The Chevrolet SSR (Super Sport Roadster) is a retro-styled retractable hardtop convertible pickup truck manufactured by Chevrolet between 2003 and 2006.

The 2003 and 2004 model years used General Motors' 5.3 L 300 hp Vortec 5300 V8. Performance was 7.7 seconds for  with a 15.9 second  run at . The 2005 SSR used the  LS2 V8 also found in the C6 Corvette, Trailblazer SS, and Pontiac GTO, and also offered a manual transmission option, the six-speed Tremec, for the first time.

For the 2005 model year, the LS2 engine featured minor modifications that boosted its output to 390 hp (395-400 for 2006), respectively. Performance improved dramatically with the LS2; the 6-speed manual version had an advertised 0– time of 5.29 seconds. In addition, GM badges were added to the vehicle.

Design

The SSR's styled design was inspired by Chevrolet's late-1940s Advance Design trucks, in particular the 1947–1955 pickups. The vehicle rode on a GMT368 platform specific to it, a version of the period's highly adaptable GMT360, and featured a steel body retractable hardtop designed by Karmann and built by ASC. The body of the pickup, namely the front fenders, was made with deep draw stampings, a forming technique that had not been used in automotive stampings in decades, and required a "relearning" of the forming technique.  The production model was based on the SuperSport Roadster concept car shown at the 2000 Detroit Auto Show. In contrast to the production vehicle, this concept car used the chassis from the Chevrolet S10 pickup. An early-production SSR was the pace car for the 2003 Indianapolis 500 auto race.

Sales

The SSR was introduced as a 2003 model on New Year's Eve 2002 (December 31). In spite of marketing efforts which included the SSR being used as the pace car for the 2003 Indianapolis 500, it sold below expectations with under 9,000 sales at US$42,000 each. Citing a 301-day supply of SSRs, General Motors in December of that year announced five weeks of layoffs at Lansing Craft Center, the factory that made the SSR. On November 21, 2005, GM announced that it would close the Craft Center in mid-2006, implying the production ending for the SSR. The final SSR, a unique black-on-silver model (Highest VIN 1GCES14H06B126138), was built on March 17, 2006. Analysts estimate that 24,150 SSRs were produced in total. Of the total production, 24,112 were available for sale to the public.

Features

The Chevrolet SSR offered many luxury amenities as standard equipment. Standard equipment on all SSR's included power windows and door locks, keyless entry, luxury leather-trimmed bucket seats, front side SRS airbags, an AM/FM stereo radio with cassette and CD players and a four-speaker audio system, carpeted floor mats, 19-inch front and 20-inch rear tires and cast-aluminum wheels, a body-colored rear tonneau cover, a power-retractable hardtop convertible roof, carpeted flooring for the interior and rear cargo compartment area, a driver information center, dual-zone manual air conditioning, a power-adjustable driver's seat, dual front SRS airbags, a leather-wrapped, tilt-adjustable steering wheel, and a cruise control, among other features. Options were few, but included the General Motors (GM) OnStar in-vehicle telematics system, polished cast-aluminum wheels, Teak decking and metal strakes for the rear cargo compartment area, rear onboard storage saddle bags, SSR-embroidered carpeted floor mats, dual power-adjustable bucket seats with driver's seat memory, an AM/FM stereo radio with a six-disc, in-dash CD changer, XM Satellite Radio, and a Bose six-speaker premium audio system with an amplifier, steering wheel-mounted audio system and OnStar controls, color-keyed interior accent trim, dual-zone automatic air conditioning, and an auxiliary center gauge package. Many of these options were part of the 1SB Equipment Package, which replaced the standard 1SA Equipment Package.

Motorsports

An attempt was made at a land speed record using a highly modified version of an SSR during the Bonneville Speed Week in August of 2011. In spite of the team's efforts, the SSR in question was deemed ineligible to race in the class that they intended to compete in due to an air dam that did not conform to the class rules. They were permitted to race the pickup for "time only" but the pickup proved unstable at speeds approaching . The pickup never reached speeds anywhere near close enough to take the record. That same year, a 1996 GMC Sonoma put the class record even further out of reach by running nearly  faster than the previous record.

See also
 Chevrolet HHR
 Chevrolet Advance Design, the 1947-55 Chevrolet pickup

References

External links

 SSR Owners Group Website - SSRFanatic.com

SSR
Rear-wheel-drive vehicles
Pickup trucks
Hardtop convertibles
Vehicles built in Lansing, Michigan
Retro-style automobiles
Cars introduced in 2003
Motor vehicles manufactured in the United States
Coupé utilities

Chevrolet SSR


Aida is a musical by Sir Elton John and Tim Rice, first opened in 1998. It was based on the Verdi opera of the same name It was nominated for Tony Awards.

Plot

Act I

The musical opens in a modern-day museum. In the Egyptian wing, a man and woman meet each other as a statue of a female Pharaoh, Amneris, awakens ("Every Story Is A Love Story") and transports them to Ancient Egypt. Ramades, who is leader of the Egyptian army, return from an expedition through the lands of the Nubians, the longtime enemies of Egypt ("Fortune Favors The Brave"). When the soldiers capture a group of women, he is instantly drawn to one of them, Aida, who tries freeing herself by fighting one of his soldiers. After Ramades forces Aida to wash his back, she refuses, telling him that although the Egyptians took everything from the Nubians, their spirit will never be taken ("The Past Is Another Land"). Ramades saves Aida's companions from working in the copper mines (and certain death) by sending them to work in the palace grounds instead. He also sends Aida as a handmaiden to Amneris, to whom he is betrothed.

Musicals
Elton John

Aida (musical)


A straitjacket is a type of clothing used to restrain patients in mental health hospitals and psychiatric wards of hospitals. A straitjacket has straps that restrain a person's arms and hands. Hospitals put straitjackets on people who have mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or paranoia, to keep them from hurting themselves, other patients, or hospital staff.

Psychiatry

Straitjacket


Quantum non-equilibrium is a concept within stochastic formulations of the De Broglie–Bohm theory of quantum physics.

Overview
In quantum mechanics, the Born rule states that the probability density of finding a system in a given state, when measured, is proportional to the square of the amplitude of the system's wavefunction at that state, and it constitutes one of the fundamental axioms of the theory.

This is not the case for the De Broglie–Bohm theory, where the Born rule is not a basic law. Rather, in this theory the link between the probability density and the wave function has the status of a hypothesis, called the quantum equilibrium hypothesis, which is additional to the basic principles governing the wave function, the dynamics of the quantum particles and the Schrödinger equation. (For mathematical details, refer to the derivation by Peter R. Holland.)

Accordingly, quantum non-equilibrium describes a state of affairs where the Born rule is not fulfilled; that is, the probability to find the particle in the differential volume  at time t is unequal to

Recent advances in investigations into properties of quantum non-equilibrium states have been performed mainly by theoretical physicist Antony Valentini, and earlier steps in this direction were undertaken by David Bohm, Jean-Pierre Vigier, Basil Hiley and Peter R. Holland. The existence of quantum non-equilibrium states has not been verified experimentally; quantum non-equilibrium is so far a theoretical construct. The relevance of quantum non-equilibrium states to physics lies in the fact that they can lead to different predictions for results of experiments, depending on whether the De Broglie–Bohm theory in its stochastic form or the Copenhagen interpretation is assumed to describe reality. (The Copenhagen interpretation, which stipulates the Born rule a priori, does not foresee the existence of quantum non-equilibrium states at all.) That is, properties of quantum non-equilibrium can make certain classes of Bohmian theories falsifiable according to the criterion of Karl Popper.

In practice, when performing Bohmian mechanics computations in quantum chemistry, the quantum equilibrium hypothesis is simply considered to be fulfilled, in order to predict system behaviour and the outcome of measurements.

Relaxation to equilibrium
The causal interpretation of quantum mechanics has been set up by de Broglie and Bohm as a causal, deterministic model, and it was extended later by Bohm, Vigier, Hiley, Valentini and others to include stochastic properties.

Bohm and other physicists, including Valentini, view the Born rule linking  to the probability density function  as representing not a basic law, but rather as constituting a result of a system having reached quantum equilibrium during the course of the time development under the Schrödinger equation. It can be shown that, once an equilibrium has been reached, the system remains in such equilibrium over the course of its further evolution: this follows from the continuity equation associated with the Schrödinger evolution of  However, it is less straightforward to demonstrate whether and how such an equilibrium is reached in the first place.

In 1991, Valentini provided indications for deriving the quantum equilibrium hypothesis which states that  in the framework of the pilot wave theory. (Here,  stands for the collective coordinates of the system in configuration space). Valentini showed that the relaxation  may be accounted for by an H-theorem constructed in analogy to the Boltzmann H-theorem of statistical mechanics.

Valentini's derivation of the quantum equilibrium hypothesis was criticized by Detlef Dürr and co-workers in 1992, and the derivation of the quantum equilibrium hypothesis has remained a topic of active investigation.

Numerical simulations demonstrate a tendency for Born rule distributions to arise spontaneously at short time scales.

Predicted properties of quantum non-equilibrium
Valentini showed that his expansion of the De Broglie–Bohm theory would allow "signal nonlocality" for non-equilibrium cases in which  thereby violating the assumption that signals cannot travel faster than the speed of light.

Valentini furthermore showed that an ensemble of particles with known wave function and known nonequilibrium distribution could be used to perform, on another system, measurements that violate the uncertainty principle.

These predictions differ from predictions that would result from approaching the same physical situation by means of the standard axioms of quantum mechanics and therefore would in principle make the predictions of this theory accessible to experimental study. As it is unknown whether or how quantum non-equilibrium states can be produced, it is difficult or impossible to perform such experiments.

However, also the hypothesis of quantum non-equilibrium Big Bang gives rise to quantitative predictions for nonequilibrium deviations from quantum theory which appear to be more easily accessible to observation.

Notes

References
 Antony Valentini: Signal-locality, uncertainty, and the sub-quantum H-theorem, II, Physics Letters A, vol. 158, no. 1, 1991, p. 1–8
 Antony Valentini: Signal-locality, uncertainty, and the sub-quantum H-theorem, I, Physics Letters A, vol. 156, no. 5, 1991
 Craig Callender: The emergence and interpretation of probability in Bohmian mechanics  (slightly longer and uncorrected version of the paper published in Studies in History and Philosophy of modern Physics 38 (2007), 351-370)
 Detlef Dürr et al.: Quantum equilibrium and the origin of absolute uncertainty, arXiv:quant-ph/0308039v1 6 August 2003
 Samuel Colin: Quantum non-equilibrium and relaxation to equilibrium for a class of de Broglie–Bohm-type theories, 2010 New Journal of Physícs 12 043008 (abstract, fulltext)

Concepts in physics
Quantum mechanics

Quantum non-equilibrium


Ormskirk is a market town in west Lancashire, England. It is 13 miles (21 km) north of Liverpool, 11 miles (18 km) northwest of St Helens, 9 miles (14 km) southeast of Southport and 18 miles (29 km) southwest of Preston. The name is Old Norse in origin

Ormskirk is known for its gingerbread.

Towns in Lancashire

Ormskirk


Tiberius (Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus, 16 November 42 BC – 16 March 37 AD) was the second Roman Emperor. He ruled from 14 to 37 AD. He was the step-son of Caesar Augustus.

Tiberius was one of Ancient Rome's greatest generals, whose campaigns protected the northern frontier. He reigned for 22 years, and the first part of his imperial work was excellent. Later, he came to be remembered as a dark, reclusive, and somber ruler. After the death of his son Drusus in 23, the quality of his rule declined and ended in terror.

In 26, Tiberius moved from Rome to the Isle of Capri, and left administration largely in the hands of his unscrupulous Praetorian Prefect Sejanus. Sejanus became the effective ruler of Rome, and plotted against Tiberius, murdering people who opposed him. When alerted, Tiberius counter-plotted to remove Sejanus from his official positions, and eventually executed him. More executions followed of people who had committed crimes under Sejanus' rule.

Caligula, Tiberius' grand-nephew and adopted grandson, succeeded the Emperor upon his death.

Rise to power
Tiberius shared in Augustus' tribune powers as of 6 BC, but soon went into retirement in Rhodes. He was reported as wanting no further role in politics.p117p46 After the early deaths of Augustus' young grandchildren-turned-sons, Lucius and Gaius in AD 2 and 4 respectively, and the earlier death of his own brother Drusus (9 BC), Tiberius was recalled to Rome in June AD 4, where he was adopted by Augustus on the condition that he, in turn, adopt his nephew Germanicus.p119 This continued the tradition of presenting at least two generations of heirs.

In the same year, Tiberius was also granted the powers of a tribune and proconsul, emissaries from foreign kings had to pay their respects to him, and by 13 was awarded with his second triumph and equal level of imperium with that of Augustus.p119/120 Tiberius duly assumed the titles of Augustus when the old man's long reign came to an end in AD 14.

Tiberius Emperor
Problems soon arose. The northern legions had not been paid, and rebelled. Germanicus and Tiberius's son, Drusus, were dispatched with a small force to quell the uprising and bring the legions back in line. Germanicus rallied the mutineers and led them on a short campaign across the Rhine into Germanic territory, stating that whatever treasure they could grab would count as their bonus. Germanicus's forces smashed across the Rhine and quickly occupied all of the territory between the Rhine and the Elbe. So Germanicus dealt a significant blow to Rome's enemies, and quelled an uprising of troops, actions that increased his fame with the Roman people.

After being recalled from Germania, Germanicus celebrated a triumph in Rome in AD 17, the first full triumph that the city had seen since Augustus's own in 29 BC. As a result, in AD 18 Germanicus was granted control over the eastern part of the empire, just as both Agrippa and Tiberius had received before, and was clearly the successor to Tiberius. But tragedy struck once again, as Germanicus died after a year, apparently poisoned.

Tiberius and Sejanus

Sejanus had served the imperial family for almost twenty years when he became Praetorian Prefect in AD 15. The death of Drusus elevated Sejanus. Tiberius had statues of Sejanus erected throughout the city, and Sejanus became more and more visible as Tiberius began to withdraw from Rome altogether. Finally, with Tiberius's withdrawal to Capri in AD 26, Sejanus was left in charge of the entire state mechanism and the city of Rome.

Sejanus's position was not that of successor. The presence of Livia (the third wife and advisor of Augustus) seems to have checked his power for a time. Her death in AD 29 changed all that. Sejanus began a series of purge trials of Senators in Rome. Germanicus's widow Agrippina the Elder and two of her sons were arrested and exiled in AD 30 and later all died in suspicious circumstances.

In response, Tiberius manoeuvered cleverly. He knew an immediate condemnation of Sejanus might not succeed. Since he and Sejanus were then joint Consuls, Tiberius resigned his post of Consul, which forced Sejanus to do likewise. This removed much of Sejanus' legal powers and protection. Then, in AD 31, Sejanus was summoned to a meeting of the Senate, where a letter from Tiberius was read condemning Sejanus and ordering his immediate execution. Macro was appointed Praetorian Prefect, with the specific job of removing Sejanus. Sejanus was tried, and he and several of his colleagues were executed within the week.

More treason trials followed. Tacitus writes that Tiberius had been hesitant to act at the start of his reign, but now, towards the end of his life, he seemed to do so without compunction. However, Tacitus' portrayal of a tyrannical, vengeful emperor has been challenged by several modern historians. The prominent ancient historian Edward Togo Salmon notes in his work, A history of the Roman world from 30 B.C. to A.D. 138:
"In the whole twenty two years of Tiberius' reign, not more than fifty-two persons were accused of treason, of whom almost half escaped conviction, while the four innocent people to be condemned fell victims to the excessive zeal of the Senate, not to the Emperor's tyranny".

Last years
The last years of Tiberius were notable for his complete absence from Rome, and his inactivity as Emperor. He was now an old man in his 70s, and left decisions to the officials in Rome. He did nothing to prevent the rise of his grandnephew Caligula, who was now popular with the people (as the only surviving son of Germanicus) and who had the support of the Prefect Macro.

In 35, Tiberius made both Caligula and his own grandson Gemellus joint heirs, before dying two years later, at 78. Some speculate Macro and Caligula hastened the old emperor's death. Caligula succeeded Tiberius as emperor.

References

Other websites

 Teberius -Citizendium

42 BC births
37 deaths
New Testament people
1st-century Roman emperors

Tiberius


Xiao Yuanming (蕭淵明) (died 556), courtesy name Jingtong (靖通), often known by his pre-ascension title of Marquess of Zhenyang (貞陽侯), at times known by his post-removal title Duke of Jian'an (建安公), honored Emperor Min (閔皇帝) by Xiao Zhuang, was briefly an emperor of the Chinese Liang Dynasty.  He was the nephew of the founding emperor Emperor Wu.  In 555, with Liang in disarray after Western Wei had captured and killed Emperor Yuan, Northern Qi, which had held Xiao Yuanming as an honored captive since 547, forced the general Wang Sengbian to accept Xiao Yuanming as emperor.  Soon, however, Wang's subordinate Chen Baxian killed Wang and removed Xiao Yuanming from the throne, replacing him with Emperor Yuan's son Xiao Fangzhi (Emperor Jing).  Xiao Yuanming died the following year.

Early life
It is not known when Xiao Yuanming was born.  His father Xiao Yi (蕭懿) was a major general during late Southern Qi, and of Xiao Yi's sons, five (perhaps all) are known to history.  Xiao Yuanming was the youngest among these sons.  As Xiao Yi was forced to commit suicide by Southern Qi's cruel emperor Xiao Baojuan in 500, Xiao Yuanming could not have been born any later than 501.

After Xiao Yi's death, Xiao Yi's younger brother and Xiao Yuanming's uncle Xiao Yan rebelled at his post of Xiangyang, seeking to avenge Xiao Yi.  By 502 he put the capital Jiankang under siege, and Xiao Baojuan was killed by his own generals.  Later that year, Xiao Yan seized the throne from Xiao Baojuan's younger brother Emperor He of Southern Qi, ending Southern Qi and establishing Liang Dynasty (as Emperor Wu).  Emperor Wu was said to love Xiao Yuanming greatly, and he created Xiao Yuanming the Marquess of Zhenyang.

Career as Liang official
Nothing is known about Xiao Yuanming's career as an official until 547, when it was recorded that he was the governor of Yu Province (豫州, modern central Anhui).  The people were said to be so impressed by his governance that they made a stone monument commemorating his term of office.  However, it became known later that the artisans who carved the monument were associated with and paid by Xiao Yuanming.  Therefore, it became widely believed that he had encouraged the people to create the monument to praise himself.

In 547, the Eastern Wei general Hou Jing, in conflict with the regent Gao Cheng, surrendered his domain—13 provinces between the Yellow River and the Huai River—to Liang.  Emperor Wu accepted Hou's surrender and commissioned an army to aid Hou, to be commanded by Emperor Wu's grandson Xiao Huili (蕭會理) the Prince of Nankang.  Xiao Yuanming requested to accompany Xiao Huili, and was made Xiao Huili's assistant.  However, Xiao Huili was cowardly and arrogant, and he refused to meet his subordinate generals, even Xiao Yuanming.  Xiao Yuanming secretly informed Emperor Wu of this, and Emperor Wu relieved Xiao Huili of his command and put Xiao Yuanming in command.

The Liang army, commanded by Xiao Yuanming, advanced on the Eastern Wei city Pengcheng (彭城, in modern Xuzhou, Jiangsu), and Xiao Yuanming camped at Hanshan (寒山), in Pengcheng's vicinity, and built a dam over Si River (泗水) to use water to attack Pengcheng.  Xiao Yuanming's lieutenant, the general Yang Kan (羊侃), quickly completed the dam, but when Yang advised Xiao Yuanming to attack Pengcheng, Xiao Yuanming hesitated.  Because Xiao Yuanming could not come up with a coordinated strategy, the generals under him began to carry out their own actions, including pillaging the people in the region, and Xiao Yuanming was unable to stop them, save the units directly under his own command.

Late in 547, the Eastern Wei forces commanded by Murong Shaozong (慕容紹宗) arrived, and instead of engaging the Eastern Wei forces quickly as Yang suggested, Xiao Yuanming became drunk with wine and allowed Murong's army to settle in.  When the armies did engage, the Liang forces were initially successful, but Murong's counterattack caused Liang forces to collapse, and Xiao Yuanming was captured.  However, the people of the region was impressed by his refusal to pillage them, and gave him the epithet "the righteous prince" (義王, yi wang).  He was taken to the Eastern Wei capital Yecheng (鄴城, in modern Handan, Hebei), where Emperor Xiaojing of Eastern Wei formally received and rebuked him, and then released him, sending him to Gao Cheng's headquarters at Jinyang (晉陽, in modern Taiyuan, Shanxi), where Gao treated him with honor—intending to use Xiao Yuanming as a pawn in negotiations with Liang.  Subsequently, Gao allowed Xiao Yuanming to write to Emperor Wu and offered to return Xiao Yuanming—causing Hou, who had by that point lost the 13 provinces but controlled Yu Province, to rebel in 548, capturing Jiankang in 549, taking Emperor Wu and his crown prince Xiao Gang hostages, and throwing Liang into a general state of confusion and unrest.

Return to Liang
Little is known about Xiao Yuanming's activities while in Eastern Wei and its successor state Northern Qi (as Gao Cheng's successor and brother Gao Yang seized the throne from Emperor Xiaojing in 550 and established Northern Qi as its Emperor Wenxuan), although it was said that Xiao Yuanming cried bitterly when he heard about the fall of Jiankang.  He was given the office of sanqi changshi (散騎常侍) -- an honorific office with little responsibilities.

In 552, Emperor Wu's son Xiao Yi the Prince of Xiangdong defeated Hou and declared himself emperor (as Emperor Yuan), setting his capital at Jiangling (江陵, in modern Jingzhou, Hubei) rather than the war-devastated Jiankang, but in 554, Western Wei forces captured Jiangling, capturing and then executing Emperor Yuan.  In light of Emperor Yuan's death, his most important general Wang Sengbian and Wang's lieutenant Chen Baxian, who together controlled the eastern empire, welcomed Emperor Yuan's 12-year-old son Xiao Fangzhi to Jiankang, preparing to make him emperor, and in spring 555, Xiao Fangzhi took the title Prince of Liang.

At that time, however, Emperor Wenxuan, who had previously made an unsuccessful attempt to establish Xiao Yuanming's cousin Xiao Tui (蕭退) as Liang's emperor in 553, decided to again try to establish a vassal regime in Liang.  He wrote Wang, suggesting that Xiao Fangzhi was too young to be emperor and proposing Xiao Yuanming as emperor—and Xiao Yuanming apparently cooperated with Emperor Wenxuan in this attempt, as he wrote a letter to Wang as well.  Wang initially wrote back to reject the offer.  However, a few quick victories by Northern Qi escort forces, commanded by Emperor Wenxuan's brother Gao Huan (高渙) the Prince of Shangdang, made Wang fearful, and he wrote back, agreeing to support Xiao Yuanming as emperor—but extracting a promise from Xiao Yuanming to create Xiao Fangzhi crown prince.  Wang also allowedly only 1,000 soldiers to accompany Xiao Yuanming south of the Yangtze River.  In summer 555, Xiao Yuanming arrived at Jiankang, and as he saw the main gate to the palace—Zhuque Gate (朱雀門), he cried bitterly, and the Liang officials also cried bitterly.  He then took the throne.  Pursuant to his promise, he created Xiao Fangzhi crown prince.  Wang and Chen continued to be in command of the armed forces.

Reign
Xiao Yuanming's reign did not last long.  In fall 555, Chen Baxian, displeased with Xiao Yuanming's ascension—which he had tried to persuade Wang Sengbian not to accept—made a surprise attack on Jiankang from his post at Jingkou (京口, in modern Zhenjiang, Jiangsu).  With everyone believing that Chen's army movement was in response to report that Northern Qi was planning to attack, Jiankang's defense forces made no effort to resist, and Chen surprised Wang, killing him and seizing power.  Two days after Wang's death, Xiao Yuanming abdicated and moved out of the palace, returning to his private residence.  Chen made Xiao Fangzhi emperor (as Emperor Jing).

After abdication
Emperor Jing formally made Xiao Yuanming prime minister and created him the greater title of Duke of Jian'an, although there is no evidence that Xiao Yuanming yielded much actual power.

In light of the coup, Northern Qi launched a major attack on Liang in winter 555, aided by Liang generals loyal to Wang Sengbian.  The Northern Qi and Liang armies following Chen Baxian's orders stalemated for months.  In summer 556, Northern Qi generals invited Xiao Yuanming to their camp for peace negotiations, and Chen sent Xiao Yuanming to the Northern Qi camp.  However, before any negotiations could commence, Xiao Yuanming died from a severe infection on his back.  In 558, Xiao Zhuang the Prince of Yongjia (Emperor Yuan's grandson), who was proclaimed Liang's emperor by the general Wang Lin following Chen's seizure of the throne from Emperor Jing earlier that year, honored Xiao Yuanming as Emperor Min—a posthumous name recognized by but rarely used by traditional historians.

Family
Sons:
 Xiao Zhang ()
 Xiao Yu ()
 Xiao Dao ()
 Xiao Dun, Prince Gaotang ()

Ancestry

References

 History of Southern Dynasties, vol. 51.
 Zizhi Tongjian, vols. 160, 161, 166.

Liang dynasty emperors
Northern Wei people
Northern Qi people
556 deaths
Year of birth unknown

Xiao Yuanming


Oysters are a family of bivalves with rough, thick shells, the Ostreidae. Some other types of shellfish are also called 'oyster'. Many species are edible, and are usually served raw. They are also good when cooked.

In the past, they were an important food source, especially in France and Britain. They used to grow in huge oyster beds, but were "overfished" in the 19th century. Nowadays they are more expensive, so eaten less often.

Oysters are usually harvested before they are fully grown. Left to themselves, they do grow quite large. A recent example was an oyster which was 11 inches long (29cm) and 3.7 lbs in weight (1.7kg). The BBC report says "The family (firm) estimated it could be between '15 and 20 years old' due to its size. The world's largest oyster was 13.97 inches long (35.5cm) and  4.21 inches (10.7cm) in width. It was found in Denmark in December 2013, Guinness World Records said".

Oysters are picked up from their muddy beds by dredging. The oysters are "shucked" from their shells before sale. Shucking is done with a short knife inserted between the upper and lower shell. The adductor muscle, which holds it closed, is cut away, and that releases the oyster. The oyster is sold loose but within its shell. Shucking method:

Insert the blade, with moderate force and vibration if necessary, at the hinge between the two valves.
Twist the blade until there is a slight pop.
Slide the blade upward to cut the adductor muscle which holds the shell closed.

The seawater the oysters were in does not stay in the oyster. Oysters (and shellfish generally) are purified while still alive before sale. That starts after they are harvested. The oysters are put into tanks pumped with clean water for 48 to 72 hours. That protects the consumer from any foul bacteria that the oyster might have picked up from the sea or river water.

Some of the unrelated 'oysters' are the pearl oyster, Pinctada, which is a clam, and a few mussels which look a bit like oysters when they are taken out of their shells.

References

Bivalves
Seafood

Oyster


The relational calculus consists of two calculi, the tuple relational calculus and the domain relational calculus, that is part of the relational model for databases and provide a declarative way to specify database queries. The raison d'être of relational calculus is the formalization of query optimization, which is finding more efficient manners to execute the same query in a database.

The relational calculus is similar to the relational algebra, which is also part of the relational model: While the relational calculus is meant as a declarative language that prescribes no execution order on the subexpressions of a relational calculus expression, the relational algebra is meant as an imperative language: the sub-expressions of a relational algebraic expression are meant to be executed from left-to-right and inside-out following their nesting.

Per Codd's theorem, the relational algebra and the domain-independent relational calculus are logically equivalent.

Example
A relational algebra expression might prescribe the following steps to retrieve the phone numbers and names of book stores that supply Some Sample Book:

 Join book stores and titles over the BookstoreID.
 Restrict the result of that join to tuples for the book Some Sample Book.
 Project the result of that restriction over StoreName and StorePhone.

A relational calculus expression would formulate this query in the following descriptive or declarative manner:

Get StoreName and StorePhone for book stores such that there exists a title BK with the same BookstoreID value and with a BookTitle value of Some Sample Book.

Mathematical properties

The relational algebra and the domain-independent relational calculus are logically equivalent: for any algebraic expression, there is an equivalent expression in the calculus, and vice versa. This result is known as Codd's theorem.

Purpose
The raison d'être of the relational calculus is the formalization of query optimization. Query optimization consists in determining from a query the most efficient manner (or manners) to execute it. Query optimization can be formalized as translating a relational calculus expression delivering an answer A into efficient relational algebraic expressions delivering the same answer A.

See also

 Calculus of relations

References

Logical calculi
Relational model

Relational calculus


The 92nd Grey Cup game took place on November 21, 2004, at Frank Clair Stadium in Ottawa, Ontario. The game decided the championship of the 2004 Canadian Football League season. The Toronto Argonauts defeated the BC Lions 27–19.

This is the first Grey Cup game to be played on the next-generation FieldTurf surface.

Game summary
Toronto Argonauts (27) - TDs, Damon Allen (2), Robert Baker; FGs Noel Prefontaine (2); cons., Prefontaine (3).

BC Lions (19) - TDs, Jason Clermont, Dave Dickenson; FGs Duncan O'Mahony (2); cons. O'Mahony (1).

First Quarter
BC – TD Clermont 12 pass from Dickenson (O'Mahony convert) 4:07 7 - 0 BC

Second Quarter
TOR – FG Prefontaine 27 7:40 7 - 3 BC
TOR – TD Allen 1 run (Prefontaine convert) 12:22 10 - 7 TOR
BC – FG O'Mahony 42 13:13 10 - 10 TIE
TOR – TD Baker 23 pass from Allen (Prefontaine convert) 14:37 17 - 10 TOR

Third Quarter
TOR – TD Allen 1 run (Prefontaine convert) 4:45 24 - 10 TOR
BC – FG O'Mahony 36 9:16 24 - 13 TOR

Fourth Quarter
BC – TD Dickenson 7 run (convert failed)  6:06 24 - 19 TOR
TOR – FG Prefontaine 16 12:19 27 - 19 TOR

The BC Lions took the opening kickoff and fashioned an impressive drive that started and ended with a Jason Clermont reception. Quarterback Dave Dickenson was perfect on a series of short precision passes, taking the Lions from their own 38-yard-line down the field for a touchdown and an early 7-0 lead. The scoring play was a 12-yard toss to Clermont on a play fake that drew away the Toronto defence, which looked bewildered on the whole series.

Toronto nearly hit a field goal later in the quarter, but a flag was thrown on Noel Prefontaine's 39-yard attempt. The subsequent kick from 47 yards missed, leaving BC pinned near its own goal line.

But Dickenson engineered a series of first downs as the quarter wound down, moving the Lions to midfield with help from receivers Geroy Simon and Ryan Thelwell and a nine-yard carry by Antonio Warren.  Duncan O'Mahony punted as the quarter ended, angling the ball out of bounds at the Argos' 21-yard line.  Overall, BC had the ball in their possession a whopping 11 minutes in the opening 15.

Damon Allen failed to ignite the Argos offence early in the second quarter, despite two quick chances thanks to a punt return fumble by Aaron Lockett of the Lions.  On the second of two Noel Prefontaine punts, Lockett held on to the ball and ran BC to its own 50-yard line. But the Lions couldn't move the ball. Trying to avoid dangerous punt returner Bashir Levingston, BC kicker Duncan O'Mahony angled his punt out of bounds for only nine yards, giving Toronto good field position.

A long completion from Allen to R. Jay Soward moved the Argos to the BC 20, and a 27-yard field goal by Prefontaine put Toronto on the board.

Allen began to find his receivers on Toronto's next drive, hitting Robert Baker for a 35-yarder and a 20-yarder to move inside the Lions' red zone. A pass interference call against the Lions then put the ball at the 1-yard line, and Allen plunged across for the touchdown and the Argos' first lead.

BC responded immediately, getting into field goal range on a Jason Clermont catch from Dave Dickenson. Duncan O'Mahony hit a 42-yarder to draw the Lions even. But just before the half, Allen again connected with Baker for a 23-yard touchdown.

The field-position advantage enjoyed by the Toronto Argonauts in the second quarter continued on the opening drive of the second half, as Allen got the ball at midfield. Allen moved the ball efficiently again, and for the second time in the game dove for a one-yard touchdown to give the Argos a 14-point lead.

Dave Dickenson had some success moving the ball for BC, but the Lions could only muster a 36-yard field goal by Duncan O'Mahony.

On Toronto's next possession, Allen went down with an apparent leg injury while running for a first down. Ironically, the play was called back on a holding penalty. Michael Bishop replaced Allen at quarterback while the 41-year-old received treatment on the bench.

The Lions defence got its best pressure of the game on Bishop early in the fourth, forcing an errant pass then nearly causing a fumble on the next play.

Dave Dickenson took over for the Lions at his own 10-yard line, and engineered an impressive drive. Lyle Green caught two passes for first downs before running back Antonio Warren took over.  Warren ran for 30 and 15 yards, setting up a Lions touchdown on Dave Dickenson's five-yard rush and dive into the end zone. Two consecutive time-count violations on a two-point conversion attempt pushed Duncan O'Mahony back for a 22-yard convert attempt that went wide.

Damon Allen returned to the game for the Argos, and was promptly decked as he tried to pass by a charging Barrin Simpson.

Dickenson just missed a streaking Geroy Simon's outstretched hands to stop the next BC drive, and Toronto took over again with a short field.

Allen found Tony Miles wide open and pushed down to the Lions' 10-yard line with the clock at three minutes and counting. Noel Prefontaine pushed the Argos' lead to eight points on a short field goal.

BC failed to move the ball on what would turn out to be its last chance with the ball, Dickenson just missing the outstretched hands of Simon on a bomb attempt.

With the ball back, the Argos got two crucial first downs and wound down the clock to win the game and their 15th Grey Cup.

Notable participants
Casey Printers, the 2004 Most Outstanding Player, dressed for the game but did not see any playing time. He had stepped in at quarterback for the Lions after an early-season injury to Dickenson, but Dickenson returned in time to play in the Grey Cup.
Jason Clermont, a Regina native who scored the game's opening touchdown, was also named the Most Outstanding Canadian Award in the CFL over the season.
Toronto Argonauts' 41-year-old quarterback Damon Allen, was named the game's Most Valuable Player for the third time in his career.

2004 CFL Playoffs

West Division
Semi-final (November 7 @ Edmonton, Alberta) Saskatchewan Roughriders 14-6 Edmonton Eskimos
Final (November 14 @ Vancouver, British Columbia) BC Lions 27-25 Saskatchewan Roughriders (OT)

East Division
Semi-final (November 7 @ Toronto, Ontario) Toronto Argonauts 24-6 Hamilton Tiger-Cats
Final (November 14 @ Montreal, Quebec) Toronto Argonauts 26-18 Montreal Alouettes

References

External links

Grey Cup
Grey Cup
BC Lions
Toronto Argonauts
Grey Cup
Canadian football competitions in Ottawa
2004 in Ontario
2000s in Ottawa
November 2004 sports events in Canada
2004 in Canadian television

92nd Grey Cup


The Chinese family of scripts are writing systems descended from the Chinese oracle bone script and used for a variety of languages in East Asia. They include logosyllabic systems such as the Chinese script itself, and adaptations to other languages, such as kanji (Japanese), Hanja (Korean), chữ Hán and chữ Nôm (Vietnamese), Sawgun and Sawndip (Zhuang) and Bowen (Bai). More divergent are Tangut, Khitan large script, and its offspring Jurchen, as well as the Yi script, the Sui script and Geba script, which were inspired by Chinese although not directly descended from it. The partially deciphered Khitan small script may be another. In addition, various phonetic scripts descend from Chinese characters, of which the best known are the various kana syllabaries, the semi-syllabary bopomofo (or zhuyin) , nüshu, and lisu.

The Chinese scripts are written in various calligraphic hands, principally seal script, clerical script, regular script, semi-cursive script, and cursive script. Adaptations range from the conservative, as in Korean, which used Chinese characters in their standard form with only a few local coinages, and relatively conservative Japanese, which has coined a few hundred new characters and used traditional character forms until the mid-20th century, to the extensive adaptations of Zhuang and Vietnamese, each coining over 10,000 new characters by Chinese formation principles, to the highly divergent Tangut script, which formed over 5,000 new characters by its own principles.

Written Chinese

Origins

The earliest known Chinese writing consists of divinatory texts inscribed on ox scapulae and tortoise plastrons found at the last Shang dynasty capital near Anyang and dating from 1200 BC. This oracle bone script shows extensive simplification and linearization, which most researchers believe indicates an extensive period of prior development of the script. Although some Neolithic symbols have been found on pottery, jade or bone at a variety of sites in China, there is no scholarly consensus that any of them are directly related to the Shang oracle bone script. Bronze inscriptions from about 1100 BC are written in a developed form of the script and provide a richer body of text.

Each character of the early script represents a word of Old Chinese, which at that time was uniformly monosyllabic. The strategies used are traditionally classified into six categories () first recorded in the second century dictionary Shuowen Jiezi. Three of these categories involved a representation of the meaning of the word:
 Pictograms () represent a word by a picture—later stylized—such as ,  and .
 Ideograms () are abstract symbols such as  and .
 Semantic compounds () combine simpler elements to indicate the meaning of the word, as in , composed of two .
Evolved forms of these characters are still among the most commonly used today.

Words that could not be represented pictorially, such as abstract terms and grammatical particles, were denoted using the rebus strategy, selecting characters for similar-sounding words. These phonetic loans () are thus new uses of existing characters rather than new graphic forms. An example is , written with the character for a similar-sounding word meaning 'wheat'. Sometimes the borrowed character would be modified slightly to distinguish it from the original, as with , a borrowing of .

Phono-semantic compounds () were obtained by adding semantic indicators to disambiguate phonetic loans. This type was already used extensively on the oracle bones, and has been the main source of new characters since then. For example, the character  originally representing  was also used to write the pronoun and modal particle . Later the less common original word was written with the compound , obtained by adding the symbol  to the character. Sometimes the original phonetic similarity has been obscured by millennia of sound change, as in  <  'go to' and  <  'road'. Many characters often explained as semantic compounds were originally phono-semantic compounds that have been obscured in this way. Some authors even dispute the validity of the semantic compound category.

The sixth traditional category () contains very few characters; its meaning is uncertain.

Styles

Development and simplification of the script continued during the Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn periods, with characters becoming less pictorial and more linear and regular, with rounded strokes being replaced by sharp angles. During the Warring States period, writing became more widespread, with further simplification and variation, particularly in the eastern states. After the western state of Qin unified China, its more conservative seal script became the standard for the whole country. A simplified form known as the clerical script became the standard during the Han dynasty, and later evolved into the regular script still used today.
At the same time semi-cursive and cursive scripts developed.

The traditional Chinese script is currently used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Mainland China and Singapore use the simplified Chinese variant.

Dialectal writing
Until the early 20th century, formal writing employed Literary Chinese, based on the vocabulary and syntax of classical works. The script was also used less formally to record local varieties, which had over time diverged from the classical language and each other. The logographic script easily accommodated differences in pronunciation, meaning and word order, but often new characters were required for words that could not be related to older forms. Many such characters were created using the traditional methods, particularly phono-semantic compounds.

The Chinese script was for a long period the only writing system in East Asia, and was also hugely influential as the vehicle of the dominant Chinese culture. Korea, Japan and Vietnam adopted Chinese literary culture as a whole. For many centuries, all writing in neighbouring societies was done in Classical Chinese, albeit influenced by the writer's native language. Although they wrote in Chinese, writing about local subjects required characters to represent names of local people and places; leading to the creation of Han characters specific to other languages, some of which were later reimported as Chinese characters. Later they sought to use the script to write their own languages. Chinese characters were adapted to represent the words of other languages using a range of strategies, including
 representing loans from Chinese using their original characters,
 representing words with characters for similar-sounding Chinese words,
 representing words with characters for Chinese words with similar meanings,
 creating new characters using the same formation principles as Chinese characters, especially phono-semantic compounds, and
 creating new characters in other ways, such as compounds of pairs of characters indicating the pronunciation of the initial and final parts of a word respectively (similar to Chinese fanqie spellings).
The principle of representing one monosyllabic word with one character was readily applied to neighbouring languages to the south with a similar analytic structure to Chinese, such as Vietnamese and Zhuang. The script was a poorer fit for the polysyllabic agglutinative languages of the north-east, such as Korean, Japanese and the Mongolic and Tungusic languages.

Korean

Chinese characters adapted to write Korean are known as Hanja. From the 9th century, Korean was written using a number of systems collectively known as Idu, in which Hanja were used to write both Sino-Korean and native Korean roots, and a smaller number of Hanja were used to write Korean grammatical morphemes with similar sounds. The overlapping uses of Hanja made the system complex and difficult to use, even when reduced forms for grammatical morphemes were introduced with the Gugyeol system in the 13th and 14th centuries.

The Hangul alphabet introduced in the 15th century was much simpler, and specifically designed for the sounds of Korean. The alphabet makes systematic use of modifiers corresponding to features of Korean sounds. Although Hangul is unrelated to Chinese characters, its letters are written in syllabic blocks that can be interspersed with Hanja. Such a Korean mixed script became the usual way of writing the language, with roots of Chinese origin denoted by Hanja and all other elements rendered in Hangul. Hanja is still used (but not very commonly like the Japanese) and is required in both North and South Korea.

Historically, a few characters were coined in Korea, such as ; these are known as gukja (/).

Japanese

Chinese characters adapted to write Japanese words are known as kanji. Chinese words borrowed into Japanese could be written with the Chinese character, while Japanese words could be written using the character for a Chinese word of similar meaning. Because there have been multiple layers of borrowing into Japanese, a single kanji may have several readings in Japanese.

Other systems, known as kana, used Chinese characters phonetically to transcribe the sounds of Japanese syllables. An early system of this type was man'yōgana, as used in the 8th century anthology Man'yōshū. This system was not quite a syllabary, because each Japanese syllable could be represented by one of several characters, but from it were derived two syllabaries still in use today. They differ because they sometimes selected different characters for a syllable, and because they used different strategies to reduce these characters for easy writing: the angular katakana were obtained by selecting a part of each character, while hiragana were derived from the cursive forms of whole characters. Such classic works as Lady Murasaki's The Tale of Genji were written in hiragana, the only system permitted to women of the time.

Modern Japanese writing uses a composite system, using kanji for word stems, hiragana for inflexional endings and grammatical words, and katakana to transcribe non-Chinese loanwords.

A few hundred characters have been coined in Japan; these are known as kokuji (), and include natural phenomena, particularly fish, such as , together with everyday terms such as  and technical terms such as .

Vietnamese

Vietnamese was first written from the 13th century using the chữ Nôm script based on Chinese characters, but the system developed in a quite different way than in Korea or Japan. Vietnamese was and is a strongly analytic language with many distinct syllables (roughly 4,800 in the modern standard language), so there was little motivation to develop a syllabary. As with Korean and Japanese, characters were used to write borrowed Chinese words, native words with a similar sound and native words with a similar meaning. In the Vietnamese case, the latter category consisted mainly of early loans from Chinese that had come to be accepted as native. The Vietnamese system also involved creation of new characters using Chinese principles, but on a far greater scale than in Korea or Japan. The resulting system was highly complex and was never mastered by more than 5% of the population. It was completely replaced in the 20th century by the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet.

Zhuang

Zhuang has been written using Sawndip for over a thousand years. The script uses both Chinese characters and new characters formed using the traditional methods, as well as some formed by combining pairs of characters to indicate the pronunciation of a word by the fanqie method. The number of new created characters is similar in scale to the chữ Nôm of Vietnam. Even though an official alphabet-based writing system for Zhuang was introduced in 1957, Sawndip is still more often used in less formal situations.

Others
Several peoples in southwest China recorded laws, songs and other religious and cultural texts by representing words of their languages using a mix of Chinese characters with a similar sound or meaning, or pairs of Chinese characters indicating pronunciation using the fanqie method. The languages so recorded included Miao, Yao, Bouyei, Kam, Bai and Hani. All these languages are now written using Latin-based scripts.

Chinese characters were also used to transcribe the Mongolian text of The Secret History of the Mongols.

Descendant scripts by type
Logographic
Oracle bone script, seal script, clerical script, standard script, semi-cursive script, cursive script, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese,  Zetian characters, bowen, sawndip, chữ Hán, chữ Nôm, hanja and kanji.

Syllabary
Hiragana, katakana, man'yōgana and Nüshu.

Semi-syllabary
Zhuyin Fuhao, gugyeol, hyangchal, idu.

Non-descendant related scripts

Between the 10th and 13th centuries, northern China was ruled by foreign dynasties that created scripts for their own languages.
The Khitan large script and Khitan small script, which in turn influenced the Tangut script and Jurchen script, used characters that superficially resemble Chinese characters, but with the exception of a few loans were constructed using quite different principles.
In particular the Khitan small script contained phonetic sub-elements arranged in a square block in a manner similar to the more sophisticated Hangul system devised later for Korean.

Other scripts in China that borrowed or adapted some Chinese characters but are otherwise distinct include Ba–Shu scripts Geba script, Sui script, Yi script and the Lisu syllabary.

See also
Chinese character encoding
Chinese input methods for computers
Chinese language
Chinese numerals
Brahmic scripts
Mojikyō

References

Citations

Works cited

External links

Evolution of Chinese Characters
History of Chinese writing
Unihan Database: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean references, readings, and meanings for all the Chinese and Chinese-derived characters in the Unicode character set
 Ideographic Rapporteur Group working documents—many big size pdfs, some of them with details of CJK extensions
 Welcome To Mojikyo Institute!—big size downloadable Mojikyo program files
Khitan script on Omniglot
Linguist List – Description of Kitan
 Jurchen Script
 Tangut script at Omniglot
Tangut coins, Andrew West

Writing systems

Chinese family of scripts


The American city of Bay City is a small city in the state of Michigan, United States. In the 2000 census it had more than 35,000 people living in it.

Although small, Bay City is one of the largest port cities on Lake Huron, one of the North American Great Lakes. It is part of a triangle of small cities in Central Michigan. The other two cities are Saginaw, Michigan, and Midland, Michigan.

Bay City was the birthplace in 1958 of Madonna Ciccone, a well-known American singer. The Scottish Pop group Bay City Rollers are said to have gotten their name from the city as well.

Other websites

 City of Bay City, Michigan

Cities in Michigan
County seats in Michigan

Bay City, Michigan


"The Adventure of Silver Blaze", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the first from the 12 in the cycle collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in December 1892.

Doyle considered "Silver Blaze" among his favourite Sherlock Holmes stories. One of the most popular Sherlock Holmes short stories, "Silver Blaze" focuses on the disappearance of the eponymous race horse (a famous winner, owned by a Colonel Ross) on the eve of an important race and on the apparent murder of its trainer. The tale is distinguished by its atmospheric Dartmoor setting and late-Victorian sporting milieu. The plotting hinges on the "curious incident of the dog in the night-time":

Plot summary

Sherlock Holmes and his partner Dr Watson travel by train to Dartmoor to investigate a crime of disappearance of the great race horse Silver Blaze and the murder of the horse's trainer, John Straker. Holmes and Watson arrive at King's Pyland, from which Silver Blaze is missing. Bookmaker Fitzroy Simpson had come to Dartmoor (and specifically to King's Pyland) to gather information about Silver Blaze and his stablemate Bayard. He had approached both Straker's maid and a stable boy the night of the horse's disappearance and has been arrested for the murder. However, to Holmes, there seem to be a number of facts that do not fit the case against Simpson, damning as it looks. It seems odd, for instance, that he would lead the horse out on to the moor simply to injure or kill him, which could be done right in his stall. He could not have stolen the animal. What good would such a famous thoroughbred be to him? Why has an exhaustive search of the neighbourhood not turned up Silver Blaze? What has Simpson done with him?

Sherlock Holmes soon tracks down Silver Blaze, literally: his tracks (along with a man's) are clearly visible in the soil, albeit intermittently. Holmes also deduces why the police could not find the horse, despite having looked right at him. Holmes ensures Silver Blaze's safety, and turns his mind to other aspects of the case.

John Straker, Silver Blaze's late trainer, has been killed by a blow to the skull, assumed to have been administered by Simpson with his "Penang lawyer", a clublike walking stick. Simpson's cravat is also found in Straker's hand, and the latter's coat is found draped over a furze bush. A knife is found at the crime scene—a peculiarly delicate-looking one, with a small blade. Dr. Watson, from his medical experience, identifies it as a cataract knife used for the most delicate surgery—useful as it is for that purpose, it would be unsuitable as a weapon. In addition, Straker also seems to have gashed himself in the hip with it.

One of the stable lads, Ned Hunter, was on guard duty the night of the crime, but he proves to have been drugged with powdered opium placed in his supper. No one else who ate the curried mutton made at the Strakers' house that evening suffered any ill effects, but Hunter was in a profound stupor well into the next day. Straker's pockets contained two interesting items: a tallow candle and a milliner's bill for (among other things) a 22-guinea dress, made out to one William Derbyshire. There is the curious incident with the dog, and a problem with the sheep kept at the stable: a shepherd tells Holmes that three of his animals have recently become suddenly lame.

Holmes's powers unravel the mystery, and lay bare what villainies there are to be exposed. He visits the milliner's shop in London and determines, using Straker's photograph, that Straker posed as Derbyshire. This establishes his motive: he had a mistress with expensive tastes, and tried to influence the race's outcome to earn himself a large sum of money. The curried mutton was a clue, also; only such a spicy dish could have masked the taste of powdered opium, and it was impossible for Simpson to arrange a highly seasoned meal that evening for his purposes. Therefore, someone in the household must have conceived the idea—namely, Straker himself.

The "curious incident of the dog in the night-time" is easily explained: the dog made no noise, because no stranger was there. As Holmes explains: "I had grasped the significance of the silence of the dog, for one true inference invariably suggests others.... Obviously the midnight visitor was someone whom the dog knew well." It was Straker who removed Silver Blaze from his stall and led him out on to the moor. Straker's purpose in doing this was to use the cataract knife to inflict a slight injury upon one of the horse's legs, rendering him temporarily lame in a way that would be undetectable on examination and thus likely put down to strain. He had thought to use Simpson's cravat (which the latter dropped when he was expelled from King's Pyland) as a sling to hold the horse's leg to cut it. But instead, Straker was killed when the horse, sensing that something was wrong, panicked and kicked the trainer in the head. The lame sheep had been used by Straker for practice.

Colonel Ross's main concern, of course, is getting his horse back safely. Holmes chooses not to tell Ross where his horse has been (although he has known all along) until after the Wessex Cup, which is won by Silver Blaze. At first the Colonel does not recognize his own horse, since the animal's distinguishing white markings have been covered with dye. The horse had been looked after by one of the Colonel's neighbours, Silas Brown, who had found him wandering the moor and hidden him in his barn. Holmes then explains the details of the case step-by-step to the satisfaction of the Colonel, Watson, and Inspector Gregory.

Gregory is one of the more competent police detectives Holmes works with in the course of his career. He conducts a thorough investigation of the crime before Holmes's arrival, and gathers all the evidence Holmes needs to solve the case. Holmes notes that Gregory is "an extremely good officer", and observes that the only quality he lacks is imagination—the ability to imagine what might have happened on a given occasion, and act on this intuition.

Publication history
"The Adventure of Silver Blaze" was published in the UK in The Strand Magazine in December 1892, and in the United States in the US edition of the Strand in January 1893. It was also published in Harper's Weekly (US) on 25 February 1893. The story was published with nine illustrations by Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine, and with two illustrations by W. H. Hyde in Harper's Weekly. It was included in the short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, which was published in December 1893 in the UK and February 1894 in the US.

Adaptations

Film and television
One of the short films in the Sherlock Holmes Éclair film series (1912) was based on the story. Georges Tréville played Sherlock Holmes in the film series.

A short film adaptation was released in 1923 starring Eille Norwood in the role of Holmes and Hubert Willis cast as Dr Watson. This was part of the 1921–1923 Sherlock Holmes Stoll film series, specifically the set of films released in 1923 under the series title The Last Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

In 1937, the British film Silver Blaze was released starring Arthur Wontner as Holmes and Ian Fleming as Watson. The film was released in the U.S. four years later as Murder at the Baskervilles.

The story was adapted as the 1977 television film Silver Blaze starring Christopher Plummer as Holmes and Thorley Walters as Watson.

The story was adapted in 1988 for Granada television's The Return of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes and Edward Hardwicke as Watson.

An episode of the animated television series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century was based on the story. The episode, titled "Silver Blaze", first aired in 1999.

In Elementary, season 2, episode 7 "The Marchioness", used elements from "Silver Blaze" in the plot.

Radio

"Silver Blaze" was adapted by Edith Meiser as an episode of the radio series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with Richard Gordon as Sherlock Holmes and Leigh Lovell as Dr. Watson. The episode aired on 8 December 1930. Other episodes adapted from the story aired in May 1935 (with Louis Hector as Holmes and Lovell as Watson) and in April 1936 (with Gordon as Holmes and Harry West as Watson). Meiser also adapted the story for The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for a 1939 episode with Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson. It was also dramatised as a 1943 episode of the series.

A radio dramatisation of the story aired on British radio in 1938, titled "Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of Silver Blaze". A different adaptation of the story aired on the BBC Home Service in 1945 with Laidman Browne as Holmes and Norman Shelley as Watson. A radio adaptation starring John Gielgud as Holmes and Ralph Richardson as Watson aired on NBC radio in March 1955.

A 1962 dramatisation of "Silver Blaze" aired on the BBC Light Programme, as part of the 1952–1969 radio series starring Carleton Hobbs as Holmes and Norman Shelley as Watson. Another adaptation aired on British radio in 1978, starring Barry Foster as Holmes and David Buck as Watson.

"Silver Blaze" was dramatised for BBC Radio 4 in 1992 by Bert Coules as an episode of the 1989–1998 radio series starring Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as Watson. It featured Jack May as  Colonel Ross, Susan Sheridan as Mrs Straker, Brett Usher as Silas Brown, Terence Edmond as Inspector Gregory, and Petra Markham as Edith.

A 2014 episode of the radio series The Classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was adapted from the story, with John Patrick Lowrie as Holmes and Lawrence Albert as Watson.

Other
In 1966, jigsaw manufacturer Springbok released a circular puzzle called "Silver Blaze - From the Memories of Sherlock Holmes".  The goal was to solve the mystery using an enclosed story booklet combined with scenes depicted in the puzzle. A sealed solution was also included.

In popular culture

The title of Mark Haddon's award-winning novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is taken from a remark made by Sherlock Holmes in "Silver Blaze". The protagonist of this novel, Christopher John Francis Boone, mentions Sherlock Holmes several times throughout the book.

In the episode "Service of All the Dead" of the TV series Inspector Morse, Morse asks Sergeant Lewis how well he knows his Sherlock Holmes and starts to quote the passage, then a constable (an extra) says the punchline to Lewis's further bewilderment.

Without explicitly referencing or quoting the Sherlock Holmes story, the silence of a dog in the night-time is similarly a clue in the crime film Beck – Mannen utan ansikte.

In Guards! Guards! Sir Terry Pratchett refers to "the curious incident of the orang-utan in the nighttime."

In the Three Investigators' fourth book The Mystery of the Green Ghost, Jupiter Jones remembers this Sherlock Holmes story.  He uses the fact that a dog does nothing in the night-time, in the presence of the eponymous green ghost, to solve the mystery: the ghost is not really there at all.

The phrase "the dog didn't bark" is often used as a shorthand way of saying that if we believe that a proposition is made true in virtue of corresponding to fact, then the absence of one or more relevant facts indicates that the proposition is likely not true.  This is usually called evidence of absence, whereby the expectation of evidence makes its absence significant.  Since we would expect a watchdog (as in Holmes' story) to bark if the horse it was guarding were stolen by a stranger, the failure of the dog to bark when the theft occurred probably means that the thief was someone known to the dog as a friendly person and not a stranger. The absence of an expected fact (the barking of the dog if a stranger had stolen the horse) narrows down the list of suspects likely to be the thief.

References
Notes

Sources

External links

text of The Silver Blaze by Arthur Conan Doyle

1892 short stories
Fictional horses
Silver Blaze
Works originally published in The Strand Magazine
Short stories adapted into films

The Adventure of Silver Blaze


A cointoise is a pendant scarf made from a hat or helmet. Originally, the cloth was worn by Crusaders to keep their helmets cool in the heat of Palestine. Later, it was used a decoration in jousting; the same term being applied later to the veil worn by women which floated from the top of their hennins. It is the original of the heraldic "mantle" or wavy scrolls around a coat of arms.

References

http://www.levinehat.com/glossary

Headgear

Cointoise


John McEntire (born April 9, 1970 in Portland, Oregon) is an American recording engineer, producer, drummer and multi-instrumentalist, based in Chicago, Illinois. He is a member of both Tortoise and the Sea and Cake.

McEntire started playing drums at age 10.  Throughout high school, he performed in marching bands and studied privately for seven years.  He went on to attend Oberlin Conservatory initially as a percussion major, but eventually switched to study in the school's then newly created program for Technology in Music and Related Arts.

Musical career
McEntire is currently a member of Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, and The Red Krayola.  His drumming work as a sideman can be heard on recordings, such as Since by Richard Buckner, Enantiodromia and Life on the Fly by Azita, Near-Life Experience by Come, Kernel by Seam, Chicago Wednesday by Jandek, and The Spectrum Between by David Grubbs.

While attending Oberlin, he briefly played with Mark Edwards in My Dad Is Dead in 1988, and then joined Bastro with David Grubbs and Bundy K. Brown in 1989.  In 1991, he relocated along with Grubbs and Brown to Chicago where they changed their musical direction and became the first incarnation of Gastr Del Sol. Their debut album, The Serpentine Similar, was released in 1993. McEntire and Brown left to play in Tortoise in 1994, yet McEntire continued to make contributions to Gastr Del Sol's later recordings and performances.

McEntire had also played in Seam, The Stokastikats, Stereolab, and The Oily Bloodmen. He was a principal musician on Jim O'Rourke's Terminal Pharmacy and has appeared on many other solo O'Rourke projects.

Production/engineering work
As a producer and engineer, McEntire has mixed and remixed recordings by many artists. He also owns and operates Soma Electronic Music Studios in Nevada City, California, to which he relocated in 2018 after 25 years in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago and then a brief stint in Los Angeles.

He produces and engineers most of the recordings for his own bands, as well as many of the solo efforts by bandmates Sam Prekop, Archer Prewitt, Jeff Parker, and Doug McCombs.  He has also engineered, produced, and/or mixed albums and tracks for many artists including: Bell Orchestre, Stereolab, Bright Eyes, Bobby Conn, Teenage Fanclub, Sylvain Chauveau, Kaki King, Tom Ze, The Ex, Smog, Trans Am, Eleventh Dream Day, Cougar, Antibalas, Innaway, The For Carnation, Dianogah, U.S. Maple, Chicago Underground Duo, Spookey Ruben, Blur, Pivot, The Fiery Furnaces, The Car Is on Fire, Small Sins, Broken Social Scene, Coldcut, Spoon, Jaga Jazzist, Great 3, Yo La Tengo, Radian, Pia Fraus and most recently, La Ciencia Simple.

McEntire is a pioneering user of modern digital audio workstation software, first employing Pro Tools on the 1997 The Sea and Cake album The Fawn and then on Stereolab's Dots and Loops, released later the same year.

References

External links
 John McEntire, Pushing Tortoise, interview
 John McEntire, Rock Reaching, interview

1970 births
Living people
Musicians from Portland, Oregon
Oberlin College alumni
American indie rock musicians
Record producers from Oregon
20th-century American drummers
American male drummers
Tortoise (band) members
Bastro members
The Sea and Cake members
Red Krayola members
Gastr del Sol members
21st-century American drummers
20th-century American male musicians
21st-century American male musicians

John McEntire


John Barton (11 June 1789 – 10 March 1852) was an English economist.

Life
Barton was born in London to Quaker parents, John Barton (1755–1789) and Elizabeth Horne (1760–1833). Throughout his career, his primary concern was poverty. "The poor grow more miserable as the rich grow more wealthy," he wrote in 1846. While he praised the classical school, he disagreed with it on the two pressing policy issues of the day, supporting the continuation of both the Poor Laws and the Corn Laws. He concerned himself mainly with statistical evidence, seldom venturing into the realm of pure theory. His empirical study of the mortality of the poor under the Poor Laws (1824, lost) suggested that contrary to the classical doctrines, the lot of the poor had improved under the operation of this system. "We shall regard the benificent principle of legislative relief, when divested of its incidental vices, as a most useful auxiliary to our endeavors for raising the condition of the labouring classes," he wrote.

His publication Observations on the Circumstances which Influence the Condition of the Labouring Classes of Society is credited with changing the opinion of David Ricardo with regard to the effect of new machinery on wages, unemployment, and national income; the chapter On Machinery, which Ricardo added to the second edition of Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, was the result of Barton's influence.

Barton was one of the founders of Birkbeck College, then called the London Mechanics' Institution. He may have been a member of the London Statistical Society. He was interested in botany in addition to social science.

Works
 Hints for Improving the Condition of the Poor (1815) in The Philanthropist No 18, April 1815
 Observations on the Circumstances which Influence the Condition of the Labouring Classes of Society (1820)
 An Inquiry into causes of the Progressive Depreciation of Agricultural Labour in Modern Times with Suggestions for its Remedy (1830)
 In Defence of the Corn Laws, or An Inquiry into the Expediency of the Existing Restrictions on the Importation of Foreign Corn with Observations on the Present Social and Political Prospects of Great Britain (1833)

Family
Barton married first Ann Woodrouffe Smith in 1811; she died in 1822. His second wife was Fanny, daughter of James Rickman. John Barton the missionary was their son.

References

19th-century British economists
1789 births
1852 deaths

John Barton (economist)


An electric violin is a string instrument which is played with a bow, like a normal violin. The strings are usually tuned to the notes G, D, A, and E, but it could have its pitches changed as it is electric. It is held between the left collar bone (near the shoulder) and the chin. Different notes are made by fingering with the left hand while bowing with the right. It has no frets or other markers. Players have to learn the exact place to put the fingers of the left hand and memorise them. Luthiers tend to fix electric violins as well.
The modern electric violin is about 10 years old. Similar string instruments have been around for almost 1,000 years. It became the most enjoyable electric instrument played along with the electric bass. It is used as a solo instrument, in rock and sometimes blues. It is also used in folk music.

An electric violin is normally not in the shape of a normal violin, but in wacky shapes and colours.

String instruments
Electronic music

Electric violin


Abdulrahman Suleiman (born 10 January 1984) is a Qatari middle-distance runner who specialises in both the 800 metres and 1500 metres. He was the 2002 Asian champion over 1500 m and represented Qatar at the 2004 Summer Olympics.

Biography
Born in Qatar, he was the second of his family to enjoy success in professional athletics, following in the footsteps of his older brother Mohamed Suleiman who was Qatar's first ever Olympic medallist. Suleiman began competing internationally at youth level: he ran in the 800 m heats of the 1999 World Youth Championships in Athletics and reached the event final at the 2000 World Junior Championships in Athletics the next year. His first medalling performances soon followed, although they came over the longer 1500 m distance – a bronze medal at the 2001 World Youth Championships paved the way for his silver medal at the 2002 World Junior Championships.

Suleiman broke into the global elite at the age of nineteen later that year, taking a gold medal at the 2002 Asian Athletics Championships. Another of his brothers (Nasser Suleiman) won a 5000 metres medal at the same competition and Abdulrahman said of his 1500 m win "I am proud to have kept up a 12-year-old family tradition". The performance at the continental championships earned him a 1500 m place on the Asian team at the 2002 IAAF World Cup. His brother Mohamed was the 1992 champion of the competition, but the younger Suleiman did not scale such heights and finished in seventh place. He represented his country on the Olympic stage at the 2004 Athens Olympics, but he did not manage to progress beyond the heats stage. At the 2005 Asian Athletics Championships he completed a Qatari 1–2 in the 1500 m with Majed Saeed Sultan and Suleiman's runner-up time of 1:44.73 was a new personal best.

He ran at the 2006 IAAF World Indoor Championships and set a Qatari indoor record over 800 m with a time of 1:47.58. He finished fifth in his semi-final, thus he did not make the cut for the 800 m world final. He represented his continent in the 1500 m for a second time at the 2006 IAAF World Cup, and again he was the seventh-place finisher. That year at the Memorial van Damme in Brussels, Suleiman teamed up with Majed Saeed Sultan, Salem Amer Al-Badri and Abubaker Ali Kamal to form a Qatari 4×800 metres relay team. The Kenyan team ran a world record time but Qatar's fourth place in 7:06.66 (four seconds behind) was a new Asian record for the uncommon event.

Suleiman has not competed internationally since 2006.

References

External links

1984 births
Living people
Qatari male middle-distance runners
Olympic athletes for Qatar
Athletes (track and field) at the 2004 Summer Olympics
Athletes (track and field) at the 2002 Asian Games
Athletes (track and field) at the 2006 Asian Games
Asian Games competitors for Qatar
Asian Athletics Championships winners

Abdulrahman Suleiman


Alexander Murray Palmer Haley (August 11, 1921 – February 10, 1992) was an African-American writer. He also had Irish and, according to his own telling, some Cherokee ancestry. He was born in Ithaca, New York. He is best known for The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which he helped Malcolm X write, and his book Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which was about his family history and inspired a television mini-series. He died of a heart attack in Seattle, Washington.

Haley family lineage
Members of his family lineage that can be confirmed:
 Parents: Simon Alexander Haley [1892-1973] married 1919 1st wife Bertha George Palmer [1897-1932]
 Paternal Grandparents: Alex Haley [1845-1918] and 2nd wife Queen Jackson [1857-1941] Natural daughter of James Jackson of Alabama [1822-1879]
 Maternal Grandparents:Cynthia Babica [Murray] [1875-1949] married to William Edward Palmer [1872-1926][Son of George Palmer and Salena Groves]
 Maternal Great Grandparents:Tom Lea/Lea Murray [b.1833-?] married 1859 to Arena Holt [1841-1908] [Daughter of "Hillian" (b.1815)]
 Maternal Great Great Grandparents: "Chicken George" Lea [1806-1890] married Mathilda McGreggor Murray Lea [b.1806-?]

Roots
According to Haley, he based his novel Roots on oral tradition and research, including a visit to Africa.

About the first third of the book is of Haley's possible ancestor, Kunta Kinte, growing up in Africa in the 1700s.  This part of the book describes the culture he lived in.

When Kinte is a teenager, he is kidnapped and taken across the Atlantic Ocean to Annapolis, Maryland. He is sold in Spotslvania County Virginia to John Waller and then to his brother William Waller.  He tries to escape and fails.  Part of his foot is cut off as punishment and so he cannot run away again.  He marries a female slave cook named Bell.  They have a daughter Kizzie who is sold at age sixteen.  She is raped by Tom Lea and gives birth to a son, "Chicken George" Lea. Chicken George becomes a famous cockfighter, meaning he trains chickens for people to bet on as they fight.  George marries and has six children, but his father sells him to a British man who takes him overseas.  While George is away, his family is sold to a slave trader who sells them to the Murray family of Alamance County, North Carolina.  George eventually returns to them.  After the US Civil War of 1861-1865 rather than sharecrop, the family moves to Henning Tennessee. Chicken George's granddaughter Cynthia marries Will Palmer and they become Alex Haley's grandparents.

Roots won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book award.  It is unusual for a novel to do both.

At first, Haley said Roots was not a novel but non-fiction.  But when scholars looked into his facts, they found many of them were wrong.  Today, scholars think that the griot, the African scholar who talked to Haley, made up parts of the story.  They think Haley was guessing or imagining things as well.  Later, Haley would also admit that he copied parts of his book from a 1967 book called The African.

Even though the book is not historically accurate, American scholars still say it is one of the most important novels in the country because it inspired African Americans to write more about Africa and slavery.

Factual accuracy questions
Trying to confirm the facts in Haley novel in regards to Africa and the Waller, Lea, and Murray families raised doubts.
Ironically, the Millses discovered a better fit to the Haley oral history in the written record than Haley himself had found. Dr. William Waller's father was Colonel William Waller, who owned a slave named Hopping George, a description consistent with a foot injury. Colonel Waller also owned a slave named Isbell, who may be the Bell in Haley family legend. Tom Lea's father lived in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and he may have purchased some of Haley's ancestors from the Wallers. When the Lea family moved to North Carolina, they would have taken their slaves with them. The Leas lived in close proximity to the Murrays and Holts, and there are three Kizzies associated with the Lea and Murray families in the post-Civil War records.

Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. was a friend of Haley, but years after Haley's death, Gates acknowledged doubts about the author's claims:

Most of us feel it's highly unlikely that Alex found the village whence his ancestors sprang. Roots is a work of the imagination rather than strict historical scholarship. It was an important event because it captured everyone's imagination." Gates later hosted the TV series African American Lives and Finding Your Roots, which used DNA testing to corroborate family histories and genealogies. Haley wrote another novel in regard to his paternal grandmother Queen [Jackson] Haley but died before he could finish it; it was published posthumously as Queen: The Story of an American Family. Ironically Subsequent DNA testing of Alex Haley's nephew Chris Haley revealed that Alec Haley, Alex's paternal grandfather (and Queen Haley's husband) was most likely descended from Scottish ancestors via William Harwell Baugh, an overseer of an Alabama slave plantation.

References

Other websites

African American writers
American novelists
American television producers
American television writers
Deaths from myocardial infarction
Writers from New York (state)
1921 births
1992 deaths
People from Ithaca, New York

Alex Haley


Moses Mayfield was a five-piece rock band from Birmingham, Alabama. Their major-label debut album, The Inside was released in March 2007 under Columbia Records and Sony BMG. The Inside reached No. 43 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart. Prior to the release of their first album, they opened for Switchfoot, The Fray, Will Hoge, Pete Yorn, Blue October, and many others on several different nationwide tours.  In August 2007, original guitarist Will Mason announced his departure from the band and guitarist Dave Taylor joined the band in preparation for their upcoming album tour.  The Inside failed to make a major splash in the market, so Moses Mayfield began to write in hopes of creating a follow-up to their critically acclaimed major label release.  Unfortunately due to a realignment of personal goals the band decided to take an indefinite hiatus in December 2007.

Not long after the band broke up, lead singer Matthew Mayfield started playing shows centered on the Birmingham, AL and Huntsville, AL area, usually solo acoustic but occasionally with a new backing band.  Within a year, he independently released an album of acoustic songs, including acoustic versions of songs that previously appeared on The Inside.  He also revealed that Moses Mayfield called it quits mainly due to disagreements with the record label, as well as some members deciding they wanted to leave the band due to these disagreements.  A combination of those two items led to the sudden break-up.

Discography

Albums
2004: Enough to Let Go
2007: The Inside

EPs
2003: Unified
2006: The Live EP

References

Musicians from Birmingham, Alabama
Musical groups established in 2002
2002 establishments in Alabama

Moses Mayfield