The Danes were a North Germanic tribe inhabiting southern Scandinavia, including the area now comprising Denmark proper, northern and eastern England, and the Scanian provinces of modern-day southern Sweden, during the Nordic Iron Age and the Viking Age. They founded what became the Kingdom of Denmark. The name of their realm is believed to mean "Danish March", viz. "the march of the Danes", in Old Norse, referring to their southern border zone between the Eider and Schlei rivers, known as the Danevirke.

Origins

The origin of the Danes remains undetermined, but several ancient historical documents and texts refer to them and archaeology has revealed and continues to reveal insights into their culture, cultural beliefs, beliefs organization and way of life.

The Danes first appear in written history in the 6th century with references in Jordanes' Getica (551 AD), by Procopius, and by Gregory of Tours. They spoke Old Norse (dǫnsk tunga), which the Danes shared with the people in Norway and Sweden and later in Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
In his description of Scandza, Jordanes says that the Dani were of the same stock as the Suetidi ("Swedes") and expelled the Heruli and took their lands.

The Old English poems Widsith and Beowulf, as well as works by later Scandinavian writers (notably by Saxo Grammaticus ( 1200)),  provide some of the original written references to the Danes. According to the 12th-century author Sven Aggesen, the mythical King Dan gave his name to the Danes.

Culture

Language
The Danes spoke Proto-Norse which gradually evolved into the Old Norse language by the beginning of the Viking Age. Like previous and contemporary people of Scandinavia, the Danes used runes for writing, but did not write much apparently, as they have left no literary legacy except for occasional rune stones and carvings in wood and various items like weapons, utensils and jewellery.

Religion
As previous and contemporary peoples of Scandinavia (the Vikings), the tribal Danes were practitioners of the Norse religion. Around 500 AD, many of the gods of the Norse pantheon had lost their previous significance, except a few such as Thor, Odin and Frey who were increasingly worshipped. During the 10th century of the late Viking Age, the Danes officially adopted Christianity, as evidenced by several rune stones, documents and church buildings. The new Christian influences also show in their art, jewellery and burial practices of the late Viking Age, but the transition was not rapid and definitive and older customs from the Norse religion remained to be practised to various degrees.

Some sources, such as the Beowulf, point to a very early Arianism in Denmark, but it has been a matter of intense academic debate for many years whether these sources reflect later adjustments or an actual early Germanic Christianity among the Danes in the Iron Age. There are several archaeological artefacts in and from Denmark however, made as early as the 500s, depicting Daniel among the lions, so the Danes must have had some knowledge of and influence from Arian cultures.

Iron Age

In the Nordic Iron Age, the Danes were based in present-day Zealand and Scania (and neighbouring parts of present-day Sweden). Until around the 6th century, Jutland was the homeland of two other Germanic tribes: the Jutes in what is now North Jutland, and the Angles in South Jutland  (especially the Anglia peninsula).

The Widsith mentions two semi-mythical kings in relation to the Danes of the Iron Age. Sigar who ruled the "Sea-Danes" and Offa who ruled both Danes and Angles. Centuries later, Saxo lists for the first time the Danes entire lineage of semi-mythical kings, starting from King Dan. As Saxo's texts are the first written accounts of Denmark's history, and hence the Danes, his sources are largely surviving legends, folk lore and word of mouth.

The royal seat and capital of the Danes was located on Zealand near Lejre and constituted what has later been dubbed the Lejre Kingdom, ruled by the Skjöldung dynasty.

Some time around the middle of the First Millennium, both Jutland and Anglia became part of Danish kingdom or kingdoms. So was southern Schleswig (now the northernmost part of Germany) – the site of Danevirke, a large set of fortifications reportedly built by Danes to mark the southern border of their realm. It was extended several times in later centuries.

Viking Age

Beginning in the 8th century, the Danes initiated the construction of trading towns across their realm, including Hedeby, Ribe, Aarhus and Viborg and expanded existing settlements such as Odense and Aalborg. Hedeby quickly grew to become the largest settlement in Scandinavia and remained so until its eventual destruction in the later half of the 11th century.

From around 800 AD, the Danes began a long era of well-organised raids across the coasts and rivers of Europe. Some of the raids were followed by a gradual succession of Danish settlers and during this epoch, large areas outside Scandinavia were settled by the Danes, including the Danelaw in England and countryside and newly established towns in Ireland, the Netherlands and northern France. In the early 11th century, King Cnut the Great (died 1035) ruled the extensive North Sea Empire for nearly 20 years, consisting of Denmark, England, Norway, southern Sweden and parts of northern Germany.

During the 10th century the royal seat of the Danes was moved from Lejre to Jelling in central Jutland, marking the foundation and consolidation of the Kingdom of Denmark.

Danelaw
In the British Isles, Danes landed three Viking ships at the isle of Portland, Dorset in 786 AD, where they met and killed a local reeve and his men. In 793 AD, a Viking raid and plunder of the monastery at Lindisfarne took place, but no further activity in England followed until 835 AD. In that year, the Danes raided and built a permanent camp on the Isle of Sheppey in south east England and settling followed from 865, when brothers Halfdan Ragnarsson and Ivar the Boneless wintered in East Anglia. Halfdan and Ivar moved north and captured Northumbria in 867 and York as well. Danelaw – a special rule of law – was soon established in the settled areas and shaped the local cultures there for centuries. Cultural remains are still noticeable today.

Ireland
The Danes first arrived in Ireland in 795 AD, at Rathlin Island, initiating subsequent raids and fortified trade settlements, so called longphorts. During the Viking Age, they established many coastal towns including Dublin (Dyflin), Cork, Waterford (Veðrafjǫrðr) and Limerick (Hlymrekr) and Danish settlers followed. There were many small skirmishes and larger battles with the native Irish clans in the following two centuries, with the Danes sometimes siding with allied clans. In 1014 AD, at the Battle of Clontarf, the Vikings were eventually defeated and the remaining Danish settlers gradually assimilated with the Irish population.

Frisia

The first Vikings appeared in Frisia, now part of the Netherlands and Germany, in 800 AD, when Danes plundered coastal settlements and later the trade town of Dorestad became a frequent target of raids. During this time, Frisia was ruled by the Franks and in the mid-9th century, the Danish chieftain of Roric received the western parts of the Netherlands as a fief and established here.

The Danes were probably involved in Frisia much earlier as Gregory of Tours (c. 538–594 AD) mentions a Danish king Chlochilaichus who was killed there while invading Frankish territory in the early 6th century.

France

The first known Viking raid in what now constitutes France, commenced in 799, when an attack was fought off on the coast of Aquitaine. Several other smaller skirmishes with aggressive Vikings from primarily Danish territory have been recorded, including the first raid on the Seine in 820, but it was not until the year 834 before Viking activity in France took off on a grand scale. In that year, Danes established a lasting base on Noirmoutier island, a central spot for the European salt trade at the time, and poured into the Loire Valley on larger raid expeditions. Many large scale raids followed all across the coasts and in-land rivers of Western Europe in subsequent decades.

In the beginning of the 900's, Vikings had established an encampment and base in the lower parts of the Seine river around Rouen. In an effort to stop or reduce the relentless raids, Charles the Simple made a treaty in Saint-Clair-sur-Epte with the Viking chieftain of Rollo in 911, granting Rollo and his Danish men authority over the area now known as Normandy. This prompted Scandinavian settlers to establish themselves here and in the course of the next couple of centuries, the Norman culture emerged in Normandy.

Historical texts

Important historical documents that tell about the tribal Danes include:

 Widsith
 Beowulf. This poem describes an event in Lejre around the year 500 AD and was probably originally written shortly after.
 Saxo Grammaticus: "Gesta Danorum" (Deeds of The Danes) written in the 12th century.

See also
Danes, the present inhabitants of Denmark.
Getae
Dacians
Normans
Norsemen
Rus' people
Varangians
Vikings
Danegeld
List of ancient Germanic peoples

Notes

References

Sources and further reading

 Mads Lidegaard (2004): "Hvad troede de på? – religiøse tanker i oldtid og vikingetid" [What did they believe in? – religious thoughts in ancient times and the Viking Age], Gyldendal,  Mads Lidegaard (1915–2006) was a prolific writer, teacher and theologian from Denmark.

External links

Early Germanic peoples
North Germanic peoples

Danes (tribe)


William Surles McArthur Jr. (born July 26, 1951) is a retired United States Army colonel and NASA astronaut and a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions and one expedition to the International Space Station via the Russian Soyuz capsule.

Army career and education
Born July 26, 1951, and raised in Red Springs, North Carolina, McArthur was active in the Boy Scouts of America where he achieved its second highest rank, Life Scout.  He attended the United States Military Academy, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Science and Engineering in 1973, and earned his commission in the U.S. Army. After serving with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, McArthur attended the U.S. Army Aviation School and served tours of duty in Korea and Georgia, where he earned a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1983.

NASA career
In 1987, McArthur attended the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School and was trained as an experimental test pilot. He was assigned to a post as a flight test engineer at NASA and was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1990. McArthur's first spaceflight was in 1993 aboard STS-58. Subsequent missions included STS-74 in 1995 and STS-92 in 2000.

A Master Army Aviator, McArthur has logged over 9,000 flight hours in 41 different aircraft and spacecraft.

McArthur is the recipient of a number of prestigious awards and honors including the Army Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal (Oak leaf cluster), the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and the NASA Space Flight Medal. He retired from the U.S. Army in 2001.

McArthur was on board the International Space Station as a member of Expedition 12, having been launched on Soyuz TMA-7. He lived aboard the station from October 3, 2005, until April 8, 2006.

McArthur served as the Director of Safety and Mission Assurance for the Johnson Space Center until his retirement in June of 2017.

Expedition 12
In April 2006, McArthur and Expedition 13 flight officer Jeffrey Williams tested a new method of preparing for spacewalks by "camping out" or spending the night in the Quest airlock, the decompression capsule through which astronauts enter and exit space. In the chamber the pressure was reduced from the normal 14.7 pounds per square inch (psi) to 10.2 psi. The more commonly used method of preparing for spacewalks involves breathing pure oxygen for several hours to purge the body of nitrogen and avoid the bends. The "campout" method was intended to shorten that lengthy preparation time. Four hours into their sleep an error tone prompted mission controllers to cut short the activity, though it was still deemed a success.

Personal life
McArthur is married to the former Cynthia Kathryn Lovin with two daughters, and enjoys cycling, photography, and working with personal computers. In May 2009 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Strathclyde in recognition of his contribution to space science and engineering, as well as his outreach work with the Scottish Space School. He resides in Friendswood, Texas.

Awards

References

External links

 NASA's Expedition 12 page
 Spacefacts biography of William S. McArthur

1951 births
Living people
United States Army astronauts
NASA civilian astronauts
Commanders of the International Space Station
Crew members of the International Space Station
People from Laurinburg, North Carolina
United States Military Academy alumni
United States Military Academy faculty
Georgia Tech alumni
United States Naval Test Pilot School alumni
United States Army colonels
American test pilots
21st-century American engineers
Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army)
Recipients of the Defense Superior Service Medal
Recipients of the NASA Distinguished Service Medal
Recipients of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal
Space Shuttle program astronauts
Spacewalkers
Mir crew members

William S. McArthur


The name Limpet is used for many marine and freshwater gastropod species which have a simple conical shell. The phrase "true limpets" is used only for marine limpets in the ancient clade Patellogastropoda. This article is mainly about the true limpets.

True limpets are small marine gastropod molluscs with flattened, cone-shaped shells. They live throughout the intertidal zone, attached to rocks or other hard ground. They attach themselves using mucus and a muscular "foot", which seals them against the rock and protects them from desiccation during low tide, and from high-energy waves action.

Limpets eat by grazing on algae found on rock surfaces. They scrape films of algae from the rock with a radula, a ribbon-like tongue with rows of teeth. Limpets move by rippling the muscles of their foot in a wave-like motion. Most limpets are less than 3in (8cm) long, but a West Mexican Limpet grows to be 8in (20 cm).

Some key-hole limpets have a hole at the top, through which gas exchange can occur (they are not true limpets).

Fossil record & taxonomy
There are many limpets in the Paleozoic fossil record, from the lower Cambrian, but none can be placed with certainty in the Patellogastropoda. Some might be Monoplacophorans, which is a separate mollusc class with a similar life-style. The earliest patellogastropod verified by shell microstructure is from the Triassic of Italy, but it is in the Upper Cretaceous and Cainozoic periods that many of the living forms make their first appearance.

Patellogastropods (roughly = order)
Patelloidea (~superfamily)
Nacelloidea
Lottoidea
Neolepetopsoidea

Life style
The life-style of limpets is sessile: they stick fast to rocks or other hard substrates.

Homing behaviour
Some species of limpets return to the same spot on the rock known as a "home scar" just before the tide ebbs. It is thought that they follow chemical trails. In such species, the shape of their shell often grows to precisely match the contours of the rock surrounding the scar. This behaviour permits a better seal to the rock. It is thought that they follow a mucus trail left as they move.

Where the limpets eat the algae, off bare rocks, it causes places where other organisms can grow and thrive. Some species, such as Lottia gigantea "garden" a patch of algae around their home scar. They push other organisms out of this patch by ramming with their shell, allowing their patch of algae to grow for their own grazing.

Predators and threats
Limpets are prey for starfish, shore-birds, fish, seals, and humans. They have a two main defences; fleeing (letting go in the water) or clamping their shells against the surface they are on. The defence response can be adjusted to the type of predator, which can often be detected chemically by the limpet.

Limpets can be long lived, with tagged specimens surviving for more than 10 years. If the limpet lives on bare rock, it grows at a slower rate but can live for up to 20 years.

Limpets found on sheltered shores (limpets that are less frequently in contact with wave action, and thus less frequently in contact with water) have a greater risk of desiccation because of the effects of sunlight, water evaporation and the wind.  To avoid drying out they will clamp to the rock they inhabit, minimizing water-loss from the rim around their base. As this occurs chemicals are released that promote the vertical growth of the shell.

Reproduction
Limpets are hermaphrodites (producing both male and female reproductive cells) and undergo sex change during life. They become male at about 9 months, but after a couple of years they change sex to become female. Spawning occurs once a year, usually during winter, and is triggered by rough seas which disperse the eggs and sperm. Larvae are pelagic for a couple of weeks before settling onto a hard substrate.

References

Lottia gigantea: taxonomy, facts, life cycle, bibliography

Gastropods

Limpet


Sataspes was a Persian navigator and cavalry commander whose name is derived from Sat (=100 sad) and Asp (= Horse, Asb). He is also credited with originating the term "horse latitudes".

Sataspes (who, according to Herodotus, was Xerxes I's cousin by his mother being Darius I's  sister) had been condemned to death for kidnapping and raping Megabyzus's daughter. However his mother, Atossa, successfully convinced Xerxes to change the punishment to a more severe one - Sataspes was tasked to circumnavigate Africa. He took an Egyptian ship and crew, sailed through the Pillars of Hercules, and proceeded south for many months, but returned to Egypt without successfully completing his task. He claimed that at the farthest point he reached, he encountered a "dwarfish race, who wore a dress made from the palm tree", and that he was forced to return because his ship stopped and would not sail any further. Xerxes did not accept this excuse and had him put to death. However, it has been suggested that Sataspes could have simply encountered the Benguela Current, which prevented him from sailing any farther.

References
Iran Chamber - Iranians, Pioneers of Navigation in the Persian Gulf Iranchamber.com
 History of Iran: Histories of Herodotus, Book 4 Iranchamber.com
The Voyage of Hanno Metrum.org (Internet Archive)

Explorers of Africa
Persian explorers
Navigators
Ancient explorers
5th-century BC travelers

Sataspes


Richard Serra (born November 2, 1938) is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings. Serra's sculptures are notable for their material quality and exploration of the relationship between the viewer, the work, and the site. Since the mid-1960s, Serra has worked to radicalize and extend the definition of sculpture beginning with his early experiments with rubber, neon, and lead, to his large-scale steel works.

Early life and education
Serra was born in San Francisco, California to Tony and Gladys Serra – the second of three sons. His father was Spanish from Mallorca and mother was Russian, in Odessa. From a young age, he was encouraged to draw by his mother. The young Serra would carry a small notebook for his sketches and his mother would introduce her son as "Richard the artist." His father worked as a pipe fitter for a shipyard near San Francisco. Serra recounts a memory of a visit to the shipyard to see a boat launch when he was four years old. He watched as the ship transformed from an enormous weight to a buoyant, floating structure and notes that: "All the raw material that I needed is contained in the reserve of this memory."

Serra studied English literature at the University of California, Berkeley in 1957 before transferring to the University of California, Santa Barbara and graduating in 1961 with a BA in English Literature. In Santa Barbara, Serra met the muralists, Rico Lebrun and Howard Warshaw. Both were in the Art Department and took Serra under their wing. During this time, Serra worked in steel mills to earn a living.

Serra studied painting at Yale University and graduated with both a BA in Art History and an MFA in 1964. Fellow Yale alumni include Chuck Close, Rackstraw Downs, Nancy Graves, Brice Marden, and Robert Mangold. At Yale Serra met visiting artists from the New York School such as Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, and Frank Stella.  Serra taught a color theory course during his last year at Yale and after graduating was asked to help proof Josef Albers' notable color theory book "Interaction of Color."

In 1964, Serra was awarded a one-year traveling fellowship from Yale and went to Paris where he met the composer Philip Glass who became a collaborator and long-time friend. In Paris, Serra spent time sketching in Constantine Brancusi's studio, partially reconstructed inside the Musée national d'art modern on the avenue President Wilson, allowing Serra to study Brancusi's work, later drawing his own sculptural conclusions. An exact replica of Brancusi's studio is now located opposite the Centre Pompidou. Serra spent the following year in Florence, Italy on a Fulbright Grant. In 1966 while still in Italy, Serra made a trip to the Prado Museum in Spain and saw Diego Velazquez's painting, "Las Meninas." The artist realized he would not surpass the skill of that painting and made the decision to move away from painting.

While still in Europe, Serra began experimenting with nontraditional sculptural material. He had his first one-person exhibition "Animal Habitats" at Galleria Salita, Rome. Exhibited there were assemblages made with live and stuffed animals which would be referenced as early work from the Arte Povera movement.

Work

Early work
Serra returned from Europe and moved to New York City in 1966. He continued his constructions using experimental materials such as rubber, latex, fiberglass, neon, and lead. His Belt Pieces were made with strips of rubber and hung on the wall using gravity as a forming device. Serra combined neon with continuous strips of rubber in his sculpture Belts (1966–67) referencing the serial abstraction in Jackson Pollock's Mural (1963.) Around that time Serra wrote Verb List (1967) a list of transitive verbs (i.e. cast, roll, tear, prop, etc.) which he used as directives for his sculptures. To Lift (1967), and Thirty-Five Feet of Lead Rolled Up (1968), Splash Piece (1968), and Casting (1969), were some of the action-based works with origins in the verb list. Serra used lead in many of his constructs because of its adaptability. Lead is malleable enough to be rolled, folded, ripped, and melted. With To Lift (1967) Serra lifted a 10-foot sheet of rubber off the ground making a free-standing form; with Thirty-five Feet of Lead Rolled Up (1968), Serra, with the help of Philip Glass, unrolled and rolled a sheet of lead as tightly as they could.

In 1968 Serra was included in the group exhibition "Nine at Castelli" at Castelli Warehouse in New York where he showed Prop (1968), Scatter Piece (1968), and made Splashing (1968) by throwing molten lead against the angle of the floor and wall. In 1969 his piece Casting was included in the exhibition Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In Casting the artist again threw molten lead against the angle of the floor and wall. He then pulled the casting made from the hardened lead away from the wall and repeated the action of splashing and casting creating a series of free-standing forms.

"To prop" is another transitive verb from Serra's "Verb List" utilized by the artist for a series assemblages of lead plates and poles dependent on leaning and gravity as a force to stay upright. Serra's early Prop Pieces such as Prop (1968) relied mainly on the wall as a support. Serra wanted to move away from the wall to remove what he thought was a pictorial convention. In 1969 he propped four lead plates up on the floor like a house of cards. The sculpture One Ton Prop: House of Cards (1969) weighed 1 ton and the four plates were self-supporting.

Another pivotal moment for Serra occurred in 1969 when he was commissioned by the artist Jasper Johns to make a Splash Piece in Johns's studio. While Serra heated the lead plates to splash against the wall, he took one of the larger plates and set it in the corner where it stood on its own. Serra's break into space followed shortly after with the sculpture Strike: To Roberta and Rudy (1969–71). Serra wedged an 8 by 24-foot plate of steel into a corner and divided the room into two equal spaces. The work invited the viewer to walk around the sculpture, shifting the viewer's perception of the room as they walked.

Serra first recognized the potential of working in large scale with his Skullcracker Series made during the exhibition, "Art and Technology," at the L.A. County Museum of Art in 1969. He spent ten weeks building a number of ephemeral stacked steel pieces at the Kaiser Steelyard. Using a crane to explore the principles of counterbalance and gravity, the stacks were as tall as 30 to 40 feet high and weighed between 60 and 70 tons. They were knocked down by the steel workers at the end of each day. The scale of the stacks allowed Serra to begin think of his work outside the confines of gallery and museum spaces.

Landscape works
In 1970 Serra received a Guggenheim Fellowship and traveled to Japan. His first outdoor sculptures, To Encircle Base Plate (Hexagram) (1970) and Sugi Tree (1970), were both installed in Ueno Park as part of the "Tokyo Biennale."

While in Japan, Serra spent most of his time studying the Zen gardens and temples of the Myoshin-ji in Kyoto. The layout of the gardens revealed the landscape as a total field that can only be experienced by walking. The gardens changed Serra's way of seeing space in relation to time. Upon returning to the US he built his first site-specific outdoor work: To Encircle Base Plate Hexagram, Right Angles Inverted (1970). Here Serra embedded two semi-circular steel flanges, forming a ring 26 feet in diameter, into the surface of 183rd Street in the Bronx. One semi-circle measured 1 inch wide and the second, 8 inches wide. The work was visible from two perspectives: either when the viewer came directly upon it or from above on a stairway overlooking the street.

Throughout the 1970s Serra continued to make outdoor site-specific sculpture for urban areas and landscapes Serra's was interested in the topology of landscape and how one relates to it through movement, space, and time. His first landscape work was made in late 1970 when Serra was commissioned by the art patrons Joseph and Emily Rauh Pulitzer to build a sculpture on their property outside St. Louis, Missouri. Pulitzer Piece: Stepped Elevation (1970–71) was Serra's first large-scale landscape work. Three plates measuring 5 feet high by 40 to 50 feet long were placed across approximately 3 acres. The placement of the plates was determined by the fall of the landscape. Each plate was impaled into the ground far enough until its rise was 5 feet. Serra's intention was for the plates to act as cuts in the landscape that function as surrogate horizons as viewers walked amongst them.

Shift (1970–72), Serra's second endeavor in the landscape, was built in a field owned by the collector Roger Davidson in King City, Ontario. The sculpture is composed of six rectilinear concrete sections placed along the sloping landscape.  In 2013 Shift was designated a Heritage Site under the Ontario Heritage Act. Shift, like Pulitzer Piece, was based on the elevational fall of the land over a given distance. The top edges of the plates function as a horizon being placed into specific elevational intervals as you walk the entire field.Serra's subsequent site-specific works in landscape continued to explore the topography of the land and how the sculpture relates to this topography by way of movement, meditation, and perception of the viewer. Among the most notable of the landscape works are Porten i Slugten (1983–86) in Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Afangar (Stations, Stops on the Road, To Stop and Look: Forward and Back, To Take It All In) (1990) in Videy Island, Iceland; Schunnemunk Fork (1991) in Storm King Art Center, New York; Snake Eyes and Box Cars (1993) in Sonoma County, California; Te Tuhirangi Contour (2000–2) in Kaipara, New Zealand; and East-West/West-East (2014) in Qatar.

The sculpture Porten i Slugten (1983–86) was commissioned for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark. After walking the museum grounds, Serra chose a ravine that runs towards the Kattegat Sea as the site for his sculpture. The ravine was the only area in the grounds that had not been landscaped. Two plates were set at an angle to each other at the end of a sloping stretch of path which fronts the ravine. The plates function in their location like a gate which opens as the viewer walks down the path towards the sea. Seen from the center of a bridge, which crosses the ravine and leads to the museum, the two plates form a single plane as if the gate had closed. As you walk down from the museum to the ocean below, the plates appear to have a continuous swinging motion.In 1988 Serra was invited by the National Gallery of Iceland to build a work. Serra chose Videy Island as the site for Afangar (Stations, Stops on the Road, To Stop and Look: Forward and Back, To Take It All In) (1990). The sculpture consists of nine pairs of basalt columns (a material indigenous to Iceland) and placed along the periphery of Vesturey, the northwest part of the island. All nine locations share the same elevations in that the stones of each pair are situated at an elevation of 9 and 10 meters, respectively. Each set of stones is level at the top. All stones at the higher elevation measure 3 meters; all stones at the lower elevation measure 4 meters. Because of the variance of topography, the stones in a set are sometimes closer together, sometimes further apart. The rise and fall of Videy Island and the surrounding landscape is seen against the fixed measure of the standing stones. The stones are visible along the horizon of the island and orient the viewer against the rise and fall of the surrounding landscape.

Te Tuhirangi Contour (2000–2) is located on vast open pasture on Gibbs Farm in Kaipara, New Zealand. The sculpture stands 20 feet high and spans 844 feet as one continuous contour that follows the rolling hills, expansion, and contraction of the landscape. The sculpture's elevation is perpendicular to the fall of the land.

East-West/West-East (2014), located on an east–west axis in the Brouq Nature Reserve in Qatar, was commissioned by Sheika al-Mayassa al-Thani of Qatar. It consists of four steel plates either 54 3/4 or 48 1/2 feet high. The plates are placed at irregular intervals in a valley that runs between two gypsum plateaus. The plates are level to each other and the elevation of the adjacent plateaus. The work spans less than a kilometer and all plates are visible from either end.

Urban works
In the landscape, the sculptural elements draw the viewer's attention to the topology of the land as its walked. Serra's site-specific Urban sculptures focus the viewer's attention on the sculpture itself. Their locations often more accessible to the public than the landscape works, invite the viewer to walk inside, pass through and move around them. Because of the confines of Urban architecture, sculptures such as Sight Point (1972–75) at the Stedelijk Museum, The Netherlands; Terminal (1977) in Bochum, Germany; T.W.U. (1980) at the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany; Fulcrum (1986–87), installed in Broadgate, London; Exchange (1996) outside the City of Luxembourg; or 7 (2011) on a pier in Doha, Qatar, reflect the verticality of their surrounding architecture. Outdoor sculptures like St. John's Rotary Arc (1980) temporarily installed outside the Holland Tunnel entrance in New York City; Tilted Arc (1981) installed and later removed from New York City's Federal Plaza; Clara-Clara (1983), temporarily installed at Tuileries, Place de la Concorde, Paris; Berlin Junction (1987) installed outside the Berlin Philharmonic; are all curved forms or arcs that open and close depending on the direction the viewer takes walking around them.

Sight Point (1972–75) was Serra's first vertical Urban work and a continuation of the balance and counterbalance principles of his earlier work Prop. Sight Point stands outside the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, consisting of three vertical steel plates 10 feet wide and 40 feet high that lean in at an angle and forming a triangular space on the ground with three openings that can be walked through. Once inside the viewer can look up and see the sky framed by the triangular shape made by the leaning plates.

Another vertical sculpture, Terminal (1977), was conceived for "Documenta VI" in 1977. It was permanently installed on a traffic island between the street car tracks in front of a train station in Bochum, Germany. Serra chose the site because of its proximity to a high traffic area. Exchange (1996), sited in a vehicular round-about on top of a highway tunnel, made of seven trapezoidal plates. The sculpture stands 60 feet high and can be seen by drivers as they enter and leave the City of Luxembourg.

In 1980 Serra installed two sculptures, with support of the Public Art Fund, in New York City. T.W.U. (1980) and St. John's Rotary Arc (1980) were each placed in areas where traffic and people converged. T.W.U, a vertical sculpture consisting of three vertical plates, each 36 feet high, was installed at a subway entrance near West Broadway between Leonard and Franklin Streets. The sculpture is now permanently installed outside the Deichterhallen, Hamburg, Germany. St. John's Rotary Arc, one of Serra's earliest curved sculptures, was 12 feet high and spanned 180 feet. From 1980 to 1988 the site-specific sculpture was installed on the rotary at the entrance and exit to the Holland Tunnel.

The following year in 1981, a second site-specific curved sculpture Tilted Arc (1981) was installed in New York City's Federal Plaza. Commissioned by the U.S. General Services Administration's Art-in-Architecture Program following a rigorous selection process, the sculpture's arc spanned 120 feet and 12 feet high. The sculpture was a curve that tilted and leaned away from its base. It was anchored into the plaza at both ends so that the center of the sculpture was raised. Serra's intention for the sculpture was to draw pedestrians' attention to the sculpture as they crossed the plaza. Tilted Arc was met with resistance by workers in the Federal building. An eight-year campaign to remove the sculpture ensued and Tilted Arc was ultimately removed on March 15, 1989. In Serra's defense to preserve the sculpture he stated "To remove the work is to destroy the work," advocating an art-for art's sake mantra of site-specific artworks. The case of Tilted Arc continues to highlight the tension surrounding the nature of public art and its intended audience.

Gallery works

Serra has had numerous exhibitions in gallery and museum settings. His site-specific gallery installations are sometimes used to test ideas. Serra's first US solo exhibition was at the Leo Castelli Warehouse, New York in 1969. There he exhibited ten lead Prop Pieces, a Scatter Piece: Cutting Device: Base Plate Measure (1969), and a Splash Piece: Splashing with Four Molds (To Eva Hesse) (1969).

Following his process-based works of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Serra began to solely use rolled or forged steel in his sculpture. Berlin Block (for Charlie Chaplin) (1977) was Serra's first forged sculpture. Made for the plaza outside the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the sculpture weighs 70 tons. Other forged sculptures include Elevation for Mies (1985–88) at Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, Germany; Philibert et Marguerite (1985), in the Musee de Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse, France; Weight and Measure (1992), a temporary site-specific installation at the Tate Gallery, London; Santa Fe Depot (2004), in the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; and Equal (2015) in the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Serra's most known series of sculpture using rolled steel plates are the Torqued Ellipses. In 1991 Serra visited Borromini's Church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome and mistook the ovals of the dome and the floor to be offset from one another. He thought to make a sculpture in this torqued form. Serra constructed models of this perceived form in his studio by cutting two ellipse-shaped pieces of wood and nailing a dowel between them. He then turned the ellipses so they were at a right angle to one another and wrapped a sheet of lead around the form. After making a template from the models Serra worked with an engineer to fabricate the sculptures. In total there are seven Torqued Ellipses and four Double Torqued Ellipses (an ellipse inside of an ellipse) dated between 1996 and 2004. Each sculpture has a different degree or torque and measures up to 13 feet high. The sculptures all have an opening so that they can be walked through and around. Three Torqued Ellipses are on permanent view at Dia Beacon, New York.

In 2005 "The Matter of Time", a commissioned installation, opened at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain. Consisting of eight sculptures spanning a decade from 1994 to 2005, "The Matter of Time" highlights the evolution of Serra's sculptural forms. Serra chose to include five sculptures derived from the initial torqued ellipse: one single, one double ellipse, and three torqued spirals. The Torqued Spirals followed after the Double Torqued Ellipses when Serra decided to connect a double ellipses into one wound form that can be entered and walked through. The remaining sculptures in "The Matter of Time" are one closed (Blind Spot Reversed) and one open (Between the Torus and the Sphere) torus and spherical sculpture; and Snake: made of three parts, each comprising two identical conical sections inverted relative to each other and spanning 104 feet overall. The sculptures are organized by Serra with intention. The direction which the viewer moves through the space creates a sensation of varying scale and proportion, and an awareness to the passing of time.

In 2008 Serra participated in Monumenta, an annual exhibition held in Paris's Grand Palais featuring a single artist. For Monumenta Serra installed a single sculpture, Promenade (2008), consisting of five plates, each 55 feet tall and 13 feet wide, placed 100 feet apart from one another across the cavernous interior of the Grand Palais. Overall, the sculpture spanned 656 feet. The plates were not placed in a line but stood side to side off the Grand Palais's center axis. They tilted either left or right, leaned either toward or away from another, and the viewer as they strolled around them.

The sculpture Equal (2015), in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, consists of eight forged blocks. Each block measures 5 by 5  by 6 feet and weighs 40 tons. The blocks are stacked in pairs and positioned on their longer or shorter sides so that each stack measures 11 feet tall. When walking amongst the four stacks the viewer becomes aware of their own sense of weight, balance, and gravity in relation to the sculptures.

Four Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure (2017), consisting of four 82-ton forged cylinders of varying dimensions is permanently installed at Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland. The sculpture is installed within a building designed by Thomas Phifer of Thomas Phifer and Partners, in collaboration with Serra to highlight the sculpture's mass within the confines of the building's interior.

Drawings
Drawing is integral to Serra's practice. Serra makes drawings on large sheets of canvas or handmade paper. They include horizontal or vertical compositions; constructions of overlapping sheets; or line drawings. His drawings are primarily done in paintstick, lithographic crayon, or charcoal and are always black. Serra experiments with different techniques and tools to manipulate and apply the medium. He often pushes the conventions of drawing towards a tactile, phenomenological experience of movement, time and space. The artist has said that his drawing practice is involved with "repetition, knowing there's no possibility of repeating, knowing that it's going to yield something different each time."

Following his break into space with sculptures like Strike: To Roberta and Rudy (1969–71), Serra became interested in redefining architectural space with drawing as well. In 1974 Serra started to make his Installation Drawings—large-scale site-specific sheets of canvas completely covered in paintstick and stapled to the wall. The Installation Drawings cover the wall, or walls, of a given space. Shafrazi and Zadikians were two of Serra's first Installation Drawings. Both were exhibited at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York in 1974 and measured approximately 10  feet high and 18 feet wide overall. Serra continued to make Installation Drawing throughout his career. Other notable drawing series include: Diptychs (1989); Dead Weight (1991–92); Weight and Measure (1993–94); Videy Afangar (1989–91); Rounds (1996–97); out-of-rounds (1999–2000); Line Drawings (2000–02); Solids (2008); Greenpoint Rounds (2009); Elevational Weights (2010); Rifts (2011–18); Transparencies (2011–13); Horizontal Reversals (2014) Rambles (2015–16); Composites (2016); Horizontals and Verticals (2016–17); Orchard Street (2018).

National and international survey exhibitions of Serra's drawings include Richard Serra: Tekeningen/Drawings 1971–1977 at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1978; Richard Serra: Tekeningen/Drawings at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastrict in 1990; Richard Serra Drawings: A Retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Menil Collection, Houston from 2011 to 2012; and Richard Serra: Drawings 2015–2017: Rambles, Composites, Rotterdam Verticals, Rotterdam Horizontals, Rifts at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. Rotterdam, The Netherlands in 2017.

Prints
Serra began making prints in 1972. Working closely with Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles, Serra developed unconventional printing techniques. He has made over 200 printed works and like his sculpture and drawing, his prints reflect an interest in process, scale, and experimentation with material.

His early lithographs starting in 1972 include the prints Circuit; Balance; Eight by Eight; or 183rd & Webster Avenue, each titled after a sculpture created around the same time. In 1981 Serra produced his first lithograph series comprising seven editions, titled: Sketch #1 through Sketch #7. That same year Serra begin to make larger-scale prints such as Malcolm X; Goslar, or The Moral Majority Sucks.

After pushing lithography to its limit, Serra began to work with silkscreen to produce a unique surface in his prints. He did so by first applying a layer of ink onto the paper. He then would apply a layer of paint stick through the second screen creating a saturated and textured surface.

Serra continued to work this his silkscreen technique, sometimes combining it with etching and aquatint. Print series include: Videy Afanger (1991); Hreppholer (1991); WM (1996); Rounds  (1999); Venice Notebook (2001); Between the Torus and the Sphere (2006); Paths and Edges (2007); Level (2008); Junction (2010); Reversal (2015); Elevational Weight (2016); Equal (2018); and (2019).

Films and video works
From 1968 to 1979 Serra made a collection of films and videos. Although he began working with sculpture and film at the same time, Serra recognized the different material capacities of each and did not extend sculptural problems into his films and videos. Serra collaborated with several artists including Joan Jonas, Nancy Holt, and Robert Fiore, on his films and videos. His first films, Hand Catching Lead (1968), Hands Scraping (1968) and Hand Tied (1968) involve a series of actions: a hand tries to catch falling lead; pairs of hands move lead shavings; and bound hands untie themselves.

A later film Railroad Turnbridge (1976) frames the surrounding landscape of the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, as the bridge turns. Steelmill/Stahwerk (1979), made in collaboration with the art historian Clara Weyergraf is divided in two parts. The first part is made up of interviews of German steel-factory workers about their work. The second part captures the forging of Serra's sculpture Berlin Block (for Charlie Chaplin).

Survey exhibitions and screenings of his films were held at the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland in 2017; Anthology Film Archives, New York, October 17–23, 2019; and Harvard Film Archive, January 27 – February 9, 2020. In 2019 Serra donated his entire film and video works to The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Exhibitions
Serra's first solo exhibition was in 1966 at Galleria Salita in Rome, Italy. His first solo exhibition in the US was at the Leo Castelli Warehouse, New York in 1969. His first solo museum exhibition was held at the Pasadena Art Museum in California in 1970.

The first retrospective of his work was held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1986. A second retrospective was held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2007.

The first survey exhibition of his drawings was held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1977 and traveled to the Kunsthalle Tübingen in 1978. A second retrospective of drawings was presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and The Menil Collection, Houston from 2011 to 2012. An overview of the artist's work in film and video was on view at the Kunstmuseum Basel, in 2017.

Serra has had solo exhibitions at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 1978; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1980; Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1983–1984; Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, 1985; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1986 and 2007; Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk, 1986; Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster, 1987; Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1987; Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 1988; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 1990; Kunsthaus Zürich, 1990; CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, 1990; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1992; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 1992; Dia Center for the Arts, New York, 1997; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1998–1999; Centro de Arte Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, 1997–1998; Trajan's Market, Rome, 1999–2000; Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis, 2003; and Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples, 2004; and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, in 2017.

Collections
Serra's work is included in many museums and public collections around the world.  Selected museum collections include The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Art Institute of Chicago; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastrict, The Netherlands; Centre Cultural Fundació La Caixa, Barcelona; Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; Dia Art Foundation, New York; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and New York; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland.

Selected public collections include City of Bochum, Germany; City of Chicago, Public Art Collection; City of Goslar, Germany; City of Hamburg, Germany; City of St. Louis, Missouri; City of Tokyo, Japan; City of Berlin, Germany; City of Paris, France; Collection City of Reykjavic, Iceland.

Awards
Serra has been the recipient of many notable prizes and awards, including Fulbright Grant (1965–66); Guggenheim Fellowship (1970); République Française, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1985 and 1991); Japan Arts Association, Tokyo Praemium Imperiale  (1994); a Leone d'Oro for lifetime achievement, Venice Biennale, Italy (2001); American Academy of Arts and Letters (2001); Orden pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste, Federal Republic of Germany (2002); Orden de las Artes y las Letras de España, Spain (2008); The National Arts Award: Lifetime Achievement Award (bestowed by Americans for the Arts 2014); Hermitage Museum Foundation's Award for Lifetime Contributions to the World of Art (2014); Chevalier de l'Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur, Republic of France (2015); Landesmuseum Wiesbaden Alexej-von-Jawlensky-Preis (2017); and a J. Paul Getty Medal (2018).

Personal life
Richard Serra moved to New York City in 1966. He bought a house in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in 1970 and spent summers working there. Serra married art historian Clara Weyergraf in 1981. Since early 2010s Serra and Weyergraf-Serra spend their time between New York City and the North Fork, Long Island.

Writings and interviews
Gathered in the following three anthologies is a comprehensive collection of writings by, and interviews with, the artist:
 Richard Serra: Writings, Interviews. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994. Includes writings by the artist and interviews by Friedrich Teja Bach, Liza Béar, Patricia E. Bickers, Lizzie Borden, Lynne Cooke, Douglas Crimp, Peter Eisenman, Mark Francis, Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, Annette Michelson, Robert C. Morgan, Alfred Pacquement, Brenda Richardson, Mark Rosenthal, Nicholas Serota, David Sylvester, and Clara Weyergraf.
 Richard Serra: Interviews, Etc. 1970–1980. Yonkers, New York: The Hudson River Museum, 1980. Written and compiled by Richard Serra in collaboration with Clara Weyergraf. Includes interviews by Friedrich Teja Bach, Liza Béar, Lizzie Borden, Douglas Crimp, Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, and Clara Weyergraf.
 Richard Serra: Schriften, Interviews 1970–1989. Bern: Benteli Verlag, 1990. German translation of the 1980 Hudson River Museum publication with additional contributions by Thomas Beller, Peter Eisenman, Philip Glass, Gerard Hovagymyan, Robert C. Morgan, Alfred Pacquement, Brenda Richardson, and Harald Szeemann.

Selected writing
All solely by Richard Serra unless indicated otherwise.

 "Play it Again, Sam." Arts Magazine 44, no. 4 (February 1970), pp. 24–27.
 "Verb List, 1967–68." First published in Avalanche [New York], no. 2 (Winter 1971), pp. 20–21.
 "Skullcracker Stacking Series." In Scott, Gail R., A Report on the Art & Technology Program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art 1967–1971, pp. 299–300. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1971.
 Jackson, Ward, and Richard Serra. "Richard Serra." Art Now: New York 3, no. 3 (September 1971), p. 4.
 Serra, Richard. "Statements." Artforum 10, no. 1 (September 1971), p. 64.
 "On Frame, on Color-Aid." Artforum 10, no. 1 (September 1971), p. 64.
 Jonas, Joan, and Richard Serra. "Paul Revere." Artforum 10, no. 1 (September 1971), pp. 65–67.
 Serra, Richard, and Rosalind Krauss, ed. "Shift." Arts Magazine 47, no. 6 (April 1973), pp. 49–55.
 Serra, Richard, and Clara Weyergraf. "St. John's Rotary Arc." Artforum 19, no. 1 (September 1980), pp. 52–55.
 "Notes from Sight Point Road." Originally published in Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal, no. 19 (1982), pp. 172–81. Edited and printed as "Extended Notes from Sight Point Road" in Richard Serra: Neuere Skulpturen in Europa 1977–1985 (Eine Auswahl)/Recent Sculpture in Europe 1977–1985 (Selected), pp. 11–15.
 "Letter from Richard Serra to President Ronald Reagan" [in Portuguese and English]. Lo Spazio Umano [Portugal], no. 2 (April–July 1985), pp. 89–92. Bilingual, Portuguese and English.
 "Serra Writes the President." Art & Artists 14, no. 3 (May–June 1985), special supplement, pp. 3, 22.
 "Notes on Drawing." First published in Güse, Ernst-Gerhard, ed. Richard Serra, pp. 66–68. New York: Rizzoli, 1988.
 "Weight." In Richard Serra: 10 Sculptures for the Van Abbe, pp. 10–12. Exh. cat. Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 1988. Bilingual in Dutch and English.
 "'Tilted Arc'—A Precedent?" [letter to the editor]. The New York Times, April 30, 1989, sec. 2, p. 5.
 "'Tilted Arc' Destroyed." Art in America 77, no. 5 (May 1989), pp. 34–47, cover.
 "Artists Have Rights to Their Works." Des Moines Sunday Register, October 29, 1989, pp. 3C.
 "The Yale Lecture, January 1990." Kunst & Museumjournaal [Amsterdam: English edition] 1, no. 6 (1990), pp. 23–33.
 "Art and Censorship." Critical Inquiry 17, no. 3 (Spring 1991), pp. 574–81.
 "Afangar Series." Open City, no. 2 (1993), pp. 101–7.
 "Donald Judd" [eulogy]. Parkett, nos. 40–41 (1994), pp. 176–79.
 "Basel, 18. Januar 1994/Basel, January 18, 1994." In Martin Schwander, ed., Richard Serra: Intersection Basel, pp. 72–79. Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag and Düsseldorf: Richter Verlag, 1996.
 "Notes on The Matter of Time." In Richard Serra: The Matter of Time, p. 141. Bilbao: Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, and Göttingen: Steidl Verlag, 2005.

Selected interviews
 Bear, Liza. "Document: Spin Out '72–'73 for Bob Smithson" [interview with the artist, October 30, 1973]. Avalanche[New York], no. 8 (Summer/Fall 1973), pp. 14–15.
 Bear, Liza. "Prisoner's Dilemma" [interview with the artist, January 27, 1974]. Avalanche [New York], no. 9 (May–June 1974), pp. 26–28.
 Bear, Liza. "Richard Serra: Sight Point '71-75/Delineator '74–76" [radio interview, February 23, 1976]. First published in Art in America 64, no. 3 (May–June 1976), pp. 82–86.
 Borden, Lizzie. "Richard Serra Interviewed by Lizzie Borden." In Richard Serra: Tekeningen/Drawings 1971–1977, pp. 9–14. Exh. cat. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1977.
 Michelson, Annette, and Clara Weyergraf. "Richard Serra's Films: An Interview." October, no. 10 (Fall 1979), pp. 68–104.
 Bear, Liza. "Interview" [March 30, 1976]. First published in Richard Serra: Interviews, Etc. 1970–1980, pp. 65–73.Yonkers, New York: The Hudson River Museum, 1980.
 Bach, Friedrich Teja. "Interview: Richard Serra & Friedrich Teja Bach" [March 14, 1975]. In Richard Serra: Interviews, Etc. 1970–1980, pp. 45–55. Yonkers, New York: The Hudson River Museum, 1980.
 Lamarche-Vadel, Bernard. "Entretien avec Richard Serra" [interview with the artist, May 1980]. First published in Artistes [Paris], no. 7 (January- February 1981), pp. 24–29.
 Crimp, Douglas. "Richard Serra's Urban Sculpture: An Interview" [July 1980]. Arts Magazine 55, no. 3 (November 1980), pp. 118–24.
 Pacquement, Alfred. "Interview." In Richard Serra: Writings, Interviews, pp. 157–64. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994.
 Szeemann, Harold. "On the Bridge." In Richard Serra: "Maillart Extended," pp. 20–25. Bern: Benteli Verlag, 1989. Trilingual, German, French, and English.
 Serota, Nicholas, and David Sylvester. "Interview with the artist" [May 27, 1992]. In Richard Serra: Weight and Measure, pp. 9–25. Exh. cat. Tate Gallery, London. Düsseldorf: Richter Verlag, 1992.
 Kimmelman, Michael. "Richard Serra." The New York Times, August 11, 1995, pp. C1, C26.
 Cooke, Lynne and Michael Govan. "Interview with Richard Serra" [Cape Breton, July 10, 1997]. In Richard Serra: Torqued Ellipses, pp. 11–31. Exh. cat. Dia Center for the Arts, New York, 1997.
 Sylvester, David. "Interview." In Russell Ferguson, Anthony McCall, and Clara Weyergraf-Serra, eds. Richard Serra: Sculpture 1985–1998, pp. 187–206. Exh. cat. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Göttingen: Steidl Verlag, 1998.
 Waters, John. "Art Profile: Richard Serra." Vogue Hommes International (Spring-Summer 2002), pp. 116–24.
 Peyser, Jonathan. "Declaring, Defining, and Dividing Space: Conversation with Richard Serra." Sculpture 21, no. 8 (October 2002), pp. 28–35.
 Foster, Hal. "Richard Serra in Conversation with Hal Foster." In Richard Serra: The Matter of Time, pp. 23–41. Bilbao: Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, and Göttingen: Steidl Verlag, 2005.
 Bui, Phong. "In Conversation: Richard Serra with Phong Bui," The Brooklyn Rail, June 2006, pp. 22–24. Reprinted in Richard Serra: Rolled and Forged, pp. 5–15. Exh. cat. Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2006.
 McShine, Kynaston. "A Conversation About Work with Richard Serra." In Richard Serra: Forty Years, pp. 15–40. Exh. cat. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2007.
 Pacquement, Alfred. "Richard Serra: Grand Seigneur du Grand Palais." In Richard Serra: Monumenta 2008/Grand Palais, pp. 4–11. Boulogne: Beaux Arts Éditions, 2008.
 Storr, Robert. "Richard Serra Goes Public in Paris." Art Press [Paris], no. 345 (May 2008), pp. 28–35.
 Garrels, Gary. "An Interview with Richard Serra." In Richard Serra: Drawing: A Retrospective, pp. 65–83. Exh. cat. The Menil Collection, Houston, 2011.
 Enright, Robert. "The Weight of History: Richard Serra's Sculpture and Drawings" [interview with the artist]. Border Crossings 36, no. 4 (December 2017 – February 2018), pp. 30–43.
 Serra, Richard, and Hal Foster. Conversations About Sculpture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018.

References

External links
 One Ton Prop (House of Cards), 1969
 Strike: To Roberta and Rudy, 1969–71
 Shift, 1970–72
 Berlin Block (For Charlie Chaplin), 1977
 Tilted Arc, 1981
 Richard Serra: Torqued Ellipses at Dia Beacon''
 The Matter of Time, 1994–2005
 East-West/West-East, 2014
 Equal, 2015
 Hand Catching Lead, 1968
 Railroad Turnbridge, 1976

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Weathering steel
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Richard Serra


Amherst is a census-designated place (CDP) and the main village in the town of Amherst in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. The population of the CDP was 697 at the 2020 census, out of 11,753 in the entire town. The village center is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Amherst Village Historic District.

Geography
The CDP is in the central part of the town of Amherst, bordered to the east by New Hampshire Route 101; to the south by Thornton Ferry Road, Courthouse Road, and Atherton Lane; to the west by Old Milford Road and the west edge of Meadow View Cemetery; and to the north by Jones Road, Mack Hill Road, and Manchester Road.

Route 101 leads northeast  to the start of the Manchester bypass, and southwest  to Wilton. Milford is  to the southwest via Amherst Street.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Amherst CDP has a total area of , all of it land.

Demographics

As of the census of 2010, there were 613 people, 241 households, and 186 families residing in the CDP. There were 254 housing units, of which 13, or 5.1%, were vacant. The racial makeup of the CDP was 99.0% white, 0.0% African American, 0.0% Native American, 0.7% Asian, 0.0% Pacific Islander, 0.0% some other race, and 0.3% from two or more races. 0.8% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

Of the 241 households in the CDP, 38.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 65.1% were headed by married couples living together, 9.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 22.8% were non-families. 19.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.0% were someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.54, and the average family size was 2.94.

27.1% of residents in the CDP were under the age of 18, 3.9% were from age 18 to 24, 18.0% were from 25 to 44, 31.2% were from 45 to 64, and 19.9% were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 45.6 years. For every 100 females, there were 88.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.4 males.

For the period 2011–15, the estimated median annual income for a household was $112,344, and the median income for a family was $141,382.  The per capita income for the CDP was $63,381. 4.3% of the population and 0.0% of families were below the poverty line, along with 0.0% of people under the age of 18 and 0.0% of people 65 or older.

References

Census-designated places in New Hampshire
Census-designated places in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire

Amherst (CDP), New Hampshire


John L. Pollock (1940–2009) was an American philosopher known for influential work in epistemology, philosophical logic, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence.

Life and career

Born John Leslie Pollock in Atchison, Kansas, on January 28, 1940, Pollock earned a triple-major physics, mathematics, and philosophy degree at the University of Minnesota in 1961.  In 1965, his doctoral dissertation Analyticity and Implication at the University of California, Berkeley was advised by Ernest Adams (making Pollock an intellectual descendant of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant, through Ernest Nagel and Patrick Suppes).  This dissertation contained an appendix on defeasible reasoning that would eventually blossom into his main contribution to philosophy.

Pollock held faculty positions at SUNY Buffalo, University of Rochester, University of Michigan, and University of Arizona, where he spent most of his career.  At Arizona, he helped found the Cognitive Science Program. He was an avid mountain biker and founded a riding club in Southern Arizona.

Philosophical work

Knowledge and Justification

Knowledge and Justification is the book that established Pollock in epistemology. It appeared at a time when American philosophy, and especially American epistemology, was obsessed with the analysis of what it means to know something.  For instance, the Gettier problem, one of the most frequently discussed problems of the day, asks why it is that holding a "justified true belief" that x is not equivalent to knowing that x. Pollock's book steps back from trying to identify the "analytic criteria" which might constitute the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge.  His epistemic norms are governed by defeasible reasoning; they are ceteris paribus conditions that can admit exceptions.  Several other epistemologists (notably at Brown University, such as Ernest Sosa, and especially Roderick Chisholm), as well as his Arizona colleague Keith Lehrer, had written about defeasibility and epistemology.  But Pollock's book, which combined a broad scope and a crucial innovation, brought the ideas into the philosophical mainstream.

Defeasible Reasoning

Pollock became known as "Mr. Defeasible Reasoning" among philosophers in the two decades before his death.  In artificial intelligence, where non-monotonic reasoning had caused intellectual upheaval, scholars sympathetic to Pollock's work held him in great esteem for his early commitment and clarity.  Pollock's most direct pronouncement is the paper "Defeasible reasoning" in Cognitive Science, 1987, though his non-syntactic ideas were almost fully mature in Knowledge and Justification.  Pollock traced the history of his own thinking (e.g., in a footnote in Pollock and Cruz, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, 1999, p. 36, note 37, and elsewhere) to his first paper on epistemology, "Criteria and our knowledge of the material world," Philosophical Review 76, 1967.  He thought that Roderick Chisholm had influenced his thinking on the subject, but he also said he was attempting to interpret Ludwig Wittgenstein directly, and sometimes credited Stephen Toulmin on the subject of argument. Although his work had considerable impact in the area of Artificial intelligence and law, Pollock was not himself interested much in jurisprudence or theories of legal reasoning, and he never acknowledged the inheritance of defeasible reasoning through H.L.A. Hart.  Pollock also held informal logicians and scholars of rhetoric at a distance, though defeasible reasoning has natural affinities in argument.

Pollock's "undercutting defeat" and "rebutting defeat" are now fixtures in the defeasible reasoning literature.  He later added "self-defeat" and other kinds of defeat mechanisms, but the original distinction remains the most popular.

Although aided by a strong tail wind from AI and a few contemporary like minded philosophers (e.g., Donald Nute, Nicholas Asher, Bob Causey), it is certain that defeasible reasoning went from the obscure to the mainstream in philosophy because of John Pollock, in the short time between the publication of Knowledge and Justification and the second edition of Contemporary Theories of Knowledge.

OSCAR / How to Build a Person

Pollock devoted considerable time later in his career to a software project called OSCAR, an artificial intelligence software prototype he called an "artilect".  OSCAR was largely an implementation of Pollock's ideas on defeasible reasoning, but it also embodied his less well known and often unpublished ideas about intentions, interests, strategies for problem solving, and other cognitive architectural design.  OSCAR was a LISP-based program that had an "interest-based" reasoner.  Pollock claimed that the efficiency of his theorem-prover was based on its unwillingness to draw "uninteresting" conclusions.  Although OSCAR did not benefit from the contributions of a large number of professional programmers, it must be compared to CyC, Soar (cognitive architecture), and Novamente for its inventor's ambition.

Pollock described Oscar's main features as the ability to reason defeasibly about perception,
change and persistence, causation, probabilities, plan construction and evaluation, and decision. He described the evolution of Oscar in the Fable of Oscar in his book.

OSCAR grew out of the Prologemena on How to Build a Person, which colleagues must have assumed was a facetious use of personhood at the time.  However, Pollock's own attitude toward OSCAR was more machinating:  he looked forward to future cognitive taxonomies that would classify OSCAR generously as a legitimate anthropomorphic form.

Nomic Probability

Nomic Probability and the Foundations of Induction, Oxford, 1990 was Pollock's deep investigation of the relationship between defeasible reasoning and the estimation of probability from frequencies (direct inference of probability).  It is a maturation of ideas originally found in a 1983 Theory and Decision paper.  This work must be compared to Henry E. Kyburg's theories of probability, although Pollock believed that he was theorizing about a broader variety of statistical inferences.

Publications

Books

 Introduction to Symbolic Logic, Holt Rinehart Winston, 1969.
 Knowledge and Justification, Princeton, 1974.
 Subjunctive Reasoning, Springer, 1976.
 Language and Thought, Princeton, 1982.
 The Foundations of Philosophical Semantics, Princeton, 1984.
 Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, first edition, Rowman-Littlefield, 1987.
 How to Build a Person: A prolegomenon, MIT Press, 1989.
 Technical Methods in Philosophy, Westview, 1990.
 Nomic Probability and The Foundations of Induction, Oxford, 1990.
 Philosophy and AI: Essays at the Interface, with R. Cummins, MIT Press, 1995.
 Cognitive Carpentry: A blueprint for how to build a person, MIT Press, 1995.
 Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, with J. Cruz, second edition, Rowman-Littlefield, 1999.
 Thinking about Acting: Logical Foundations for Rational Decision Making, Oxford, 2006.

Selected papers

 "Criteria and our knowledge of the material world," The Philosophical Review, 1967.
 "Basic modal logic," Journal of Symbolic Logic, 1967.
 "What Is an Epistemological Problem? American Philosophical Quarterly, 1968.
 "The structure of epistemic justification," American Philosophical Quarterly, 1970.
 "Perceptual knowledge," The Philosophical Review, 1971.
 "The logic of projectibility," Philosophy of Science, 1972.
 "Subjunctive generalizations," Synthese, 1974.
 "Four Kinds of Conditionals," American Philosophical Quarterly, 1975.
 "The 'possible worlds' analysis of counterfactuals," Philosophical Studies, 1976.
 "Thinking about an Object," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 1980.
 "A refined theory of counterfactuals," Journal of Philosophical Logic, 1981.
 "Epistemology and probability," Synthese, 1983.
 "How Do You Maximize Expectation Value?" Nous, 1983.
 "A theory of direct inference," Theory and Decision, 1983.
 "A solution to the problem of induction," Nous, 1984.
 "Reliability and justified belief," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 1984.
 "A theory of moral reasoning," Ethics, 1986.
 "The Paradox of the Preface," Philosophy of Science, 1986.
 "Epistemic norms," Synthese, 1987.
 "Defeasible reasoning," Cognitive Science, 1987.
 "How To Build a Person: The Physical Basis for Mentality," Philosophical Perspectives, 1987.
 "My brother, the machine," Nous, 1988.
 "OSCAR: A general theory of rationality," Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 1989.
 "Interest driven suppositional reasoning," Journal of Automated Reasoning, 1990.
 "Self-defeating arguments," Minds and Machines, 1991.
 "A theory of defeasible reasoning," International Journal of Intelligent Systems, 1991.
 "New foundations for practical reasoning," Minds and Machines, 1992.
 "How to reason defeasibly," Artificial Intelligence, 1992.
 "The theory of nomic probability," Synthese, 1992.
 "The phylogeny of rationality," Cognitive Science, 1993.
 "Foundations for direct inference," Theory and Decision, 1994.
 "Justification and defeat," Artificial Intelligence, 1994.
 "The projectibility constraint," in Grue! The New Riddle of Induction, ed. Douglas Stalker, Open Court, 1994.
 "Implementing defeasible reasoning," Workshop on Computational Dialectics - FAPR, 1996.
 "Oscar - A general-purpose defeasible reasoner," Journal of Applied Nonclassical Logics, 1996.
 "Proving the non-existence of God," Inquiry : An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 1996.
 "Taking perception seriously," Proceedings of the first international conference on Autonomous Agents, 1997.
 "Reasoning about change and persistence: A solution to the frame problem," Nous, 1997.
 "The logical foundations of goal-regression planning in autonomous agents," Artificial Intelligence, 1998.
 "Perceiving and reasoning about a changing world," Computational Intelligence, 1998.
 "Procedural Epistemology," in The Digital Phoenix: How Computers are Changing Philosophy, Bynum and Moor, eds., Wiley, 1998.
 "Planning Agents," in Foundations of Rational Agency, ed. Rao and Wooldridge, Kluwer, 1999.
 "Belief revision and epistemology," with AS Gillies, Synthese, 2000.
 "Rational cognition in OSCAR," Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2000.
 "Defeasible reasoning with variable degrees of justification," Artificial Intelligence, 2001.
 "Causal probability," Synthese, 2002.
 "The logical foundations of means-end reasoning," Common Sense, Reasoning, & Rationality, 2002.
 "Rational choice and action omnipotence," The Philosophical Review, 2002.
 "Plans and decisions," Theory and Decision, 2004.
 "What Am I? Virtual machines and the mind/body problem," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2008.

References

External links
 A site containing John Pollock's works.
 Pollock's home page.
 Pollock's summaries of his works.

 Philosophy department memorial notice

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Sentenced to Prism (1985) is a science fiction novel by American writer Alan Dean Foster, a  stand-alone entry in his Humanx Commonwealth series of books.  Like many of his books, Foster creates an extraordinary world that he tries to make unlike anything ever seen by his readers by creating a primarily silicon-based planet with almost everything seeming to be made from crystals, glass, and reflective surfaces.

Plot
Set in the Humanx Commonwealth, Prism is a unique planet because its ecosystem contains both silicon-based and carbon-based life. Evan Orgell, a management troubleshooter sent to Prism to investigate the disappearance of a research group, finds himself fighting for his survival in this strange crystalline environment after his specialized environment suit succumbs to the local elements.  Leaving behind his mechanized suit, Evan is for the first time in his life exposed to a hostile environment without the protection of his suit and must rely on the unexpected help of the native sentient life to survive.

With the help of a caterpillar-like creature named A Surface of Fine Azure-Tinted Reflection With Pyroxin Dendritic Inclusions (which Evan chooses to call simply "Azure", much to his strange new friend's disappointment) he must grow to overcome his prejudices, his assumptions, and his preoccupations to relearn what life, communication, companionship, government, and even his own bodily form mean to him.  He and his new-found friends must overcome multiple treacherous acts by his own race in order to survive and thrive on the beautiful, but deadly, planet.

External links

Alan Dean Foster homepage

1985 American novels
Humanx Commonwealth
Novels by Alan Dean Foster
1985 science fiction novels
American science fiction novels
Del Rey books

Sentenced to Prism


Weather Center Live was a program on The Weather Channel. It airs on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time. It gives information about the current weather events happening in the United States. It is The Weather Channel's de facto program. On November 16, 2021, the show was replaced by Storm Center.

History
Weather Center Live formally launched as Weather Center on March 2, 2009. It replaced the old Weather Center. Its hosts were Stephanie Abrams and Mike Bettes. Abrams and Bettes formerly hosted Abrams & Bettes: Beyond the Forecast, which ended three days earlier. From May 5 to June 12, 2009, Mike Bettes went on the Vortex 2 project, so Adam Berg filled in for him in the studio.

Schedule and hosts
On June 22, 2009, Jim Cantore and Alexandra Steele became hosts of the program, replacing Abrams & Bettes (they got a week off to get ready for their new hosts on Your Weather Today, now America's Morning Headquarters). Cantore and Steele hosted from 7-10 p.m. ET under the title Weather Center with Cantore & Steele (just like under Your Weather Today's new name Your Weather Today with Abrams & Bettes).

In December 2009, Kevin Robinson left The Weather Channel, and was replaced by Chris Warren. In September 2010, Crystal Egger replaced Alexandra Steele, who was later at CNN. Nicole Mitchell left the program in November, and was replaced by Kelly Cass.

Beginning in January 2011, Weather Center aired three blocks a night (7-8 p.m., 10-11 p.m., and 1-2 a.m.) and debuted on weekends on February 5, 2011. The weekday editions were hosted by Chris Warren and Crystal Egger, the weekend editions were hosted by Paul Goodloe and Kelly Cass.

In March 2012, the weekday edition debuted at 4:00 p.m., moving Day Planner to 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. ET. The weekend edition debuted at 4 p.m. as well, canceling PM Edition. In November 2012, Weather Center Live began airing from 5-8 p.m. ET.

Todd Santos left the channel in July 2013, and was replaced by Keith Carson. In September, Crystal Egger left the program (she returned on September 12 to anchor from 1-3 a.m. ET due to the flooding in Colorado, before she left the network for good). Alexandra Wilson left the afternoon 4-5 p.m. edition to replace her as a co-host with Chris Warren and Jim Cantore. However when she left no anchor was announced to join Alex Wallace.

On November 12, 2013 at 4:00 a.m. Eastern Time, The Weather Channel re-launched with new graphics. As a result, the program was extended to mornings and afternoons (4:00 to 5:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Eastern) and weekends from 4:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time, but that change meant that the show's 10:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. editions and weekends at 4:00 and 7:00 p.m. Eastern were replaced by long-form programming, removing nighttime forecast programs for the first time in The Weather Channel's history.

In February 2014, the show was extended to 2:00-5:00 p.m. ET. In April, Dave Schwartz returned to The Weather Channel co-anchoring alongside Alexandra Wilson. On November 6, 2014, the show's 4:00-5:30 a.m. time slot was replaced by long-form programming (from 4-5 a.m.) and an extended Wake Up with Al from 5 to 5:30 a.m. ET. On November 8, 2014, the weekend 4-5 a.m. ET and noon-2 p.m. editions were also replaced by long-form programming. So as a result, Weather Center Live only aired from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET weekdays and 5:00 a.m. to noon ET on weekends.

In mid-November, Weather Center Live began airing at 10:00 a.m. weekdays, canceling the rebroadcast of Wake Up with Al.

On January 31, 2015, the 5:00-9:00 a.m. edition was replaced by AMHQ Weekend hosted by Reynolds Wolf and Kait Parker. On March 14, 2015, the 9:00 a.m. to noon edition was replaced by Weekend Recharge hosted by Maria LaRosa and Paul Goodloe. Weather Center Live became a weekday only show, airing from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

On August 24, 2015, the 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. edition was replaced by Weather Underground, hosted by Mike Bettes and Alex Wilson. On June 4, 2018, Weather Center Live was shortened by an hour, ending at 5 p.m. ET.

In December 2018, Weather Center Live began being known as The Weather Channel LIVE only on electronic program guides.

The Weather Channel shows
2009 establishments
English-language television programs

Weather Center Live


Brithys crini, the amaryllis borer, crinum borer, lily borer or Kew arches, is a moth of the family Noctuidae. It is a garden pest in parts of its range, as their larvae damage the stems and leaves of lilies, especially lilies of the family Amaryllidaceae.

Range
It is found in the coastal areas of the Mediterranean, south to South Africa. Furthermore, it is found in Japan and in Queensland and Northern Territory in Australia towards India and Sri Lanka.

Description

The wingspan of the moth is about 40 mm. Its head, thorax and forewings are very dark brown, but paler toward the wingtips. Sub-basal, median and postmedial indistinct waved lines are black. A curved submarginal ochreous line with ferrous colored lunuled found on each side of it. There is a marginal black lunule series. The hindwings are practically white. Tarsi bear black and white stripes. In Europe the adults are on the wing in July.

Life stages
There are several generations per year, though development slows down in cooler seasons, when the larvae sometimes overwinter by boring into the bulbs of the host plants.

The moth lays clusters of a few dozen eggs on the host plant leaves. The hatching larvae at first remain in groups and mine into the leaves. As they grow they either emerge and feed externally, or proceed down the leaves to their bases or even into the bulbs.

The larvae are aposematically coloured in pale yellows on blacks and browns. They are unpalatable to most vertebrate predators, and also poisonous, feeding as they do, on largely unpalatable and poisonous plants. They are slightly bristly, but the bristles seem to be sensory rather than irritant. Typically they grow to about 40 mm long before pupation.

Food plants
The larvae feed on all species of Crinum, Clivia and Hippeastrum, including Crinum angustifolium, Haemanthus species, Hippeastrum procerum, Pancratium maritimum, Zephyranthes candida, Crocus tommasinianus, Narcissus spp., and Amaryllis belladonna. Commonly they bore into thick leaves or even into the bulbs; Mature larvae are likely to feed externally, especially on thin-leaved plants. Heavy infestations of the caterpillars may kill plants.

Predators
The most effective enemies of the larvae in Europe are the carabid (ground beetle) Scarites buparius and the tenebrionid (darkling beetles), Erodius siculus and Pimelia bipunctata.

Control
Commercial carbaryl dusts are effective in combating the caterpillar, but they cannot reach those that have bored into the plant. The insecticide also reduces populations of predators, so that weekly applications become necessary. For small scale horticulture, or in home gardens it is better to rely on mechanical control, seeking out discoloured feeding patches on leaves and crushing the young larvae before they develop. Heavily infested leaves it often is better to cut out and destroy.

References

External links

 Fauna Europaea

Glottulinae
Owlet moths of Europe
Moths of the Comoros
Owlet moths of Africa
Moths of Japan
Moths of Madagascar
Moths of Mauritius
Moths of Réunion
Moths of the Middle East
Moths described in 1775
Taxa named by Johan Christian Fabricius

Brithys crini


Cryoburn is a science fiction novel by American writer Lois McMaster Bujold, first published in October 2010. Part of the Vorkosigan Saga, it was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2011, as Bujold's ninth Best Novel nomination. Also in 2011, it was one of the top five finishers in the poll for the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

Plot summary

Cryoburn takes place six or seven years after Diplomatic Immunity.  Miles Vorkosigan, the main character in the series, is 39 years old. He is sent by Emperor Gregor to the planet Kibou-daini ("New Hope") to investigate White Chrysanthemum Cryonics Corporation. WhiteChrys, a major "cryocorp", to which sick or dying people go to be frozen in hopes of one day being revived and cured, is opening a subsidiary on Komarr, arousing suspicions. The narrative follows three points of view: those of Miles, his Armsman Roic, and Jin Sato, a local Kibou-daini boy.

At a conference, an attempt is made to kidnap Miles and the other attendees. Miles avoids capture because an allergic reaction to the drug used on him makes him extremely hyperactive, and escapes into the below-ground Cryocombs, where the frozen are stored. Roic is caught along with Raven, a cryo-revival specialist from the Durona Group who assisted in reviving Miles after his death on Jackson's Whole (detailed in Mirror Dance).

When Miles finds his way back to the surface, he encounters Jin, an eleven-year-old boy living with his chickens and other pets in a disused building. Jin introduces him to a society of outcasts living in abandoned facilities. This helps Miles piece together what is really going on.

Publication history

Lois Bujold announced the name of the book on her blog: "My editor, playing the part of the Supreme Court, has kindly cast the deciding vote in this close election: the new Miles book shall henceforth be known as CryoBurn."  The other two choices under consideration were Cold Breath and Cryopolis.

Bujold read the first two chapters at Denvention 3 in August 2008. The full-length electronic Advance Reader Copy was made available through Webscriptions on August 3, 2010. The hardcover version of Cryoburn also comes with a CD-ROM containing E-Book versions of the omnibus editions of the Vorkosigan Saga.

References

2010 American novels
2010 science fiction novels
American science fiction novels
Novels by Lois McMaster Bujold
Vorkosigan Saga
Fiction about suspended animation
Baen Books books

Cryoburn


The central and eastern Alps of Europe are rich in folklore traditions dating back to pre-Christian times, with surviving elements originating from Germanic, Gaulish (Gallo-Roman), Slavic (Carantanian) and Raetian culture.

Survival through the ages

Ancient customs survived in the rural parts of Austria, Switzerland, Bavaria, Slovenia, western and northern Croatia and north eastern Italy in the form of dance, art, processions, rituals and games. The high regional diversity results from the mutual isolation of Alpine communities. In the Alps, the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and paganism has been an ambivalent one. While some customs survived only in the remote valleys inaccessible to the church's influence, other customs were actively assimilated over the centuries. In light of the dwindling rural population of the Alps, many customs have evolved into more modern interpretations.

Pastoral traditions
Around September 8, the feast of the Nativity of Mary, it is customary to bring the cattle down from the upland pastures for the winter. In Bavaria, women weave fir wreaths decorated with paper roses and small mirrors to ward off demons during the downhill journey. It has been suggested that this may have been derived from end-of-summer festivals for the Germanic goddess Iðunn; however, it is also appropriate that shepherds would have come down from the alps on the feast of the birth of Mary as Saint Joachim did on hearing it heralded by an angel while sheltering among Jewish shepherds.

Winter traditions

Krampus

The word Krampus originates from the Old High German word for claw (Krampen). In the Alpine regions, the Krampus is a mythical horned figure represented as accompanying Saint Nicholas. Krampus acts as an anti–Saint Nicholas, who, instead of giving gifts to good children, gives warnings and punishments to the bad children. Traditionally, young men dress up as the Krampus in the first two weeks of December, particularly in the evening of December 5, and roam the streets frightening children and women with rusty chains, hammers and bells. This figure is believed to originate from stories of house spirits such as kobolds or elves.

Perchten

Originally, the word Perchten (plural of Perchta) referred to the female masks representing the entourage of an ancient goddess, Frau Perchta, or Pehta Baba as it is known in Slovenia. Some claim a connection to the Nordic goddess Freyja, though this is uncertain. Traditionally, the masks were displayed in processions (Perchtenlauf) during the last week of December and first week of January, and particularly on January 6. The costume consists of a brown wooden mask and brown or white sheep's skin. In recent times Krampus and Perchten have increasingly been displayed in a single event, leading to a loss of distinction of the two. Perchten are associated with midwinter and the embodiment of fate and the souls of the dead. The name originates from the Old High German word peraht ("brilliant" or "bright").

Sometimes, der Teufel is viewed to be the most schiach ("ugly") Percht (masculine singular of Perchten) and Frau Perchta to be the most schön ("beautiful") Perchtin (female singular of Perchten).

Spring traditions
Chalandamarz is an ancient festival celebrated by the Romansh speaking part of the Swiss Canton Graubünden. It is celebrated on the first of March and marks the end of winter and the arrival of spring. Its object is to scare away the evil spirits of winter and wake up the good spirits of spring.

Badalisc

The Badalisc is a "good" mythological animal who lives in the woods of Andrista, in Val Camonica, Italy. During an annual town festival someone dresses up as the creature and is "captured" and brought to the town. The animal is made to tell the people of the town gossip. At the end of the festival the creature is released until the next year's ceremony.

Gallery

See also

References

Wenn die Hexen umgehen, Claudia Lagler, 5 January 1999, Die Presse (newspaper), (in German)

External links
Swiss neopagan site focussing on pre-Christian Alpine traditions
Swiss legends and Austrian legends on Sagen.at

Alpine folklore
German folklore
Germanic paganism
Paganism in Europe
Religion in Austria
Christian folklore
Swiss folklore
Winter traditions
Ritual animal disguise
Slavic paganism

Pre-Christian Alpine traditions