Berge Sigval Natanael Bergesen (3 April 1863 – 4 December 1956) was a Norwegian shipowner and industrialist who served as a member of the Norwegian Parliament .

Bergesen was born at Farsund in Vest-Agder, Norway. He was a son of Ole Bergesen (1832-1899) and Marthe Marie Sophie Soeborg Jensen (1830-1908). He completed middle school in Kristiansand in 1879 and then received a trade school education in Osnabrück, Germany. Between the years 1882–1887, he received experience with chartering and ship brokerage businesses in Germany and Britain. In 1887, he moved to Stavanger where he founded his own shipping company, Sigval Bergesen (not to be confused with Bergesen d.y. ASA, which was founded by his son Sigval).  Over time, his fleet grew to become the city's largest.

Bergesen was member of the Parliament of Norway from 1903 to 1909.  He also held several important board positions, among these chairman of the Norwegian America Line from 1929 to 1939.

A statue of Sigvald Bergesen is located at the railway station in Stavanger. It was structured by Norwegian artist  Ottar Espeland and was unveiling June 7, 1953.

Personal life
He was married in 1888 with Rachel Racine (1866-1936), daughter of the merchant Charles Samuel Racine (1826-1896) and Marie Berentsen (1835-1897). Bergesen was the father of Ole Bergesen and Sigval Bergesen, Jr. Through Ole he was a grandfather of Berge Sigval Natanael Bergesen. Through Sigval he was a great-grandfather of Morten Sigval Bergesen and Petter C. G. Sundt and Ole Bergesen.

References

1863 births
1956 deaths
People from Farsund
Politicians from Stavanger
Norwegian company founders
Norwegian businesspeople in shipping
Members of the Storting

Sigval Bergesen


Selig Percy Amoils, FRCS, born 1933, is a South African ophthalmologist and biomedical engineering inventor.  In 1965, Amoils refined the cryoextraction method of cataract surgery by developing a cryoprobe that was cooled through the Joule-Thomson effect  of gas expansion. His system is still widely used in the fields of ophthalmology and gynaecology.

Amoils was also awarded a patent for his "rotary epithelial scrubber", an improvement on the brush first developed by Ioannis Pallikaris that removes corneal epithelial cells in preparation for photorefractive keratectomy.
Another development of his in 1970, was the diamond vitrectomy cutter, various instruments enabling micro-control of blade depth in radial keratotomy, as well as the oval comparator, or astigmometer, to control astigmatism after cataract surgery.

Career
Born, raised, and educated in Johannesburg, South Africa, Amoils briefly studied mechanical engineering prior to attending medical school at the University of Witwatersrand where he earned his MB and BCh in 1956. His specialist training was with Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, and Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary as a Clinical Fellow and research scientist specializing in retinal diseases and surgery and glaucoma.

He advanced cryosurgery for cataracts and retinal detachments during 1962 at Baragwanath hospital in Soweto.  This led to the Joule-Thomson effect cryoprobe in 1965, using carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide to cool the probe, which could then be reheated electrically, or by warm gas to release the probe if the resulting iceball also adhered to the iris; this dramatically changed cataract and retinal surgery.  Amoils achieved wide recognition for his invention and in 1975 received a Queen's Award for Technological Innovation. His cryoprobe has since been on display in the Kensington Museum in London.

In 1994, Amoils removed a cataract from South African President Nelson Mandela's left eye. In 2006, President Thabo Mbeki awarded him the silver Order of Mapungubwe for "excellence in the field of ophthalmology and for inspiring his colleagues in the field of science".

Publications
 Cryosurgery in ophthalmology (Textbook) Pitman Medical (1975)

References

 Sandton Chronicle report by Gillian Redmond 6 October 2006
 American Jewish Year Book, 1983, p. 271; online at

External links
 Innovative Excimer Solutions Inc.
 List of published papers

1933 births
Living people
South African ophthalmologists
South African Jews
Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons of England
South African inventors

Selig Percy Amoils


The Diechterhorn is a mountain in the Urner Alps, overlooking the Haslital in the Bernese Oberland. At 3,389 metres above sea level it is the highest summit of the Urner Alps lying within the canton of Bern.

On its east side lies the upper basin of the Trift Glacier, the summit of the Dammastock being located about five kilometres east. On its west side lies the Gelmersee at 1,849 metres.

The Gelmer hut, lying at 2,412 metres above the Gelmersee, is the closest hut. It is a common base for climbers.

References

External links
Diechterhorn on Summitpost

Mountains of the Alps
Alpine three-thousanders
Mountains of Switzerland
Mountains of the canton of Bern

Diechterhorn


Colonel Leroy W. Stutz (November 13, 1939 – July 9, 2023) was a U.S. Air Force officer, pilot and prisoner of war for 2,284 days (6.25 years) during the Vietnam War.

Early life and education
Stutz grew up on farm in northeast Kansas. His sisters were Helen S. Caplinger and Jeanette Mae Berry. He graduated from Atchison County Community High School, where he was an accomplished athlete.  Following high school, he farmed with his brother-in-law for two years and joined the Kansas National Guard in 1957.  Stutz attended Washburn University for the 1959–1960 academic year.  While a student at Washburn, Stutz was initiated into the Kansas Beta Chapter of Phi Delta Theta.

Stutz subsequently received an appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy graduating in 1964.  Prior to entering the service, Stutz was a Master Mason.  Following his return from Vietnam he completed the Scottish Rite degrees.

Soon after graduation from the Air Force Academy, Stutz married his high school sweetheart, Karen Keirns.  Their son, Brian, was born in 1965.  The Stutzs have three grandchildren: Aaron, Austin, and Aimee.

Vietnam
After flight training and reconnaissance photo training in Alabama and South Carolina, Stutz was promoted to first lieutenant and assigned to Udorn, Thailand flying the RF-4C Phantom II.

During a reconnaissance mission in November 1966, Stutz was recognized for his bravery with his first Silver Star.  The citation reads:

First Lieutenant Leroy W. Stutz distinguished himself by gallantry in connection with military operations against an opposing armed force near Hanoi, North Vietnam on 23 November 1966. On that date, Lieutenant Stutz, despite extremely hazardous conditions, reconnoitered the Dap Cau Railroad and Highway Bridge near Hanoi. This night, low level mission imposed great demands upon the resources and capabilities of the pilot. Exposing himself for fifty-five minutes over hostile territory in a highly sophisticated and lethal anti-aircraft defense structure, Lieutenant Stutz displayed outstanding determination in successfully obtaining the required intelligence on their assigned target. This intelligence was instrumental in restricting the flow of vital materials transported on the railroad leading from Hanoi to Communist China.  By his gallantry and devotion to duty, Lieutenant Stutz has reflected great credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.

Stutz's 85th combat mission came on December 2, 1966. Stutz and his co-pilot, Captain Robert R. Gregory, were assigned a 55-minute photo reconnaissance mission over Hanoi, North Vietnam.  During a pass over their target, their aircraft was hit by 57mm AAA ground fire and the two ejected as their aircraft crashed near Yên Bái 25 miles outside of Hanoi.  After landing, the two established voice contact with each other, and both were captured.

Stutz reported that he saw Gregory several times the day of their capture, but Gregory was unconscious.  Both men were transported to the Hanoi Hilton in the same truck and arrived on the same day they were shot down. Stutz never saw Gregory again.  In 1987, Life magazine published a story about Gregory who was still listed as missing in action.  Three months later, Vietnamese officials discovered Gregory's remains, returning them to his family 22 years after Stutz's return.

In an interview in 2004, Stutz described what happened upon his capture.  After being stripped of his clothes and having his arms tied behind him, they "beat hell" out of him.  "They took me to three or four villages to let everyone see the 'American aggressor,'" he recalled, adding villagers were encouraged to strike him too. "It was organized mayhem."

Stutz was routinely beaten, tortured and starved during the first four years of captivity.  He was moved around to several POW camps in the north including New Guy Village, the Zoo, Little Las Vegas, the Power Plant, Heartbreak Hotel, Camp Hope (Son Tay) and Skidrow.  Army Special Forces raided Son Tay in Operation Ivory Coast a rescue attempt but Stutz and his fellow POWs had been moved shortly before the raid.

During his first time at the infamous Hanoi Hilton, an old French prison in downtown Hanoi, the North Vietnamese crowded 40 or 50 into each large cell.  Stutz reported in 2004 that "We might have overstepped our bounds because they decided to 're-educate' 36 of us.  We were sent to a camp called Skid Row — solitary confinement, hotter than hell, no exercise," he said. "From Skid Row, they brought me and some other guys back and put us in an eight-man cellblock called Heartbreak Hotel."

About one year before their eventual release, the North Vietnamese took Stutz and 214 other prisoners to a camp on the Chinese border.  They remained there until the peace agreement was signed.

In the documentary Return with Honor, Stutz describes how his North Vietnamese captors tortured him:

I thought I was the toughest fighter pilot in the world. I found out real fast how wrong I was . . . When the screaming gets so bad they stuff a rag in your mouth so they don't have to hear you, all you can think is, 'God, I don't want to die and nobody even knowing.'Stutz served as a technical advisor to Return with Honor.

On March 4, 1973, Stutz, promoted during his time as a prisoner to captain, was released from Hanoi.  Almost 600 Americans were freed during Operation Homecoming.  The years of deprivation and captivity took a toll on Stutz, who lost , dropping from .  An injury suffered when he "tried to break the butt of a rifle with my head" had grounded him medically, when he was finally freed.

Air Force career
Promoted to major in 1974, Stutz was an Air Officer Commanding at the Air Force Academy and then the Commandant's Executive for Honor and Ethics.  He next attended the Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base in 1977–1978.  Promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1978, he attended Maintenance Officers School at Chanute Air Force Base.  He was then assigned to MacDill Air Force Base as officer in charge of the 61st Aircraft Maintenance Unit, maintenance supervisor, and later commander of the 56th Aircraft Generation Squadron and assistant deputy commander for maintenance.

Promoted to colonel in 1984, Stutz then attended the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in 1984–1985.  He returned to MacDill as Deputy Commander for Maintenance for the 56th Tactical Training Wing.  He was next Deputy for Maintenance of the 552nd Airborne Warning and Control Wing at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.

In July 1990, he reported to Chanute Air Force Base, Illinois, where he became the vice wing commander and the chief of the operation division of the 3330th Technical Training Wing. He was put in command of the 3360th in February 1992, and appointed commander of the Training Wing in November 1992.

Colonel Stutz retired from the Air Force in June 1994, having completed 30 years on active duty.  At the time of his retirement, he was a rated A pilot, with over 750 flying hours in the T-37 Tweet, T-33, and RF-4C Phantom II.

Death
Stutz died in Oklahoma City on July 9, 2023, at the age of 83. He was buried at Pardee Cemetery.

References

1939 births
2023 deaths
United States Air Force colonels
Vietnam War prisoners of war
Recipients of the Silver Star
Recipients of the Legion of Merit
Recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross (United States)
United States Air Force personnel of the Vietnam War
Shot-down aviators
Aviators from Kansas
Washburn University alumni
People from Atchison County, Kansas

Leroy W. Stutz


Teddington Lock is a complex of three locks and a weir on the River Thames between Ham and Teddington in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, England.  Historically in Middlesex, it was first built in 1810.

The limit of legal powers between the Port of London Authority, the navigation authority downstream to the North Sea and that upstream to small headwaters of the river, the Environment Agency, is marked nearby by an obelisk on the "Surrey" (towpath, right) bank.  The weir named Teddington Weir marks the river's usual tidal limit and is the lowest on the Thames. This lock is the lowest full-tide lock and second lowest of all-tide locks on the Thames.

The complex of civil engineering or infrastructure in essence consists of a large long weir and three locks: a conventional launch lock in regular use, very large barge lock and a small skiff lock. The barge lock was made to accommodate long barges, steamers or passenger ferries and has an additional set of gates half-way to operate more quickly for shorter craft. The staggered structures incorporate two reinforced narrow islands. The upper island is traversed by and accessible by the lock gates or Teddington Lock Footbridge.

Location and design
The greater lock is against the general south (right, towpath or Surrey) bank of the river which is for 500 m north-east here; a middle lock being that most regularly used spans a long thin island which has lawns, places for boat owners to sit and a lock keeper's cabin and short thin island which is a thin wedge of concrete and a broad canoe/kayak stepped portage facility.

The river downstream of the lock is the Richmond and Twickenham reach of the Tideway, a  reach of semi-tidal river due to the fact the Richmond Lock and half-tide barrages limits the fall of water thereby maintaining a head of water to aid navigability at and around low tide.

Though the weir at Teddington Weir marks the managed river's usual tidal limit, after prolonged rainfall causing very high fluvial flow, specifically at high tide, a higher limit of slack water (stand of the tide) causes eddies to arise as far upstream as the top of this reach, the next lock.

The large, bow-shaped Teddington Weir is against the opposite bank. A series of two footbridges at differing heights make up a structure which crosses the locks, the middle island that has the lock keeper's cabin and the weir pool, Teddington Lock Footbridge.

History

First lock, 1810
The Navigation Act obtained in April 1771 by the Thames Navigation Commission did not allow them to build locks below Maidenhead Bridge, but from 1802, several plans for locks in the First District of the Thames, stretching from Staines to Teddington, were drawn up. Stephen Leach took over the post of Clerk of Works for the First District in 1802, following the retirement of Charles Truss at the age of 82. Just before his retirement, Truss proposed locks at Molesey and Teddington, each having a weir with long tumbling bays, similar to modern practice. John Rennie had suggested a series of long cuts in 1794, and Truss adopted the same idea. Rennie and William Jessop again proposed four long cuts in 1805, each about , but the Navigation Committee were thwarted by strong opposition from landowners.

Zacchary Allnutt, by then Surveyor for the Second and Third Districts, stretching from Staines to Mapledurham near Reading, suggested locks at Chertsey, Sunbury and Teddington in 1805. Rennie submitted new proposals in 1809 for nine locks between Staines and Twickenham; two would be without weirs, seven would require large weirs to be built. Finally Leach drafted plans in 1810, which he suggested were "at once practicable and expedient, the least expensive, and the most likely to pass through Parliament without opposition and yet calculated to remedy the most prominent evils complained of." An Act of Parliament was obtained by the City of London Corporation in June 1810, which authorised construction of locks and weirs at Chertsey, Shepperton, Sunbury and Teddington. Each would be  with the associated weirs having ample capacity for flood conditions. Rennie, Leach and the Navigation Committee visited the sites in July, to finalise the positioning of the lock.  Leach then took charge of the work, which was undertaken by contractors Joseph Kimber and John Dows who also built Sunbury Lock.

Work at Teddington started in September 1810, but there were delays caused by flooding in November and December, and Leach awarded the contractors an extra £500. The lock was finished and opened in June 1811, but the weir was incomplete. The cofferdam protecting the works would need to be removed as river levels rose in the winter, which would have delayed completion until the following July, and so again Leach stepped in, awarding advance payments to the contractors, which enabled them to finish on time. The lock was further upstream than the present lock complex at the point where the footbridge now crosses. It comprised three pairs of gates as stipulated in the act. Total cost for lock, cut, weir, ballast and ground was £22,035 10s. d. () of which the land from Lord Dysart's estate cost £282 10s. 5d.. The lock was, at first, highly unpopular with the local fishermen and bargemen. After attempts to smash it, the lock keeper was granted permission to keep "a blunderbuss with bayonet attached thereto" to ward off attacks.

Rebuild, 1857
By 1827 the timber lock needed considerable repair and in 1829 the weir was destroyed by an accumulation of ice. It is noted that in 1843 the lock keeper prevented a steam vessel from ascending the lock. At that time steam vessels were limited to travel as far (upstream) as Richmond. As originally built, the lock had timber sides up to normal head water level, and turf above that. The crest of the weir was  above low water level at Teddington, but following the removal of the piers of old London Bridge (demolished 1831) in 1832, the drop increased to  and increased to  when dredging of the river was carried out. At tidally lower water occasional grounding of barges took place below the bottom sill.

Consideration was given to removing the lock altogether in 1840. However, it was decided to rebuild the lock and in June 1854 proposals included providing capacity for seagoing craft with a side lock for pleasure traffic. In June 1857 the first stone of the new lock was laid at the present position, the central of the three, opened in 1858 together with the narrow skiff lock,. The boat slide, separate, was added in 1869 and in the 1870s the weir collapsed twice causing enormous damage. After the weir had been rebuilt in 1871, sluice bays spanned around , similar to the tumbling bays.

Footbridges and barge lock
The footbridges were opened in 1889 and finally the barge lock, the largest lock on the river, was built in 1904–1905.  of the extracted gravel was used to raise the level of Cross Deep Ait, a former ait adjacent to Swan Island downstream, to protect it from flooding. The footbridges are Grade II listed.

World War II
In 1940 Teddington Lock was the assembly point for an enormous flotilla of small ships from the length of the River Thames to be used in the evacuation of Dunkirk.

Recent developments

Early twenty-first century renovation and improvement work in the area around the locks was undertaken as part of the Thames Landscape Strategy Teddington Gateway project.

In 2009 a local community group initiated a feasibility study for exploiting Teddington's weir for electricity generation, inspired by similar community-led generation schemes; Torrs Hydro and Settle Hydro. The study was encouraging and the Ham Hydro project now proposes using three reverse-Archimedean screws with a total output of . Environmental concerns, notably those raised by anglers about the potential effect on fish populations, prompted further environmental surveys during 2012. The outcome of these considerations is awaited before the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames will determine whether planning permission is to be granted for the scheme.

Access to and across the lock

The lock is on the towpath on the Surrey side in Ham about a mile below Kingston-upon-Thames. Parking is generally over 100 m distant. The nearest road is Riverside Drive in Ham. Alternatively the lock can be reached from Ferry Road Teddington over the footbridges which cross the river there.

Reach above the lock

Located  above the lock is Trowlock Island, towards the Teddington bank, followed by Steven's Eyot in the centre of the river. There are then Kingston Railway and Kingston Bridges. After  the river then curves sharply to the right with Thames Ditton Island towards the village of the same name. Finally before Molesey Lock is Hampton Court Bridge.

Despite settlements on both sides of the lock having formed part of London since the 1960s, the banks are still often referred to as the "Middlesex" and "Surrey" banks.

On the Middlesex (Teddington etc.) side of the river going upstream, the bank generally consists of homes and gardens/communal grounds up to and inclusive of Hampton Wick at Kingston Bridge; Teddington Studios, Lensbury Club, watersports clubs/a football club and the nature reserve at Trowlock are on the stretch. Above Kingston Bridge is Hampton Court Park, which stretches as far as Hampton Court Bridge. Half the Longford River, which feeds the water-features of Hampton Court Palace, runs out of a grated culvert opposite Raven's Ait and below the Water Gallery. After Hampton Court Bridge (along the side of the weir stream) the bank adopts food/hotel use then residential use.

On the Surrey side is a consistent green buffer and towpath between the river and Ham/Kingston, widening to Canbury Gardens, until the high-rise town centre is reached. The town's buildings switch to entertainment immediately south of Kingston Bridge. After the canalised mouth of the Hogsmill the riverside switches to a promenade with road by residential uses until Seething Wells reservoirs. Raven's Ait is upstream of the bridges in the centre of the river at Surbiton, followed by a marina. Long and Thames Dittons's riverside homes and pubs follow until beyond Thames Ditton Island.  A riverside park and playing fields flank the mouth of the Mole until Hampton Court Bridge, near to the top of the reach, overlooking part of the Palace. Hampton Court railway station is before the bridge and just above it is Molesey Lock.

Boats
There are navigation transit markers between Kingston Bridge and Raven's Ait on the Hampton Court bank, to allow river users to check their speed. A powered boat may not pass except in emergencies between the markers in less than one minute.  The reach is home to at least five sailing clubs, five rowing clubs, two skiffing and punting clubs, the Royal Canoe Club and two Sea Cadet centres. Numerous pleasure boats ply for trade, London Riverboat services and chartered trips between Kingston and Hampton Court.

Thames Path
The Thames Path as its towpath follows the Surrey side to Kingston Bridge where it crosses to run alongside Hampton Court Park, before returning to what is traditionally (and in navigation use) termed the "Surrey side" at Hampton Court Bridge.

Sinuosity
The river makes an acute inside angle on this reach — Teddington and Molesey locks are less than half the distance apart by land.

Sports clubs on the reach

 Royal Canoe Club
 Kingston Rowing Club
 Walbrook Rowing Club
 Tiffin School Boat Club
 Kingston Grammar School Boat Club
 Kingston University Boat Club
 The Skiff Club
 Dittons Skiff and Punting Club
 Thames Sailing Club
 Tamesis Sailing Club
 Minima Yacht Club
 Kingston Royals Dragon Boat Racing Club
 1st Surbiton (Sealion) Sea Scouts
 Ajax Sea Scouts
 Leander Sea Scouts

Popular culture and the media

The lock was the location of the  Fish-Slapping Dance sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus.

In episode 1 of series 5 of the BBC TV police drama New Tricks, the villain is arrested at Teddington Lock.

Thames Television had its purpose-built Teddington Studios at Teddington Lock.

In a third-season episode of Murder Maps Teddington Lock was the location of the brutal murder of two teenage girls in the summer of 1953. The murderer, Alfred Whiteway was apprehended, found guilty and was executed in December 1953.

In Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London book series Teddington lock marks the limit of the authority between the old man of the river, Father Thames and the newer Mother Thames in the Tidal Reaches

See also

 Locks on the River Thames
 Rowing on the River Thames
 Sailing on the River Thames

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

 Teddington Lock website
Photos of Teddington Lock with brief descriptions at Ham Photos blog

1812 establishments in England
Ham, London
Locks of London
Locks on the River Thames
Obelisks in England
Teddington
Transport in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames
Weirs on the River Thames

Teddington Lock


Bear Cub  () is a 2004 Spanish comedy-drama film co-written and directed by Miguel Albaladejo. The plot follows a bearish gay man who ends up looking after his nephew while his sister goes away to India and in turn makes him develop a fatherly bond with the boy, while forcing him to change his lifestyle. The Spanish word cachorro describes any young, furry animal such as a cub or puppy.

Plot
As a favor to his hippie sister who has gone off to India, Pedro, a gay dentist, has agreed to look after his nine-year-old nephew, Bernardo. Bernardo's father is dead and the boy and his uncle have not had much to do with each other until now. Originally, the boy was to stay with Pedro for a few days, but six weeks have passed with no word from the boy's mother.

His nephew's presence forces Pedro to take a break from his otherwise extremely active sex life. In fact, Pedro was beginning to tire of the superficial nature of his frequent relationships. Even his boyfriend, Manuel, who suddenly pays Pedro a visit and who shares his penchant for leather and latex, is not really the man with whom he wants to spend the rest of his life, although they express love for each other. Then, all at once, an entirely different set of problems arise. For one, there is Doña Teresa, Bernardo's paternal grandmother, who one day darkens Pedro's door and puts the emotional screws on him. Worse still, however, is the news that Bernardo's mother has been arrested in India for drug smuggling. She may be facing a prison sentence of 30 years, so the embassy informs Pedro. Pedro is just as shocked at this news as Bernardo; nevertheless, he realizes that he is now responsible for the boy. Without further ado, he decides to rise to the challenge this represents. There suddenly seem to be so many things to organize – such as repairs to the house and finding a school for the boy – that Pedro hardly misses the life he used to lead. Gradually, however, he succeeds in rekindling his sex life – albeit in a less excessive form.

Doña Teresa makes another appearance, this time demanding custody of Bernardo. However, Pedro is willing to fight for the boy's welfare. After illegally obtaining his medical history (revealing that Pedro is HIV positive) and hiring a private investigator who obtains pictures of Pedro on a night out in a gay club, and threatening him with both, he ends up allowing her to enroll Bernardo in a boarding school. When his grandmother goes to visit him later on, revealing Pedro's HIV status (despite their previous agreement), Bernardo reveals that he already knew from his mother, and that his mother was HIV positive as well. She then reveals that he is in the hospital with pneumonia. He tells her that he hates her and that it is her fault that he is currently in the hospital, because she was not there to care for him.

Three years pass, during which several letters go back and forth between Bernardo, Pedro, his mother and his grandmother. Bernardo and two of his friends, a boy and girl, attend a funeral, where a casket is being lowered, although it is not immediately revealed whose funeral this is. Shortly after, a cab pulls up with Pedro inside, out of the hospital and healthy, and he expresses lament at the passing of Bernardo's grandmother. After a brief conversation, Bernardo returns to his two friends, kisses both, and parts from them; it is unclear whether or not he is romantically involved with one of them. Bernardo then returns to his uncle and they ride away together in the cab.

Cast
 José Luis García Pérez as Pedro
 David Castillo as Bernardo at 9 years old
 Daniel Llobregat as Bernardo at 14 years old
 Diana Cerezo as Lola
 Arno Chevrier as Manuel
 Empar Ferrer as Doña Teresa
 Elvira Lindo as Violeta
 Mario Arias as Javi

Distribution
The film had its world premiere at the 54th Berlin International Film Festival on 8 February 2004, and was shortly followed by a nationwide release in Spain on 27 February 2004. It then made its debut in the United States at the 2004 Miami International GL Film Festival on 28 April 2004, and received theatrical releases in New York City on 5 November 2004 and in Los Angeles on 19 November 2004, earning $99,261 at the US box office. It was first released on DVD on 10 May 2005, and was released again as an unrated director's cut on 1 March 2007.

For its premiere in the United States, two sex scenes are cut (the initial scene and the one of the sauna).

Film festivals
2004 Berlin International Film Festival
2004 Tribeca Film Festival
40th Chicago International Film Festival
2004 Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
2004 Miami International GL Film Festival
2005 Tokyo International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival

References

External links

2004 films
2004 comedy-drama films
2004 LGBT-related films
Bear (gay culture)
Films scored by Lucio Godoy
Films set in Madrid
Films shot in Madrid
2000s French-language films
Gay-related films
HIV/AIDS in film
LGBT-related comedy-drama films
Spanish comedy-drama films
2000s Spanish-language films
Spanish LGBT-related films

Bear Cub


Andreas Waldherr (29 April 1968 – 6 July 2011) was an Austrian rally driver.

Career

In 2000 Andreas Waldherr achieved second place for diesel vehicles in the Rally Cup of the Supreme National Sports Commission for Motorsports (OSK) of the Austrian Automobile, Motorcycle and Touring Club (ÖAMTC).  He won the OSK Rally Cup for diesel vehicles three times, from 2001 to 2003.  Since 2004, Waldherr drove successfully in the Austrian Rally National Championship.

He experienced his greatest success in 2006 when he took third place in the overall standings.  He achieved his first success in the Austrian Rally National Championship at the 2–3 May 2008 Bosch Super Plus Rally in a Volkswagen Polo S2000. During his career, Waldherr drove in 72 rallies, three of which won.  In the 2010 season, engaged by VW Racing Austria Club, Waldherr was able to finish in second place behind national champion Raimund Baumschlager.  However, 2011 was less successful, where he ranked only eighth after experiencing several problems.  Waldherr also proved his skills in closed-course racing: In 2006 he took third place in the 24 Hours of Dubai and in 2011 he achieved the highest score for diesel-powered vehicles in a Golf TDI.

Andreas Waldherr lived in Thomasberg, Austria, was married and the father of a son Luca, who's also a rally driver.

Waldherr suffered a fatal accident in his workshop in Anspang, Austria on the morning of 6 July 2011 when he was crushed under his rally car while servicing it.  He was alone in the workshop at the time he was found by rescue personnel, around 11:30 a.m.  Resuscitation efforts were unsuccessful.

References

External links
 www.waldherr.cc — Waldherr Motor-Sport

Austrian rally drivers
1968 births
2011 deaths
Accidental deaths in Austria
Austrian racing drivers
Nürburgring 24 Hours drivers

Andreas Waldherr


St Andrew's Presbyterian Church is a Presbyterian church at 32 Moon Street, Wingham, New South Wales, Australia. Together with St Thomas' Presbyterian Church, Krambach, the St Andrew's congregation forms part of the Wingham and Upper Manning Parish.

St Andrew's is located on a  triangular block formed by Moon Street, Gloucester Road, and Fotheringham Street in Wingham. St. Andrew's is towards the apex at the corner of Moon Street and Gloucester Road. The manse is located at the Fotheringham Street end of the block, however the manse is not the home of the current minister.

Church building

The church building is a yellow brick building from the 1970s and replaced the original wooden church built in 1856 in Canget Street, one block east of the Wingham Memorial Hall.

The site of the new church was donated to the parish many years before the new church was built for the purpose of providing a manse. The manse was built in 1898 and has since undergone several alterations.

Part of the funding for the new building was provided by a scheme subsidising the building of World War II memorials. There is a roll of honour in the porch.

The building itself includes a sanctuary with seating for 120 people, a vestry off to the right and the hall to the left. Inside the church an enclosed pulpit is located to the left of the congregations view, and a lectern on the right. Further right from the lectern is seating for a choir of 30. Directly behind the lectern is the baptismal font. In the centre between the font and the organ is the Communion Table and seating for the minister and 8 elders. Behind the pulpit is a large chair for the preacher and the new organ. The original organ was donated by the former minister Rev. Philip Lucock. At the very back of the church is a large stand on which flowers are placed and above that on the back wall is a large celtic cross.

Although the original plans included the church hall, it was not expected that it would be built at the same time as the new church, but the parish decided that it could afford to do so. The original plans included only a small kitchen and did not include public facilities, which were added, but are located a long way from the body of the hall, and even further from the church itself.

Similar churches by the same architect are Port Macquarie Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church at Rutherford, New South Wales, and a church at Leura in the Blue Mountains.

Parish

The Wingham and Upper Manning Parish was established in 1883 by its division form the Taree and Lower Manning Parish. At the time the parish formerly included congregations at Ashlea, Bo Bo, Bobin, Callighan's Creek, Cedar Party Creek, Cooplacurripa, Cucumbark, Kauthi, Krambach, Killawarra, Kimbriki, Kilibakh Creek, Glen Lewis, Giro, Nowendoc, No. 1, Wherral Flat, and Woodside (near Mt George). In the mid-1990s a congregation at Comboyne joined the neighbouring parish of Wauchope.

See also

 Presbyterian Church of Australia

References

Presbyterian organizations established in the 19th century
Wingham
Churches completed in the 1970s
Mid North Coast
20th-century Presbyterian church buildings in Australia

St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Wingham


Anna Robena Laidlaw or Anna Robena Thomson (30 April 1819 – 29 May 1901) was a British pianist. She was court pianist to the queen of Hanover.

Life
Robena Anna Keddy Laidlaw was born in West Bretton in Yorkshire in 1819. She was the daughter of Alexander Laidlaw who was a merchant of Scottish descent and his Irish wife Ann Keddy. Her father's family knew Sir Walter Scott and she was sent to Edinburgh to study the piano with Robert Müller. She continued her studies in Königsberg and later to London where she studied under Henri Herz.

In 1834 she played for William IV and the ageing Paganini before returning two years later to play in Warsaw, St Petersburg, Dresden, and Vienna and the following year in Leipzig. There she met Robert Schumann who created eight pieces for piano named Fantasiestücke, in her honour, the same year of 1837. It is not clear how close their relationship was, but Laidlaw is presumed to be the reason he started to compose again after a break of four months.

It was Schumann's idea to reverse her first two names so that it was Anna Robena Laidlaw who was appointed court pianist to the queen of Hanover in 1840. She toured Europe until 1845 when she returned to London where she lived with her parents until she married in 1852. Her new husband, George Thomson worked in insurance and together they had four daughters.

Laidlaw died in London in 1901.

References

Works cited

1819 births
1901 deaths
Musicians from Wakefield
English classical pianists
English women pianists
19th-century classical pianists
19th-century English musicians
19th-century British women musicians
Women classical pianists
19th-century English women
19th-century women pianists

Anna Robena Laidlaw


Alexander Jagiellon (Polish: Aleksander Jagiellończyk, Lithuanian: Aleksandras Jogailaitis; 5 August 1461 – 19 August 1506) of the House of Jagiellon was the Grand Duke of Lithuania and later also King of Poland. He was the fourth son of Casimir IV Jagiellon. He was Elected grand duke of Lithuania on the death of his father (1492) and king of Poland on the death of his brother John I Albert.

Kings of Poland

Alexander Jagiellon


The Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935 resulted in the indictment of 80 people involved in the illegal production and distribution of moonshine whisky in Virginia. At the time, Franklin County was believed to produce the highest volume of illegal liquor in the U.S., colloquially referred to as "the moonshine capital of the world." From 1928-1935, prosecutors alleged that a conspiracy ring had defrauded the government out of 5.5 million dollars in whisky excise taxes, equivalent to roughly 95 million dollars today. The case is the second longest in Virginia's history and eventually resulted in 20 convictions, including several officers of the law and government officials.

Description
The alleged conspiracy was uncovered by federal agent Colonel Thomas Bailey, who after distinguishing himself as a hero in World War I, became an undercover agent for the federal government. Posing as a small-scale moonshine buyer, Bailey went undercover in Franklin County beginning in 1934. Unlike previous attempts to curtail illegal liquor production, Bailey's plan sought to protect rather than arrest the small distillers in exchange for incriminating information that could lead to the arrest of the conspiracy's ringleaders. After roughly a year, Bailey was allegedly able to uncover a complex system driven by bribery and extortion, in which distillers would supposedly pay local sheriffs for protection from federal law enforcement agencies. In truth, however, the Governor of Virginia had directed law enforcement to take fines from whiskey makers wherever possible in order to relieve congestion in both the courts and jails in the Commonwealth.  Bailey's case took roughly two years to build, and charged the defendants with 68 separate counts of illegal activity related to the production of untaxed moonshine whisky. The prosecution summoned 176 witnesses, most of which (if not all) were convicted criminals, versus the defense's 69, taking roughly 10 weeks for the entirety of the testimonies to be heard.  In fact, many of the Government's witnesses likely had ulterior motives in testifying for the prosecution because they had been previously convicted by the efforts of some of the defendants.

After a grueling two-month trial, the verdict was finally made public on July 1, 1935. After an examination of the evidence, County Commonwealth's Attorney and grand-nephew of Robert E. Lee, Charles Carter Lee, along with two others, were acquitted with the other 30 defendants found guilty.  Of the charges that were levied against the guilty parties, most were so light that many of them were back in business before they had even been sent to serve their jail time. The Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935 resulted in little real effect on illegal liquor production in Franklin County, Virginia.

Aftermaths
In the 1950s, the court files and official trial transcripts mysteriously disappeared. In the 1990s, the retired lawyer Keister Greer led a thorough investigation to understand where those might have gone.

In popular culture

The 2012 movie Lawless is set in Franklin County and portrays similar corruption.

References

Bibliography

 Keister Greer, The Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935, History House Pr, 2003

Franklin County, Virginia
20th-century American trials


Raaz Chandpuri (born Mohammad Sadiq; 189a2-1969) was an Indian poet and literary critic, known for writing Urdu ghazal and nazm. He was amongst the earliest disciples of Seemab Akbarabadi and attained the status of an Ustaad for himself. He was a master of Urooz.

His first known collection of ghazals, Nawa e Raaz, was published in 1961 by Adara Anees of Allahabad. However, he is better known for his critical appraisal of the life and work of Seemab Akbarabadi, Dastaan e chand, on which exercise Mehr Lal Soni Zia Fatehabadi too had relied while writing the biography of Seemab Akbarabadi titled - " Zikr e Seemab ".

Written by Sarwar Alam Raz Sarwar and published by Kitab Ghar, Baqiyaat e Raaz  is the only critical appraisal of the life and work of Raaz Chandpuri.

References

Urdu-language poets from India
Muslim poets
20th-century Indian Muslims
1892 births
1969 deaths
20th-century Indian poets
People from Bijnor district

Raaz Chandpuri


In environmental philosophy, environmental ethics is an established field of practical philosophy "which reconstructs the essential types of argumentation that can be made for protecting natural entities and the sustainable use of natural resources." The main competing paradigms are anthropocentrism, physiocentrism (called ecocentrism as well), and theocentrism. Environmental ethics exerts influence on a large range of disciplines including environmental law, environmental sociology, ecotheology, ecological economics, ecology and environmental geography.

There are many ethical decisions that human beings make with respect to the environment. These decision raise numerous questions. For example:

Should humans continue to clear cut forests for the sake of human consumption?
Why should humans continue to propagate its species, and life itself?
Should humans continue to make gasoline-powered vehicles?
What environmental obligations do humans need to keep for future generations?
Is it right for humans to knowingly cause the extinction of a species for the convenience of humanity?
How should humans best use and conserve the space environment to secure and expand life?
What role can Planetary Boundaries play in reshaping the human-earth relationship?

The academic field of environmental ethics grew up in response to the works of Rachel Carson and Murray Bookchin and events such as the first Earth Day in 1970, when environmentalists started urging philosophers to consider the philosophical aspects of environmental problems. Two papers published in Science had a crucial impact: Lynn White's "The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis" (March 1967) and Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" (December 1968). Also influential was Garett Hardin's later essay called "Exploring New Ethics for Survival", as well as an essay by Aldo Leopold in his A Sand County Almanac, called "The Land Ethic", in which Leopold explicitly claimed that the roots of the ecological crisis were philosophical (1949).

The first international academic journals in this field emerged from North America in the late 1970s and early 1980s – the US-based journal Environmental Ethics in 1979 and the Canadian-based journal The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy in 1983. The first British based journal of this kind, Environmental Values, was launched in 1992.

Marshall's categories
Some scholars have tried to categorise the various ways the natural environment is valued. Alan Marshall and Michael Smith are two examples of this, as cited by Peter Vardy in The Puzzle of Ethics. According to Marshall, three general ethical approaches have emerged over the last 40 years: Libertarian Extension, the Ecologic Extension, and Conservation Ethics.

Libertarian extension
Marshall's libertarian extension echoes a civil liberty approach (i.e. a commitment to extending equal rights to all members of a community). In environmentalism, the community is generally thought to consist of non-humans as well as humans.

Andrew Brennan was an advocate of ecologic humanism (eco-humanism), the argument that all ontological entities, animate and inanimate, can be given ethical worth purely on the basis that they exist. The work of Arne Næss and his collaborator Sessions also falls under the libertarian extension, although they preferred the term "deep ecology". Deep ecology is the argument for the intrinsic value or inherent worth of the environment – the view that it is valuable in itself. Their argument falls under both the libertarian extension and the ecologic extension.

Peter Singer's work can be categorized under Marshall's 'libertarian extension'. He reasoned that the "expanding circle of moral worth" should be redrawn to include the rights of non-human animals, and to not do so would be guilty of speciesism. Singer found it difficult to accept the argument from intrinsic worth of a-biotic or "non-sentient" (non-conscious) entities, and concluded in his first edition of "Practical Ethics" that they should not be included in the expanding circle of moral worth. This approach is essentially then, bio-centric. However, in a later edition of Practical Ethics after the work of Næss and Sessions, Singer admits that, although unconvinced by deep ecology, the argument from intrinsic value of non-sentient entities is plausible, but at best problematic. Singer advocated a humanist ethics.

Ecologic extension
Alan Marshall's category of ecologic extension places emphasis not on
human rights but on the recognition of the fundamental interdependence
of all biological (and some abiological) entities and their essential diversity. Whereas Libertarian Extension can be thought of as flowing
from a political reflection of the natural world, ecologic extension is
best thought of as a scientific reflection of the natural world.
Ecological Extension is roughly the same classification of Smith's eco-holism, and it argues for the intrinsic value inherent in collective
ecological entities like ecosystems or the global environment as a whole entity. Holmes Rolston, among others, has taken this approach.

This category might include James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis; the theory that the planet earth alters its geo-physiological structure over time in order to ensure the continuation of an equilibrium of evolving organic and inorganic matter. The planet is characterized as a unified, holistic entity with independent ethical value, compared to which the human race is of no particular significance in the long run.

Conservation ethics
Marshall's category of 'conservation ethics' is an extension of use-value into the non-human biological world. It focuses only on the worth of the environment in terms of its utility or usefulness to humans. It contrasts the intrinsic value ideas of 'deep ecology,' hence is often referred to as 'shallow ecology,' and generally argues for the preservation of the environment on the basis that it has extrinsic value – instrumental to the welfare of human beings. Conservation is therefore a means to an end and purely concerned with mankind and inter-generational considerations. It could be argued that it is this ethic that formed the underlying arguments proposed by Governments at the Kyoto summit in 1997 and three agreements reached in the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.

Humanist theories
Peter Singer advocated the preservation of "world heritage sites", unspoilt parts of the world that acquire a "scarcity value" as they diminish over time. Their preservation is a bequest for future generations as they have been inherited from human's ancestors and should be passed down to future generations so they can have the opportunity to decide whether to enjoy unspoilt countryside or an entirely urban landscape. A good example of a world heritage site would be the tropical rainforest, a very specialist ecosystem that has taken centuries to evolve. Clearing the rainforest for farmland often fails due to soil conditions, and once disturbed, can take thousands of years to regenerate.

Applied theology

The Christian world view sees the universe as created by God, and humankind accountable to God for the use of the resources entrusted to humankind. Ultimate values are seen in the light of being valuable to God.  This applies both in breadth of scope – caring for people (Matthew 25) and environmental issues, e.g. environmental health (Deuteronomy 22.8; 23.12-14) – and dynamic motivation, the love of Christ controlling (2 Corinthians 5.14f) and dealing with the underlying spiritual disease of sin, which shows itself in selfishness and thoughtlessness. In many countries this relationship of accountability is symbolised at harvest thanksgiving. (B.T. Adeney : Global Ethics in New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology 1995 Leicester)

Abrahamic religious scholars have used theology to motivate the public. John L. O'Sullivan, who coined the term manifest destiny, and other influential people like him used Abrahamic ideologies to encourage action. These religious scholars, columnists and politicians historically have used these ideas and continue to do so to justify the consumptive tendencies of a young America around the time of the Industrial Revolution. In order to solidify the understanding that God had intended for humankind to use earths natural resources, environmental writers and religious scholars alike proclaimed that humans are separate from nature, on a higher order. Those that may critique this point of view may ask the same question that John Muir asks ironically in a section of his novel A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf, why are there so many dangers in the natural world in the form of poisonous plants, animals and natural disasters, The answer is that those creatures are a result of Adam and Eve's sins in the garden of Eden.

Since the turn of the 20th century, the application of theology in environmentalism diverged into two schools of thought. The first system of understanding holds religion as the basis of environmental stewardship. The second sees the use of theology as a means to rationalize the unmanaged consumptions of natural resources. Lynn White and Calvin DeWitt represent each side of this dichotomy.

John Muir personified nature as an inviting place away from the loudness of urban centers. "For Muir and the growing number of Americans who shared his views, Satan's home had become God's Own Temple." The use of Abrahamic religious allusions assisted Muir and the Sierra Club to create support for some of the first public nature preserves.

Authors like Terry Tempest Williams as well as John Muir build on the idea that "...God can be found wherever you are, especially outside. Family worship was not just relegated to Sunday in a chapel." References like these assist the general public to make a connection between paintings done at the Hudson River School, Ansel Adams' photographs, along with other types of media, and their religion or spirituality. Placing intrinsic value upon nature through theology is a fundamental idea of deep ecology.

Normative ethical theories
Normative ethics is a field in Moral Philosophy that investigates how one ought to act. What is morally right and wrong, and how moral standards are determined. Superficially, this approach may seem intrinsically anthropocentric. However, theoretical frameworks from traditional normative ethical theories are abundant within contemporary environmental ethics.

Consequentialism
Consequentialist theories focus on the consequences of actions, this emphasises not what is 'right', but rather what is of 'value' and 'good'. Act Utilitarianism, for example, expands this formulation to emphasise that what makes an action right is whether it maximises well-being and reduces pain. Thus, actions that result in greater well-being are considered obligatory and permissible. It has been noted that this is an 'instrumentalist' position towards the environment, and as such not fully adequate to the delicate demands of ecological diversity.Rule-utilitarianism is the view that following ceratin rules without exception is the surest way to bring about the best consequences. This is an important update to act-utilitarianism because agents do not need to judge about the likely consequences of each act; all they must do is determine whether or not a proposed course of action falls under a specific rule and, if it does, act as the rule specifies.

Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic (1949) tries to avoid this type of instrumentalism by proposing a more holistic approach to the relationship between humans and their 'biotic community', so to create a 'limit' based on the maxim that "a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community; it is wrong when it tends otherwise." Thus, the use of natural resources is permissible as long as it does not disrupt the stability of the ecosystem. Some philosophers have categorised Leopold's views to be within a consequentialist framework, however it is disputed whether this was intentional. Other consequentialist views such as that of Peter Singer tend to emphasise the inclusion of non-human sentient beings into ethical considerations. This view argues that all sentient creates which are by nature able to feel pleasure and pain, are of equal moral consideration for their intrinsic value. Nevertheless, non-sentient beings, such as plants, rivers and ecosystems, are considered to be merely instrumental.

Deontology
Deontological theories state that an action should be based on duties or obligations to what is right, instead of what is good. In strong contrast to consequentialism, this view argues for principles of duty based not on a function of value, but on reasons that make no substantive reference to the consequences of an action. Something of intrinsic value, then, has to be protected not because its goodness would maximise a wider good, but because it is valuable in itself; not as a means towards something, but as an end in itself. Thus, if the natural environment is categorised as intrinsically valuable, any destruction or damage to such would be considered wrong as a whole rather than merely due to a calculated loss of net value. It can be said that this approach is more holistic in principle than one of consequentialist nature, as it fits more adequately with the delicate balance of large ecosystems.

Theories of rights, for example, are generally deontological. That is, within this framework an environmental policy that gives rights to non-human sentient beings, would prioritise the conservation of such in their natural state, rather than in an artificial manner. Consider for example, issues in climate engineering; Ocean fertilisation aims to expand marine algae in order to remove higher levels of CO2. A complication from this approach is that it creates salient disruptions to local ecosystems. Furthermore, an environmental ethical theory based on the rights of marine animals in those ecosystems, would create a protection against this type of intervention. Environmental deontologists such as Paul W. Taylor, for example, have argued for a Kantian approach to issues of this kind. Taylor argues that all living things are 'teleological centres of life'  deserving of rights and respect. His view uses a concept of 'universalizability', to argue that one ought to act only on actions which could be rationally willed as a universal law. Val Plumwood has criticised this approach by noting that the universalisation framework, is not necessarily based on 'respect' for the other, as it's based on duty and 'becoming' part of the environment.

Virtue ethics
Virtue ethics states that some character traits should be cultivated, and others avoided. This framework avoids problems of defining what is of intrinsic value, by instead arguing that what is important is to act in accordance with the correct character trait. The Golden mean formulation, for example, states that to be 'generous' (virtue), one should neither be miserly (deficiency) or extravagant (excess). Unlike deontology and consequentialism, theories of virtue focus their formulations on how the individual has to act to live a flourishing life. This presents a 'subjective flexibility' which seems like an adequate position to hold considering the fluctuating demands of sustainability.  However, as a consequence, it can also be said that this is an inherently anthropocentric standpoint.

Some Ecofeminist theories such as that of Val Plumwood, have been categorised as a form of virtue ethics. Plumwood argues that a virtue-based ethical framework adapts more fittingly to environmental diversity, as virtues such as 'respect', 'gratitude', and 'sensitivity', are not only suitable to ecological subjectivity but also more applicable to the views of indigenous people. Furthermore, what traits would be considered as part of environmental vices? Ronald Sandler argues that detrimental dispositions to human flourishing such as 'greed', 'intemperance' and 'arrogance', lead to detrimental dispositions to the protection of the environment such as 'apathy', against other species, and 'pessimism' about conservation. Views such as this, create a mutualistic connection between virtuous human flourishing, and environmental flourishing.

Anthropocentrism

Anthropocentrism is the position that humans are the most important or critical element in any given situation; that the human race must always be its own primary concern. Detractors of anthropocentrism argue that the Western tradition biases homo sapiens when considering the environmental ethics of a situation and that humans evaluate their environment or other organisms in terms of the utility for them (see speciesism). Many argue that all environmental studies should include an assessment of the intrinsic value of non-human beings, which would entail a reassessment of humans ecocultural identities. In fact, based on this very assumption, a philosophical article has explored recently the possibility of humans' willing extinction as a gesture toward other beings. The authors refer to the idea as a thought experiment that should not be understood as a call for action.

Baruch Spinoza reasoned that if humans were to look at things objectively, they would discover that everything in the universe has a unique value. Likewise, it is possible that a human-centred or anthropocentric/androcentric ethic is not an accurate depiction of reality, and there is a bigger picture that humans may or may not be able to understand from a human perspective.

Peter Vardy distinguished between two types of anthropocentrism. A strong anthropocentric ethic argues that humans are at the center of reality and it is right for them to be so. Weak anthropocentrism, however, argues that reality can only be interpreted from a human point of view, thus humans have to be at the centre of reality as they see it.

Another point of view has been developed by Bryan Norton, who has become one of the essential actors of environmental ethics by launching environmental pragmatism, now one of its leading trends. Environmental pragmatism refuses to take a stance in disputes between defenders of anthropocentrist and non-anthropocentrist ethics. Instead, Norton distinguishes between strong anthropocentrism and weak-or-extended-anthropocentrism and argues that the former must underestimate the diversity of instrumental values humans may derive from the natural world.

A recent view relates anthropocentrism to the future of life. Biotic ethics are based on the human identity as part of gene/protein organic life whose effective purpose is self-propagation. This implies a human purpose to secure and propagate life. Humans are central because only they can secure life beyond the duration of the Sun, possibly for trillions of eons. Biotic ethics values life itself, as embodied in biological structures and processes. Humans are special because they can secure the future of life on cosmological scales. In particular, humans can continue sentient life that enjoys its existence, adding further motivation to propagate life. Humans can secure the future of life, and this future can give human existence a cosmic purpose.

Status of the field

Only after 1990 did the field gain institutional recognition at programs such as Colorado State University, the University of Montana, Bowling Green State University, and the University of North Texas. In 1991, Schumacher College of Dartington, England, was founded and now provides an MSc in Holistic Science.

These programs began to offer a master's degree with a specialty in environmental ethics/philosophy. Beginning in 2005 the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies at the University of North Texas offered a PhD program with a concentration in environmental ethics/philosophy.

In Germany, the University of Greifswald has recently established an international program in Landscape Ecology & Nature Conservation with a strong focus on environmental ethics. In 2009, the University of Munich and Deutsches Museum founded the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, an international, interdisciplinary center for research and education in the environmental humanities.

Relationship with animal ethics

Differing conceptions of the treatment of and obligations towards animals, particularly those living in the wild, within animal ethics and environmental ethics has been a source of controversy between the two ethical positions; some ethicists have asserted that the two positions are incompatible, while others have argued that these disagreements can be overcome.

See also

Anarcho-primitivism
Biocentrism
Bioethics
Climate ethics
Conservation movement
Crop art
Earth Economics (policy think tank)
Ecocentrism
Ecological economics
EcoQuest (a series of two educational games)
Environmental health ethics
Environmental movement
Environmental organization
Environmental politics
Environmental racism
Environmental resource management
Environmental skepticism
Environmental virtue ethics
Hans Jonas
Human ecology
List of environmental philosophers
Nature conservation
Population control
Resource depletion
Self-validating reduction
Solastalgia
Terraforming
Trail ethics
Van Rensselaer Potter
Veganism

Notes

Further reading
 Brennan, Andrew/ Lo, Yeuk-Sze 2016: Environmental Ethics. In: Zalta, Edward N. (Hg.): The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu, Stanford University: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/ethics–environmental/.

 Ott, Konrad (2020): Environmental ethics. In: Kirchhoff, Thomas (ed.): Online Encyclopedia Philosophy of Nature / Online Lexikon Naturphilosophie, doi: https://doi.org/10.11588/oepn.2020.0.71420; https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/oepn/article/view/71420.

External links

 Bioethics Literature Database
 Brief History of Environmental Ethics
 Thesaurus Ethics in the Life Sciences
 EnviroLink Library: Environmental Ethics - online resource for environmental ethics information
 EnviroLink Forum - Environmental Ethics Discussion/Debate
 Environmental Ethics online (journal, 1979-present)
 Sustainable and Ethical Architecture Architectural Firm
 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
 Environmental Ethics entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
 Center for Environmental Philosophy
 UNT Dept of Philosophy
 Creation Care Reading Room: Extensive online resources for environment and faith (Tyndale Seminary)
 Category List - Religion-Online.org "Ecology/Environment"
 Islam, Christianity and the Environment

Relational ethics
Articles containing video clips
Spinoza studies

Environmental ethics


An Vsevolozhsk amo in uska bungto ha Leningrad Oblast, Rusya.

Famous residents

Belousov, Vladimir Pavlovich (born 1946) — athlete, Olympic champion.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Bortko (born 1946) is a Soviet and Russian film director, screenwriter, producer.

Vashukov, Mikhail Yuryevich (born 1958) is an artist, a couplet player, a humorist.

Vocka, Gergard Yakovlevich (1887-1988) — local historian, knight of the Order of Lenin (1953), the first Honorary citizen of Vsevolozhsk (1988), one of the streets of the city is named in his honor.

Denisov, Anatoly Alekseevich (1934-2010) — Soviet and Russian scientist, politician.

Dobrovolsky, Yuri Antonovich (1911-1979) — test pilot, Hero of the Soviet Union.

Drachev, Vladimir Petrovich (born 1966) — World Cup winner and 4-time world champion in biathlon.

Svetlana Sergeevna Zhurova (born 1972) is an Olympic champion, a deputy of the State Duma.

Slepukhin, Yuri Grigoryevich (1926-1998) — writer.

Boris Pavlovich Listov (born 1969) is a Russian economist, Chairman of the Management Board of JSC Rosselkhoznadzor.

Mga syudad ngan mga bungto ha Leningrad Oblast

Vsevolozhsk


The Story of Nastagio Degli Onesti, part one is a painting in tempera on wood by Sandro Botticelli, dated 1483. It measures 83 x 138 cm and is in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

History

The picture is one of a series of four, possibly commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1483 to donate to Giannozzo Pucci on the occasion of his wedding to Lucrezia Bini that year. The four were held in the Palazzo Pucci in Florence until 1868, when they were sold. The first three are now in the Prado, and the last one is now in original location after having spent some time in the Watney Collection in Charlbury, Oxfordshire, England.

Description and style

The story of Nastagio degli Onesti, a nobleman of Ravenna, is the eighth tale of the fifth day in The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. This theme was chosen for its happy ending to a love affair, in which the daughter of Paolo Traversari, who rejects Nastagio's courting, changes her mind after witnessing the infernal punishment of another woman guilty of the same sin of ingratitude towards her lover.

The first episode of the story is set in a pine wood around Ravenna, the city where the story takes place. Nastagio has left the city, disappointed by his unreturned affection, and wanders alone and sorrowful. He is surprised by the sudden appearance of a woman being chased by a knight and his dogs, which seize her in their teeth in spite of Nastagio's attempts to defend her.

On the left in the painting are some tents, in which Nastagio (in the red hose) is seen being advised by his friends to leave town for a while. Then Nastagio is shown in close-up, roaming the forest. He appears again nearby with a stick, seeking to drive away the dogs that are trying to bite a half-naked woman, chased by a dashing knight with a sword and golden armour.

The scene has a strong narrative character, showing successive scenes within one picture and requiring three representations of Nastagio, a typically late medieval procedure. The tall, upright trunks of the trees combine with the horizontal seascape in the background to form a kind of grid, giving a remarkable effect of depth. The drama combines with the formal elegance of the slender figures and the graceful gestures of people and animals to achieve a magical suspension between fable and reality. Although the conception of the four pictures is due to Botticelli, the execution was entrusted in part to his assistants, in particular Bartolomeo di Giovanni for the first three pictures and Jacopo da Sellaio for the fourth.

See also
 List of works by Sandro Botticelli

Further reading

References

External links
Museo Nacional del Prado: On-line gallery

Paintings by Sandro Botticelli
Paintings of the Museo del Prado by Italian artists
1483 paintings
Dogs in art
Horses in art
Ships in art
Rabbits and hares in art
Adaptations of works by Giovanni Boccaccio


The California Department of General Services (DGS) is a state government agency in the California Government Operations Agency of the executive branch of the government of California in the United States.  It provides a large number of services to other agencies in the government of California, playing a role that is similar to that played by the General Services Administration for the federal government of the United States.

In 1951, the California State Assembly's Interim Committee on Governmental Reorganization began to study a proposal to consolidate purchasing, printing, records management, traffic management, building maintenance, grounds maintenance, and information services into a single agency, to be called the Department of General Services.  The purpose of this proposal was "to reduce the staggering overhead involved in the present practice of maintaining these functions separately in each State administrative agency".

This proposal was one of several long-running reform ideas floating around Sacramento since the late 1930s which were consolidated by Governor Pat Brown in 1961 into a plan for a dramatic reorganization of the state government.  Brown's massive plan touched off an equally massive uproar, and he was unable to get his plan enacted all at once as a single package.  That year, the California State Legislature enacted only part of the first part of Brown's plan, to create four so-called "super-agencies" (of eight then planned) headed by secretaries to reduce the number of Cabinet-level direct reports to the governor.  (The hyphen was later dropped and they are now called superagencies.)  In 1963, after the Little Hoover Commission filed a report recommending the creation of a Department of General Services, Governor Brown formally asked the state legislature to create such a department, and in March, Milton Marks introduced an bill to that effect in the state assembly. By June, the bill had cleared the California State Senate and went back to the assembly for a vote to concur in the senate's minor amendments to the bill, which Marks indicated would follow in due course.  By September, Governor Brown had signed the bill into state law and had started to appoint officials to positions in the new department.

Since 2001, DGS headquarters has been located at The Ziggurat in West Sacramento.

See also

California Green Lodging Program

References

External links
Department of General Services
 Department of General Services in Title 2 of the California Code of Regulations
 Department of General Services in Title 21 of the California Code of Regulations
 Office of Administrative Hearings in Title 1 of the California Code of Regulations

General Services


A public address system (or PA system) is an electronic system comprising microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, and related equipment. It increases the apparent volume (loudness) of a human voice, musical instrument, or other acoustic sound source or recorded sound or music. PA systems are used in any public venue that requires that an announcer, performer, etc. be sufficiently audible at a distance or over a large area. Typical applications include sports stadiums, public transportation vehicles and facilities, and live or recorded music venues and events. A PA system may include multiple microphones or other sound sources, a mixing console to combine and modify multiple sources, and multiple amplifiers and loudspeakers for louder volume or wider distribution.

Simple PA systems are often used in small venues such as school auditoriums, churches, and small bars. PA systems with many speakers are widely used to make announcements in public, institutional and commercial buildings and locations—such as schools, stadiums, and passenger vessels and aircraft. Intercom systems, installed in many buildings, have both speakers throughout a building, and microphones in many rooms so occupants can respond to announcements. PA and Intercom systems are commonly used as part of an emergency communication system.

The term sound reinforcement system generally means a PA system used specifically for live music or other performances. In Britain any PA system is sometimes colloquially referred to as a Tannoy, after the company of that name, now owned by TC Electronic Group, which supplied many of the PA systems used previously in Britain.

Early systems

Megaphone

From the Ancient Greek era to the nineteenth century, before the invention of electric loudspeakers and amplifiers, megaphone cones were used by people speaking to a large audience, to make their voice project more to a large space or group. Megaphones are typically portable, usually hand-held, cone-shaped acoustic horns used to amplify a person's voice or other sounds and direct it towards a given direction. The sound is introduced into the narrow end of the megaphone, by holding it up to the face and speaking into it. The sound projects out the wide end of the cone. The user can direct the sound by pointing the wide end of the cone in a specific direction. In the 2020s, cheerleading is one of the few fields where a nineteenth century-style cone is still used to project the voice. The device is also called "speaking-trumpet", "bullhorn" or "loud hailer".

Automatic Enunciator

In 1910, the Automatic Electric Company of Chicago, Illinois, already a major supplier of automatic telephone switchboards, announced it had developed a loudspeaker, which it marketed under the name of the Automatic Enunciator. Company president Joseph Harris foresaw multiple potential uses, and the original publicity stressed the value of the invention as a hotel public address system, allowing people in all public rooms to hear announcements. In June 1910, an initial "semi-public" demonstration was given to newspaper reporters at the Automatic Electric Company building, where a speaker's voice was transmitted to loudspeakers placed in a dozen locations "all over the building".

A short time later, the Automatic Enunciator Company formed in Chicago order to market the new device, and a series of promotional installations followed. In August 1912 a large outdoor installation was made at a water carnival held in Chicago by the Associated Yacht and Power Boat Clubs of America. Seventy-two loudspeakers were strung in pairs at forty-foot (12 meter) intervals along the docks, spanning a total of one-half mile (800 meters) of grandstands. The system was used to announce race reports and descriptions, carry a series of speeches about "The Chicago Plan", and provide music between races.

In 1913, multiple units were installed throughout the Comiskey Park baseball stadium in Chicago, both to make announcements and to provide musical interludes, with Charles A. Comiskey quoted as saying: "The day of the megaphone man has passed at our park." The company also set up an experimental service, called the Musolaphone, that was used to transmitted news and entertainment programming to home and business subscribers in south-side Chicago, but this effort was short-lived. The company continued to market the enunciators for making announcements in establishments such as hospitals, department stores, factories, and railroad stations, although the Automatic Enunciator Company was dissolved in 1926.

Magnavox

Peter Jensen and Edwin Pridham of Magnavox began experimenting with sound reproduction in the 1910s. Working from a laboratory in Napa, California, they filed the first patent for a moving coil loudspeaker in 1911. Four years later, in 1915, they built a dynamic loudspeaker with a  voice coil, a  corrugated diaphragm and a horn measuring  with a  aperture. The electromagnet created a flux field of approximately 11,000 Gauss.

Their first experiment used a carbon microphone.  When the 12 V battery was connected to the system, they experienced one of the first examples of acoustic feedback, a typically unwanted effect often characterized by high-pitched sounds. They then placed the loudspeaker on the laboratory's roof, and claims say that the amplified human voice could be heard  away. Jensen and Pridham refined the system and connected a phonograph to the loudspeaker so it could broadcast recorded music. They did this on a number of occasions, including once at the Napa laboratory, at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition, and on December 24, 1915, at San Francisco City Hall alongside Mayor James Rolph. This demonstration was official presentation of the working system, and approximately 100,000 people gathered to hear Christmas music and speeches "with absolute distinctness".

The first outside broadcast was made one week later, again supervised by Jensen and Pridham. On December 30, when Governor of California Hiram Johnson was too ill to give a speech in person, loudspeakers were installed at the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, connected to Johnson's house some miles away by cable and a microphone, from where he delivered his speech. Jensen oversaw the governor using the microphone while Pridham operated the loudspeaker.

The following year, Jensen and Pridham applied for a patent for what they called their "Sound Magnifying Phonograph". Over the next two years they developed their first valve amplifier.  In 1919 this was standardized as a 3-stage 25 watt amplifier.

This system was used by former US president William Howard Taft at a speech in Grant Park, Chicago, and first used by a current president when Woodrow Wilson addressed 50,000 people in San Diego, California. Wilson's speech was part of his nationwide tour to promote the establishment of the League of Nations. It was held on September 9, 1919, at City Stadium. As with the San Francisco installation, Jensen supervised the microphone and Pridham the loudspeakers. Wilson spoke into two large horns mounted on his platform, which channelled his voice into the microphone. Similar systems were used in the following years by Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Marconi

By the early 1920s, Marconi had established a department dedicated to public address and began producing loudspeakers and amplifiers to match a growing demand. In 1925, George V used such a system at the British Empire Exhibition, addressing 90,000 via six long-range loudspeakers. This public use of loudspeakers brought attention to the possibilities of such technology.  The 1925 Royal Air Force Pageant at Hendon Aerodrome used a Marconi system to allow the announcer to address the crowds, as well as amplify the band.  In 1929, the Schneider Trophy race at Calshot Spit used a public address system that had 200 horns, weighing a total of 20 tons.

Late 1920s–1930s
Engineers invented the first loud, powerful amplifier and speaker systems for public address systems and movie theaters. These large PA systems and movie theatre sound systems were very large and very expensive, and so they could not be used by most touring musicians. After 1927, smaller, portable AC mains-powered PA systems that could be plugged into a regular wall socket "quickly became popular with musicians"; indeed, "... Leon McAuliffe (with Bob Wills) still used a carbon mic and a portable PA as late as 1935." During the late 1920s to mid-1930s, small portable PA systems and guitar combo amplifiers were fairly similar. These early amps had a "single volume control and one or two input jacks, field coil speakers" and thin wooden cabinets; remarkably, these early amps did not have tone controls or even an on-off switch. Portable PA systems you could plug into wall sockets appeared in the early 1930s when the introduction of electrolytic capacitors and rectifier tubes enabled economical built-in power supplies that could plug into wall outlets. Previously, amplifiers required heavy multiple battery packs.

Electric megaphone

In the 1960s, an electric-amplified version of the megaphone, which used a loudspeaker, amplifier and a folded horn, largely replaced the basic cone-style megaphone. Small handheld, battery-powered electric megaphones are used by fire and rescue personnel, police, protesters, and people addressing outdoor audiences. With many small handheld models, the microphone is mounted at the back end of the device, and the user holds the megaphone in front of her/his mouth to use it, and presses a trigger to turn on the amplifier and loudspeaker. Larger electric megaphones may have a microphone attached by a cable, which enables a person to speak without having their face obscured by the flared horn.

Small systems

The simplest, smallest PA systems consist of a microphone, an amplifier, and one or more loudspeakers. PA systems of this type, often providing 50 to 200 watts of power, are often used in small venues such as school auditoriums, churches, and coffeehouse stages. Small PA systems may extend to an entire building, such as a restaurant, store, elementary school or office building. A sound source such as a compact disc player or radio may be connected to a PA system so that music can be played through the system. Smaller, battery-powered 12 volt systems may be installed in vehicles such as tour buses or school buses, so that the tour guide and/or driver can speak to all the passengers. Portable systems may be battery powered and/or powered by plugging the system into an electric wall socket. These may also be used for by people addressing smaller groups such as information sessions or team meetings. Battery-powered systems can be used by guides who are speaking to clients on walking tours.

Public address systems consist of input sources (microphones, sound playback devices, etc.), amplifiers, control and monitoring equipment (e.g., LED indicator lights, VU meters, headphones), and loudspeakers. Usual input include microphones for speech or singing, direct inputs from musical instruments, and a recorded sound playback device. In non-performance applications, there may be a system that operators or automated equipment uses to select from a number of standard prerecorded messages. These input sources feed into preamplifiers and signal routers that direct the audio signal to selected zones of a facility (e.g., only to one section of a school). The preamplified signals then pass into the amplifiers. Depending on local practices, these amplifiers usually amplify the audio signals to 50 V, 70 V, or 100 V speaker line level. Control equipment monitors the amplifiers and speaker lines for faults before it reaches the loudspeakers. This control equipment is also used to separate zones in a PA system. The loudspeaker converts electrical signals into sound.

Large systems

Some PA systems have speakers that cover more than one building, extending to an entire campus of a college, office or industrial site, or an entire outdoor complex (e.g., an athletic stadium). A large PA system may also be used as an alert system during an emergency.

PA systems by size and subwoofer approach

Telephone paging systems
Some private branch exchange (PBX) telephone systems use a paging facility that acts as a liaison between the telephone and a PA amplifier. In other systems, paging equipment is not built into the telephone system.  Instead the system includes a separate paging controller connected to a trunk port of the telephone system.  The paging controller is accessed as either a designated directory number or central office line. In many modern systems, the paging function is integrated into the telephone system, so the system can send announcements to the phone speakers.

Many retailers and offices choose to use the telephone system as the sole access point for the paging system, because the features are integrated.  Many schools and other larger institutions are no longer using the large, bulky microphone PA systems and have switched to telephone system paging, as it can be accessed from many different points in the school.

PA over IP
PA over IP refers to PA paging and intercom systems that use an Internet Protocol (IP) network, instead of a central amplifier, to distribute the audio signal to paging locations across a building or campus, or anywhere else in the reach of the IP network, including the Internet. Network-attached amplifiers and intercom units are used to provide the communication function. At the transmission end, a computer application transmits a digital audio stream via the local area network, using audio from the computer's sound card inputs or from stored audio recordings. At the receiving end, either specialized intercom modules (sometimes known as IP speakers) receive these network transmissions and reproduce the analog audio signal. These are small, specialized network appliances addressable by an IP address, just like any other computer on the network.

WMT PA Systems
Wireless Mobile Telephony (WMT) PA Systems refers to PA paging and [intercom] systems that use any form of Wireless mobile telephony system such as GSM networks instead of a centralized amplifier to distribute the audio signal to paging locations across a building or campus, or other location. The GSM mobile Networks are used to provide the communication function. At the transmission end, a PSTN Telephone, mobile phone, VOIP phone or any other communication device that can access and make audio calls to a GSM based mobile SIM card can communicate with it. At the receiving end, a GSM transceiver receives these network transmissions and reproduce the analogue audio signal via a Power Amplifier and speaker. This was pioneered by Stephen Robert Pearson of Lancashire, England who was granted patents for the systems, which also incorporate control functionality. Using a WMT (GSM) network means that live announcements can be made to anywhere in the world where there is WMT connectivity. The patents cover all forms of WMT i.e., 2G, 3G, 4G ..... ××G. A UK company called Remvox Ltd (Remote Voice experience) has been appointed under license to develop and manufacture products based on the technology.

Long line PA

A Long-Line Public Address (LLPA) system is any public address system with a distributed architecture, normally across a wide geographic area.  Systems of this type are commonly found in the rail, light rail, and metro industries, and let announcements be triggered from one or several locations to the rest of the network over low bandwidth legacy copper, normally PSTN lines using DSL modems, or media such as optical fiber, or GSM-R, or IP-based networks.

Rail systems typically have an interface with a passenger information system (PIS) server, at each station. These are linked to train describers, which state the location of rolling stock on the network from sensors on trackside signaling equipment. The PIS invokes a stored message to play from a local or remote digital voice announcement system, or a series of message fragments to assemble in the correct order, for example: " / the / 23.30 / Great_Western_Railway / Night_Riviera_sleeper_service / from / London_Paddington / to / Penzance / .... / will depart from platform / one / this train is formed of  / 12_carriages /." Messages are routed via an IP network and are played on local amplification equipment.  Taken together, the PA, routing, DVA, passenger displays and PIS interface are referred to as the customer information system (CIS), a term often used interchangeably with passenger information system.

Small venue systems

Small clubs, bars and coffeehouses use a fairly simple set-up, with front of house speaker cabinets (and subwoofers, in some cases) aimed at the audience, and monitor speaker cabinets aimed back at the performers so they can hear their vocals and instruments. In many cases, front of house speakers are elevated, either by mounting them on poles or by "flying" them from anchors in the ceiling. The Front of House speakers are elevated to prevent the sound from being absorbed by the first few rows of audience members. The subwoofers do not need to be elevated, because deep bass is omnidirectional. In the smallest coffeehouses and bars, the audio mixer may be onstage so that the performers can mix their own sound levels. In larger bars, the audio mixer may be located in or behind the audience seating area, so that an audio engineer can listen to the mix and adjust the sound levels. The adjustments to the monitor speaker mix may be made by a single audio engineer using the main mixing board, or they may be made by a second audio engineer who uses a separate mixing board.

Large venue systems
For popular music concerts, a more powerful and more complicated PA System is used to provide live sound reproduction. In a concert setting, there are typically two complete PA systems: the "main" system and the "monitor" system. Each system consists of a mixing board, sound processing equipment, amplifiers, and speakers. The microphones that are used to pick up vocals and amplifier sounds are routed through both the main and monitor systems. Audio engineers can set different sound levels for each microphone on the main and monitor systems. For example, a backup vocalist whose voice has a low sound level in the main mix may ask for a much louder sound level through their monitor speaker, so they can hear their singing.
 The "main" system (also known as Front of House, commonly abbreviated FOH), which provides the amplified sound for the audience, typically uses a number of powerful amplifiers that drive a range of large, heavy-duty loudspeakers—including low-frequency speaker cabinets called subwoofers, full-range speaker cabinets, and high-range horns. A large club may use amplifiers to provide 3000 to 5000 watts of power to the "main" speakers. An outdoor concert may use 10,000 or more watts.
 The monitor system reproduces the sounds of the performance and directs them towards the onstage performers (typically using wedge-shaped monitor speaker cabinets), to help them to hear the instruments and vocals.  In British English, the monitor system is referred to as the "foldback". The monitor system in a large club may provide 500 to 1000 watts of power to several foldback speakers; at an outdoor concert, there may be several thousand watts of power going to the monitor system.

At a concert using live sound reproduction, sound engineers and technicians control the mixing boards for the "main" and "monitor" systems, adjusting tone, levels, and overall volume.

Touring productions travel with relocatable large line-array PA systems, sometimes rented from an audio equipment hire company. The sound equipment moves from venue to venue along with various other equipment such as lighting and projection.

Acoustic feedback
All PA systems have the potential for audio feedback, which occurs when a microphone picks up sound from the speakers, which is re-amplified and sent through the speakers again.  It often sounds like a loud high-pitched squeal or screech, and can occur when the volume of the system is turned up too high.  Feedback only occurs when the loop gain of the feedback loop is greater than one, so it can always be stopped by reducing the volume sufficiently.

Sound engineers take several steps to maximize gain before feedback, including keeping microphones at a distance from speakers, ensuring that directional microphones are not pointed towards speakers, keeping the onstage volume levels down, and lowering gain levels at frequencies where the feedback is occurring, using a graphic equalizer, a parametric equalizer, or a notch filter. Some 2010s-era mixing consoles and effects units have automatic feedback preventing circuits.

Feedback prevention devices detect the start of unwanted feedback and use a precise notch filter to lower the gain of the frequencies that are feeding back. Some automated feedback detectors require the user to "set" the feedback-prone frequencies by purposely increasing gain (during a sound check) until some feedback starts to occur. This process is often referred to as "a ring out" or "an EQ" of a room/venue. The device then retains these frequencies in its memory and it stands by ready to cut them. Some automated feedback prevention devices can detect and reduce new frequencies other than those found in the sound check.

See also
 Announcer
 Instrument amplifier
 Intercom
 1 Main Circuit, the shipwide public address system on United States ships

References

External links

Sound production technology
DJing
Address system
Audio engineering
Speech
Safety equipment

Public address system


Promises is a 2001 documentary film that examines the Israeli–Palestinian conflict from the perspectives of seven children living in the Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Israeli neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Promises has been shown at many film festivals and received excellent reviews and many accolades.

The film follows Israeli-American filmmaker B.Z. Goldberg as he meets with seven Palestinian and Israeli children between the ages of nine and thirteen, seeing the Middle East conflict through their eyes. It allows "ordinary" kids to develop natural bonds of affection by simply playing games with each other - bonds which go beyond the clutter of prejudices that they have heard from their parents and others around them.

Production
Promises was shot between 1997 and 2000 and was produced in association with the Independent Television Service with partial funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The film has a running time of 106 minutes, and includes Arabic, Hebrew and English dialogue with English subtitles.

In 2004 the filmmakers' produced a follow-up program called Promises: Four Years On, which features interviews and updates on the children's current lives. It lasts 25 minutes and is included as a special feature on the film's DVD release.

The children
 Daniel and Yarko: Israeli boys living in west Jerusalem, secular Jews, put off more by religious Jews than Palestinians; grandsons of Holocaust survivor
 Shlomo: Jewish quarter in Jerusalem, Orthodox, son of a rabbi from Jerusalem
 Moishe: lives in Beit-El in the West-Bank, dislikes the Arabs.
 Faraj: lives in the Deheishe refugee camp in the West Bank, Palestinian; son of Palestinian refugees
 Mahmoud: Palestinian quarter in East Jerusalem; son of a merchant in the Muslim quarter of the Old City
 Sanabel: Palestinian lives also in the Deheishe refuge camp, father is in prison because he was affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Her brother died from heatstroke, he was also in prison.

Reception

Critical response
Promises has an approval rating of 96% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 47 reviews, and an average rating of 7.81/10. The website's critical consensus states, "A heartbreaking and illuminating look at the Israeli and Palestinian conflict through the eyes of children". Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Nominations
 Best Documentary, 74th Academy Awards
 Best Documentary, IFP Spirit Awards
 Truer than Fiction Award, IFP Spirit Awards

Awards
 2002 The NBR Freedom of Expression Citation National Board of Review
 2002 The Michael Landon Award for Community Service to Youth Twenty-Third Annual Young Artist Awards
 2001 Emmy Award, Best Documentary
 2001 Emmy Award, Best Background Analysis
 2001 Rotterdam International Film Festival Audience Award, Best Film
 2001 Munich Film Festival Freedom of Expression Award
 2001 Jerusalem Film Festival Special Festival Award
 2001 Locarno International Film Festival Special Ecumenical Jury Prize
 2001 San Francisco International Film Festival Audience Award, Best Documentary Grand Prize, Best Documentary Golden Gate Award, Documentary Film
 2001 Vancouver International Film Festival Audience Award, Diversity in Spirit Award
 2001 Hamptons International Film Festival Best Documentary
 2001 São Paulo International Film Festival Best Documentary Audience Award
 2001 Valladolid International Film Festival Best Documentary
 2001 Paris International Film Festival (Rencontres) Audience Award-Best Film

References

External links

 The Promises Film Project
 Promises Films, An Independent Documentary Filmmaking Company
 Official Twitter Account

2001 documentary films
2001 films
2000s Arabic-language films
American documentary films
Documentary films about children in war
Documentary films about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Films directed by Carlos Bolado
2000s Hebrew-language films
POV (TV series) films
2000s English-language films
2001 multilingual films
American multilingual films
2000s American films

Promises (2001 film)


Fire Over Rome () is a 1965 Italian peplum film directed by Guido Malatesta.

Plot
After successfully campaigning in Gaul for several years, Consul Marcus Valerius arrived back in Rome with his legion. He and his men were looking forward to celebrating their return with their families and friends. The fearless warrior expected his Emperor to be pleased with his conquests, but Nero showed little interest. Other priorities were far more important.
Nero ordered Marcus to assist Menecrate, the hated leader of the Praetorian Guards, in cleansing the city of its Christian presence but he refused and resigned as Consul in protest. He was immediately sentenced to death and his legion disbanded.
Marcus Valerius is a valiant soldier and the killing of innocent people goes against all his principles. The former hero is now the hunted.

Cast
 Lang Jeffries	as 	Marcus Valerius
 Cristina Gaioni	as 	Giulia
 Moira Orfei	as 	Poppaea
 Mario Feliciani	as 	Seneca
 Luciano Marin	as 	Fulvius
 Evi Maltagliati	as 	Livia Augusta, Marcus's Mother
 Franco Fantasia	as 	Clodius

Release
Fire Over Rome was released as L'incendio di Roma in Italy on 20 March 1965. In the UK it received a belated release in 1975 under the title Revenge of the Gladiators where it appeared on a double bill with the 1962 film Land of the Monsters.

See also
 List of Italian films of 1965

References

Bibliography

External links

Fire Over Rome at Variety Distribution

1965 films
1960s Italian-language films
Peplum films
Films directed by Guido Malatesta
Films set in the Roman Empire
Films about gladiatorial combat
Depictions of Nero on film
Cultural depictions of Seneca the Younger
Cultural depictions of Poppaea Sabina
Sword and sandal films
1960s Italian films

Fire Over Rome