the Kingdom of Sardinia and in the Kingdom of Italy.

He died at Frosinone.

His wife, Maria Wyse Bonaparte, was a granddaughter of Lucien Bonaparte and a grandniece of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Note

1808 births
1873 deaths
People from Alessandria
Prime Ministers of Italy

Urbano Rattazzi


Tommy Schleh (born December 10, 1964 in Neckarbischofsheim), known under his stage name as DJ Klubbingman, is a Eurodance DJ and producer. He is a member of the group Masterboy.

Masterboy
In 1989, he and Enrico Zabler started working on dance music sounds. Their Eurodance group Masterboy was highly popular during the 1990s.

In 1999, his solo single "Welcome to the Club" was a success, along with "Living on a Better World".

Kinki Palace club
Since the age of 17, he has been working as a DJ. Today he owns the dance club Kinki Palace in Sinsheim in southwest Germany, where he still occasionally produces techno sounds himself.

As of 2009, his productions are broadcast weekly on the radio station Sunshine Live (every Tuesday from 8 to 12 pm).

Solo singles
 "Dreaming for a Better World"
 "Welcome to the Club"
 "Open Your Mind"
 "Highway to the Sky"
 "No Limit (On the Beach)"
 "Magic Summer Night"
 "We Call It Revolution" (feat. Trixi Delgado)
 "Love Message" (feat. Trixi Delgado)
 "Ride on a White Train" (feat. Trixi Delgado)
 "Another Day, Another Night" (feat. Trixi Delgado)

References

External links
 Official Site

 Kinki palace
 Fan shop
 Sunshine Live

German DJs
German record producers
1964 births
Living people
Eurodance musicians
Electronic dance music DJs

Tommy Schleh