The 2000 Rose Bowl was a college football bowl game played on January 1, 2000. It was the 86th Rose Bowl game and was played on January 1, 2000 at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California. The game featured the Wisconsin Badgers defeating the Stanford Cardinal by a score of 17–9. Ron Dayne, the Wisconsin running back, was named the Rose Bowl Player of the Game for the second consecutive year.

Pre-game activities
On October 26, 1999, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses selected Sophia Bush, a senior at Westridge School and a resident of Pasadena, to become the 82nd Rose Queen to reign over the 111th Rose Parade and the 86th Rose Bowl Game on the first New Year's Day of the 21st century.

The game was presided over by the 2000 Tournament of Roses Royal Court and Rose Parade Grand Marshal Roy L. Disney. Members of the royal court were: Princesses Lauren Beattie, La Canada Flintridge, La Canada High School; Caitlin Bogert, Pasadena, Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy; Grace Chen, San Marino, San Marino High School;  Kellie Handy, South Pasadena, South Pasadena High School; Carol Huang, San Marino, San Marino High School; and Mariasol Pena, Arcadia, Arcadia High School. The 1999–2000 Tournament of Roses President was Kenneth H. Burrows.

Teams

Wisconsin Badgers

Wisconsin entered the game as the sole champions of the Big Ten Conference, their first untied conference championship season since 1962 when they played in the 1963 Rose Bowl, although they had been conference co-champions in 1993 and 1998, appearing in the 1994 and 1999 Rose Bowls.  The Wisconsin offense featured a powerful running game with 1999 Heisman Trophy winner Ron Dayne at running back.

Stanford Cardinal

Stanford entered the game as the champions of the Pacific-10 Conference.  It was their first conference championship season since 1971 and their first Rose Bowl since 1972.

Game summary

Scoring

First quarter
No Score

Second quarter
Stanford – Mike Biselli 28-yard field goal 13:26 3–0 Stanford
Wisconsin – Vitaly Pisetsky 31-yard field goal 9:19 3–3
Stanford – Kerry Carter 1-yard run (two-point conversion failed) 2:03 9–3 Stanford

Third quarter
Wisconsin – Ron Dayne 4-yard run (Pisetsky kick) 12:57 10–9 UW

Fourth quarter
Wisconsin – Brooks Bollinger 1-yard run (Pisetsky kick)  7:22 17–9 UW

Aftermath

Ron Dayne was named the Rose Bowl MVP for the second time (the first time being the 1999 Rose Bowl), becoming only the third player in the history of the Rose Bowl to repeat as MVP.  To this day, he is the only player from a Big Ten Conference team to accomplish this feat: Bob Schloredt of the Washington Huskies (AAWU) was the first, Charles White of USC (Pac-10) was the second, and Vince Young of the Texas Longhorns (Big 12) has subsequently become the fourth.

The two teams would go on to face off again exactly thirteen years later in the 2013 Rose Bowl, with Barry Alvarez returning to serve as interim head coach for Wisconsin, but this time, Stanford would win 20–14.

2000 Rose Queen Sophia Bush went on to become a successful actress, starring for nine seasons as Brooke Davis on One Tree Hill, and later as Detective Erin Lindsay on Chicago P.D..

Cultural references
 The animated series Futurama occasionally references this game, as part of a running gag that the mother of Philip J. Fry is a devout football fan.
 The episode "Jurassic Bark", in which the (incorrectly inversed) 2nd-quarter score is briefly shown on Fry's parents' television, while Fry's mother wears a "cheesehead" hat to show loyalty to Wisconsin.
 The episode "The Luck of the Fryrish", in which Fry's mother mentions the day Wisconsin won the Rose Bowl 17–9 in reference to the day Fry disappeared.
 The episode "Game of Tones" ends with a dream sequence of Fry and his mother watching the end of the game.

References

Rose Bowl
Rose Bowl Game
Stanford Cardinal football bowl games
Wisconsin Badgers football bowl games
January 2000 sports events in the United States
Rose

2000 Rose Bowl


The Common Metadata for Climate Modelling Digital Repositories, or METAFOR project, is creating a Common Information Model (CIM) for climate data and the models that produce it.

The CIM aims to describe climate data and the models that produce it in a standard way, and to address the fragmentation and gaps in availability of metadata (data describing data) as well as duplication of information collection and problems of identifying, accessing or using climate data that are currently found in existing repositories. A further aim of the METAFOR project is to ensure the wide adoption of the CIM.

METAFOR is optimizing the way climate data infrastructures are used to store knowledge, thereby adding value to primary research data and information, and providing an essential asset for the numerous stakeholders actively engaged in climate change issues (policy, research, impacts, mitigation, private sector).

METAFOR has created tools for practical use of the CIM, e.g., the CMIP5 questionnaire for input and creation of CIM documents. External groups, e.g., the Earth Systems Grid, are also writing tools for CIM content.

METAFOR and the CMIP5 metadata questionnaire

METAFOR was tasked by the World Climate Research Programme to produce the metadata for the 5th Coupled model intercomparison project, an international experiment involving multiple general circulation models that will serve as a basis for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.

The CMIP5 questionnaire is an ambitious metadata collection tool and will help scientists to provide the most comprehensive metadata of any climate model inter-comparison project. It aims to collect enough detail to allow users to easily:
 browse the archive & find desired datasets
 easily differentiate between the "genealogy" (related models & experiments) of datasets

The questionnaire also allows users to enter descriptions of components which are not already specified by the questionnaire controlled vocabulary. It produces XML output complies with the Metafor Common Information Model (CIM), allowing tools and services developed using the CIM to be applied to the questionnaire outputs.

References

External links

CMIP5 questionnaire page
Metafor: Managing Metadata For Climate Models, Zero-In Third Issue eMagazine
Formal announcement of the CMIP5 questionnaire release
Earth System Grid portal

Earth sciences software infrastructure organizations
Earth sciences metadata conventions

METAFOR


The Ship of Monsters () is a 1960 Mexican comic science fiction film. It was produced by Jesús Sotomayor Martínez,  directed by Rogelio A. González, and starred Eulalio González, Ana Bertha Lepe and Lorena Velázquez. The screenplay, by Alfredo Varela, Jr., was based on a story by José María Fernández Unsáin.

Plot
Two Venusian women, Gamma (Lepe) and Beta (Velázquez), are sent on a mission by their queen (Consuelo Frank) to search for males to repopulate the planet. Along the way, they and their servant, Tor the robot, acquire a colorful array of male extraterrestrial creatures in their "ship of monsters", including Martian prince Tagual, Uk the cyclops, Utirr the spider and skeletal Zok. Landing in Mexico, Gamma and Beta become enamored with singing cowboy Lauriano (Eulalio González).

Cast
 Eulalio González as Lauriano Treviño Gómez
 Ana Bertha Lepe as Gamma
 Lorena Velázquez as Beta
 Consuelo Frank as Regente de Venus
 Manuel Alvarado as Ruperto
 Heberto Dávila, Jr. as Chuy Treviño Gómez
 Mario García "Harapos" as Borracho
 José Pardavé as Atenógenes
 Jesús Rodríguez Cárdenas

Reception
Filmstruck critic Jeff Stafford called it "one of the more exotic genre hybrids that emerged from Mexico in the early sixties, mixing sci-fi, horror and Western elements into something uniquely original".

Beth Accomando of KPBS praised the film, saying, "You'll find deliciously low budget sets Ed Wood would die for; a know-it-all robot; babes in bathing suit space uniforms; and a refreshing Mexican take on American sci-fi conventions".

References

External links

1960 films
1960s science fiction comedy films
Mexican science fiction comedy films
Films directed by Rogelio A. González
1960s Spanish-language films
Venus in film
1960 comedy films
1960s Mexican films
Spanish-language science fiction comedy films

The Ship of Monsters


Brot af Sigurðarkviðu is the remaining 22 stanzas of a heroic Old Norse poem in the Poetic Edda. In the Codex Regius, there is a gap of eight leaves where the first part of the poem would have been found, and also the last part of the Sigrdrífumál. The missing narrative is preserved in the Völsunga saga in prose form with four stanzas of poetry. According to Henry Adams Bellows, the original size of the poem should have been more than 250 stanzas.

References
 Fragment of a Sigurth Lay Henry Adams Bellows' translation and commentary
 Fragments of the Lay of Sigurd and Brynhild Benjamin Thorpe's translation, at Google Books
 The (old) Lay of Sigurd Translated by William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon.
 Brot af Sigurðarkviðu Sophus Bugge's edition of the manuscript text
 Sigurðarkviða in meiri (Brot af Sigurðarkviðu) Guðni Jónsson's edition with normalized spelling

Nibelung tradition
Eddic poetry

Brot af Sigurðarkviðu


John M. Feehan (8 September 1916 – 25 May 1991) was an Irish author and publisher. The eldest son of a schoolmaster, Feehan was born in Dualla, County Tipperary.

Early life and career
He entered secondary schooling at Rockwell College and later attended University College Galway.

Feehan joined the Irish Army and reached the rank of captain before resigning in 1945. He had four children. He founded the successful Cork-based publishing house Mercier Press in 1944 and served as its managing director. In 1946, he published This Tremendous Lover by Dom Eugene Boylan which sold over a million copies. At the Frankfurt Book Fair he secured the translation rights of German books on philosophy and religion that sold well. In the 1960s he launched a successful range of paperbacks on Irish literature, culture, religion and history.

Writing
In 1972, Feehan wrote Tomorrow To Be Brave which recounted his wife's life and death by cancer. He explored Ireland on foot and by boat, writing a number of books.

He appeared as himself in the made-for-TV documentary on Michael Collins, The Shadow of Beal na blath (1991).

Feehan died in Cork on 25 May 1991 of an apparent heart attack at the age of 74.

Selected bibliography
 My Village - My World, foreword by John B. Keane. Mercier Press, c1992.
 An Apology to the Irish people  Royal Carbery Books : Trade distributor, Mercier Press, c1988.
 The Secret Places of the Burren Royal Carbery Books, c1987.
 The Secret Places of the Shannon
 The Secret Places of Donegal
 The Statesman - a Study of the Role of Charles J Haughey in the Ireland of Tomorrow Mercier Press, c1985.
 Operation Brogue : A Study of the Vilification of Charles Haughey. Mercier Press, 1984. .
 Bobby Sands and the Tragedy of Northern Ireland Mercier Press, c1983. .
 The Shooting of Michael Collins: Murder or Accident Mercier Press, c1981. .
 Fifty Years Young: A Tribute to John B. Keane Mercier Press, c1979.
 The Magic of the Kerry Coast Mercier Press, 1979. .
 The Wind that Round the Fastnet Sweeps Mercier Press, 1978.  Subsequently, under the title:The Secret Places of the West Cork Coast.
 Tomorrow To Be Brave Mercier Press, 1972. .This is the story of a remarkable and wonderful woman, who knew she was going to die a lingering and painful death but who faced up to it with unbelievable courage and who turned her last terrible years on this earth into the greatest years of her life - years of kindness, patience, understanding and unselfishness.
 An Irish Publisher and His World Mercier Press, c1969.

Filmography
 The Shadow of Beal na blath (1991) (TV) (as Capt. John M. Feehan) .... Himself (author).

References
Notes

Bibliography
 Brady, Anne M. and Brian Cleeve. A Biographical Dictionary of Irish Writers.  The Lilliput Press, 1985, p. 77.
 Feehan, John M.  My village--my world / John M. Feehan ; foreword by John B. Keane. Dublin : Mercier Press, c1992, p. 96.
 Who' who, what' what and where in Ireland / in association with The Irish Times. London, Dublin : Geoffrey Chapman, c1973, p. 110.

External links
 Bio on Mercier Press site

1916 births
1991 deaths
Alumni of the University of Galway
Irish Army officers
Irish non-fiction writers
Irish male non-fiction writers
Irish publishers (people)
People from County Tipperary
People educated at Rockwell College
20th-century non-fiction writers

John M. Feehan


San Martino di Castrozza is a mountain resort in the Primiero valley in the Trentino province in Italy. The western part, with 428 inhabitants, is in the comune of Siror, with the eastern, housing 135 inhabitants, in Tonadico.

History

The first buildings on the site of San Martino were a religious institution, the hospice of saints Martino and Giuliano, which welcomed travelers crossing the Alps by the Rolle Pass between the valleys of Primiero and Fiemme. All that remains of the hospice is the church of San Martino, which has a romanesque bell-tower.

The first alpine hotel in San Martino was built by the Irish traveller, John Ball in 1873. By the first decade of the 20th century San Martino di Castrozza was already established as a tourist destination for the wealthy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of which Trentino then formed part. The resort was rebuilt after the devastation of the First World War, and grew rapidly thereafter.

Geography
San Martino is situated in a valley of green meadows, in the Paneveggio-Pale di San Martino Natural Park. It is surrounded by peaks of the Dolomites, including the Pale di San Martino, of which the highest peaks are Vezzana and the Cimon della Pala.

In culture
 Arthur Schnitzler's 1924 novella Fräulein Else is set in San Martino di Castrozza.

References

External links
 Azienda per il Turismo San Martino di Castrozza

Frazioni of Trentino
Ski areas and resorts in Italy

San Martino di Castrozza


Willy Decker (born 1950) is a German theatre director, particularly known for his opera productions. He staged the world premieres of Hans Werner Henze's Pollicino (Montepulciano, 1980), Antonio Bibalo's Macbeth (Oslo, 1990), and Aribert Reimann's Das Schloss (The Castle) (Berlin, 1992).

Decker was born in Pulheim near Cologne. He was educated first at the Rheinischen Musikschule in Cologne where he studied violin; later, he attended the University of Cologne and the Hochschule für Musik Köln where he studied philosophy, theatre, music, and singing.  In his early 20s he started work as an assistant director in Essen at the Cologne State Opera, where he eventually served as the artistic director. He went on to direct many new opera productions for major European opera houses, as well as for San Francisco Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago. He made his Salzburg Festival debut in 2004 directing Korngold's Die tote Stadt; he returned in 2005 for an acclaimed new production of La traviata starring Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón.

In 2005, he was appointed an honorary professor in musical theatre direction at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. As of 2009, he is the artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale Festival.

In 2010, he presents Wagner's Flying Dutchman at the parisian Bastille Opera, and "Tristan und Isolde" in Hong Kong.

References
Cummings, David Cummings, "Decker, Willy", International Who's who in Music and Musicians' Directory (Classical and Light Classical), 17th edition,  Routledge, 2000, p. 150.
Klinger, Thomas, "Stage director Willy Decker makes his debut in Salzburg", Freunde der Salzburger Festspiele Magazine, April 2004.
Lash, Larry L., Moses und Aron, Wiener Staatsoper, 6/15/06, Opera News, September  2006, vol. 71, no. 3
Salzburger Nachrichten, Standing Ovations für "La Traviata" in Salzburg, 8 August 2005.

External links
Willy Decker at the Ruhrtriennale Festival official web site.

1950 births
Living people
German opera directors
Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln alumni
Academic staff of the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin

Willy Decker


A Book of Common Prayer is a 1977 novel by Joan Didion. A limited signed edition of this book was issued by Franklin library.

Themes

The novel is a story of both personal and political tragedy in the fictional Central American country of "Boca Grande". In 1983 Didion published Salvador, a book of essays on corruption and violence in El Salvador; the fiction and non-fiction reflect a similar perspective of rage and despair.

Plot introduction
The novel is narrated by Grace Strasser-Mendana, an American expatriate who married into one of the three or four families that dominate Boca Grande politics, the Mendanas. Grace was trained as an anthropologist under Claude Lévi-Strauss, and later took up the amateur study of biochemistry, both attempts to find clear-cut, scientific answers to the mysteries of human behavior. Both attempts fail: Grace remains uncomprehending and cut off from the people around her, and in the final line of the novel she admits, "I have not been the witness I wanted to be."

But Grace is not the novel's central character. That is Charlotte Douglas, another American woman sojourning in Boca Grande, although her family ties are elsewhere. Charlotte's beloved daughter Marin has run off with a group of Marxist radicals and taken part in an absurd act of terrorism, and in the wake of her daughter's disappearance, Charlotte's marriage to a crusading Berkeley lawyer (not Marin's father), has fallen apart.

References

External links

 Book page on Joan Didion website

1977 American novels
Novels by Joan Didion
Novels set in Central America

A Book of Common Prayer


The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better is a pamphlet by Tyler Cowen published in 2011. It argues that the American economy has reached a historical technological plateau and the factors that drove economic growth for most of America's history are no longer present. These figurative "low-hanging fruit" include the cultivation of much free, previously unused land, technological breakthroughs in transport, refrigeration, electricity, mass communications, sanitation, and the growth of education. Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, theorizes that these factors have contributed to stagnation in the median American wage since 1973.

The concept of a "Great Stagnation" has been contrasted with the idea of the "Great Divergence", a set of explanations that blame rising income inequality and globalization for the economic stall. Related debates have examined whether the internet's effect has yet been fully realized in production, if its users enjoy a significant consumer surplus, and how it might be further integrated into the economy. The final set of questions concerns appropriate policy responses to the problem.

The pamphlet, first published in January 2011 as an ebook, is 15,000 words long and was initially priced at US$4. A hardback version, which Cowen dubbed "the retrogression", was published in June 2011. While not all reviewers agreed with Cowen's thesis and arguments, the book was largely welcomed as timely and skilled in framing the debate around the future of the American economy.

Synopsis

The main thesis is that economic growth has slowed in the United States and in other advanced economies, as a result of falling rates of innovation. In Chapter 1, Cowen describes the three major forms of "low-hanging fruit": the ease of cultivating free and unused land, rapid invention from 1880 to 1940 which capitalized on the scientific breakthroughs of the 18th and 19th centuries and the large returns from sending intelligent but uneducated children to school and university. There are potentially two further minor forms: cheap fossil fuels and the strength of the American constitution. Cowen concludes, "You could say, 'The modern United States was built at five forms of low-hanging fruit, and at most only two of those are still with us.' Fair enough." While they produced extremely large returns, future advances will be much more incremental. He offers anecdotal and statistical illustrations for this slowdown. First, he compares the changes witnessed by his grandmother with those of his own generation. Then, he cites median income statistics: the rate of growth drastically slowed from 1973 onwards. He further argues that the failure to diagnose the trend has led to a degradation in political discourse since left and right leaning actors blame the policies of "the other side" and "what I like to call the 'honest middle' cannot be heard above the din."

Chapter 2 examines productivity in the contemporary economy. Cowen describes spurts in productivity growth, 2.8% between 1996 and 2000 and 3.8% from 2000 to 2004, and he asks if they disprove the stagnation thesis. He concedes that there have been gains in certain areas, such as information technology, but argues that in other important areas such as finance, which is 8% of GDP, there has been less value created.

Also, whilst productivity figures have improved, median incomes and stock market prices, and thus the returns to capital and labor, have not improved. Furthermore, government consumption (government activity excluding transfer payments) represents between 15 and 20% of GDP, but since the sector is measured at cost it becomes less and less productive as it grows larger. Thus, the more government consumption there is, the more published GDP figures tend to overestimate growth in living standards.

In health care (17% of GDP), the problems of asymmetric information and moral hazard mean that increased spending results in little or no improvement in health outcomes. A similar result is observed in education, 6% of GDP, where outcomes have not improved in the last 40 years.

Chapter 3 considers whether the internet and other computing technologies disprove the argument. Cowen writes that while the internet has been fantastic for the intellectually curious, it has done little to raise material standards of living. The biggest Internet companies employ at most a few thousand people, and relatively few services are paying: "We have a collective historical memory that technological progress brings a big and predictable stream of revenue growth across most of the economy. When it comes to the web, those assumptions are turning out to be wrong or misleading."

Chapter 4 examines American politics in light of the thesis. Cowen says Paul Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal (2007) puts the "cart before the horse" in asking for high marginal tax rates, unionization, and an egalitarian distribution of income and wealth. The policies worked in the 1950s precisely because the real income growth was there to support them. Cowen argues that the failure to recognize the stagnation has led to poor policy ideas from the right (such as "revenue generating tax cuts") and the left (redistribution of incomes). Cowen laments the "exaggeration" of both sides and the influence of political lobbying on economic policy. The growth in government, he says, was affordable during the period of lowhanging fruit, and the advances in transportation, industrial production, electronic communications and scientific management even facilitated it.

Chapter 5 proposes a simple cause for the 2008 financial crisis "We thought we were richer than we were." He argues that despite a series of regular, smaller crises since the 1980s, the crash was ultimately caused by investors taking too much risk across the economy, "housing and sub-prime loans were the proverbial canary in the coalmine."

Chapter 6 looks at solutions to the problem. Cowen praises the development of India and China as producers and consumers, the role of the internet in enlarging the scientific community, and a growing consensus for the reform of educational policy in the US. He further suggests for the social status of scientists to be raised to at least as strong a motivating factor as money can.

Analysis

Place in the growth literature
Matthew Yglesias described the book's themes as a continuation and expansion of those developed by Paul Krugman in The Age of Diminished Expectations, Third Edition: U.S. Economic Policy in the 1990s (1997). Both books treat the diminishing rate of return from basic science and the effects that it has on politics, specifically "that a growing share of innovative energy is going into rent-seeking or otherwise unproductive activities".

Timothy Noah compared it to Prosperity: The Coming Twenty Year Boom and What it Means to You  by Bob Davis and David Wessel, an enormously popular book at the time (1998) which today resells for a penny. He described how both Prosperity and The Great Stagnation examine the puzzle of stagnant median wages though offer starkly different opinions about the prospects for future growth and in particular the role of information technologies in that. He concluded by calling Cowen's appeal to "realistic expectations" about growth a "weird conservative echo" of the Club of Rome's liberal "era of limits gospel from the 1970s". In the summer of 2012, Robert Gordon's paper, "Is U.S. Economic Growth Over?" prompted comparisons to Cowen's thesis. Gordon also points out that the easy gains of increased labor force participation, schooling or land use have been spent, while other major innovations or industries—such as transport or sanitation—have enjoyed only gradual improvement.

Internet, growth and quality of life
Writing in Slate, Annie Lowrey compares Cowen's treatment of the internet to the "productivity paradox" first postulated by economists in the 1980s. She quoted Robert Solow, a growth theorist, who wrote in 1987 "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics." To explain why growth had not picked up strongly after the boom in computing products from the 1970s onwards, they suggested that the changes advantaged some firms and disadvantaged others leaving little net gain. The problem also may be partly because of deficiencies in the measurement of income and well-being. The internet promotes more free culture, the consumption of which provides utility and happiness to people but cannot be captured through GDP figures that measure revenue.

The Economists Free Exchange blog argued that Cowen "undersold" recent innovations in digital technologies and that society was still in the process of re-organising itself around them. A growth spurt should be expected but this could take anything from years to decades, it warned. Furthermore, there are particularly large gains to be had in the area "cognition-augmenting innovations (as opposed to labor-augmenting innovations)". Writing in Forbes, Steve Denning described Cowen's "low-hanging fruit theory" as "folkloric nonsense". The world of 1953, when Denning was young, is inconceivable to a young person today, he wrote, adding that the qualification "apart from the Internet" is equivalent to saying "apart from the wheel" when discussing transport. The Financial Times reviewer recognized that Cowen, a prominent blogger, "is no Luddite...he thinks life is more fun and interesting with the internet around". He argued that most economists do not look at consumer technology to find the internet's effect on productivity but rather organizations: super-efficient retailers such as Wal-mart and Tesco have already incorporated it into their logistics. Furthermore, the pace of change means it could be a generation at least before we see the full implementation. Timothy Noah seizes upon Cowen's "concession" that the internet could well increase scientific output by allowing better communication between scientists in remote places. Just as Davis and Wessel incorrectly predicted a coming boom in middle class incomes due to computers, Cowen "seems equally wrong to suggest that computer technology is not on the verge of doing so."

Education and employment
Denning writes that the real challenge is keeping up with technological change, and in this sense, scientific management was the key American technological advance in the 20th century. It allowed American companies to provide large numbers of jobs to semi-skilled workers through supply-chain management, hierarchies, and rule-based systems. Businesses must now adjust to well-informed consumers who disdain profiteering and wish to be "delighted". A related challenge is shifting from managing semi-skilled to knowledge workers. The Economist contrasted the "Great Stagnation" thesis with the "Great Divergence" which traces the pay gap to an increasing demand for skilled workers. Timothy Noah, writing in Slate, did not share Cowen's optimism about the future of American educational attainment on the basis that President Obama "is getting tough" on teachers' unions. There have been many reforms implemented in the last thirty years that the unions initially opposed, and the United States has poorer outcomes than many OECD countries with stronger unions. Noah reminds us that the earlier authors were optimistic about increased third level enrollment and that has since fallen as have graduation rates. The United States remains significantly behind other advanced countries in educational outcomes offering a perverse hope for improvement.

David Brooks argued that a more fundamental shift from a materialist to a post-materialist mindset has occurred in recent generations. While for generations born early in the century increased income was the same as improvements in lifestyle this is no longer true for people born into an affluent, information driven world. Younger generations live much more intellectually diverse lives and cites much user generated content as being mostly produced outside of the monetary economy. He affirms Cowen's acknowledgment that this has brought large increases in human happiness with correspondingly little economic activity.

Relationship to the 2008 financial crisis and recession
The Economist criticized Cowen for associating the economic problems resulting from the 2008 financial crisis to his broader thesis, arguing instead that this was mostly caused by a demand shock and mostly preventable.  Some scholars, such as Jim Rickards, Howard Qi, Hongbin Song, etc., point out that the demand shock was only the phenomenon, a result of a more serious underlying structural problem in the American economy. Furthermore, Howard Qi argues that the education in the US is not conducive to producing high quality scientists and engineers from the American citizens. Instead, the US is becoming increasingly and vitally relying on foreign students in the US universities to support the intellectual need in the US's science and engineering. Matthew Yglesias also disagreed with the link: "Rich countries have experienced very divergent fates over the past 36 months when the key evidence for the technological stagnation thesis is that rich countries have experienced a broadly similar fate over the past 36 years", he writes.

Policy responses
Cowen writes that one way to improve innovation is to raise the social status of scientists, a suggestion described as "a bit empty" and not fully congruent with the problem of recent innovations being private goods, such as financial sector innovation, rather than public ones such as penicillin or the rail-road. Noah described Cowen's prescriptions, encouragement of free trade, more higher status for scientists, and resignation to the "new normal" as "absurdly half-hearted".

Writing on The Economist'''s Free Exchange blog, R.A. concluded that Cowen's analysis of education suggested that the rich world would do better by aiding mass education programs in developing countries rather than pursuing the diminishing returns in domestic education and research, in contrary  to President Obama's State of the Union speech in 2011. Looser immigration law would also allow rich and poor countries to exploit this source of growth. Secondly, it proposed to harvest "policy low-hanging fruit" i.e. reforming or abolishing foolish and costly policies. It proposed taxing "bads" such as traffic congestion and pollution rather than "goods" such as income, reducing spending on medical treatments with no clear benefits, and removing agricultural subsidies and mortgage interest deduction. In The Economist, two different sets of policy responses were considered depending on whether the true cause is ailing technological innovation or a decline in workers' bargaining power in the face of emerging-market industrialization. Progressive taxation and redistribution would offset labor's position of weakness whilst a limited state would reduce commitments it cannot expect to fulfill in a stagnating economy.

 Publication and reception The Economist noted that the "publishing model is fascinating in its own right". A hardback version, which Cowen dubbed "the retrogression", was published in June 2011.Cowen, Tyler *The Great Stagnation* (retrogression) www.marginalrevolution.com, 17 May 2011. Retrieved 26 August 2012. Yglesias described the publication as an innovation in "current affairs publishing" and "much shorter and cheaper than a conventional book in a way that actually leaves you wanting to read more once you finish it. My guess is that this is the future of books." The book has been compared to economic and political pamphlets of the 17th century, which were frequently used to quickly get ideas about current affairs into circulation.The Economist welcomed The Great Stagnation as "an important [book] that will have a profound impact on the way people think about the last thirty years". It praised "the trains of thought it suggests" and  said the book merited "a rigorous debate" which should encourage different policy choices across the political spectrum. Matthew Yglesias described the book as a "bravura performance from one of the most interesting thinkers out there". However, he said it was remarkably silent on intellectual property law and the implications for society in a world in which most of the increase in output comes from catch-up growth from poor countries. The Wall Street Journal described the book as Cowen's most impactful book due to the direction in which he leads the debate. "What is exciting is to imagine students, economists, and scientists across the country reading the book, coming to terms with the depth of our challenge and pursuing new ways of trying to 'fix' things or generally improve our lot." "A small book but a big, worthwhile question", concluded The Economist. In the New York Times, David Brooks praised The Great Stagnation as "the most debated non-fiction book so far this year", which Timothy Noah described as a great favor to the book's marketing though an exaggeration considering the discussion surrounding Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua.

 Sequel
In September 2013, a sequel by Cowen, titled Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation'', was published by Dutton Books. The sequel focused on Cowen's vision for how the United States economy would recover and grow over the coming decades, and the types of jobs that would exist in the new economy.

References

External links
 Book Page on the Mercatus centre website
 Marginal Revolution Cowen's blog with Alex Tabarrok
 Lecture by Cowen describing his thesis
 Video interview by The Economist with Cowen
 Cowen discussing US Income inequality on NPR

 Largely critical video discussion of hypotheses with Glenn Loury and Brink Lindsey on bloggingheads.tv

2011 non-fiction books
Books about economic crises
Books about the United States
E. P. Dutton books

The Great Stagnation


Firefly Arts Collective is an American non-profit organization that facilitates the annual New England regional burner festival 'Firefly'.   Firefly is a regional event inspired by the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada. Firefly is held in Vermont typically during July 4 weekend. Most of the organizers and participants come from the Boston metropolitan area and surrounding states including Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York.

Firefly is a camping event that celebrates art for art's sake and espouses a gift economy where no vending, sales or barter are permitted. Visual and performance artists from all over the New England region and the East Coast create a temporary community for the weekend. Participants share a wide range of talents from sculpting, painting, music, theatre, and DJing, to alternative forms of expression such as games, performance art, and circus talents such as aerial silks, juggling, and fire spinning.

The event adheres to the ten principles of the Burning Man event in Nevada.  Among these are the Leave No Trace philosophy, an environmental policy whereby participants are obligated to remove every piece of refuse that they generate while at the event, taking it with them when they leave. The themes of radical self-expression and radical self-reliance are also borrowed from Burning Man. In addition, the event is considered a "no spectators" event, meaning that all attendees are expected to actively participate in its creation, staffing, and general philosophy.

According to the event's official website Firefly is, "A celebration of self-expression and community! Firefly is a participatory arts and music gathering in the woods of Vermont." The event is organized and run completely by volunteers. On the last night of Firefly a giant wooden Firefly is burned.  In 2006 the Firefly included fireworks launched from its top.

Weather
Firefly is held at the end of Vermont's mud and rain season. The road leading to the current event site is a dirt road that can become unnavigable by average vehicles due to mud.

History

Firefly was started in 2003 by Boston  burners.  It was first held on NUHOC land in Shelburne, New Hampshire.  Since 2009 it takes place at the Laurelin Retreat Center, owned by neopagan writer and Vermont state assembly member Kirk White.

Ticketing
 Tickets for the 2003 event were $15.00 each.  There were 175 tickets sold.
 Tickets for the 2006 event were US$30.00 each, and were handled in one release of 350 tickets.  When tickets were sold out a limited number of additional tickets were released.  Members of music bands were also sold tickets outside of the initial release.
 Tickets for 2007 were sold for US$35 each.  They were sold in a release of 400 and a lottery of 100.
 Tickets for 2008 were sold for US$40 each.  They were sold in a release of 450 and then an additional 50 tickets were released.
 Tickets for 2009 were sold for US$40 each.  They were sold in a release of 150, 300, and then an additional 50 more were released.
 Tickets for 2010 were sold for US$45 each.  They were sold in three releases of 200.
 Tickets for 2012 were sold for US$75 each.  A lottery system distributed tickets to pre-registered ticket seekers. A waitlist allowed ticket holders to sell their tickets at face value to the next person on the waitlist. Each ticket was uniquely matched to an individual's ID.
 Tickets for 2013 were sold for US$75 each.  A similar lottery system was used again.  845 tickets were sold.
 Tickets for 2014 were sold to 950 people. 821 attended.
 Tickets for 2015 were sold to 835 people. 828 attended.
 Tickets for 2016 were sold for US$85 each. Parking passes were sold for $20 per car to encourage carpooling.  A lottery system was used again.  1050 tickets were sold. 922 attended.
 Tickets for 2017 were sold for US$85 each. Parking passes were sold for $20 per car to encourage carpooling.  A lottery system was used again.  1122 tickets were sold. 1030 attended.
 Tickets for 2018 were sold for US$85 each. Parking passes were sold for $30 per car to encourage carpooling.  A lottery system was used again.  1290 tickets were sold. 1210 attended.
 In 2019, people paid what they were willing. Parking passes were $30 per car. A lottery system was used again, aiming for around 1300 participants.

References

External links

Burning Man

Firefly Arts Collective


Stephen Hendry (born 13 January 1969) is a Scottish former professional snooker player. He has won the World Championship seven times, a record in the modern snooker era.

Hendry started playing snooker in 1981, aged 12, and became at 16 years the youngest ever professional. He finished his professional career 27 years later after his defeat in the 2012 world championship. In his career he was between 1990 an 1998 and again 2006/2007 snooker's world number one. Actual Hendry operates as a commentator for BBC Snooker.

Other websites
 Stephen Hendry at snooker.org

1969 births
Living people
British snooker players
Sportspeople from Edinburgh

Stephen Hendry


Children of Glory () is a 2006 film directed by Krisztina Goda. Children of Glory commemorates Hungary's Revolution of 1956 and the "Blood in the Water" match. Taking place in Budapest and at the Melbourne Olympic Games in October and November of that year, the film takes viewers into the passion and sadness of one of the most dramatic popular revolts of the twentieth century. In the same year Soviet tanks were violently suppressing the Revolution within Hungary, the Hungarian water polo team was winning over Russia in the Olympic pool in Melbourne, in what is sometimes described as the bloodiest water polo match in history. While telling the story of 1956 in part through fictional lead characters, the film-makers simultaneously recreated many of the key public events of the Revolution, including the huge demonstrations and the fighting in the streets of Budapest.

Plot summary
In 1956, Karcsi Szabó (Iván Fenyő) was a star athlete at the University of Budapest and had been named captain of the national water polo team that would represent Hungary in the Olympics held that summer in Australia. However, many of Szabó's countrymen had more on their minds; Hungary had fallen under the oppressive rule of the Soviet Union, and a growing number of Hungarians were demanding independence. One day, Szabó and his friend Tibi (Sándor Csányi) witness a demonstration led by Viki Falk (Kata Dobó) demanding an end to Soviet rule in Hungary.

While initially Szabó is more attracted to Falk's beauty than her message, through his attempts to woo her he is awakened to the need for revolution; however, an uprising by the people is crushed by the Soviet war machine, and matters become worse for the Hungarian people. When Szabó and his teammates discover that Hungary will be competing against the Soviet Union in the men's Water Polo tournament at the upcoming Olympics, they see an opportunity for a symbolic victory over their oppressors, if they will be allowed to leave to country to compete.

Cast
 Kata Dobó as Falk Viki
 Iván Fenyő as Szabó Karcsi
 Sándor Csányi as Vámos Tibi
 Károly Gesztesi as Telki coach
 Ildikó Bánsági as Karcsi's mother
 Tamás Jordán as Karcsi's granddad
 Viktória Szávai as Hanák Eszter
 Zsolt Huszár as Gál Jancsi
 Tamás Keresztes as Ács Imi
 Péter Haumann as Feri bácsi
 Dániel Gábori as Józsika (as Gábori Dániel)
 Róbert Marton as Kardos Márton (Compó)
 Kornél Simon as Abonyi Gyula (Báró)
 Krisztián Kolovratnik as Fazekas Sándor (Frank)
 Antal Czapkó as Prokop

References

External links
 Official site

 The Times Review
 American DVD version

2006 films
2000s sports films
C2 Pictures films
Films about the 1956 Summer Olympics
Films produced by Andrew G. Vajna
Films scored by Nick Glennie-Smith
Hungarian historical drama films
Hungarian Revolution of 1956 films
Films with screenplays by Joe Eszterhas
Water polo films
Films directed by Krisztina Goda

Children of Glory


The Chamber of Deputies () is a hoose o the bicameral Pairlament o Italy (the ither bein the Senate o the Republic). The twa hooses thegither furm a perfect bicameral seestem, meanin thay perform identical functions, but dae so separately. Pursuant tae airticle 56 the Italian Constitution, the Chamber o Deputies haes 630 seats, o which 618 are electit frae Italian constituencies, an 12 frae Italian ceetizens livin abroad. Deputies meet in the Palazzo Montecitorio.

Italy, Chamber of Deputies
Chamber of Deputies
Established in 1948, it takes up the similar body inherited from the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 known until the Unification as the Chamber of Deputies of the Kingdom of Sardinia and which in 1939 was suppressed by Fascism to be replaced by the Chamber of Fasci and Corporations.  After the fall of fascism during the Second World War and the consequent transformation of Italy into a republic at the end of the conflict, the new Constitution of 1948 restored the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic with a view to creating a perfect bicameral system. The Chamber is made up of 630 members elected with a mixed majority / proportional system;  with the constitutional law of 2019, confirmed by referendum on 20 September 2020, its consistency was changed to 400 members;  the change is destined to come into force on the first electoral deadline for the renewal of the parliament. Like the Senate, the House is normally elected every five years except in cases of election before the deadline;  to 2021 it is in its eighteenth parliamentary term and is chaired by the deputy Roberto Fico since 24 March 2018.

Chamber o Deputies (Italy)


The Kohistan video case is an honour killing case that took place in May 2012 in Palas Valley, Kohistan, Pakistan. It involved the honour killing of up to five girls, of whom a video had emerged on the internet. The video featured a boy dancing while four girls clapped and sang along.

It is claimed that, when the footage became public, a tribal jirga was held shortly afterwards where it was decided that the participants as well as the boy who filmed the video should be killed.

Afzal Kohistani, the elder brother of the two boys involved in the video, went against local tribal tradition and brought the case to national attention; first asking for the participants' protection and subsequently claiming that the girls in the video had already been murdered. Kohistani campaigned for over seven years to keep the case in the public eye until he was murdered in March 2019.

In September 2019, three men were convicted of murdering three of the girls from the video and were sentenced to life imprisonment. The status of the fourth and fifth girl remain unconfirmed.

Events

The video

Four girls − Bazeegha, Sereen Jan, Begum Jan and Amina − are seen clapping and singing; a fifth girl, Shaheen, is also present but does not appear in the video. In a separate shot, a man is seen dancing, while a second man records both him and the girls. The video was reportedly filmed at a wedding celebration in the remote and strictly conservative Kohistan region, where cultural traditions are enforced by tribal jirgas in the absence of a capable law enforcement system. In May 2012, the video was leaked online and as the girls and men were from different tribes, a jirga was convened by local tribesmen where it was decided that the participants should be killed, as intertribal mingling is widely considered to be forbidden.

Investigations and legal rulings

The incident reached national media in June 2012 when Afzal Kohistani, the elder brother of the boys connected to the video, alleged that the girls had been killed on the orders of the Azadkhel tribe jirga. Officials from the area denied that this had taken place and claimed that the girls were alive. The case was disposed of after rights activists and government officials made two trips to the remote village to meet the girls, as ordered by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and initially confirmed that at least four of the girls were alive.  Dr Farzana Bari, a woman's rights activist who made both trips to meet the girls, initially agreed with the conclusions reached but then lodged her dissent.

In response to the closure of the case, Afzal Kohistani asserted that imposters had been presented to the investigation team and that the real girls were dead. He filed an application to reopen the case which resulted in three of his brothers being shot dead.

On 8 February 2014, a former member of the Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from Kohistan, publicly claimed that the four girls seen in the video had been murdered and this prompted Afzal Kohistani to file another petition for the girls to be produced in court. After this was rejected, he took it to the Supreme Court where, in November 2016, another commission was ordered.
The defence lawyer argued that the girls couldn't be brought before the commission because of local tribal restrictions making it a matter of honour and shame. That argument was rejected by Justice Ejaz Afzal and sessions judge, Shoaib Khan, and other officials, were dispatched to meet the girls. Four girls duly appeared before them and inconsistences were noted around the age of the girls produced and those who appeared in the video five years prior.

In relation to Amina, the report submitted by the commission to the Supreme court stated:

Similar discrepancies were found in each case.

Farzana Bari made a fresh statement to the court reiterating her earlier concerns that the girls seen in the video were not those who had been presented before the commission. She stated:

In August 2018, on the order of the Supreme Court, the Kohistan police registered a first information report for the alleged honour killing of the five girls connected to the video. In December 2018, the investigation found that two out of five victims were reportedly alive and that three of the girls - Siran Jan, Begum Jan and Bazeegha - had, indeed, been killed.

Afzal Kohistani

Afzal Kohistani was a Salehkhel tribesman from the Kolai-Palas District, he was one of eight children. The family lived comfortably and were well respected within the village community of Gadaar. At various times, Afzal ran a tailoring shop, clerked for a lawyer and traded bee honey, he studied law in his free time.

In 2010, he was living in Mansehra with his wife and two of his younger brothers, Bin Yasir and Gul Nazar. Around this time Yasir and Nazar returned to the family village of Gadaar, which is where the video was later filmed. When the video went viral Yasir and Nazar were arrested, two of their brothers and other families from the Salehkhel tribe left Gaddar and moved to Allai, where they'd been offered protection from the Azadkhel tribe, to whom the girls in the video belonged.

As opposed to following the tribal tradition, Afzal tried to prevent the sentence of the jirga from being carried out. When that failed he went to the media and repeatedly raised litigation in order to prove that the murders had taken place. As a result, three of Afzal's brothers, who stayed behind in Gadaar, were murdered in January 2013 and Afzal's house was firebombed.

On 6 March 2019, he was shot dead in Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Convictions

In January 2014, six men from the Azadkhel tribe were convicted of murdering Afzal Kohistani's three brothers. One was sentenced to death and five others were sentenced to 25 years in prison, all were relatives of the girls from the video. Six other men, including the jirga chief who allegedly ordered the initial murders, were acquitted. In 2017, the convictions of the six men were overturned by the high court.

In September 2019, the father of Bazeegha, the father of Sereen Jan and the brother of Begum Jan, were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Five other men were acquitted.

See also
Honour killing in Pakistan:
 Qandeel Baloch
 Stoning of Farzana Parveen
 Samia Sarwar
 Death of Samia Shahid
 Ayman Udas

References

External links
Honor Killings Unveiled: The Kohistan Video Scandal Java Films 2016

Scandals in Pakistan
Crime in Pakistan
Viral videos
Kohistan District, Pakistan
2012 in Pakistan
Political scandals in Pakistan
Honor killing victims
Violence against women in Pakistan
Online obscenity controversies
YouTube controversies
Political controversies in Pakistan
Incidents of violence against girls

2012 Kohistan video case


A grape is a fruitin berry o the deciduous widy vines o the botanical genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or thay can be uised for makin wine, jam, juice, jelly, grape seed extract, raisins, vinegar, an grape seed ile. Grapes are a non-climacteric teep o fruit, generally occurrin in clusters.

Grape

Grape


GhettoPhysics: Will the Real Pimps and Hos Please Stand Up! is a 2010 docudrama film written and directed by William Arntz and E. Raymond Brown.  The film is based on Brown's 2003 book, Will The Real Pimps and Hos Please Stand Up! — Peeping the Multi-leveled Global Game. The book and the film examine the interplay between Pimps and "Hos" and how that dynamic is the oldest and simplest expression of the ways in which power is wielded in today's world.  The film uses documentary footage, animation, satire and dramatization to illustrate examples culled from the "hood" to Wall Street. Whether the players are real-life pimps or corporate executives, they are all playing the "game" and repeating the same power dynamics.

There have historically been many negative associations with the provocative language and images surrounding the sexual politics of the Pimp/Ho dynamic.  GhettoPhysics looks closely at this reality, then goes beyond the world of prostitution to illustrate and clarify how the game is played.  Weaving together theories of metaphysics and archetypal psychology, the film explains how the GhettoPhysics game crosses all races, all classes and all socio-economic levels.  There are elements of the Pimp and elements of the Ho in everyone, whether they are male or female, black or white, rich or poor.  The idea is to become aware of how the game is being played so one may take responsibility and gain more control over one's own life.

On the decision to utilize the Pimp/Ho metaphor for the film, Arntz and Brown explain, "We don't normally refer to power interactions in say, politics or economics as a game.  But this is exactly what is taking place.  GhettoPhysics helps you become more aware of it and play it from a position of personal power."

Synopsis
The basic tenet of GhettoPhysics is that the Pimp/Ho game is the fundamental expression of how people interact in the world. But this interaction is so multilayered and can become so complex that it is hard to see the game. However, by looking at the world using the Pimp/Ho dynamic, it becomes very easy to see the manipulations that keep society's Hos forever in debt, disempowered or marching off to war, while society's Pimps remain rich, powerful, and in control.

The film includes interviews with notable entertainers and thinkers such as Dr. Cornel West, Ice-T, Norman Lear, Cynthia McKinney, KRS-One, John Perkins (author), Byron Katie, Too Short, and William Arntz.  It also includes a colorful contingent of street characters, with names such as Fillmore Slim, Candy, Hook da Crook, Loreal, Mac Breed and Lo Da Show.

The Pimp/Ho dynamic is not limited to the streets of the inner city ghettos, but extends throughout all aspects of today's society from government to business, religion and education.  Analyzing real world issues such as the global economic crisis, the Gulf oil spill, global ecological threats, healthcare reform and war, GhettoPhysics details the street world and then moves to the classroom and the corporate boardroom to illustrate how the game is being played every day.

Release dates
 October 8, 2010:  Atlanta, Oakland, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, DC
 October 15, 2010:  Tempe
 October 22, 2010:  New York, Los Angeles

Reception
GhettoPhysics received reviews in numerous publications.  The San Jose Mercury News called the movie's material "engrossing" but said the presentation was "stiff and stagy." Superconciousness Magazine called the movie an "irreverent, cagerattling, cinematic jewel."

References

External links

Further reviews
 Review at Body Mind Spirit Guide
 Review at AOL News
 Review at AV Club
 Review at Electronic Urban Report
 Review at LA Weekly Online

2010 films
American documentary films
2010s English-language films
2010s American films

GhettoPhysics


An agreement signed between the Allied Powers of the First World War on September 10, 1919. The agreement was registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series on 21 October 1920.

The agreement was concerned with states which either were established or gained new territories following the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - Romania, Poland, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.

Article 1 of the agreement stipulated for the payment by the above governments of 1.5 billion Gold Francs as the cost for gaining these new territories. Article 2 laid the rules for distribution of the payments between the said above governments. Articles 3-5 stipulated the sums will be deducted from the war reparations these governments were to receive from the Austrian government.

See also
 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919)
 Agreement Between the Allied and Associated Powers with Regard to the Italian Reparation Payments

Notes

External links
 text of the agreement

Interwar-period treaties
Treaties concluded in 1919
Treaties entered into force in 1920
Treaties of the United Kingdom (1801–1922)
Treaties of the French Third Republic
Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)
Treaties of the Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)
Treaties of the United States
Treaties of Belgium
Treaties of the Republic of China (1912–1949)
Treaties of Cuba
Treaties of the Kingdom of Greece
Treaties of the Empire of Japan
Treaties of Nicaragua
Treaties of Panama
Treaties of the Second Polish Republic
Treaties of the Portuguese First Republic
Treaties of the Kingdom of Romania
Treaties of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Treaties of Czechoslovakia
Treaties of Thailand

Agreement between the Allied and Associated Powers with Regard to the Contribution to the Cost of Liberation of the Territories of the Former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy


Otto Lenz (6 July 1903, Wetzlar, Rhine Province – 2 May 1957, Naples) was a German politician (CDU), serving from 1951 to 1953 as Head of the Chancellery, and from 1953 until his death as a member of the German Bundestag. He was also a signatory of the founding declaration of the CDU.

Early life and legal career
After completing his Abitur, Lenz began studying law at the University of Freiburg. He completed his studies at the University of Marburg in 1924, receiving his doctorate in 1925 with a dissertation entitled Die Haftung bei Gattungsschulden in § 279 BGB (The Liability of Generic Debt in § 279 BGB). After passing the Staatsexamen, Lenz joined the Administration of Justice and quickly began working in Germany's Federal Ministry of Justice. He became director of the Ministry's press office in 1929 and served in this office for four years, during which he experienced considerable success in developing a strong relationship with the German press. In 1932 he began working as the personal advisor of state secretary Heinrich Hölscher.

Nazi-Era
After the Machtergreifung in January 1933, Lenz's title was changed to Advisor of Commercial Law in the Reichsjustizamt. One year later, in April 1934, he was promoted to the position of Landgerichtsdirektor despite the protest of the National Socialist lawyer's association. His first act of defiance to the Nazi-Regime occurred in 1938, when he refused a job transfer due to his unwillingness to work as a judge in the Nazi legal system. He worked instead as a lawyer during this time, being admitted only with serious difficulty to the Kammergericht.

As an opponent of the Nazis, Lenz belonged to the Donnerstagsgesellschaft (Thursday Association), a circle of former Centre Party members, officials, and journalists. He participated in the opposition by at one point hiding resistance fighter Ernst von Harnack in his apartment, as well as maintaining contact with 20 July plot-conspirators Josef Wirmer and Carl Goerdeler. As a result of these relationships Lenz was arrested after the failed assassination plot and brought to court in January 1945 for his participation in the conspiracy as well as the suspicious nature of his work as a lawyer throughout the early 1940s, during which time he was seen by the Gestapo as a defender of Jews. His role as the defendant of the pardoned opposition leader Josef Müller in 1944 was a further source of irritation to the Nazis. Due to his success as his own defence lawyer, Lenz was able to avoid execution and was sentenced instead to four years penitentiary with eight years without civil rights. He was freed by Soviet forces on 28 April 1945.

Politics
Immediately after his release from prison Lenz took part in the establishment of the CDU in Berlin. His desire for an interdenominational political party held together by common Christian beliefs preceded the conclusion of the war and is present in journal entries from his time in prison.

Lenz's longing to become a lawyer in Munich caused him to hesitate in accepting Konrad Adenauer's 1946 offer to become Secretary of State, which he ultimately accepted and began serving as on 15 January 1951. During this time Lenz remained extremely busy meeting with politicians, diplomats, church representatives, businessmen, lobbyists, and journalists as well as helping establish the direction in which the young Federal Republic of Germany would take itself.

His desire to create a "Ministry of Information" after the 1953 elections (in which he was elected to the Bundestag) ultimately failed due to the strong legacy of the Propagandaministerium of the Nazi-Era. His desire to be voice in the public sphere led to the establishment of Die Politische Meinung, a monthly publication which continues to be distributed by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung today.

On 2 May 1957, while still a member of the Bundestag, Lenz died unexpectedly in Naples after developing a fever on a return trip from Africa.

Further reading
  Buchstab, Günter (2004). "Otto Lenz." Christliche Demokraten gegen Hitler: Aus Verfolgung und Widerstand zur Union. Ed. Buchstab, Günter; Kaff, Brigitte; Kleinmann, Hans-Otto. Freiburg, Germany: Herder, 2004. p. 344–352. Print.

References

1903 births
1957 deaths
People from Wetzlar
Politicians from the Rhine Province
German Roman Catholics
Members of the Bundestag for Rhineland-Palatinate
Members of the Bundestag 1983–1987
Members of the Bundestag 1980–1983
Members of the Bundestag 1976–1980
Members of the Bundestag 1972–1976
Members of the Bundestag 1969–1972
Members of the Bundestag 1965–1969
Jurists from Hesse
Cartellverband members
University of Freiburg alumni
University of Marburg alumni
Heads of the German Chancellery
Members of the Bundestag for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany
Deaths from malaria

Otto Lenz


Anne Marguerite Squire née Park (1921–2017), 31st Moderator of the United Church of Canada from 1986 to 1988, was the first female lay person elected to that post. Her time as Moderator was marked by controversy over the question of whether members of the LGBTQ community should be ordained.

Early life
Anne Park was born in Amherstburg, Ontario to a Methodist mother and Anglican father. After graduating from high school in 1938, she became a public school teacher. She met Bill Squire at a Hallowe'en dance, and they were married in 1943. She left teaching in 1945 to raise a family, and became a Sunday School teacher.

Moderator
After her children were grown up, Squire enrolled at Carleton University in Ottawa and received her B.A. in 1974, and an M.A. in Religion in 1975. She then taught at Carleton's Lay School of Theology from 1975 until 1982.

In 1982, she was appointed Secretary of the United Church Division of Ministry, Personnel and Education. It was during this period that Squire, as a member of Ottawa Presbytery's Education and Student's Committee, first studied the issue of gay ordination; the committee came to the decision that there "were no theological or policy reasons for refusing to ordain someone who was gay or lesbian." The committee recommended a church-wide study, which was implemented.

In 1986 she became the first laywoman elected to the post of United Church Moderator. (Robert McClure, 23rd Moderator 1968–1971, was the first layperson elected to the post.) During her time in office, Squire was the target of much vitriolic correspondence from church members who opposed the ongoing study on human sexuality and ministry. In 1987, Squire told Maclean's magazine, ""It is difficult to find a neutral person. It touches the emotions of people at a deep level [...] I think the church is being tested by fire. It could be burned to ashes — but it could be strengthened and tempered like steel." As part of her final days as Moderator, Squire presided over the 32nd General Council of the United Church, where the report Gift, Dilemma, and Promise: A Report and Affirmations of Human Sexuality was received. The report stated that "all persons, regardless of sexual orientation, who profess their faith in Jesus Christ are welcome to be or become members of The United Church of Canada" and that "all members of the United Church are eligible to be considered for ordered ministry." After much debate, the report was accepted, opening the door to ordination of members of the LGBTQ community.

Of her time as Moderator, a role traditionally filled by an ordained minister, Squire wrote, "My theology of ministry is that all ministry is the ministry of Jesus Christ, and we are invited to participate in that. Lay people have as much to offer as those in the Order of Ministry. All that I have done is to help that concept of ministry be accepted by the church."

Honours
 Doctor of Divinity, McGill University (1980)
 Doctor of Divinity, Queen's University (1985)
 Doctor of Laws, Carleton University (1988)
 Senate medal, Carleton University (1972)

References

1921 births
2017 deaths
Moderators of the United Church of Canada
Members of the United Church of Canada
Carleton University alumni
Women Protestant religious leaders

Anne M. Squire


Hans Erich (Eric) Hollmann (4 November 1899 – 19 November 1960) was a German electronic specialist who made several breakthroughs in the development of radar.

Hollmann was born in Solingen, Germany. He became interested in radio and even as a teenager subscribed to the technical magazines of the day. Late in World War I he became a prisoner of war of the French and did not return to Germany until 1920. He then studied at the Technical University at Darmstadt until he received his doctorate in 1928.

Hollmann's doctoral research included the development of an ultra-short-wave transmitter and receiver for centimetre and decimetre waves. This gained the attention of Telefunken, and ultimately led to their development of the first microwave telecommunication system.

In 1930 Hollmann moved to the Heinrich-Hertz Institute for Oscillatory Research in Berlin. There he continued studies in microwaves and cathode ray tubes and also worked on the ionosphere research and radio astronomy. In 1933 Hollmann became a lecturer at the Technical University in Berlin.

In January 1934, Hans-Karl von Willisen and Paul-Günther Erbslöh started a company called Gesellschaft für elektroakustische und mechanische Apparate (GEMA). With Hollmann as a consultant, GEMA built a system using interference detection in the autumn of 1934. It operated at 50 cm wavelength and could detect ships up to 10 km distance. By 1935, they used pulse-modulation, allowing measurement of range (distance to the target), and developed the technology into two applications. For naval use, the Seetakt system used a wavelength of 80 cm. A land based version at 120 cm wavelength was also developed as Freya.

Telefunken set up a radar business in 1933 based on Hollmann's work and developed a much shorter-range gun-laying system called Würzburg. During World War II, Freya and Würzburg worked in pairs. Freya would spot the incoming aircraft while the Würzburg calculated the distance and height.

He invented and patented a prototype of the cavity magnetron in 1935, but the German military considered the frequency drift of Hollman's device to be undesirable, and based their radar systems on the klystron instead.

In the same year, Hollmann wrote two books on microwaves, Physics and Technique of Ultra-short Waves and Seeing with Electromagnetic Waves, which were the inspiration for the development of centimetre radar in other countries despite some censorship of their contents.

During the war he supervised many research institutes in occupied countries and saved many scientists from being deported to Germany. He established the  Laboratory for High-Frequency Engineering and Ultrasound in Lichterfelde, Berlin. Part of their work involved making transmitters for the Navy. Here he brought in Max Bense. At this time there was speculation about a future possibility of teleporting human beings from Germany to California.  His home and his laboratory were destroyed during the war. After the war he was not allowed to work on microwaves but he turned his attention to a wide range of other fields in electronics.

In 1947 he accepted an offer from the US Government to work for NASA in California. In 1949 he sent Bense a copy of Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948), stimulating the latter's interest in cybernetics.

He was married to Gisela Schimmelbusch and had three children. He died in Los Angeles in 1960.

References

External links
 Biography on his sixtieth birthday

1899 births
1960 deaths
20th-century German physicists
Radar pioneers
Operation Paperclip
People from Solingen

Hans Hollmann


A Specter is Haunting Texas is a science fiction novel by American writer Fritz Leiber, first published as a novel in 1969. It was originally published as a three-part serial in the magazine Galaxy Science Fiction in 1968. The title appears to be based on a Karl Marx quote from The Communist Manifesto: "A spectre is haunting Europe...the spectre of communism."

Plot summary

Scully Christopher Crockett La Cruz is an actor, fortune seeker and adventurer from the long isolated orbital technocratic democracies of Circumluna and the Bubbles Congeries. He lands in what he believes to be Canada to reclaim family mining interests only to discover that Canada is now North Texas and what is left of civilization in North America is ruled by primitive, backslapping, bigger than life anti-intellectual "good ole boys" convinced of their own moral superiority.

In the tortured version of history known to the giant hormone-boosted Anglo-Saxon inhabitants who rule a diminutive Mexican underclass, the original Texas, or Texas, had actually secretly ruled the pre-nuclear war United States since 1845.

Texas escaped the nuclear destruction of the rest of the United States because of the foresight of Lyndon the First. An enormous bunker then known as the Houston Carlsbad Caverns-Denver-Kansas City-Little Rock Pentagram and now referred to simply as the Texas Bunker had saved the heartland during a war that destroyed both American coasts, Europe, Russia, China, and Africa. Texas then conquered the rest of the continent, although Hawaii and Cuba remain stubbornly "unconquered".

Reception
Alexei Panshin described Specter as "an intermittently satirical melodrama about revolution," saying "Its greatest strength, in fact, is in conceits and occasional lines. And two-thirds of the way through it falls apart, its satire forgotten in favor of the melodramatic requirement of movement at any cost." Ron Goulart called the novel "a big, funny and angry book. . . . a fine non-stop picaresque about a future United States that's turned into Texas and about race, love, violence, God, death, Shakespeare, and most anything else you can name."

References

Release details
Fritz Leiber. 1968, 1969, 1971. A Specter is Haunting Texas. Galaxy Science Fiction, Walker, Bantam.

External links

 A Specter is Haunting Texas as serialized in Galaxy Science Fiction, parts one, two, and three at the Internet Archive

1969 American novels
1969 science fiction novels
Dystopian novels
American science fiction novels
Novels by Fritz Leiber
Novels set in Texas
Works originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction
Novels first published in serial form

A Specter Is Haunting Texas


The 1999 Gothenburg Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-level Ozone (known as the Multi-effect Protocol or the Gothenburg Protocol) is a multi-pollutant protocol designed to reduce acidification, eutrophication and ground-level ozone by setting emissions ceilings for sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and ammonia to be met by 2010. As of August 2014, the Protocol had been ratified by 26 parties, which includes 25 states and the European Union.

The Protocol is part of the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution. The Convention is an international agreement to protect human health and the natural environment from air pollution by control and reduction of air pollution, including long-range transboundary air pollution.

The geographic scope of the Protocol includes Europe, North America and countries of Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA).

On May 4, 2012, at a meeting at the United Nations Office at Geneva, the Parties to the Gothenburg Protocol agreed on a substantial number of revisions, most important are the inclusion of commitments of the Parties to further reduce their emissions until 2020. These amendments now need to be ratified by Parties in order to make them binding.

Purpose and history

Because pollutants can be carried many hundreds of kilometres by winds, pollutants emitted in one country may be deposited in other countries. Deposition of pollutants in a country can far exceed the amount of such pollution produced domestically due to pollution arriving from one or more upwind countries.

In 1976, the environment ministers from the Nordic countries proposed a European convention on transboundary air pollution that emphasized sulphur compounds (Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP)). After negotiations, 34 countries and the European Commission signed this Convention in 1979 in Geneva. The convention came into force in 1983, and has now been ratified by 47 European countries, two North American countries (Canada and the United States) and Armenia. The CLRTAP now includes eight protocols that identify specific obligations to be taken by Parties.

The Gothenburg Protocol was signed on 30 November 1999 in Gothenburg, Sweden, to support the CLRTAP. The Gothenburg Protocol entered into force on 17 May 2005.

Protocol contents

Protocol elements

The following are the main provisions of the Protocol:

 Annex 1 - Critical loads and levels
 Annex 2 - Maximum allowable emissions (emission ceilings) are adopted for 2010 for sulphur, nitrogen oxides (NOx), Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and ammonia (NH3). The selection of the specific emission levels (in tons/year) were based on the predicted effects of the pollutants and the pollutant control options and costs. Emission limits are set for each participating country. Those countries participating in the Protocol ("the Parties") with significant emission levels of the most harmful pollutants and whose emissions are relatively cheap to reduce must make larger emission reductions.
Following the revision of the Gothenburg Protocol, to which the Parties agreed in May 2012, Annex 2 will now also contain reduction commitments, expressed as a percentage reduction compared to 2005 emission levels, that Parties should meet in 2020.

 Annexes 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9 list 'limit values' for specific emission sources, such as for combustion plants, electricity generation, cement production or dry cleaning. Best available techniques are required to control emissions. With the exception of Annex 9, all the emission limit values specified were also updated in 2012 by the Parties.
 Annex 4 is for sulphur from stationary sources
 Annex 5 is for nitrogen oxides (NOx) from stationary sources
 Annex 6 is for Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) from stationary sources
Annex 8 is for fuels and new mobile sources
Annex 9 is for ammonia (NH3) from agricultural sources

Guidance documents adopted together with the Protocol provide a range of abatement techniques and economic instruments for the reduction of emissions. Among the specific emission sources, the Protocol establishes NOx emission limits for large stationary engines. Emission limits for new stationary sources should be enforced within one year after the date of entry into force of the Protocol for the party in question.

 Maximum sulfur content is specified for gas oil fuels (other than fuels used in vehicles) at 0.2% effective by July 2000 and 0.1% by January 2008.

The details of the Protocol are identified in a series of Annexes that address specific pollutants and emission source sectors (e.g. Annex V: "Limit values for emissions of nitrogen oxides from stationary sources"). The Annexes typically allow Canada and the United States to participate with different commitments than other Parties to the Protocol. This is due to the different regulatory nature of Canada and the United States versus most European countries.

Implementation and results

In the EU, the Gothenburg protocol is implemented through the National Emission Ceilings (NEC) directive.

Of all the countries that ratified the 1999 Gothenburg Protocol, most are expected to meet their obligations. Progress towards reducing sulphur emissions was greater than the Protocol commitments due to a widespread European shift from coal to natural gas as an industrial fuel in the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, the acidification of forests and lakes was halted in large parts of Europe. Reduction of NOx emissions from traffic has less than originally expected. The Protocol required only modest ammonia emission reductions and therefore in most parts of Europe, excess nitrogen deposition will be reduced only by a small percentage.

It is predicted that the implementation of the Protocol in Europe will reduce sulphur emissions there by at least 63%, NOx emissions by 41%, VOC emissions by 40% and ammonia emissions by 17% compared to levels in 1990. In addition, Protocol implementation in Europe will:
 reduce the area of excessive acidification from 93 million hectares in 1990 to 15 million hectares;
 reduce the area of excessive eutrophication from 165 million hectares in 1990 to 108 million hectares, and;
 reduce the number of days with excessive ozone levels by 50%.

As a result, it is estimated that human life-years lost as a result of the chronic effects of ozone exposure will be about 2,300,000 lower in 2010 than in 1990. In addition, there will be approximately 47,500 fewer premature deaths resulting from ozone and particulate matter in the air. Furthermore, the amount of vegetation exposed to excessive ozone levels will be reduced by 44% from 1990 levels.

However, for large parts of Europe, human exposure to particulate matter and ozone will remain higher than recommended by the World Health Organization. In the Benelux, the Po-area, Russia and Ukraine, the health risks will remain higher than for the rest of Europe. The East European countries that did not ratify the Protocol are expected to suffer from increasing air pollution. Because of the great potential for low-cost emission reduction measures in this region, increased related policy efforts are underway for countries such as Russia and Ukraine. Abatement of emissions from shipping and ambitious climate policy measures, offers possibilities to reduce air pollution in EU countries at relatively low costs. Additional concerns include the negative effects from the combustion of biomass and biodiesel on air quality/

Revisions of the Gothenburg Protocol

In December 2007, efforts began to revise the Gothenburg Protocol. These revisions were concluded at a meeting of the Parties to the Protocol in Geneva in May 2012. The Parties agreed to include more stringent emission reduction commitments for 2020, including reduction targets for particulate matter (PM). Subsequently, the technical annexes were also amended to update them with improved emission limit values. The protocol now also includes, as the first international agreement between countries, measures addressing short-lived climate forcers, such as black carbon.

The work to revise the Protocol was coordinated by the Working Group on Strategies and Review and supported by varies technical groups, such as the Expert Group on Techno-Economic Issues.

References

External links
 CLRTAP text (pdf)
 Status of Protocol signature/ ratification
 Summary of Gothenburg Protocol
 NOx Emission Limits From New Stationary Engines

Air pollution
Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution
Environmental treaties
Treaties concluded in 1999
Treaties entered into force in 2005
Treaties of Belgium
Treaties of Bulgaria
Treaties of Croatia
Treaties of Cyprus
Treaties of the Czech Republic
Treaties of Finland
Treaties of Denmark
Treaties of France
Treaties of Germany
Treaties of Hungary
Treaties of Latvia
Treaties of Lithuania
Treaties of Luxembourg
Treaties of North Macedonia
Treaties of the Netherlands
Treaties of Norway
Treaties of Portugal
Treaties of Romania
Treaties of Slovakia
Treaties of Slovenia
Treaties of Spain
Treaties of Sweden
Treaties of Switzerland
Treaties entered into by the European Union
Treaties of the United Kingdom
Treaties of the United States
1999 in Sweden
2005 in the environment
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe treaties

Multi-effect Protocol


Skeeter Brandon (April 22, 1948 – March 20, 2008) was an American blind blues keyboardist, singer and songwriter.

From 1966 to 1991, Brandon played in various bands across the United States.  He joined Highway 61 in 1991, and recorded four albums in that ensemble until their break-up in 2001. In 1994 he formed the Prime Rib Blues Band. Popular Skeeter Brandon songs include "Strollie Bun", "That's What Lovin You Has Done To Me", "Soap Opera Blues", and "The Last Goodby". Brandon's lifetime in music reflected the influence of the African-American songster tradition.

Biography
Calvin Thomas Brandon was born the son of Ivory Royster and Mary Brandon, in Halifax, Virginia, United States. One of sixteen children, Brandon was blind since childhood but sang in his local church at the age of six and was playing the piano three years later. He was educated at the Governor Morehead School for the blind in Raleigh, North Carolina, which he first attended in 1954. He learned to play both trumpet and snare drum, and had some success in his teenage years as the leader of his own band playing around in Raleigh and Goldsboro, North Carolina.  They specialized in playing cover versions of popular tracks by artists including Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, and Wilson Pickett.  He slowly eased the trumpet playing out of his performing repertoire and formed the Soul Stars Band, that were good enough to earn a residency at the Playboy Club in Goldsboro. Brandon concentrated on playing the keyboards and singing for the rest of his life. At the Playboy Club, Brandon was noticed by Clarence Carter who, in 1970, employed Brandon in his backing band.  This led to Brandon making appearances worldwide. Brandon and Carter subsequently recorded together at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama.

By 1973, Brandon had joined the backing band for the Chi-Lites. By the middle of that decade, Brandon felt confident and experienced enough to both tour and record under his own name.  This led to another recording session at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. The resulting single, "I Kept on Smilin'" b/w "24 Hour Love Man" was released by Hit Man Records, and sold so well locally that Atlantic Records re-released it in 1975. Brandon then joined William Bell on tour before returning to his home in Goldsboro. He teamed up with another blind musician and played small clubs across North Carolina. Rarely restricted by his loss of vision, Brandon was known for walking through the audience mid-set. In the 1980s, Brandon recorded with a couple of North Carolina gospel ensembles, Slim & the Supreme Angels and Willis Pittman & the Burden Lifters.

in 1991, Brandon was recruited to lead a new outfit, Skeeter Brandon & Highway 61 (often abbreviated to HWY 61).  They toured along the East Coast, and released four albums; Rockin' With the Blues, Hi-Test Blues (both 1993), License to Thrill (1996), and I'm a Man of My Word (1999). Guests artists on Hi-Test Blues included Mark Wenner of the Nighthawks, Ann Rabson of Saffire – The Uppity Blues Women, and Bob Margolin. Max Drake played lead guitar on License to Thrill and I'm a Man of My Word.  The band split up in 2001, and then the Music Maker Relief Foundation provided assistance to Brandon with his bills and arranged a number of shows for him. Previously in 1994 Brandon had also formed the Prime Rib Blues Band. Brandon's solo effort, It's Good To Go, was released in 2003 on Rock House Records.

On March 20, 2008, Skeeter Brandon died at the age of 59 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. He had stopped performing in the Charlotte area just four months before his death. Brandon left behind a wife, Vanessa Brandon, and four children.

Discography

References

1948 births
2008 deaths
American rhythm and blues keyboardists
American blues singers
20th-century African-American male singers
Songwriters from Virginia
Blind musicians
People from Halifax, Virginia
20th-century American singers
20th-century American male singers
21st-century American keyboardists
African-American songwriters
21st-century American male singers
21st-century American singers
21st-century African-American male singers
American male songwriters
American blind people
American musicians with disabilities

Skeeter Brandon


Dual Segmented Langmuir Probe (DSLP) is an instrument developed primarily by Czech researchers and engineers to study the magnetospheric background plasma flown on board the spacecraft of the European Space Agency (ESA) Proba 2.

Data acquired by DSLP will be used to reach these specific scientific goals:
 Directional Measurements: Contrary to classical Langmuir probes, the new DSLP concept of data acquisition from the independent segments will enable to study also plasma characteristics in different directions. This should provide for example estimations of plasma flow velocity. Typically in the presence of magnetic field, electron temperatures are observed to be slightly different in the direction parallel and perpendicular to the magnetic field lines. This temperature anisotropy should be measured with DSLP by way of directional data acquisition.
 Non-Maxwellian Features in Ionospheric Plasma: Classical theories for LPs are typically developed for plasmas in a thermodynamic equilibrium, that is for particle populations possessing Maxwellian velocity distribution functions. However, a thermodynamic equilibrium and thus a Maxwellian distribution is an idealized case while the real distribution in many plasma environments often exhibits various non-Maxwellian features, like loss-cone or flat-top distributions or high-energy tails. We intend to adapt the DSLP theoretical model in order to see whether such features exist also in ionospheric plasmas.
 Ionospheric Irregularities: Ionosphere especially in the equatorial region possess several phenomena such equatorial ionization anomaly or ionospheric perturbations in auroral and cusp regions. The latitudinal distribution of these anomalies should be mapped during the whole mission. The effects are also highly dependent on space weather, on magnetospheric forces induced by solar, interplanetary and magnetospheric disturbances. Hence also coordination with LYRA and SWAP (other Proba 2 payload) measurements would be useful to find a correlation between particular solar events and ionospheric disturbances.
 Ionospheric Perturbations by Solar Events (CMEs): This scientific objective will use cooperation with LYRA and SWAP experiments and further more enhance the sphere of interest. Detected solar event, if possible, should start DSLP burst measurement when the solar event affects the Earth.
 Mapping Bulk Plasma Parameters: All acquired DSLP data will be used to map the bulk plasma parameters (primarily electron density and temperature) and to study their latitude and seasonal variations.

The DSLP instrument consists of two Langmuir probes, electronics and small data processing unit. DSLP shares some interface, power and processing resources with TPMU experiment. DSLP has been developed on the basis of its predecessor ISL (Instrument Sonde de Langmuir), flown on the
Demeter mission of CNES.

DSLP was developed by the consortium of
Astronomical
Institute
and Institute of Atmospheric Physics,
Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague, Czech Republic, Research and Scientific Support Department (RSSD) ESA ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, Czech Space Research Centre (CSRC), Brno Czech Republic, and SPRINX Systems, Prague, Czech Republic. The team has been led by the Principal Investigator Pavel Trávníček.

References

2009 in spaceflight
European Space Agency
Environmental science
Spacecraft instruments

bg:Проба-2
de:Proba-2
es:Proba 2
fr:Proba-2
he:פרובה 2
nl:Proba-2

Dual segmented Langmuir probe


Shanghai Dreams () is a 2005 Chinese film directed by Wang Xiaoshuai and starring Gao Yuanyuan, Li Bin, Tang Yang, Wang Xiaoyang, and Yao Anlian. The film was produced by Stellar Megamedia, Debo Films Ltd. and Kingwood Ltd.

Shanghai Dreams was the winner of the Jury Prize at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

Synopsis
The film is set in the early 1980s and follows a Shanghai family who had gone to work in a factory in Guizhou as part of the 'Third Front', intended as an industrial base if China were invaded. The father, obsessed with returning to Shanghai for a better life for his family, attempts to prevent a romance between his daughter and a local worker. The film is partly autobiographical in nature, as Wang's family was also sent to Guizhou as a child.

Background
Shanghai Dreams represents the first time a director has approached the subject of the "Third Line of Defense" and its consequences. This is in no small part due to the director, Wang Xiaoshuai's own upbringing. Like the Wu family, the Wang family was also originally from Shanghai and who moved to Guiyang due to the need to create an industrial third line of defense. This third line of defense was set away from cities and the seacoast, in order to protect China's industrial capability in case of a war against the Soviet Union. With the opening up of China in the 1980s, however, many of these urban exiles were given the opportunity to return home to the cities, even as their families had already laid down roots in their new homes. Wang has stated that he set the story in the 1980s in that it represented an era of transition, wherein the Cultural Revolution had ended, but much of the old ways were still ingrained in society.

Plot
The main character Qinghong is a 19-year-old student living with her overly repressive father, mother and younger brother in a typical small apartment. Her 'boyfriend' Honggen, a working local boy who plays only a minor role in the film and develops an obsession with Qihong to her father's contempt. Confiding in her best friend Xiao Zhen, Qinghong strives for love and independence.

Qinghong's father Wu Zemin is a stubborn and aggressive man, who has never forgiven his wife for persuading him to move to rural Guiyang. He regularly meets with other 'Third Line' volunteers to discuss strategies for returning to Shanghai. He becomes increasingly strict with Qinghong, often following her home from school to ensure a restricted social life. He forbids her from seeing her 'boyfriend' Honggen, discourages her from spending time with Xiao Zhen and after discovering that she has sneaked out to an underground dance party confines her to the house. Xiao Zhen has meanwhile fallen for the local boy Lu Jun, the son of another 'Third Line' volunteer couple. Lu gets a local girl pregnant and is forced by his angry father to marry her. Soon after the wedding, though, he runs away with Xiao Zhen, causing panic in the local community.
Honggen stalks Qinghong and she promises to meet him secretly one evening. She slips out of the house while her father hosts a meeting with other "Third Line" friends to discuss a plan to flee to Shanghai without official permission. When Qinghong tells Honggen that they cannot be together because her family will soon leave, the nervous Honggen loses control of himself and rapes her. Qinghong totters home, muddied and bleeding. Her father initially tries to retaliate by beating up  Honggen at work, but subsequently alerts the police and has Honggen arrested.
Traumatised, Qinghong attempts suicide. She is recovering when a sad and chastened Xiao Zhen returns to Guiyang.

Very early one morning, as dawn is breaking, the Wu family boards a van for the drive to Shanghai. They are delayed in the streets of Guiyang by the crowds gathering to watch a round of public executions. Called out on loudspeaker are the names of those to be executed, with the last name called Honggen.

Release in China
Shanghai Dreams marks the first time Wang was given a wide degree of freedom by the Film Bureau in comparison to his previous films, notably Beijing Bicycle, which suffered from censorship woes. Wang has noted that authorities approached him after realizing that foreign blockbusters were slowly taking over the Chinese market. Wang was then asked to send in a 1000 word summary of the film, after which they asked to see the entire script; both requests were honored and neither was "softened" in Wang's words, as a means to test the openness of the "new" bureau. Wang noted that the film does not represent a "typical" Chinese film; as stated in an interview, Wang states:

Nevertheless, the film was released in China theaters shortly after its premiere at Cannes.

Awards
The film premiered in the 2005 Cannes Film Festival as an official selection in competition for the Palme d'Or, and received the Jury Prize.

Awards and nominations
 Cannes Film Festival, 2005
 Palme d'Or- official selection
 Prix du Jury - winner
 1st International Eurasia Film Festival, 2005
 Best Film - winner
 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival
 EurAsia Grand Prix

Cast
Gao Yuanyuan as Wu Qinghong, the daughter of a family sent to the Guizhou Province in the 1960s. Her name is the original Chinese title of the film.
Yao Anlian as Wu Zemin, Qinghong's father, obsessed with a return to Shanghai after years in Guizhou.
Li Bin as Fan Honggen, a local boy whom Qinghong falls in love with.
Tang Yang as Meifen, Qinghong's mother, and Zemin's wife.
Wang Xueyang as Xiaozhen, Qinghong's friend, a local Guizhou girl.
Qin Hao as Lu Jun, a local boy, Xiaozhen's object of desire.
Wang Xiaofen as Qinghong's brother
Dai Wenyan as Xiaozhen's mother
Lin Yuan as Xiaozhen's father
You Fangming as Lu Jun's father
Sun Qinchang as Wang Erhua

References

External links

 Shanghai Dreams at the Chinese Movie Database

2005 drama films
2005 films
Chinese drama films
Films set in the 1980s
Films set in Guizhou
Films directed by Wang Xiaoshuai
2000s Mandarin-language films

Shanghai Dreams