Robert Reynolds Ashley (March 28, 1930 – March 3, 2014) was an American composer, who was best known for his television operas and other theatrical works, many of which incorporate electronics and extended techniques. His works often involve intertwining narratives and take a surreal multidisciplinary approach to sound, theatrics and writing, and have been continuously performed by various interpreters during and after his life, including Automatic Writing (1979) and Perfect Lives (1983).

Life and career
Ashley was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He studied at the University of Michigan from 1948 to 1952, where he met Ross Lee Finney in 1949. Finney had a good reputation after serving in World War II, in which he was wounded by a land mine. Ashley stated, "Everyone treated him as if he [were] James Bond." Finney went on to approve a paper Ashley wrote on a Bartók string quartet during a weekly analysis seminar. Later, he studied at the Manhattan School of Music, and then became a musician in the US Army. After moving back to Michigan, Ashley worked at the University of Michigan's Speech Research Laboratories. Although he was not officially a student in the acoustic research program there, he was offered the chance to obtain a doctorate, but turned it down to pursue his music. From 1961 to 1969, he organised the ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor with Roger Reynolds, Gordon Mumma, and other local composers and artists. He was a co-founder of the ONCE Group, as well as a member of the Sonic Arts Union, which also included David Behrman, Alvin Lucier, and Gordon Mumma. In 1969 he became director of the San Francisco Tape Music Center. In the 1970s he directed the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music. His notable students include Maggi Payne and Hsiung-Zee Wong.

The majority of Ashley's recordings have been released by Lovely Music, which was founded by Performing Artservices, the not-for-profit management organization which represents Ashley and other artists. His first album with Lovely Music was 1978's Private Parts, an early version of the first and last acts from Perfect Lives. In 1979 and 1980, the label released, respectively, Automatic Writing and Perfect Lives (Private Parts): The Bar (the latter being another excerpt from what was to become Perfect Lives).

Since he first came to prominence, Ashley was indelibly linked to the performance of his pieces, particularly through the use of his voice in such works as Automatic Writing and Perfect Lives.  Starting in the 1980s, he formed a band that lasted for decades consisting of himself, Sam Ashley, Joan LaBarbara, Thomas Buckner, and Jacqueline Humbert as vocalists and Tom Hamilton on electronics.

Ashley also collaborated with various artists in terms of reading text. He was featured, alongside Kunga Rinpoche, on Eliane Radigue's 1987 piece Mila's Journey Inspired by a Dream. On December 9, 1992, Ashley publicly read William Gibson's electronic poem Agrippa (A Book of the Dead), on its premiere at The Kitchen in Chelsea, Manhattan. His reading, known as The Transmission, was recorded and simultaneously transmitted to several other cities only once.

In the final years of his life, Ashley's work was newly taken up by other performers.  Notable interpreters of Ashley's work have included the electronic duo Matmos, who've repeatedly performed their arrangements of episodes from Perfect Lives; Object Collection, who premiered a stage version of Automatic Writing in 2011; the band Varispeed, who've presented various site-specific, day-long arrangements of Perfect Lives since 2011; the band Trystero, who perform Perfect Lives in their memorized marathon arrangement; and Alex Waterman, who spearheaded a new Spanish-language version of Perfect Lives entitled Vidas Perfectas, performing the piece around the world and producing a new video realization as well.  In 2002 he received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award. In 2011, Ashley's 1967 opera That Morning Thing was restaged as part of the Performa Biennial with direction from Fast Forward.  In 2014, shortly after his death, the Whitney Biennial presented three of Ashley's operas: Vidas Perfectas and The Trial..., both directed by Alex Waterman, and Crash, the opera he finished three months before he died. Crash was remounted a year later at Roulette with the same cast: Gelsey Bell, Brian McCorkle, Paul Pinto, Dave Ruder, and Aliza Simons from the music collective Varispeed, as well as Amirtha Kidambi, with projected photos by Philip Makanna.

Personal life and death
He had one son, Sam, from his first marriage to Mary Tsaltas.  In 1979, he married his second wife, Mimi Johnson.

He died at his home in Tribeca on March 3, 2014, from liver disease at the age of 83.

Operas

In Memoriam... Kit Carson (1963)
That Morning Thing (1967)
Music with Roots in the Aether (television opera) (1976)
Perfect Lives (television opera) (1978–83)
Atalanta (Acts of God) (1982–91)
Now Eleanor's Idea tetralogy:
Improvement (Don Leaves Linda) (1985)
eL/Aficionado (1987)
Now Eleanor's Idea (1993)
Foreign Experiences (1994)
Balseros (1997)
Your Money My Life Goodbye (1998)
Dust (1998)
Celestial Excursions (2003)
Concrete/The Old Man Lives In Concrete (2006-2012)
Crash (2013)

Ashley wrote many other pieces for combinations of instruments, voices, and electronics. A complete list can be found at his official website.

<noinclude>

Ashley, Space Theater, and ONCE

The Space Theater was a loft specially designed and outfitted for performances with projected images and music. It served as the venue for semiweekly multimedia performances from 1957 to 1964; its creators asked Gordon Mumma and Ashley to produce live electronic music for the productions. The performances included music produced by things such as the "rubbing together of stones" and steel rings thrown along wires.

During their cooperation in Space Theater, Ashley created the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music in 1958 with Mumma, whom he had originally met in his graduate composition seminars. The studio consisted of little more than spare rooms in each of their houses, where they kept their equipment. Ashley and Mumma were "serious tinkers in electronics," working before synthesizers and electronic musical instruments were commercially available. They invented and built much of their own equipment with materials from Radio Shack. They were two of the earliest composers to work in live generation of music with amplified small sounds.

The success of Space Theater led to the creation of the ONCE festival, a contemporary performing arts event that served as a forum for experimental art and music. Ashley was the director. Other musician participants included Roger Reynolds, George Cacioppo, Bruce Wise, and Donald Scarvada. Other collaborating artists were Harold Borkin and Joseph Wehrer, architects; George Manupelli, filmmaker; and Mary Ashley and Milton Cohen, painter-sculptors. There were six ONCE festivals between 1961 and 1965. They were considered "far-out" and controversial, and experienced both support and antagonism from the surrounding community in Ann Arbor. The festivals invited European and jazz composers to participate, and were a major influence on contemporary music of the time.

Trilogy: Atalanta, Perfect Lives, and Now Eleanor's Idea
The operas of Perfect Lives, Atalanta, and Now Eleanor's Idea comprise a trilogy that maintains a pulse of 72 beats per minute throughout (except for the opera Foreign Experiences within the Now Eleanor's Idea tetralogy, which is set to a quarter note=90). The third episode of Perfect Lives ("The Bank") contains the focal event of this trilogy. The event itself is hard to describe; after a variety of strange events transpire at the bank, i.e. a fight between dogs that speak Spanish and a bucket of water strategically thrown on the bank manager, it is realized that the bank "has no money in the bank," a consequence of the art/crime action taken by the elopers Gwyn and Ed. In describing these curious events, Ashley introduces all of the bank tellers ("Introducing Susie. Susie works at the bank. That's her job. Mostly she helps people count their money. She likes it."), who each have visions, each representing one of the trilogy's operas.

Kate sees the security camera footage from the bank, which contains elements of Episodes 2 through 4 of Perfect Lives. She is, in effect, watching herself. Linda, Susie, and Jennifer see visions of the three suitors of Atalanta, Willard Reynolds, Bud Powell, and Max Ernst, who have accidentally appeared in a spaceship at the moment of the bank incident. Eleanor's vision is conceptually of the four operas that bear her name, although Linda's vision introduces its four characters (Linda, Eleanor, Don, and Junior Jr.) as a foursome. The first section of the opera Now Eleanor's Idea, entitled Improvement, features a retelling of these events.

Now Eleanor's Idea tetralogy

Now Eleanor's Idea is an opera tetralogy, part of the larger trilogy described above, based on the idea of heading westward in America, eventually arriving at the Pacific Ocean. Each opera is centered on one of the characters briefly introduced in Episode 3 of Perfect Lives. According to Kyle Gann, the order of the tetralogy is (1) Improvement (representing Linda, one of the bank tellers), (2) el/Aficionado (representing Don Jr, i.e. "D, the Captain of the Football Team"), (3) Foreign Experiences (representing Junior Jr., Don and Linda's Son), and (4) Now Eleanor's Idea (representing Now Eleanor, another teller). According to Gann, the overall four-part structure of the cycle mirrors the four-movement symphonic form.

These works are subtle in their narrative links to one another. The flow from Perfect Lives leads to Now Eleanor's Idea (the opera, not the tetralogy), focusing on Eleanor and her journey from Midwestern-small-town bank teller to television news reporter to prophet for the Southwestern Hispanic low rider car culture. Don's story is chronicled in Foreign Experiences. Don has moved to California with his family and becomes a professor. Unsatisfied with his existence, Don embarks on a mystical quest. Improvement (Don Leaves Linda) focuses on Linda—here a metaphor for the Jews forced out of Spain in 1492—who is abandoned by her husband Don at a highway rest stop. Linda meets many characters in her travels, including a tap dancer who is a stand-in for Giordano Bruno, and settles into a cosmopolitan existence with her son, Junior Jr. In a dream that echoes the uncertain journey of his father, Junior, Jr.'s opera, el/Aficionado, is a post-mortem on a mysteriously botched exercise in espionage. Ashley says that each of these scenarios is in reality the simultaneous dream of the protagonist, happening at the focal moment of Perfect Lives.

Ashley, along with Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Jacqueline Humbert, and Joan LaBarbara, performed the complete tetralogy in 1994 in Avignon and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Recordings of the operas have been released gradually, first with Improvement in 1992, followed by el/Aficionado in 1994, Foreign Experiences in 2006, and Now Eleanor's Idea in 2007.

Additional allegory

Ashley has ascribed various meanings to the individual elements of the trilogy. One layer of meaning is the journey, presumably of European-Americans, westward across America. Atalanta represents those in the new world who are acutely aware of their tradition in the old world. This is represented in the lengthy stories on great figures of the past (the "Anecdotes", etc.). Perfect Lives represents life in the Midwest, which Ashley was interested in "because it was flat". The stories have gotten shorter and are now just quaint colloquialisms and idioms (think of the string of phrases punctuated by "AND" in Episode 4). Now Eleanor's Idea is about the journey beyond the familiar to the West Coast, presumably the end of the world, i.e. a certain civilization was established when European adventurers found themselves in California and figured they would likely never make it home. Rather than anecdotes and sayings, the story telling unit in these operas is much smaller, and hence the language is more abstract. Ashley says in the liner notes to Atalanta that the three works represent "architecture, agriculture, and genealogy", respectively.

Ashley has also described the Now Eleanor's Idea tetralogy as cataloging four American varieties of religion: Judaism in Improvement, Pentecostal Evangelism in Foreign Experiences, "corporate mysticism" in el/Aficionado, and Roman Catholicism as derived from Spain in Now Eleanor's Idea.

Automatic Writing
Automatic Writing is a piece that took five years to complete and was released by Lovely Music Ltd. in 1979. Ashley used his own involuntary speech that results from what he says is his Tourette syndrome as one of the voices in the music. This was considered a very different way of composing and producing music. Ashley stated that he wondered since Tourette's had to do with "sound-making and because the manifestation of the syndrome seemed so much like a primitive form of composing whether the syndrome was connected in some way to his obvious tendencies as a composer".

Ashley was intrigued by his involuntary speech, and the idea of composing music that was unconscious. Seeing that the speech that resulted from having Tourette's could not be controlled, it was a different aspect from producing music that is deliberate and conscious, and music that is performed is considered "doubly deliberate" according to Ashley. Although there seemed to be a connection between the involuntary speech, and music, the connection was different due to it being unconscious versus conscious.

Ashley's first attempts at recording his involuntary speech were not successful, because he found that he ended up performing the speech instead of it being natural and unconscious. "The performances were largely imitations of involuntary speech with only a few moments here and there of loss control".
However, he was later able to set up a recording studio at Mills College one summer when the campus was mostly deserted, and record 48 minutes of involuntary speech. This was the first of four "characters" that Ashley had envisioned of telling a story in what he viewed as an opera. The other three characters were a French voice translation of the speech, Moog synthesizer articulations, and background organ harmonies. "The piece was Ashley's first extended attempt to find a new form of musical storytelling using the English language. It was opera in the Robert Ashley way".

Use of electronics

In the dialogue for Automatic Writing, the words themselves were not necessarily the primary source of meaning—especially not after the kind of audio manipulation Ashley used to modify them. Some of the dialogue became totally incomprehensible. Ashley appreciated the use of voice and words for more than their explicit denotation, believing their rhythm and inflection could convey meaning without being able to understand the actual phonemes.

Ashley engineered the first version of the piece using live electronics and reactive computer circuitry. He recorded his vocal part himself, with the mic barely an inch from his mouth and the recording level just shy of feedback. He then added "subtle and eerie modulations" to the recording, modifying his voice to the point that much of what he read could not be understood.

The piece included four vocal parts that changed over the life of the piece, but in the final recording, the pieces included Ashley's monologue, a synthesized version, a French translation of the monologue, and a part produced by a Polymoog synthesizer.

The Immortality Songs
While still completing his "grand trilogy" of Perfect Lives, Atalanta, and Now Eleanor's Idea, in 1987 Ashley commenced work on The Immortality Songs, a series that would occupy him for the rest of his life – and a project that he undertook aware that he "might not live to finish" it. Following his continual interest in forms of speech, the immortality songs are all invested in ranting as a form of uncontrolled speech. Ashley commenced this series by writing a list of forty nine titles for projects (not only operas), the rhythm of the title often influencing the rhythm of the subsequent project or opera (most especially within Your Money My Life Goodbye [1998]) Several of these projects include: Yellow Man with Heart with wings (opera, originally from 1979, remixed in 1990 to become the first of The Immortality Songs), Regards to Natalie Wood (Poem, 1990), Outcome Inevitable (Orchestral, 1991), Love is a good example (Lecture to be sung, 1991), When Famous Last Words Fail You (Lecture to be sung, 1997), Dust (Opera, 1998), Your Money My Life Goodbye (Opera, 1998)Yes, but is it edible? (Lecture to be sung, 1999), Celestial Excursions (opera, 2003), Practical Anarchism (Lecture to be sung, 2003), Hidden Similarities (Adapted from a section of Concrete, opera, 2005), and Concrete (opera, 2006). The sections of Concrete itself contain some of the titles from his list.

Films
1976 - Music With Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television. Tape 7: Robert Ashley. Produced and directed by Robert Ashley. New York, New York: Lovely Music.
1983 - Perfect Lives (an opera for television). Released on DVD by Lovely Music, 2005. Directed by John Sanborn, featuring "Blue" Gene Tyranny, Jill Kroesen and David Van Tieghem.
1984 - Atalanta Strategy. Released on VHS by Lovely Music. Draws from a variety of sections of the opera and features performative commentary from Ashley himself.

Books
1991 - Perfect Lives: an opera. Published by Burning Books, edited by Melody Sumner Carnahan. Libretto plus lectures by Ashley.
2000 - Music With Roots in the Aether. Published by MusikTexte. Transcriptions of the television opera with introductory essays by various composers before each section.
2010 - Outside of Time: Ideas About Music. Published by MusikTexte, edited by Ralf Dietrich.
2011 - Quicksand. Published by Burning Books. A Quadrants Series Novel.
2011 - Atalanta (Acts of God). Published by Burning Books. Libretto plus afterword by Ashley.
2014 - Crash. Published by Burning Books. Libretto by Ashley.

Exhibitions
 Robert Ashley - Perfect Lives, 2011, Trade (gallery), Nottingham, United Kingdom

References

Further reading
Bailin, David. 1985. "Space and Time in the World," Formations 5, Volume 2, No. 1.
Gann, Kyle. 2012. Robert Ashley: A Biography. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Gena, Peter. 1985, "Everything is Opera," Formations 2, no. 1: 42–51.
Gutkin, David. 2014. "'Meanwhile, Let's Go Back in Time': Allegory, Actuality, and History in Robert Ashley's Television Opera Trilogy." Opera Quarterly, (winter 2014) Volume 30 (1): 5-48.
Herold, Christian. 1997. "The Other side of Echo: The Adventures of a Dyke-Mestiza-Chicana-Marimacharanchera Singer in (Robert) Ashleyland," Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, 9:2: 163–197.
Miller, Tyrus. 2010. "The 'Approach-of-the-End-of-the-World-Feeling': Allegory and Eschatology in the Operas of Robert Ashley," Ars Aeterna. Unfolding the Baroque: Cultures and Concepts 2 (1). Nitra, Slovakia: Constantine the Philosopher University: 40-51.
Sabatini, Arthur. 1990. "Performance Novels: Notes Towards an Extensions of Bakhtin's Theories of Genre and the Novel," Discours Social/Social Discourse 3, nos. 1-2: 135–45.
__ 2002. "The Sonic Landscapes of Robert Ashley," in Land/Scape/Theater. Edited by Elinor Fuchs and Una Chaudhuri. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
 Zimmerman, Walter, Desert Plants – Conversations with 23 American Musicians, Berlin: Beginner Press in cooperation with Mode Records, 2020 (originally published in 1976 by A.R.C., Vancouver). The 2020 edition includes a cd featuring the original interview recordings with Larry Austin, Robert Ashley, Jim Burton, John Cage, Philip Corner, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Joan La Barbara, Garrett List, Alvin Lucier, John McGuire, Charles Morrow, J.B. Floyd (on Conlon Nancarrow), Pauline Oliveros, Charlemagne Palestine, Ben Johnston (on Harry Partch), Steve Reich, David Rosenboom, Frederic Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum, James Tenney, Christian Wolff, and La Monte Young.

External links

Archivio Conz
Robert Ashley homepage

UBUWEB: Music with Roots in the Aether
Lovely Music Artist: Robert Ashley
Robert Ashley Interview with Theresa Stern Nov 1997
The University of Akron Bierce Library Composer Profile: Robert Ashley
Robert Ashley in conversation with Thomas Moore

Robert Ashley in conversation with André Éric Létourneau – site of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Robert Ashley – Perfect Lives
Composer's entry on IRCAM's database

Listening
Interview with Robert Ashley (4 December 1979)
UbuWeb: Robert Ashley featuring Interiors with Flash, and In Sara Mencken, Christ and Beethoven there were men and women (1972)

Art of the States: Robert Ashley Untitled Mixes (1965)

1930 births
2014 deaths
20th-century classical composers
21st-century classical composers
American male classical composers
American classical composers
American opera composers
Male opera composers
Manhattan School of Music alumni
Mills College faculty
Musicians from Ann Arbor, Michigan
Pupils of Wallingford Riegger
United States Army soldiers
University of Michigan alumni
21st-century American composers
People with Tourette syndrome
20th-century American composers
Classical musicians from Michigan
20th-century American male musicians
21st-century American male musicians
People from Tribeca
Nonesuch Records artists

Robert Ashley


Gwyn Thomas (6 July 1913 – 13 April 1981) was a Welsh writer, dramatist, Punch-columnist, radio broadcaster and raconteur, who has been called "the true voice of the English-speaking valleys".

Early life
Gwyn Thomas was born in Cymmer, Porth in the Rhondda Valley, the youngest of 12 children, to coalminer Walter Morgan Thomas and his wife. His mother died when he was aged six, and he was consequently brought up by his sister, often with handouts from the local soup kitchen.

After winning a scholarship, Thomas studied Spanish at the University of Oxford. Plagued by mysterious health problems, terribly poor and depressed, it was only after spending a summer and a term at the end of his second year at Complutense University of Madrid, thanks to a miners' scholarship, that he decided to complete his studies. Thomas was diagnosed at the age of 23 with a previously undetected thyroid malfunction that had been poisoning him for years, which was operated on to prevent his death.

Career
On graduation, and wanting to be a writer, Thomas struggled to establish himself during the 1930s depression. He took on part-time lecturing jobs across England, while trying to get his novel Sorrow For Thy Sons published.

He married his childhood friend Eiluned (Lyn) Thomas in Pontypridd Register Office on 5 January 1938. Failing to pass the British Army medical at the outbreak of World War II thanks to 20 years of smoking, he returned to Wales in 1940 and taught at the WEA. He then became a schoolteacher, first teaching French in Cardigan, and then Spanish and French
at Barry Grammar School for 20 years.

Approached in 1951 by a BBC Radio Wales producer to write for the radio, he returned to his childhood memories of 1920s South Wales to create the radio play Gazuka!, a celebration of a bizarre musical instrument.

A prolific novelist and short-story writer, he became a regular on chat shows such as The Brains Trust, and after 20 years of teaching in 1962 he became a full-time writer and broadcaster, retiring with his wife to Peterston-super-Ely.

However, due to a combination of diabetes, heavy drinking and smoking, his health began to fail in the late 1960s. In 1981 Thomas collapsed and was taken to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, where he died on 13 April, shortly before his 68th birthday.

Memorial
In 1993 Sir Anthony Hopkins portrayed Thomas in a BBC Wales television production, "Selected Exits", adapted by Alan Plater and based on his memoir A Few Selected Exits.  Later that year Hopkins unveiled a bronze bust of Thomas in the foyer of the New Theatre, Cardiff, where he spoke about his personal experience of knowing the author, who had been a family friend. Thomas was further commemorated at an event in Memorial Hall, Barry on Saturday 21 November 2009, when Pride in Barry announced it was placing a Blue Plaque on the Old College Inn, Barry, where his old school classrooms used to be.

In 2013, at the centenary of his birth, he was compared with Kingsley Amis and Evelyn Waugh.

Works

Novels
The Dark Philosophers (1946) [new edition 2005]
The Alone to The Alone (1947) [new edition 2008]
All Things Betray Thee (1949) [new edition 1986]
The World Cannot Hear You (1951)
Now Lead Us Home (1951)
A Frost on My Frolic (1953)
The Stranger at My Side (1954)
A Point of Order (1956)
The Love Man (1958)
Sorrow For Thy Sons (1986) [written 1936]
The Thinker and the Thrush (1988) [written 1949]

Short stories
Where Did I Put My Pity? (1946)
Gazooka and Other Stories (1957)
Ring Delirium 123 (1960)
A Welsh Eye (1964) (with drawings by John Dd. Evans; new edition 1984)
The Lust Lobby (1971)
The Sky of our Lives (1972)
Selected Short Stories (1984) [new editions 1988, 1995]
Meadow Prospect Revisited (1992)

PlaysThe Keep (1962)Sap (1974)The Breakers (1976)Three Plays (1990) [The Keep, Loud Organs, Jackie The Jumper]

MiscA Hatful of Humours (1965) [essays]A Few Selected Exits (1968) [autobiography; new editions 1985, 1993]High on Hope (1985) [journalism]

Further reading
Parnell, M. (1997), Laughter from the Dark: A Life of Gwyn Thomas, Seren Books/Poetry Wales Pr Ltd,
Leeworthy, D (2022), Fury of Past Time: A Life of Gwyn Thomas'', Parthian Books,

See also
Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English
Welsh Literature

References

External links
 BBC Wales on his life.
 Thomas's comments after meeting Jacob Bronowski

People from Porth
Alumni of St Edmund Hall, Oxford
Complutense University of Madrid alumni
Welsh schoolteachers
Welsh short story writers
Welsh novelists
Welsh expatriates in Spain
Anglo-Welsh novelists
1913 births
1981 deaths
20th-century British novelists
20th-century Welsh dramatists and playwrights
20th-century British short story writers
British expatriates in Spain

Gwyn Thomas (novelist)


The French Wars of Religion were eight wars that were fought in France in the 16th century between Catholics and Protestants (also known as "Huguenots"). In all of the wars until 1585, the Catholics were supported by the French kings.

First war
The first war started in 1562, when the Protestant Prince of Condé, Louis de Bourbon, fled Paris with his supporters and captured the city of Orléans. His army was defeated by the Catholics at the Battle of Dreux in December, and the Catholics placed Orléans under siege. During the siege, a Huguenot killed the Catholic leader, Duke Francis of Guise. A peace treaty was signed in March, ending the first war.

Second war
The second war began in 1567, when the Prince of Condé tried to kidnap King Charles IX in an incident known as the "Surprise at Meaux." Condé put Paris under siege, but the Catholics attacked his army and defeated him. The Protestants and the Catholics raised large armies, but there were no more major battles. In March 1568, another peace treaty was signed.

Third war
The third war began in 1568, when Condé and his ally, Gaspard de Coligny, suspected that the Catholics would try to murder them. They went south and raised an army. A Catholic army, led by the king's brother, Henry of Valois, who would later become Henry III of France, attacked them and won a victory at Jarnac. At the Battle of Jarnac, Condé was captured and executed. Coligny, now the leader of the main Protestant army, fought another battle against the Catholics at Moncontour. This battle, one of the deadliest of the era, was another Protestant defeat. Many of the Protestants withdrew into the fortress town of Saint Jean d'Angély, and the Catholics besieged them there. While the Catholics besieged Saint Jean d'Angély and lost thousands of troops, Coligny joined forces with the Protestant Count of Montgomery and his army. The Protestants marched across France and, in June 1570, defeated the Catholics at the Battle of Arnay-le-Duc. The Catholics, running out of money, made a peace treaty with the Protestants.

Fourth war
In 1572, the fourth war broke out when the Catholics, led by Henry of Valois and Henry of Guise, the son of Duke Francis, who was killed during the first war, killed Coligny and thousands of other Protestants during the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Many Protestant survivors fled to La Rochelle, one of the main centres of Protestantism in France. The Catholic army put La Rochelle under siege but could not conquer the city. After losing thousands of soldiers, the Catholics agreed to a peace treaty. Between the fourth and the fifth wars King Charles IX died and his younger brother, Henry, became King Henry III.

Fifth war
In 1574, the fifth war began.  The Catholic monarchy faced an alliance between the Protestants and a new group, known as the "Malcontents," Who were were Catholic noblemen who opposed the policies of the monarchy and wanted religious toleration for the Protestants. In 1575, King Henry III's younger brother, Francis, known as the Duke of Alençon, joined the Malcontents and raised an army. Henry III gave up and in 1576 agreed to a peace treaty with the Malcontents and Protestants. Called the Peace of Beaulieu, gave a lot of land and money to the Duke of Alençon and to the Malcontents. Many of the Malcontents, including Alençon, were satisfied and became loyal to the King and the Catholics again.

Sixth war
In late 1576, the sixth war began.  The Protestants no longer had as many allies and lost the important cities of La Charité and Issoire. However, the King did not have enough money to continue the war and so the war ended in 1577.

Seventh war
The seventh war began in 1580 when Henry of Navarre, the most important Protestant leader, attacked the Catholic city of Cahors. He conquered the city, but the Catholics captured the Protestant city of La Mure later that year. In November 1580, another peace treaty was signed.

In 1584, the Duke of Alençon died.  King Henry III was the only living son of King Henry II (reigned from 1547 to 1559), and the next man in line to become king was the Protestant Henry of Navarre. Many Catholics wanted King Henry III to disown Henry of Navarre and to make someone else the heir to the throne because were scared of a Protestant becoming king, but Henry III refused.

Eighth war
In 1585, the Catholics, led by Henry of Guise, raised an army and forced King Henry III to outlaw Protestantism in France. The war that followed, the eighth war, is also known as the "War of the Three Henrys" and is named after King Henry III, Henry of Guise, and Henry of Navarre. Even though Henry III and Henry of Guise were on the same side in 1585, many Catholics feared that Henry III secretly wanted Henry of Navarre to be the next king. In 1588, the supporters of Henry of Guise, known as "Leaguers," chased King Henry III out of Paris. In 1589, afraid that Henry of Guise wanted to take the throne from him, Henry III had him murdered, fled to the Protestant army, and joined forces with Henry of Navarre. Charles of Mayenne, Henry of Guise's brother, became the leader of the Leaguers.

The Royal-Protestant army defeated the Leaguers at the Battle of Senlis and surrounded Paris.  Before they could capture the city, King Henry III was killed by a Leaguer but named Henry of Navarre as his heir.  Henry of Navarre, now Henry IV of France, defeated Leaguer armies at the Battle of Arques (1589) and the Battle of Ivry (1590) but could not completely defeat the Leaguers on the battlefield.  In 1593, King Henry IV converted to Catholicism.

End
After six more years of fighting, the Leaguers gave up, and the war ended. Henry IV pardoned most of those who had fought against him, and made a settlement allowing Catholics and Protestants to practice their faith within certain limits.

References

16th century in France
Wars involving France
Counter-Reformation

French Wars of Religion


"Grill, Interrupted" is the nineteenth episode of the sixth season of the American sitcom Modern Family, and the series' 139th episode overall. It originally aired on April 1, 2015. The episode was written by Paul Corrigan & Brad Walsh & Jeffrey Richman, and directed by James Bagdonas.

In the episode, Alex gets accepted at Caltech but is acting weird, making Claire believe that she hasn't praised her enough. The family gathers at Jay's for his birthday, where Phil tries desperately to impress Jay with his gift. Gloria tries to give Manny and Luke a lesson for sneaking booze. Mitchell and Claire decide to give Jay back the money he loaned them a long time ago to help them with their houses, without telling Phil nor Cameron. Andy wants to talk to Haley about his feelings but her coming at Jay's with her new boyfriend makes things a little difficult for him.

"Grill, Interrupted" received positive reviews from the critics.

Plot

Gathering at Jay's (Ed O'Neill) house for his birthday, Claire (Julie Bowen) and Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) decide to pay their father back the money he loaned them for the down payment on their respective houses. Mitchell intends on using the money that Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) has received from a recently deceased distant relative, and Phil (Ty Burrell) starts to believe the money problems are what have caused the slight rift between himself and Jay. After Phil's present (a new, state-of-the-art barbecue grill) backfires, he, Claire, Mitchell and Cameron all begin arguing in the driveway about the various monetary issues that have surfaced that day.

Luke (Nolan Gould) and Manny (Rico Rodriguez) come up with a plan to steal and drink a bottle of Gloria's (Sofia Vergara) tequila. Before they can take it, she swaps it out with water so she can teach them a lesson, leaving Luke and Manny suffering a placebo intoxication. When they are "drunk" enough, Gloria makes them believe that the bottle of tequila had a deadly worm inside it that probably got drunk by them. The only way to kill the worm once you had drunk it, is by taking an ice cold bath, something that Luke and Manny rush to do. Gloria appears and takes a photo of the boys being in the tub together, threatening them to post it online if they attempt to steal from her or get drunk underage again.

Meanwhile, Andy (Adam Devine) wants to talk to Haley (Sarah Hyland) about his feelings, since it is the first time he will see her after the events of "Closet? You'll Love It!", where Haley told him that he has a shot with her while she thought he was sleeping. Andy is nervous and Haley appearing with her new boyfriend Will (Nick Ballard) does not help the situation. A series of mishaps leaves Andy and Haley in bed together and, later, Haley removing her clothes due to a drink spillage, but Will does not suspect Andy, nor feeling threatened by him. When Haley leaves the room, Will asks Andy to help him come up with a message for a card for Haley, but once Will leaves Haley struggles to read the handwriting. She asks Andy to read it to her and gets frustrated about how clingy Will is already after only two weeks of dating. Haley kisses Andy on the cheek and heads downstairs, leaving him both disappointed and hopeful.

Alex (Ariel Winter) finds out she has been accepted into Caltech, but she is acting strange after her parents' reaction. Claire blames herself for never praising Alex's achievements because she expects them from her, and begins to overtly praise Alex in front of the whole family, leaving Alex embarrassed and irritated. Jay later finds her with a bottle of tequila, the placebo bottle that Gloria swapped out earlier with water, in his new car in the garage. When confronted, Jay explains the bottle of water in the tequila bottle, commenting that drinking will not help her with her problems. Alex expresses worry about being the least intelligent person at her new college and talks about how scared she is. Jay reassures her that she will do great at college and drives her out of the garage into the yard in front of the bickering family. He tells her that the family needs a leader and one day he will not be around to do it anymore, implying that in the future she will be the one to keep the family in check because she is the only one who can do it.

Reception

Ratings
In its original American broadcast, "Grill, Interrupted" was watched by 9.43; up by 0.72 from the previous episode.

Reviews
"Grill, Interrupted" received positive reviews from the critics.

David Kallison of The A.V. Club awarded the episode with a B+, saying that "Modern Family has no business being as good as it is. [The show] is on a tear of superb episodes lately, starting with the anti-Luddite ode, 'Connection Lost'. What makes this family different from others is the depth and heart the characters possess. The Dunphys et al. are more like, well, a real family. And that makes their schtick last longer". Kallison further went on to praise the season as a whole, saying "This season proves that sitcoms can survive on solid characters and solid jokes. "Grill, Interrupted" lives up to those expectations perfectly".

Ashley Bissette Sumerel of TV Fanatic rated the episode with 4.2/5, saying that this was the kind of episode she liked to see. Sumerel further went on to label the episode "intricate and fun", and also praised Luke, Manny and Gloria's subplot, by saying "In reality, this is a serious topic, and it's nice to see it being dealt with". She closed her review by stating "Overall, this is a really enjoyable, funny installment. It tries to do a LOT, but that's part of what makes Modern Family, well... Modern Family".

Lisa Fernandes of Next Projection rated the episode with 7.6/10, praising the scene between Alex and Jay as "lovely" saying that "Ed O'Neill acts the holy hell out of [it]". Fernandes summarizes her review by stating "Some good moments, the Jay/Alex pep talk and most of the Haley/Andy storyline salvage the episode".

The Christian Post praised the scene between Alex and Jay at the episode's close, saying "As they look at the bickering going on, it's clear that Jay thinks that Alex is more than capable of leading the family one day".

References

External links

"Grill, Interrupted" at ABC.com

2015 American television episodes
Modern Family (season 6) episodes

Grill, Interrupted


Julio Navarro Ventura (January 9, 1934 – January 24, 2018) was a Major League Baseball relief pitcher. He played for the Los Angeles Angels (1962–64), Detroit Tigers (1964–66), and Atlanta Braves (1970).

The 5'11", 190 lb. right-hander with the nickname "Whiplash" was acquired by the Angels from the San Francisco Giants organization on September 2, 1962. Navarro made his major league debut in relief on September 3, 1962 against the New York Yankees in game 2 of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium. He pitched three innings and gave up two earned runs in the 6–5 Angels victory. He struck out one batter, Roger Maris. He won his first major league game the very next day with 1.1 scoreless innings against New York. He retired Bobby Richardson to end the 8th, L.A. scored in the top of the 9th, and then he got Roger Maris, Elston Howard, and Johnny Blanchard to close out the game. He pitched seven more games that month, ending with a 4.70 ERA.

The next season, 1963, was Navarro's best statistically. He teamed with 40-year-old Art Fowler to give the Angels a pair of dependable closers. Navarro finished in the American League top ten for games pitched (57), saves (12), and games finished (30). He was 4–5 with an ERA of 2.89.

Navarro began the 1964 season in excellent fashion. He relieved in five games for the Angels with a 1.93 ERA, then was traded to the Detroit Tigers for outfielder/pitcher Willie Smith on April 28. He was never the same after that, pitching decently for Detroit but not with the degree of effectiveness he had shown with Los Angeles. He was out of the big leagues after 1966 but returned in 1970 to make 17 appearances for the Atlanta Braves.

Career totals include a 7–9 record in 130 games, 1 game started, 66 games finished, 17 saves, and an ERA of 3.65. He had 151 strikeouts in 212.1 innings pitched for a 6.40 K/9IP, higher than the major league average during his era. Very good defensively, he handled 49 out of 50 total chances successfully for a fielding percentage of .980.

He is the father of former major league pitcher Jaime Navarro.

Navarro died peacefully January 24, 2018 in Orlando, Florida surrounded by his beloved wife and children.

References

External links

Retrosheet

1936 births
2018 deaths
Atlanta Braves players
Cafeteros de Córdoba players
Chicago Cubs scouts
Cocoa Indians players
Deaths from Alzheimer's disease
Deaths from dementia in Florida
Detroit Tigers players
Diablos Rojos del México players
Hawaii Islanders players
Los Angeles Angels players
Major League Baseball pitchers
Major League Baseball players from Puerto Rico
People from Vieques, Puerto Rico
Phoenix Giants players
Richmond Braves players
Sandersville Giants players
Shreveport Braves players
Springfield Giants players
Syracuse Chiefs players
Tacoma Giants players
Toronto Maple Leafs (International League) players
Vancouver Mounties players

Julio Navarro (baseball)


Google Sites is a structured wiki and web page creation tool included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. The service also includes Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, and Google Keep. Google Sites was only available as a web. The sites allows users to create and edit files online while collaborating with other users in real-time.

History
Google Sites started out as JotSpot, the name and sole product of a software company that offered enterprise social software. It was targeted mainly at small-sized and medium-sized businesses. The company was founded by Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer, co-founders of Excite.

In February 2006, JotSpot was named part of Business 2.0, "Next Net 25", and in May 2006, it was honored as one of InfoWorld's "15 Start-ups to Watch". In October 2006, JotSpot was acquired by Google. Google announced a prolonged data transition of webpages created using Google Page Creator (also known as "Google Pages") to Google Sites servers in 2007. On February 28, 2008, Google Sites was unveiled using the JotSpot technology. The service was free, but users needed a domain name, which Google offered for $10. However, as of May 21, 2008, Google Sites became available for free, separately from Google Apps, and without the need for a domain.

In June 2016, Google introduced a complete rebuild of the Google Sites platform, named the New Google Sites, along with transition schedule from Classic Google Sites. The new Google Sites does not use JotSpot technology.

In August 2020, the new Google Sites became the default option for website creation, while in November 2021, all websites made with classic Google Sites were archived.

Censorship
Following a Turkish regional court ruling in 2009, all pages hosted on Google Sites were blocked in Turkey after it was alleged that one of the pages contained an insult of Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled the blockage a breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Yildirim v Turkey, 2012). The blockage was lifted in 2014.

References

Proprietary wiki software
Sites
Web applications
Free web hosting services
Wiki farms
Sites
Companies' terms of service
2006 mergers and acquisitions

Google Sites


Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, originally an informal group of the leading emerging economies of the early 2000s, have since experienced very different growth paths. Their significance in the global economy at a time of considerable geopolitical uncertainty remains an open question. Over the past two decades, global economic power has been astonishingly restructuring. This has been driven primarily by the rise of China and, to a lesser extent, the BRICS countries more broadly – which, in addition to the East Asian giant, encompass Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa.

මෙය ප්‍රදාන වශයෙන් ආරක්ශක ගිවිසුමක් ලෙස පවති.බටහිර ප්‍රමුක නෙටෝ සංවිදානයේ බලපෑම් වලින් ආරක්ශාවීමට මෙම සංවිදානය බිහි වීමේ මූලික අඩිතාලමයි.

අනාගතයේදී පහත රටවල්ද මෙම සංවිදානය සමග එක්වීමට ඇත.

 TURKEY(NATO)
 HUNGARY(NATO)
 KASAKASTHAN
 PAKISTAN
 SRILANKA
 BANGLADESH
 MALDIVES
 ALL OF AFRICA
 ALL OF LATIN AMERICA
 NORTH KOREA
 IRAN
 BELARUS

As this group has become increasingly formalized and institutionalized – hosting regular summits and establishing collective bodies – many observers have worried that its growing influence might be accompanied by the normalization of authoritarian forms of 'state capitalism', and even the unraveling of the liberal order.

තවත් සමහරුන්, රජය විසින් මෙහෙයවන ලද සංවර්ධනයේ නැඟෙනහිර ආකාරයන් බොහෝ ආකාරවලින් ඇන්ග්ලෝ-ඇමරිකානු ආර්ථික හා දේශපාලන ව්‍යුහයන්ට වඩා උසස් ලෙස පෙනෙන බවට තර්ක කරමින්, වඩාත් සංජානනීය දෘෂ්ටියක් ගෙන ඇති අතර, මෙය විවෘත ගෝලීය ආර්ථිකයක් සමඟ ප්‍රතිසන්ධානය - සහ ඇත්ත වශයෙන්ම රඳා පවතී.

Either way, the concerns of many Western liberals have resurfaced following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Recent news that other mostly non-democratic states – Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey (and Argentina) – have either applied to join the BRICS or are considering doing so, is also cause for concern among Western governments.

What are the BRICS and why do they matter?
At one level, the idea of the BRICS is connected. The former Goldman Sachs economist (and now crossbench peer) Jim O'Neill coined the term BRIC in the early 2000s to describe the four fast-growing countries that seemed most likely to begin catching up with at the turn of the millennium the West (O'Neill, 2001).

Looking back, this notion appears quite problematic (Bishop, 2012). Brazil's growth slowed dramatically around 2014 as it struggled with early de-industrialization (Muzaka, 2017).

Russia was an erstwhile superpower. Therefore, describing it as 'rising' was and remains questionable, particularly as its industrially atrophied post-communist economy has remained small in global terms. Even today, as the country mounts a major military offensive, its GDP is still barely half that of the UK despite a population almost three times the size and the largest, most resource-rich territory on the planet.

India's growth has been impressive, but its relative share of global GDP has actually shrunk and its economy is now around one-fifth the size of China's. One author describes the pair comparatively as the 'slouching tiger' and 'roaring dragon' (Kennedy, 2016).

දකුණු අප්‍රිකාව ගෝලීය වශයෙන් කිසිසේත්ම නැඟී එන බලවතෙකු නොවන අතර කලාපීය නියෝජනයේ හේතූන් මත මූලික වශයෙන් පසුව කණ්ඩායම්කරණයට ටැග් කරන ලදී.

The story of the BRICS is largely about China's staggering rise. Its development has been so sustained over such a long period that it has genuinely reshaped the distribution of global economic power (Bishop, 2016).

Figure 1: GDP by BRICS country (2000-21), in current dollars
As the chart shows, China's GDP is more than double that of the other four BRICS combined: almost $18 trillion compared with Brazil ($1.6 trillion), Russia ($1.8 trillion), India ($3.2 trillion) and South Africa ($400 billion). For comparative purposes, GDP in the United States is $23 trillion but China's economy is arguably the largest in the world in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms.
In the early research on the subject, there were fierce debates over which countries should and should not be included in the next generation of emerging powers (Cooper et al, 2006).

Some questioned whether the 'MINT' countries – Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey – might be next (O'Neill, 2013). Others stressed that a focus on large middle-income countries ignores the many small ones – such as New Zealand, Norway, Qatar and Singapore – that have achieved high levels of income and development while exercising power in unconventional ways (see Long, 2022).

There have always been question marks over which countries, exactly, should comprise the rising or emerging powers, and what criteria best capture this. What does it even mean to 'rise' or 'emerge', and how do we know when a state has finally 'risen' or 'emerged'?

By the same token, as some rise, other must decline relatively: do we even have a language to describe developmental decline – or 'undevelopment' – in supposedly 'developed' countries (Bishop and Payne, 2019)?

These questions aside, the BRICS have, over time, become more deeply institutionalised. Since 2009, the countries have held annual summits with an increasingly widened agenda.

The establishment of the New Development Bank (NDB) in 2014 with $50 billion of start-up capital was another milestone. So too was the simultaneous creation of the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), a liquidity mechanism that provides support for members facing short-term balance of payments squeezes or currency instability (see Cooper, 2017).

ලෝකයේ බොහෝ රටවල් තවමත් වසංගතයෙන් පීඩා විඳිමින් සිටින මොහොතක, මෙම ආයතනිකකරණ ක්‍රියාවලිය තීව්‍ර විය හැක්කේ මෙම සන්දර්භය තුළ ය.

රටවල් නව ආකාරයේ සහයෝගීතාවයක් අපේක්ෂා කරන්නේ ඇයි?
The motivations of prospective BRICS members are complex. Take Saudi Arabia: it is already an exceptionally wealthy country, it has a close security relationship with the United States and it can mobilise substantial sovereign wealth for investment in pursuit of economic expansion (see Trudelle, 2022). But domestic political modernisation remains slow, and the economy is highly dependent on energy and threatened in the long run by global decarbonisation.

A degree of diplomatic isolation has also followed the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Like all authoritarian states, Saudi Arabia has to search for sources of domestic and international legitimacy. Increasingly dense trade links with China will be critical to this endeavour, by simultaneously diversifying the economy and sources of international support (Martin, 2021).

Similar stories apply to Egypt, Iran and Turkey, where the respective regimes have all experienced volatile economies, political conflict and diplomatic isolation in recent history. The Arab Spring of a decade ago still casts a very long shadow over the Middle East as a whole, leaving rulers feeling insecure and repression enduring (Josua and Edel, 2021).

Another potential BRICS member, Argentina, is a little different. Growth has fluctuated constantly since the dramatic financial crisis of 2001 (Stiglitz and Weisbrot, 2022). Periods of expansion and policy experimentation have occurred in tandem with buoyant export revenues during the late 2000s and early 2010s (Grugel and Riggirozzi, 2012).

But inflation has remained high and the currency has tanked. One US dollar bought one peso prior to 2001; a decade later it bought eight to ten pesos; and yet a decade further on, it now buys 148. Debt is also growing again. It exploded from around 40% of GDP to 160% in the aftermath of the 2001 crisis, declined again to around 40% alongside the commodity boom by 2014, and then rose once more to over 100% of GDP by the time the pandemic arrived in 2020.

Argentina has long required new sources of capital and international institutional power. Indeed, its demand for inclusion in the Group of 20 (G20) during the global financial crisis of 2007-09 in part reflected resentment at Brazil's membership and relatively higher perceived status as an emerging power.

But what is in it for the BRICS as an organisation? New members, in theory, imply new economic resources that can be mobilised and greater strength in numbers. The expansion of the group also provides greater legitimacy and reinforces the sense that the club is worth joining – an effect that could become self-perpetuating.

At the same time, while these potential new members are certainly regionally significant, they are not the largest, most powerful, economically dynamic or diplomatically influential of countries that could theoretically join (certainly compared with the MINT countries). Furthermore, the BRICS would no longer really comprise mainly the 'rising powers' in a global sense with Argentina, Iran and Saudi Arabia joining.

Consequently, the broader issue is that the BRICS as an organisation still lacks deeper institutionalisation. Beyond the establishment of the NDB, 'it is difficult to see what the group has done other than meet annually' (O'Neill, 2021).

ආර්ථික වර්ධන පථයන් එතරම් අසමාන වී තිබීම සහ සමූහයට පැහැදිලි ඒකාබද්ධ දෘෂ්ටිවාදී මූලධර්ම හෝ ගෝලීය පර්යාය කළමනාකරණය කිරීම සඳහා හවුල් දැක්මක් නොමැති වීම නිසා මෙම ගැටලුව උග්‍ර වේ.

Expanding the membership, then, is at least partly about gaining renewed impetus in a context where the BRICS remain beset by divergent interests, development trajectories, relative levels of geo-economic significance and ability to exercise substantial influence over the international system.

In all of these areas, China's power resources far outstrip those of the other members, while as an aspirant hegemon, it also depends most on – and has additional responsibility for – maintaining a calm, stable and open global economy (Beeson and Zeng, 2019).

But the level of openness that China adopts, or the extent of its accommodation to liberal, Western mores, depends to a significant degree on the policy area under discussion (Hameiri and Zeng, 2019; Weinhardt and ten Brink, 2020).

How could the expansion of the BRICS affect the global economy?

The worry, from a Western perspective, relates to the fact that – with the partial exception of South Africa (Reddy, 2022) – the BRICS have become, to differing degrees, more nationalist and authoritarian over the past decade.

Xi Jinping has cemented his dominance in China. Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro – who will shortly face a presidential election run-off against Lula da Silva – and India under Narendra Modi have both experienced a starkly populist turn (de Souza, 2020; Sinha, 2021). Vladimir Putin's Russia has become a pariah state that poses numerous thorny geopolitical questions extending well beyond the immediate Ukraine crisis (Burns, 2019; d'Eramo, 2022). In all four, minorities are persecuted and civil rights restricted.

Consequently, some European and US policy-makers worry that the BRICS may become less an economic club of rising powers seeking to influence global growth and development, and more a political one defined by their authoritarian nationalism.

Yet both the BRICS and the West share much in common. Economically, people the world over have long been disenchanted with market-led globalisation. The United States and many European countries – and even the European Union (EU) itself – have marvelled at China's expansion and reassessed their own desperate need for new institutions and mechanisms to drive interventionist industrial policy to keep up (Lavery and Schmid, 2021; Hopewell, 2021).

Politically – with continuing constitutional upheaval wrought by Brexit and the election of Donald Trump only the most obvious examples – Western countries have also experienced declines in the quality of democracy. As European states elect (or come close to electing) nationalists like Georgia Meloni in Italy or Marine Le Pen in France, they appear more vulnerable to further democratic decay than at any other time in recent history.

Diplomatically, the war in Ukraine appears to have drawn a stark dividing line between an Eastern-backed Russia and the West. But this only obscures the complicity of many of the latter's banking institutions and political elites in fostering Putin's regime, even as its excesses became progressively more evident (Bienkov, 2022).

So as the BRICS rise, they disrupt the global order in problematic ways that give incentives to the West to adopt illiberal mores (Hopewell, 2017). But the East also faces the countervailing pressure to become more liberal themselves, thereby reinforcing as well as reshaping that order (Bishop and Murray-Evans, 2020).

This is evident in the 'ambivalent' way that China and India are torn between their self-identity as developing countries, with a purported mission to lead the Global South, and the unavoidable reality that their economic interests increasingly align with the Global North (Cooper, 2021).

The web of constraints that China and India face – notably the tension inherent in preserving an uneasy BRICS unity while becoming responsible global diplomatic powers themselves – was highlighted starkly in September 2022 when both made their displeasure at Russia's quagmire in Ukraine public for the first time (Lau, 2022).

Will globalisation endure?
It is difficult to envisage a decisive decoupling of West from East, or a definitive process of 'deglobalisation'. The sheer volume of trade in goods and services, the flows of capital, data and people across borders to facilitate it, the extent of economic interdependence and the complexity of global value chain-based production, which relies on inputs sourced from around the world, all militate against it (Bishop and Payne, 2021a).

We will not see a decisive retreat behind national borders. Authoritarian autarky is not a viable or credible development strategy today. But at the same time, the pressures facing states from below mean that high levels of unmediated and destabilising economic openness also remain politically toxic.

The future of the global economy will plausibly remain globalised in general – with globalisation itself changing shape – while simultaneously becoming more national in certain respects.

This is not as contradictory as it sounds. Globalisation is a process driven substantially by states that are embedded within it. The two co-exist: they are not alternatives.

We require a recalibration of the nature of the relationship – an attempt to find greater policy space for nations within a renewed overarching global framework of institutions, rules and norms.

Between the two, the regional level is crucial. Indeed, even if we are witnessing some degree of 'reshoring' in light of Ukraine and wider upheavals in the global economy, many production networks are likely to reconstitute themselves regionally rather than nationally (Grey, 2019). Modern forms of production at the highest points of a value chain require economies of scale that are frequently continental in scope.

The key question is not if the global economy will evolve and change shape, but rather whether this occurs in a well-managed or increasingly fraught way. This will be determined by how the framework of global governance adapts to new realities.

International bodies are unquestionably in desperate need of reform and revitalisation (Bishop and Payne, 2021b). But the system that they collectively comprise is not as dysfunctional as is often believed (Drezner, 2014).

All states require the public goods that they provide and, as Lord O'Neill (2021) notes, the greatest disappointment with the performance of the BRICS is that they have not yet lived up to their promise in terms of sustaining the G20 on the next chapter of its development.

Overcoming this will be necessary for the body to carry out its crucial role of 'steering' the global economy in coming years and ensuring that tensions between West and East are mollified rather than magnified.

Author:Ramesh Bagya Sadishan Abeywickrama

Source: World Bank (Creative Commons License CC-BY 4.0)

BRIC රටවල්


The head of government is the leader of the executive branch of a nation's government. This is not always the same person as the head of state. Common titles for heads of government include Premier or Prime Minister.

In some countries such as the United States, the president is both the head of state and the head of government. In the Republic of Ireland the president is the head of state but the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) is the head of government.

In most modern monarchies the king (or queen) is the head of state but not the head of government, as is the case of Japan and the UK, for example. In this scenario, the monarch will perform ceremonial duties while the head of government takes care of the executive branch.

The head of state of some countries has no power over law and justice, for example, the Chancellor of Germany has those powers and not the Bundespresident.

Head of government


Stratum is the second full-length studio album by the Norwegian Christian extreme metal band Drottnar, initially released on October 13, 2012 through Endtime Productions.  A single was released for the album, "Lucid Stratum", on November 8, 2011, and the band went on a four-stop tour with Deuteronomium and Pantokrator in Finland from May 2–5, 2013. The album features a highly technical and complex form of extreme metal, and met with a positive reception from critics.

Background and recording

Drottnar formed in Fredrikstad, Norway, in 1996. The band recorded and released two demos, Doom of the Antichrist and A White Realm, both of which were re-mastered and re-released as a compilation, Spiritual Warfare, in 2000. The compilation was described as death/doom and Viking metal. In 2003, the group released an EP, Anamorphosis, and adopted a more minimalist black metal style. A studio album, Welterwerk, followed in 2006, and featured a technical and chaotic sound. Around the time of Welterwerk'''s release, the band members started wearing early 20th century military regalia in mockery of Nazi and Communist regimes.

Recording for Stratum began in 2009, which the band announced on Facebook on February 1 of that year. The next day, Drottnar announced the departure of guitarist Bengt Olsson. However, later that year, on August 12, the band announced that Olsson had rejoined Drottnar. Recording continued for the next few years. The album was mastered at Strype Audio by Tom Kvålsvoll.

Promotion and release
A single from the album, "Lucid Stratum", was released on November 8, 2011. On October 13, 2012, the band released Stratum in digital format, as well as a music video for the song "We March". Drottnar held a release party on March 16, 2013 at Elements of Rock in Uster, Switzerland, and announced on March 19 that a few physical copies of Stratum were available before they hit stores. On February 14, 2014, Drottnar released a lyric video for "Cul-De-Sac".

Musical style
Reviewers described the music on Stratum as a highly complex and technical form of extreme metal. HM's Michael Larson noted that on Stratum, Drottnar continued with the technical playing of the past, and perhaps even became more technical, but balanced this with a "subdued grind and some atonal chord work". André Gabriel of Metal.de described the music as "extreme", melding black metal with a "weird", progressive style, and noted the many tempo changes and intricate song structures. Radio show MLWZ wrote that on the album, Drottnar brings together "elements of technical, black, death, industrial, avant-garde and just about every form of extreme metal one can think of".

Touring
On December 1, 2012, Drottnar performed at Metal Night at Fabriken in Alingsås, Sweden. On May 2–5, 2013, Drottnar went on the 20 Years of Holy Metal tour in Finland with Deuteronomium and Pantokrator. The tour made four stops: Tampere, Kuopio, Lahti, and Helsinki.

Critical receptionStratum met with a positive reception from critics. Michael Larson of HM rated the album four out of five stars, remarking that "Drottnar sure takes their sweet time putting out albums, with 6 or 7 years between full-length releases. This time, it was definitely worth the wait." Larson opined that he liked the band's first release, 2000's Spiritual Battle, but disliked the band's previous album, 2006's Welterwerk, as was "too chaotic". However, in Larson's opinion, "Stratum seems to have taken the best of both those releases and melded them together into a furious sonic fury." He felt that while the band kept its technical playing style, it avoided getting too "chaotic and noisy". He also praised the production quality of the release, dubbing it "stellar". André Gabriel of Metal.de rated the album six out of ten, calling the album intelligently designed and well-played, but not outstanding. Kev Rowland, writing for the Polish radio show MLWZ, stated that he was "incredibly impressed" by the album. He lavished praise on the album's production, describing the sound quality as "incredible, large, loud and incredibly clear and concise so that one can hear just how much the bass is adding in terms of nuance". He concluded that Stratum'' is frightening; it is compelling, schizophrenic and all encompassing. This is not music for everyone, as its very nature will push many away, but if you want your music to be extreme yet always maintain a sensibility and power then look no further. The very first time I played this I was incredibly impressed, and repeated plays have only cemented that opinion. This could well be the extreme metal album of the year...

Track listing

Release history

References

Drottnar albums
2012 albums
Industrial metal albums
Avant-garde metal albums

Stratum (album)


I'll Do Anything is a comedy-drama movie from 1994. This movie is about an actor who finds himself the sole caretaker for his six-year-old daughter. Anne Heche plays Claire. Tracey Ullman plays Beth. Nick Nolte plays Matt. The movie got very positive reviews from the critics. The box office intake, however, was poor. The release of I'll Do Anything was in February 1994.

1994 comedy-drama movies
American comedy-drama movies

I'll Do Anything


John Joseph O'Neill (10 January 1873 – 29 June 1935) was a catcher in Major League Baseball who played for the St. Louis Cardinals (1902–03), Chicago Cubs (1904–05) and Boston Beaneaters (1906). He batted and threw right-handed.

He was born in the townland of Tawnaleen, near Maum, in County Galway, Ireland, to Michael O'Neill, a small farmer in Maum, and Mary Joyce.

O'Neill was one of four major league brothers. Steve was a catcher and manager, Jim a shortstop, and Mike, who also was born in Ireland, was a pitcher and formed a brother battery with Jack for the St. Louis Cardinals.

O'Neill shared catching duties for the Cardinals, Cubs and Beaneaters in a modest span of five years. He was a smart runner with some speed and usually was used in pinch-running situations. His most productive season came in 1903, when he posted career-highs in batting average (.236), runs (23), hits (58), doubles (nine), runs batted in (21), stolen bases (11) and games played (75).

In 303 games O'Neill was a .196 hitter with 20 stolen bases and 74 RBI. He also collected 185 hits with 24 doubles, five triples, and one home run in 945 at-bats.

O'Neill died in Scranton, Pennsylvania, at the age of 62.

See also
List of players from Ireland in Major League Baseball

References

External links
 Baseball Reference
Baseball Reference - 1902 debuts
Retrosheet

1873 births
1935 deaths
19th-century Irish people
20th-century Irish people
Boston Beaneaters players
Chicago Cubs players
St. Louis Cardinals players
Irish emigrants to the United States
Sportspeople from County Galway
Major League Baseball catchers
Major League Baseball players from Ireland
Irish baseball players
Baseball players from Pennsylvania
Rochester Brownies players
Montreal Royals players
Cortland Hirelings players
Canandaigua Giants players
Scranton Miners players
Hartford Indians players
Syracuse Stars (minor league baseball) players
Utica Reds players
Utica Pent-Ups players
Jersey City Skeeters players

Jack O'Neill (baseball)


Enrique Telémaco Susini (January 31, 1891 – July 4, 1972) was an Argentine entrepreneur and media pioneer.

In 1920, Susini led the effort for the first radio broadcast in Argentina, and subsequently established one of the earliest regular radio stations in the world. During the 1920s and 1930s, he became a successful entrepreneur in the nascent radio and film industry.

Besides his business interests, Susini was an accomplished artist. He worked as director for theaters in Argentina and Italy and directed several movies produced by Lumiton, which he owned.

Early life

Enrique T. Susini was born in Buenos Aires as son of Dr. Telémaco Susini, professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Buenos Aires and the country's first otolaryngologist.
In 1906, his father assumed the position of Argentine consul in the Austro-Hungarian capital of Vienna.
This allowed young Susini, who had received his high-school diploma one year earlier at the age of 14
to attend the Vienna conservatory, where he received formal training in singing and playing the violin. After briefly studying physics and chemistry in Berlin and Paris,
he returned to Buenos Aires in 1909 to begin his medical studies at the faculty where his father had taught. In 1913, at the age of 22, he received his degree of medical doctor having written an award-winning thesis.

After his graduation, he briefly worked as a journalist, helping to found the Asociación de la Crítica (Association of [theater] critics) in 1915. One year later, he joined the Argentine military, where he conducted research about the influence of electric and acoustic stimuli on the human body and set up a laboratory for veterinary vaccines.

Radio Days

Radio Pioneer

In 1910, Guglielmo Marconi, winner of the previous year's Nobel Prize in Physics, had come to Argentina for the centennial festivities of the country's independence. During his stay, he used the opportunity to set up a telegraphic radio station in Bernal, from where he successfully transmitted messages to Canada and Ireland.
The publicity generated by Marconi's visit helped to create a group of mostly young radio enthusiasts. Among these young people were Susini and a group of his friends from medical school.

In 1915, the community had become large and sophisticated enough for a newspaper article to mention that the radio amateurs "formed a sort of fraternity, exchanging news, talking with each other over long distances, and even transmitting little piano or violin concerts over their connections."

Susini, along with his nephew Miguel Mugica and his friends Cesar Guerrico and Luis Romero Carranza formed part of this community and took part in these first tentative steps. Soon they acquired the nickname Locos de la Azotea ("the crazy people from the roof"), because their hobby involved activities - sometimes bordering on the acrobatic - on top of tall buildings, where they mounted the long wire antennas required by early-type radios. During this time, the group first played with the idea to use radio as a means for cultural dissemination, a fact that Susini himself later ascribed to their shared passion for theater and music.

At the outbreak of the World War in Europe, radio communication had become a technology of great military significance, and its development accelerated considerably during the following years. However, most of this development took place in secret, and so the stream of bibliographical material and hardware from Europe to Argentina gradually dried up.

In this situation, Susini was offered a great opportunity resulting from his military experience. After the end of the war in late 1918, he was sent to France to study the effect of chemical warfare on the respiratory system. While conducting his research, he was able to procure radio communications hardware from the formerly belligerent armies, which he later smuggled back to Argentina.

First Broadcast

After returning to Argentina in 1919, Susini started working on the conversion of an old circus site into the Teatro Coliseo theater. Together with his friends, he started planning for a radio transmission from there, strongly supported by the two Italian owners, Faustino da Rossa and Walter Mocchi.

During 1920, while the group was working on the project, news reached them of Marconi's successful broadcast of a concert of Nellie Melba in Chelmsford that had taken place on June 15. Even though it was somewhat of a disappointment that their broadcast would not be the world's first, the preparations continued at a rapid pace.

On August 27, they were finally ready. The theatre was showing the opera Parsifal by Richard Wagner. Susini and his coworkers had set up a 5W transmitter on the roof using a RS-5 Telefunken tube, operating in 350m, along with a wire antenna connected to the dome on top of a neighboring building. To pick up the sound in the theater, they used a microphone originally designed to aid people with hearing loss.

Around 8:30 pm, Susini himself took the microphone and inaugurated regular radio broadcast service in Argentina with the words:

Señoras y señores, la Sociedad Radio Argentina les presenta hoy el Festival Sacro de Ricardo Wagner, Parsifal, con la actuación del tenor Maestri...

(Ladies and gentlemen, the Radio Argentina Society today presents you the [opera] Parsifal by Richard Wagner, featuring the tenor Maestri...)

The transmission continued for about three hours and was received as far as Santos in Brazil, where it was picked up by a ship's radio operator. The number of listeners was limited, since the crystal set radios used at the time were rare and difficult to operate, requiring tedious fine-tuning of a lead glass crystal and installation of a wire antenna several meters long. But the newspaper La Razón published a raving review, and even president Hipólito Yrigoyen commended Susini and his group for their accomplishment.

Radio Argentina

During the next 19 days, the group continued to broadcast from the theater, transmitting mostly Italian operas such as Verdi's Aida and Rigoletto. After the season at the Teatro Coliseo was over, they started creating productions under their own name. By now they officially called their station "Radio Argentina". Radio Argentina would continue broadcasting until its demise on December 31, 1997.

At first, it was run solely by the four friends. The polyglot Susini himself performed songs in Spanish, French, German, Italian and Russian, assuming a different stage name each time so the listeners would not notice.

During the following years, radio broadcasting in Argentina saw a quick expansion. In 1921, Buenos Aires mayor Juan Barnetche introduced official broadcasting licenses. In the same year, Radio Club Argentina was founded, becoming the first such association on American soil. In October 1922, Radio Argentina broadcast live from the inauguration of president Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear, an historic first. Two months later, the first competitors arrived - Italian-owned Corporación Argentina de Radio Sud América, Radio Brusa and Radio Cultura, all three founded within an interval of three days.

In 1924, the radio industry in Argentina went through a brief crisis, during which Radio Argentina had to be financially supported by an association of industrialists named Asociación Argentina de Broadcasting.
While competitor Radio Sud América went into bankruptcy, and was taken over by Radio Argentina, Radio Argentina itself survived, even though it had to briefly adopt the name of its benefactors. The station now broadcast from the famous Teatro Colón opera as well as from the (Tango-) Club Abdullah, and other venues. Adding to the variety of the schedule was Argentina's first regular radio journal.

1925 saw the introduction of mandatory callsigns for radio stations, and from now on the station was known as LOR Radio Argentina (changed 1934 into LR2 Radio Argentina, it being the second station on the dial from the left). It also entered a collaboration with the daily newspaper Crítica, remaining under the direction of Susini and his friends but adopting the name
"LOR Broadcasting de Crítica". This arrangement lasted a little more than a year, before the station returned to its original name and ownership.

Vía Radiar

By now, Susini and his partners were focusing on another project. Immediately after reacquiring the station from Crítica, they sold it to Radio Prieto, using the money to create a radiotelegraphy company, Sociedad Anónima Radio Argentina, constituted on August 31, 1927.

The company soon entered the market of short-wave radio communication between South America and Europe, receiving a "concession for an international radio telegraphy service allowing direct communication between Spain and Argentina" from the Spanish government.

With its relay stations in Paraguay, New York City and Madrid,
the company, operating under the brand name "Vía Radiar", had considerable financial success. Moving aggressively against competitors by reducing prices, it soon managed to control the majority of radio traffic between Argentina and Europe, in close cooperation with the Spanish administration's telegraph service.

In 1930, the company was sold to ITT for the very substantial sum of 200 million US Dollar. Susini and his friends remained on the board of directors under the new ownership.

Lumiton Film

One year later, Susini, by now married to singer Alicia Arderius, and his three companions founded the film company Lumiton (from Spanish luminosidad and tono: "light" and "sound"), which would become one of the major players during the following decade, known as the "Golden Age of Argentine Cinema".

With equipment bought during a trip to the United States, the four partners set up the most modern film studio in the country at the time, which included its own laboratory.
The studio released its first film, Los Tres Berretines, on May 19, 1933. It was the second sound film in Argentina, preceded only by competitor Sono Film's Tango, released about three weeks earlier on April 27.
Though officially credited collectively to "Equipo Lumiton", it had actually been directed by Susini himself.

In total, 99 films were released by the company with its trademark gong. Among the most notable was 1938 Venice Film Festival entry La chismosa, starring Lola Membrives, also directed by Susini himself.
Lumiton continued producing feature films until 1957.

Other activities

Even while leading his various companies, Susini remained active in the cultural domain. He was in charge of Teatro Coliseo during several seasons in the 1920s, and served as technical director of the famous Teatro Colón. After setting in scene the opera Oberon in 1938 at the Teatro Reale in Rome to great critical acclaim, he was called to work as director at the Scala in Milan.

Later he also worked at the "Teatro Argentino de La Plata". During his life, Susini authored more than seventy theater plays, receiving the National Culture Award in 1951 for his comedy En un viejo patio porteño ("In an old Buenos Aires back yard"). Furthermore, he was known as an excellent concert pianist.

Also in 1951, Susini returned to his roots as broadcast pioneer, working as director of photography during Argentina's first television broadcast on October 17.

Finally, in 1962, Susini founded the cooperative phone company TELPIN in Pinamar, opening the way for a series of popular local phone companies in Argentina. TELPIN is still in business today as a modern telecommunications company offering a broad range of phone and internet services.

Legacy

Although he definitely did not perform the world's first radio broadcast, an honor that belongs to Enrico Marconi, Susini is often credited, especially in Argentine publications, with the establishment of the world's first regular radio broadcast service.

A final evaluation of this claim is not easy, since there were many experimental audio broadcasts in various countries at the time. However, what remains certain is that Susini established the first radio broadcast station in South America on his personal initiative, overcoming serious difficulties in the process. Even though Susini himself has remained relatively unknown, even in his home country, the significance of his pioneering feat was acknowledged in 1970 by the establishment of August 27 as National Broadcast Day (Día de la Radiodifusión) in Argentina, annually celebrated by the country's radio stations.

Selected filmography
 It Always Ends That Way (1939)

References

External links
Lumiton Homepage

Lumiton's entry on IMDB
Canal 7, successor of Argentina's first TV station
Homepage of TELPIN phone company

1891 births
1972 deaths
Mass media people from Buenos Aires
History of radio
Radio pioneers
Argentine film directors
Burials at La Recoleta Cemetery

Enrique Telémaco Susini


"Gimme More" is a song from Britney Spears' album Blackout. The song was released in late 2007. It was her comeback single after a few years out of the music business because of her personal problems. It hit the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. It is a dance-pop and electropop song with elements of disco music. Its lyrics are apparently about dancing and having sex although they're actually about the media fascination for Spears' private life as noted in lyrics such as "Cameras are flashing my way darty dancin' they keep watching, feels like the crowd was saying: gimme more"

The song was first performed at the 2007 VMA awards; a performance heavily criticized by the media comparing it to Spears' standards in previous ceremonies. It was also performed during the Femme Fatale tour in an Egypt-style remix in 2011 as well as in Britney: Piece Of Me Vegas Residency in 2013.

The song was an international success reaching the top 10 in more than 15 countries including the US, UK and Australia among others

Britney Spears songs
2007 songs
Songs about sexuality
Lil' Kim songs

Gimme More


The Twilight Zone is an American television series created by Rod Serling. It is a series of unrelated stories of drama, psychological thriller, fantasy, science fiction, suspense, and/or horror, often ending with a dark or unexpected twist. A popular and critical success, it introduced many Americans to serious science fiction and abstract ideas through television and Twilight Zone books and comics.

The success of the first series started two revival series: one series that ran for several seasons on CBS and in syndication in the 1980s, and another series that ran on UPN from 2002 to 2003. It would also lead to a movie, a radio series, a comic book, a magazine and  other spin-offs that would go on for 50 years.

Aside from Serling himself, who wrote nearly two-thirds of the series' total episodes, writers for The Twilight Zone included authors such as Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Jerry Sohl, George Clayton Johnson, Earl Hamner, Jr., Reginald Rose, Harlan Ellison and Ray Bradbury.  Many episodes also featured adaptations of classic stories by such writers as Ambrose Bierce, Lewis Padgett, Jerome Bixby and Damon Knight.

Twilight Zone's writers often used science fiction as a way for social commentary. Television networks and sponsors who had censored all possible offensive material from the mostly live dramas were not aware of the methods developed by writers such as Ray Bradbury for dealing with important issues through fantasy. Themes include nuclear war, mass hysteria, and McCarthyism, subjects that were not allowed on more "serious" primetime television.

The first series contained 156 episodes. Seasons 1, 2, 3, 5 were half hour shows. Season four (1962–1963) contained one-hour episodes.

Other websites

Twilight Zone actors interviewed, October 2015
The Anorak Zone
The Rod Serling Museum
The Twilight Zone Museum

American science fiction television series
1959 television series debuts
1950s television series
1960s television series
1964 television series endings
CBS network shows
First run syndicated television programs
UPN network shows
English-language television programs

The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)


The Pacific Division is one of three divisions in the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association, along with the Northwest Division and the Southwest Division. The five teams in this division are the Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers, Phoenix Suns, and the Sacramento Kings.

References

National Basketball Association divisions

Pacific Division (NBA)


The Darker Image was the first all-black female swimsuit calendar to break into mainstream bookstores across the United States, such as Barnes & Noble and Waldenbooks, in 1994–1997.

Before King, Smooth and BlackMen magazines existed, black calendars such as The Darker Image were among the first to usher hip hop models into the mainstream print media (other than perhaps Jet magazine). The Darker Image was particularly well distributed and sat on shelves in Borders Books & Music and Barnes & Noble nationwide and was featured on Entertainment Tonight, Extra, and The Jenny Jones Show. The Los Angeles Times quoted Barnes & Noble calendar buyer Bill Costello as saying, "The market is crying out for it.  It's rare that you can say in the business, 'This is needed, there's nothing else like it.' In this case, it was true." The Darker Image's distribution records for a minority-themed swimsuit calendar remain unbroken.

The Darker Image calendar became a small part of the cultural zeitgeist of the time, particularly in the urban world, with the calendar prominently featured in John Singleton's movie Higher Learning, and The Hollywood Reporter writing: "'Phat Beach,' the first Hollywood beach blanket-type movie featuring blacks, has just wrapped principal photography.... Coolio and Paperboy will provide the rap tunes for the models from Darker Image '95 Swimsuit Calendar."

The Darker Image calendar did not feature any big name models or actresses at the time, although many of the models in the calendar went on to impressive careers, including Traci Bingham, Melissa De Sousa, Amy Hunter, and Mari Morrow.

References

External links
 YouTube link

African-American mass media
Published calendars
Swimsuits

The Darker Image


ArabDev is a Giza (Egypt)-based non-profit organization that uses Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to "promote existing development projects and for innovative developmental initiatives". ArabDev provides women and youth with an educational venue for livelihood opportunities, through improved access to information and its use in skill development as well as small and micro enterprises.

Formation

It was formed by its non-governmental organizations (NGOs) both in Egypt and in the wider Arab region. ArabDev seeks to support ICT capacity-building among disadvantaged communities and grassroots organizations to get access to better work and life opportunities.

Focus

Its focus includes, using ICTs for:

 Poverty reduction.
 Skill development.
 Dissemination of developmental information.
 Creation of linkages between NGOs.
 Supporting developmental advocacy.

Current initiatives

ArabDev, which is a member of the Association for Progressive Communications, has reported recent initiatives to spread free software among youth in the disadvantaged south of Egypt. The group reported working with two middle schools in the Al Menia governorate, and also with the Faculty of Computer Engineering of the Menia University.

For this project, the goal is to establish a "core group" of FLOSS users in the Minya Governorate, which could act as a south Egyptian "diffusion point".

So far, it has created computer labs or telecentres in some schools, which also offer their services to the community. In the Association for Progressive Communications report for 2005-06, it was stated that ArabDev reached an agreement with the Egyptian education department to collect fees, so as to make this venture sustainable.

External links

ArabDev
 Podcast on ArabDev team's attempt at popularising FLOSS through telecentres
Computers and domestic violence in Egypt
Children hungry for computer training held back by lack of PCs in Upper Egypt
Playing games with computer education: ArabDev's Menia initiatives

Non-profit organisations based in Egypt
Information technology organizations based in Africa

ArabDev


Scrap is a term used to describe recyclable materials left over from manufacturing and product consumption. It includes parts of vehicles, building supplies, and surplus materials. Often confused with waste, scrap in fact has significant monetary value.

Overall, the scrap industry processes more than  of recyclable material each year into raw material feedstock for industrial manufacturing around the world. One example is scrap steel. Scrap is mainly reused to make other items. Plastic, for example, is melted down into new shapes. A water bottle may have been part of a computer once.

Recycling
Waste management
Scrap is very valuable. Some scrap is stolen for its worth, like copper wires and pans. This is a crime in some countries, and many investigations are focused on issues with legitimate metal trading. Totaled cars are often also sold for the metal inside. They are crushed, melted into smaller ingots and cylinders, then shipped to a manufacturer of metal goods that paid for that scrap metal. For developed metals to become scrap metal, it needs to be unused and useless in the form it's in. Only then do people shred and melt metal to be used for other things.

Scrap


Jan Timman (born 14 December 1951) is a Dutch chess grandmaster who was one of the world's leading chess players from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. At the peak of his career, he was considered to be the best non-Soviet player and was known as "The Best of the West". He has won the Dutch Chess Championship nine times and has been a Candidate for the World Chess Championship several times. He lost the title match of the 1993 FIDE World Championship against Anatoly Karpov.

Early career
He is the son of mathematics professor Rein Timman and his wife Anneke, who as a schoolgirl was a mathematics student of former world champion Max Euwe. His older brother, Ton (1946–2014), held the chess title of FIDE Master. Jan Timman was already an outstanding prospect in his early teens, and at Jerusalem 1967 played in the World Junior Championship, aged fifteen, finishing third.

Timman received the International Master title in 1971, and in 1974 attained Grandmaster status, making him the Netherlands' third after Max Euwe and Jan Hein Donner. In the same year he won the Dutch Championship for the first time, having finished second in 1972. He was to win it again on many more occasions through 1996. His first notable international success was at Hastings 1973/74, where he shared victory with Tal, Kuzmin, and Szabó. A string of victories quickly followed at Sombor 1974 (with Boris Gulko), Netanya 1975, Reykjavík 1976 (with Fridrik Olafsson), Amsterdam IBM 1978, Nikšić 1978, and Bled/Portorož 1979.

Tournament successes
By 1982 Timman was ranked second in the world, behind only Anatoly Karpov. In the 1980s he won a number of very strong tournaments, including Amsterdam IBM in 1981, Wijk aan Zee in 1981 and 1985, Linares in 1988, the 1989 Euwe Memorial, and the 1989 World Cup tournament in Rotterdam. Other major successes included Las Palmas 1981, Mar del Plata 1982, Bugojno 1984, and Sarajevo 1984. One of his notable later successes was the 2nd Immopar Rapid Tournament in 1991, a weekend event which attracted a huge amount of prize money. In this knock-out format tournament he defeated Gata Kamsky 1½–½, Karpov 2–0, Viswanathan Anand 1½–½, and finally the World Champion Garry Kasparov 1½–½ to win the first prize of approximately 75,000 USD. His performance was equivalent to an Elo rating of 2950.

World Championship Candidate
Timman's world championship career began at the zonal tournaments at Forssa/Helsinki 1972 and Reykjavík 1975. He failed to qualify for the next stage on both occasions. However his win at Amsterdam 1978 took him to his first interzonal tournament at Rio de Janeiro, where he failed to progress further. He finished in the middle of the field at the 1982 Las Palmas Interzonal, but won the Taxco 1985 Interzonal convincingly to qualify for the Candidates Matches for the first time. However, he lost in the first round to Artur Yusupov in 1986. In the next cycle, after winning the 1987 Tilburg Interzonal he defeated Valery Salov, Lajos Portisch, and Jonathan Speelman, but lost in the final to Anatoly Karpov in 1990. He reached the final round once again in 1993, having defeated Robert Hübner, Viktor Korchnoi, and Yusupov, but lost this time to Nigel Short. However, after Short and Garry Kasparov played their World Championship match outside of the auspices of the sport's governing body FIDE, Timman was invited to compete against Karpov for the FIDE version of the world title. He lost the match by 12½ points to 8½.

Olympiad career

Timman represented the Netherlands in 13 Chess Olympiads from 1972 to 2004, playing on the top board on 11 occasions. In 1976 he won the gold medal for the best individual performance on that board.

Later career
Timman continues to play actively. In 2004 he placed equal first in a tournament in Reykjavík and was equal second at Amsterdam. He played in the gold medal-winning Dutch team at the European Team Chess Championships in Gothenburg in 2005, alongside Loek van Wely, Ivan Sokolov, Sergei Tiviakov, and Erik van den Doel. In 2006 he won the Sigeman Tournament in Malmö Sweden and was second in the Howard Staunton Memorial in London.

Writings
Timman is one of the chief editors of the magazine New In Chess. His book The Art of Chess Analysis () is widely considered one of the modern classics of chess literature. His Timman's Titans won the 2017 ECF Book of the Year. His other books include Timman's Selected Games (1995), Studies and Games (1996), Fischer, World Champion! (2002), an account of the 1972 World Championship, Power Chess with Pieces: The Ultimate Guide to the Bishops Pair & Strong Knights (2004), Botvinnik's Secret Games (2006), On the Attack: The Art of Attacking Chess According to the Modern Masters (2006), Curaçao 1962: The Battle of Minds That Shook the Chess World (2007), which covers the 1962 Candidates Tournament and The Art of the Endgame (My journeys in the Magical World Endgame Studies) (2011).

Style
Timman likes to challenge opponents directly in the areas of their strengths. Yasser Seirawan describes a game where Timman had an over-the-board inspiration to opt for a complicated game—the kind that Timman knew Seirawan really enjoyed—in spite of having prepared an equalizing variation beforehand. Timman's fearlessness has caused him to lose a lot of games, but also makes him a feared competitor because nobody likes to lose from their favourite positions. Raymond Keene described Timman's playing style as that of "a fighter, in the mould of Emanuel Lasker".

He has always adopted a wide and varied opening repertoire, playing an array of different systems as both White and Black. When he first reached the world class level in the 1970s, this was relatively unusual, with most elite grandmasters deploying a more narrowly focused range of openings, but it is now the norm.

Example game

This game, played between Timman and Garry Kasparov in Hilversum on 17 December 1985, is a good example of Timman's style:
Timman vs. Garry Kasparov, Hilversum 1985; Ruy Lopez, Zaitsev Variation 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.c3 0-0 9.h3 Bb7 10.d4 Re8 11.Ng5 Rf8 12.Nf3 Re8 13.Nbd2 Bf8 14.a3 h6 15.Bc2 Nb8 16.b4 Nbd7 17.Bb2 g6 18.c4 exd4 19.cxb5 axb5 20.Nxd4 c6 21.a4 bxa4 22.Bxa4 Qb6 23.Nc2 Qc7 24.Bb3 Ba6 25.Rc1 Bg7 26.Ne3 Bb5 27.Nd5 Nxd5 28.Bxg7 Kxg7 29.exd5 Ne5 30.Ne4 Nd3 31.Qd2 Ra3 32.Nf6 Rxe1+ 33.Rxe1 Kxf6 34.Qc3+ Ne5 35.f4 Ba4 36.fxe5 dxe5 (see diagram; at this point, Timman finds a game-ending combination) 37.d6 Qxd6 38.Qf3+ Ke7 39.Qxf7+ Kd8 40.Rd1 Ra1 41.Qf6+ (Kasparov cannot hang on to his queen)

Personal life
Timman married twice, with a son and a daughter from the first marriage.

References

External links

1951 births
Living people
Chess grandmasters
Dutch republicans
Chess Olympiad competitors
Dutch chess players
Dutch chess writers
Dutch non-fiction writers
Sportspeople from Amsterdam

Jan Timman