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{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licuala_orbicularis"} | Species of palm
Licuala orbicularis is a species of palm in the genus Licuala. It is endemic to the island of Borneo. | 81e4ba1c-0846-498b-ad8e-01028d04e2a8 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hillyard_Swinstead"} | British painter and illustrator
George Hillyard Swinstead (1860-1926) was a British artist associated with the Suffolk school. | 0a6c2b00-2a8e-4dfc-9145-186492aba40e |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Brodin"} | Swedish ice hockey player
Ice hockey player
Daniel Brodin (born 9 February 1990) is a Swedish professional ice hockey right winger who is currently playing for Djurgårdens IF Hockey in the HockeyAllsvenskan (Allsv). Brodin has represented Sweden internationally at the 2010 World Junior Championships. He was drafted by the Toronto Maple Leafs, who selected him in the fifth round of the 2010 NHL Entry Draft.
Playing career
Brodin participated in the 2006 TV-pucken, playing for Stockholm Röd. He scored one goal and two points but couldn't help the team get promoted to the playoffs. He played the rest of the 2006–07 season in Almtuna IS' J20 team. He moved to Djurgårdens IF the following season, where he played in Djurgården's J18 team for most of the season.
Brodin was promoted to the J20 team for the 2008–09 season. The team made it to the playoffs but was beaten by Brynäs IF in the semifinals. Brodin joined Djurgården's senior team as an extra player for the away game against Luleå HF on 12 February 2009, but did not get any time on the ice. He made his real Elitserien debut against Modo Hockey on 10 November 2009, two days later on 12 November, he scored his first point, an assist to Marcus Krüger who scored the 2–2 goal against Luleå HF. Brodin scored the 2–1 goal in the derby against Södertälje SK on 14 November 2009. It proved to be the game-winning goal and was also his first goal in Elitserien.
Brodin was selected by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the fifth round of the 2010 NHL Entry Draft. Brodin signed a two-year extension with Djurgården on 4 March 2011.
On 3 May 2019, Brodin joined HC Fribourg-Gottéron of the National League (NL) on a one-year deal worth CHF 650,000.
International play
Brodin was named for Team Sweden by Pär Mårts, coach of Sweden's national junior hockey team, for the 2010 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships, despite only having played nine Elitserien games at the time.
He replaced Niklas Nordgren, who suffered from a minor concussion, in the 2010 Karjala Cup. Team Sweden's last game in the tournament against Finland was Brodin's first game in the senior national team. He was called up again for Team Sweden for the 2010 Channel One Cup.
Personal
In July 2017, Brodin married his childhood sweetheart Emilia Appelqvist, a professional soccer player for Djurgårdens IF DFF and the Sweden women's national football team. In September 2018 Emilia gave birth to the couple's first child, a daughter named Mila Ida Brodin.
Career statistics
Regular season and playoffs
International | 727f049e-ce3f-4abc-bc4b-86347ee8f5db |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JazzFest_Berlin"} | JazzFest Berlin (also known as the Berlin Jazz Festival) is a jazz festival in Berlin, Germany. Originally called the "Berliner Jazztage" (Berlin Jazz Days), it was founded in 1964 in West Berlin by the Berliner Festspiele. Venues included Berliner Philharmonie, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Volksbühne, Haus der Berliner Festspiele and the Jazzclubs Quasimodo and A-Trane.
The festival's mission has been "to document, support, and validate trends in jazz, and to mirror the diversity of creative musical activity. | acb9feef-a183-43d9-8581-684b390a7b4a |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicometrina"} | Genus of flukes
Helicometrina is a genus of trematodes in the family Opecoelidae.
Species
Species later synonymised with species of Helicometrina | 6488ae8e-c25d-40e3-9728-4986935db76a |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobello_di_Bonomo"} | Italian painter
Jacobello di Bonomo (active 1370–90) was an Italian painter, active in an early Renaissance style.
Little is known about his biography, and he appears to be referred to by various authors under different names, such as Jacobello or Jacometto del Fiore by the abbot Luigi Lanzi.
While he apparently trained in Venice, there are no identifiable works there. He is best known for a large and colorful polyptych of the Virgin and Child with 14 Saints (1385), located at Santarcangelo di Romagna. It is housed in the Civic Museum in the Palazzo Cenci of Santarcangelo. Some art critics suggest the influence of Lorenzo Veneziano. Other sources point to him working for or alongside Giovanni da Bologna. | 331e2f2c-6ed1-4395-86fd-ad52e484d776 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ss._Theodore_Church"} | Ss. Theodore Church (Romanian: Biserica Sfinții Teodori) is a Romanian Orthodox church located at 14 Sfântul Teodor Street in Iași, Romania.[citation needed] It is dedicated to Saints Theodore of Amasea and Theodore Stratelates.
The first church on the site was made of wood. Historians initially believed it was built by Prince Eustratie Dabija (reigned 1661-1665) and his wife Dafina. However, in 1902, Gheorghe Ghibănescu deciphered the Romanian Cyrillic inscriptions on two icons, finding that while the church was constructed under Dabija, the ktitors were vornic Solomon Bârlădeanul and his wife Maria. A document of 1669 attests the church's existence. It burned in 1735 and 1760. The present stone church is thought to date to 1761 and was financed by the nun Sofia, the daughter of a jitnicer and a widow.
Around 1783, after Sofia's death, the church was in need of repairs, while the cojoc-makers' guild was looking for a place to worship. Thus, the church came into their hands, and the new occupants rebuilt the spire roofs and exterior siding, adding a new style of ornament later copied by numerous churches in the area. They added numerous religious books to its collection, candelabras brought from Russia and a clock installed in the main spire. The guilders also donated a collection of books printed at Râmnic in 1779-1780.
The iconostasis is unique in Moldavia. Carved in rosewood, it has icons dating to Dabija's reign: those depicting Christ, the Virgin Mary, Ss. Theodore and Saint Nicholas were probably painted by Grigore Zugravul in 1665, and come from the old wooden church. The cojocari probably added a row of icons during their heyday; researchers have noted a difference in style consonant with two different time periods. The guilders were associated with the church for roughly a century. Due to industrial advances, their guild system broke down around 1920. The church was hit by a bomb in 1944, during World War II, and repaired in 1952. The repainting process degraded the appearance of the interior.
The church combines Baroque, Turkish, Moldavian and Wallachian influences, typical of the final quarter of the 18th century. It resembles several Iași churches of the period, while the window decorations are visibly influenced by Golia Monastery. It is listed as a historic monument by Romania's Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs. | 67be0545-8505-41cd-bd15-2f186e4a6b2c |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentalism_(disambiguation)"} | Look up mentalism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Mentalism is a performing art in which the practitioner simulates psychic abilities.
Mentalism may also refer to: | 69105a91-c938-4c99-b22f-d5f9cddc1a40 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Rosa_Church,_Paramaribo"} | Church in Paramaribo, Suriname
The Santa Rosa Church (Dutch: Sint Rosakerk) is a Roman Catholic church located in Paramaribo, Suriname. The current church dates from 1911, and is the second largest church in Paramaribo. It is located in the centre of the city and part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
History
In the middle of the 19th century there was a large increase in the number of Catholics in Suriname. In 1861, the building of Loge Concordia [nl] of the freemasons was purchased, and turned into a church. The church was dedicated to Rose of Lima.
In 1911, a larger church was built with two towers, and consecrated on 28 June 1911. It is a deep church with a small square in front. The building consists of a high central nave with a flat ceiling, and two side naves, and is painted in the same colour scheme as the Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral.
The organ of the Rosa Church was built by Jos H. Vermeulen and dates from 1929. There are two bells in the left tower. In 1946, the Rosa Church was hit by lightning which caused a hole of several metres in the tower. In 2009, the Mary statue of the clergy house of the Anthony the Great Church [nl] in The Hague was donated to the Rosa Church and placed in an artificial cave in front of the church.
In 2020, a restoration of the Rosa Church started, because the building suffered from leakage and barklice. In May 2021, during the restoration, both towers were struck by lightning and damaged.
The clergy house is in use by the boy scouts, and the church is also used as a concert hall.
Gallery | 9b8c1f26-b265-4c7e-8022-55f66d736c6a |
null | 1998 U.S. Open may refer to:
Topics referred to by the same term | b206be33-aa41-4c03-bf13-d5c74d3acbec |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikenobo_College"} | Ikenobo Junior College (池坊短期大学, Ikenobō tanki daigaku) is a private junior college in Kyoto, Japan, established in 1952.
Alumni | f6c8bbd4-3ef9-4887-a2c1-a08966f4244f |
null | Poklong Anading (born August 1, 1975, Manila, Philippines) is a contemporary artist. He works in various mediums including photography, video, painting, sculpture and installation. He is the recipient of the 2006 Ateneo Studio Residency Grant in Australia, the 2006 Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artists Award, and 2006 and 2008 Ateneo Art Awards. His previous residencies include Big Sky Mind, Manila (2003–04), and Common Room, Bandung, Indonesia.
Early life
Poklong Anading was born on August 1, 1975 in Manila, Philippines. He was a student of Roberto Chabet and graduated from the College of Fine Arts, University of Philippines in 1999 with a BFA in painting. He has been recognized for his work on both a national and international level.
Themes
Although he received his formal training in painting, Anading works mainly in photography and video. His work has also extended into process-oriented sculpture and installation in the style of Arte Povera. Through his art, Poklong Anading assumes the role of observer and collector, creating images and objects derived from facts and memories. He also explores and documents the intangible such as light, time, gravity and space.
Anading has also expressed an interest in identity. For his Anonymity series (2004-), the artist takes photographs of individuals whose faces are unidentifiable behind blinding sunlight. His Hit or Miss is a Hit(2015) show exhibited at the 1335 Mabini art gallery in Manila, also included images of anonymous people taking selfies of themselves. The artist has classified identity as a “never-ending” topic that intensifies the more it is discussed. His various attempts at concealing the face—considered the main identifier of an individual—are the result of a desire to create a “clean slate” by removing the limitations of identity.
Poklong Anading's art also focuses on including the subject or the viewer in the artwork. While his Miracle Healing and Other Hopeful Things (2011) show exhibited at Mo Space, Manila focused on bringing the observer back to a childlike state through the use of colorful materials and confetti, his other works such as the Homage to Homage sculptures (2014-2015) dwell on “the ratio of Manila's aggressive urbanization and accretion of skyscrapers on the one hand and the abounding living and working conditions on the other.”
The artist has said that he derives his ideas from his current setting—his "present circumstances" or a "given moment" dictate the medium in which he will work. His work is often preceded by a great deal of research.
Selected exhibitions
Anonymity (2004–)
Anonymity is an ongoing photography project, which began in 2004. Taken on streets where Anading has traveled, the photographs in the series show individuals holding circular mirrors in front of their faces that reflect sunlight back to the camera. The series creates an absence of knowledge and an enhanced sense of anonymity through the faces concealed by the bright sunlight. The artist aims to mark the “clothes, bearings and backgrounds” of these individuals as their only possible identifier, and places attention on the “background that configures the encountered ‘Other.’” Anading also expresses interest in the point where identity and representation vanish and “selfhood” is both marked and erased. Anonymity also received the 007 Silverlens Foundation Acquisition Grant. The first piece in the series, Counter Acts I, was exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in the exhibition No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia. With the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, the artwork later traveled to the Asia Society Hong Kong Centre and the Center for Contemporary Art in Singapore.
Urban Canyon (2015)
This exhibition was held in the 1335 Mabini art gallery in Manila, and was structured to draw the audience's attention to the unique structures hidden in the city. The artist's idea behind this project is that our conception of a city relies heavily on cosmopolitan ideals, which inevitably eliminate its true character. For this show, Anading exhibited four series of projects: Road to Mountains, Untitled (Drawer), Homage to Homage, and Gateway. In the show, the artist used “forgotten” objects from the city that were annihilated in order to make way for the new urban setting, and placed them outside of their usual environment. Understanding the exhibition requires questioning what is lost within the structure and what it is replaced with.
In Untitled (Drawer), the artist accumulated images of tower cranes in clear film photographs, as the tower crane disappeared when the skyscraper reached its final stage. As the new object was completed the tower cranes vanished in oblivion.
A similar topic was portrayed in Homage to Homage, in which a scaffold was wrapped in steel by the artist in order to celebrate its temporary nature. The idea behind the show was to demonstrate the vanishing nature of all objects that are created for the sole purpose of aiding architecture that will construct the ideal metropolitan city. The scaffold's form was preserved but wrapped in luster by the artist in order to depict the very question behind its presence, and ultimately its disappearance.[citation needed]
In Road to Mountains, Anading placed rubber tires used as speed bumps throughout the gallery to highlight their contradictory nature; an object used for motion that becomes a means to cease motion. The artist depicted the paradox behind speed bumps alongside the paradox with the progression of city life.
The final show in the project; Gateway, was a three-part video set in three different cities: Singapore, Manila and La Rochelle. The artist used this video to explore the “borders that define a city” through the use of contradicting images such as structure and sky, and silhouette and light. Anading drew attention through the video to how the urban edifices change cityscapes.
Pocket Coffin (2013)
This exhibition was held at the Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill (Graz, Austria) from October 31, 2012 to January 5, 2013. Anading came up with the title of the exhibition during an inter-religious event in the same city, and derived the name from a 7th-century pocketbook. For this exhibition, Anading once again focused on the ordinary, and introduced four works about “home, exploring and finding, operating systems and the puzzlement of information and filtering, desire and fulfillment.” This exhibition, like his previous ones, encouraged active participation from the audience. One of the shows in the exhibition was called “rfinderexplore”, which consisted of sound files made up of the various voices heard during the religious conference. The artist presented all of these sound files as blank folders, eliminating the certainty that the digital usually brings and instead forcing the viewer to delve into uncertainty.
Miracle Healing and Other Hopeful Things (2011)
Miracle Healing and Other Hopeful Things (2011, Mo Space, Manila) was the artist's exhibition of large scale installations. For this project the artist collected used materials around the city and re-used them as art objects that have regained In addition to a new way of producing art, with this exhibition Anading also created a new way of touring an exhibition. His installations included both fabric and iron, portraying the balance between two opposites.
Drunken Revelry (2009)
For this exhibition Anading divided the exhibition space into two: One half for his video, and the other half for his sound project. Both installations were based on his experience with a wooden toy boat from Bandung called Perahu. The first half of the exhibition was set in a dark room with recorded sounds of the Perahu in water, while the second half projected on unused gallery equipment the colorful images of Perahus in water. | 256a3cde-c1ac-4a83-ab82-369c49944e71 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humidicutis_marginata"} | Species of fungus
Humidicutis marginata is a gilled fungus of the waxcap family.
Taxonomy
The species was first described as Hygrophorus marginatus by Charles Horton Peck in 1876. William Alphonso Murrill called it Hygrocybe marginata in 1916. It was transferred to the new genus Humidicutis by Rolf Singer in 1958, who had previously placed it in Tricholoma.
Edibility
It is considered edible with a pleasant taste, but one guide says it is "not worthwhile". | 4a478c15-4ff0-460f-9ef7-829edac7aedb |
null | Former state electoral district of Victoria, Australia
Ballarat South was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Victoria. It was created in the redistribution preceding the 1955 election, covering the southern suburbs and the rural areas south of Ballarat.
It was a marginal seat that was always won by the governing party throughout its existence.
Ballarat South was abolished in the redistribution preceding the 1992 election, and was mostly replaced by the new district of Ballarat East.
Members for Ballarat South
Election results | d81600af-ea92-422c-a893-dd20e9fe00e0 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eosentomon_pacificum"} | Species of insect-like animal
Eosentomon pacificum is a species of proturan in the family Eosentomidae. It is found in Southern Asia. | e477dab2-6566-4a30-8f10-6db2ddbe327c |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Next_Door_(novel)"} | 1943 novel by Mignon G. Eberhart
The Man Next Door is a murder mystery and espionage novel by Mignon G. Eberhart. It was published by Random House in 1943, and reprinted in 1976 by Popular Library and in 2004 by Black Dagger Crime (ISBN 978-0754086543).
Synopsis
Pretty Maida Lovell, secretary to war department executive Steve Blake, stops by Christine Blake's house (his widowed sister-in-law) where he is living and has his home office. She is to pick up some notes for his radio speech later that evening. She is in love with him, and jealous that Blake has been spending time with Christine's elegant penthouse-lifestyle sister, Angela Favor. She encounters - and rebuffs - prissy Walsh Rantoul in the house, who is mixing drinks and coming on to her. She goes upstairs to retrieve the notes, and Blake stops in at the same time. After Blake departs for his meeting, Maida goes downstairs to find Blake gone and Rantoul dead in the kitchen. It looks like Blake has murdered him, since they had words earlier.
A stranger who calls himself "Smith" enters. In order to protect Blake from discovery, he offers to dispose of Rantoul's body and the evidence, if Maida will find information about airplane movements for him. The information he asks for is to be public knowledge anyway, so she complies. Now she is trapped. Smith is obviously an enemy spy and he has a hold on Maida to find out more and more intelligence on wartime materiel and personnel movements.
Reception
The character of Walsh Rantoul is singled out by Rick Cypert, an Eberhart biographer, as an example of the sort of queer-coded character that was favored by Eberhart. Cypert also notes that The Man Next Door is one of four Eberhart novels published, between 1943 and 1946, that involve a number of questionable characters who are discovered to be Nazis or Nazi sympathizers; the other three are Wolf in Man's Clothing, Wings of Fear, and Five Passengers from Lisbon. | f93f9a74-2871-4db3-ae28-9ff56a7b1e72 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermally_activated_delayed_fluorescence"} | Thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) is a process through which a molecular species in a non-emitting excited state can incorporate surrounding thermal energy to change states and only then undergo light emission. The TADF process involves an excited molecular species in a triplet state, which commonly has a forbidden transition to the ground state termed phosphorescence. By absorbing nearby thermal energy the triplet state can undergo reverse intersystem crossing (RISC) converting it to a singlet state, which can then de-excite to the ground state and emit light in a process termed fluorescence. Along with fluorescent and phosphorescent compounds, TADF compounds are one of the three main light-emitting materials used in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs).
Another type of TADF process has been shown to originate from conformational trapping to a dark state. Thermal energy allows the repopulation of the emissive state resulting in a delayed fluorescence.
History
The first evidence of thermally activated delayed fluorescence in a fully organic molecule was discovered in 1961 using the compound eosin. The emission that was detected was termed "E-type" delayed fluorescence and the mechanism was not completely understood. In 1986, the TADF mechanism was further investigated and described in detail using aromatic thiones, but it was not until much later that a practical application was identified.
From 2009 to 2012 Adachi and coworkers published a series of papers reporting effective TADF molecular design strategies and competitive external quantum efficiencies (EQE) for green, orange, and blue OLEDs. These publications spiked interest in the topic and TADF compounds were soon considered a possible higher efficiency alternative to traditional fluorescent and phosphorescent compounds used in lighting and displays. TADF materials are being considered the third generation of OLEDs following fluorescent and phosphorescent based devices.
Mechanism
The steps of the TADF process are displayed in the figure at right. In the electroluminescent process, which is observed in OLEDs, an applied voltage excites an electron into either a singlet or triplet state. Due to spin-coupling of light atoms, the total spin quantum number of the half-filled ground state electron and the excited state electron determine whether the electron system is a singlet or triplet state. If the electron system resides in a singlet state, the excited electron can undergo an allowed transition to the ground state in a prompt de-excitation on the order of about 10 nanoseconds, which is called fluorescence. If the electron system resides in a triplet state, the excited electron can undergo a forbidden de-excitation to the ground state on a much slower timescale on the order of about 1 microsecond, which is called phosphorescence. The thermally activated delayed fluorescence process occurs when an electron system in the triplet state undergoes reverse intersystem crossing to become a singlet state and then proceeds to fluoresce. In this fashion, when a TADF material becomes electronically excited it exhibits a prompt fluorescence and then a delayed fluorescence of similar wavelength.
Fluorescent materials can fundamentally only harvest energy from the singlet states, which make up 25% of electronic states due to spin statistics of light atoms. And due to out-coupling efficiency of ~20%, this leaves fluorescent materials with a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of roughly 5%. Both phosphorescent and TADF materials have the ability to harvest energy from both the singlet and triplet states, theoretically allowing these materials to convert close to 100% of applied energy giving them a large advantage over fluorescent-based materials.
Spin statistics
Electronic states of materials used in light-emitting devices typically contain some type of spin coupling. In phosphorescent materials for example, heavy transition metals are used to take advantage of spin-orbit coupling. Most TADF materials however contain light organic atoms that incorporate spin coupling also known as angular momentum coupling. In this phenomenon, the quantum mechanical behavior of the excited and ground state electrons causes the combined state to have not only a combined total spin number S, but also a combined z-component of the spin Sz. Only when this spin coupling phenomenon is taken into account does a random excited state produce 3 possible electron combinations of total spin S=1 and 1 combination of total spin S=0. These then correspond to the observed 75% triplet states and 25% singlet states generated under electrical excitation.
Factors affecting TADF
Several key kinetic properties of TADF materials determine their ability to efficiently generate light through fluorescence while minimizing thermal loss pathways. The rate of reverse intersystem crossing, referred to as kRISC, must be relatively high compared to the rate of non-radiative triplet pathways. Most non-radiative triplet pathways like triplet-triplet annihilation, triplet quenching, or thermal decay occur on the order of 1 microsecond or longer compared to fluorescent emission which is typically on the order of 10 nanoseconds.
Another key property is the difference in the singlet and triplet state energy levels, called the ΔEST. The smaller this energy gap, the closer it becomes to the average thermal energy of surrounding molecules. Materials with a ΔEST approaching the order of available thermal energy (~25.6 meV at room temperature) can effectively undergo reverse intersystem crossing with little to no thermal loss pathways from the triplet state. Minimization of this energy gap is thus considered to be the most important factor in synthesizing potential TADF materials, as the TADF process can only occur when excited triplet states can readily convert to excited singlet states. The most effective strategies employed so far to minimize this energy gap are to synthesize molecules with donor and acceptor moieties spaced apart and twisted from each other on the same molecule. This effectively reduces the differences in the triplet and singlet states caused by spin coupling, which in turn reduces the ΔEST.
Chemical structure
The chemical structure of many commonly used TADF materials reflects the requirement to minimize the ΔEST by displaying a twisted structure where one part of the molecule is oriented on a plane parallel to the other. One of the most commonly used and successful TADF materials 2,4,5,6-Tetra(9H-carbazol-9-yl)isophthalonitrile (4CzIPN) contains this type of structure as the bottom and top carbazole groups can be viewed as flat and coplanar while the bottom left and bottom right carbazole groups can be thought of as coming into and out of the page. Because the pairs of carbazole groups are antiplanar, the differences between the HOMO and LUMO energy levels is minimized and the compound can more easily transfer between the triplet and singlet states.
Besides having an overall twisted conformation, high efficiency TADF materials contain both electron donating and electron accepting moieties and incorporate the same kind of planar twist between them. The interactions between these electron accepting and electron donating groups reduces the overlap of the HOMO and LUMO energy levels even further. Thus, many highly efficient TADF materials contain multiple carbazole groups as electron donors and can incorporate electron acceptors like triazines, sulfoxides, benzophenones, and spiro-based groups. The table below shows several examples of these compounds that have been reported to yield high efficiencies and low ΔEST.
Applications
Organic LEDs
The vast majority of research on TADF-based materials is focused on improving the efficiency and lifetime of TADF-based OLEDs. Organic light-emitting diodes or OLEDs have provided an alternative to traditional liquid-crystal display (LCD) displays due to their improved contrast, response time, wider viewing angle, and the possibility of making flexible displays. The first generation of OLEDs were based on fluorescent materials, which includes most OLED or AMOLED displays that are currently commercially available. The second generation of OLED materials employ phosphorescence light emission, which has the advantage of higher theoretical efficiency, but may still be lacking in other areas like the poor lifetimes seen in phosphorescent blue emitters.
Many consider the third generation of OLEDs to be TADF materials because of their already impressive quantum efficiencies and performance in small test devices. In practice, these newer TADF materials still have difficulties with solution processability in larger practical devices and many blue TADF molecules show poor performance and lifetimes. If these challenges can be addressed, TADF-based OLEDs show promise in replacing current LCD-based displays and OLED-based displays especially in curved televisions and flexible phone screen designs. In 2019, Taiwan-based Wisechip launched the world's first OLED display that uses TADF emitters (developed by Kyulux) in a Hyperfuorescence structure.
Fluorescence imaging
TADF-based materials have a unique advantage in some imaging techniques because of their longer lifetime over promptly fluorescing materials. For instance, the TADF exhibiting molecule ACRFLCN exhibits a strong sensitivity towards triplet oxygen making it an effective molecular oxygen sensor. The fluorescein derivative DCF-MPYM has shown success in the field of bioimaging as its long lifetime allows time-resolved fluorescence imaging in living cells. These tailored organic compounds are especially promising in bioimaging applications because of their low cytotoxicity compared to traditional compounds like lanthanide complexes.
Mechanoluminescence
TADF compounds can also be synthesized to exhibit a tunable color change based on the macroscopic particle size in powder form. In this way, these compounds can shift the color of their light emission through mechanical grinding in a phenomenon termed mechanoluminescence. Specifically, asymmetric compounds with diphenyl sulfoxide and phenothiazine moieties have been synthesized displaying linearly tunable mechanochromism due to a combination of fluorescence and TADF mechanisms. The compound named SCP shows dual emission peaks in its photoluminescence spectrum and changes from a green color to blue through mechanical grinding.
Challenges
Research into TADF materials has provided impressive results and devices made with these compounds have already achieved comparable small device performance and comparable quantum efficiencies. However, the synthesis and application of TADF materials still has multiple challenges to overcome before they become commercially viable. Likely the biggest hurdle is the difficulty in producing a blue light emitting TADF molecule with a reasonable lifetime. Creating a long lifetime blue OLED has been a challenge not only for TADF, but for fluorescent and phosphorescent materials as well due to the higher energy light degradation pathways. Another difficulty in producing efficient TADF materials is the lack of a reliable molecular design strategy. The combination of donating and accepting groups and the twisted molecular structure provide good fundamental starting concepts for new synthesis, but the difficulty in predicting HOMO and LUMO energy levels and the control of excitons through the material make it challenging to pinpoint which moieties will prove the most effective. | 8d32e29f-cb93-4663-bf62-57e5b1651355 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_High_School_(New_York)"} | School in Mexico, New York, United States
Mexico High School is a historic school building located in Mexico, Oswego County, New York. It is part of the Mexico Central School District. It was built in 1938 after a previous 1927 building was damaged by fire in 1937. It is a two-story, Georgian Revival style brick building in a U-shaped plan. It features a distinctive tower that contains an 1828 bell from an earlier building. The entry is distinguished by a two-story, five-bay portico supported by six Ionic columns and crowned by a Chippendale patterned balustrade.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Mexico Academy and Central School in 1991. | ce61047a-9bf1-4328-97fc-a9228b8aa8b5 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythms_of_the_World"} | British music festival
Rhythms of the World (ROTW) is British music festival first organised in 1992. In 2010 the festival was on the weekend of 24 and 25 July. Acts performing included Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, Glen Matlock, the Swanvesta Social Club and Hugh Cornwell.
Location
Rhythms of the World takes place each July in the market town of Hitchin, Hertfordshire. The ROTW festival was made up of nearly 190 acts on 11 stages, plus 12 fringe venues (pubs and bars offering live music in partnership with ROTW) in 2006. It now includes various workshops (music, art and otherwise), stalls and myriad other distractions.
It was announced on 2 October 2007 that Rhythms of the World would no longer be held in Hitchin town centre and that the organising committee are looking for a greenfield site on the outskirts of the town for future events.
On 11 February 2008 it was announced that the 2008 festival would take place in the grounds of Hitchin Priory.
Funding
Festival organizers estimate the costs at around £200,000 in 2011. This cost is covered by support from North Hertfordshire District Council, other grants, and admission fees. Additionally, the festival uses volunteers extensively to minimise event expenses.
History
Rhythms of The World was started in 1992 by the Hitchin Oxfam Campaigns Group as a way of raising money for Oxfam and to highlight their international issues through world music. The first four years were staged in Hitchin Town Hall and featured bands such as the Bhundu Boys and King Salsa. In 1996 the event moved outside to the Market Place, but had only one stage and due in part to terrible weather the organisers felt the benefit to Oxfam was not being reflected in the increasing effort required. In 1998 the Campaigns Group ceased the Rhythms of The World project.
In 1999 a new committee, including some of the original campaigners, restarted Rhythms. With two stages, a fringe pub, Horace X, and Baka Beyond, ROTW became more of a festival. This increase in potency started to interest larger numbers of local music professionals.
With the benefit of these professionals and supporting volunteers ROTW 2000 was on a different level to the previous years; a purpose built stage dominated the Market Place, along with four others, and world music bands such as the Dhol Foundation, Bollywood Brass Band and Kiki Dee featured.
From then on, ROTW has increased its success. 2001 and 2002 saw ROTW increasing the number of stages and venues (including more fringe venues), bringing an eclectic programme of world music from places such as Siberia, Africa, South America, Tibet, India and Hitchin itself. Bands such as Ayub Ogada, Motimba, Itang Bondi and Yat Kha helped create what has now become the typical Rhythms musical atmosphere.
2003 saw 140 acts on 8 stages and market stalls selling various souvenirs, crafts and clothes from all over the world. The local St. Mary's church became a venue, and Bancroft Gardens became a family chillout area. Banners adorned Hitchin, which were made by the children from the local primary schools. This was the beginning of art taking a stand in the ROTW festival.
2004 had two main stages (the Market Place and Portmill Lane), plus, the BBC, the Arts Council and Decibel partnered with ROTW to help showcase national and local world bands. Even more banners were launched on the town.
2005 was similar to other years. 160 acts performing on 10 stages, plus, more dance and more poetry.
2006 saw 193 acts performing on 11 stages, plus workshops, more dance and more poetry.
2007 saw 142 acts performing on 8 stages, a dance hall hosting dance classes, workshops, more art and poetry. Artists performing included Monobloco and This was the last festival to be held on the streets of the town centre
For 2008 the festival moved to the ground of Hitchin Priory. The festival had over 120 acts on 5 stages, a sound system, an arena and a family area with activities and workshops. 23,000 people attended over the two days. Artist performing included Billy Cobham & Asere, No 1 Station and Massukos. A new addition to ROTW was the BBC Introducing... stage hosted by BBC Three Counties Radio.
The 2009 festival saw performances from Jazz Jamaica, The Jive Aces, Hjtalin, Etran Finatawa, The Magnolia Sisters, John Otway, Blyth Spirit, Flamboyant Bella and Exit Avenue. In front of a weekend audience of 26,000.
The 2010 festival saw performances from Black Polaris, The Swanvesta Social Club, Stu O'Connor, This Empire, My First tooth, The October Game, Lecarla, Red Dollar, HeKz, Spandex Ballet, Trailer Trash Orchestra, David Gibb & the Pony Club, CC Smugglers, Spiked, Trouble with Tuesday, Frog Stupid, Lika Sharps, Bayou Seco, Out of the Trees, The Xcerts, Ballachulish Hellhounds, The Whybirds, The Amigos, My Passion and Rotating Leslie. 30,000 people attended.
In 2011, the 20th festival was held on 9 and 10 July.
In 2012, the 21st festival was held on 14 and 15 July. With the wet weather, attendance was very low, the fields were very damaged and the festival lost a lot of money on holding the event.
In 2013, there was no festival due to having no venue in time.
However, in 2014, Rhythms of The World returned on 2 and 3 August, featuring the Number one Asian band in UK performing, as well as one of the biggest Cuban bands coming to Hitchin. | ce70ac18-0971-460c-9c71-5b73291a0633 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Laser_Games"} | American videogame company
American Laser Games was a company based in Albuquerque, New Mexico that created numerous light gun laserdisc video games featuring live action full motion video. The company was founded in the late 1980s by Robert Grebe, who had originally created a system to train police officers under the company name ICAT (Institute for Combat Arms and Tactics) and later adapted the technology for arcade games. Its first hit game was Mad Dog McCree, a light gun shooter set in the American Old West. By mid-1995 they were recognized as the leading company in the medium of laserdisc-based arcade games. Almost all arcade games released by the company were light gun shooters and a number of them also had an Old West theme.
Later, the company turned toward compact disc technology to release its games. Ports of its arcade titles were released for the Sega CD, CD-i and DOS computers equipped with CD-ROM drives. The company was particularly supportive of the 3DO, not only releasing versions of its games for the console, but also offering a modified version of the 3DO platform as an upgrade kit for existing arcade video game cabinets, supporting compressed video versions of their games at a lower cost. In 1995, American Laser Games released Mazer for the 3DO home market and Orbatak (3DO-powered) for the arcade - their first and only in-house non-Full motion video based games. The company also released a series of light-gun controllers, including the 3DO Game Gun and the PC Gamegun, for home computer use. The latter proved unsuccessful due to its poor accuracy.
American Laser Games lasted until the mid-to-late 1990s, by which time it had begun making "games for girls" for the PC under the moniker Her Interactive, beginning with McKenzie & Co. In response to a major slump in the arcade industry, American Laser Games ended its direct manufacturing of coin-op machines in November 1995, and turned its focus to developing games for the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation. This failed to revive the company's fortunes, and revenues in 1996 were roughly half of the $16 million it generated in 1995. At the end of 1996 ALG laid off a third of its staff, Jan Claesson replaced Grebe as president, and the company began focusing primarily on the Her Interactive line, cancelling all the games in their mainstream line except for Shining Sword. The company eventually closed its doors and was bought out by Her Interactive, which had been spun off before ALG closing and is still making games as of January 2018. In 2000, the development and publishing rights to all of the games that were produced by American Laser Games were purchased by Digital Leisure, Inc from Her Interactive. Many of these games were then re-released for the PC and in DVD TV game format.
Games
Light gun arcade games
Other games | 57343afa-58df-48e6-ac29-d553af3880cc |
null | English composer
Thomas Causton or Caustun (died 1569) was an English composer.
Causton was a gentleman of the chapel royal under Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. Nothing is known of his parentage, but it is possible that he is identical with a Thomas Causton who was living about the same date at Oxted in Surrey. This individual was the son of William Causton of Orpington, by Katherine Banister, and was married to Agnes Polley of Shoreham. Their son William (d. 1638) had a numerous family, who lived at Oxted until late in the seventeenth century. On 29 Oct. 1558 Mary wrote to the mayor and aldermen of London in favour of Thomas Causton, ‘one of the gentlemen of the chappell,’ requesting that he should be admitted into the freedom of the city. In 1560 he contributed some music to John Day's rare ‘Certain Notes, set forth in four and three parts, to be sung at the Morning, Communion, and Evening Prayer.’ The same publisher's ‘Whole Psalmes in Foure Partes’ (1563) also contains twenty-seven compositions by Causton. A Venite and service by him have been reprinted in the ‘Ecclesiologist,’ and a Te Deum and Benedictus in score are preserved in the British Museum (Add. MS. 31226). He died on 28 Oct. 1569, and was succeeded at the Chapel Royal by Richard Farrant.
Modern scholars believe Causton was only included in John Day's collection because of his personal connection to the publisher. He was described as "earnest but amaterish" by Gustave Reese and as "As a composer [...] no more than an enthusiastic amateur" by Edmund Fellowes. Day published every piece by Causton, with the exception of his Yield unto God, but no posthumous volume as would be a expected of a significant composer. This has been taken by scholars to show that Causton worked for Day as a script corrector or compiler.
He is not the same as the Thomas Causton reported by Foxe as having been put to death in 1555.
Recordings | 8ecc7102-9440-41ce-966b-74583a9df505 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFA_Premier_League"} | Association football league in Grenada
Football league
The GFA Premier League is the top football league in Grenada. It was created in 1983 and is headed by the Grenada Football Association. 10 teams participate in this league.
The 10th-placed team is relegated to the Grenada First Division, while the 9th-placed team plays a play-off with the 2nd-placed team of the second level.
Despite being a league competition in CONCACAF none of the Grenadan teams ever played in CFU Club Championship or CONCACAF Champions' Cup.
Some of the matches are played at the 9,000 capacity Grenada National Stadium. In 2014, the match between PetroCaribe Queens Park Rangers and Nixon's Electrical Happy Hill FC was the first live broadcast of a Premier Division match.
Current teams
As of 2022[update]
2021–22 stadiums
Previous winners
2021–22 stadiums
Top scorers | c89637a2-ece7-4743-880a-f3f0ba12b4ab |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_of_Lorraine"} | Mademoiselle d'Armagnac
Charlotte de Lorraine-Armagnac (6 May 1678 – 21 January 1757) was a Princess of Lorraine by birth and daughter of Louis, Count of Armagnac. She was known as Mademoiselle d'Armagnac and died unmarried.
Biography
Charlotte of Lorraine was the eleventh of fourteen children born to Prince Louis de Lorraine, Count d'Armagnac and Catherine de Neufville. She belonged to the House of Guise, a cadet branch of the House of Lorraine, entitled to the rank of prince étranger in France. She was raised with her sister Marie of Lorraine, mother of Louise Hippolyte Grimaldi. Charlotte's own mother was a daughter of Nicolas de Neufville, a Marshal of France and one time governor of Louis XIV.
Styled Mademoiselle d'Armagnac, she was a celebrated beauty at the court and was a favourite of Louis XIV and was described by Madame de Sévigné as a beautiful and likeable woman. After the marriage of her sister Marie to the Duke of Valentinois (future Prince of Monaco) the court paid close attention to the range of suitors that were offered to Charlotte.[citation needed] These included the famous Saint Simon; the Margrave of Ansbach, brother of the future Queen Caroline of Great Britain as well as various other French noblemen.
Another candidate was Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, Count de Toulouse, youngest son of Louis XIV and his mistress Madame de Montespan. Louis opposed the match and gave her a pension in return for her losses. She died unmarried having outlived her many siblings.
Ancestry | 723359b6-fda2-46b0-b2d8-b2f3cfa64c61 |
null | English footballer (born 1944)
Frank Casper (born 9 December 1944) is an English former professional football player, coach and manager, born in Barnsley. As a player, he made nearly 400 appearances in the Football League as a striker for Rotherham United and Burnley. He went on to coach at and then manage Burnley.
Career
Casper made his Rotherham United debut against Derby County in 1962.
He transferred to Burnley in June 1967 for a fee of £30,000, which was the first significant purchase by the club since the 1959 signing of Alex Elder. He scored on his Burnley debut against Coventry City, went on to score five goals in his first five games with the club, and became the club's top scorer in each of his first two seasons. With the departure first of Willie Irvine, then of Andy Lochhead, he was left without a regular forward partner. During the 1970–71 season, he was sidelined through injury for half the season and the Clarets were relegated from the top flight.
Through the early to mid-1970s, Frank continued to be a major focus of the Clarets' attack and forged a successful partnership with Paul Fletcher, with the two helping the club gain promotion back to Division One in 1972–73. Casper's first team appearances were limited after an injury sustained at Leeds United in 1974, and early in 1976 he made his last first team appearance at Norwich before retiring and joining the Turf Moor staff as youth team coach. In all he spent around 20 years with Burnley, first as a very successful striker, then as a coach, caretaker manager in 1983, and manager from 1989 to 1991.
He also had a spell as assistant manager at Bury, alongside former teammate Martin Dobson.
His son Chris was also a professional footballer and football manager. | c7ffcc9f-d433-409d-ac2f-a6d7cb8068b5 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PPP1R3A"} | Protein phosphatase 1 regulatory subunit 3A is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the PPP1R3A gene.
The glycogen-associated form of protein phosphatase-1 (PP1) derived from skeletal muscle is a heterodimer composed of a 37-kD catalytic subunit (MIM 176875) and a 124-kD targeting and regulatory subunit, referred to as PP1G by Hansen et al. (1995).
PP1G binds to muscle glycogen with high affinity, thereby enhancing dephosphorylation of glycogen-bound substrates for PP1 such as glycogen synthase (e.g., MIM 138570) and glycogen phosphorylase kinase (e.g., MIM 306000). Phosphorylation at ser46 of the PP1G subunit in response to insulin increases PP1 activity, while phosphorylation at ser65 in response to adrenaline causes dissociation of the catalytic subunit from the G subunit and inhibits glycogen synthesis.
Because of these functions, PP1G was postulated to be involved in noninsulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM; MIM 125853) and obesity.[supplied by OMIM] }} | eed5d60e-7c90-49a7-b183-b241cc341907 |
null | Clement Byrne Christesen (28 October 1911 – 28 June 2003) was the founder of the Australian literary magazine Meanjin. He served as the magazine's editor from 1940 until 1974.
Biography
Early years
Clement Byrne Christesen was born and spent his early life in Townsville. His father, Patrick, was of mixed Irish and Danish descent, while his mother Susan (née Byrne), was mostly Irish. The family moved to Brisbane in 1917, where Christesen later attended the University of Queensland.
Career
After leaving university, Christesen worked as a journalist at Brisbane's Courier-Mail and the Telegraph, as well as a publicity officer for the Queensland government.
Christesen was founding editor of Meanjin Papers which was first published in 1940, following his return from overseas travel.
With an offer of full-time salary and commercial support for the publication, the magazine and its editor moved to the University of Melbourne in 1945.
He retired as editor in 1974.
Personal life
In January 1942, he married Nina Maximoff, only daughter of Captain and Mrs. Michael Maximoff of South Brisbane, Queensland. Nina Christesen would found the Russian Department at the University of Melbourne. In the 1940s they moved to "Stanhope" in Eltham, Victoria.
Awards
Christesen was granted several awards and state honours in recognition of his achievements:
Bibliography
As editor
Death
Christesen died on 28 June 2003 at Templestowe nursing home two years after his wife's death. "He was lucid right to the end," said his niece Nina Joan Christesen. | b4f8ae16-beb3-422e-a834-0b95ea4f2bd7 |
null | Australian environmentalist (born 1936)
Rosemary Edna Sinclair AO (nee Fenton; born 17 November 1936) is an Australian environmental and children's rights activist. She is involved in administrative approach related to developmental actions. She won the title of Miss Australia in 1960.
In November 1988, in association with Christine Stewart, she founded the National Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (NAPCAN) to fully address issues related to child abuse.
Early life and education
Rosemary Fenton was born on Lord Howe Island on 17 November 1936. Her father, Stanley Fenton, worked as a radio operator at the Civil Aviation Department on the island. Her schooling until matriculation was at the Presbyterian Ladies' College, Sydney, a boarding school. She also did a course in nursing. When her mother died in 1952, she returned to Lord Howe Island to look after her father and two younger siblings, brother Stan and sister Robyn. While she had left the island to attend secondary school, she used to come home twice a year. Her paintings adorned the walls of her father's house.
Sinclair wanted to compete for the Miss Australia beauty contest. As she lived on the island keeping house for her family, she stitched her own clothes on the basis of a catalog she had obtained from Sydney. She tried these clothes on her younger 12- year old sister Robyn as a model. She won the Miss Australia title in November 1960 and was very modest about winning the crown. She then went on a prize-winning tour of Hong Kong, Tokyo, Honolulu, San Francisco, and many other places. Thereafter, she worked as a model.
Career
Sinclair took up the environmental cause of her birthplace, the Lord Howe Island, in 1982, when it was listed as an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Though the islanders were pleased with the heritage status accorded to the island, Sinclair was unhappy with many of the planning and management actions initiated by the Government of Australia to conserve the newly accorded heritage status, as it affected the basic rights of the islanders. Her objections were to the cutting of pine trees planted in the 19th century; she considered these trees (though not indigenous) as part of the island's heritage.
When the trees were being felled she threatened to lie down between the trees to stop the tree cutters. Her argument was that the trees added to the aesthetic beauty of the island. She also objected to the neglect of maintenance of embankments that were built to extend the airport on the island, as the embankments were eroding. She objected to the garbage that was being dumped in the lagoon of the island as it was causing health hazards.
The management plan proposed by the government to preserve the island's heritage status envisaged restricting the tourist accommodation to about 400 and limiting the number of cars on the island to 100, which she objected for the reason that it was limiting the opportunities to the islanders who had lived there for many years. Another of her protests was on the creation of an aquatic reserve in a part of the island. She considered this action as detrimental to the fishing rights of the local people who had fished in the area for several years. All her objections resulted in the Ministry of Planning and Environment agreeing to address the issues she had raised. In 1967, she worked in the Prime Minister's Department and dealt with public relations and facilitated the Montreal Expo.
Awards and recognition
Sinclair was awarded the Centenary Medal in 2001 for "service to children, especially child abuse and neglect". She was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the 2002 Australia Day Honours for "service as a leading advocate for the welfare of abused and neglected children, particularly through raising public awareness, developing preventative strategies, education programmes and support services for the parents of 'at risk' children, and through fundraising endeavours to maintain and expand services".
Affiliations and memberships
In 1976, Sinclair took up the cause of child abuse and since then she has pursued the issue with dedication, even though she has been criticized for not raising the issues related to women in general outside the limits of the house. On child abuse her refrain is: "But there are no political boundaries for child abuse. It knows no socio-economic boundaries, either. There is an increasing community awareness of its cost to children and to society as a whole – and that something can be done."
Personal life
She married Ian Sinclair on Valentine's Day 1970; he later became the Deputy leader of the Federal opposition and leader of the National Party of Australia. She was Ian's second wife and "inherited" his first wife's three children aged 8 to 12. In 1972, she and Ian Sinclair had a son, Andrew. | 3c54d458-78dc-4dfe-93f3-65bed12f1e0a |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chironex_indrasaksajiae"} | Species of jellyfish
Chironex indrasaksajiae, locally known as Mangkaprun Klong, Mangkaprun Sarhai or Sarong, is a species of box jellyfish in a coastal water of the northern and eastern Gulf of Thailand. It has been accused of causing fatalities in the area as it is a member of the genus Chironex.
Taxonomy
All species in the genus were named after a person related to the jellyfish research. The Chironex indrasaksajiae, however, was named after a Thai princess, princess Indrasakdi Sachi (RTGS: Inthrasak Sachi; formerly Queen Indrasakdi Sachi). It seems like a norm for Thai scientists to name species after members of their royal family members as the Thai royal family members have had enormous influences in their life such as advancing educational systems and improving the quality of their life. The species was distinguished from the other species using both morphological and molecular techniques.
Description
A box jellyfish with smooth exumbrella that has a maximum bell height of 150 mm. Most of the morphological characteristics of the species are similar to its congener such as cock’s comb shaped gastric saccules, smooth and triangular shaped perradial lappets with a single frenulum on each side of the bell, and dome shaped rhopalial niche ostia. The jellyfish carries up to 12 tentacles per pedalium on each corner of the bell. The species was distinguished from the other Chironex by the bulbous shaped pedalial canal.
Distribution
Most of the Chironex box jellyfish in Thailand were found only from 9o from the equator and northward. The species was only reported from the upper and eastern Gulf of Thailand.
Venom
The genus Chironex is renowned for delivering highly venomous envenomations that cause fatalities in many countries such as Japan, Philippines and Australia. All of the fatal cases in the Gulf of Thailand occurred in the area where the Chironex box jellyfish are found. | e9227127-b391-4f61-bb63-e7e8eadd467a |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabez_Chickering"} | American lawyer
Jabez Chickering (died 1826) was a lawyer and businessman from Dedham, Massachusetts.
Personal life
Chickering was the son of the minister in Dedham's South Church, also named Jabez Chickering, and his wife Hannah, the daughter of Thomas Balch. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1804. He had a wife and six children. Chickering died in Monroe, Michigan in 1826.
Career
Chickering was a lawyer with a large practice and a justice of the peace.
Along with William Phillips, Chickering was a principal incorporation of the Dedham Worsted Company on Mother Brook. It went out of business after only three years, however, and the mill was purchased by Benjamin Bussey. He published the Dedham Gazette, with Theron Metcalf as editor.
In September 1821 he applied to become a Unitarian minister, saying he had "faithfully & regularly attended to the studies of the Theology School at Cambridge. A professor, Andrews Norton, however, protested that his "certificate was not regularly voted" and that Chickering "has been far from faithfully attending to my exercises."
In January 1824, the public became aware that Chickering had gone bankrupt and went to New York to try and recoup some of his money. On February 2, the directors and shareholders of the Dedham Bank, where Chickering was a cashier, were informed that $35,000 was also missing. His widow was eventually able to pay off the bank and other individuals to whom Chickering owed money.
Dispute at First Church
When Rev. Jason Haven died, Chickering was appointed to the committee to find his replacement in the pulpit at the First Church and Parish in Dedham. Bates was unpopular with the congregation, and it was hoped that the new minister's politics would be more in line with the community. On March 1, 1818, just days after Bates left town, Chickering and the committee produced Alvan Lamson. Lamson was an 1817 graduate of Harvard Divinity School, a Unitarian stronghold. The congregation were largely conservative Calvinists.
Those who opposed Lamson did not raise any objections to his moral or professional qualifications. They did, however, object to his theology and found him lacking in "spirituality and knowledge of the scriptures" and displayed little of "that which fixes the attention and reaches the heart." Lamson's initial reaction seems to have been to decline the call, given the size of the opposition, but he was persuaded to accept by Chickering. Many members of the church stormed out when they heard he had accepted.
A council was called to consider the situation and then to ordain Lamson. Chickering presented at the council letters showing that if all the members of the church had been present when the vote was taken that there would have been a majority in favor of Lamson. The council was not inclined to consider the views and membership status of the absent members and instead considered Lamson's qualifications.
The congregation was split, with the conservative church members leaving and taking the church's property with them. They also sent a committee, led by Chickering, to meet with Samuel Fales as the senior deacon. They demanded "Christian satisfaction" regarding his deaconship. When they reported back to the liberal sect, they charged Fales with leasing the parsonage house out without the church's consent. Fales was also accused of not giving direct answers to their questions, including which group he considered to be the true church. As a result, the liberal group voted to remove Fales as deacon but allowed him to remain a member of the church.
A lawsuit, Baker v. Fales, ensued, with the liberal members of the church attempting to regain possession of the church's property. At the trial in February 1820, the members of First Church were represented by Judge John Davis and Chickering while the breakaway church members were represented by Theron Metcalf, Samuel Haven, and a Mr. Prescott. Judge Samuel Wilde presided over the trial and the jury eventually ruled for Chickering's side.
The case was appealed to the Supreme Judicial Court and was heard during the October 1820 session. There, Massachusett's Solicitor General, Daniel Davis, represented the plaintiffs with Chickering. The breakaway defendants had Daniel Webster and Theron Metcalf representing them. Chickering's side won once again at the high court. The case was a major milestone in the road towards the separation of church and state and led to the Commonwealth formally disestablishing the Congregational Church in 1833.
In a pamphlet Haven published, Chickering was portrayed as one of the central "plotters" in the whole ordeal. Chickering then attempted to sue Haven for libel, but a grand jury in Norfolk County refused to indict Haven in October 1820. Chickering then tried in Cambridge, where the pamphlet was printed, and a Middlesex Grand Jury did indict him. Haven was arrested on December 1, 1819. Due in part to the long speech Haven gave in his own defense, the trial lasted over two days. Haven was acquitted.
Works cited | 701ae74b-639f-4427-90ba-5a20c5bea9bd |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vrchlab%C3%AD"} | Town in Hradec Králové, Czech Republic
Vrchlabí (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvr̩xlabiː]; German: Hohenelbe, Latin: Albipolis) is a town in Trutnov District in the Hradec Králové Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 12,000 inhabitants. It lies at the foot of the Giant Mountains on the river Elbe. The town centre with the castle complex, monastery complex and town park is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monument zone.
Administrative parts
Vrchlabí is made up of town parts of Vrchlabí, Hořejší Vrchlabí and Podhůří.
Etymology
The name of the town is closely related with the location on the river Elbe, the oldest name is Latin Albipolis (Albi = Elbe, polis = city). Both Czech and German name can be translated as Upper Elbe Area.
Geography
Vrchlabí is located about 21 km (13 mi) northwest of Trutnov and 48 km (30 mi) north of Hradec Králové. About half of the municipal territory lies in the Giant Mountains, and its northern part lies in the Krkonoše National Park. The seat of the administration of the national park is located in Vrchlabí. The southern part of Vrchlabí lies in the Giant Mountains Foothills. The town is nicknamed the "Gateway to the Giant Mountains". The highest point is on the slopes of the mountain Žalý with an altitude of about 1,026 metres (3,366 ft), however both its peaks lies behind the border of Vrchlabí.
Vrchlabí is located on the upper part of the river Elbe. There are two small ponds in the area, the larger one is Vejsplachy, used for recreational purposes. The Vrchlabský Pond, named after the town, lies outside the municipal territory.
History
The history of Vrchlabí started with the colonization of the Giant Mountains. The first settlement called Wrchlab was probably founded before 1300. The first written mention is from 1359.
The most significant person in the history Vrchlabí was Kryštof Gendorf, a mining expert who developed the town into one of the most important metallurgy centres. Thanks to him, Vrchlabí was granted town rights in 1533, along with two annual fairs. Many people from German speaking lands came to work and live to the town during his reign and brought in the Lutheran reformation faith, which spread quickly in the region, supported vividly by Gendorf himself. Vrchlabí also became a place of fairs at that time. Especially linen cloth was highly desired and it was exported into Italy or Spain, as well North Africa.
Vrchlabí was known for manufacturing of organs in the 17th and 18th centuries, which was introduced into the town by the Tauchmann family. Textile production dominated the town's economy from the late 18th century until the 1930s and determined the industrial and craft development of Vrchlabí.
In 1867, winter sports started to develop in the region. The main promoter of skiing was Guido Rotter, a local factory owner.
The town was part of the Kingdom of Bohemia, which itself fell to the Habsburg monarchy in the 16th century, and from 1867 to 1918 was included in the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary (after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867). Administratively it was part of the head of the Hohenelbe District, one of the 94 Bezirkshauptmannschaften in Bohemia.
In 1918, Vrchlabí became part Czechoslovakia, when the Czechs regained independence. From 1938 to 1945 it was occupied by Germany, and was then administered as part of the Reichsgau Sudetenland. During the occupation, the Germans established and operated a Gestapo prison in the town, and a subcamp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp for female prisoners in the Hořejší Vrchlabí town part. Nazi Germany also brought many Italian, French, English and Russian prisoners of war to work as forced laborers in the town. The town's Germans who had not fled in World War II were expelled according to the Potsdam Agreement and Beneš decrees. The town was restored to Czechoslovakia.
Demographics
Economy
Since the 16th century, Vrchlabí is an industrial town. Nowadays, it is known especially for machinery industry. In Vrchlabí there is one of three factories of Škoda Auto in the Czech Republic. The local branch employs about 1,000 people. From 1946 to 2012, it produced cars, and since 2015, it produces components for cars. The largest employer with its headquarters in the town is ARGO-HYTOS, producer of components and systems for the hydraulic industry.
Vrchlabí is also known as centre of tourism and winter sports, which significantly contribute to the town's economy.
Culture
The beer festival Krkonošské pivní slavnosti ("Giant Mountains Beer Festival") has been held in the town every year since 1998.
The Střelnice house is the centre of culture. It is a place where all concerts, plays or balls are performed.
Sport
Krakonošova stovka is a 100 km-long march that has been held annually since 1966.
The local ice hockey club, HC Vrchlabí, plays in the 2nd Czech Republic Hockey League since 2022–23 season.
Vrchlabí Mad Squirrels, local rugby club, play in the Euro XIII.
There are four ski resorts in the area: Kněžický Vrch, Kněžický Vrch – Kebrlák, Bubákov, and Herlíkovice.
Sights
Landmarks of Vrchlabí
New Town Hall
T. G. Masaryka Square
Vrchlabí Castle
The monastery complex
The Vrchlabí Castle was built in 1546–1548 for Kryštof Gendorf and originally surrounded by the moat. It was one of the first Renaissance castles in Bohemia. The most valuable monument in the castle and the last piece of the original equipment is the Renaissance faience stove. Nowadays the castle houses the municipal office and some of the spaces are freely accessible.
The castle is surrounded by a park from the second half of the 19th century. It was originally an ornamental garden, but after the moat was eliminated, the park was redesigned. In the southwestern part of the park is the castle chapel with the Czernin-Morzin tomb. It was built in the Neo-Gothic style in 1887–1890.
The Discalced Augustinians Monastery was founded in 1705. The monastery complex with the Church of Saint Augustinus was built in the Baroque style with Neoclassical elements and was finished in 1725. Nowadays the premises of the monastery house an exhibition of the Krkonoše Museum on the nature and history of the region, and the church is often used as a concert hall due to its great acoustics.
The Church of Saint Lawrence on the Míru Square was built in the Neo-Gothic style in 1889. It replaced an old Gothic church from the 14th century. It has 60 metres (200 ft)-high tower. Opposite the church is located a valuable set of four gabled houses where is located Krkonoše Museum and KRNAP infocentre. Next to them is one of the oldest monuments in the town, a house which served as the town hall from 1591 to 1737. Above the brick ground floor is the timbered floor supported by four sandstone columns with Ionian heads.
The second square in the historic centre is T. G. Masaryka Square. Its main landmark is the New Town Hall from 1732–1737. It was originally built in the Baroque style as one of the first stone buildings in the town. In 1927, it was rebuilt to the Neorenaissance style.
The very oldest house in Vrchlabí is the House with Seven Gables. It is a modified village chalet with unique appearance.
Notable people
Twin towns – sister cities
Vrchlabí is twinned with: | dc817f19-9704-4fb4-a949-76b4a1c3a6c9 |
null | WLF is an abbreviation that may stand for:
Topics referred to by the same term | 545af045-8322-4a12-a646-f9ba7c43ee24 |
null | Japanese footballer
Takuya Nagata (永田 拓也, Nagata Takuya, born September 8, 1990) is a Japanese football defender who plays for Giravanz Kitakyushu.
Club career
In addition to his appearances in league matches with the Red Diamonds, he also has appeared three times in the J. League Cup. He is a product of the Red Diamonds' youth system.
Career statistics
Club
As of 1 January 2020.
International
As of 6 August 2009 | 159afe89-9cdc-429b-a880-ee404a87884f |
null | Office in Jakarta, Indonesia
Sequis Centre Tower is a 210 metres (690 ft) tall skyscraper at Sudirman Central Business District, South Jakarta, Indonesia. This is a LEED Platinum building. The design of the tower is inspired from the Banyan tree with a bundle of four towers, with gardens on the roof featuring typical local plants. To reduce the amount of energy, Sequis Tower has adopted the design of shading fins that can compensate for solar radiation on the building facade. Sequis Tower’s open plaza has pedestrian access to Pacific Place, The Alila Hotel, Jakarta Stock Exchange, Bapindo Towers, Sequis Center, The Energy Tower, Graha CIMB Niaga and MRT Jakarta’s Istora station. The tower is topped off in March, 2017. | a22d5ec2-c5e6-4214-94f6-fa837f053325 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirsad-1"} | The Mirsad-1 (Arabic: مرصاد, English: "Observation post") is a designation for a small unmanned aerial vehicle used for reconnaissance purposes by Hezbollah group in the 2000s. Mirsad-1 drones entered Israel on two occasions, in 2004 and 2005.
The Mirsad-1 is not a Hezbollah-designed UAV. Instead, it is a name given by Hezbollah to existing Iranian UAVs provided to the group, namely the twin-tail Ababil drones. Before 2006, Hezbollah acquired up to eight such drones from Iran. Reports state that up to 30 Hezbollah personnel also received training on operating the Mirsad at the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' bases near Isfahan, Iran. Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, has boasted about the drones, saying that they "can be laden with a quantity of explosives of up to 40 to 50 kilograms" and can reach "deep" into Israel.
Use
The first Mirsad-1 flight into Israeli airspace occurred mid-morning on November 7, 2004. The drone flew at low level from Lebanon south over the western Galilee town of Nahariyya, then turned and flew back north, over the Mediterranean sea, having spent up to half an hour in Israeli airspace.
The second flight took place on April 11, 2005, and was a short, 18 mile incursion. The drone had crossed back into Lebanese territory by the time Israeli fighters could be scrambled to intercept. | 27b01022-aa76-4ad2-8e71-b05a00fca139 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ahrenkiel"} | Thomas Ahrenkiel (born on 19 October 1967) is a Danish politician who was formerly the head of the Ministry of Defense and the Defense Intelligence Service there.
Biography
Ahrenkiel was born on 19 October 1967.
He received a degree as cand politician from the University of Copenhagen. Ahrenkiel was also a member of the Foreign Service, including as a Ministerial Counselor in the Prime Minister's Office and as an Embassy Secretary in Brussels.
In 2005, he became a Knight of Dannebrog and he is a member of the Bilderberg group.
Ahrenkiel is known in the cases of fraud in the Ministry of Defence's Property Agency. He has previously, in 2018, received criticism from the Chamber Advocate, after he in 2016 had participated in a meeting where his then girlfriend and current wife received a salary increase of 1,500 kroner monthly and a lump sum of 75,000 kroner. Before the wage negotiations, however, he had told the Prime Minister's Head of Department Christian Kettel Thomsen, who is the country's top official, about the matter, so he escaped further prosecution in the case as he had allegedly acted in good faith.
Ahrenkiel was to leave the Ministry of Defense on 1 September 2020 to take up the position of Danish Ambassador to Berlin. However, in connection with the case of the Defense Intelligence Service, where he is former chief, he was 24.8. exempted from service and repatriated with immediate notice. | 4ed42be0-84e5-4b91-8ec7-47f6ed33fcbe |
null | English cricketer
George Henry Withers Ewbank (17 October 1839 – 30 April 1885) was an English cricketer. Ewbank's batting and bowling styles are unknown.
Born at Alipore in the British Raj, Ewbank made his debut in first-class cricket for a combined Gentlemen of Kent and Surrey team against the Gentlemen of England in 1855 at Lord's. He later played first-class cricket for Sussex, making three appearances in 1857 against the Marylebone Cricket Club, Surrey, and Kent, before making a final appearance in 1860 against the Marylebone Cricket Club. In his five appearances in first-class cricket, Ewbank scored just 10 runs from ten innings, with a high score of 6.
Ewbank served in the British Indian Army in the Raj, taking part in the Indian Mutiny (1857—58) and its aftermath. He was still serving in the Raj in 1862, as a lieutenant in the Madras Artillery. Between 1862 and 1868, Ewbank served in the Bengal Regiment, though by 1868 he was serving as a second—captain in the Royal Artillery. Ten years later he was still serving in the Royal Artillery, achieving the rank of major. He retired from military service in 1882. He died at West Norwood, Surrey on 30 April 1885. His brother, Christopher, also played first-class cricket. Ewbank's previously undiscovered biography The Ewbank Enquiry was published in 2012. | 3c51c66a-a2cd-4e64-bebf-9fe55d59996a |
null | Charles Dodge may refer to: | 290d6615-1a1b-4800-9fb2-a17e520970d9 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Gershuni"} | Israeli artist
Moshe Gershuni (11 September 1936 – 22 January 2017) was an Israeli painter and sculptor. In his works, particularly in his paintings from the 1980s, he expressed a position different from the norm, commemorating The Holocaust in Israeli art. In addition, he created in his works a connection between bereavement and homoerotic sexuality, in the way he criticized society and Israeli Zionism-nationalism. He was awarded the Israel Prize for Painting for his work in 2003, but in the end it was revoked and he was deprived of receiving the prize.
Biography
Moshe Gershuni was born in 1936 to Yona and Zvi Kutner, who had migrated to British Mandate Palestine from Poland. Zvi, the head of the family, who was an agronomist and farmer, "hebraicized" the family name from Kutner to Gershuni, after his father. His mother Yona, née Senior, acted in community theater in Poland and made hats in Tel Aviv. The family lived in Tel Aviv on Hahashmal Street, and in 1939 moved to Mazeh Street. In 1938 Mira, Moshe's sister, was born, and in 1943, his brother Avshalom was born. Moshe was sent to the religious Bilu School and then continued his studies in a religious high school.
His father managed to save several family members from The Holocaust by arranging immigration certificates (certifikatim) to British Mandate Palestine, but some of his mother's relatives were murdered in the Holocaust. Gershuni described in a late interview the presence of the Holocaust in his childhood: "My mother was troubled all the rest of her life that she had not succeeded in bringing them here. And, like many others, I remember the years after the war [...] I remember that I read everything I could on the subject, there were already personal accounts of it on the radio, in private conversations, from the relatives who arrived. [...] it was in my consciousness, it was almost the center of my consciousness, in spite of the fact that my early years included the founding of the State and the war with the Arabs, but everything was a function of that experience."
In 1952 the family moved from Tel Aviv to Herzliya, near to the family-owned orchards, in the Gan Rashal area. In 1954, Gershuni's induction into the army was postponed by half a year because he was underweight, but the date of induction in 1955 was also postponed by the death of his father in an auto accident. Gershuni took over his father's job in the orchards. After his father's death Gershuni began to move into the world of art. The painter Leon Fouturian and the sculptor Uri Shoshany, both residents of Herzliya, influenced him. From 1960 to 1964 he studied sculpture in night courses at Avni Institute of Art and Design, after days spent working in the orchards. His teachers were Dov Feigin and Moshe Sternschuss, members of the "New Horizons" group, which during these years was beginning to lose the central place it had held in the world of Israeli art.
In 1964 he married Bianca Eshel, who was also a student in the Avni Institute and a widow of an Israeli Air Force pilot who had been killed in the Sinai Campaign. After the wedding the couple moved to Ra'anana. In addition to Eshel's daughter from her first marriage, a son, Aram Gershuni, was born to them in 1967 and a second son, Uri Gershuni, in 1970.
From "Pre-Conceptual" Art to "Post-Minimalist" Art, 1969–79
Presence, Absence, Body
Gershuni's artistic path began with abstract sculpture, strongly influenced by pop art. His first solo exhibition was mounted in 1969 in the Israel Museum. On the walls of the Museum were hung yellowish green abstract paintings in a geometric style, and throughout the space of the exhibition itself were strewn objects made of soft materials influenced by the sculptor Claes Oldenburg.
In the 1970s Gershuni produced a series of works influenced by the conceptual art of Europe and America. Yona Fischer who, in his position as Curator of the Israel Museum during those years, encouraged these trends, in retrospect stated that "the understanding that conceptual activity was what was developing here was not yet fully focused." As the influence of conceptual art, particularly American conceptual art, seeped in, "post-minimalist" art, which was concerned with examining the material values of art (Formalism), while attempting to strengthen the status of artistic activity, began to develop in Israel. In addition, this type of art emphasized the ontological dimension of artistic works. Instead of objectives with a commercial aesthetic, this genre adopted a freer relationship with minimalist values and emphasized the exposure of the process of the artist at work. At the same time it examined and subverted the values of society with regard to its political and social views.
Gershuni's first important works made use of automobile tires ("Inner Tubes"). The use of this material constituted a continuation of his preoccupation with soft materials, but Gershuni introduced new characteristics which had been absent in his work before. In "The Spirit is Willing, But the Flesh is Weak" (1969), for example, Gershuni exhibited inner tubes lined up in a row along a wall. The title of the work, taken from "Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 26:41)," referred to the gap between the body and the spirit, and between the perception of reality and human consciousness. A similar work was exhibited in 1970 in the "Group Autumn Exhibition" in the Helena Rubenstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art. Gershuni created a large sculptural installation called "Inner Tubes," which included rows of 64 tire inner tubes arranged in piles and creating a net ("grid") in the style of minimalist art. The work received broad public exposure because of a television reporter on Channel 1 who visited the exhibition and focused on Gershuni's sculpture as an uncompromisingly curious object.
Another work that shows Gershuni's ironic relationship with the grid is "Margarine Cubes on Paper" (1970). The work documented, in effect, an activity in which margarine cubes melted into the paper, while emphasizing the sensual aspect of the material. A reinforcement of this tendency can be seen in two videos Gershuni prepared for a television show created by Jacques Katmor for Israeli Television. In the video clip "Crawling" (1970; 32 seconds, black and white), Gershuni implemented an activity of signing with his body. He is photographed dressed in an Israeli army uniform, crawling over a dune in two opposing directions that are combined with one another. In this way, a kind of sign, in the form of an X was formed. This activity was described in retrospect by Ilana Tannenbaum as an act of ars poetica, which voids and cancels out the action it performs, at the same time as it makes an ironic statement about the Israeli military. Another work that was shown on the program included the covering up or sealing of the television screen "from the inside" with black paint.
Another series of works, also from 1970, is a series of drawings on fragments of paper, with names like "The Paper Looks White, but Inside, Within, It Is Black." In these works Gershuni emphasizes the edges of the paper by tearing it or blackening it. These actions, according to Gershuni, were intended to show "that paper has thickness, that it is three-dimensional." By pointing out the interior dimension of the paper, Gershuni was trying to indicate – ironically – the "beyond," that is the transcendental dimension of art.
In the group of works that Gershuni created during the first half of the decade, content that diverged from questions of the characteristics of pure artistic representation began to appear. At the same time, Gershuni preserved the characteristics of form within conceptual art, that is, its arrangement in series, the use of text, and the reflexive dimension of the works. Among the new characteristics that appeared in his works was a whole series of clearly biographical references, both to the artist and to his family. In his work "My Father My Grandfather" (1970), for example, which was displayed in the exhibition entitled "Concept Plus Information" at the Israel Museum (Yona Fischer, Curator) in 1971, Gershuni hung an enlarged family photograph with a circle drawn around the head of his paternal grandfather. Next to the photograph was a caption that read, "My Old Man, Moshe the Son of So-and-So, Woodcarver. Plotzk, Poland, 1910." In the 1974 "Benedictus" exhibition at the Yodfat Gallery in Tel Aviv, another work that made use of family photographs was exhibited. Under three photographs of his father and Red Army insignia, Gershuni attached a text printed on paper which said "My father was born in Poland and studied agriculture in France. He made aliyah to the Land of Israel in 1929. Planted trees." The relationship between the images and the written texts were created, according to the later interpretation of Gideon Ofrat, pointed towards a disconnect between space and time, and between the Europe in which his grandfather lived and the Land of Israel in which Gershuni lived. The gap between the past and the present appears once again in his installation "Cypresses/Memories" (1971), which was displayed in The Artists House Tel Aviv, and which showed photographs from his childhood arranged on cut-down cypresses.
The series of photographs entitled "The Main (Real) Problems are with the Tongue and the Toes" (1972) reveals Gershuni's interest in the body and corporeality as a topic of knowledge. In these self-portraits, Gershuni creates portraits by "mugging" in front of the camera, in a way that is parallel to contemporary American artists, such as Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci, etc. The photographs of his face focus on Gershuni's mouth and focus on the relationship between the surface and the gaping space. In the photographs of his legs, Gershuni continues with an examination of the relationship by exposing the toes of his feet through yellow paper.
"The Problem of Painting is The Palestinian Problem"
Following the lead of Yitzhak Danziger, the spiritual father of many young artists of the 1970s, Gershuni participated in several performance art installations, which were called in those days "activities." "You could say we were 'Danziger's Boys'," Gershuni related, "in the early 1970s, during the period when he was working in the Nesher quarry and was carrying out all of his experiments. That was during the time when he hung the wheat in the Museum, all that experimental direction that was exactly in the spirit of what we were looking for."[11] These activities, that were political and social in nature, Gershuni developed in a kind of group that worked in the Hadera area, and which included Micha Ullman, Avital Geva, and Yehezkel Yardeni. The group made sure they had regular meetings with Danziger in Haifa and Tel Aviv and participated in tours he organized.
Among the group of projects the group carried out, called the "Metzer-Messer Project" (1972), Gershuni took photographs of the landscapes of Kibbutz Metzer, called "a meeting of the kibbutz members", and "gave away" the kibbutz lands to these members. His colleague, the artist Micha Ullman, carried out an exchange of land between the Arab village of Messer and the neighboring kibbutz, and Geva organized books that were sent to recycling to Amnir Recycling Industries and set up an improvised libraries, among other things. The social dimension of these activities emphasized the work methods of art as an element in social progress. "In those days I used to say I didn't need a studio because I created products."
In 1972 Gershuni began to teach in the Department of Fine Arts of "Bezalel." He was considered one of the central teachers, who supported experimental and political art. The "political discourse" of that period, according to Itamar Levy, "ran parallel to the formalist discourse." An example of the political involvement can be found in a 1974 manifesto which includes artistic declarations, such as combining different artistic disciplines and putting an emphasis on work processes, along with a political petition from Bezalel's teachers and pupils, including Gershuni, which called for the formation of an investigative committee to examine the government's "failure" in the Yom Kippur War. In 1977, in connection with the "academization" of Bezalel, events reached a peak which included a series of strikes by the department and the students. Among the activities that Gershuni carried out with his pupils during this period was writing inscriptions that read "The painting problem is the Palestinian problem" and spreading them around the streets of Jerusalem. Because of the "rebellion" half of the teachers in the department were fired, among them Gershuni and Micha Ullman, who were considered the principal supporters of the students. In 1978 Gershuni began to teach at HaMidrasha - The Art Teachers Training College in Ramat Hasharon, where he continued to teach until 1986.
In 1978 Gershuni exhibited his work in a large group exhibition called "Artist-Society-Artist" at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The version of his work "A Gentle Hand" that he displayed there included a newspaper article called "The Story of Joseph Ziad as Told to Leroy Frizen", describing abuse of a Palestinian doctor at the hands of Israeli soldiers, and including a voice recording on which he sings the song "A gentle hand" by Zalman Shneur, that was broadcast from a loudspeaker on the roof of the museum like a muezzin. In the catalog, Gershuni gave an explanation of the work that dealt both with internal politics and his own personal feelings:
"If I say that the song is 50 years old and that its source is from a certain period of settlement and a certain period of Zionism, will that mean anything? The song has emotional significance for me. The melody has Eastern motifs. I sing it the way I remember Ilka Raveh singing it in a night club in Jaffa, and he sang the way they once used to sing, during the time of enthusiasm for things Eastern, when they were still trying to be influenced by the East. On the soundtrack that appears here it's as though I'm sitting there and teaching myself how I ought to sing "A Gentle Hand."
Red Sealing, 1979–80
In 1979 a solo exhibition entitled "Little Red Sealings" opened at the "Sarah Levy Gallery." The exhibition included paper and photographs that had been treated with red paint, a color which was to become significant in Moshe Gershuni's work in the coming years. The works exhibited a number of artistic influences by citing the names of artists such as the Italian sculptor Medardo Rosso, the Israeli painter Aviva Uri, etc.
A group of his works included imagery taken from iconic art works. In an untitled work (1980) Gershuni stained a portrait of the Pope in red. In addition Gershuni added many-legged graphic symbols that were reminiscent of swastikas. This symbol appears several times, including on the groin of the Pope. In another untitled work from the same year Gershuni drew on a reproduction of a portrait of Bernard Van Orley (1521) by Albrecht Dürer.[16] Gershuni covered the face with transparent blue paint, like a kind of veil, and he drew on the lapel of his black garment a Star of David the edges of which were stained in red. Itamar Levy described in retrospect Moshe Gershuni's act of creating that painting as a test of his relationship to painting. "In Gershuni's treatment the portrait turns into dirt, the dirt is makeup, the makeup is makeup in blood. In Gershuni's treatment, the painting turns into the arena for an enraged attack on the painting. And the world that surrounds the man becomes a woman adorned, an object of lust, perhaps of forbidden passion.
Along with these personal works, Gershuni created works that had a direct social and political message. In a series of works entitled "Arik Sharon and the Indians" (1979), Gershuni made use of a pickup truck with a man holding a rifle sitting on it. Gershuni imposed red markings on them and a hand-written caption with the name of the work. In his work "Golda Meir" (1979) Gershuni wrote the name of Prime Minister Golda Meir on a portrait of the queen from the painting by Francisco Goya, "Charles IV of Spain and His Family" and gave the painting a red frame made up of paint smudges. In other works of this period Gershuni colored the edges of the paper with red paint, staining them and adding texts like "Hello, Soldier" or "I'm coming."
His works of this period were a series of installations that distanced themselves from the serious nature of his earlier works. In 1979 Gershuni exhibited the caption "Who's Zionist and Who Isn't?" on the walls of the Julie M. Gallery in Tel Aviv. In this exhibition large letters were written on the walls of the gallery in pastel chalks and lit up with strong, hot lighting.
In 1980 Gershuni exhibited an installation called "Blood of My Heart" in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The installation included 150 white porcelain plates stained with red paint. Gershuni continued in this artistic vein in an installation called "Red Sealing/Theater" which was displayed in the Israeli Pavilion in the 1979 Venice Biennale. In this year Gershuni carried out an activity involving the sealing of the cracks in the space of the pavilion with red paint and then added objects connected to his own biography. This act of sealing in his work, in Gershuni's eyes, was meant to be interpreted as a sign of the reverberating presence of a burden that could not be eliminated. In the end, Gershuni presented the work "as a murder scene." Amnon Barzel, curator of the exhibition, described the work as a transcendental description contrasting the activity of nature to the activity of man. However, a quote from Gershuni explains it as a cry against the injustice of the world: "I am calling my work 'Theater'," Gershuni wrote, "because of my doubt that a work of art, or the color red, can call sufficient attention to life or react to it sufficiently [...] The cry of the individual is the only justification for society, and works of art are the only excuse for continuing to live in injustice and wars."
These works presented a variety of new images, and therefore a conspicuous Iconographic development, in Gershuni's work. Furthermore, they abandoned the minimalist character of his works up until this time.
At the end of this decade Gershuni went through a depression and a deep identity crisis. It was during this period that Gershuni also came to terms with his homosexuality. In 1981, after several sexual experiments with men, Gershuni left his family and Ra'anana for an apartment and studio on Yosef ha-Nasi Street in Tel Aviv-Yafo. It was during this period also that he met Yitzhak, his partner until the mid-1990s.
"Soldiers in a Cabaret, 1980–82
In the beginning of the 1980s Gershuni abandoned "Post-minimalist" sculpture and the conceptual approach in order to create a series of paintings. Gershuni received encouragement for the continuation of his creative life within the framework of psychological therapy he was receiving during this period. In his first works from this period paint stains appeared in red or glittering purple, with blurry outlines, produced with glass paints on glossy paper. Next to the stains appeared short titles, such as "How Are You, Soldier" (1980). After the first works, this series of works shows a growing sophistication of graphic composition. In works like "Hey, Soldier" (1980), an abstract image in yellow and muddy gray, stained with shiny red paint, floating above the glossy paper which repels the paint. In "But Where is the Lamb for a Burnt Offering" (1980), the paint stains have turned into a schematic image of an animal placed within a framework of fiery red paint stains.
Until 1981, his paintings included more identifiable images, with a specific iconography. Among the images are masculine figures in which "feminine" traits, such as exaggerated lips, appear. Other images are flags, mainly in yellow and green, and bonfires with smoking torches. The iconography of this image is connected to The Sacrifice of Isaac and the ritual sacrifice it symbolizes. he specific mention of the name Yitzhak [Isaac in English] relates also to biographical details from Gershuni's own life, to the Yitzhak who was his lover at the time or Yitzhak Danziger, who was a sort of spiritual father to him.
These paintings were done by spreading on paint with his fingers while lying on the floor next to the canvas. In many of the paintings there began to appear quotes from Israeli songs and poetic verses from the Bible, which Gershuni indicated he had sung while painting these works. The development of this style was influenced by the "Bad Painting" style which developed in Europe and America during this period.
The first exhibition of these works took place in the Givon Art Gallery in Tel Aviv and was called "Hey, Soldier." Among the works included in the exhibition were paintings entitled "Soldier! Soldier!" (1981) and "Sing Soldier" (1981). In December 1981, in the third number of the journal Kav, an article by Sarah Breitberg-Semel was published. It was called "Moshe Gershuni -- Soldiers in a Cabaret," and it discussed Gershuni's new group of works. A central place in the article was given to "I am a Soldier" (1981), which was part of this exhibition. Breitberg-Semel claimed that Gershuni's creative process was modeled by how the viewer perceived him. On one hand, the works include texts that are "confessions," as in "I am a Soldier" or "I am Vincent," while on the other hand the work displays the emphasis on the craftsmanship involved in the artistic expression represented by the use of glossy paint on paper that does not absorb the paint. For Breitberg-Semel, the change in the nature of the texts in Gershuni's work—from canonical texts related to "the beautiful, socialist Land of Israel" to texts praising the exalted nature of Creation along with "passages of mourning concerned with death" – were a sign of a collapse of the view of one world view, militaristic and solid, and its replacement by "a complex point of view, open and lacking a solution, of existential questions, accompanied by mystical yearnings."
On the cover of the fourth issue of the 1982 volume of Kav (November 1982) was a reproduction of Gershuni's painting "Isaac, Isaac, With Great Pity I have Loved You" (1982). Inside the issue appears a short text by gershuni discussing the importance of the "place" and strengthening Breitberg-Semel's interpretation. "I am a Jew," Gershuni wrote, "yes, with all the mysticism that goes along with it. I am Israeli because I am a Jew. Otherwise I have no particular reason to be here." Gershuni continued by describing his activity as an artist as "a lone soldier in the battle for the character of Israeli society."
Breitberg-Semel's article determined the dominant view of Gershuni's work during the 1980s. While this interpretation emphasized the corporeality and the sensuality of the way he painted, Gershuni's battle as a "lone soldier" was perceived in terms of nationalism. To a certain extent the homosexual aspect of his work was covered up. "During the 1980s, even drawing a soldier with an earring was unthinkable," Gershuni said in a later interview, but the covering up of the homosexual aspect was at the request of Gershuni himself, who preferred that the press did not openly publicize that he had come out of the closet due to family considerations.
"A Spring Day Will Come and Cyclamen Will Bloom, 1982–89"
In 1982-1983 Gershuni began a series of paintings that included images of the flower cyclamen. The cyclamen, according to Gershuni, represents a national motif and often appears in Hebrew poems for children. Another iconographic source is Haim Gouri's song "Bab al-Wad" (1948). In "Little Isaac, Where are You Going?" (1982), for example, on the left side of the painting there is a dark-colored scribble that looks like flower petals next to a branched system of lines, in pencil and in paint, creating images that look like a fire, like a question mark, etc. In 1983 the cyclamen can be discerned as a clear image, but the range of colors becomes darker. In addition, Gershuni begins to include in his works symbols of alienation and exile – "Yitzhak" (Isaac) becomes "Yitzhakeleh" and swastikas begin to appear. In 1984 Gershuni created the series "Hai Cyclamens," (18 Cyclamens) which was exhibited in the Givon Gallery in 1984. The series is composed of 18 paintings, each of which is spread over 2 sheets of paper held together by tape, making them 140 X 200 cm total in size. Besides the images of flower petals and cyclamen petals, which form a thick, upward-pointing tangle, quotations from Gouri's song also appear in the paintings and a number of verses from Psalms 103: "who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion." These verses are arranged around the edges of the paintings as a sort of frame.
Yigal Zalmona described the motif of the cyclamen in Gershuni's work as a replacement for the soldier. As a combination of voluptuousness and a reference to national mourning. The cyclamens, Zalmona states, "are sometimes humanized: their leaves remind one of bodily forms, sexual organs, and buttocks, in celebratory or medical postures, sometimes withered, sometimes lushly blooming – a reference to the conditions of the human soul."
In addition to his expressive works, Gershuni began work on a large number of prints which he created at the Jerusalem Print Workshop. Among his works in this medium that stand out are the series of etchings called "Kaddish" (1984), each of which includes words from the Jewish prayer of mourning Kaddish, a series of prints from the poems of Hayim Nahman Bialik (1986), etc.
In 1986 a large exhibition of Gershuni's paintings, curated by Zalmona, was held in the Israel Museum. The exhibition - entitled "For Man and Beast are Creatures of Chance" - displayed the major series of Gershuni's works from the time he moved into the medium of painting. Itamar Levy provided an iconographic interpretation of Gershuni's work and connected his images to artistic works from the history of western art. The meeting between these and Gershuni "the Jew" creates a space in which the old world order has awakened and "the aspiration toward the lofty is written in bodily fluids and systems of limbs." In his article Zalmona also mentioned the erotic aspect of Gershuni's work and presented it as a sign of his search for self-identity.
The exhibition "Through a Glass Darkly," (1986) mounted for the first time at the Israel Museum, also exhibited Gershuni's aspirations toward the lofty. In addition to the text, the drawings display eschatological elements which were characteristic of Gershuni during this period, such as pentagrams, question marks, etc. An interesting iconographic element that appears in some of the paintings is the number "8." The use of this figure, which appeared earlier in the paintings of Arie Aroch as a symbol for infinity, appears in Gershuni's paintings as a symbol for aspiration toward the lofty and divine love, within a chaotic and "earthly" framework.
At the end of the 1980s Gershuni began once again to create works that used old porcelain ware. Works such as "Here I Am!!!," "Justice Shall Walk Before Him," or "Where Are All the Jews?" all of them from 1988, included textual imagery drawn from Jewish sources. Gershuni juxtaposed them to graphic images such as stars or Magen Davids (Stars of David), swastikas, and fingerprints.
Kaddish, 1989–99
Wreaths
In 1990 a large solo exhibition of Gershuni's works, entitled "Works, 1987-1990" and curated by Itamar Levy, was held at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The exhibition presented new images that had been added to Gershuni's iconography, among them, wreaths of flowers. The wreaths, which in Western culture are perceived as symbols of victory and of mourning, appeared in Gershuni's works as self-contained images floating in empty space. Alongside wreaths with abundant petals were also wreaths that were nearly bare. "The wreath project gradually wilted and dropped off," Gershuni testified, "the glory faded, the wreaths became bare." In one of my last I wrote "Come, my bride," but not in the usual sense, but rather in the sense of wilting, annihilation, end."
The wreaths appeared again as a motif in the artist's book Kaddish (1997), which was accompanied by the text of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Kaddish" (1961). The book included 24 pages, 54 x 76 centimeters in size, on which Ginsberg's text in English was printed, with a translation into Hebrew by Nathan Zach, and with prints on gold leaf. The book was displayed in 1999 in the Jewish Center in the New Synagogue, Berlin, and in 2000 in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, in exhibition cases that looked like the benches in a synagogue.
On November 26, 1998, in a gallery used for artists workshops in Tel Aviv, a joint exhibition of works by Gershuni and the photographer Shosh Kormush. In the works he displayed in this exhibition Gershuni returned to the motif of wreaths, but this time he created them using a technique of obliterating the color from the surface of the painting by scratching it off with his fingernails.
Eyes
In May 1996 Gershuni held a joint exhibition with Raffi Lavie in the Givon Gallery in Tel Aviv. The exhibition was considered one of the most important exhibitions of its time, not only because it presented a body of works of two canonical figures in Israeli art, or as it was defined, of "local masters turning 60," but primarily because of its relationship to Israeli public space.
Gershuni's works, which included captions such as "El Male Rachamim" [God, Full of Mercy], from the "Kaddish" prayer, included images in large, dark paint stains, similar to eyes, making use of the thick impasto. The combination of these paintings with the paintings of Lavie, who for the first time used red paint stains and "shots" of color in his works, were interpreted as a direct reaction to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, even though Gershuni's works were painted before the murder. Another indication of Gershuni's personal involvement in Rabin's murder and its implications can be seen in Aharon Shabtai's article "Moishe" (2010), in which he sets forth his political views at the time and describes his growing closeness to Leah Rabin. In addition to this Gershuni displayed works in a group exhibition called "After Rabin: New Works in Israeli Art" in 1998 at the Jewish Museum in New York City.
The "eyes" motif that appears in Gershuni's works and creates a kind of basic facial form possesses a rich iconography. Along with literary references such as Hayyim Nahman Bialik's poem, "These hungry eyes that so earnestly seek," or the poetry of Avraham Ben-Yitzhak, Gershuni testified that the eyes came from "there." "Sometimes I think of the picture of my family from Poland...as the source of those eyes. I also have in my head a picture of a moving train, and from between the slats a pair of dark eyes of a little girl or little boy peeps out. The empty eyes followed me around long before I painted them, following an exhibition of Roman busts in the Louisiana Museum years ago...it was specifically the holes, the lack of eyes, that created an opening to the black emptiness within the sculpture, that pointed out that the sculpted, molded face was a thin, empty shell.
In Ziva Postec's film, "Hakhanot Lepreda" (Preparation for Parting) (1997: 88 minutes), documenting Gershuni's conduct during this period, Gershuni points out the connection between his personal biography and his faith. In 1997 Gershuni suffered an anxiety attack and was hospitalized in the "Geha" Mental Health Center. During his hospitalization Gershuni created an entire series of drawings he called "Ein Harod," in which he refers to the etymology of the word "haredah" (anxiety). The drawings continued Gershuni's preoccupation with a kind of abstraction of the round form. In an interview just before the drawings went on display in a 2003 exhibition in the Museum of Art (Mishkan LeOmanut) Ein Harod named after Chaim Atar, Gershuni explained the title of the drawings and their significance: " I called the exhibition 'Ein Harod.' This seems to me artistically appropriate because these drawings of the landscape, comprised of a line signifying the horizon with a circle above it, are very abstract, and this name gives them concreteness and place. Ein Harod is the eye of the fear, the eye of the storm. It seems to me that this series was created from within the greatest loneliness, or the loneliest journey, that I have ever made."
This works in this series join the large group of paintings Gershuni produced from the middle of the 1990s, and they are materially minimalistic, in a way that stands out from Gershuni's previous work. The drawings, which are saturated with an atmosphere of transcendentalism, are done on canvas that Gershuni treats with different drawing materials in order to bring out the physical structure of the canvas.
In 1999 Gershuni and the photographer Zohar Kaniel, his partner from 1997 until 2000, mounted an exhibit of photographs in the framework of the "Art Focus 3" exhibition. The photographs included intimate scenes of the couple in their bathroom, reflected in the mirror. The exhibition was called "Phaedrus," from Plato's dialogue "Phaedrus," which discusses the significance of love and the soul. Kaniel's works emphasized the reflexive dimension of the act of observation by the pair of lovers.
Parallel with this, Gershuni was invited to curate an exhibition at the Israel Museum, composed of works from the Museum's collections. This exhibition also included photographs from the series that Kaniel had created. After he curated the exhibition at the Israel Museum, entitled "Artist's Slant – Moshe Gershuni Selects from the Museum's Collection," the Museum's curators tried to cancel the exhibition because of the provocative nature of the photographs. They also claimed that Gershuni made only minimal use of the Museum's collections, When the Museum failed to cancel Gershuni's exhibition because of an injunction Gershuni brought against it, a sign was hung at the entrance to the exhibition saying that "The exhibition includes a personal statement by the artist and does not express the Museum's position." A detailed description of the incident appears in Studio magazine, which was the most influential art magazine in Israel at that time.
2000s
In 2000 Gershuni became romantically involved with Juan Jose Garcia Pineiro, a young Spanish man he had met on the Internet in 1999. Pineiro immigrated to Israel and began living with Gershuni in Tel Aviv. In addition, Gershuni rented a new, large studio in Southern Tel Aviv.
During the first half of the decade, a number of exhibitions that recycled earlier works of Gershuni were held. In Hamidrisha Gallery the installation "A Gentle Hand" was set up again and then left there as a permanent exhibition, and in 2005 the exhibition "Little Red Works," which had originally been mounted in the Sarah Levi Gallery in Tel Aviv in 1979, was set up again. It was curated by Benno Kalev, a collector who bought many of the works that appeared in this exhibition.
After the decision was published by the Israeli Ministry of Education, Gershuni announced that he refused to shake the hand of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon or Minister of Education Limor Livnat, and that he did not intend to take part in the Israel Prize awards ceremony. "I am very happy to receive the Israel Prize," Gershuni announced, "but I am very sad to receive it in the political and social conditions that exist in Israel today." In a letter that he sent to the Ministry of Culture on April 4, Gershuni wrote, "I cannot come and take part in the ceremony awarding the prizes. This is not the time for ceremonies and parties." At the same time as the storm in the press was going on, Gershuni petitioned the High Court to allow him to accept the Israel Prize without being required to attend the awards ceremony, but the High Court rejected his petition and made receiving the prize conditional on participation in the awards ceremony. In a later interview Gershuni referred to this incident and claimed that his refusal to participate in the ceremony was a result of his artistic reaction. "I had no choice," Gershuni said, "I once did a work against Arik Sharon; how can I make a mockery of my art and shake his hand now? My art is more important to me than my life. It was a symbolic refusal, an expression of opposition to all the policies of this country."
On March 27, 2006, at Bet Gabriel on the Sea of Galilee, the exhibition "Sham-Mayim," curated by Gideon Ofrat, opened. In this exhibition Gershuni returned to the image of wreaths. He used watercolors and acrylic paint in shades of blue. In some of the paintings the expression "Field of Sacred Apples," a kabbalistic expression from the liturgical poem by Isaac Luria, "Azmir le-Shabahim" (I Sing Psalms in Honor of Shabbat), chanted at the Friday night meal, appears. Ofrat described the use of the old motif of the wreaths not only as a symbol of victory and of mourning, but also as an expression of sexuality, of the desire to mate, and of Eros, all of which symbolize the attempt to reach transcendental union.
On June 24, 2006 an exhibition opened at the Givon Art Gallery in which Gershuni displayed a series of paintings on fabric, done in the technique of Impasto [paint applied thickly] using oil paints and thickening gel, with a spray dripping water on the damp gel layer. These paintings, which he had begun to create at the beginning of the decade, had the look of "fields of paint," in the style of the "New York School." The works strove, in Gershuni's words, to be "a transparent screen of shadows that come from the black place." In this way Gershuni sought to make the viewer look at and thus become aware of how a painting creates an artistic illusion. In the exhibition that he mounted at the Givon Art Gallery, Gershuni even directed groups of lights on the paintings in a way that created different focuses of light on the surfaces of the paintings. A similar exhibition," "Whoever Sheds the Blood of Man in Man his Blood be Shed," [An Eye for an Eye] from Pirkei Avot, took place in March 2008 in the Kfar Saba Municipal Art Gallery. At the same time Gershuni began to create a series of medium-sized bronze sculptures. These sculptures were produced using bronze casting methods from different sculptures, probably figurative, made by amateur sculptors.
In 2002 Gershuni was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. In spite of the effects of the disease, Gershuni continued with his artistic output. A series of works that aroused great interest in the press in this regard was a group of drawings called "Summer 2009" that was displayed in 2009 in the Givon Art Gallery. The exhibition displayed a large series of papers, both small and medium in size, with images of light blue patches of color. A group of these drawings was later exhibited at the Museum of Art, Ein Harod, within the framework of the Collection of Gaby and Ami Brown.
2010s
In November 2010, a retrospective exhibition of Gershuni's works opened at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, curated by Sarah Breitberg-Semel. Another exhibition of his works from the 1980s onward opened in November 2014 at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Germany.
Gershuni died on 22 January 2017 in Tel Aviv at the age of 80.
Trends in the work of Moshe Gershuni
Gershuni's varied work has had a great deal of influence on Israeli art. The combination of biographical characteristics, homosexual sexual expression, and aggressive expressionism, have comprised his most noticeable examples of anti-modernism beginning in the 1970s. In the 1970s Gershuni created minimalist art, in touch with American influences. However his work, along with the strictly formal side, was concerned with the physical aspect of artistic materials. In his work of these years there is a feeling of his squeezing in under the modernist grid while emphasizing self-examination and physical examination at the same time that he is adapting new artistic techniques, such as installation art, performance art, and environmental works. "A great many of my works in the 1970s were connected to what was going on between us and Europe," Gershuni noted with regard to his work from these years, "which was essentially our homeland, because we did not have a history of art of our own in Israel,...while on the other hand there is the Zionist thing...we want to be part of the East, not part of the decadence of Europe."
In her article, ""The Want of Matter: A Quality in Israeli Art" (1986), Sarah Breitberg-Semel described Gershuni's work as conducting a complex, "two-faced" dialogue with Europe and its culture. On one hand this work is saturated with the characteristics of the same culture with which, on the other hand, he conducts a blood feud in the name of the Jewish people."
In his article "The Visibility and Invisibility of Trauma" (1996), Roee Rosen claims that Gershuni's works during the 1980s express a paradoxical relationship to the trauma of the Holocaust. The works are full of a mixture of symbols of European culture and of Jewish culture together with symbols of sexual transgression. This mixture, Rosen says, delays the establishment of a homogeneous, hermetic identity, and allows a reflexive view of the trauma of the Holocaust.
Awards and recognition | 460f0fe0-e6a1-4941-a158-02c743961244 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudgea"} | Genus of plants
Rudgea is a genus of plant in the family Rubiaceae. it was given it name by Richard Anthony to honour Edward in 1806
Species include:[citation needed]
The name was given by Richard Anthony Salisbury to honour Edward Rudge in 1806. | ceff1807-97af-41e2-b466-6325831e5d14 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Claxton_Shield"} | The 1939 Claxton Shield was the sixth annual Claxton Shield, an Australian national baseball tournament. It was held at Richmond Cricket Ground, Albert Ground, South Melbourne Cricket Ground and National Park in Melbourne from 29 July to 5 August, the second time Melbourne had hosted the Shield. New South Wales won the Shield for the third time, successfully defending their title from the previous two years. Queensland joined the other four states for the first time in the tournament. The other participating teams were Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia. It was also the first year an Australia national team was picked primarily based on the Championships.
Format
As had been the case in the 1937 tournament, the four teams played a round-robin schedule, meeting each other team once, with two competition points were on offer in each game. The points were awarded as follows:
At the end of these preliminary games, the top two teams played each other to determine the champions, while the remaining two teams faced each other to determine third place. In the event of a tie between teams in terms of points, the tiebreaker used would have been the net runs for and against, with the team achieving the greater value placing in the higher position.
Results
Preliminaries
Finals
Third place final
Championship game
All-Australian team
At the conclusion of the tournament, representatives from the Australian Baseball Council selected an All-Australian team. Though the selected team did not actually play together, it was the first time an Australian team had been selected.
Bibliography | e3dd9b15-71b8-4c28-83e3-49609dcfa687 |
null | Portuguese footballer
Luís Pedro de Freitas Pinto Trabulo (born 22 August 1994), known as Pité, is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays for C.D. Mafra as a midfielder.
Club career
Beira-Mar
Born in the town of Esgueira, Aveiro District, Pité joined local S.C. Beira-Mar's youth system in 2005, aged 11. He made his debut with the first team on 27 July 2013, playing the full 90 minutes in a 1–0 away loss against Portimonense S.C. in the first round of the Portuguese League Cup. His maiden appearance in the Segunda Liga took place on 12 August, in a 2–3 home defeat to FC Porto B.
Pité scored his first goal as a senior on 2 October 2013, helping to a 3–2 win at C.D. Santa Clara. He missed only seven matches during the campaign, helping to a 12th-place finish amongst 22 teams.
Porto
On 1 July 2014, Pité signed for FC Porto, being assigned to the reserves also in the second division. He spent two seasons playing for them, split roughly between starting games and coming on as a substitute.
Tondela
On 15 July 2016, Pité was loaned to Primeira Liga club C.D. Tondela for the season. He made 15 appearances across all competitions as it finally avoided relegation, scoring once as consolation in a 1–2 home loss to F.C. Arouca on 8 January 2017.
Pité joined on a permanent basis on 7 June 2017, until 2020.
Arouca
Out of work since leaving Tondela, Pité found a new team on 13 January 2021, joining second-tier Arouca on an 18-month deal. He scored his first goals on the final day of the season on 22 May, ensuring a play-off place with two in a 3–1 home victory over G.D. Chaves; three days later he scored the opening goal against Rio Ave F.C. in a 3–0 win in the play-off first leg (5–0 aggregate).
International career
On 17 July 2016, Pité was called to the Portugal Olympic squad due to appear in the year's Summer Olympic Games, replacing Nuno Santos. He replaced Porto's Sérgio Oliveira midway through the second half of the group stage opener against Argentina, and scored the final 2–0 in the 84th minute following a blunder from goalkeeper Gerónimo Rulli.
Career statistics
As of 22 May 2016
Honours
Porto B | f64d6116-fad8-4050-a400-d0be03b400bc |
null | Jasenovac, Croatia may refer to: | 6e9d7526-9d87-45aa-8a03-458f681f590b |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC_1993"} | Intermediate galaxy in the constellation Fornax
IC 1993 is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Fornax. It was discovered by Lewis Swift on November 19, 1897. At a distance of about 50 million light-years, and redshift of 1057 km/s, it is one of the closest to us of the 200 galaxies in the Fornax Cluster.
IC 1993 is a galaxy with several spiral arms in its disc, and it has a Hubble classification of (R')SA(s)bc, indicating it is an intermediate spiral galaxy with a ring on its outer edges. It is a remote galaxy, far from the center of the Fornax Cluster. It is at the edge of the Fornax Cluster. Near the galaxy is a bright foreground star that makes deep observations more difficult, so the galaxy's apparent magnitude is 12.6. Its size in the night sky is 2.5' x 2.2', and it has a diameter of 45000 light-years.
IC 1993 is one of the 25 galaxies known to have rings or partial rings. Most resemble local collisional ring galaxies in morphology, size, and clumpy star formation. Clump ages range from 108 to 109 yr, and clump masses go up to several × 108 solar masses, based on color evolution models. The clump ages are consistent with the expected lifetimes of ring structures if they are formed by collisions.
There are 15 other galaxies that resemble the arcs in partial ring galaxies but haven't evident disk emission. Their clumps have bluer colors at all redshifts compared to the clumps in the ring and partial ring sample, and their clump ages are younger than in rings and partial rings by a factor of ~10. In most respects, they resemble chain galaxies except for their curvature.
Several rings are symmetric with centered nuclei and no obvious companions. They could be outer Lindblad resonance rings, although some have no obvious bars or spirals to drive them. If these symmetric cases are resonance rings, then they could be the precursors of modern resonance rings, which are only ~30% larger on average. This similarity in radius suggests that the driving pattern speed has not slowed by more by ~30% during the last ~7 Gyr. Those without bars could be examples of dissolved bars. | 4228f2a2-8448-49de-9d7c-773ea7a98f3e |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosef_Shagal"} | Yosef Shagal (Hebrew: יוסף שגל, born 25 March 1949) is an Israeli politician and former journalist, of Azerbaijani Jewish origin. He served as a member of the Knesset for the Russian-immigrant dominated Yisrael Beiteinu between 2006 and 2009. From 2012 until 2015, he was the ambassador of Israel to Belarus.
Background
Born in Baku in the Soviet Union (today in Azerbaijan) of Mountain Jewish heritage, Shagal studied history at university. After gaining a BA, he began working as a journalist. He made aliyah to Israel in 1990, and worked as a reporter for Israel Plus, the country's Russian language station.
Shagal joined Yisrael Beiteinu, a nationalist party dominated by immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in February 2006, just a month before the 2006 elections. Despite his late entry to politics, he won fourth spot on the party's list, and was elected to the Knesset when it won eleven seats. He lost his seat in the 2009 elections. Today he lives in Jerusalem and is married with two children.
In 2008, Yosef Shagal, then retired Israeli parliamentarian, in an interview to Azerbaijani media stated: "I find it deeply offensive, and even blasphemous to compare the Holocaust of European Jewry during the Second World War with the mass extermination of the Armenian people during the First World War. Jews were killed because they were Jews, but Armenians provoked Turkey and should blame themselves." | d8e7d07c-7019-437b-84dd-87c855806eb1 |
null | Martin Joseph Blake (born 1853) was an Irish historian who died around 1930.
Blake was a descendant of one of The Tribes of Galway, and some of his noteworthy work was the publication, in two volumes, of much of the extant documents of the Blake family of Galway from 1315 to the 18th century. He was a substantial contributor to the early volumes of the Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society.
Selected bibliography | 73b740fb-cd17-4a1e-b41a-f674a965ec6c |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Clipper_Round_the_World_Yacht_Race_results"} | Results of episodes of the Clipper Round The World Yacht Race
The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race was conceived in 1995 by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston and together with William Ward (CEO), founded Clipper Ventures, a company that would run the race. The race takes paying amateur crews on one or more legs of a circumnavigation of the globe in specially designed yachts owned by Clipper Ventures. Three different classes of yacht have been used throughout the race, the Clipper 60, Clipper 68 and Clipper 70s. The race ran every two years between 1996 and 2002, and then skipped a year, with subsequent races beginning in 2005, 2007, 2009, 2013, 2015 and 2017.
Clipper 1996
Route
The first race took a route starting from Plymouth and then sailing to Madeira, Fort Lauderdale, Panama, Galapagos, Hawaii, Yokohama, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seychelles, Durban, Cape Town, Salvador (Brazil), the Azores and back to Plymouth.
Results
The overall scores were calculated based on the number of points awarded for each race, with first place scoring one point, second scoring two points and so on.
Clipper 1998
Fleet
Seven boats raced, with Blackadder not competing.
Route
The route was largely the same as the '96 race, but called briefly at Nassau in the Bahamas before going to Marina Hemingway, five miles to the west of Havana, a direct course between the USA and Cuba being impossible.
Results
The race was won, convincingly, by Alex Thomson, who was the youngest skipper to win a round the world yacht race at just 24. Thomson used the win to springboard him into the international racing scene on his Open 60 Hugo Boss.
The Times Clipper 2000 Race
This was the only race to have a title sponsor, with the UK daily broadsheet The Times sponsoring the race and trophy.
Fleet
All eight Clipper 60 yachts took part, and were renamed after cities in the UK (Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Jersey and Liverpool), with the crews, where possible, drawn from the city their boat was named for.
Route
The race started and finished in Portsmouth harbour. The stop in the Azores was replaced by one in New York City and to compensate for the extra distance the Seychelles to Durban to Cape Town leg was reduced to Mauritius to Cape Town.
The race attempted to make it from Yokohama to Shanghai but a fierce storm east of Tokyo Bay in March 2001 caused damage to several of the boats and by the time they had returned to Japan for repair, the entry visas to China had lapsed. Instead, the fleet raced from Yokohama to Naha, the capital of the Japanese island, Okinawa.
Another diversion took place in May 2001 when mechanical problems to Bristol Clipper’s generator meant the fleet spent two days in Christmas Island and the crews got an unexpected Australian stamp in their passports.
In another modification to the Clipper ‘96 and Clipper ‘98 route, stops were included in Vilamoura (Portugal), Singapore and Mauritius with the penultimate race going from New York to the Channel Island port of St. Helier.
Results
The point scoring method was altered, with the races now scoring 8 points for a win, 7 for second and so on.
Clipper 2002-03 Race
Fleet
This was to be the fourth and final circumnavigation for the Clipper 60 fleet. Three of the boats were renamed, and international cities were now added to the race, Hong Kong, Cape Town and New York.
Route
The start point was moved to Liverpool, and an estimated 40,000 spectators came to see the boats off despite a 24-hour delay due to storms in the Irish Sea. 100 mph (160 km/h) gusts turned the local waters into a boiling maelstrom and the start was postponed from the Sunday until the next day.
The race continued to go westwards. As in 2000, the attempt to race into Shanghai failed – this time thanks to the promised berthing facilities being withdrawn. Further along the route, the fleet was challenged by the SARS virus and the yachts were forced to find an alternative location close to Singapore. The popular Indonesian island of Batam provided the facilities and the stop proved so popular, it was a catalyst for Singapore to enter a yacht in the next running of the race.
Results
Clipper 2005–06 Race
Fleet
The 2005 race was the first to feature the larger Clipper 68 yachts.
After the initial three international boats from the 2002 race, the race was made fully international, with boats sponsored by Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, Qingdao, Durban, New York City, Singapore and Western Australia as well as the home teams of Liverpool, Glasgow, Cardiff and Jersey.
Route
The 2005 race was the first to circumnavigate from east to west. The route was altered to take account of the faster boats, and to take in stopovers at many of the sponsoring cities. For the first time there was a leg across the Southern Ocean between Durban and Fremantle, and a leg across the North Pacific between Qingdao and Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
The race schedule was significantly altered when Glasgow Clipper reported keel problems in the South China Sea, and diverted to Subic Bay in the Philippines, followed by the rest of the fleet that were showing symptoms, causing an enforced 6 week stopover. The revised schedule dropped the planned stopover in Yokohama from the route, and moved the Caribbean stopover from Curaçao to Jamaica.
Results
Races score first = 10 points, second = 9 points, etc. However, Race 1 (Liverpool to Cascais) and Race 13 (Holyhead to Liverpool) were scored at half points. In addition, the race committee did sometimes apply points penalties, invariably for excessive sail damage. The penalty points are shown in brackets after the result.
The original race 6, from Singapore to Qingdao was abandoned when the fleet diverted to Subic, and no points were awarded.
Liverpool and Singapore were awarded a tie in Race 3, after Liverpool had a GPS failure, and could not confirm its finish time with sufficient accuracy to determine whether it was ahead or behind Singapore. 5.5 points were awarded to each boat.
Clipper 2007–08 Race
The Clipper 07–08 race started on 16 September 2007 in Liverpool.
Fleet
Once again, 10 Clipper 68s took part. There were some changes to the lineup with Victoria, Jersey and Cardiff replaced by Jamaica, Hull & Humber and Nova Scotia.
Route
The race had some changes compared to the 05–06 route. La Rochelle was the first stop, replacing Cascais, and the route for Leg 5 changed, with the race leaving Qingdao and heading to Santa Cruz, California via Hawaii, eliminating the stopovers in Yokohama and Victoria. The final leg also changed, with an extra stop in Halifax, and the final pitstop in Cork, rather than Jersey and then finished in Liverpool in July 2008.
Results
RTD = Retired, DNC = Did not compete
Where two teams are equal on points, their relative position is determined using the countback rule. That is, the team with the most first-place finishes is placed higher; if those are equal, look at second-place finishes, and so forth.
Points have been deducted for sail damage: Glasgow & Hull and Humber 4, Nova Scotia & Jamaica 3, Liverpool 1.
Race 1 was for half points.
Clipper 2009–10 Race
The Clipper 2009–10 race started from Kingston upon Hull on the Humber Estuary on 13 September 2009. The race was won by Spirit of Australia on 17 July 2010, when the yachts returned to Hull Marina for a gala celebration.
Fleet
The same fleet of Clipper 68s took part. The yachts were named Hull and Humber, Qingdao, Uniquely Singapore, Cape Breton Island, Spirit of Australia, California, Edinburgh Inspiring Capital, Jamaica Lightning Bolt, Team Finland and Cork.
On 15 January 2010, Cork Clipper ran aground on the Gosong Mampango reef in the Java Sea at 3°35.1195′S 109°10.9′E / 3.5853250°S 109.1817°E / -3.5853250; 109.1817 (Cork Clipper). In 1992 it was reported that the reef and its associated light lie 0.9 nmi (1.7 km) east of their charted positions. The crew successfully evacuated the yacht and were aided by competitors Team California and Team Finland. Cork Clipper was abandoned a few days later after the decision was made that any attempt to salvage her would be uneconomical. A Challenge 67' yacht Aurora of London was chartered and prepared and re-branded as Cork in Antigua. She rejoined the race in Panama in May 2010, where she was skippered by Hannah Jenner - former 07/08 skipper of Glasgow - Scotland With Style. The Cork yacht was able to finish the race in style as they achieved line honours into their home port of Kinsale, and won the final race from IJmuiden to Hull; winning a second coveted yellow pennant.
Results
For this race, stealth mode was introduced along with scoring gates.
Clipper 2011-12 Race
The fleet departed from Ocean Village on 31 July 2011 and the race started in the Solent. The race lasted a full year and covered an estimated 40,000 nautical miles (74,000 km).
Fleet
In this edition of the race the fleet included a newly built Clipper 68 to replace the yacht lost at sea. The race saw several yachts suffering steering gear failures, the most severe causing Singapore to retire during the leg to New Zealand. During race 9 from Qingdao to California, an incident on the Geraldton Western Australia yacht made international headlines when the US Coastguard Cutter Bertholf rescued two of the four injured crew from the yacht.
Route
The route was again modified with yachts visiting Eastern Australia and New Zealand for the first time before sailing up to Singapore.
Results
Scoring gates and stealth mode were again features of the 11-12 race.
Clipper 2013-14 Race
Fleet
For this edition, the fleet was expanded to 12 brand new identical Tony Castro designed Clipper 70 yachts. In a break from tradition, 5 of the yachts are sponsored by companies rather than cities or countries.
Route
The race set off from London's St. Katherine Docks on Sunday 1 September, with the start taking place offshore at Southend the following morning. The fleet then raced to Brest and onwards to Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Albany, Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane, Singapore, Qingdao, San Francisco, Panama, Jamaica, New York, Derry/Londonderry, and Den Helder, before finishing back in London.
Skippers
On 10 April 2013, the skippers for the Clipper 13-14 Round the World Yacht Race were announced as follows:
Clipper 13-14 Results
Clipper 2015-16 Race
Fleet
The 2015-16 edition of the race featured the same matched fleet of twelve Clipper 70 yachts as took part in the 2013-14 Race. GREAT Britain, Derry-Londonderry-Doire and Qingdao return as sponsors, with other the sponsors announced during 2015 being (in order of announcement): ClipperTelemed+, Mission Performance, Unicef, IchorCoal, Garmin, Da Nang - Viet Nam, LMAX Exchange, PSP Logistics, and Visit Seattle.
Route
The 2015-16 edition of the race set sail on Sunday 30 August 2015, once again from London's St Katharine Docks, with the actual start of the first race taking place offshore at Southend at 1230 BST on Monday 31 August. The fleet will race to Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Albany, Sydney, Hobart, the Whitsunday Islands, Da Nang, Qingdao, Seattle, Panama, New York, Derry/Londonderry, and Den Helder, before finishing back in London.
Skippers
On 18 March 2015, the skippers for the Clipper 15-16 Round the World Yacht Race were announced as follows:
Results
On 29 July 2016, the winners of the Clipper 2015-16 Round the World Yacht Race were announced as follows:
Clipper 2017-18 Race
Fleet
The 2017-18 edition of the race featured the same matched fleet of twelve Clipper 70 yachts as took part in the 2015-16 Race. CV24, Greenings, retired from the race entirely when it ran aground on October 31, 2017 off the coast of Cape Town.
Route
The 2017-18 edition of the race set sail on Sunday 20 August 2017, Liverpool’s Albert Dock. This was the fourth time Liverpool has hosted the Clipper race, making it the most frequented Clipper Race stopover port. The fleet raced to Punta del Este, Cape Town, Freemantle, Sydney, Hobart, the Whitsunday Islands, Sanya, Qingdao, Seattle, Panama, New York, Derry/Londonderry, before finishing back in Liverpool on Saturday, July 28, 2018.
Results
The race was won by Wendy Tuck, who was the first female skipper to win a round the world yacht race. In second place came Nikki Henderson, to date the youngest skipper of the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race.
The results of the Clipper 2017-18 Round the World Yacht Race were announced as follows:
Clipper 2019-20 Race
Route
The race started at London and continued to Portimao, Punta del Este, Cape Town, Fremantle, Whitsundays and Subic Bay. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the organisers to cancel visits to Chinese ports and suspend the remaining legs. The race resumed in March 2022, when the sailors parted from Subic Bay and travelled to Seattle, Panama, Bermuda, New York, Derry and finally back to London.
Results | 4a4ced80-34af-4577-91a3-0a127f517972 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Tarantino"} | American filmmaker (born 1963)
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (/ˌtærənˈtiːnoʊ/; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by frequent references to popular culture and film genres, non-linear storylines, dark humor, stylized violence, extended dialogue, pervasive use of profanity, cameos and ensemble casts.
Tarantino began his career as an independent filmmaker with the release of the crime film Reservoir Dogs in 1992. His second film, Pulp Fiction (1994), a dark comedy crime thriller, was a major success with critics and audiences winning numerous awards, including the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 1996, he appeared in From Dusk till Dawn, also writing the screenplay. Tarantino's third film, Jackie Brown (1997), paid homage to blaxploitation films.
In 2003, Tarantino directed Kill Bill: Volume 1, inspired by the traditions of martial arts films; it was followed by Volume 2 in 2004. He then made the exploitation slasher Death Proof (2007), part of a double feature with Robert Rodriguez, released under the collective title Grindhouse. His next film Inglourious Basterds (2009) told an alternate history with the war film genre. He followed this with Django Unchained (2012), a slave revenge Spaghetti Western, which won him his second Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Tarantino's eighth film, The Hateful Eight (2015), was a revisionist Western thriller and opened to audiences with a roadshow release. His most recent film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), is a comedy drama set in the late 1960s about the transition of Old Hollywood to New Hollywood. A novelization of the film was also published in 2021, becoming his debut novel.
Tarantino's work has been subject to controversy, such as the depictions of violence, frequent inclusion of racial slurs and the alleged negligence of safety in his handling of stunt scenes on Kill Bill: Volume 2. During his career, Tarantino's films have garnered a cult following, as well as critical and commercial success. He has been considered "the single most influential director of his generation", and listed as one of the most influential people in the world. Apart from receiving the Palme d'Or and two Academy Awards, his other major awards include two BAFTAs and four Golden Globes.
Early life
Tarantino was born on March 27, 1963, in Knoxville, Tennessee, the only child of Connie McHugh and aspiring actor Tony Tarantino, who left the family before his son's birth. He is of Irish ancestry through his mother, though he claims she is half-Cherokee; his father is of Italian descent. He was named in part after Quint Asper, Burt Reynolds's character in the TV series Gunsmoke. Tarantino's mother met his father during a trip to Los Angeles. After a brief marriage and divorce, Connie left Los Angeles and moved to Knoxville, where her parents lived. In 1966, Tarantino returned with his mother to Los Angeles.
Tarantino's mother married musician Curtis Zastoupil soon after arriving in Los Angeles, and the family moved to Torrance, a city in Los Angeles County's South Bay area. Zastoupil accompanied Tarantino to numerous film screenings while his mother allowed him to see more mature movies, such as Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Deliverance (1972). After his mother divorced Zastoupil in 1973, and received a misdiagnosis of Hodgkin's lymphoma, Tarantino was sent to live with his grandparents in Tennessee. He remained there less than a year before returning to California.
At 14 years old, Tarantino wrote one of his earliest works, a screenplay called Captain Peachfuzz and the Anchovy Bandit, based on the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit. Tarantino later revealed that his mother had ridiculed his writing skills when he was younger; as a result, he vowed that he would never share his wealth with her. As a 15-year-old, Tarantino was grounded by his mother for shoplifting Elmore Leonard's novel The Switch from Kmart. He was allowed to leave only to attend the Torrance Community Theater, where he participated in such plays as Two Plus Two Makes Sex and Romeo and Juliet. The same year, he dropped out of Narbonne High School in Harbor City, Los Angeles.
Career
1980s: Early jobs and screenplays
Through the 1980s, Tarantino had a number of jobs. After lying about his age, he worked as an usher at an adult movie theater in Torrance, called the Pussycat Theater. He spent time as a recruiter in the aerospace industry, and for five years he worked at Video Archives, a video store in Manhattan Beach, California. He was well known in the local community for his film knowledge and video recommendations; Tarantino stated, "When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, 'No, I went to films." In 1986, Tarantino was employed in his first Hollywood job, working with Video Archives colleague Roger Avary, as production assistants on Dolph Lundgren's exercise video, Maximum Potential.
Before working at Video Archives, Tarantino co-wrote Love Birds In Bondage with Scott Magill. Tarantino would go on to produce and direct the short film. Magill committed suicide in 1987, but not before destroying all footage that had been shot. Later, Tarantino attended acting classes at the James Best Theatre Company, where he met several of his eventual collaborators for his next film. In 1987, Tarantino co-wrote and directed My Best Friend's Birthday (1987). It was left uncompleted, but some of its dialogue was included in True Romance.
The following year, he played an Elvis impersonator in "Sophia's Wedding: Part 1", an episode in the fourth season of The Golden Girls, which was broadcast on November 19, 1988. Tarantino recalled that the pay he received for the part helped support him during the preproduction of Reservoir Dogs; he estimated he was initially paid about $650, however the episode was frequently rerun because it was on a "best of..." lineup, therefore received about $3,000 in residuals over three years.
1990s: Breakthrough
After meeting Lawrence Bender at a friend's barbecue, Tarantino discussed with him about an unwritten dialogue-driven heist film. Bender encouraged Tarantino to write the screenplay, which he wrote in three-and-a-half weeks and presented to Bender unformatted. Impressed with the script, Bender managed to forward it through contacts to director Monte Hellman. Hellman cleaned up the screenplay and helped secure funding from Richard N. Gladstein at Live Entertainment (which later became Artisan, now known as Lionsgate). Harvey Keitel read the script and also contributed to the budget, taking a role as co-producer and also playing a major part in the picture. In January 1992, it was released as Tarantino's crime thriller Reservoir Dogs—which he wrote, directed, and acted in as Mr. Brown—and screened at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was an immediate hit, receiving a positive response from critics.
Tarantino's screenplay True Romance was optioned and the film was eventually released in 1993. The second script that Tarantino sold was for the film Natural Born Killers, which was revised by Dave Veloz, Richard Rutowski and director Oliver Stone. Tarantino was given story credit and stated in an interview that he wished the film well, but later disowned the final film. Tarantino also did an uncredited rewrite on It's Pat (1994). Other films where he was an uncredited screenwriter include Crimson Tide (1995) and The Rock (1996).
Following the success of Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino was approached by major film studios and offered projects that included Speed (1994) and Men in Black (1997), but he instead retreated to Amsterdam to work on his script for Pulp Fiction.
Tarantino wrote, directed, and acted in the dark comedy crime film Pulp Fiction in 1994, maintaining the stylized violence from his earlier film and also non-linear storylines. Tarantino received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, which he shared with Roger Avary, who contributed to the story. He also received a nomination in the Best Director category. The film received another five nominations, including for Best Picture. Tarantino also won the Palme d'Or for the film at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. The film grossed over $200 million and earned positive reviews.
In 1995, Tarantino participated in the anthology film Four Rooms, a collaboration that also included directors Robert Rodriguez, Allison Anders and Alexandre Rockwell. Tarantino directed and acted in the fourth segment of "The Man from Hollywood", a tribute to the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "Man from the South". He joined Rodriguez again later in the year with a supporting role in Desperado. One of Tarantino's first paid writing assignments was for From Dusk till Dawn, which Rodriguez directed later in 1996, re-teaming with Tarantino in another acting role, alongside Harvey Keitel, George Clooney and Juliette Lewis.
His third feature film was Jackie Brown (1997), an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel Rum Punch. An homage to blaxploitation films, it starred Pam Grier, who starred in many of the films of that genre in the 1970s. It received positive reviews and was called a "comeback" for Grier and co-star Robert Forster. Leonard considered Jackie Brown to be his favorite of the 26 different screen adaptations of his novels and short stories.
In the 1990s, Tarantino had a number of other minor acting roles, including in Eddie Presley (1992), The Coriolis Effect (1994), Sleep With Me (1994), Somebody to Love (1994), All-American Girl (1995), Destiny Turns on the Radio (1995), and Girl 6 (1996). Also in 1996, he starred in Steven Spielberg's Director's Chair, a simulation video game that uses pre-generated film clips. In 1998, Tarantino made his major Broadway stage debut as an amoral psycho killer in a revival of the 1966 play Wait Until Dark, which received unfavorable reviews for his performance from critics.
2000s: Subsequent success
Tarantino went on to write and direct Kill Bill, a highly stylized "revenge flick" in the cinematic traditions of Chinese martial arts films, Japanese period dramas, Spaghetti Westerns, and Italian horror. It was based on a character called The Bride and a plot that he and Kill Bill's lead actress Uma Thurman had developed during the making of Pulp Fiction. It was originally set for a single theatrical release, but its four-hour running time prompted Tarantino to divide it into two movies. Tarantino says he still considers it a single film in his overall filmography. Volume 1 was released in 2003 and Volume 2 was released in 2004.
From 2002 to 2004, Tarantino portrayed villain McKenas Cole in the ABC television series Alias. In 2004, Tarantino attended the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, where he served as President of the Jury. Also Volume 2 of Kill Bill had a screening, but was not in competition.
Tarantino then contributed to Robert Rodriguez's 2005 neo-noir film Sin City, and was credited as "Special Guest Director" for his work directing the car sequence featuring Clive Owen and Benicio del Toro. In May 2005, Tarantino co-wrote and directed "Grave Danger", the fifth season finale of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. For this episode, Tarantino was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series at the 57th Primetime Emmy Awards.
In 2007, Tarantino directed the exploitation slasher film Death Proof. Released as a take on 1970s double features, under the banner Grindhouse, it was co-directed with Rodriguez who did the other feature which was the body horror film Planet Terror. Box-office sales were low but the film garnered mostly positive reviews.
Tarantino's film Inglourious Basterds, released in 2009, is the story of a group of Jewish-American guerrilla soldiers in Nazi-occupied France in an alternate history of World War II. He had planned to start work on the film after Jackie Brown but postponed this to make Kill Bill after a meeting with Uma Thurman. Filming began on "Inglorious Bastards", as it was provisionally titled, in October 2008. The film opened in August 2009 to positive reviews with the highest box office gross in the US and Canada for the weekend on release. For the film, Tarantino received his second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director and Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
2010s and 2020s: Established auteur
In 2011, production began on Django Unchained, a film about the revenge of a former slave in the Southern United States in 1858. The film stemmed from Tarantino's desire to produce a Spaghetti Western set in America's Deep South during the Antebellum Period. Tarantino called the proposed style "a southern", stating that he wanted "to do movies that deal with America's horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they're genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it's ashamed of it, and other countries don't really deal with because they don't feel they have the right to". It was released in December 2012 and became his highest grossing film to date. He also received his second Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
In November 2013, Tarantino said he was working on a new film and that it would be another Western, though not a sequel to Django Unchained. On January 11, 2014, it was revealed that the film would be titled The Hateful Eight. The script was then leaked in January 2014. Aggrieved by the breach of confidence, Tarantino considered abandoning the production which was due to start the next winter and publish it as a novel instead. He stated that he had given the script to a few trusted colleagues, including Bruce Dern, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen. On April 19, 2014, Tarantino directed a live reading of the leaked script at the United Artists Theater in the Ace Hotel Los Angeles for the Live Read series. Tarantino explained that they would read the first draft of the script, and added that he was writing two new drafts with a different ending. Filming went ahead as planned with the new draft in January 2015. The Hateful Eight was released on December 25, 2015, as a roadshow presentation in 70 mm film-format theaters, before being released in digital theaters on December 30, 2015. The film received mostly positive reviews from critics.
In July 2017, it was reported that Tarantino's next project would be a film about the Manson Family murders. In February 2018, it was announced that the film's title would be Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and that Leonardo DiCaprio would play Rick Dalton, a fictional star of television Westerns, with Brad Pitt as Dalton's longtime stunt double Cliff Booth; Margot Robbie would be playing real life actress Sharon Tate, portrayed as Dalton's next-door neighbor. Filming took place in the summer of 2018. In wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations, Tarantino severed ties to The Weinstein Company and Miramax and sought a new distributor after working with Weinstein for his entire career. The film officially premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where it was in competition for the Palme d'Or. Sony Pictures eventually distributed the film, which was theatrically released in July 2019.
In November 2022, Tarantino revealed plans to shoot an eight-episode television series in 2023. No further details were provided.
As a producer
Tarantino has used his Hollywood power to give smaller and foreign films more attention. These films are often labeled "Presented by Quentin Tarantino" or "Quentin Tarantino Presents". In 1995, Tarantino formed Rolling Thunder Pictures with Miramax to release or re-release several independent and foreign features. By 1997, Miramax had shut down the company due to poor sales. The following films were released by Rolling Thunder Pictures: Chungking Express (1994, dir. Wong Kar-wai), Switchblade Sisters (1975, dir. Jack Hill), Sonatine (1993, dir. Takeshi Kitano), Hard Core Logo (1996, dir. Bruce McDonald), The Mighty Peking Man (1977, dir. Ho Meng Hua), Detroit 9000 (1973, dir. Arthur Marks), The Beyond (1981, dir. Lucio Fulci), and Curdled (1996, dir. Reb Braddock).
In 2001, he produced the US release of the Hong Kong martial arts film Iron Monkey, which made over $14 million worldwide. In 2004, he brought the Chinese martial arts film Hero to the US. It opened at number-one at the box office and eventually earning $53.5 million.
While Tarantino was in negotiations with Lucy Liu for Kill Bill, the two helped produce the Hungarian sports documentary Freedom's Fury, which was released in 2006. When he was approached about a documentary about the Blood in the Water match, Tarantino said "This is the best story I've ever been told. I'd love to be involved".
In 2006, another "Quentin Tarantino presents" production, Hostel, opened at number-one at the box office with a $20.1 million opening weekend. He presented 2006's The Protector, and is a producer of the 2007 film Hostel: Part II. In 2008, he produced the Larry Bishop-helmed Hell Ride, a revenge biker film.
As a film exhibitor
In February 2010, Tarantino bought the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Tarantino allowed the previous owners to continue operating the theater, but stated he would make occasional programming suggestions. He was quoted as saying: "As long as I'm alive, and as long as I'm rich, the New Beverly will be there, showing films shot on 35 mm." Starting in 2014, Tarantino took a more active role in programming film screenings at the New Beverly, showing his own films as well as prints from his personal collection. In 2021, Tarantino announced that he had also purchased the Vista Theatre in Los Angeles, stating that he intends to keep it a first-run theatre, and that like The New Beverly it will only show movies on film.
Film criticism
In June 2020 Tarantino became an officially recognized critic on the review aggregation website, Rotten Tomatoes. His reviews are part of the "Tomatometer" rating.
Tarantino reappraises films that go against the views of mainstream film criticism, for example, he considers the 1983 film Psycho II to be superior to the original 1960 film Psycho. He is also among a few notable directors, including Martin Scorsese and Edgar Wright, who appreciate Elaine May's 1987 film Ishtar, despite its reputation as being a notorious box-office flop and one of the worst films ever made.
Tarantino praised Mel Gibson's 2006 film Apocalypto, saying, "I think it's a masterpiece. It was perhaps the best film of that year." In 2009, he named Kinji Fukasaku's violent action film Battle Royale as his favorite film released since he became a director in 1992. In 2020, Tarantino named David Fincher's film The Social Network his favorite movie of the 2010s.
In August 2022, Tarantino stated that Steven Spielberg's Jaws is "the greatest movie of all time. Maybe not the best film, but the best movie ever made". The director continued his praise for Spielberg, "I think my favourite Spielberg-directed movie, again with Jaws carved out on its own Mount Rushmore, is Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", because “He [Spielberg] pushes the envelope, he creates PG-13; a movie so fucking badass it created a new level in the MPAA.” He also views favorably the fourth film in the Indiana Jones franchise, asserting that he found Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull more enjoyable when compared to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Books
In 2020, Tarantino signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins. He published his first novel in June 2021, a novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It received positive reviews from The New York Times and The Guardian. The second book he published under the deal titled Cinema Speculation, about films of the New Hollywood era, was inspired by film critic Pauline Kael and published on November 1, 2022.
Podcast
In June 2021, Tarantino announced plans to start a podcast with Roger Avary. The podcast is named after Video Archives, a video rental store that both directors had worked at prior to their film careers, and will feature the directors, and a guest, examining a film which could have been offered for rental at the store. The podcast premiered on July 18, 2022.
Unproduced films
A number of film projects have been considered by Tarantino throughout his career. They have included comic book adaptations (Green Lantern, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Silver Surfer), sequels (Kill Bill:Volume 3), spin-offs of previous works (The Vega Brothers), crossovers of his own work with other genres (Django/Zorro), literary adaptations of well-known authors (Len Deighton, Bret Easton Ellis), and campaigning to direct in major film franchises (James Bond and Star Trek). Most of the projects he has discussed have been speculative, but none of them have been accomplished. In November 2014, Tarantino said he would retire from films after directing his tenth film.
Final tenth film
In 2009, Tarantino said that he plans to retire from filmmaking when he is 60, in order to focus on writing novels and film literature. He is skeptical of the film industry going digital, saying, "If it actually gets to the place where you can't show 35 mm film in theaters anymore and everything is digital projection, I won't even make it to 60." He has also stated that he has a plan, although "not etched in stone", to retire after making his tenth movie: "If I get to the 10th, do a good job and don't screw it up, well that sounds like a good way to end the old career."
Influences and style of filmmaking
Early influences
In the 2012 Sight & Sound directors' poll, Tarantino listed his top 12 films: Apocalypse Now, The Bad News Bears, Carrie, Dazed and Confused, The Great Escape, His Girl Friday, Jaws, Pretty Maids All in a Row, Rolling Thunder, Sorcerer, Taxi Driver and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western films were a profound influence including Once Upon a Time in the West. He is an admirer of the 1981 film Blow Out, directed by Brian De Palma, which led to his casting of John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Similarly, Tarantino was captivated with Jim McBride's 1983 remake of Breathless and with Richard Gere's unlikable but charismatic protagonist. The film's popular culture references, in particular the comic book Silver Surfer, inspired him to have the character's poster on Mr. Orange’s apartment wall in Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino has also labeled Rio Bravo as one of his influences. He listed the Australian suspense film Roadgames (1981) as another favorite film.
Other films he cited as formative influences include Hong Kong martial arts films (such as Five Fingers of Death and Enter the Dragon), John Woo action films (A Better Tomorrow II and The Killer), John Carpenter films (Assault on Precinct 13 and The Thing), blaxploitation films (including The Mack and Foxy Brown), Jean-Luc Godard films (Bande à Part and the 1960 version of Breathless), and Sonny Chiba's work (The Street Fighter and Shadow Warriors).
In August 2007, while teaching in a four-hour film course during the 9th Cinemanila International Film Festival in Manila, Tarantino cited Filipino directors Cirio H. Santiago, Eddie Romero and Gerardo de León as personal icons from the 1970s. He referred to De Leon's "soul-shattering, life-extinguishing" movies on vampires and female bondage, citing in particular Women in Cages; "It is just harsh, harsh, harsh", he said, and described the final shot as one of "devastating despair". Upon his arrival in the Philippines, Tarantino was quoted in the local newspaper as saying, "I'm a big fan of RP [Republic of the Philippines] cinema."
Style
Tarantino's films often feature graphic violence, a tendency which has sometimes been criticized. Reservoir Dogs was initially denied United Kingdom certification because of his use of torture as entertainment. Tarantino has frequently defended his use of violence, saying that "violence is so good. It affects audiences in a big way". The number of expletives and deaths in Tarantino's films were measured by analytics website FiveThirtyEight. In the examples given by the site, "Reservoir Dogs features 'just' 10 on-screen deaths, but 421 profanities. Django Unchained, on the other hand, has 'just' 262 profanities but 47 deaths." He often blends aesthetic elements, in tribute to his favorite films and filmmakers. In Kill Bill, he melds comic strip formulas and visuals within a live action film sequence, in some cases by the literal use of cartoon or anime images.
Tarantino has also occasionally used a non-linear story structure in his films, most notably with Pulp Fiction. He has also used the style in Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, and The Hateful Eight. Tarantino's script for True Romance was originally told in a non-linear style, before director Tony Scott decided to use a more linear approach. Critics have since referred to the use of this shifting timeline in films as the "Tarantino Effect". Actor Steve Buscemi has described Tarantino's novel style of filmmaking as "bursting with energy" and "focused". According to Tarantino, a hallmark of all his movies is that there is a different sense of humor in each one, which prompts the viewer to laugh at scenes that are not funny. However, he insists that his films are dramas, not comedies.
Tarantino's use of dialogue is noted for its mundane conversations with popular culture references. For example, when Jules and Vincent in Pulp Fiction are driving to a hit, they talk about Vincent’s trip to Europe, discussing the differences in countries such as a McDonald's "Quarter Pounder with Cheese" being called a "Royale with Cheese" in France because of the metric system. In the opening scene to Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Brown (played by Tarantino) interprets the meaning of Madonna’s song "Like a Virgin". In Jackie Brown, Jackie and Max chat over a cup of coffee while listening to a vinyl record by the Delfonics' "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)".
He also creates his own products and brands that he uses in his films to varying degrees. His own fictional brands, including "Acuña Boys Tex-Mex Food", "Big Kahuna Burger", "G.O. Juice", "Jack Rabbit Slim's", "K-Billy", "Red Apple cigarettes", "Tenku Brand Beer" and "Teriyaki Donut", replace the use of product placement, sometimes to a humorous extent. Tarantino is also known for his choice of music in his films, including soundtracks that often use songs from the 1960s and 70s. In 2011, he was recognized at the 16th Critics' Choice Awards with the inaugural Music+Film Award.
A recurring image in his films are scenes where women's bare feet feature prominently. When asked about foot fetishism, Tarantino responded, "I don't take it seriously. There's a lot of feet in a lot of good directors' movies. That's just good direction. Like, before me, the person foot fetishism was defined by was Luis Buñuel, another film director. And [Alfred] Hitchcock was accused of it and Sofia Coppola has been accused of it."
Tarantino has stated in many interviews that his writing process is like writing a novel before formatting it into a script, saying that this creates the blueprint of the film and makes the film feel like literature. About his writing process he told website The Talks, "[My] head is a sponge. I listen to what everyone says, I watch little idiosyncratic behavior, people tell me a joke and I remember it. People tell me an interesting story in their life and I remember it. ... when I go and write my new characters, my pen is like an antenna, it gets that information, and all of a sudden these characters come out more or less fully formed. I don't write their dialogue, I get them talking to each other."
Appraisals
During his career, Tarantino's films have garnered a cult following, as well as critical and commercial success. In 2005, he was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. Filmmaker and historian Peter Bogdanovich has called him "the single most influential director of his generation". Tarantino has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film industry.
In 2013, a survey of seven academics was carried out to discover which filmmakers had been referenced the most in essays and dissertations on film that had been marked in the previous five years. It revealed that Tarantino was the most-studied director in the United Kingdom, ahead of Alfred Hitchcock, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
Controversies
Gun violence
Tarantino has said that he does not believe that violence in film inspires real acts of violence. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre accused him of being insensitive to the event. In an interview with Terry Gross, Tarantino expressed "annoyance" at the suggestion that there is a link between the two, saying, "I think it's disrespectful to [the] memory of those who died to talk about movies ... Obviously the issue is gun control and mental health." Soon after, in response to a Hollywood PSA video titled "Demand a Plan", which featured celebrities rallying for gun control legislation, a pro-gun group used scenes from Tarantino's film Django Unchained to label celebrities as "hypocrites" for appearing in violent movies.
Racial slurs in films
In 1997, Spike Lee questioned Tarantino's use of racial slurs in his films, especially the word "nigger", particularly in Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. In a Variety interview discussing Jackie Brown, Lee said, "I'm not against the word ... And some people speak that way, but Quentin is infatuated with that word... I want Quentin to know that all African Americans do not think that word is trendy or slick." Tarantino responded on The Charlie Rose Show:
As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are, all right? And to say that I can't do that because I'm white, but the Hughes brothers can do that because they're black, that is racist. That is the heart of racism, all right. And I do not accept that ... That is how a segment of the black community that lives in Compton, lives in Inglewood, where Jackie Brown takes place, that lives in Carson, that is how they talk. I'm telling the truth. It would not be questioned if I was black, and I resent the question because I'm white. I have the right to tell the truth. I do not have the right to lie.
Tarantino said on The Howard Stern Show that Lee would have to "stand on a chair to kiss [his] ass". Samuel L. Jackson, who has appeared in both directors' films, defended Tarantino. At the Berlin Film Festival, where Jackie Brown was screened, Jackson said: "I don't think the word is offensive in the context of this film ... Black artists think they are the only ones allowed to use the word. Well, that's bull. Jackie Brown is a wonderful homage to black exploitation films. This is a good film, and Spike hasn't made one of those in a few years." Tarantino argued that black audiences appreciated his blaxploitation-influenced films more than some of his critics, and that Jackie Brown was primarily made for black audiences.
Django Unchained was the subject of controversy because of its use of racial slurs and depiction of slavery. Reviewers defended the use of the language by pointing out the historic context of race and slavery in America. Lee, in an interview with Vibe, said that he would not see the film: "All I'm going to say is that it's disrespectful to my ancestors. That's just me ... I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody else." Lee later tweeted: "American slavery was not a Sergio Leone spaghetti western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves. Stolen from Africa. I will honor them."
Kill Bill car crash
Uma Thurman was in a serious car crash on the set of Kill Bill because Tarantino had insisted she perform her own driving stunts. Tarantino said he did not force her to do the stunt. Although Thurman said the incident was "negligent to the point of criminality", she did not believe Tarantino had malicious intent.
Roman Polanski
In a 2003 Howard Stern interview, Tarantino defended the director Roman Polanski against charges that Polanski had raped then-13-year-old Samantha Geimer in 1977. He said that Polanski's actions were "not rape" and Geimer "...wanted to have it". The interview resurfaced in 2018 and drew criticism, including from Geimer, who stated in an interview, "He was wrong. I bet he knows it... I hope he doesn't make an ass of himself and keep talking that way." Within days of the interview resurfacing, Tarantino issued an apology, stating "Fifteen years later, I realize how wrong I was... I incorrectly played devil’s advocate in the debate for the sake of being provocative."
Anti-police brutality rally
In October 2015, Tarantino attended a rally held in New York protesting police brutality. The event aimed to call attention to "police brutality and its victims". At the event Tarantino made a speech, "I'm a human being with a conscience ... And when I see murder I cannot stand by. And I have to call the murdered the murdered and I have to call the murderers the murderers."
As a response to Tarantino's comments police unions across the United States called for a boycott of his upcoming film at the time, The Hateful Eight. Patrick J. Lynch, union president of the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York, said, "It's no surprise that someone who makes a living glorifying crime and violence is a cop-hater, too. The police officers that Quentin Tarantino calls 'murderers' aren't living in one of his depraved big screen fantasies — they're risking and sometimes sacrificing their lives to protect communities from real crime and mayhem." The Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said Tarantino "doesn't understand the nature of the violence. Mr. Tarantino lives in a fantasy world. That’s how he makes his living. His movies are extremely violent, but he doesn't understand violence. … Unfortunately, he mistakes lawful use of force for murder, and it's not."
Tarantino's response to the controversy was, "All cops are not murderers ... I never said that. I never even implied that." In an MSNBC interview with Chris Hayes, he said, "Just because I was at an anti-police brutality protest doesn’t mean I'm anti-police." He clarified his protest comments, "We were at a rally where unarmed people – mostly black and brown – who have been shot and killed or beaten or strangled by the police, and I was obviously referring to the people in those types of situations. I was referring to Eric Garner, I was referring to Sam DuBose, I was referring to Antonio Guzman Lopez, I was referring to Tamir Rice ... In those cases in particular that we're talking about, I actually do believe that they were murder."
Harvey Weinstein
On October 18, 2017, Tarantino gave an interview discussing sexual harassment and assault allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein. Tarantino said his then-girlfriend Mira Sorvino told him in the mid-1990s about her experience with Weinstein. Tarantino confronted Weinstein at the time and received an apology. Tarantino said: "What I did was marginalize the incidents. I knew enough to do more than I did."
On February 3, 2018, in an interview with The New York Times, the Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill actress Uma Thurman said Weinstein had sexually assaulted her, and that she had reported this to Tarantino. Tarantino said he confronted Weinstein, as he had previously when Weinstein made advances on his former partner, demanding he apologize. He banned him from contact with Thurman for the rest of the production. In a June 2021 interview on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Tarantino said he regretted not pressing Weinstein further, saying he did not know the extent of his misconduct before the 2017 scandal. He remarked on his "sad" view of his past relationship with Weinstein, saying he once looked up to him for fostering his career and describing him as "a fucked up father figure".
Bruce Lee
In 2019, Shannon Lee, daughter of Bruce Lee, called his depiction in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood disheartening and inaccurate. Tarantino said: "Bruce Lee was kind of an arrogant guy. The way he was talking, I didn't just make a lot of that up." During that time, China put the release of the movie on halt, with sources claiming that Shannon Lee filed a complaint to China’s National Film Administration. Tarantino refused to recut the movie for the Chinese release.
History of altercations
Tarantino has a history of clashing with people in the entertainment industry and being difficult with journalists.
In 1993, Tarantino sold his script for Natural Born Killers which was rewritten, giving him only a story credit. He later disowned the film which caused enmity; and the publication of a "tell-all" book titled Killer Instinct by Jane Hamsher—who with Don Murphy, had an original option on the screenplay and produced the film—calling Tarantino a "one-trick pony" and becoming "famous for being famous" led him to physically assault Murphy in the AGO restaurant in West Hollywood, California in October 1997. Murphy subsequently filed a $5 million lawsuit against Tarantino; the case ended with the judge ordering Tarantino to pay Murphy $450.
In 1994, Tarantino had an on-set feud with Denzel Washington during the filming of Crimson Tide over what was called "Tarantino's racist dialogue added to the script". A few years later Washington apologized to Tarantino saying he "buried that hatchet".
In 1997, during the Oscars, Tarantino was accompanying Mira Sorvino who had stopped to speak to MTV News host at the time Chris Connelly when he called her from the media scrum. Before she could talk to him Tarantino grabbed Sorvino telling her, "He's the editor of Premiere and he did a story on my Dad," and pulled her away. Connelly, a former Premiere magazine editor-in-chief said, "No, I didn't." As they walked off, Tarantino gave the journalist the finger saying "Fuck you!" and spat at him. The article that angered Tarantino included a 1995 interview from a biography by Jami Bernard with his biological father Tony Tarantino, someone he had never met, which he considered "pretty tasteless".
In 2009, Tarantino was set to appear on the talk show Late Show with David Letterman to promote Inglourious Basterds. A few years prior to this event, David Letterman had interviewed a former "unnamed" girlfriend of Tarantino on his show. Letterman joked about the relationship questioning why a "glorious movie star" would date a "little squirrelly guy". A couple of days later, Tarantino phoned Letterman screaming angrily, "I’m going to beat you to death! I’m going to kill you! I’m coming to New York, and I'm gonna beat the crap out of you! How can you say that about me?!" Letterman offered to pay for Tarantino's flight and let him choose the method of fighting, which Tarantino determined would be "bats". However, Letterman never heard from Tarantino again, until years later, when he came on the show to promote the new film. The host approached Tarantino in the make-up room, just before the show went live, and demanded an apology. Tarantino was not forthcoming, but at his publicist’s urging, he begrudgingly conceded.
In 2013, during an interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4 News while promoting Django Unchained in the UK, Tarantino reacted angrily when he was questioned about whether there was a link between movie violence and real-life violence. He informed Guru-Murthy that he was "shutting [his] butt down". Tarantino further defied the journalist, saying: "I refuse your question. I'm not your slave and you're not my master. You can't make me dance to your tune. I'm not a monkey."
In 2019, during the Cannes Film Festival, at the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood press conference, a journalist asked why Margot Robbie had so few lines in the film. Tarantino snapped back, "Well, I just reject your hypothesis," giving no further comment.
Personal life
Relationships and marriage
In the early 1990s Tarantino dated comedians Margaret Cho and Kathy Griffin. From 1995 to 1998 he dated actress Mira Sorvino. He was her date at the 68th Oscars ceremony where she had won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In March 1998 they separated with Sorvino releasing a statement that "[They] still love each other very much" but had reached a "mutual" decision to go their separate ways." From 2003 to 2005, Tarantino was in a romantic relationship with filmmaker Sofia Coppola. The two have remained friends since their breakup.
On June 30, 2017, Tarantino became engaged to Israeli singer Daniella Pick, daughter of musician Zvika Pick. They met in 2009 when Tarantino was in Israel to promote Inglourious Basterds. They married on November 28, 2018, in a Reform Jewish ceremony in their Beverly Hills Home. As of January 2020, they were splitting their time between the Ramat Aviv Gimel neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Israel and Los Angeles. On February 22, 2020, their son was born in Israel. Their second child, a girl, was born in July 2022.
Faith and religious views
As a youth, Tarantino attended an Evangelical church, describing himself as "baptized, born again and everything in between". Tarantino said this was an act of rebellion against his Catholic mother as she had encouraged what might usually be considered more conventional forms of rebellion, such as his interests in comic books and horror films. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Tarantino was evasive about his religious beliefs but said he believed in God, whom he credited with giving him his writing ability.
In the 2010s, Tarantino continued ascribing his talents to gifts from God but expressed uncertainty regarding God's existence. "I think I was born Catholic, but I was never practiced," said Tarantino. "As time has gone on, as I've become a man and made my way further as an adult, I'm not sure how much any of that I believe in. I don't really know if I believe in God, especially not in this Santa Claus character that people seemed to have conjured up." In June 2021, Tarantino said he was an atheist.
Filmography
Tarantino has stated that he plans to make a total of just ten films before retiring as a director, as a means of ensuring an overall high quality within his filmography. He believes "most directors have horrible last movies," that ending on a "decent movie is rare," and that ending on a "good movie is kind of phenomenal." Tarantino considers Kill Bill 1 and 2 to be a single movie.
Bibliography
Collaborators
Tarantino has built up an informal "repertory company" of actors who have appeared in many roles in his films. Most notable of these is Samuel L. Jackson, who has appeared in four films directed by Tarantino and a fifth written by him, True Romance. Other frequent collaborators include Uma Thurman, who has been featured in three films and whom Tarantino has described as his "muse"; Zoë Bell, who has acted or performed stunts in seven Tarantino films; Michael Madsen, James Parks and Tim Roth, who respectively appear in five, four and three films. In addition, Roth appeared in Four Rooms, an anthology film where Tarantino directed the final segment, and filmed a scene for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood before it was cut for time.
Other actors who have appeared in several films by Tarantino include Michael Bacall, Michael Bowen, Bruce Dern, Harvey Keitel, Michael Parks, Kurt Russell, and Craig Stark, who have appeared in three films each.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt have each appeared in two Tarantino films, the second of which, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, they appear in together. Like Jackson, Pitt also appeared in the Tarantino-penned True Romance. Christoph Waltz appeared in two Tarantino films, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for each role. Waltz had been working as an actor since the 1970s in numerous German movies and TV shows but was a relative unknown in America when he was cast as Hans Landa in his first film for Tarantino.
Editor Sally Menke, who worked on all Tarantino films until her death in 2010, was described by Tarantino in 2007 as "hands down my number one collaborator".
Awards and honors
Throughout his career, Tarantino and his films have frequently received nominations for major awards, including for Academy Awards, BAFTA Awards, Golden Globe Awards, Directors Guild of America Awards, and Saturn Awards. He has won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay twice, for Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained. He has four times been nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, winning once for Pulp Fiction in 1994. In addition to his recognition for writing and directing films, Tarantino has received five Grammy Award nominations and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
In 2005, Tarantino was awarded the honorary Icon of the Decade at the 10th Empire Awards. He has earned lifetime achievement awards from two organizations in 2007, from Cinemanila, and from the Rome Film Festival in 2012. In 2011, Tarantino was awarded the Honorary César by the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma.
For his work of Pulp Fiction, Tarantino became the first director to ever sweep "The Big Four" critics awards (LA, NBR, NY, NSFC) and the first of the five directors (Curtis Hanson, Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher, and Barry Jenkins) to do so. | be5eab4f-d360-4b65-9f0f-d25111725e07 |
null | Finnish curler (born 1966)
Mari Hansen (born 1966) is a Finnish curler. She competed at the World Senior Curling Championships in 2017, 2018, and 2019. | ccfad84c-df63-4af5-88d5-1e2eb250dd91 |
null | This is a list of films based on poems. | cfad3872-978e-4f2c-bdc6-1e5b0c7e1488 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Friedl%C3%A4nder"} | German writer and Holocaust survivor (1928–2019)
Vera Friedländer (born Veronika Rudau and also known as Veronika Schmidt, 27 February 1928 – 25 October 2019) was a German writer and Holocaust survivor.
Biography
Friedländer was born in Woltersdorf in 1928. Her mother was Jewish and her father was Christian, therefore she was persecuted as "half-Jewish" during the Nazi era and was a forced laborer. When her mother was arrested in early March 1943 as part of the "Fabrikaktion" in the Gestapo collection point Große Hamburger Straße in Berlin, she spent many hours with her father and other partners in mixed marriages waiting outside the collection point. Her mother was eventually released, however, many members of Friedländer's family were deported and murdered in Auschwitz, Theresienstadt and other places.
In 1945, Friedländer was forced to work, unpaid, sorting shoes at the Salamander shoe repair shop at Köpenicker Str. 6a-7 in Berlin-Kreuzberg. She later learnt that the shoes had come from people who had been murdered in concentration camps.
After the war ended, she studied German language and literature, received her doctorate and studied at Humboldt University of Berlin. She worked first as editor of the literary magazine Die Schatulle from 1957 to 1960 and then at Humboldt University. In 1975 she and her husband went to Warsaw, where she taught at the University of Warsaw. In 1982 she won the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prize. From 1982 to 1986 she held a professorship for German language at Humboldt University.
In 1990, she was co-founder of the Jüdischer Kulturverein Berlin (Jewish cultural association of Berlin). With the support of the association, she founded a German language school in Berlin, among others for Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe – today's Friedländer School. Friedländer worked in forced labor research at the Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt (Berlin history workshop) and was actively involved in the Stolperstein project.
Since 2009, there has been a play entitled Vera, which is based on her texts and in which she herself appeared on stage with an independent theatre group for a time.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Friedländer worked as an author for Die Weltbühne, among other things. In 2012 an article by her was published in the magazine Ossietzky.
Death and legacy
Friedländer died in Berlin in October 2019 at the age of 91. She was a great-great granddaughter of Natan Friedland.
In March 2020, a memorial plaque for the forced laborers of the Salamander company was attached to the shoe manufacturer's former repair shop in Berlin-Kreuzberg and inaugurated on 21 July 2020.
Publications | 623a5483-297e-4138-8492-4f10af99a891 |
null | Species of gastropod
Vexillum pratasense is a species of small sea snail, marine gastropod mollusk in the family Costellariidae, the ribbed miters.
Description
Distribution | e42763e1-cc94-481f-a295-385f22ffd7dd |
null | I.E.S Abdera is a secondary school in Adra, Spain. It caters for students aged 11–18 and is part of the Bilingual programme (English) | 2cc26574-5c0b-40fd-9dc4-5ed3ce034eee |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephants_Delicatessen"} | Delicatessen and catering company based in Portland, Oregon, U.S.
Elephants Delicatessen is a local delicatessen and catering company based in Portland, Oregon, in the United States, established in 1979. Its flagship store is located on Northwest 22nd Avenue.
History
Elaine and Jake Tanzer founded the company in April 1979.
Co-owner Anne Weaver is chief executive officer, as of 2013. Scott Weaver is executive chef, as of 2019.
Elephants had 439 employees, as of 2019. The business joined the Energy Trust of Oregon's Strategic Energy Management cohort to assess energy usage, identify waste, and strategize on gas emissions reduction.
In 2020, Elephants joined the Rose City Downtown Collective, a group of downtown businesses seeking to rebuild the area following a downturn caused by the pandemic and George Floyd protests. The company is among the largest women-owned businesses headquartered in Oregon and Southwest Washington, as of 2021.
Kim Stafford has a writing shed with a wall made of boards from the original Elephants.
Locations
Elephants Delicatessen's flagship store is located at 115 Northwest 22nd Avenue. Other locations:
The Elephants on Corbett (5221 SW Corbett Avenue) opened in 2013, becoming the first location to serve brunch.
Reception
Elephants was included in The Oregonian's "Top Workplaces" list of "99 great places to work" in Oregon and Southwest Washington. In 2020, Elephants won in the Best Catering Service category of Willamette Week's annual Best of Portland Readers' Poll. The company ranked number 24 in Oregon Business's 2021 list of "100 Best Green Workplaces in Oregon". | e6ada36e-c7b4-4b1c-8948-4ebd302aaec8 |
null | Extinct species of moth
Gurnetia durranti is an extinct moth in the family Cossidae, and the only species in the genus Gurnetia. It was described from a specimen found in the Bouldnor Formation on the Isle of Wight. It is dated to the Late Eocene.[citation needed] | 24e49aa3-50af-4132-82fe-7cd48f53a78b |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Merriman"} | American journalist
Justin Merriman is a freelance photojournalist who has traveled the world extensively, covering events in India, Cuba, Italy, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Pakistan. His work has appeared in national and international publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Time, USA Today, Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair, Forbes, and The Guardian.
Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Merriman also is a founding member of American Reportage, a collective of documentary photojournalists specializing in comprehensive storytelling of the American experience.
In addition to being a journalist, Merriman also is an accomplished filmmaker. He recently made his debut, directing and producing SOMETHING LIKE HOME, a documentary short for the language app, Duolingo. The project took Merriman to Turkey and Jordan to interview and film displaced and refugee Syrians on how they use language to transform their lives.
His journalistic work has been recognized by several prestigious organizations, winning awards from Pictures of the Year International, Society of Professional Journalists, the National Press Photographers Association, National Headliners Awards, the Society for News Design, the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, the Northern Short Course, the Southern Short Course, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the Military Reporters and Editors Association, and the Western Pennsylvania Press Club. He was named Photographer of the Year by the News Photographer Association of Greater Pittsburgh four times, and was honored in 2016 with the Keystone Press Awards Distinguished Visual Award from the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.
After working in the United States and overseas as a photojournalist for newspapers, Merriman decided to tell the stories of communities throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.
Merriman chronicled the U.S. War on Terror after covering the United 93 crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 11, 2001. His journey took him across the United States, as well as to the battlefields in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
He also traveled to Cuba in 2002 to report on life on the island nation under Fidel Castro, visited India to tell of the efforts to eradicate polio on the subcontinent, was in Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake, returned to Cuba in 2012 to photograph Pope Benedict XVI's visit, and was at The Vatican for the 2013 papal conclave and subsequent election of Pope Francis.
Merriman covered the second anniversary of Egypt's revolution and the unrest that followed, Russia's 2014 invasion of Crimea and the subsequent international political crisis, and visited the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2015.
Most recently, Merriman traveled the entire stretch of the U.S. border with Mexico documenting issues of immigration.
Born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, Merriman graduated from the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg in 2000 with a B.A. in English Writing. In 2009, the university conferred on him its prestigious Alumnus of Distinction award. | d23ca07d-4f00-47d4-9579-37d15d0cbac2 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAP45_Armoured_Personnel_Carrier"} | Armoured personnel carrier
The MAP45 Armoured Personnel Carrier (a.k.a. MAP 'four five') is a Rhodesian/Zimbabwean 4x4d heavy troop-carrying vehicle (TCV) first introduced in 1978 based on a Mercedes-Benz truck chassis. It remains in use with the Zimbabwe National Army.
History
The MAP45 Armoured Personnel Carrier ('MAP' stands for mine and ambush protected in Rhodesian military jargon) was developed in 1977-78 by the Rhodesian Army Workshops as a light version of the MAP75 TCV. Production started early in 1978 at Army Workshops but in order to meet the increasing demand, manufacture was contracted out to the Rhodesian private firm Zambesi Coachworks Ltd of Salisbury (now Harare).
General description
The MAP45 consists of an all-welded body with a cut-down troop compartment built on a modified Mercedes-Benz 4.5 ton Series LA911B truck chassis. Adapted from the MAP75 TCV, the open-topped hull or 'capsule' is faceted at the sides, which were designed to deflect small-arms' rounds, and a flat deck reinforced by a v-shaped 'crush box' meant to deflect mine blasts. Three inverted U-shaped low 'Roll bars' were fitted to protect the fighting compartment from being crushed in case the vehicle turned and roll over after a landmine detonation. Due to the shortened top hull, their reduced height presented less of a problem since it did not hamper movements inside the troop compartment as in the MAP75.
Protection
The hull was made of ballistic 10mm mild steel plate; front windscreen and side windows had 40mm bullet-proof laminated glass.
Armament
Rhodesian MAP45s were usually armed with a FN MAG-58 7.62mm Light Machine Gun (LMG), sometimes installed on a locally produced one-man MG armoured turret to protect the gunner. Vehicles assigned to convoy escorting duties ('E-type') had a Browning M1919A4 7.62mm medium machine gun mounted on an open-topped, cylinder-shaped turret (dubbed 'the dustbin'). For 'externals' twin Browning MG pintle mounts were sometimes fitted, placed behind the driver's compartment. The Zimbabwean vehicles after 1980 sported single pintle-mounted Soviet-made 12.7mm and 14.5mm Heavy Machine Guns (HMG) instead.
Variants
Combat history
The MAP45 TCV soon became a popular vehicle among the elite units of the Rhodesian Security Forces – including the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR), the Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI), and the Rhodesian SAS – who employed it late in the war on their cross-border covert raids ('externals') against ZIPRA and ZANLA guerrilla bases in the neighboring Countries, such as the September 1979 raid on the ZANLA's New Chimoio base in Mozambique (Operation "Miracle").
After independence, the MAP45 entered service with the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) in early 1980 and participated in the large military exercises conducted at Somabula Plain, Matabeleland that same year. ZNA's 'Four Fives' were thrown into action in November 1980 against ZIPRA troops at the 1st Battle of Entumbane and later at the February 1981 2nd Battle of Entumbane (near Bulawayo, Matabeleland), and later again after February 1982 by helping to put down the Super-ZAPU insurgency in Matabeleland. The converted MAP45 TCVs were also employed by the ZNA forces in Mozambique during the Mozambican Civil War, guarding the Mutare-Beira oil pipeline from 1982 to 1993. The MAP45 later served with the ZNA contingent sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo during the Second Congo War from 1998 to 2002.
Operators | 50256f24-1c4d-43ae-8489-295ad0140a18 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Theatre"} | United States historic place
Commodore Theatre is an historic movie theater located at Portsmouth, Virginia. It was built in 1945, and is an Art Deco style, 1,000-seat theater building. The two-story front facade features a plain mass of yellow pressed brick decorated with horizontal stripes of brown brick on the upper level with a central pavilion of curved-top vertical pylons of Indiana limestone and decorative strips of glass block. The lower level of the facade is composed of Indiana limestone ashlar veneer with a base of black marble. A dominant element of the auditorium is the pair of restored murals on the side walls representing the progress of America and the commerce and industry of Hampton Roads.
The theater currently offers first-run films on a nightly basis, featuring Dolby Digital and THX sound, accompanied by a full dining experience serviced by a full kitchen in the main building.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. It is located in the Downtown Portsmouth Historic District. | fde2d477-2029-46f6-8b68-56ef66bd0458 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Montgomerie,_12th_Earl_of_Eglinton"} | Scottish noble
Colonel Hugh Montgomerie, 12th Earl of Eglinton, KT (5 November 1739 – 14 December 1819) was a Scottish peer, politician, soldier and composer.
Biography
Montgomerie was styled Lord Montgomerie from 1769. He sat as a Member of Parliament for Ayrshire off and on from 1780 to 1796. That year he became Lord Lieutenant of Ayrshire, a post he held until his death. In 1794 he raised a fencible regiment, the West Lowland Fencibles of which he was colonel.
In 1798, having previously succeeded to the earldom through his third cousin, he was elected a representative peer and moved to the House of Lords. On 15 February 1806, he was created Baron Ardrossan in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, enabling him to sit the Lords in his own right. He was made a Knight of the Thistle in 1814.
As large ships were unable to reach Glasgow due to the silting of the River Clyde, Montgomerie promoted and partially funded the Glasgow, Paisley and Ardrossan Canal. However, funds ran out, and the canal was only constructed from Glasgow to Johnstone via Paisley. The Glasgow terminus of the canal was at Port Eglinton. Though the wharf is now filled in, the neighbouring Eglinton Street still bears his name. Preparatory work on the canal from the new harbour created at Ardrossan was used as the basis for Glasgow Street, which is the main thoroughfare of the town.
Montgomerie was an amateur composer and cellist. His best-known work is the dance tune "Ayrshire Lasses," and other composers dedicated works to him, including Thomas Arne.
Family
Montgomerie married Eleanora Hamilton, daughter of Robert Hamilton and Jean Mitchell, around 3 June 1772. They had two sons, and two daughters:[citation needed] | 80bef6fc-b678-41da-a41a-a86d50ea3778 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haripu%C3%B1jaya"} | Mon kingdom
Haripuñjaya (Central and Northern Thai: หริภุญชัย RTGS: Hariphunchai, also spelled Haribhuñjaya) was a Mon kingdom in what is now Northern Thailand, existing from the 7th or 8th to 13th century CE. Its capital was at Lamphun, which at the time was also called Haripuñjaya. In 1292 the city was besieged and captured by Mangrai of the Tai kingdom of Lan Na.
Founding
According to the Camadevivamsa and "Jinakalamali" chronicles, the city was founded by a hermit named Suthep in 629 AD, and the Mon ruler of Lavo Kingdom (present-day Lopburi) sent his daughter Jamadevi to become its first queen. However, this date is now considered as too early, and the actual beginning is placed at around 750 AD.[citation needed] At that time, most of what is now central Thailand was under the rule of various Mon city states, known collectively as the Dvaravati kingdom. Queen Jamadevi gave birth to twins, the older succeeding her as the ruler of Lamphun, and the younger becoming ruler of neighboring Lampang.
Flourishing and downfall
The kingdom under King Adityaraja, came into conflict with the Khmers in the twelfth century. Lamphun inscriptions from 1213, 1218, and 1219, mention King Sabbadhisiddhi endowing Buddhist monuments.
The chronicles say that the Khmer unsuccessfully besieged Haripuñjaya several times during the 11th century. It is not clear if the chronicles describe actual or legendary events, but the other Dvaravati Mon kingdoms did in fact fall to the Khmers at this time. The early 13th century was a golden time for Haripuñjaya, as the chronicles talk only about religious activities or constructing buildings, not about wars. Nevertheless, Haripuñjaya was besieged in 1292 by the Tai Yuan king Mangrai, who incorporated it into his Lan Na ("One Million Rice Fields") kingdom. The plan set up by Mangrai to overpower Haripuñjaya began by dispatching Ai Fa (Thai: อ้ายฟ้า) on an espionage mission to create chaos in Haripuñjaya. Ai Fa managed to spread discontent among the population, which weakened Haripuñjaya and made it possible for Mangrai to take the kingdom over. Phraya Yi Ba, the last king of Haripuñjaya, was forced to flee south to Lampang.
List of rulers
Names of monarchs of the Haripuñjaya kingdom according to Tamnan Hariphunchai (History of Kingdom of Haripuñjaya):[citation needed] | 3ccebae9-e606-4adf-a003-816fc5607fd2 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Cesare"} | Australian security researcher
Silvio Cesare (/tʃɛˈzæreɪ/ chez-ARR-ay)[citation needed] is an Australian security researcher known for his multiple articles in phrack, talks at numerous security conferences including Defcon and Black Hat Briefings. Silvio is also a former member of w00w00. He is credited with the publication of the first ELF virus for UNIX-like operating systems. His security research includes an IDS evasion bug in the widely deployed Snort software. Silvio holds a PhD in Computer Science from Deakin University and is the co-founder of the security conference BSides Canberra. He earned his Master of Informatics and Bachelor of Information Technology from CQUniversity Australia. He currently operates the Canberra based training and consulting provider InfoSect.
Articles
Silvio is the author of "Software Similarity and Classification", released by Springer.
He is the author of numerous whitepapers on information security, including:
Software and Services
Silvio has released numerous tools to perform software similarity classification.[citation needed]
Simseer
Simseer is a free online service that tells you how similar to each other are the software that you give it. It is built using the technology of Malwise. There are a number of applications where it is useful to know if software is similar such as malware classification, incident response, plagiarism detection, and software theft detection.
Bugwise
Bugwise is a service that performs bug detection in Linux executable binaries. It does this by using static program analysis. More specifically, it is performed using decompilation and data flow analysis. Currently, the service checks for the presence of some double frees in sequential code that use the libc allocator functions.
Clonewise
Clonewise is an open source project to identify clones of packages embedded in other software source. Identifying package clones enables us to automatically infer outstanding vulnerabilities from out of date clones. | fe05a54e-7ec7-432b-9052-cff74aa3d9c8 |
null | Raja of Pudukkottai
Raja Sri Brahdamba Dasa Raja Sri Rajagopala Tondaiman Bahadur (23 June 1922 – 16 January 1997) was the ninth and last ruler of the princely state of Pudukkottai.
Early life
Rajagopala Tondaiman was born to Prince Ramachandra Tondaiman and his second wife, Mathusri Raja Srimathi Rani Janaki Ayi Sahib, on 23 June 1922.[citation needed]
Reign
On 19 November 1928, six-year-old Rajagopala Tondaiman was appointed to succeed Martanda Bhairava Tondaiman as the Raja of Pudukkottai. Raghunatha Pallavarayar served as regent until February 1929. From February 1929 to 17 January 1944, the state was governed by a council of regency appointed by the British.[citation needed] Rajagopala took over the administration on 17 January 1944.[citation needed] On 3 March 1948, Rajagopala Tondaiman acceded to the dominion of India. The princely state became a part of Trichirappalli district of the Madras Presidency.
Rajagopala Tondaiman served as the President of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA), Pudukottai Recreation Club (PRC) and Kodaikanal Boat and Rowing Club. He is a recipient of the George V Silver Jubilee Medal (1935), George VI Coronation Medal (1937) and Indian Independence medal (1948). | cdec5322-2261-47b2-b5e8-bb60fd04e9ea |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractory_Obdurate"} | 2014 studio album by Wovenhand
Refractory Obdurate is the seventh studio album by the American rock band Wovenhand. The album was released on April 29, 2014 through a partnership between Glitterhouse Records and Deathwish Inc.
The album was met with generally favorable reviews, and ranked at number 47 on Billboard Top Heatseekers chart.
Track listing
All songs written by David Eugene Edwards, except where noted.
Personnel
Wovenhand
Production
Artwork | f3d31489-5913-42bb-b633-d5466a9fdadf |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDGL"} | Classic hits radio station in Yucca Valley, California
KDGL (106.9 FM, "The Eagle") is a classic hits /classic rock station serving the Coachella Valley and Morongo Basin markets of inland Southern California. Artists featured on the station include Aerosmith, The Beatles, Boston (band), Jim Croce, The Eagles, Foreigner, Billy Joel, Elton John, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Fleetwood Mac, Styx, The Steve Miller Band, and many others.
KDGL's studios are located at 1321 North Gene Autry Trail in Palm Springs, California. KDGL's main transmitter is located on the southeast corner of Yucca Valley, California, just north of Joshua Tree National Park. | 996f2ac6-0362-4f4b-be47-768db6f23cdf |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karapet_Agadzhanian"} | Psychiatrist (1876–1955)
Karapet Sarkisovich Agadzhanian (Armenian: Կարապետ Սարգսի Աղաջանյան; Russian: Карапет Саркисович Агаджанянц; 1876, Tiflis — 15 December 1955, Paris) was a Russian-Armenian psychiatrist, neurologist and neuroanatomist.
Biography
Karapet Sarkisovich Agadzhanian was born in the family of an archpriest of the Armenian Gregorian Church. In 1896 he graduated from the 1st Tiflis Gymnasium. In 1901 he graduated with honors from the Medical Faculty of the Imperial Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg. He was an apprentice, and later one of the associates of Vladimir Bekhterev.
In 1904 he defended his doctoral dissertation: "On the cortical center of view." In 1905, he became a laboratory assistant at the Clinic for the Mental and Nervous Diseases of the Academy; from 1906 — assistant, and since 1909 — privat-docent of the Clinic for the Mental and Nervous Diseases at St. Petersburg Women's Medical Institute.
In 1910 he trained in Berlin, where he studied neuroanatomy under the guidance of the German neurologist Luis Jacobson-Lask,. After returning to Russia, he worked at Mikhailovsky Hospital in Tiflis. In 1911 he was appointed Director of the Physiotherapeutic polyclinic of the St. Petersburg Psychoneurological Institute. He was a member of the Committee of the St. Petersburg Psychoneurological Institute and read the course lectures about nervous diseases. From November 1913 to January 1915 he was a professor at the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Warsaw, and after the evacuation of the University to Rostov-on-Don, he continued his work at Rostov University. In 1915 he appointed a consultant on nerve diseases on the Southern Front.
In 1920 he emigrated to Turkey; from 1922 he taught at the University of Constantinople. In 1924 he moved to France. In 1924–1929 he was a member, then a member of the board, and from 1937–1948, chairman and honorary chairman of the Society of Russian Physicians named after Mechnikov in France. In 1928 he defended a thesis for a doctorate in medicine at the University of Paris. In 1931–1934 he worked at the Russian ambulance department of the Red Cross in Paris, from 1934 he worked at the Russian ambulance named after V. I. Temkin. Since 1933 he was a member of the Group of Russian Academicians (Groupe Académique Russe) in Paris. In 1950 he was elected chairman of the Union of Russian Armenians in France.
He was Secretary-General of the Committee for Assistance to the Union of Russian Military Disabled (1930s), and a founding member of the Parisian Masonic Lodge "Free Russia" (1931), member of the Lodge "North Star" (1926-1934) (Grand Orient de France).
He died in Paris in 1955.
Works | 37f4618a-5279-4f6e-be20-337f07817936 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_Novices%27_Hurdle"} | Hurdle horse race in Britain
Horse race
The Hyde Novices' Hurdle is a Grade 2 National Hunt hurdle race in Great Britain which is open to horses aged four years or older. It is run on the Old Course at Cheltenham over a distance of about 2 miles and 5 furlongs (4,225 metres), and during its running there are ten hurdles to be jumped. The race is for novice hurdlers, and it is scheduled to take place each year in November.
The event was given its present name when it attained Grade 2 status in 2008. Prior to this it had been run at a lower grade under various titles. From 2010 to 2016 the race was sponsored by Neptune Investment Management and run as the Neptune Investment Management Novices' Hurdle. Since 2017 it has been sponsored by the Ballymore Group and run as the Ballymore Novices' Hurdle.
The race was first run in 1996.
Winners | 0c8c1544-3ab8-4186-b8b6-756c764497f8 |
null | Virgil Smith may refer to: | 63ebea3a-6e7f-4a14-9dc9-a9e093f6fc4b |
null | Place in Blekinge, Sweden
Ronnebyhamn is a locality situated in Ronneby Municipality, Blekinge County, Sweden with 537 inhabitants in 2010. | 5a9dec1d-cd04-47db-bd02-4bbd0b360155 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Internacional_de_San_Sebasti%C3%A1n"} | Tennis tournament
The Open Internacional de San Sebastián is a tournament for professional female tennis players played on outdoor clay courts. The event is classified as a $60,000 ITF Women's World Tennis Tour tournament and has been held in San Sebastián, Spain, since 2022.
Past finals
Singles
Doubles | 0b2f613f-8645-45de-bf6f-8f169178bece |
null | A Contracting Officer ( KO or CO ) is a person who can bind the Federal Government of the United States to a contract which is greater in value than the federal micro-purchase threshold ($10,000). This is limited to the scope of authority delegated to the Contracting Officer by the head of the agency. The abbreviation "KO" is frequently used.
Responsibilities
A Contracting Officer enters into, administers, or terminates contracts and makes related determinations and findings, and is appointed by a (SF) 1402, Certificate of Appointment. Subsection 414(4) of Title 41, United States Code, requires agency heads to establish and maintain a procurement career management program and a system for the selection, appointment, and termination of appointment of contracting officers. Agency heads or their designees may select and appoint contracting officers and terminate their appointments. These selections and appointments shall be consistent with the Office of Management and Budget/Office of Federal Procurement Policy's (OMB/OFPP) standards for skill-based training in performing acquisition, contracting and procurement duties as published in OFPP Policy Letter No. 05-01, Developing and Managing the Acquisition Workforce, April 15, 2005.
The responsibilities of a Contracting Officer are detailed in FAR (48 CFR) Part 1.602-2: "Contracting officers are responsible for ensuring performance of all necessary actions for effective contracting, ensuring compliance with the terms of the contract, and safeguarding the interests of the United States in its contractual relationships." | 27896bc1-c606-49cc-9a72-86ec9782c0ef |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astarte_undata"} | Species of bivalve
Astarte undata, or the waved astarte, is a species of bivalve mollusc in the family Astartidae. It can be found along the Atlantic coast of North America, ranging from Labrador to Maryland. | 0ec12035-5424-45cd-88db-5631140bff51 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bmibaby"} | 2002–2012 British low-cost airline
Bmibaby Limited (styled as bmibaby.com) was a British low-cost airline that flew to destinations in the United Kingdom and Europe from its bases at Birmingham and East Midlands airports. It was a subsidiary of British Midland International, itself wholly owned by International Airlines Group (IAG). Bmibaby's head office was at Donington Hall in Castle Donington, North West Leicestershire, England. Bmibaby held a United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority Type A Operating Licence, and was permitted to carry passengers, cargo and mail on aircraft with 20 or more seats.
Following the takeover of BMI and its subsidiaries by IAG in April 2012, it was announced on 3 May 2012 that Bmibaby would be shut down in September 2012, with many flights ceasing to operate with effect from 11 June. Bmibaby's final flight, from Málaga to East Midlands, operated on 9 September 2012.
History
The airline was established on 24 January 2002 and began operations on 22 March 2003 with a flight between East Midlands and Málaga.
Continued expansion for the airline led to it opening further bases at Cardiff in October 2002, Manchester in May 2003, Durham Tees Valley in October 2003, Birmingham in January 2005. and Belfast City Airport in March 2012. Insufficient passenger numbers led to the closure of the Durham Tees Valley base in 2006, followed by both Cardiff and Manchester in 2011 to make way for expansion in the Midlands and the new base at Belfast City.
On 1 March 2007, the airline announced an initiative for business travellers with an "only choose what you need" approach, allowing passengers to choose from a range of services such as ticket flexibility, executive lounge access and on-line check in, and only pay for the services they used. The company also announced that BMI's frequent flyers could now gain Diamond Club miles.
By 2007, Bmibaby had nine Boeing 737 aircraft based at East Midlands Airport, making it their biggest base, however in December 2008 the airline announced that it would be suspending five routes from the airport as a result of a reduction in the number of customers booking city-breaks.
Further cuts were announced in November 2009 when it was announced that the fleet would be reduced from 17 to 12 aircraft in 2010, with up to 158 jobs at risk of redundancy. The airline said the action was necessary to stem record losses and that it would focus on growth routes best fit for the business.
In April 2011, Bmibaby announced it would close its bases at Cardiff and Manchester Airports in October 2011 to increase services at Birmingham and East Midlands Airports as well as opening a new base at Belfast City Airport, moving from Belfast International Airport where the airline was based for several years.
In May 2011, Bmibaby launched what it called the first European airline loyalty programme tied into a location-based social network. Passengers use the Gowalla smartphone application at Bmibaby check-in desks to collect points.
On 22 December 2011, IAG announced it had agreed a contract with Lufthansa to buy BMI. The contract allowed for Lufthansa to sell BMI Regional and Bmibaby separately before the completion of the main sale, although the price payable by IAG would be reduced if the airlines were not sold. On 2 February 2012, BMI announced it had signed a "non-binding and non-exclusive" agreement with a "UK-based company", with plans to complete the sale by the summer of 2012. The sale was not completed by the time IAG purchased BMI, and so Bmibaby and BMI Regional became part of the group. IAG said it would continue the attempts to sell both airlines.
However, on 3 May 2012 IAG announced that it had not found a buyer for Bmibaby and that it was proposing to shut down the company by 9 September 2012. Flights to some destinations such as Belfast, Amsterdam, Paris and Geneva ended on 11 June 2012. All remaining services ended by 9 September 2012. The final flight to operate was flight WW5330 from Malaga to East Midlands. Over 800 jobs were lost by the closure, including 400 at the head office in Castle Donington.
After its closure, WOW air took the WW IATA code while the ICAO code BMI remains unused.
Destinations
Fleet
As of September 2012, the Bmibaby fleet consisted of the following aircraft in an all-economy class configuration:
Several aircraft had names with the word baby in the title. After all flights ceased, the aircraft were placed in storage at Norwich International Airport and Lasham Airfield. The majority of the airline's fleet was leased. As of November 2014, all the fleet had moved on from Bmibaby, one had been scrapped (G-OBMP) and the last one partly remains with some of the fuselage in some trees at Bruntingthorpe (G-BVKB).
Services
Onboard
Bmibaby offered a buy on board programme with variety of items to purchase including scratch-cards, tax-free shopping and onboard drinks and snacks. The shopping range included items such as jewellery and fragrances, gifts and travel accessories. On non-EU flights, duty-free priced cigarettes and spirits could be purchased. Drinks and snack items included hot and cold drinks, alcoholic and soft drinks as well as crisps, sandwiches and confectionery. The drinks and snack menu was named the Tiny Bites menu. The Bmibaby inflight magazine was known as Yeah baby!
The majority of Bmibaby's cabins had shaded blue leather seating with a 29/30" seat pitch. Extra legroom seats could be found on the front rows and on over-wing exit rows of all the Bmibaby 737 aircraft.
Telephone Booking
In addition to online booking on the bmibaby.com website; Bmibaby employed 20-30 customer service representatives to take telephone queries and bookings. Prior to November 2005 the team were located in Glasgow. From November 2005, the team was based in Belfast working in the TeleTech customer contact centre. The call centre was then moved to Delhi, India and remained there until the firm's closure in 2012. | 20b966e2-f5d3-432e-8879-eb9479409a63 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrike_Handrup"} | German Paralympic cyclist
Henrike Handrup (born 9 March 1983) is a German former Paralympic cyclist who competes at international elite competitions. She is a World road racing champion and a track bronze medalist has competed at the 2012 Summer Paralympics but did not medal. | cf948fdd-f816-4b73-b7c1-41517d49a538 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_Ku%C4%8Dera_(canoeist)"} | Czechoslovak-Slovak slalom canoeist (born 1963)
Milan Kučera (born 1963) is a Czechoslovak-Slovak slalom canoeist who competed at the international level from 1982 to 1993.
He won seven medals at the ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships with two golds (C2 team: 1983, 1985 both for Czechoslovakia), three silvers (C2 team: 1987, 1989, 1991 all for Czechoslovakia) and two bronzes (C2: 1987 for Czechoslovakia; C2 team: 1993 for Slovakia).
His partner in the C2 boat from 1982 to 1989 was Miroslav Hajdučík. From 1991 to 1993 he paddled with Viktor Beneš.
World Cup individual podiums | 82b4e0dd-efc1-4661-88c8-292c708b2ae4 |
null | Football league season
The 2014–15 Moldovan "B" Division season' was the 24th since its establishment. Was approved new system with three divisions, thus coming back to the system that was used between the 1993–94 and 1995–96 seasons.
Final standings
Center
Source: Moldovan Football Federation (in Romanian)
Rules for classification: 1st points; 2nd head-to-head points; 3rd head-to-head goal difference; 4th goal difference; 5th goals scored; 6th number of wins; 7th Fair play competition
(C) Champion; (P) Promoted
North
Source: Moldovan Football Federation (in Romanian)
Rules for classification: 1st points; 2nd head-to-head points; 3rd head-to-head goal difference; 4th goal difference; 5th goals scored; 6th number of wins; 7th Fair play competition
(C) Champion; (P) Promoted
South
Source: Moldovan Football Federation (in Romanian)
Rules for classification: 1st points; 2nd head-to-head points; 3rd head-to-head goal difference; 4th goal difference; 5th goals scored; 6th number of wins; 7th Fair play competition
(C) Champion; (P) Promoted | d81505bc-cda0-4d12-83fa-6ccc639f6f96 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudocoracidae"} | Extinct family of sharks
Pseudocoracidae is a family of extinct mackerel sharks that lived during the Late Cretaceous. It includes two genera, Galeocorax and Pseudocorax. | 14a198ac-b24d-4c96-9d9b-b916055febc7 |
null | List of capes in Turkey
A cape (headland) (Turkish: burun) is a point of land extending into the sea. Turkey, being a country of two big peninsulas (Anatolia and Thrace) is surrounded by four seas and has many capes. The surrounding seas (counter-clockwise from the north) are the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, the Aegean Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea.
The list
The following list gives the names of capes of Turkey. The names are sometimes used with the suffix burun which means cape. | 553c9880-05c4-426a-b5cb-b8c3064e64cb |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chastel,_Haute-Loire"} | Commune in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
Chastel (French pronunciation: [ʃastɛl]) is a commune in the Haute-Loire department in south-central France.
Population | 3df9ae36-0ea5-4c5a-a1af-32f93f2ed210 |
null | English cricketer
Pamela Mather (born 1946) is an English former cricketer who played as a bowler. She appeared in five One Day Internationals for England in the 1973 Women's Cricket World Cup. She took two wickets at an average of 50.00 as England won the tournament. She played domestic cricket for East Anglia. | bffcfe89-4dff-475b-bedb-bd006a68deb5 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphodes_argyraspides"} | Species of moth
Glyphodes argyraspides is a moth in the family Crambidae. It was described by Tams in 1941. It is found in Uganda. | 062f0139-e47b-4a80-911a-3c796b37ee0e |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rathan_Mouli"} | Indian film actor
Rathan Mouli is an Indian actor who has appeared in Tamil language films.
Career
Rathan Mouli made his acting debut in Unnaiye Kadhalipen (2010), before going on to work in Parameshwar's Karumpuli (2013) and Anand's Theal. While his first film went largely unnoticed, Karumpuli (2013) gained attention prior to release after the Censor Board had recommended several changes owing to its story on terrorism. Rathan Mouli then collaborated with director Pughazhmani on back-to-back horror films, 13 aam Pakkam Parkka (2015) opposite Sri Priyanka and the horror comedy Vellikizhamai 13am Thethi (2016) opposite Suza Kumar.
His first release in 2017 was the rural action film Arasakulam, while his upcoming films include Yennai Priyadhey which began production in 2013, Malli and Sei (a) Sethumadi.
Filmography | 954f2aa4-1238-4c3f-a4a1-4e0573a569bc |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBabno,_Podkarpackie_Voivodeship"} | Village in Subcarpathian Voivodeship, Poland
Żabno [ˈʐabnɔ] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Radomyśl nad Sanem, within Stalowa Wola County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland. It lies approximately 3 kilometres (2 mi) south-east of Radomyśl nad Sanem, 11 km (7 mi) north-west of Stalowa Wola, and 71 km (44 mi) north of the regional capital Rzeszów. | 77b409ed-4a32-498a-86a4-70db9fa72eae |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Valley_(California)"} | Valley of far eastern San Bernardino County, California
The Ward Valley (California) is a lengthy almost true N-S trending valley of far eastern San Bernardino County, California.
The south end of the valley expands slightly northwest-by-southeast, and contains Danby Dry Lake, a 13-mi (21 km) long dry lake, or playa. Mountain ranges surround the valley on all sides. The neighboring valleys eastward over the mountain ranges, Chemehuevi Valley, Vidal Valley, and Rice Valley are all western tributary valleys to the south-flowing Colorado River along the Lower Colorado River Valley corridor.
The center of the valley is approximately just east of the Oro Plata Mine at the east of the Old Woman Mountains.
The Iron Mountains with the Iron Mountain Pump Plant of the Colorado River Aqueduct lie on the southwest margin of the valley.
Geography
The map of California showing the location of Ward Valley, also shows the low elevation green, low valleys, south of the 'map location point'. The northwest-by-southeast section, contains the three dry lake beds, from west to east: Bristol Lake, Cadiz Dry Lake, and Danby Lake.
Geographically, the entire region of Ward Valley is a transition from higher elevation bajadas and mountain ranges of the Mojave Desert, to lower elevation sections of Mojave Desert, and the northwest region of the Sonoran Desert in southeast California, called the Colorado Desert. The region has mostly arid mountain ranges, bajadas, flatlands, sand dune fields (from prevailing, seasonal winds), and playas (salt-flats).
The lengthy north section of Ward Valley is drained by one major wash, named Homer Wash. Its outfall end, due to scant rainfall, and distance from Danby Lake, ends about 5-mi from the north side of the lake (ground infiltration). | cafb04d2-83c4-416f-bc62-01fbbd86a95c |
null | Dionysopolis (Ancient Greek: Διονυσόπολις) may refer to: | 0c48dec5-4033-4e95-b723-04b8b7378f50 |
null | Estonian architect
Andres Põime (born 10 August 1957, in Tallinn) is an Estonian architect.
From 1964 to 1975 Andres Põime studied in the 2nd Secondary School of Tallinn (today's Secondary Science School of Tallinn [Wikidata]). From 1975 he studied in the State Art Institute of the Estonian SSR (today's Estonian Academy of Arts) in the department of architecture. He graduated from the institute in 1980.
From 1980 to 1990 Andres Põime worked in the state design bureau Eesti Kommunaalprojekt (Estonian Communal Project). From 1991 to present Andres Põime has worked in the architectural bureau Studio-3 OÜ.
Most notable works by Andres Põime are the restaurant Kadriorg, apartment buildings in Nõmme and Kuressaare and the spa-hotel in Narva-Jõesuu. In addition to new projects Andres Põime has done numerous notable reconstruction projects – the old airport of Tallinn, the Russian Gymnasium etc. Andres Põime is a member of the Union of Estonian Architects.
Works | a06e0cb6-3f8a-4c2f-ab63-9043e899cdb1 |
null | Swedish sailor and physician (born 1949)
Roger Nilson (born 5 March 1949) is a Swedish sailor and physician. He has competed in the Volvo Ocean Race seven times: he sailed with Alaska Eagle in 1981–82, Drum in 1985–86, The Card in 1989–90, Intrum Justitia in 1993–94, Swedish Match in 1997–98, Amer Sports One in 2001–02, Telefónica Black in 2008–09. | 27e1876c-4562-41d9-a0d0-26495b6e4aa1 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvydas_%C5%A0ik%C5%A1nius"} | Lithuanian basketball player
Arvydas Šikšnius (born 10 October 1987) is a Lithuanian professional basketball player, who currently plays for Pieno žvaigždės Pasvalys of the Lithuanian Basketball League.
Professional career
Šikšnius won the Lithuanian Basketball League (LKL) All-Star Game's Slam Dunk Contest, in 2009. He played for nine different LKL teams. | 16a5cab8-41aa-4f03-9c36-9a79ebe661f4 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Ra%C3%BAl_Iglesias"} | Argentine footballer
José Raúl Iglesias (nicknamed Toti), (Buenos Aires, born 6 March 1957) is a retired footballer of Argentina. His position on the field was centre forward, having scored 117 goals in Primera División during his career. He won two championships in lower divisions of Argentina, being the topscorer of the tournament in both cases.
Iglesias is also the top-scorer of the 1980s in Argentine football, having scored 105 goals in 144 matches.
Biography
Born in Boedo, city of Buenos Aires, Iglesias grew up imitating his idol, Luis Artime, a notable forward of the 1960s. He spent his youth career at San Lorenzo de Almagro, debuting in Primera División at 18, in 1976 in a match v. Unión de Santa Fe. Iglesias scored his first goal in Primera that same day, by penalty shoot-out. Alberto Rendo was the coach of San Lorenzo by then.
Iglesias would be later transferred to Sarmiento de Junín, where he became top scorer of the team that won the 1980 Primera B championship.
Iglesias had a long career as scorer, becoming an idol for the Sarmiento de Junín and Racing Club de Avellaneda supporters.
"All of my goals were very ugly!"
— Iglesias during an interview.
Iglesias was the Primera B Nacional top scorer at the 1986-87 season playing for Huracán (which also promoted to Primera División) where he scored 36 goals in 37 matches, setting a record for the division. After his tenure on El Globito, Iglesias was traded to Racing Club, where he became an idol for its supporters who also dedicated him a song. Iglesias formed a praised attacking line along with wingers Ramón Medina Bello and Walter Fernández, with the addition of midfielder Miguel Colombatti and Uruguayan playmaker Rubén Paz. His most remembered match playing for Racing was a smashing victory over Boca Juniors by 6–0, with two goals by Iglesias.
Like Mexican striker Hugo Sánchez, Iglesias' trademark was to perform a celebratory somersault after each goal he scored.
"Be prepared, be ready to shout a goal so the Totigol will appear at any time"
— Song by the Racing Club supporters.
In Primera División Iglesias scored 117 goals in 288 matches. Iglesias is the top-scorer of the 1980s in Argentine football, having scored 105 goals in 144 matches. Nevertheless, he was never called up for the Argentina national team.
Honours
Sarmiento (J)
Huracán | df3cbf91-5380-4b2c-9c17-e6e0a70e715b |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skwary,_Masovian_Voivodeship"} | Village in Masovian Voivodeship, Poland
Skwary [ˈskfarɨ] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Naruszewo, within Płońsk County, Masovian Voivodeship, in east-central Poland. | 8c1f3ee0-39a6-4241-86b2-3ebe4dce5f59 |
null | Species of gastropod
Cyphoma arturi is a species of sea snail in the family Ovulidae, the ovulids, cowry allies or false cowries. | b60d1511-be5c-4faa-9b8a-a7845c1fc684 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_the_Canadian_Dental_Association"} | Academic journal
The Journal of the Canadian Dental Association (JCDA) is a bimonthly peer-reviewed dental journal published by the Canadian Dental Association. It is more commonly referred to by its web address JCDA.ca, owing to its evolution into a print and electronic based knowledge network.
History
Published dental literature in Canada was first produced by Dr. W.H. Elliot of Montreal, PQ who published 18 papers in the American Dental Journal starting in 1842. In the 1850s there were several attempts to create a Canadian dental journal (the Family Dentist from Brockville and Journal of the Times from Halifax) but none lasted very long.
In 1868, Dr. W. George Beers of Montreal ("the father of lacrosse") published the Canadian Journal of Dental Science. Dr. Beers later moved to Hamilton, Ontario where he recruited Dr. Curtis Chittenden (a founder of the Ontario Dental Association) as an associate editor. The journal struggled and eventually failed in 1879.
Dr. Beers, returned to Montreal where, in 1889, he launched the Dominion Dental Journal 10 years after the failure of his previous journal. The Dominion Dental Journal became Canada's preeminent dental journal and persisted for more than 46 years. In 1935, it was absorbed by the newly created Journal of the Canadian Dental Association and joined with La Revue dentaire canadienne, a French language dental journal that had been founded in 1915 under the editorship of Honoré Thibault. JCDA has been published since that time in both English and French.
The modern journal
The modern JCDA has transformed into a network of knowledge delivery vehicles. The printed journal still exists but it is one piece of a system that includes the JCDA.ca website, the JCDA Clinical Q&A blogs, the JCDA Oasis mobile platform and social media bulletins through email (JCDA Express and JCDA Bulletin), Twitter (JCDATweets & JCDAClinicalQA), Facebook and LinkedIn.
Impact
In the 2012 Journal Citation Reports, JCDA had an impact factor of 0.624. JCDA is indexed in Medline, Journal Citation Reports and Science Citation Index.
Publication Model
JCDA has a continuous publication model, where articles are published to JCDA.ca before, or in place, of being published in the printed journal. The printed journal is distributed to all dentists and dental students in Canada as well some colleagues outside of Canada.
Major Delivery Networks
Core Sections of JCDA (print & web)
JCDA has three core sections of material.
Research; A scholarly section of publications that has been peer-reviewed by at least 2 external examiners and consists of information that is novel to the dental literature.
Clinical Dentistry; A clinically focused section in user friendly formats such as case reports, "point-of-care" and diagnostic challenges. Some of the material will be peer-reviewed while others will be informative/opinion pieces.
News & Issues; A section dedicated to the news and issues from the Canadian Dental Association and/or the provincial dental societies.
JCDA Oasis
JCDA Oasis was launched in 2011 to create an area for collaboratively edited content, in the Web 2.0 spirit, where rapid publication, dissemination and open dialogue between contributors and readers are pillars of process. JCDA involves organizations (e.g. Organization for Safety, Asepsis and Prevention), industry partners and dentists (e.g. Coronation Dental Specialty Group) to create content then it is opened to discussion with readers. There are three core sections.
Oasis Discussions; Launched in 2012, Oasis Discussions (previously named Clinical Q&A) is an open forum for discussion of clinical cases, in a blog format with multi-media presentations. Oasis Discussions is hosted at OasisDiscussions.ca. Each week, volunteer specialists from across Canada & the US post open ended questions and research on case management and "hot" topics, the goal of which is to foster lively discussions between professionals.
Oasis Mobile; A resource created through a collaborative effort of dentists and other professionals from across Canada to offer an "Online Advice and Searchable Information System"; OASIS. The site offers concise clinical information and decision supports for everyday practice. The broad categories of information are medical conditions, prescription drugs and dental & medical emergencies
Case Conferences; Webinar discussions of specific clinical cases.
Other Sections
JCDA also features classified ads for dentists in Canada as well as a products and services section where industry can display their products.
Open Access Policy
JCDA is an open access Journal with a continuous publication model. | e61600b2-0962-4d0d-a3d6-8df7212158f6 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy_in_Singapore"} | Democratic system used in Singapore national elections
Singapore has a multi-party parliamentary system of representative democracy in which the President of Singapore is the head of state and the Prime Minister of Singapore is the head of government. Executive power is vested in the President and the Cabinet. Cabinet has the general direction and control of the government and is collectively responsible to the Parliament. There are three separate branches of government: the legislature, executive and judiciary.
Representative democracy began in the 1940s when the number of elected seats in the legislature gradually increased, until a fully elected Legislative Assembly of Singapore was established in 1958. At present, Singapore legislation establishes various mechanisms that fulfil the doctrine of representative democracy. Parliamentary elections in Singapore are required to be held regularly to elect the Parliament by universal suffrage. Although the right to vote in Singapore law is not expressly mentioned in the Constitution, the Government has affirmed that the right is implied by the constitutional text.
The Constitution vests the three branches of the state with different aspects of governmental power. The executive is made up of the President and the Cabinet, which is headed by the Prime Minister. The Cabinet is accountable to the electorate and is an embodiment of representative democracy. The President is elected by the people to act as a constitutional safeguard in protecting the national reserves and preserving the integrity of the public service. To qualify as a presidential candidate, stringent criteria must be satisfied.
The Constitution further provides for the composition of a parliament which encompasses members of parliament (MPs) elected through Single Member Constituencies and Group Representation Constituencies, Non-constituency Members of Parliament (NCMPs) and Nominated Members of Parliament (NMPs). MPs are representatives of the electorate and have the role of raising concerns that the people may have. The Government's view is that representative democracy is better understood as regarding political parties rather than individual MPs as the fundamental element in the political system. While the judiciary is not a direct manifestation of the concept of representative democracy, it serves as a check on the Government and the legislature by ensuring that their powers are exercised within the limits established by the Constitution, such as the fundamental liberties in Part IV.
The democratic right of Singaporeans to change their government through free and fair elections has not been tested as of yet. From its independence, the governing People's Action Party (PAP) has won every election with varying amounts of support ranging from 60–70% of the popular vote under the first-past-the-post voting system (FPTP). Nevertheless, U.S.-based Freedom House has said that elections in Singapore are free from voter suppression and electoral fraud.
The right to freedom of speech and expression, which is guaranteed to Singapore citizens by Article 14 of the Constitution of Singapore, is essential to the concept of representative democracy. Mechanisms available for the exercise of the right include the freedom of speech and debate in Parliament, Speakers' Corner, and the new media. However, Article 14 enables Parliament to restrict the right to free speech on various grounds. One of these is the protection of reputation. Critics have charged that Cabinet ministers and members of the ruling People's Action Party have used civil defamation suits against opposition politicians to inhibit their activities and exclude them from Parliament. The Government has said that there is no evidence substantiating such claims. In addition, both media ownership and content are carefully regulated by the Government. Article 14 protects the right to freedom of assembly which is relevant to free speech as the latter is often exercised at assemblies and gatherings. Free assembly is restricted in Singapore through laws that require permits to be obtained before events are held, though an exception is made for indoor events involving organisers and speakers who are citizens.
The Government has been accused of slowing down the progress of democracy by using the Internal Security Act (Cap. 143, 1985 Rev. Ed.) (ISA) to detain political opponents and suppress political criticism. In response, the Government has asserted that no person has been detained purely for their political beliefs.
Government's understanding of representative democracy
Representative democracy has been described as "a system of government where the people in free elections elect[ ] their representatives to the legislative chamber which occupies the most powerful position in the political system". The meaning of the term was discussed in the Parliament of Singapore on 27 August 2008 upon a motion moved by Nominated Member of Parliament Thio Li-ann, a professor of constitutional law at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law, for the House to affirm the importance of representative democracy and to call on the Government to amend the Parliamentary Elections Act to make the calling of by-elections mandatory in Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs) in certain situations. According to Thio, under the view of representative democracy taken by the 18th-century British Member of Parliament (MP) and philosopher Edmund Burke, "an MP is no mere delegate who simply mouths his constituents' views. An MP is chosen for his 'mature judgement' and 'enlightened conscience.'" Thus, an MP "has to represent his constituents in tending to municipal affairs", but also "be concerned with national affairs", and, "as a party member, he must toe the party line". In addition, an MP of a minority ethnic group in a GRC "has to carry the concerns of his particular minority community as well". For this reason, she felt that if the seat of a minority MP in a GRC became vacant, it should be incumbent on the Government to call a by-election to fill it.
Opposing the motion, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong noted that the Burkean model of representative democracy "puts the emphasis on choosing candidates to become MPs as the fundamental element of the whole scheme", with the result that "if an MP dies or resigns, ... he has to be replaced, so a by-election has to be held promptly without delay". However, in the Government's view, representative democracy is better understood as having an "emphasis on choosing political parties to form the government and to have political parties as the fundamental element in the system":
Parties will field candidates to contest in general elections. They have to be high quality people – with integrity, ability, commitment, drive – all the attributes which we look for in an ideal candidate. But the candidate is not on his own. He carries the banner of the party. ... [H]e identifies himself for the party's manifesto, the programmes and the promises that the party makes. ... In this scheme, if voters in the general election support the party and vote its candidates in, and they form a majority in Parliament, then that party with a majority in Parliament forms the government. And that party has a mandate, not only because it so happens that this specific group of MPs, at this moment, supports it, but because it stood in a general election and the voters gave it the mandate, and indirectly, through the MP, voted for this party to form the government of the country, and to govern the country until the next general elections are called. Therefore, the emphasis in this system is on the ruling Party delivering on its programmes and promises.
Consequently, if a parliamentary seat falls vacant mid-term, it does not have to be filled immediately as "[t]he vacancy does not affect the mandate of the Government, nor its ability to deliver on its programmes or promises. And this mandate continues until the next general election is called, when the incumbent team will render account to the electorate." The Prime Minister said that the Singapore system of government was based on this model for two reasons: first, to "encourage voters to think very carefully when they are voting during general elections, because you are not only voting for your representative in the constituency, you are voting for the government in the country"; and, secondly, "to maximise the chances of a stable, effective government in between general elections".
History
Singapore was colonised by the British in the 19th century, during which society was ruled according to English law. The result was the transplantation of the Western idea of representative democracy into Singapore's legal system. This idea has taken root and developed tremendously since the end of World War II into what it is today.
Before World War II
After Singapore was founded in 1819, she was under the jurisdiction of British rule. For a long time, representative democracy was non-existent. In 1920, a select committee which was established to reform the Legislative Council argued that Singapore was not ready for democratic ideas – to allow people to elect members into the Legislative Council might result in giving the "professional politician the opportunity of obtaining power by playing on religious and social prejudices". Even though the Council lacked popular representation of the locals, the population was generally satisfied with the system and the policies of the Governor of the Straits Settlements were influenced by opinions expressed by the public and in the press.
After World War II
It was only in 1946, after the Japanese Occupation and the disbanding of the Straits Settlements, that the people were allowed to elect members into the Legislative Council. The Council then consisted of at least 22 but not more than 24 members. Only nine members were elected, out of which the Singapore Chamber of Commerce, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the Indian Chamber of Commerce were each allotted one seat. The other six seats were to be filled by democratic elections based on universal suffrage. Elections were held for the first time on 20 March 1948.
Even so, the general public was apathetic towards the new political situation and the British regarded this as the major impediment to the development of democratic government in Singapore. Thus, a constitutional commission headed by Sir George Rendel was set up in 1953 to recommend changes in the constitutional system, with the aim of increasing widespread participation in the central and local government of Singapore.
The Government accepted most of the Rendel Commission's recommendations in its report of February 1954. One suggested reform was to transform the Legislative Council into an Assembly of 32 members, of whom 25 would be elected. The "Leader of the House" or "Chief Minister" would be the leader of the largest political party in the Assembly or of a coalition of parties assured of majority support. Representation by the Chambers of Commerce was also removed.
The amended Constitution of Singapore also provided for a Council of Ministers appointed by the Governor upon the recommendation of the Chief Minister, consisting of three unelected Official Members and six Elected Members. As the Constitution was unclear on the powers of the ministers, the discretion to make crucial decisions and formulate policies was understood to reside in the Governor and the Official Members.
Self-governance, merger with Malaysia, and independence
A fully elected Legislative Assembly was finally established in 1958, when Singapore relinquished its colonial status to become a self-governing state. Its powers extended to areas not previously under its purview, such as defence and foreign policy. This situation remained throughout merger with Malaysia in 1963, and after separation from Malaysia and full independence in 1965. In the Proclamation of Singapore contained in the Independence of Singapore Agreement 1965 entered into between Malaysia and Singapore, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew proclaimed on behalf of the people and Government of Singapore that as from 9 August 1965 Singapore "shall be forever a sovereign democratic and independent nation, founded upon the principles of liberty and justice and ever seeking the welfare and happiness of her people in a more just and equal society".
After independence, the Parliament of Singapore remained fully elected until 1984, when amendments to the Constitution and the Parliamentary Elections Act were passed to provide for Non-constituency Members of Parliament ("NCMPs"). NCMPs, who are declared elected by the returning officer, consist of the best performing losers in general elections based on the percentage of votes cast. The scheme ensures that opposition representation is accounted for in the Parliament. In 1990, yet another type of unelected Member was introduced – the Nominated Member of Parliament ("NMP"). These non-partisan Members were brought in to provide alternate views on policies that differed from the opinions espoused by the political parties represented in Parliament.
Voting
Role in a representative democracy
Voting is regarded as key to representative democracy, which requires that the leaders of a country are elected by the people. The basis of this concept is that everyone should be treated equally and everyone has equal rights. Every person, therefore, has a right to one vote, and no more, in the choice of representatives. The right to vote is a primary right, a right of fundamental importance by which other rights are protected. It is one of the important bulwarks of a representative democracy and in this regard, the ballot box is the people's ultimate mechanism to control the shaping of government policies. However, it must be recognised that voting is not an infallible litmus test for democracy; rather, it functions as a procedural device that is normally regarded as the best instrument for securing the ideal of self-governance.
Right to vote
The right to vote in Singapore is an implied constitutional right arising from various provisions in the Constitution. These include Articles 65 and 66, which provide for a maximum term of five years for each Parliament and for a general election to be held within three months after Parliament is dissolved. In a parliamentary debate in 2009, NMP Thio Li-ann suggested that the Government should amend the Constitution to expressly include a right to vote. She said:
A right of fundamental importance should be recognised as a fundamental right and constitutionally entrenched. Only the most important rights and interests are constitutionalised ... The right to vote is not an ancillary or new-fangled right; it is fundamental and long-established.
Thio noted that in 1966 the Wee Chong Jin Constitutional Commission had considered it "necessary and wise" to constitutionally entrench the right to vote by making it removable only by a majority of two-thirds of the electorate voting at a national referendum. In addition, she cited the case of Taw Cheng Kong v. Public Prosecutor (1988), where the High Court had made a statement which seemed to indicate that the right to vote is a privilege rather than a right.
In reply, Minister for Law K. Shanmugam affirmed that the right to vote is indeed a constitutional right. He noted that it cannot be a privilege in a representative democracy since that would imply that there exists an institution superior to the body of citizens which can grant such a privilege. He also asserted that, ultimately, "it is the mettle of the people and its leadership" that determine whether the Constitution is abided by as the supreme law of the land.
In response to Thio's point on the views of the Wee Chong Jin Constitutional Commission, Shanmugam said that at the time the report was rendered the electorate was immature and unfamiliar with the importance of voting, a result of the country's history of colonial rule. In contrast, the high voter turnout rates in every election since then evidenced that Singaporeans have realised this point. With regard to the Taw Cheng Kong case, Shanmugam stated that since the Court's observations were obiter, they were unlikely to be treated as setting a precedent.
First-past-the-post system
The "first-past-the-post" voting system, also known as the simple plurality voting system, is used in Singapore for electing the President as well as Members of the Parliament. This system has been criticised as undemocratic because the eventual winner may have won only a minority of the total votes cast, despite having secured the most votes in absolute terms among all the candidates. Thus, there might be cases where an elected politician can be said to have won the mandate of only a minority of voters, and that his or her election is therefore not an accurate reflection of the voters' will. As constitutional lawyer Sir William Wade has said: "If it is accepted that a democratic Parliament ought to represent so far as possible the preferences of the voters, this system is probably the worst that could be devised."
In the 2006 general election, despite only achieving 66.6% of the total votes cast, the ruling People's Action Party ("PAP") was returned to power with 82 out of the 84 seats. While there were more opposition members elected to the Parliament in the 2011 general election, PAP held on to 81 of 87 seats in the Parliament despite securing only 60.1% of the votes. Also, during the 2011 presidential election, President Tony Tan Keng Yam won with only 35.2% of the total votes.
Eligibility to vote
Voting in Singapore is compulsory. Any citizen above 21 years of age who is not disqualified by the factors in section 6 of the Parliamentary Elections Act is required to vote in person. There is no constitutional provision stipulating any qualifications for voters, and as the Act is an ordinary piece of legislation the disqualifying factors may be changed by a simple majority (more than 50%) of votes in Parliament.
To be eligible to vote at a contested election in any constituency, a voter's name must be on the latest certified register of electors for that constituency. The name of the voter will be included in the register of electors for a constituency if on the cut-off date for the production of the register of electors the voter is a citizen of Singapore, at least 21 years old, and ordinarily resident or deemed to be ordinarily resident in Singapore at an address that is in that constituency. For the purpose of preparing or revising a register of electors, information stated on a voter's National Registration Identity Card is used to determine that he or she complies with the above requirements, unless the facts are shown to be otherwise.
Democratic institutions
Legislature
The Legislature of Singapore consists of the President and the Parliament. The concept of representative democracy is embodied in the Legislature and is given effect in part through various parliamentary innovations that have been introduced over the years, such as Group Representation Constituencies, Non-constituency Members of Parliament and Nominated Members of Parliament.
Constituencies
There are two types of constituencies (electoral divisions) in Singapore: Single Member Constituencies (SMCs) and Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs). In SMCs candidates vie individually for parliamentary seats, whereas in GRCs the contest is between teams of candidates. Under the GRC scheme, which came into effect on 1 June 1988, the Government may, having regard to the number of voters in a particular constituency, advise the President to declare it to be a GRC and designate it as a constituency in which at least one of the candidates is from the Malay community, or from the Indian or some other minority community in Singapore. Each team in a GRC may have between three and six candidates.
The GRC scheme seeks to ensure a multiracial Parliament and seeks to secure "the long-term political stability of Singapore ... by ensuring that Parliament will always be multi-racial and representative of our society, and ... by encouraging the practice of multi-racial politics by all political parties". It also encourages political parties to appeal to all races with moderate policies, and not to one race or another with chauvinist or extremist policies. Further, it has been suggested that the scheme puts a "premium on parties which can field credible teams", thereby demonstrating that they are "fit not just to become MPs but to form the government".
The GRC scheme has been criticised as weakening the candidate–voter relationship, because it may be more difficult for voters to feel that candidates actually represent them when there are a number of candidates in a team to vote for. Most voters elect MPs whom they can identify with and are better able to represent their interests. It would be much easier for voters to identify with a single candidate than with a team of, say, four individuals. Also, since there will be key vote pullers in every GRC, the unknown or unpopular candidate is "dragged into Parliament on the coat-tails of the major vote-puller". This alienates the electorate from its representatives, thereby undermining the idea of representation. Since the people "cannot clearly identify themselves with the candidates ... responsibility for choices cannot be ascribed to the people".
In addition, it has been suggested that the GRC scheme merely provides an appearance of a united, multiracial Parliament. In fact, minority representatives are required to vote according to their party line; they are not allowed to vote specifically in the interests of their racial groups. The multiracial element in Parliament has been artificially imposed by way of a racial quota to ensure that the minorities are represented.
Non-constituency Members of Parliament
The NCMP Scheme was introduced in 1984 to ensure the presence of Opposition Members in Parliament. The NCMP Scheme serves to ensure that the voices of the minority are still heard. Thus, to qualify as an NCMP, the candidate must have won at least 15% of the total number of votes. The powers of an NCMP are restricted in Art 39(2) of the Constitution: an NCMP cannot vote on a bill to amend the Constitution; a supply, supplementary supply or final supply bill; a money bill; a vote of no confidence in the Government; or a motion for removing the President from office.
Despite the aim of the NCMP scheme to ameliorate the impacts of the first-past-the-post system, its legitimacy is highly doubted. It is based neither on a clear electoral mandate like ordinary MPs, nor on expertise or specialisation (as in the case of NMPs). As a result, the privileges of NCMPs are severely curtailed and this limits their effectiveness as alternative voices in Parliament.
Further, critics question the exact purpose of the scheme. It is unclear as to whether NCMPs serve to represent the minority in the first-past-the post system, or is an apparent representation that would not affect PAP's decision-making. Nevertheless, it still seems to be a mechanism for representation of the minority opposition.
Nominated Members of Parliament
The NMP scheme was introduced in 1990 and serves to introduce into Parliament alternative, independent and non-partisan views from minorities and experts. This is said to effectively raises the level of political discourse. Women, for example, who are usually under-represented in parliament, may be appointed as an NMP to provide alternate views. A special select committee of Parliament nominates candidates to be appointed as NMPs by the President on the advice of the Cabinet. In 2010, the number of NMPs was increased from six to nine. NMPs share the same powers and privileges as NCMPs.
The NMP scheme was not introduced without controversy, which may lead one to question the effectiveness of the scheme in strengthening representative democracy. Despite the protests of many PAP MPs, the party whip was enforced to effect the passing of this scheme. Criticism of the scheme mainly revolved around the dilution of the democratic legitimacy of the Parliament since the electorate has no say in choosing the NMP based on his or her merits. Further, there may be doubts as to the NMP's commitment and willingness to serve as an MP, since the NMP bypasses the electoral process. The scheme has also given rise to allegations that it serves as another platform for the PAP to undercut support for the opposition.
On the other hand, NMP Paulin Tay Straughan has argued that NMPs, being non-partisan, do not replace either PAP or opposition MPs. During general elections, Singaporeans still continue to elect MPs who best represent their interests, and NMPs do not feature in the equation. In other words, the NMP scheme has never compromised the democratic process of free elections.
By-elections
A by-election is an election held in between general elections to fill a vacant parliamentary seat. Article 49 of the Constitution states that a vacancy not due to a dissolution of Parliament "shall be filled by election in the manner provided by or under any law relating to the Parliamentary elections". However, when a vacancy arises in a GRC, no election needs to be held unless all the MPs have vacated their seats. The Prime Minister has full discretion with regards to the timing of the by-election and he is not obliged to call a by-election within any fixed timeline.
Whether a time frame should be imposed for the calling of by-elections has been subject to much debate. Several arguments have been advanced by the Government. First, when a voter casts a vote for a candidate, he is also voting for the political party that the candidate is a member of. Thus, once the party has received the voter's mandate, a vacant seat will not affect this mandate. Requiring the other members in a GRC to vacate their seats so that a by-election can be called would be unfair to them. Secondly, the Government believes that a GRC can function if it is lacking a member, as MPs from other constituencies can help to address the needs of residents in that GRC.
However, Thio Li-ann believes that it is undesirable that the law does not impose a time frame for the calling of by-elections. If a by-election is not called promptly upon a parliamentary seat falling vacant, the electors in the GRC in question will be represented to a lesser extent. This is particularly pertinent where more than one MP vacates his or her seat or when the seat vacated is that of a minority candidate. Should the latter situation arise, the rationale behind the GRC scheme – to guarantee minority representation in Parliament – would be defeated.
In an SMC, only one candidate is elected to represent the constituency in question. Thus, if an SMC parliamentary seat is vacated and the Prime Minister exercises discretion not to call a by-election in the SMC, the constituency's residents will not only lack a representative in Parliament but will also be without a Town Council chairman.
Finally, where an MP of the ruling party vacates his or her seat, a counterpart in a neighbouring ward may take over his or her functions, thus eliminating the need for a by-election. However, this arrangement may not work if an opposition MP vacates his or her seat and no by-election is called, because of the dearth of opposition MPs in Parliament. Therefore, the voters in the opposition ward will be denied of representation until the next general election.
Elected President
Singapore's Elected Presidency scheme was created as a constitutional safeguard for the nation's future to prevent irresponsible governance. Being directly elected by the people gives the President legitimacy and moral authority to serve as a check on the executive's powers. The President's two main responsibilities are the protection of Singapore's past reserves and the preservation of the integrity of the public service. However, the President's role is custodial and ceremonial – he does not exercise executive powers. In fact, the President is generally required to act in accordance with the advice of the Cabinet, or of a Minister acting under the general authority of the Cabinet, in the exercise of his functions under the Constitution or any other written law, unless the contrary is expressly provided for.
Stringent eligibility requirements and the Presidential Elections Committee's role
Thio Li-ann has said that the democratic character of the process for electing the President may be hampered by the application of stringent, elitist criteria, such that it becomes a "clear obstacle to the unmediated expression of the citizens' preferences".
Imposing more stringent criteria for the President than for the Prime Minister appears unreasonable, considering how the Prime Minister's governing powers are far more substantial than that of the President. Among other things, candidates have to be above 45 years of age and must either presently hold or in the past have held high public office or directorships in private sector companies with paid-up capitals of at least S$100 million. It has been estimated that "only just over 400 people have the necessary financial or administrative experience to qualify as spelt out in the constitution". These onerous qualifying criteria have greatly reduced the pool of candidates, and have been criticised as "technocratic rather than democratic".
In response to the criticisms, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong argued that the qualification process is necessary and was "carefully designed to ensure that the electorate is presented with qualified candidates". The Prime Minister asserted it would be "reckless" to adopt less stringent criteria, though such criteria can be "refined further over time".
Potential presidential candidates are vetted by an unelected three-member Presidential Elections Committee ("PEC"). The PEC is not constitutionally obliged to give reasons behind its decisions to award or deny a certificate of eligibility. Its decision is not subject to legal or political scrutiny, and its verdict is final. There has been criticism of how Andrew Kuan, who applied to be a candidate in the 2005 presidential election, was denied a certificate of eligibility. Before the PEC could reach a decision on the matter, he was reportedly discredited though statements from various people which were published in the media that alleged incompetence and cast doubt on his character. Subsequently, Kuan was denied a certificate, the PEC stating that his seniority and responsibility as the Jurong Town Corporation's Group Chief Financial Officer were not comparable to the experience of a chairman or chief executive officer of a statutory board or a company with a paid-up capital of at least $100 million, as required by the Constitution. There is no legal requirement for the PEC to interview prospective candidates, and it did not do so to allow Kuan to explain his side of the story. As a result, the unopposed incumbent S.R. Nathan was declared the President for a second term.
Possible reforms might be for prospective candidates to have the right to publicly respond to negative accusations before the PEC, and for the PEC to be more transparent with regard to the reasons for their decisions concerning the eligibility of candidates. A more democratised process open to public scrutiny would give citizens a role to play, thus enhancing the notion of representative democracy.
Uncontested elections
After Ong Teng Cheong, the first Elected President, had stepped down, the subsequent presidential elections in 1999 and 2005 were uncontested, and S.R. Nathan was deemed to have been elected unopposed for two consecutive terms. Thio has commented:
The right to vote in competitive elections is integral to a functioning democracy and its underlying principles of representation, participation, and legitimacy. Unfortunately, the phenomenon of election by default, a regular feature of Singapore's parliamentary and presidential elections, only harms the practice of democracy.
She has suggested that to ensure that the institution of the Elected President continues to be legitimate, even if there is only one candidate in an election a vote should be held, and the candidate only declared elected if he or she receives at least a specified percentage of votes.
Prime Minister and the Cabinet
Singapore's Prime Minister is the Head of the Government of Singapore. The President appoints as Prime Minister an MP who, in his or her judgement, is likely to command the confidence of a majority of the MPs. This is a power that the President exercises in his or her personal discretion. The President then acts in accordance with the advice of the Prime Minister to appoint other Ministers from among the Members of Parliament. These Ministers, together with the Prime Minister, form the Cabinet. The Cabinet has the general direction and control of the Government and is collectively responsible to Parliament.
This scheme can be seen as a mechanism for representation. First, MPs are chosen by the electorate to represent their concerns and needs in Parliament. Secondly, the Prime Minister, who is vested with the confidence of majority of the MPs, and the Cabinet which is made up of popularly elected MPs, effectively represent the views of the electorate as he heads the Government. The structure of the executive is therefore based on the concept of political representation.
Role of the judiciary
Appointment and independence of judges
Article 93 of the Constitution vests judicial power in the judiciary. Rather than being elected, the Chief Justice, Judges of Appeal, and the judges of the Supreme Court are appointed by the President if he, acting in his discretion, concurs with the advice of the Prime Minister. In the Subordinate Courts, district judges and magistrates are appointed by the President on the recommendation of the Chief Justice. The idea of the rule of the majority means that people should only be governed by laws passed by their elected representatives. Thus, unelected judges influencing the laws that govern people through the making of decisions seems incompatible with the idea of representative democracy. It has also been said that a judicial "last word" would put the judiciary at odds with Parliament, as the judiciary is not directly accountable to the people. However, even though the appointment of judges is counter-majoritarian in nature, this does not mean that the concept of representative democracy is undermined, as it appears that a counter-majoritarian judiciary more effectively upholds the Constitution and the concept of representative democracy.
Because of this vital responsibility that the judiciary has, it is important that the judiciary is independent of the political branches of government. As Alexander Hamilton put it: "The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited constitution". Singapore's judiciary, however, has been criticised as lacking independence and impartiality.
According to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, the criticisms involving judicial bias "could have stemmed from the very high number of cases won by the government or members of the ruling party in either contempt or defamation suits brought against government critics, whether media or individual". The Government is alleged to have used the judiciary as a tool to deluge their political opponents like J.B. Jeyaretnam, Tang Liang Hong and Dr. Chee Soon Juan with litigation, in some cases causing bankruptcy and, eventually, removal from the political scene. In a 2008 report, the International Bar Association Human Rights Institute ("IBAHRI") claimed that the "slim likelihood" of a successful defence to defamation, combined with high damages awarded in cases involving PAP officials, "sheds doubt on the independence of the judiciary in these cases".
Allegations of this nature have previously been denied in parliamentary debates, and the Ministry of Law has said the IBAHRI's allegation that there are reasons to worry about the executive's influence over judicial decision-making is not supported by evidence. In 2000, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew noted that "[o]ur judiciary and the rule of law are rated by WEF [World Economic Forum], IMD [International Institute for Management Development] and PERC [Political and Economic Risk Consultancy] as the best in Asia".
Upholding the Constitution
The Constitution embodies the idea of representative democracy, as it provides for alternative voices and minority representation in Parliament through the GRC, NCMP and NMP schemes. The Chief Justice of Canada, Beverley McLachlin, has commented that democracy itself is a lot more complicated than elected persons making law. Democracy not only requires majority rule, but rule that protects individuals and groups of individuals whilst promoting fairness. As Martin Taylor puts it:
As our understanding of the nature of modern democratic government improves, it becomes increasingly apparent that majority rule, while an essential ingredient of the system, can operate in ways which are as undemocratic as the rule of the minority – that democracy has to do not only with who exercises the power of the state, by and for the people, but also with the manner in which the state treats those who seek its assistance, or are obliged to submit to its authority, and with what the state allows people to decide and do of, by and for themselves.
"Majority rule" must be subject to limits, as an elected government may still pass or be tempted to pass unconstitutional and undemocratic laws, such as laws affecting fundamental liberties guaranteed by constitutions.
The Singapore Constitution provides safeguards against such behaviour by the majority, and prescribes limits to their powers in the form of, among other things, the fundamental liberties in Part IV of the document. The courts have asserted that the judiciary thus has the power and duty to ensure the observance of constitutional provisions, and is also responsible for declaring invalid any exercise of legislative power exceeding the limits conferred by the Constitution, or contravening any prohibition that the Constitution provides. Supreme Court judges take an oath to defend and protect the Constitution before assuming office. This is done through judicial review, where the judiciary prevents the Parliament from enforcing unconstitutional laws by striking down such laws. Thus, the judiciary essentially upholds the idea of representative democracy that the Constitution embodies when playing its counter-majoritarian role of serving as a check on Parliament and a "Protector of the Individual".
Purposive interpretation of statutes
A key idea of democracy is that "people may consent to be governed by laws made by ... democratically elected representatives". Judges are required to interpret statutes in a manner that gives "effect to the intent and will of Parliament". By interpreting statutes according to Parliament's intention, the judiciary upholds the notion of representative democracy as it makes sure that the people are ruled accurately by the laws made by their elected leaders. Thus, the role of judges in interpretation is essential to democracy.
Judges are required to interpret laws in the light of section 9A(1) of the Interpretation Act, which requires an interpretation that would "promote the purpose or object" underlying written law is to be "preferred" over an interpretation that would not, thus mandating a purposive interpretation. The Interpretation Act provides for the types of extrinsic materials and the circumstances under which such extrinsic materials can be referred to, to aid judges in determining the purpose of the statute. Thus, when determining the purpose of a statutory provision, a judge can refer to relevant extrinsic materials such as the explanatory statement relating to the bill in which the provision appears and the speech made in Parliament by a minister moving a motion for the second reading of the bill, when circumstances call for it.
The view has been taken that judges may assign meaning to vague constitutional provisions or statutes on the basis of their own ideological preferences, hence disregarding Parliament's intention. This criticism arguably does not suggest the need to abandon interpretation by reference to the legislature's intention, but serves to highlight the importance of the need to use the power of interpretation in an appropriate manner.
Freedom of speech and expression
Democracy essentially means rule of the people. To build a democratic society and rule, there must be citizen participation by an informed electorate. The freedom to speak and express is thus crucial for the formation of public opinion on political questions, and is indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth. In Singapore, the right to freedom of speech and expression is guaranteed to citizens by Article 14(1)(a) of the Constitution, though it is subject to many qualifications. Parliament may by law impose restrictions on the right as it considers necessary or expedient in the interest of the security of Singapore, friendly relations with other countries, public order or morality, and restrictions designed to protect the privileges of Parliament or to provide against contempt of court, defamation or incitement to any offence.
Role in a representative democracy
Upholding the concept of representative democracy requires the protection of freedom of expression. This paves the way for discussion of the state of affairs in the country, as expressed by representatives of the people, which include members of the ruling party elected into government as well as opposition politicians. Free discourse about political ideas and government plans can facilitate the acknowledgement of current weaknesses or limitations. This is justified in the name of public interest as the legislature, administration and governmental institutions will then strive to make improvements.
Restricting speech inevitably prevents ascertainment and publication of true facts and accurate judgements – it entails an unwarranted "assumption of infallibility" on the part of the government. As argued by John Stuart Mill and analysed by Eric Barendt, allowing freedom of speech ensures that the government's policies are right and appropriate to legislate; even the possibility of false speech should not prevent genuine expression of true beliefs. Nevertheless, since inflammatory speech that may provoke disorder must be prevented, a government should be entitled to prioritise public order considerations over permitting individuals to express their personal opinions. Balancing the risk of damage and disorder against long-term benefits of uninhibited debate is imperative.
Government's position
As society matures, the Singapore Government has taken greater cognisance of educated and informed Singaporeans who place greater value on their rights of expression and call for a less restrictive culture. In 2004, Lee Hsien Loong, then Deputy Prime Minister, expressed how the Government would be "increasingly guided by the consensus of views in the community with regards to morality and decency issues" in a bid to "pull back from being all things to all citizens". However, he emphasised the caveat of "opening up more choices for citizens, without imposing on the whole of society". Civic participation may be engaged through debates on policies and national issues, but criticism which "scores political points and undermines the government's standing, whether or not this is intended" will not be treated lightly. When the opposition criticises an action or policy, the Government "necessarily has to rebut or even demolish them, so not to lose its moral authority".
In a parliamentary speech on 28 February 2008, Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng said that the Government had adjusted its policies in relation to various types of expression. For instance, in 2000 it had created Speakers' Corner as an outdoor venue for political speeches. Use of this venue was liberalised in 2004 to include performances and exhibitions. All public talks held indoors involving organisers and speakers who are Singapore citizens are also exempted from the licensing requirements of the Public Entertainments and Meetings Act. However, freedom of speech and expression, though characteristic and imperative in a self-professed democracy, is not unfettered. The Government thus continues to require licences for events where the speeches relate to race or religion, and does not permit outdoor demonstrations to be held.
Mechanisms for the exercise of free speech
Freedom of speech and debate in Parliament
The most direct way of upholding representative democracy is for elected MPs to highlight and address the concerns of the electorate during Parliament sessions. Opposition MPs, NCMPs and NMPs fulfil the important role of representing diverse views and enunciating various needs to the Parliament. At the general election in May 2011, six opposition MPs from the Workers' Party of Singapore were elected to Parliament. In section 5 of the Parliament (Privileges, Immunities and Powers) Act, enacted pursuant to Article 63 of the Constitution, the freedom of MPs to speak and express themselves in Parliament is provided for in the following terms:
There shall be freedom of speech and debate and proceedings in Parliament, and such freedom of speech and debate and proceedings shall not be liable to be impeached or questioned in any court, commission of inquiry, committee of inquiry, tribunal or any other place whatsoever out of Parliament.
Parliamentary privilege protects contentious views expressed by MPs in the course of parliamentary proceedings in the interest of their constituents or the general public, and thus effectively buoys the right of free speech and expression. Members can speak freely and express themselves frankly in Parliament without fearing legal consequences because they are immune from any civil or criminal proceedings, arrest, imprisonment or damages for what they have said.
Speakers' Corner
Speakers' Corner at Hong Lim Park, which was introduced on 1 September 2000, is a platform for the expression of views in an open-air venue, and was intended to "liberalise our society, to widen the space for expression and participation", as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong stated in his National Day Rally speech in 2008. Most assemblies, demonstrations, exhibitions and speeches organised by Singapore citizens and participated in by only citizens and permanent residents may be held at Speakers' Corner without the need for any permit under either the Public Entertainments and Meetings Act or the Public Order Act. All that is required is prior registration with the Commissioner of Parks and Recreation before engaging in an event at the venue. However, permits are required if the event concerns matters directly or indirectly relating to any religious belief or religion generally, or which may "cause feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between different racial or religious groups in Singapore"; or involves the display of any banner, film, photograph, placard or poster containing violent, lewd or obscene material.
The creation of Speakers' Corner has been criticised as a governmental concession to free speech which remains fairly restrictive. The number of events staged at the venue has gone down over the years; this has been attributed to the prevalence of more widespread, effective and convenient communication channels such as television programmes, and the Internet and its online fora. In the words of Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, Speakers' Corner has been "playing the same role as envisaged – mostly dormant but good to have".
New media
According to Tan Tarn How, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies and former journalist, Singapore newspapers "have a long record of publicly endorsing the PAP-led government's position". Thus, passing through the mainstream media's filters, news about opposition political parties can end up marginalised or unreported, as compared to updates from the ruling party. Should the media avoid reporting opposition-related events, voters are effectively deprived of making an informed choice. In Castells v. Spain (1992), the European Court of Human Rights said:
Freedom of the press affords the public one of the best means of discovering and forming an opinion of the ideas and attitudes of their political leaders. In particular, it gives politicians the opportunity to reflect and comment on the preoccupations of public opinion; it thus enables everyone to participate in the free political debate which is at the very core of the concept of a democratic society.
With the advent of new media, pro-PAP views in mainstream media are countered by websites expressing the views of Internet users which have been omitted from newspapers and television, thus providing additional platforms for expression which are vital in inculcating a more open and democratic society.
Moves by politicians to embrace public opinion on unofficial and informal new media platforms also illustrate how freedom of speech and expression is upheld, and, in fact, increasingly encouraged and taken into account in Singapore's system of representative democracy. More politicians have been engaging citizens through the Internet through social networking websites and online fora. Former Foreign Minister George Yeo has been actively communicating with netizens on the ubiquitous social networking website Facebook, and has amassed many "friends" who are interested in local political affairs. His willing and frank engagement was evident in the run-up to Singapore's 2011 presidential election, as he had initially contemplated contesting for the Elected Presidency after losing his parliamentary seat in the 2011 general elections, though he subsequently decided not to. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong engaged in a web chat with netizens on the People's Action Party's Facebook page in May 2011 to answer questions and assuage their concerns.
Restrictions on free speech
Article 14(2)(a) of the Constitution recognises that certain restrictions on speech and expression are necessary in the public interest. It states that Parliament may by law impose restrictions on the right to freedom of speech and expression "as it considers necessary or expedient in the interest of the security of Singapore or any part thereof, friendly relations with other countries, public order or morality and restrictions designed to protect the privileges of Parliament or to provide against contempt of court, defamation or incitement to any offence".
However, potentially severe restrictions on free speech, some of which are elaborated upon below, may act as a disincentive to people expressing political views. These restrictions inevitably have a bearing on how representative democracy is upheld, and have also been said to impact the content of free speech as opposition parties are tempered by the fear of defamation suits.
Defamation law
The frequency of defamation suits brought by Government ministers and PAP MPs against critics, in particular political opponents, has been a cause for concern for organisations such as the International Bar Association and the United States Department of State. Amnesty International has referred to the use of civil defamation suits as a strategy by the government to inhibit the public activities of opposition politicians. This is due to how high awards of damages often cripple opposition politicians financially, causing them to become bankrupt and thus lose their parliamentary seats or become ineligible to run for elections. The resulting perception is that Singapore's leadership has a long-standing reputation for using defamation actions as a mechanism for removing opposition members from the Singapore Parliament or for inhibiting opposing political views.
The Government has denied these claims, citing the lack of substantiating evidence. Noting that many opposition politicians routinely criticise government leaders but are not sued because they have not uttered slanderous falsehoods, it insists that free speech and the right to disagree are upheld, the effects of which are characteristic of a representative democracy. The Government has also pointed out that Singapore's legal system has won excellent ratings in international surveys. Lee Kuan Yew has also defended the system, asserting that doing things the Government's way has allowed Singapore to be prosperous, orderly and corruption-free whilst gaining international respect; and that the "threat of defamation proceedings may make opposition politicians weigh their words more carefully than they do elsewhere".
Public Entertainments and Meetings Act and Public Order Act
Since free speech may be exercised during assemblies and gatherings, Article 14(1)(b) of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of assembly, is relevant. Prior to October 2009, the Public Entertainments and Meetings Act ("PEMA") required a licence to be obtained from the Public Entertainments Licensing Unit (PELU) of the Singapore Police Force before talks, discussions or similar events open to the public were held. Holding an event without a licence would result in a fine or imprisonment. Members of opposition parties claimed that PELU acted inconsistently in issuing licences, and that they had been denied licences without reason. The Workers' Party was fined $800 after a dinner event in 1986, at which the Party's Secretary-General J.B. Jeyaretnam had given a speech. PELU decreed that since the publicly delivered speech had been unrelated to the festivities, a separate licence from the dinner itself was needed. In addition, the Act exempted public entertainments provided by or under the auspices of the Government, thus allowing MPs from the ruling PAP to speak without a licence in their capacity as grassroots advisers.
With effect from 9 October 2009, PEMA was amended to exclude "any lecture, talk, address, debate or discussion in any place to which the public or any class of the public has access whether gratuitously or otherwise" from the definition of public entertainment, with the consequence that a licence is no longer required under this Act for such events. Under the Public Order Act, which introduced this change, a permit must generally be obtained from the Commissioner of Police before any public assembly is held. However, no permit is required for public assemblies held inside buildings or other enclosed premises where the organisers and speakers are all Singapore citizens; the event does not deal with any matter "which relates (directly or indirectly) to any religious belief or religion, or any matter which may cause feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between different racial or religious groups in Singapore"; and the organiser or an authorised agent of the organiser is present at all times.
Media regulation
Both media ownership and content are carefully regulated by the Government. Given how government-linked companies appear to exercise a near monopoly over the mainstream media in Singapore, the view has been taken that the mainstream media take a predominantly pro-PAP stance in their reporting and suppress or disregard the viewpoints of opposition parties. The Government has justified this approach by stressing that the media should play a constructive role in nation-building by adopting and presenting a national perspective on issues. In other words, the media should support the goals of the elected leadership and extol consensus instead of contention to enhance national strength and competitiveness, and thus "assiduously eschew advancing its own political agenda" at the expense of straightforward truth.
Broadcasting and films
Under the Broadcasting (Class Licence) Notification, issued under section 9 of the Broadcasting Act, all Internet content providers such as bloggers are automatically considered to be licensed and must comply with the conditions of the class licence and the Internet Code of Practice issued by the Media Development Authority (MDA). In particular, it is mandatory for an Internet content provider to register with the MDA if it is, or if the Authority thinks that it is, an individual providing any programme about or a body of persons engaged in the "propagation, promotion or discussion of political or religious issues relating to Singapore, on the World Wide Web through the Internet". The MDA can fine a licensee, or suspend or cancel its licence, if it has breached the terms of its licence, any relevant code of practice issued by the Authority, any provisions of the Broadcasting Act, or any direction issued by the Authority or the Minister for Communications and Information. In addition, it is an offence to provide a broadcasting service without a licence, and a convicted person is liable to a fine of up to $200,000, jail of up to three years, or both. If the offence continues after conviction, a further fine of up to $10,000 per day may be imposed.
The Minister may declare that any foreign broadcasting service which is rebroadcast in Singapore has been "engaging in the domestic politics of Singapore". Rebroadcasting such a "declared foreign broadcasting service" is prohibited without the Minister's approval, which can be refused, revoked without reasons, or granted on conditions, which may include restrictions on the number of people permitted to receive the service and suspensions of the service for certain periods. Failing to comply with the above rules is a crime punishable by a fine of up to $100,000.
It is an offence under section 33 of the Films Act to distribute, import, make, reproduce, or exhibit or possess for exhibition any "party political film". A party political film is one that is "an advertisement made by or on behalf of any political party in Singapore or any body whose objects relate wholly or mainly to politics in Singapore, or any branch of such party or body", or a film that is "directed towards any political end in Singapore". The latter phrase is defined in the Act as follows:
... [A] film is directed towards a political end in Singapore if the film –
(a) contains wholly or partly any matter which, in the opinion of the Board [of Film Censors], is intended or likely to affect voting in any election or national referendum in Singapore; or
(b) contains wholly or partly references to or comments on any political matter which, in the opinion of the Board, are either partisan or biased; and "political matter" includes but is not limited to any of the following:
(i) an election or a national referendum in Singapore;
(ii) a candidate or group of candidates in an election;
(iii) an issue submitted or otherwise before electors in an election or a national referendum in Singapore;
(iv) the Government or a previous Government or the opposition to the Government or previous Government;
(v) a Member of Parliament;
(vi) a current policy of the Government or an issue of public controversy in Singapore; or
(vii) a political party in Singapore or any body whose objects relate wholly or mainly to politics in Singapore, or any branch of such party or body.
However, the following types of films are not considered to be party political films:
(a) a film which is made solely for the purpose of reporting of news by a broadcasting service licensed under any written law;
(b) a film which is made solely for the purpose of informing or educating persons on the procedures and polling times for any election or national referendum in Singapore;
(c) a film which records live the whole or a material proportion of any performance, assembly of persons or procession that is held in accordance with the law and that does not depict any event, person or situation in a dramatic way;
(d) a film designed to provide a record of an event or occasion that is held in accordance with the law for those who took part in the event or occasion or are connected with those who did so;
(e) a documentary film without any animation and composed wholly of an accurate account depicting actual events, persons (deceased or otherwise) or situations, but not a film –
(i) wholly or substantially based on unscripted or "reality" type programmes; or
(ii) that depicts those events, persons or situations in a dramatic way;
(f) a film without animation and dramatic elements –
(i) composed wholly of a political party’s manifesto or declaration of policies or ideology on the basis of which candidates authorised by the political party to stand will seek to be elected at a parliamentary election; and
(ii) made by or on behalf of that political party; and
(g) a film without animation and dramatic elements –
(i) composed wholly of a candidate’s declaration of policies or ideology on the basis of which the candidate will seek to be elected at a parliamentary or presidential election; and
(ii) made by or on behalf of that candidate.
Newspapers
The Newspaper and Printing Presses Act ("NPPA") generally imposes curbs on the foreign ownership of newspaper companies, and requires a permit to be obtained for the publication, sale and distribution of newspapers. It also enables the Minister for Communications and Information to restrict the circulation of any foreign newspaper that has been declared to be "engaging in the domestic politics of Singapore". In February 1987, such a declaration was made against The Asian Wall Street Journal and its circulation was limited to 400 copies. The newspaper's publisher, Dow Jones Publishing Co. (Asia) Inc., unsuccessfully challenged the decision before the High Court and the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal interpreted the term domestic politics broadly, holding that in Singapore's context it included:
... the political system of Singapore and the political ideology underpinning it, the public institutions that are a manifestation of the system and the policies of the government of the day that give life to the political system. In other words, the domestic politics of Singapore relate to the multitude of issues concerning how Singapore should be governed in the interest and for the welfare of its people.
In a September 2011 statement, the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts justified the NPPA's existence, stating: "The various safeguards provided for in the NPPA help to ensure that the media operating in Singapore play a responsible role and that publishers are accountable for the content they publish. The safeguards also prevent local newspapers from being manipulated by foreign interests which can have a divisive effect on social cohesion. These considerations are still valid today. Journalistic freedom to report responsibly has not been compromised."
Publications
Under the Internal Security Act, the Minister for Communications and Information is empowered to prohibit the printing, publication, sale, issue, circulation or possession of any document or publication on the ground, among others, that it is prejudicial to the national interest, public order or security of Singapore. Doing any of the above acts in relation to a banned publication is a criminal offence. Among the publications that have been interdicted under this Act are works by Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong, and the Russian political newspaper Pravda. A similar power to prohibit the importation, sale or circulation of publications that are considered to be contrary to the public interest exists under the Undesirable Publications Act.
Election advertising
Advertising on the Internet was liberalised by the Government in time for the 2011 general elections. Two forms of political advertising on the Internet are permitted during parliamentary elections. First, during the election period – that is, the period between the day the writ of election is issued and the start of polling day – political parties, candidates or election agents may use the Internet to further candidates' campaigns, including using websites, chat rooms or discussion forums, video and photograph sharing or hosting websites, e-mail, micro-blog posts (such as Twitter), SMS and MMS messages, digital audio and video files, electronic media applications, and blogs and social networking services (such as Facebook). Election advertising sent by e-mail, micro-blog post, SMS or MMS must contain a functioning e-mail address or mobile phone number to enable recipients to indicate that they do not wish to receive further messages from the sender.
However, the Internet may not be used to publish the following:
Secondly, when candidates wish to publish election advertising on the Internet during the campaign period – that is, the period from the closure of the place of nomination on nomination day after the election is adjourned to enable a poll to be taken, to the start of the eve of polling day – they must provide to the returning officer, within 12 hours after the start of the period, declarations containing information on all the online platforms the advertising has appeared on in that time. Subsequently, a similar declaration must be provided before election advertising is published on such platforms.
Individuals who are Singapore citizens may publish on the Internet material that amounts to election advertising without having to comply with the above regulations so long as they do so personally and not at the direction of another person or on that person's behalf, and do not receive any benefit for doing so.
During presidential elections, candidates may advertise on the Internet except on the eve of polling day and polling day itself. However, on those days, it remains legal for people to convey their own political views on a non-commercial basis to others by telephonic or electronic transmission, and election advertising may remain unaltered on the Internet if it was lawfully published before the eve of polling day.
Other controversies relating to representative democracy
Over the years, the Government has been accused of slowing down the progress of democracy by using the Internal Security Act to detain political opponents and suppress political criticism and dissent by organisations such as the Asian Legal Resource Centre and Human Rights Watch. A similar allegation was made by presidential election candidate Tan Jee Say in 2011. Conversely, the Government has repeatedly asserted that "[n]o person has ever been detained only for their political beliefs". | 7fd75d5c-b55e-414c-9261-bfd9fdc36845 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Primavera"} | Canadian wheelchair curler
Jim Primavera (born (1962-02-18)February 18, 1962) is a Canadian wheelchair curler.
Teams | db9dbbe5-2abb-43fb-8103-47b8b4e9c079 |
null | The 2001 NCAA Division II football rankings are from the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA). This is for the 2001 season.
Legend
American Football Coaches Association poll | d5c5f948-afb5-4d25-a422-3c574f3879b8 |
null | The Carthage Underground is a collection of marble quarries in Carthage, Missouri, most of which is owned by Americold. Americold holds 43,000,000 square feet (4,000,000 m2) of the quarry, much of which is occupied by warehouses or factories, primarily for food storage. The total area of the underground is difficult to trace, but is rumored to stretch as far as Joplin, Missouri (roughly 20 miles (30 km) from Carthage). It is frequently visited by urban explorers due to the decrepit abandoned quarries mixed seamlessly with working underground factories and warehouses. Many of the local industries rely heavily upon the facilities to store foodstuffs there. It is also oddly present with an ecosystem of its own, with underground lakes hosting turtles, fish and various other species. This could be seen as remarkable given that the quarries were utterly devoid of life before the mining industry.
The temperature of the underground is frequently quoted as 60 °F (16 °C) year round, though artificial refrigeration has altered the temperature to a range of -30 to 100 °F (38 °C).
Urban explorers should be extremely cautious exploring the undergrounds—the great amount of them are uninhabited and/or flooded, and wildlife is not rare there. Americold has a policy against photographs. Unauthorized trespassing in their share of the underground can result in criminal prosecution, and the mostly uncharted abandoned areas are dangerous at best. | 21796f03-5d4e-4ff3-a3c9-0b1d888e52d1 |
null | Vickerman is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: | fb1f65c3-8fe1-4e0d-b40d-32d86eb48f89 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_(disambiguation)"} | Look up Coup or coup in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Coup is typically used as the short form of the phrase coup d'état, a sudden overthrow of a government.
Coup or The Coup may also refer to:
Film and television
Literature
Music
Other uses | 34f47d8b-6303-4d84-a6da-d18a7ea1e1fa |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Ely"} | American judge & politician
Elisha Ely (April 27, 1784 – November 3, 1854) was an American businessman, judge, and politician active in the states of New York and Michigan during the mid-19th century. He was a member of the Michigan House of Representatives in its first year of existence, and was also a regent of the University of Michigan in its first years as a statewide elected body.
Biography
Elisha Ely was born on April 27, 1784, in West Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of John Ely and Abigail Montague.
During the War of 1812, General Peter B. Porter organized a company of dragoons under the command of Major Isaac W. Stone, and Ely was commissioned as a captain. This unit of about fifty men was responsible for repelling, after a brief exchange of cannon fire, the attempted landing by the British admiral Sir James Yeo at Charlotte in May 1814.
Ely formed a company to transport the mail between Canandaigua, and Lewiston, New York, in 1816. He was named the surrogate of Monroe County, New York, on March 10, 1821. The following year he became county clerk following Nathaniel Rochester's election to the state assembly, and served until 1826. He also served as a trustee of Rochester High School following its establishment in 1827.
In 1833 Ely purchased a one-third share of a tract of land in Michigan, on the site of what later became the town of Allegan, and, along with his partners, built a sawmill on the property. His son, Alexander L. Ely, acted as the principal manager. Elisha made a tour of the area that year and returned to Rochester in 1834, before moving to Allegan permanently in 1835.
By 1835, the population of the area was large enough to warrant organization as a separate county rather than a township attached to Kalamazoo County, and at a meeting to organize Allegan County held on August 12, 1835, Ely was elected as a judge of the new county. He was elected as the county's representative to the newly-formed Michigan House of Representatives in the November 5 election that also approved the new state constitution, by a vote of 31 to 30 over Dr. Lintsford B. Coats. The constitution, which had been drafted prior to Allegan County's organization, did not explicitly allocate the seat to which Ely was elected, but since the county was duly organized prior to final approval of the constitution, the House allowed him to take his seat. Ely was appointed superintendent of the poor for Allegan County in 1839; sources do not indicate how long he held the position.
Michigan adopted a new constitution in 1850 that called for the election, rather than appointment, of the Regents of the University of Michigan. Ely was one of the eight men elected in 1851, and served until his death in 1854. During his tenure, the Board of Regents chose the first president of the university, Henry Philip Tappan.
Ely died in Allegan on November 3, 1854.
Family
Ely married Hannah Dickinson of Hatfield, Massachusetts, on November 11, 1807. They had two children who died young, Mary and Elisha, and seven who survived to adulthood, Alexander Leicester, Elisha Dickinson, Heman Billings, Caroline, John Fellows, George Hervey, and Samuel Partridge. Hannah Ely died of cholera in Rochester on August 30, 1832. Ely remarried in Detroit in April 1837, to Ann Garrison, originally of New York City; she outlived him, dying in Marshall, Michigan, on February 20, 1873. | 0a6f3751-9e0a-4b7c-b445-0cfa8de48403 |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Emilia-Romagna_regional_election"} | The Emilia-Romagna regional election of 2014 took place on 23 November 2014.
The three-term incumbent President of the Region, Vasco Errani of the centre-left Democratic Party resigned in July 2014 after the conviction for fraudulent misrepresentation, triggering a snap election.
In an election marked by the lowest turnout ever in the Region (37.7%), Stefano Bonaccini, a Democrat, was elected President by defeating several candidates, mainly Alan Fabbri of the Northern League (29.9%) and Giulia Gibertoni of the Five Star Movement (13.3%).
Electoral system
In Emilia-Romagna, a new electoral law was approved by the Legislative Assembly in July 2014, abolishing the blocked list. The first elections regulated by this law were the regional elections of 2014.
The voter can express one or two preference votes for the candidates on the chosen list; in the case of the expression of two preferences, these must concern candidates of different sex according to "gender preference" (under penalty of annulment of the second preference). As regards the election of the councilors, the law guarantees in any case at least 27 seats on the lists that support the elected president (majority prize), obtaining effects that are very similar to those of the list but acting on the provincial lists. The first 40 seats are distributed on a proportional basis. A seat is then attributed to the candidate for president who came second. The remaining 9 seats are assigned by majority method to the lists that support the elected president if these lists have obtained less than 25 seats with the previous procedure, otherwise the "prize" will be only 4 seats. If, at the end of these assignments, the majority lists have not obtained at least 27 seats, these will be guaranteed by removing some of the seats already assigned to the opposition lists.
Parties and leaders
Results | 74c83fa3-bcc8-4591-83c6-1463637eb64c |
{"document_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartered_Institute_of_Bankers_of_Nigeria"} | The Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) is the umbrella professional body for bankers in Nigeria. The CIBN was incorporated in 1976 as the Nigerian Institute of Bankers. It was chartered in 1990, and is now covered by the CIBN Act 5 of 2007. The Institute is authorized to control entry into the banking profession, to set standards for bankers and to maintain professional ethics through sanctions of erring members. Corporate members include the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation and all Deposit Money Banks, Development Banks, Mortgage Banks, Micro Finance Banks and Discount Houses in Nigeria.
History
The Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria was established in 1963 as the Lagos Local Centre, Institute of Bankers, London. It was in incorporated in 1976 as the Nigerian Institute of Bankers, a company Limited by Guarantee. The Institute attained Chartered status and became The Chartered Institute Of Bankers of Nigeria through Act 12 of 1990 which was repealed and re-enacted as CIBN Act No 5 of 2007.
Key dates in CIBN history include:
Publications | e3b38f02-317b-4882-bf75-4dceae078382 |
null | Major League Baseball season
The 1999 Atlanta Braves season marked the franchise's 34th season in Atlanta and 129th overall. The Braves won their eighth consecutive division title with a 103-59 record and 6 game lead over the New York Mets. The Braves appeared in the World Series for the fifth time during the 1990s. The Braves lost all four games of the 1999 World Series to the New York Yankees, resulting in a sweep. The Braves played their 2nd World Series against the Yankees in 4 years, with the first being in 1996, which they lost in six games. Until 2021, this represented the Braves last National League pennant they have won. They would not return to the World Series until 22 years later.
Two key players on the 1999 Braves were Chipper Jones and John Rocker. Jones won the National League's Most Valuable Player award with a .310 average, 45 HRs, 110 RBIs, and sealed the award with his September heroics against the New York Mets. Rocker recorded 38 saves as Atlanta's closer, but later created controversy due to his racist and homophobic comments in a December 27, 1999, Sports Illustrated article.
Offseason
Regular season
Opening Day starters
Season standings
Record vs. opponents
Transactions
Roster
Player stats
Batting
Starters by position
Note: Pos = Position; G = Games played; AB = At bats; H = Hits; Avg. = Batting average; HR = Home runs; RBI = Runs batted in
Other batters
Note: G = Games played; AB = At bats; H = Hits; Avg. = Batting average; HR = Home runs; RBI = Runs batted in
Pitching
Starting pitchers
Note: G = Games pitched; IP = Innings pitched; W = Wins; L = Losses; ERA = Earned run average; SO = Strikeouts
Other pitchers
Note: G = Games pitched; IP = Innings pitched; W = Wins; L = Losses; ERA = Earned run average; SO = Strikeouts
Relief pitchers
Note: G = Games pitched; W = Wins; L = Losses; SV = Saves; ERA = Earned run average; SO = Strikeouts
National League Division Series
Atlanta Braves vs. Houston Astros
Atlanta wins series, 3-1
National League Championship Series
Game 1
October 12: Turner Field, Atlanta
The Braves began their eighth consecutive NLCS with a 4-2 victory over the Mets, defeating a team they left for dead two weeks earlier. Greg Maddux tossed seven solid innings, and future NLCS MVP Eddie Pérez who came up big for the absence of Javy López, homered. Light-hitting shortstop Walt Weiss went 3-for-4 with a run scored and RBI for the Braves.
John Rocker recorded the final four outs for the save, his second of the postseason, to seal Atlanta's fourth straight win.
Game 2
October 13: Turner Field, Atlanta
Game 3
October 15: Shea Stadium, Flushing, New York
Game 4
October 16: Shea Stadium, Flushing, New York
Game 5
October 17: Shea Stadium, Flushing, New York
Game 6
October 19: Turner Field, Atlanta
World Series
Game 1
October 23, 1999, at Turner Field in Atlanta.
Game 2
October 24, 1999, at Turner Field in Atlanta
Game 3
October 26, 1999, at Yankee Stadium in New York
Game 4
October 27, 1999, at Yankee Stadium in New York
Award winners
1999 Major League Baseball All-Star Game
Farm system
LEAGUE CO-CHAMPIONS: Myrtle Beach | 1cc46c44-c7d6-489d-98f4-472ba36994b9 |
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