upward21

anbu cosplay

2009-03-27T01:50:00.000-07:00

The ANBU is actually short for Ansatsu Senjutsu Tokushu Butai, and is an organization of assassination squads that serves directly under the village's leader. The ANBU wear porcelain animal masks in order to distinguish themselves from normal shinobi and to conceal their identities, and also have standard uniforms consisting of black and gray armor, arm guards, a signature spiral tattoo on their left shoulder and a Ninjatō strapped on their back. They know the layout of the human body in detail, and have developed several techniques to perform their duties, such as paralyzing the target. ANBU are considered the elite, and they perform high-ranked and dangerous missions. Within the ANBU of Kirigakure,and presumably other ninja villages there exists a sub-group called Hunter-nin , given the specific duty of hunting down missing-nin, and destroying their bodies, so their village's secrets won't be revealed to foreign ninja.

2007-12-05T07:35:00.001-08:00

Ingvar Even Ambjørnsen-Haefs (born May 20, 1956 in Larvik) is a Norwegian writer. He is best known for his "Elling" tetralogy: Utsikt til paradiset (1993), Fugledansen (1995), Brødre i blodet (1996), and Elsk meg i morgen (1999).
Brødre i blodet ("Blood brothers") was turned into a successful movie, entitled Elling, which received an Oscar nomination in the Best Foreign Film category in 2001. The English translation of the novel is called Beyond the Great Indoors.
His debut novel was a semi-autobiography called 23-salen ("The 23rd Row"), in which he criticized Norway's efforts to take care of psychically challenged individuals. In all his novels he has spoken the outsiders' cause, as he did in his break-through novel Hvite Niggere ("White Niggers") in 1986. The novel is about a young man who leads a life somewhat on the edges of normal society.
He is also known for the youth's book series "Pelle og Proffen" which circles around two detective teenagers, getting involved in all kinds of mysteries or crimes, for example drugs, pollution and Nazism. He started this project after having read some of Franklin W. Dixon's books about The Hardy Boys which he thought vas kind of miserable. The books Døden på Oslo S, Giftige Løgner, and De Blå Ulvene of this series were also turned into successful movies. In 2005 the book Drapene i Barkvik ("The murders in Barkvik") appeared, about the teenager Fillip Moberg attempting to solve an axe murder in a small Norwegian village.
Ambjørnsen has received many prizes for his writing. Among them is the prize for the 80s best book for children and young adults (Pelle and Proffen books), the Tabu prize in 2001, Telenor's culture prize 2002, and the Brage prize 1995.
His three Samson and Roberto books have become particularly popular in Russia, in part due to the splendiferous illustrations by Nikolai Vorontsov, which also contribute carefully orchestrated local Russian-related colloquialisms to the stories.
He now lives in Hamburg with his German wife and translator Gabriele Haefs, where he has lived since 1985.

2007-12-04T11:12:00.000-08:00

A male DVI-I (dual link) connector.
The Digital Visual Interface (DVI) is a video interface standard designed to maximize the visual quality of digital display devices such as flat panel LCD computer displays and digital projectors. It was developed by an industry consortium, the Digital Display Working Group (DDWG). It is designed for carrying uncompressed digital video data to a display. It is partially compatible with the High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) standard in digital mode (DVI-D).

Overview
The data format used by DVI is based on the PanelLink serial format devised by the semiconductor manufacturer Silicon Image Inc. This uses Transition Minimized Differential Signaling (TMDS). A single DVI link consists of four twisted pairs of wire (red, green, blue, and clock) to transmit 24 bits per pixel. The timing of the signal almost exactly matches that of an analog video signal. The picture is transmitted line by line with blanking intervals between each line and each frame, and without packetization. No compression is used and there is no support for only transmitting changed parts of the image. This means that the whole frame is constantly re-transmitted. The specification (see below for link) does, however, include a paragraph on "Conversion to Selective Refresh" (under 1.2.2), suggesting this feature for future devices.
With a single DVI link, the largest resolution possible at 60 Hz is 2.75 megapixels (including blanking interval). For practical purposes, this allows a maximum screen resolution at 60 Hz of 1915 x 1436 pixels (standard 1.33 ratio), 1854 x 1483 pixels (1.25 ratio) or 2098 x 1311 (widescreen 1.6 ratio). The DVI connector therefore has provision for a second link, containing another set of red, green, and blue twisted pairs. When more bandwidth is required than is possible with a single link, the second link is enabled, and alternate pixels may be transmitted on each, allowing resolutions up to 4 megapixels at 60 Hz. The DVI specification mandates a fixed single link maximum pixel clock frequency of 165 MHz, where all display modes that require less than this must use single link mode, and all those that require more must switch to dual link mode. When both links are in use, the pixel rate on each may exceed 165 MHz. The second link can also be used when more than 24 bits per pixel is required, in which case it carries the least significant bits. The data pairs carry binary data at ten times the pixel clock reference frequency, maximum 1.65 Gbit/s x 3 data pairs for a single DVI link.
Like modern analog VGA connectors, the DVI connector includes pins for the display data channel. DDC2 (a newer version of DDC) allows the graphics adapter to read the monitor's extended display identification data (EDID). If a display supports both analog and digital signals in one input, each input can host a distinct EDID. If both receivers are active, analog EDID is used.
There is a length limitation of 15-foot (4.6m) in DVI cables. For longer distances, to eliminate the video degradation, the use of a DVI booster is recommended. DVI boosters may or may not use an external power supply.

Technical discussion
In Radeon HD, audio signals are carried through DVI when the video card detects a connected HDMI display, which is connected via the HDMI adapter which is optionally supplied by the manufacturer (it appears that the 2400 Pro models do not come with the required adaptor).[1]

Extensions
The DVI connector usually contains pins to pass the DVI-native digital video signals. In the case of dual-link systems, additional pins are provided for the second set of data signals.
As well as digital signals, the DVI connector includes pins providing the same analog signals found on a VGA connector, allowing a VGA monitor to be connected with a simple plug adapter. This feature was included in order to make DVI universal, as it allows either type of monitor (analog or digital) to be operated from the same connector.
The DVI connector on a device is therefore given one of three names, depending on which signals it implements:
The connector also includes provision for a second data link for high resolution displays, though many devices do not implement this. In those that do, the connector is sometimes referred to as DVI-DL (dual link).
The long flat pin on a DVI-I connector is longer than the same pin on a DVI-D connector, so it is not possible to connect a male DVI-I to a female DVI-D by removing the 4 analog pins. It is possible, however, to connect a male DVI-D cable to a female DVI-I connector. Many flat screen LCD monitors have only the DVI-D connection so that a DVI-D male to DVI-D male cable will suffice when connecting the monitor to a computer's DVI-I female connector.
DVI is the only widespread video standard that includes analog and digital transmission options in the same connector. Competing standards are exclusively digital: these include a system using low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS), known by its proprietary names FPD (for Flat-Panel Display) Link and FLATLINK; and its successors, the LVDS Display Interface (LDI) and OpenLDI.
Some new DVD players, TV sets (including HDTV sets) and video projectors have DVI/HDCP connectors; these are physically the same as DVI connectors but transmit an encrypted signal using the HDCP protocol for copy protection. Computers with DVI video connectors can use many DVI-equipped HDTV sets as a display; however, due to Digital Rights Management, it is not clear whether such systems will eventually be able to play protected content, as the link is not encrypted.
USB signals are not incorporated into the connector, but were earlier incorporated into the VESA Plug and Display connector used by InFocus on their projector systems, and in the Apple Display Connector, which was used by Apple Computer until 2005.

DVI-D (digital only)
DVI-A (analog only)
DVI-I (digital & analog) Specifications
GTF (General Timing Formula) is a VESA standard which can easily be calculated with the Linux gtf utility.

Minimum clock frequency: 21.76 MHz
Maximum clock frequency in single link mode: Capped at 165 MHz (3.7 Gbit/s)
Maximum clock frequency in dual link mode: Limited only by cable quality (more than 7.4 Gbit/s)
Pixels per clock cycle: 1 (single link) or 2 (dual link)
Bits per pixel: 24
Example display modes (single link):

HDTV (1920 × 1080) @ 60 Hz with 5% LCD blanking (131 MHz)
UXGA (1600 × 1200) @ 60 Hz with GTF blanking (161 MHz)
WUXGA (1920 × 1200) @ 60 Hz (154 MHz)
SXGA (1280 × 1024) @ 85 Hz with GTF blanking (159 MHz)
WXGA+ (1440 x 900) @ 60 Hz (107 MHz)
WQUXGA (3840 × 2400) @ 17 Hz (164 MHz)
Example display modes (dual link):
- QXGA (2048 × 1536) @ 75 Hz with GTF blanking (2×170 MHz)
  HDTV (1920 × 1080) @ 85 Hz with GTF blanking (2×126 MHz)
  WQXGA (2560 × 1600) @ 60 Hz with GTF blanking (2x174 MHz) (30" Apple, Dell, HP, Quinux, and Samsung LCDs)
  WQUXGA (3840 × 2400) @ 33 Hz with GTF blanking (2x159 MHz) Analog
  
  ADC – Apple Display Connector, a similar, now-obsolete connector that can still be found on some older Macs. Based on DVI, with USB and power capabilities included.
  VGA connector, analog video (an older standard, though very common on current computer hardware)
  High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), a forward-compatible standard, that also includes digital audio transmission
  Unified Display Interface (UDI), a proposed future standard to replace both DVI and HDMI
  DisplayPort, another proposed standard, incompatible with DVI and HDMI
  DMS-59, a way to combine 2 analog and 2 digital signals in one connector. Commonly used to give 2 x DVI outputs from one graphics card connector.
  DFP, an older type of digital video link
  M1-DA, a proprietary plug used in some projectors and sometimes labeled as DVI-M1
  LCD TV
  List of display interfaces

2007-12-03T08:31:00.001-08:00

Jahiliyya in Muslim Societies
Jahiliyyah has come to have a particular function in some radical Islamic circles, analogous to the idea of false consciousness in secular radical movements.
The threat this 'disease' poses to the survival of Islam might justify a more militant attitude towards Western influence in Islam's heartlands, and can be seen as permitting 'real' Muslims to attack Muslims who have succumbed to Jahiliyyah — who are therefore no longer true Muslims.

A Problematic Term

Arabic poetry
The Power of Nightmares, the first part of which also talks about an extremist interpretation of Jahiliyyah
Affluena - according to The Power of Nightmares, jahiliyyah is the muslim view on the painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more, also known as Affluenza.

2007-12-02T07:24:00.001-08:00

Mount Darwin, the highest peak in Tierra del Fuego at 2,488 metres (8,163 ft), forms part of the Cordillera of the Andes, South America, just to the north of the Beagle Channel. It is formed of crystalline schists and has massive glaciers down its steep southern slopes.
It is best climbed in late December, January, February and March, and was first climbed in 1961 by Eric Shipton, E. Garcia, F. Vivanco and C. Marangunic.
It was given its name during the voyage of the Beagle by HMS Beagle's captain Robert FitzRoy to celebrate Charles Darwin's 25th birthday on 12 February 1834. A year earlier Fitzroy had named an expanse of water to the southwest of the mountain the Darwin Sound to commemorate Darwin's quick wit and courage in saving them from being marooned when waves from a mass of ice splitting off a glacier threatened their boats.

External link

Mount Darwin, a climbers challenge and the highest peak in Tierra del Fuego

2007-12-01T08:26:00.001-08:00

Events

1087 - John II Comnenus, Byzantine Emperor (d. 1143)
1475 - Cesare Borgia, Italian aristocrat (d. 1507)
1502 - John Leland, English antiquarian (d. 1552)
1520 - William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, English statesman (d. 1598)
1604 - William Brereton, English soldier and politician (d. 1661)
1739 - Grigori Potemkin, Russian statesman (d. 1791)
1766 - Samuel Wilson, possible namesake of Uncle Sam (d. 1854)
1775 - Laura Secord, Canadian war heroine (d. 1868)
1802 - Arnold Ruge, German philosopher and writer (d. 1880)
1813 - John Sedgwick, American Civil War general (d. 1864)
1819 - Clara Schumann, German pianist and composer (d. 1896)
1830 - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Austrian writer (d. 1916)
1842 - John H. Bankhead, U.S. Senator (d. 1920)
1851 - Walter Reed, American physician and biologist (d. 1902)
1857 - Michał Drzymała, Polish peasant rebel (d. 1937)
1857 - Milton S. Hershey, American confectioner (d. 1945)
1860 - John J. Pershing, American general (d. 1948)
1863 - Arthur Henderson, British politician and union leader, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1935)
1873 - Constantin Carathéodory, Greek mathematician (d. 1950)
1874 - Henry Fountain Ashurst, American politician (d. 1962)
1874 - Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian-born composer (d. 1951)
1876 - Sherwood Anderson, American writer (d. 1941)
1877 - Wilhelm Filchner, German explorer (d. 1957)
1877 - Stanley Lord, captain of the SS Californian the night of the Titanic disaster (d. 1962)
1882 - Ramón Grau, Cuban president (d. 1969)
1885 - Wilhelm Blaschke, Austrian geometer (d. 1962)
1886 - Sir Robert Robinson, British chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1975)
1886 - Amelie Beese, German aviator and sculptor. (d. 1925)
1887 - Lavoslav Ruzicka, Croatian chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1976)
1893 - Larry Shields, American musician (d. 1953)
1894 - J.B. Priestley, English playwright and novelist (d. 1984)
1894 - Julian Tuwim, Polish poet (d. 1953)
1895 - Morris Kirksey, American rugby player (d. 1981)
1899 - Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, leader of the Iron Guard (d. 1938)
1903 - Claudette Colbert, French-born actress (d. 1996)
1911 - Bill Monroe, American singer (d. 1996)
1916 - Roald Dahl, British writer (d. 1990)
1918 - Dick Haymes, Argentine vocalist (d. 1980)
1917 - Robert Ward, American composer
1922 - Charles Brown, American singer and pianist (d. 1999)
1923 - Edouard Boubat, French photographer (d. 1999)
1924 - Scott Brady, American film actor (d. 1985)
1924 - Maurice Jarre, French composer
1925 - Mel Tormé, American singer (d. 1999)
1926 - Emile Francis, Canadian ice hockey player and executive
1929 - Nicolai Ghiaurov, Bulgarian opera singer (d. 2004)
1930 - Robert Gavron, Baron Gavron, British printing millionaire
1931 - Barbara Bain, American actress
1933 - Eileen Fulton, American actress
1936 - Stefano Delle Chiaie, Italian neo-Nazi
1937 - Don Bluth, American animator
1938 - Judith Martin, American etiquette writer
1938 - John Smith, Labour Party Leader 1992 - 1994. (d. 1994)
1939 - Richard Kiel, American actor
1940 - Óscar Arias, Costa Rican politician, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
1941 - Tadao Ando, Japanese architect
1941 - Ahmet Necdet Sezer, 10th President of Turkey
1941 - David Clayton-Thomas, Canadian singer (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
1942 - Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri, aka Iron Sheik, professional wrestler
1944 - Jacqueline Bisset, British actress
1944 - Peter Cetera, American musician (Chicago)
1945 - Noël Godin, Belgian humorist
1945 - Andres Küng, Swedish-Estonian politician, journalist (d. 2002)
1946 - Frank Marshall, American film producer
1948 - Nell Carter, American actress (d. 2003)
1948 - Dimitri Nanopoulos, Greek physicist
1949 - Fred Sonic Smith, American musician (MC5) (d. 1994)
1950 - Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, Polish politician
1951 - Jean Smart, American actress
1951 - Linda Wong, Asian adult actress (d. 1987)
1952 - Randy Jones, American musician (The Village People)
1952 - Raymond O'Connor, American actor
1952 - Don Was, American singer
1955 - Joe Morris, American musician
1957 - John G. Trueschler, American politician.
1957 - Vinny Appice, American musician (Black Sabbath, Dio, Heaven and Hell)
1960 - Greg Baldwin, American voiceover actor (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
1961 - Dave Mustaine, American musician (Megadeth)
1961 - KK Null, Japanese musician
1961 - Peter Roskam, Republican Congressman from Illinois
1962 - Tõnu Õnnepalu, Estonian poet and author
1965 - Zak Starkey, British musician
1965 - Annie Duke, American poker player
1966 - Maria Furtwängler, German physician
1967 - Michael Johnson, American athlete
1967 - Tim 'Ripper' Owens, American singer (Iced Earth, ex-Judas Priest)
1968 - Emma Sjöberg, Swedish model
1968 - Bernie Williams, Puerto Rican baseball player
1969 - Tyler Perry, American actor
1969 - Shane Warne, Australian cricketer
1970 - Louise Lombard, British actress
1970 - Jason Scott Sadofsky, American programmer
1970 - Yuki Matsuoka, Japanese voice actress
1971 - Goran Ivanišević, Croatian tennis player
1971 - Manabu Namiki, Japanese composer
1971 - Stella McCartney, English fashion designer
1973 - Christine Arron, French runner
1973 - Fabio Cannavaro, Italian footballer
1973 - Kelly Chen, Chinese singer
1973 - Marcelinho Paulista, Brazilian footballer
1974 - Craig Rivet, Canadian ice hockey player
1974 - Keith Murray, American rapper
1974 - Éric Lapointe, Canadian football player
1975 - Joe Don Rooney, American musician (Rascal Flatts)
1975 - Akihiro Asai, Japanese racing driver
1976 - Giorgos Koltzos, Greek footballer
1976 - Craig McMillan, New Zealand cricketer
1976 - José Théodore, Canadian ice hockey player
1977 - Fiona Apple, American singer
1977 - Ivan De Battista, Maltese Actor, singer and composer
1977 - Daisuke Tsuda, Japanese singer (Maximum the Hormone)
1978 - Megan Henning, American actress
1978 - Darren Kenton, English footballer
1979 - Geike Arnaert, Belgian singer (Hooverphonic)
1979 - Ivan Miljković, Serbian volleyball player
1979 - Catalina Cruz, American Pornstar
1980 - Han Chae Young, South Korean actress
1980 - Daisuke Matsuzaka, Japanese baseball player
1980 - Evangelos Nastos, Greek footballer
1980 - Viren Rasquinha, Indian field hockey player
1980 - Ben Savage, American actor
1980 - Michelle Nolan, American musician (Straylight Run)
1980 - Teppei Teranishi, American guitarist (Thrice)
1981 - Koldo Fernández, Spanish cyclist
1981 - Angel Williams, Canadian wrestler
1982 - Nenê, Brazilian basketball player
1982 - Rickie Weeks, American baseball player
1982 - Miha Zupan, Slovenian basketball player
1983 - James Bourne, English musician
1986 - Kamui Kobayashi, Japanese racing driver
1986 - Sean Williams, American basketball player
1987 - Luke Fitzgerald, Irish rugby union International
1988 - Keith Treacy, Irish footballer Deaths

Roman festivals - epulum Iovis ("banquet of Jupiter"), on the Ides, during the Ludi Romani.
RC Saints - St John Chrysostom.
Also see September 13 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics).

2007-11-30T11:00:00.001-08:00

You may be looking for the God-Emperor from the game Warhammer 40,000.
God Emperor of Dune is a science fiction novel by Frank Herbert published in 1981, the fourth in the Dune series.
3,500 years have passed since Paul Atreides became the messiah of the Fremen and the Emperor of the universe. His son, Leto Atreides II, sees the path that his father Muad'Dib also saw, a future that secures the continuation of human life throughout the universe. That future, however, requires an aberrant act of selflessness: becoming a hybrid of man and sandworm. Leto II accepts this mantle of godhead from the Fremen and transforms himself into a monster of the desert, a sandworm, that will dominate the ecology of the planet Arrakis (known as Dune) for millennia. This is an act his father had been unwilling to do. Leto essentially accepts the terrible price of saving humanity which his father rejected. The novel records Leto II's attempts to consummate the Golden Path, which delivers the volition of humanity by scattering it beyond the perceived safety of Imperium's known universe, and also by destroying the possibility of the Imperium's control by any single entity, including himself.
Stylistically, the novel is permeated by quotations from, and speeches by its main character, Leto, to a degree unseen in any of the other Dune novels. In part, this stylistic shift is an artifact of how Herbert wrote it: the first draft was written almost entirely in the First-person narrative voice, only being revised in later drafts to insert more third-person narration of events.

Notable parody

Touponce, William F. (1988), Frank Herbert, Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers imprint, G. K. Hall & Co, ISBN 0-8057-7514-5; PS3558.E63Z89

2007-11-29T09:15:00.001-08:00

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (also known as The Charter of Rights and Freedoms or simply The Charter) is a bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada. It forms the first part of the Constitution Act, 1982. The Charter guarantees certain political and civil rights of people in Canada from the policies and actions of all levels of government. It is designed to unify Canadians around a set of principles that embody those rights.
The Charter was preceded by the Canadian Bill of Rights, which was enacted in 1960. However, the Bill of Rights was only a federal statute, rather than a constitutional document. As a federal statute, it was limited in scope, it was easily amendable by Parliament and it had no application to provincial laws. The Supreme Court of Canada also narrowly interpreted the Bill of Rights and the Court was reluctant to declare laws inoperative. The British Parliament formally enacted the Charter as a part of the Canada Act 1982 at the request of the Parliament of Canada in 1982, the result of the efforts of the Government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
One of the most notable effects of the adoption of the Charter was to greatly expand the scope of judicial review, because the Charter is more explicit with respect to the guarantee of rights and the role of judges in enforcing them than was the Bill of Rights. The courts, when confronted with violations of Charter rights, have struck down unconstitutional federal and provincial statutes and regulations or parts of statutes and regulations, as they did when Canadian case law was primarily concerned with resolving issues of federalism. However, the Charter granted new powers to the courts to enforce remedies that are more creative and to exclude more evidence in trials. These powers are greater than what was typical under the common law and under a system of government that, influenced by Canada's mother country the United Kingdom, was based upon Parliamentary supremacy. As a result, the Charter has attracted both broad support from a majority of the Canadian electorate and criticisms by opponents of increased judicial power. The Charter only applies to government laws and actions (including the laws and actions of federal, provincial, and municipal governments and public school boards), and sometimes to the common law, not to private activity.

Features
Many of the rights and freedoms that are protected under the Charter, including the rights to freedom of speech, habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence,

History
The task of interpreting and enforcing the Charter falls to the courts, with the Supreme Court of Canada being the ultimate authority on the matter.
With the Charter's supremacy confirmed by section 52 of the Constitution Act, 1982, the courts continued their practice of striking down unconstitutional statutes or parts of statutes as they had with earlier case law regarding federalism. However, under section 24 of the Charter, courts also gained new powers to enforce creative remedies and exclude more evidence in trials. Courts have since made many important decisions, including R. v. Morgentaler (1988), which struck down Canada's abortion law, and Vriend v. Alberta (1998), in which the Supreme Court found the province's exclusion of homosexuals from protection against discrimination violated section 15. In the latter case, the Court then read the protection into the law.
Courts may receive Charter questions in a number of ways. Rights claimants could be prosecuted under a criminal law that they argue is unconstitutional. Others may feel government services and policies are not being dispensed in accordance with the Charter, and apply to lower-level courts for injunctions against the government (as was the case in Doucet-Boudreau v. Nova Scotia (Minister of Education)). A government may also raise questions of rights by submitting reference questions to higher-level courts; for example, Prime Minister Paul Martin's government approached the Supreme Court with Charter questions as well as federalism concerns in the case Re Same-Sex Marriage (2004). Provinces may also do this with their superior courts. The government of Prince Edward Island initiated the Provincial Judges Reference by asking its provincial Supreme Court a question on judicial independence under section 11.
In several important cases, judges developed various tests and precedents for interpreting specific provisions of the Charter. These include the Oakes test for section 1, set out in the case R. v. Oakes (1986), and the Law test for section 15, developed in Law v. Canada (1999). Since Re B.C. Motor Vehicle Act (1985), various approaches to defining and expanding the scope of fundamental justice (the Canadian name for natural justice or due process) under section 7 have been adopted. (For more information, see the articles on each Charter section).
In general, courts have embraced a purposive interpretation of Charter rights. This means that since early cases like Hunter v. Southam (1984) and R. v. Big M Drug Mart (1985), they have concentrated not on the traditional, limited understanding of what each right meant when the Charter was adopted in 1982, but rather on changing the scope of rights as appropriate to fit their broader purpose. This is tied to the generous interpretation of rights, as the purpose of the Charter provisions is assumed to be to increase rights and freedoms of people in a variety of circumstances, at the expense of the government powers. Constitutional scholar Peter Hogg has approved of the generous approach in some cases, although for others he argues the purpose of the provisions was not to achieve a set of rights as broad as courts have imagined.
Public interest groups frequently intervene in cases to make arguments on how to interpret the Charter. Some examples are the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Mental Health Association, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF), and REAL Women of Canada. The purpose of such interventions is to assist the court and to attempt to influence the court to render a decision favourable to the legal interests of the group.
A further approach to the Charter, taken by the courts, is the dialogue principle, which involves greater participation by elected governments. This approach involves governments drafting legislation in response to court rulings and courts acknowledging the effort if the new legislation is challenged.

Interpretation and enforcement
Some Canadian Members of Parliament saw the movement to entrench a charter as contrary to the British model of Parliamentary supremacy. Others would say that the European Convention on Human Rights has now limited British parliamentary power to a greater degree than the Canadian Charter limited the power of the Canadian Parliament and provincial legislatures. Hogg has speculated that the British adopted the European Convention partly because they were inspired by the similar Canadian Charter.

Comparisons with other human rights instruments
The Charter was intended to be a source for national values and national unity. As Professor Alan Cairns noted, "The initial federal government premise was on developing a pan-Canadian identity."

The Charter and national values
While the Charter has enjoyed a great deal of popularity, with 82% of Canadians describing it as a "good thing" in opinion polls in 1987 and 1999,

2007-11-28T10:12:00.001-08:00

Hank Aaron Stadium is a baseball stadium in Mobile, Alabama, United States. It hosts the Mobile BayBears, a minor-league professional team in the Southern League. The stadium, which opened in 1997, has a capacity of 4,000. The ballpark was named after Major League Baseball's all-time home run king and Mobile native Hank Aaron.

2007-11-27T10:29:00.001-08:00

"The Adventure of the Copper Beeches", one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the last of the twelve collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in Strand Magazine in June 1892.

Synopsis
Violet Hunter asks Holmes whether to accept a job as governess, with very strange conditions. She is enticed by the phenomenal salary which, as originally offered, is £100 a year, later increased to £120 when Miss Hunter balks at having to cut her long hair off, which is one of many peculiar provisos to which she must agree. The employer, Jephro Rucastle, seems pleasant enough, yet Miss Hunter obviously has her suspicions.
She announces to Holmes, after the raised salary offer, that she will take the job, and Holmes suggests that if he is needed, a telegram will bring him to Hampshire, where Mr. Rucastle's country estate, the Copper Beeches, is situated.
In about a fortnight, Holmes receives such a message, beseeching him to come and see her in Winchester. Once Holmes and Watson arrive, Miss Hunter tells them one of the most singular stories that they have ever heard. Mr. Rucastle would sometimes have Miss Hunter wear an electric blue dress and sit in the front room reading, with her back to the front window. She began to suspect that she was not supposed to see something outside the window, and a small mirror shard hidden in her handkerchief showed her that she was right: there was a man standing there on the road looking towards the house.
At another such session, Mr. Rucastle told a series of funny stories that made Miss Hunter laugh until she was quite weary. The one astonishing thing about this was that Mrs. Rucastle not only didn't laugh, but didn't even smile.
There were other unsavoury things about the household. The six-year-old child that she was supposed to look after was astonishingly cruel to small animals. The servants, Mr. and Mrs. Toller, were quite a sour pair. A great mastiff was kept on the property, and always kept hungry. It was let out to prowl the grounds at night and Miss Hunter was warned not to cross the threshold after dark. Also, Toller, who was quite often drunk, was the only one who had any influence over this brute.
There was also the odd discovery by Miss Hunter of her own tresses in a locked drawer. Upon checking her own luggage, however, they turned out to be another woman's, but identical in every way to Miss Hunter's, even to the unusual colour.
However, the most unsavoury thing of all about the household was the mystery wing. Miss Hunter had observed that there was a part of the house that did not seem to be used. The windows were either dirty or shuttered, and once she saw Mr. Rucastle coming out of the door leading into the wing looking most perturbed. Later, he explained that he used the rooms for his photography hobby, but Miss Hunter was not convinced.
She sneaked into the wing one evening, and had a truly frightening experience there. She thought she saw someone. Running out of the room, she found herself right in Mr. Rucastle's clutches. He seemed convinced that she had seen nothing of the prisoner in the forbidden wing. He also threatened to throw her to the mastiff if she ever went into the wing again.
It seems clear to Holmes that Miss Hunter has been hired to impersonate someone who looks very much like her, and he surmises quite reasonably that it is probably Mr. Rucastle's daughter by his first marriage, Alice. The story has been that she moved to Philadelphia. Holmes further surmises that the man watching the house is likely Alice's lover, or perhaps even her fiancé. The purpose of hiring Miss Hunter seems clear: she is to convince the man watching from the road that Alice is no longer interested in seeing him.
Holmes and Watson send Miss Hunter back to the Copper Beeches with certain instructions, and then arrive there in the evening with the intent of searching the forbidden wing. Holmes turns out to be right in most of his deductions, but the wing is empty. Someone has been there before him. Mr. Rucastle shows up as well, and in his anger, lets the mastiff loose, which has not been fed in two days (for Toller has been quite drunk). The mastiff attacks Rucastle. Even though he survives, Rucastle is a broken man, having paid hard for his evil intentions.
Rucastle's daughter has escaped with her fiance, and they marry soon after. Watson notes, at the end of the story, that Holmes appears to have been drawn to Miss Hunter. However, to his disappointment, Holmes does not show any interest in Miss Hunter after the mystery had been solved, which was the real force behind his feelings.

2007-11-26T09:00:00.001-08:00

The Second Opium War or Arrow War was a war of the United Kingdom and France against the Qing Dynasty of China from 1856 to 1860.

Background
The war may be viewed as a continuation of the First Opium War (1839-1842), thus the title of the Second Opium War.
On 1856-10-08, Qing officials boarded the Arrow, a Chinese-owned ship that had been registered in Hong Kong and was suspected of piracy and smuggling. Twelve Chinese subjects were arrested and imprisoned. The British officials in Guangzhou demanded the release of the sailors, claiming that because the ship had recently been British-registered, it was protected under the Treaty of Nanjing. Only when this was shown to be a weak argument did the British insist that the Arrow had been flying a British ensign and that the Qing soldiers had insulted the flag. Faced with fighting the Taiping Rebellion, the Qing government was in no position to resist the West militarily. This has come to be known as the "Arrow Incident".
The British Parliament decided to seek redress from China based on the report about the "Arrow Incident" submitted by Harry Parkes, British Consul to Guangzhou. France, the USA, and Russia received requests from Britain to form an alliance. France joined the British action against China, prompted by the execution of a French missionary, Father August Chapdelaine ("Father Chapdelaine Incident"), by Chinese local authorities in Guangxi province. The USA and Russia sent envoys to Hong Kong to offer help to the British and French, though in the end they sent no military aid.
The British and the French joined forces under Admiral Sir Michael Seymour. The British army led by Lord Elgin, and the French army led by Gros, attacked and occupied Guangzhou in late 1857. Ye Mingchen was captured, and Bo-gui, the governor of Guangdong, surrendered. A joint committee of the Alliance was formed. Bo-gui remained at his original post in order to maintain order on behalf of the victors. The British-French Alliance maintained control of Guangzhou for nearly four years. Ye Mingchen was exiled to Calcutta, India, where he starved himself to death.
The coalition then cruised north to briefly capture the Taku Forts near Tianjin in May, 1858.

Outbreak
In June 1858 the first part of the war ended with the Treaties of Tianjin, to which France, Russia, and the United States were party. These treaties opened eleven more ports to Western trade. The Chinese initially refused to ratify the treaties.
The major points of the treaty were:

Britain, France, Russia, and the United States would have the right to establish diplomatic legations (small embassies) in Peking (a closed city at the time)
Ten more Chinese ports would be opened for foreign trade, including Niuzhuang, Danshui, Hankou, and Nanjing
The right of all foreign vessels including commercial ships to navigate freely on the Yangtze River
The right of foreigners to travel in the internal regions of China, which had been formerly banned
China was to pay an indemnity to Britain and France in 2 million taels of silver each
China was to pay compensation to British merchants in 2 million taels of silver for destruction of their property Treaty of Aigun
In June 1858, shortly after the Qing Court agreed to the humiliating treaties, more hawkish ministers prevailed upon the Xianfeng Emperor to resist encroachment by the West. On June 2, 1858, the Xianfeng Emperor ordered the Mongolian general Sengge Rinchen to guard the Dagu Fort in Tianjin. Sengge Richen reinforced the Dagu Forts with added artillery. He also brought 4,000 Mongolian cavalry from Chahar and Suiyuan.
In June, 1859, a British naval force with 2,200 troops and 21 ships, under the command of Admiral Sir James Hope sailed north from Shanghai to Tianjin with newly-appointed Anglo-French envoys for the embassies in Beijing. They sailed to the mouth of the Hai River guarded by the Dagu Fort near Tianjin and demanded to continue inland to Beijing. Sengge Rinchen replied that the Anglo-French envoys may land up the coast at Beitang and proceed to Beijing but refused to allow armed troops to accompany them to the Chinese capital. The Anglo-French forces insisted landing at Dagu instead of Beitang and escorting the envoy to Beijing. On the night of June 24, 1859, a small batch of British forces blew up iron obstacles that the Chinese had placed in the Baihe River. The next day, the British forces sought to forcibly sail into the river, and shelled Dagu Fort. They encountered fierce resistance from Singge Rinchen's positions. After one day and one night's fighting, four gunboats were lost and two others severely damaged. The convoy withdrew under the cover of fire from a naval squadron commanded by Commodore Josiah Tattnall. Tattnall's intervention violated U.S. neutrality in China. For a time, anti-foreign resistance reached a crescendo within the Qing Court.
In the summer of 1860, a larger Anglo-French force (11,000 British, 6,700 French) with 173 ships sailed from Hong Kong and captured the port cities of Yantai and Dalian to seal the Bohai Gulf. Then they carried out a landing near at Bei Tang(also spelled Pei Tang), some 3 kilometres (2 mi) from the Dagu Fort on August 3, which they captured after three weeks' on August 21. After taking Tienstin on August 3, the Anglo-French forces marched inland toward Beijing. The Xianfeng Emperor then dispatched ministers to for peace talks, but relations broke down completely when a British diplomatic envoy, Harry Parkes, was arrested during negotiations on September 18. He and his small entourage were imprisoned and tortured (some were murdered by the Chinese in a fashion that infuriated British leadership upon discovery in October). The Anglo-French invasion clashed with Singge Rinchen's Mongolian cavalry on September 18 near Zhangjiawan before proceeding toward the outskirts of Beijing for a decisive battle in Tongzhou District. At Baliqiao, Sengge Rinchen's 10,000 troops including elite Mongolian cavalry were completely annhilated after several doomed frontal charges against concentrated firepower of the Anglo-French forces, which entered Beijing on October 6.
With the Qing army devastated, Emperor Xianfeng fled the capital, leaving his brother, Prince Gong, to be in charge of negotiations. Xianfeng first fled to the Summer Palace in Chengde and then to Jehol in Manchuria., as it was his own father, Thomas Bruce (1776–1841), who, from 1799 to 1803, removed from the Acropolis in Greece what are now known as the Elgin Marbles to Britain, where they remain to this day, a subject of rancor between the Greek and British governments.

Continuation of the war
After the Xianfeng emperor and his entourage fled Beijing, the June 1858 Treaty of Tianjin was finally ratified by the emperor's brother, Yixin, the Prince Gong, in the Convention of Peking on October 18, 1860, bringing The Second Opium War to an end.
The British, French and - thanks to the schemes of Ignatiev - the Russians were all granted a permanent diplomatic presence in Beijing (something the Qing resisted to the very end as it suggested equality between China and the European powers). The Chinese had to pay 8 million taels to Britain and France. Britain acquired Kowloon (next to Hong Kong). The opium trade was legalized and Christians were granted full civil rights, including the right to own property, and the right to evangelize.
The content of the Convention of Peking included:
Two weeks later, Ignatiev convinced the Manchu to sign a "Supplementary Treaty of Peking", in which the Manchu signed away some 300,000 to 400,000 square miles (777,000–1,036,000 km²) of land to the Russians. The defeat of the Imperial army by a small Anglo-French military force (outnumbered at least 10 to 1 by the Manchu army) coupled with the flight (and subsequent death) of the Emperor and the burning of the Summer Palace was a shocking blow to the once powerful Qing Dynasty. "Beyond any doubt, by 1860 the ancient civilization that was China had been thoroughly defeated and humiliated by the West."

China's recognition of the validity of the Treaty of Tianjin
Opening Tianjin as a trade port
Cede No.1 District of Kowloon (south of present day Boundary Street) to Britain
Freedom of religion established in China
British ships were allowed to carry indentured Chinese to the Americas
Indemnity to Britain and France increasing to 8 million taels of silver a piece
Legalization of the opium trade Further reading

Fraser, George MacDonald (1986). Flashman and the Dragon. New York, NY: Knopf. ISBN 0-394-55357-8. — A portion of the memoirs of the fictional Harry Paget Flashman recounting his adventures during the Second Opium War and Taiping Rebellion.

2007-11-25T09:18:00.001-08:00

History
The Royal Academy does not receive financial support from the state or crown. One of its principal sources of revenue is hosting temporary public art exhibitions. These are of the highest quality, comparable to those at the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery and leading art galleries outside the United Kingdom. In 2004 the highlights of the Academy's permanent collection went on display in the newly restored reception rooms of the original section of Burlington House, which are now known as the "John Madejski Fine Rooms".
Under the Direction of the Exhibitions Secretary Norman Rosenthal the Academy has hosted ambitious exhibitions of contemporary art including in 1997 "Sensation" the collection of work by young British Artists owned by Charles Saatchi. The show created controversy for including a painting of Myra Hindley that was vandalised while on display.
The Academy also hosts an annual Royal Academy summer exhibition of new art, which is a well known event on the London social calendar. It is not as fashionable as was the case in earlier centuries, and has been largely ignored by the trendy Brit Artists and their patrons; however Tracey Emin exhibited in the 2005 show. In March 2007 this relationship developed further when Tracey Emin accepted the Academy's invitation to become a Royal Academician, commenting in her weekly newspaper column that, "It doesn't mean that I have become more conformist; it means that the Royal Academy has become more open, which is healthy and brilliant."
The Academy has received many gifts and bequests of objects and money. Many of these gifts were used to establish Trust Funds to support the work of the Royal Academy Schools by providing "Premiums" to students displaying excellence in various artistic genre. The rapid changes that pulsed through 20th century art have left some of the older prize funds looking somewhat anachronistic. But efforts are still made to award each prize to a student producing work that bears a relation to the intentions of the original benefactor.

Activities
The Academy runs a postgraduate art school and a research library. The Royal Academy Schools, the country's oldest art school, is based in Burlington House. There are generally two exhibitions every year of work by Academy students.

Royal Academy Schools
Full membership of the academy is limited to 80 Academicians or "RAs", who may be painters, printmakers, sculptors, or architects, and must be "professionally active in Britain".
The Academy's rules are that there must always be at least 14 sculptors, 12 architects, and 8 printmakers; the balance being made up of 46 painters. New Academicians are elected by the existing RAs, and originally had to enter a Diploma Work representative of their œuvre.
Apart from kudos of being elected, full members of the Academy may expect to serve for a time on the governing council of the Academy, and to take part in various committees. Each room in the Summer Exhibition is generally hung by a different R.A.
In common with certain other Royal societies, election as President of the Royal Academy (P.R.A.) practically guarantees a knighthood, if the President is not already of that rank.
A larger number of Associates of the Royal Academy (designated "A.R.A.") are also elected, but being an A.R.A. is not a prerequisite to full membership.
Members of the public can also join the Royal Academy as "Friends" by making a financial donation; outside of public exhibitions, this is one of the RA's main sources of income.

Membership
(incomplete list)

Richard Ansdell
Francesco Bartolozzi (1768)
Agostino Carlini (1768)
Mason Chamberlin (1768)
Sir William Chambers (1768)
Giovanni Battista Cipriani (1768)
Richard Cosway (1768)
Francis Cotes (1768)
George Dance the Younger (1768; Academy professor of architecture 1798-1805)
Nathaniel Dance-Holland (1768)
Thomas Gainsborough (1768)
John Gwynn (1768)
Francis Hayman (1768; 1st Academy librarian)
Nathaniel Hone (1768)
William Hunter (1768; 1st Academy professor of anatomy)
Angelica Kauffmann (1768)
George Michael Moser (1768; 1st Academy Keeper)
Mary Moser (1768)
Joseph Nollekens (1768)
Thomas Pingo (1768)
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1768; President 1768–1792)
John Inigo Richards (1768; Academy secretary 1788–1810)
Paul Sandby (1768)
Thomas Sandby (1768; 1st Academy professor of architecture)
Dominic Serres (1768; Academy librarian 1792–1793)
Benjamin West (1768; President 1792–1805, 1806–1820)
Richard Wilson (1768)
Joseph Wilton (1768; 3rd Academy Keeper)
Johann Zoffany (1768)
Francesco Zuccarelli (1768)
Thomas Hardwick (1768-69) (silver medal winner)
Philip James de Loutherbourg (1781)
Joseph Wright (1784)
Thomas Banks (1785)
James Northcote (1787)
John Opie (1788)
John Russell (1788)
Henry Fuseli (1790; Academy professor of painting 1799–1803, 1810–1824; Academy Keeper 1803–1810?)
Ozias Humphrey (1791)
Robert Smirke (1793)
Thomas Kirk (1794)
Sir Thomas Lawrence (1794; President 1820–1830)
Richard Westall (1794)
Thomas Stothard (1794)
John Hoppner (1795)
John Flaxman (1800; Professor of Sculpture 1810–1826)
Martin Archer Shee (1800; President 1830–1850)
Sir John Soane (1802; Academy professor of architecture 1806–1837)
J. M. W. Turner (1802)
Thomas Phillips (1808; Academy professor of painting 1824–1832)
David Wilkie (1811)
Sir Richard Westmacott (1811; Professor of Sculpture 1827–1856)
Robert Smirke (1811)
William Theed (1813)
John Jackson (1817)
Edward Hodges Baily (1821)
Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (1827; President 1850–1865)
John Constable (1829)
Edwin Henry Landseer (1831)
William Clarkson Stanfield (1835)
Frederick Richard Lee (1838)
Daniel Maclise (1840)
David Roberts (1841)
William Dyce (1848)
Richard Westmacott (1849; Professor of Sculpture 1857–1868)
Sir Francis Grant (1851)
Richard Redgrave (1851)
William Powell Frith (1852)
Sydney Smirke (1859; Academy professor of architecture 1860–1865)
John Everett Millais (1863; President 1896)
Thomas Sidney Cooper (1867)
Edward Middleton Barry (1869)
James Sant (1869)
Edward Armitage (1872)
Thomas Woolner (1875; professor of sculpture 1877–1879)
Edward Poynter (1876; President 1896–1918)
William Quiller Orchardson (1877)
Henry Hugh Armstead (1880)
Edwin Long (1881)
Alfred Waterhouse (1885)
Sir Thomas Graham Jackson (1892) architect
John William Waterhouse (1895)
George Frederic Watts (1897)
Edwin Austin Abbey (1898)
Benjamin Williams Leader (1898)
Albert Chevallier Tayler (1899?)
Sir Aston Webb (1903)
Sir George Clausen (1906)
William Lionel Wyllie (1907)
James Jebusa Shannon (1909)
Henry Scott Tuke (1914)
Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1921)
Augustus John (1928)
Sir William Reid Dick (1928)
George Spencer Watson (1932)
Wilfrid de Glehn (1932)
Sir William Russell Flint (1933)
Francis Dodd (1935)
Laura Knight (1936)
Harold Knight (1937)
Vincent Harris (1942)
John Aldridge 1963
William Roberts (1966)
Eric Schilsky (1968)
Hugh Casson (1970)
Edward Ardizzone (1970)
Norman Adams (1972)
Fred Cuming (1974)
Bryan Kneale (1974)
Sir Kyffin Williams (1974)
Olwyn Bowey (1975)
Elizabeth Blackadder (1976)
Anthony Green (1977)
Eduardo Paolozzi (1979)
David Tindle (1979)
Peter Blake (1981)
William Bowyer (1981)
Tom Phillips (1984)
Donald Hamilton Fraser (1985)
Michael Kenny (1986)
Norman Ackroyd (1988)
Craigie Aitchison (1988)
Ann Christopher (1989)
Gillian Ayres (1991)
John Bellany (1991)
Kenneth Draper (1991)
David Hockney (1991)
Bill Jacklin (1991)
R B Kitaj (1991)
Joe Tilson (1991)
Sir Terry Frost (1992)
Brendan Neiland (1992)
Sir Nicholas Grimshaw (1994)
Christopher Orr (1995)
Patrick Procktor (1996)
Eva Jiřičná (1997)
Alison Wilding (1999)
Maurice Cockrill (1999)
David Nash (1999)
Gary Hume (2001)
Ian McKeever (2003)
Tracey Emin (2007)
Tony Bevan (2007) List of RAs

Other posts

The Arts Club
Royal West of England Academy

2007-11-24T08:22:00.000-08:00

Ian Hislop (born 13 July 1960) is the editor of British satirical magazine Private Eye, a team captain on the popular satirical current affairs quiz Have I Got News for You and a comedy scriptwriter.

Early Life
As editor of Private Eye, Ian Hislop was once the most sued man in English legal history

Private Eye
Hislop is the only person to have appeared in every episode of Have I Got News for You's 17-year history, despite suffering from appendicitis during one episode and having to go to hospital immediately afterwards. His satirical views and broad knowledge of politics complement the wry surrealism of fellow panellist Paul Merton, and this interaction contributes greatly to the success of the show. Hislop often suffixes potentially slanderous statements with "allegedly". This however provides no legal protection.
Apart from one episode, where Hislop and Merton swapped places (and dress styles), he has only ever sat in the far right seat (far left from the audience's point of view).

Personal Life
In Caroline Chartres's book "Why I am still an Anglican", Hislop describes himself as, "Atheist with Doubts: a C of E don't know". In 1996 he presented an award-winning documentary series for BBC Channel 4 about the history of the Church of England called "Canterbury Tales". Recent works include the Radio 4 series, "The Real Patron Saints".

2007-11-23T07:58:00.000-08:00

The Thackray Museum in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England is a museum of the history of medicine. Since it opened in 1997 it has won "Museum of the Year" and other awards.
Highlights include Life in Victorian Leeds: visitors walk through a reproduction of slum streets complete with authentic sights, sounds and smells and are invited to follow the lives, ailments and treatments of eight Victorian characters, making the choices that determine their survival amongst the rats, fleas and bedbugs. Pain, pus and blood describes surgery before anaesthesia, and Having a baby focuses on developments in safety for childbirth. Hannah Dyson's ordeal is a reconstruction of 1842 surgery, before anaesthetics were in use: visitors watch as 11-year old Hannah undergoes amputation of her leg after it was crushed in a mill accident. The life zone is an interactive children's gallery. There are also temporary exhibition galleries.
The building is a Grade 2 listed building, a former workhouse adjacent to St James's Hospital.

2007-11-22T09:27:00.001-08:00

Electric potential is the potential energy per unit of charge associated with a static (time-invariant) electric field, also called the electrostatic potential, typically measured in volts. It is a Lorentz scalar quantity. The difference of electrical potential between two points is known as voltage.
There is also a generalized electric scalar potential that is used in electrodynamics when time-varying electromagnetic fields are present. This generalized electric potential cannot be simply interpreted as a potential energy, however.

Explanation
Objects may possess a property known as electric charge. An electric field exerts a force on charged objects, accelerating them in the direction of the force, in either the same or the opposite direction of the electric field. If the charged object has a positive charge, the force and acceleration will be in the direction of the field. This force has the same direction as the electric field vector, and its magnitude is given by the size of the charge multiplied with the magnitude of the electric field.
Classical mechanics explores the concepts such as force, energy, potential etc. in more detail.
Force and potential energy are directly related. As an object moves in the direction that the force accelerates it, its potential energy decreases. For example, the gravitational potential energy of a cannonball at the top of a hill is greater than at the base of the hill. As the object falls, that potential energy decreases and is translated to motion, or inertial (kinetic) energy.
For certain forces, it is possible to define the "potential" of a field such that the potential energy of an object due to a field is dependent only on the position of the object with respect to the field. Those forces must affect objects depending only on the intrinsic properties of the object and the position of the object, and obey certain other mathematical rules.
Two such forces are the gravitational force (gravity) and the electric force in the absence of time-varying magnetic fields. The potential of an electric field is called the electric potential.
The electric potential and the magnetic vector potential together form a four vector, so that the two kinds of potential are mixed under Lorentz transformations.

Mathematical introduction
When time-varying magnetic fields are present (which is true whenever there are time-varying electric fields and vice versa), one cannot describe the electric field simply in terms of a scalar potential φ because the electric field is no longer conservative: is path-dependent because .
Instead, one can still define a scalar potential by also including the magnetic vector potential . In particular, is defined by:

where is the magnetic flux density. One can always find such an because (the absence of magnetic monopoles). Given this, the quantity is a conservative field by Faraday's law and one can therefore write:

where φ is the scalar potential defined by the conservative field .
The electrostatic potential is simply the special case of this definition where is time-invariant. On the other hand, for time-varying fields, note that , unlike electrostatics.
Note that this definition of φ depends on the gauge choice for the vector potential (the gradient of any scalar field can be added to without changing ). One choice is the Coulomb gauge, in which we choose . In this case, we obtain , where ρ is the charge density, just as for electrostatics. Another common choice is the Lorenz gauge, in which we choose to satisfy .

Special cases and computational devices
This electric potential, typically measured in volts, provides a simple way to analyze electric circuits without requiring detailed knowledge of the circuit shape or the fields within it.
The electric potential provides a simple way to analyze electrical networks with the help of Kirchhoff's voltage law, without solving the detailed Maxwell's equations for the fields of the circuit.

2007-11-20T09:48:00.001-08:00

The Premiership of Tony Blair began on 2 May 1997 and ended on 27 June 2007. While serving as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Blair concurrently served as the First Lord of the Treasury, the Minister for the Civil Service, the Leader of the Labour Party (until Gordon Brown was declared Labour leader on 24 June 2007), and a Member of Parliament for the constituency of Sedgefield in County Durham. He remains a Privy Counsellor having first been appointed in July 1994 when he became Leader of the Opposition. Blair is the Labour Party's longest-serving Prime Minister, and having led the party to three consecutive general election victories, the only Labour Prime Minister to serve more than one full consecutive term.
Blair is both credited with and criticised for moving the Labour Party towards the centre of British politics, using the term "New Labour" to distinguish his pro-market policies from the more collectivist policies which the party had espoused in the past.
In domestic government policy, Blair has significantly increased public spending on health and education while also introducing controversial market-based reforms in these areas. Blair's tenure has also seen the introduction of a minimum wage, tuition fees for higher education, constitutional reform such as devolution in Scotland and Wales, and progress in the Northern Ireland peace process. The British economy performed well, Blair kept to Conservative commitments not to increase income tax in the first term although rates of Employee's National Insurance (a payroll levy) were increased, increasing taxation of wages.
Controversially, Blair strongly supported US foreign policy, notably by participating in the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.
On 7 September 2006 Blair publicly stated he would step down as party leader by the time of the TUC conference in September 2007. On 10 May 2007 he announced his intention to resign as Prime Minister on 27 June 2007.

First term 1997 to 2001
Immediately after taking office, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown gave the Bank of England the power to set the UK base rate of interest autonomously, as agreed in 1992 in the Treaty of Maastricht. This decision was popular with the British financial establishment in London, which the Labour Party had been courting since the early 1990s. Together with the Government's decision to remain within projected Conservative spending limits for its first two years in office, it helped to reassure sceptics of the Labour Party's fiscal "prudence".

Independence for the Bank of England
In the early years of his first term, Blair relied for his political advice on a close circle of his staff, among whom his press secretary and official spokesman Alastair Campbell was seen as particularly influential. Controversially, Campbell was permitted to give orders to civil servants, who had previously taken instructions only from ministers. Unlike some of his predecessors, Campbell was a political appointee and had not come up through the Civil Service. Despite his overtly political role, he was paid from public funds as a civil servant. His was one of a number of New Labour appointments that gave rise to fears that the traditional political neutrality of the civil service was being eroded.
A significant achievement of Blair's first term was the signing, on 10 April 1998, of the Belfast Agreement, generally known as the Good Friday Agreement. Negotiations aimed at bringing peace to Northern Ireland had begun under the previous Prime Minister, John Major, but had collapsed after the end of the first IRA ceasefire in the mid-1990s. In the Good Friday Agreement, most Northern Irish political parties, together with the British and Irish Governments, agreed upon an "exclusively peaceful and democratic" framework for the governance of Northern Ireland and a new set of political institutions for the province. In November 1998 Blair became the first British Prime Minister to address Dáil Éireann ending years of animosity between Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland.
Blair's first term saw an extensive programme of changes to the constitution. The Human Rights Act was introduced in 1998; a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly were set up; most hereditary peers were removed from the House of Lords in 1999; the Greater London Authority and the post of Mayor of London were established in 2000; and the Freedom of Information Act was passed later in the same year, with its provisions coming into effect over the following decade. This last Act disappointed campaigners, whose hopes had been raised by a 1998 White Paper which had promised more robust legislation. Also, whether the House of Lords should be fully appointed, fully elected, or be subject to a combination of the two remains a disputed question. 2003 saw a series of inconclusive votes on the matter in the House of Commons.
Significant change took place to legislation relating to rights of lesbian and gay and transgender people during Blair's period in office. During his first term, the age of consent for gay sex was equalised at 16 (see Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000) and the ban on gays in the armed forces was lifted. Subsequently, in 2005, a Civil Partnership Act came into effect, allowing gay couples to form legally recognised partnerships. At the end of September 2006 more than 30,000 Britons had entered into Civil Partnerships as a result of this law. The ultimate unpopularity of what should have been a fringe project meant that its failure had a political effect that far exceeded its intrinsic importance.

Domestic politics
In 1999, Blair planned and presided over the declaration of the Kosovo War. While in opposition, the Labour Party had criticised the Conservatives for their perceived weakness during the Bosnian war, and Blair was among those urging a strong line by NATO against Slobodan Milošević. Blair was criticised both by those on the Left who opposed the war in principle and by some others who believed that the Serbs were fighting a legitimate war of self-defence. One month into the war, on 22 April 1999, Blair made a speech in Chicago setting out his "Doctrine of the International Community".. This later became known by the media as the "Blair doctrine".
Also in 1999, Blair was awarded the Charlemagne Award by the German city of Aachen for his contributions to the European ideal and to peace in Europe.

Foreign policy
In the 2001 general election campaign, Blair emphasised the theme of improving public services, notably the National Health Service and the State education system. The Conservatives concentrated on opposing British membership of the Euro, which did little to win over floating voters. The Labour Party largely preserved its majority, and Blair became the first Labour Prime Minister to win a full second term. However, the election was notable for a large fall in voter turnout.
Following the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, Blair was very quick to align the UK with the United States, engaging in a round of shuttle diplomacy to help form and maintain an international coalition prior to the 2001 war against Afghanistan. He maintains his diplomatic activity to this day, showing a willingness to visit countries that other world leaders might consider too dangerous to visit. In 2003, he became the first Briton since Winston Churchill to be awarded a Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress for being "a staunch and steadfast ally of the United States of America",

Iraq war
After fighting the 2001 election on the theme of improving public services, Blair's government raised taxes in 2002 (described by the Conservatives as "stealth taxes") in order to increase spending on education and health. Blair insisted the increased funding would have to be matched by internal reforms. The government introduced the Foundation Hospitals scheme to allow NHS hospitals financial autonomy, although the eventual shape of the proposals, after an internal struggle with Gordon Brown, allowed for less freedom than Blair had wished. Several healthcare trusts established under the foundation hospitals scheme are now in severe financial difficulties, having spent large proportions of their funding increases on pay rises for staff and on expensive drugs. As a result, with supply of healthcare services increasing less quickly than demand, benefits from the NHS have not increased to the same degree, and the NHS had an £800 million deficit for the 2005/6 financial year.
The peace process in Northern Ireland hit a series of problems. In October 2002, the Northern Ireland Assembly established under the Good Friday Agreement was suspended. Attempts to persuade the IRA to decommission its weapons were unsuccessful, and, in the second set of elections to the Assembly in November 2003, the staunchly unionist Democratic Unionist Party replaced the more moderate Ulster Unionist Party as Northern Ireland's largest unionist party, making a return to devolved government more difficult. At the same time, Sinn Féin replaced the more moderate SDLP as the province's largest nationalist party.
In its first term, the government had introduced an annual fixed tuition fee of around £1,000 for higher education students (rejecting requests from universities to be allowed to vary the fee), with reductions and exemptions for poor students. At the same time, the remaining student maintenance grant was replaced with a low-interest loan, which was to be repaid once the student was earning over a certain threshold. In 2003, Blair controversially introduced legislation permitting universities to charge variable fees of up to £3,000 per year. At the same time, the repayment of student loans was delayed until the graduate's income was much higher, and grants were reintroduced for some students from poorer backgrounds. It was claimed the increase in university fees violated a promise in Labour's 2001 election manifesto, though this claim is arguably unsustainable if the relevant promise is interpreted strictly and literally. At its second reading in the House of Commons in January 2004, the Higher Education Bill which contained the changes was passed with a majority of only five, due to a large-scale backbench Labour rebellion. A defeat was averted by a last-minute change of intention by a small number of Gordon Brown's backbench allies.
On 1 August 2003 Blair became the longest continuously serving Labour Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, surpassing Harold Wilson's 1964–1970 term. The Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr. David Kelly reported on 2 August, ruling that he had committed suicide, and despite widespread expectations that the report would criticise Blair and his government, Hutton cleared the Government of deliberately inserting false intelligence into the September Dossier, while criticising the BBC editorial process which had allowed unfounded allegations to be broadcast. Evidence to the inquiry raised further questions over the use of intelligence in the run up to the war, and the report did not satisfy opponents of Blair and of the war. After a similar decision by President Bush, Blair set up another inquiry—the Butler Review—into the accuracy and presentation of the intelligence relating to Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Opponents of the war, especially the Liberal Democrats, refused to participate in this inquiry, since it did not meet their demands for a full public inquiry into whether the war was justified.
The political fallout from the Iraq War continued to dog Blair's premiership after the Butler Review. On 25 August 2004 Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price announced he would attempt to impeach Blair,

Domestic politics
On 19 October 2003 it emerged Blair had received treatment for an irregular heartbeat. Having felt ill the previous day, he went to hospital and was diagnosed with supraventricular tachycardia. This was treated by cardioversion and he returned home that night. He was reported to have taken the following day (20 October) more gently than usual and returned to a full schedule on 21 October. Downing Street aides later suggested the palpitations had been brought on by drinking lots of strong coffee at an EU summit and then working-out vigorously in the gym. However, former minister Lewis Moonie, a doctor, said the treatment was more serious than Number 10 had admitted: "Anaesthetising somebody and giving their heart electric shocks is not something you just do in the routine run of medical practice."
In September 2004, in off-the-cuff remarks during an interview with ITV news, Lord Bragg said Blair was "under colossal strain" over "considerations of his family" and that Blair had thought "things over very carefully." This led to speculation Blair would resign. Although details of a family problem were known by the press, no paper reported them because according to one journalist, to have done so would have breached "the bounds of privacy and media responsibility." The planned procedure was carried out at London's Hammersmith hospital.

Health problems
At the same time as Blair's operation it was disclosed the Blairs had purchased a house at 29 Connaught Square, London, for a reported £3.5 million.. The purchase also led to more speculation that Blair was preparing for life after government.

Connaught Square
The Labour Party won the Thursday 5 May 2005 general election and a third consecutive term in office. The next day, Blair was invited to form a Government by Queen Elizabeth II. The reduction in the Labour majority (from 167 to 66) and the low share of the popular vote (35%) led to some Labour MPs calling for Blair to leave office sooner rather than later; among them was Frank Dobson, who had served in Blair's cabinet during his first term. However, dissenting voices quickly vanished as Blair in June 2005 took on European leaders over the future direction of the European Union.

Third term 2005 to 2007
The rejection by France and the Netherlands of the treaty to establish a constitution for the European Union presented Blair with an opportunity to postpone the doubtful UK referendum on the constitution without taking the blame for failing from the EU. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw announced that the Parliamentary Bill to enact a referendum was suspended indefinitely. It had previously been agreed that ratification would continue unless the treaty had been rejected by at least five of the 25 European Union member states who must all ratify it. In an address to the European Parliament, Blair stated: "I believe in Europe as a political project. I believe in Europe with a strong and caring social dimension." lukewarm in spite of some diplomatic success including a last-minute budget deal. The most controversial result was an agreement to increase British contributions to the EU development budget for new member countries, which effectively reduced the UK rebate by 20%.

G8 and EU presidencies
On 6 July 2005, during the 117th International Olympic Committee (IOC) session in Singapore, the IOC announced that the 2012 Summer Olympics, the Games of the XXX Olympiad, were awarded to London over Paris by only four votes. The competition between Paris and London to host the Games had become increasingly heated particularly after French President Jacques Chirac commented three days before the vote that "one cannot trust people [ie: the British] whose cuisine are so bad."

London to host the 2012 Summer Olympics
On Thursday 7 July 2005, a series of four bomb explosions struck London's public transport system during the morning rush-hour. All four incidents were suicide bombings. Fifty-six people were killed and 700 injured. The incident was the deadliest single act of terrorism in the United Kingdom since 270 died in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland and replaced the 1998 Omagh Bombing (29 dead) as the second most deadly terrorist attack on British soil. It was also the deadliest bombing in London since World War II.
Blair made a statement about the day's bombings, saying that he believed it was "reasonably clear" that it was an act of terror, and that he hoped the people of Britain could demonstrate that their will to overcome the events is greater than the terrorists' wish to cause destruction. He also said that his determination to "defend" the British way of life outweighed "extremist determination" to destroy it. On 13 July 2005, he told that international cooperation would be needed to "pull up this evil ideology by its roots".

2005 London bombings
The introduction of further reforms to the education system, which restricted the involvement of local education authorities in opening new schools, proved controversial. Labour backbenchers opposed to the proposals produced a rival manifesto, and the Bill to introduce the changes was delayed while the government negotiated with them. The Conservative Party declared its support for the reforms, making passage certain but increasing the likelihood that Labour MPs would vote against them. On 15 March 2006, the Education and Inspections Bill passed its second reading, with 52 Labour MPs voting against; had the Conservative Party also voted against it would have been defeated.

Education reforms 2006
The local elections in England on 4 May 2006 dealt a blow to Blair, with the loss of 317 seats and 18 councils. This result was thought to be partly continued fallout from public dissatisfaction over the decision to invade Iraq, and partly due to a scandal concerning the Home Office's mishandling of foreign criminals' deportation. At the same time, an affair of the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott with his diary secretary had been made public. Further, some Primary Care and Hospital Trust sustained significant deficits and had to release staff, which called into question the position of Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt. On 5 May, Blair reshuffled his Cabinet. Most significantly, Charles Clarke and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw were relieved of their duties and many other positions were reassigned. Many commentators saw this as a panic reaction designed to ward off calls for Blair to step down.

Local elections on 4 May 2006 and cabinet reshuffle
Blair urged his fellow EU members on October 20, 2006 to send a strong message to the Sudanese government that it must allow a UN force into Darfur, arguing that it is a critical time for Darfur and therefore a chance for the EU to strengthen the pressure on the Sudanese government.

Darfur
See also: Labour Party (UK) leadership election, 2007
After Labour's 2004 conference, on 30 September 2004, Blair announced in a BBC interview

Debate over Muslim women wearing veils
Blair was interviewed in connection with the cash for honours investigation by the police in December 2006, the first time that a serving Prime Minister has been questioned by police regarding a criminal investigation.

2007-11-19T07:22:00.001-08:00

Infobox last updated on: June 4, 2007.
Vijay Amritraj (Tamil: விஜய் அமிர்தராஜ், Hindi: विजय अम्िरत्राज, Urdu: وِجے اَمرِترج), born December 14, 1953) is an Indian/American former tennis player and actor.
Amritraj was born in Madras, India to Maggie Dhairyam and Robert Amritraj. He and his brothers, Anand Amritraj and Ashok Amritraj, were among the first Indians to play in top-flight international tour tennis. In 1976, the brothers (Vijay and Anand) were semi-finalists in the Wimbledon men's doubles.
After playing his first grand prix event in 1970, Amritraj achieved his first significant success in singles in 1973 when he reached the quarter-final stage at two Grand Slam events. At Wimbledon he lost 5-7 in the fifth set to the eventual champion Jan Kodes and later that summer at the U.S. Open lost to tennis great Ken Rosewall after having beaten another legend, Rod Laver, two rounds earlier.
Amritraj repeated his feat at Forest Hills in 1974 when he went out in the last eight again to Rosewall after beating a young Björn Borg in the second round. In the years that followed he reached the latter stages of numerous Grand Prix events but failed to meet with success in the grand slams. It would not be again until 1981 when Amritraj would again proceed to the quarter-finals, going out in five sets to Jimmy Connors. This match typified Amritraj's tennis. He was a natural grass-court player who liked to chip-and-charge, and serve-and-volley. He could compete against the world's best but often would lose longer matches through a lack of stamina. Against Connors he was up two sets but lost the last two convincingly in a 6-2, 7-5, 4-6, 3-6, 2-6 loss. A similar Wimbledon result occurred in 1979 in the 2nd round where he looked set to defeat defending champion Borg, up two sets to one and 4-1 in the 4th set, only to lose 6-2, 4-6, 6-4, 6-7, 2-6.
Amritraj was the captain of the Indian Davis Cup for much of the late 1970's and 1980's, helping India reach the finals in 1974 and 1987. It was here that he revelled as a champion and chalked memorable wins against higher ranked players. A do-or-die five set epic over Martin Jaite was the highlight of India's run to the final in 1987. He compiled a career singles win-lose record 384-296, winning 16 singles titles to go along with 13 in doubles. He beat the best, including John McEnroe at his peak in 1984 (in the first round in Cincinnati) and had five career wins over Connors in their 11 matches. He reached his career high ranking in singles of World No. 16 in July, 1980.
Vijay also had a brief acting career, appearing with Roger Moore in the James Bond film, Octopussy as Vijay and in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. He has since gone on to become a sports commentator, has been a judge at the Miss Universe pageant, and has developed a successful multimedia business.
Both his son Prakash Amritraj and nephew, Stephen Amritraj are professional tennis players.
In 2006, after completing his assignment as a "United Nations Messenger of Peace," Mr. Vijay Amritraj founded "The Vijay Amritraj Foundation." The foundation's mission is to bring hope, help and healing to the defenseless and innocent victims of disease, tragedy and circumstance in India. Driven by a firm belief that "in giving we receive," the foundation pledges to make a real difference for those who are most in need of the helping hand of humanity. After an extraordinarily successful debut in 2006, the Foundation raised enough funds to immediately begin supporting various Charitable Organizations in India. Over the next decade, the Foundation aims to have a meaningful presence in all the states of the Indian Union, and to make a positive difference in the lives of the less fortunate citizens of these states. Today, many noteworthy persons are associated with the Foundation, including World Leaders, Statesmen, Business Leaders, and Philanthropists; among them, George H.W. Bush -Former President of the United States, Mr. Reddy S. Jay Reddy - Chairman & CEO of The CORBISCO Group, Mr. Sashi Tharoor - Former Under Secretary General of the United Nations, and General the Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank - Chief of the Defence Staff of the United Kingdom during the Blair Administration. The Foundation conducts a highly successful Golf Tournament every year, followed by a gala dinner event in Beverly Hills, California.

2007-11-18T08:40:00.001-08:00

The term prince, from the Latin root princeps, is used for a member of the highest ranks of the aristocracy or the nobility.
The title is given only to males and has several fundamentally different meanings, of which one is generic to the word, and several types of titles. The female equivalent is a princess.

Historical background
The original, but least common use of the title, is as a generic term (descriptive, not formal), one originating in the application of the Latin word princeps, from Roman, more precisely Byzantine law and the classical system of government that was the European feudal society. I.e. the emperor, or generalized the ruler. In this sense, it can in principle be used for any reigning monarch, hereditary or elective, regardless of his title and protocolary rank.
Example: The early Renaissance title of Niccolò Machiavelli's book Il Principe attests and exemplifies the use of the word prince in this meaning, as a sovereign ruler of a society.
The word prince did not come into official, or formalized, use in Europe until quite late, i.e some three-to-four centuries ago. All medieval rulers had other, particular or more formalized titles in use, either in their native language or in Latin.
All findings of the title prince used for a lord of a territory before the 13th century are either translations of native titles to Latin or the term used in a more general sense than as the formal only title of the potentate in question.
Most of the medieval feudal magnates that now or then are accorded the prince title, have actually formally then been Lord of an estate that is defined as a principality. Almost all lands described as medieval principalities in feudal societies, have been so-called allodial properties, i.e not under feudal obligations but inalienably the landowner's inheritable real-estate.
This explanation for origins of French principalities has been supplied by heraldic and genealogical research [1]. An example of this has been the title of Prince of Dombes. Such principalities tended to be small. Presumably, Monaco is an example of such a principality that has survived to today, by existing as a sovereign state.
The use of the term prince was then more like a common title given to different kinds of official titles for different kinds of feudal territories. All local rulers of feudal societies, from the level of count upwards, were regarded as princes in this sense. This is attested by even today, surviving styles for e.g counts, margraves and dukes that are high and noble princes (cf. Royal and noble styles).
From 16th century onwards, European monarchs quite widely granted such abstract titles that were not linked to the power of government of an actual county or territory. This led to official recognition that ancient dynasties of the Holy Roman Empire were much more true rulers, reigning lords, than the new class of persons being holder of equivalent title of honour.
After the general term "prince" was recognized, the practice of adding a prefix title began. This tradition stems from the creation of nobilary titles in the Holy Roman Empire, where noble families began using prefix titles as a means to distinguish their older, territory-linked titles from merely honorific ones. For example, the German title of gefürsteter Graf (princely count) is known to have existed in the 18th century and possibly may have existed even earlier. It is important to keep in mind, however, that these prefix titles were not new grants, but rather an explication of existing positions and status by the use of new terminology. Princely counts (including the various gefürstete margraves, landgraves, counts palatine, etc.) soon started to use the title Fürst (prince) more than they used the less impressive-sounding "count". Consequently, with the advent of the title "Fürst", a new class of nobility was created whose status clearly ranked above that of those newly created counts and marquesses, but ranked just under the title of duke. The rank of "duke" was not similarly augmented; it had not suffered any lessening of prestige, as the title was not given in bulk. In the 19th century, however, dukes holding, or in direct line of succession to autocratic power, tended to assume the title archduke or grand duke to further distinguish themselves from mere dukes.
The following parts of this article are only concerned with the usages as a formal nobiliary (or analogous) title.

Prince as a generic word for ruler

Prince as a courtesy title
The courtesy title of prince was often given to a prince of the blood. That is a general term for a male member of a ruling house of a monarchy. Further distinctions within this category can exist from country to country and from time period to time period, e.g. First Prince of the Blood in France.
In some monarchies, e.g. the kingdom of France, this appellation is a specific title in its own right, of more restricted use. There the notion of prince du sang is restricted to paternal royal descendants. Depending on national tradition, the appellation may have restricted scope or not, often no further than one or two generations after the monarch and / or the line of succession, or it may be allowed to run into very high numbers, as is often the case in oriental dynasties.
Generally, when such a prince succeeds to the throne as ruling or least titular monarch, he stops being styled a titular prince. This goes for Kings, Emperors, Grand Dukes or one of many other ruler-styles, usually of higher rank, except in the case of a ruler styled prince of a particular principality (see below). The same principle applies, mutatis mutandis when a courtesy princess becomes a queen regnant.
The female equivalent of a courtesy title of prince is princess. But then this title is also generally used for the spouse of any prince, of the blood, or of a principality, and also the daughter of any monarch. Regardless of birth rank, marriage to a prince(ss) generally means accession to the ruling house, but often the princely style is subject to an explicit conferral by the Monarch or a political authority with in say in the succession, e.g. certain parliaments, which may be delayed, withheld or even reversed. Inversely, the husband of a born princess is in many monarchies not as readily styled prince, although it certainly occasionally happened.
In these systems, a courtesy title of prince can be given to:
But in cultures which allow the ruler to have several wives, e.g. four in Islam and / or official concubines, for these women sometimes collectively referred to as harem there are often specific rules determining their hierarchy and a variety of titles, which may distinguish between those whose offspring can be in line for the succeesion or not, or specifically who is mother to the heir to the throne.
To complicate matters, the style His Royal Highness, a prefix normally accompanying the title of a dynastic prince, of royal or imperial rank, that is, can be awarded separately (as a compromise or consolation prize, in some sense).
Although the definition above is the one that is most commonly understood, there are also different systems. Depending on country, epoch and translation other meanings of prince are possible.
Over the centuries foreign-language titles such as Italian principe, French prince, German Fürst, Russian kniaz, etc., are often translated as prince in English.
Many princely styles and titles are used in various monarchies, often changing with a new dynasty, even altered during one's rule, especially in conjunction with the style of the ruler. Indeed, various princely titles are derived from the ruler's, such as (e)mirza(da), khanzada, nawabzada, sahibzada, shahzada, sultanzada (all using the Persian patronymic suffix -zada, or son, descendant, or (maha)rajkumar from (Maha)Raja and Kolano ma-ngofa 'son of the ruler' on Tidore, again patronymic; or even from a unique title, e.g. mehtarjao.
However, often such style is used in a way that may surprise as not apparently logical, such as adopting a style for princes of the blood which is not pegged to the ruler's title, but rather continues an old tradition, asserts genealogical descendency from and / or claim of political succession to a more lofty monarchy, or simply is assumed 'because we can'.

The son of a monarch in the direct line of succession.
Other members of the royal family, also in the order of succession, although more distant and styled Royal Highness.
The husband of a reigning queen is usually titled prince or prince consort. However for wives of Monarchs, the title is usually a female variation on his, the same as used in case a female can mount the throne, such as queen or empress. Prince of the blood
In some monarchic dynasties, a very specific title is used, sometimes officially, such as Infante in Spain and Portugal.
This can be a style in existence for a princely - at least originally - feudal entity, possibly still nominally linked to one, Archduke in the Habsburg empire, Grand Prince (often rendered, less correctly, as Grand Duke) in tsarist Russia. See also Porphyrogenetos.
Other titles are unique to one dynasty, even though the ruler's title is not, such as Moulay (French form; also Mulay in English) in the Sherifian sultanate (now kingdom ruled by a Malik) of Morocco,
On the other hand, an existing style can be used without retaining any of its intrinsic qualities, e.g. Sultan for ordinary members of the Ottoman dynasty (ruler mainly styled Padishah)
Yet a style can be reserved for members of the dynasty meeting specific criteria, e.g. French Emperor Napoléon I Bonaparte created the style Prince français ('French prince') for the princes of his house in line for the imperial succession, which excluded notable his adoptive stepson Eugène de Beauharnais, who meanwhile was Prince de Venise in chief of Napoleon's other realm, Italy.
Sometimes a specific title is commonly used by various dynasties in a region, e.g. Mian in various of the Punjabi princely Hill States (lower Himalayan region in British India)
Some monarchies also commonly awarded some of their princes of the blood various lofty titles, some of which were reserved for royalty, other also open to the most trusted commoners and/or the highest nobility, as in the Byzantine empire (e.g. Protosebastos reserved).
Independently of such traditions, some dynasties more or less frequently awarded apanages to princes of the blood, typically carrying a feudal type title (often as such of lower protocollary rank than their birth rank) and some income.

For the often specific terminology concerning a probable future successor, see Crown Prince and links there.

Confusingly, there are instances where a title suggests close kinship but actually only expresses a similar position in the line of succession, e.g. Filius Augusti 'son of the Augustus' in the Roman Tetrarchy. Furthermore, terms of kinship are sometimes used as a protocollary style, even for biologically unrelated digitaries, not unlike the practice of members of the clergy being addressed as 'father' and addressing laymen as 'my son/daughter', or even several ecclesiastical titles originally meaning father (notably Pope, Abbot, partially Patriarch) or brother (e.g. Fra).

For the often specific terminology concerning a probable future successor, see Crown Prince and links there. Specific titles
Other princes derive their title not from their heraditory or dynastic position as such, but from their claim to a unique and personal title of formal princely rank, one named after a specific and historical principality, but not connected to any practical claim as sovereign of a state, even if they belong to one.

Prince as a substantive title
A prince or princess who is the head of state of a territory that has a monarchy as a form of government is a reigning prince.

Prince as a reigning monarch
If the state that is governed by such a prince carries no other specific, formal name, their domain, typically smaller than a full sized kingdom, is called a principality. This can be a regular, independant and sovereign nation. Protocolary, these princes rank below a grand duke.
Currently the last sovereign cases, all tiny states in Europe, are:
Coat of arms of the principality of Andorra (1607).
Coat of arms of the principality of Liechtenstein (1719).
Coat of arms of the principality of Monaco (1861).
Coat of arms of the prince-bishopric of Rome (1927).
In the same tradition some self-proclaimed monarchs of so-called micronations establish themselves as virtual princes:

the principality of Liechtenstein (between Austria and Switzerland) : H.S.H. Hans-Adam II von und zu Liechtenstein, Sovereign Prince of Liechtenstein
the principality of Monaco (enclave in France) : H.S.H. Albert II of Grimaldi, Sovereign Prince of Monaco
the co-principality of Andorra (between Spain and France) : The President of France, Co-Prince of Andorra and H.E. Joan Enric Vives Sicília, Co-Prince of Andorra
the prince-bishopric of Rome (enclave in Italy) : H.H. Pope Benedict XVI, Prince-Bishop of Rome
Roy Bates calls himself Prince Roy of the Principality of Sealand Nominal principalities
The term prince has also been used to describe, in languages like English for lack of a more specific word for this concept, the head of any feudal or vassal state of lower — generally peerage — rank ruling in his own right, not in a mere gubernatorial capacity. For example, it has been used as a synonym for duke or count at times.
In German, such a prince is specifically called Fürst (capitals obligatory for German nouns), and there are equivalents in most languages and countries that know the tradition of the Holy Roman Empire and where this was called Kleinstaaterei. The title was used for the head of state, and the title of Prinz was used for cadet members of reigning royal or princely families, and also for the cadets of some mediatized families, and did not imply any sovereignty whatsoever.
The female equivalents are Fürstin and Prinzessin.

Generic use
Various monarchies provide for different modes in which princes of the dynasty can temporarily or permanently share in the style and / or office of the Monarch, e.g. as Regent or Viceroy.
Tthough these offices must not be reserved for members of the ruling dynasty, in some traditions they are, possibly even reflected in the style of the office, e.g. prince-lieutenant in Luxembourg repeatedly filled by the Crown prince before the grand duke's abdication, or in form of consortium imperii.
Some monarchies even have a practice in which the Monarch can formally abdicate in favor of his heir, and yet retain a kingly title with executive power, e.g. Maha Upayuvaraja (Sanskrit for Great Joint King in Cambodia), though sometimes also conferred on powerful regents who exercised executive powers.

Princes as representants of a reigning monarch

Titular princes
One type of prince belongs in both the genealogical royalty and the territorial princely styles. A number of nobiliary territories, carrying with them the formal style of prince, are not or no longer actual political, administrative, principalities, but are maintained as essentially honorary titles and are awarded traditionally or occasionally) to princes of the blood, as an appanage.
This is done in particular for the heir to the throne, creating a de facto primogeniture, who is often awarded a particular principality in each generation, so that it becomes synonymous with the first in line for the throne, even if there is no automatic legal mechanism to do so.
Examples of such titles are:
Some states have an analogous tradition, where they confer another princely title, such as the British royal duchies to various other royal princes, and (again, through de facto primogeniture).
Both systems may concur, as in Belgium, where Prince of Liège is one of the traditional titles for royal sons, alongside the title of Duke of Brabant, the highest title, being handed down through primogeniture if it is not yet taken. The title of Count of Flanders is similarly used for the next in the succession order.

The Crown Prince of the United Kingdom of Great-Britain and Northern Ireland: Prince of Wales (Charles, Prince of Wales)
The Crown Prince of the kingdom of the Netherlands: Prins van Oranje (Willem Alexander, Prince of Orange)
The Crown Prince of the kingdom of Spain: Principe de Asturias (Felipe, Prince of Asturias)
The Crown Prince of the kingdom of France: Dauphin de Viennois, then Dauphin de France Titular Princes from within the royal family
France and the Holy Roman Empire
In several countries of the European continent, e.g. in France, prince can be an aristocratic title of someone having a high rank of nobility in chief of a geographical place, but no actual territory, and without any necessary link to the royal family, which makes comparing it with e.g. the British system of royal princes difficult.
In France, prince was both a rank and a title. The rank was given to some great families related to foreign sovereign dynasties. It was called prince étranger (Foreign Prince) and carried special precedence at the court. Families of prince étranger rank were those of Lorraine, Cleves, Savoy, La Tour d'Auvergne and Rohan. The Foreign princes often had others ranks such as duke. When not a duke, a Foreign Prince could style himself prince of a fiefdom he held.
The kings of France started to bestow the aristocracy with princely titles from 16th century onwards. These titles were made by elevating a fiefdom to principalty status. This title had no place in the ranks of the nobility, but was notably use for dukes' heir apparent.
This can even occur in a monarchy within which an identical but real and substantive feudal title exists, such as Fürst in German. An example of this is:
Spain and France
In other cases, such titular princedoms are created in chief of an event, such as a treaty of a victory. An example of this is:
Poland and Russia
In Poland specifically, the titles of prince dated either to the times before the Union of Lublin or were granted to Polish nobles by foreign kings, as the law in Poland forbade king from dividing nobility by granting them hereditary titles. For more information, see The Princely Houses of Poland.
In the Russian system, knyaz, translated as prince, is the highest degree of nobility, and sometimes, represents a mediatization of an older native dynasty which became subject to the Russian imperial dynasty. Rurikid branches used the knyaz title also after they were succeeded by the Romanovs as the Russian imperial dynasty. An example of this is:

Prince de Mercœur of the House of Lorraine
Prince de Turenne of the House of La Tour d'Auvergne
Prince de Marcillac : heir of the duke de La Rochefoucauld
Prince de Tingry : heir to the duke de Piney-Luxembourg
Prince de Lamballe : heir of the duke de Penthièvre
Otto von Bismarck was called Prince of Bismarck in the empire of reunited Germany, under the Hohenzollern dynasty.
The Spanish minister Manuel Godoy was created Principe de la Paz or Prince of Peace by his king for negotiating the 1795 double peace-treaty of Basilea, by which the revolutionary French republic made peace with Prussia and with Spain.
The triumphant generals who led their troops to victory received a so called victory title. Especially Napoleon I Bonaparte created many such titles, also dukedoms.
King William I of the Netherlands bestowed the victory title of prince of Waterloo upon Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington after his victory over Napoleon I Bonaparte at Waterloo in 1815.
Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin who was made Prince Potemkin Titular Princes from outside the royal family
In each case, the title is followed (when available) by the female form and then (not always available, and obviously rarely applicable to a prince of the blood without a principality) the name of the territorial associated with it, each separated by a slash. If a second title (or set) is also given, then that one is for a Prince of the blood, the first for a principality. Be aware that the absence of a separate title for a prince of the blood may not always mean no such title exists; alternatively, the existence of a word does not imply there is also a reality in the linguistic territory concerned; it may very well be used exclusively to render titles in other languages, regardless whether there is a historical link with any (which often means that linguistic tradition is adopted)
Etymologically, we can discern the following traditions (some languages followed a historical link, e.g. within the Holy Roman Empire, not their linguistic family; some even fail to follow the same logic for certain other aristocratic titles):

Romanic languages

Breton: Priñs /Priñsez
Irish: Prionsa /Banphrionsa - Flaith /Banfhlaith
Scottish Gaelic: Prionnsa /Bana-phrionnsa - Flath /Ban-fhlath
Welsh: Twysog /Twysoges Celtic languages

Languages (mainly Germanic) that use (generally alongside a princeps-derivate for princes of the blood) an equivalent of the German Fürst:
- Danish: Fyrste /Fyrstinde - Prins /Prinsesse
  Dutch: Vorst /Vorstin- Prins /Prinses
  Estonian [Finno-Ugric family]: Vürst /Vürstinna - Prints /Printsess
  German: Fürst /Fürstin - Prinz /Prinzessin
  Icelandic: Fursti /Furstynja - Prins /Prinsessa
  Luxembourgish: Fürst /Fürstin - Prënz /Prinzessin
  Old English: Ǣðeling /Hlæfdiġe
  Norwegian: Fyrste /Fyrstinne - Prins /Prinsesse
  Swedish: Furste /Furstinna - Prins /Prinsessa Germanic languages
  
  Slavic and (related) Baltic languages:
  - Belarusian: Tsarevich, Karalevich, Prynts /Tsarewna, Karalewna, Pryntsesa
    Bulgarian: Knyaz /Knaginya, Tsarevich, Kralevich, Prints /Printsesa
    Croatian, Serbian: Knez /Kneginja Kraljević/Kraljevna, Princ/Princeza
    Czech: Kníže /Kněžna, Princ/Princezna
    Latvian: Firsts /Firstiene - Princis /Princese
    Lithuanian: Kunigaikštis /Kunigaikštiene - Princas /Princese
    F.Y.R.O.M.: Knez /Knezhina, Tsarevich, Kralevich, Prints /Tsarevna, Kralevna, Printsesa
    Polish: Książę /Księżna, Książę, Królewicz /Księżna, Królewna
    Russian: Knyaz /Knyagina Knyazhnya, Tsarevich, Korolyevich, Prints /Tsarevna, Korolyevna, Printsessa
    Slovak: Knieža /Kňažná, Kráľovič, Princ /Princezná
    Slovene: Knez /Kneginja, Kraljevič, Princ /Kraljična, Princesa
    Ukrainian: Knyaz /Knyazhnya, Tsarenko, Korolenko, Prints /Tsarivna, Korolivna, Printsizna Slavic and Baltic languages
    
    other languages:
    - Finnish: Ruhtinas /Ruhtinatar - Prinssi /Prinsessa
      Greek (Medieval, formal): Prigkips, Πρίγκηψ/Prigkipissa, Πριγκήπισσα
      Greek (Modern, colloquial): Prigkipas, Πρίγκηπας/Prigkipissa, Πριγκήπισσα
      Hungarian (Magyar): Herceg / Hercegnő
      Turkish: Prens/Prenses Other languages
      The above is essentially the story of European, Christian dynasties and other nobility, also 'exported' to their colonial and other overseas territories and otherwise adopted by rather westernized societies elsewhere (e.g. Haiti).
      Applying these essentially western concepts, and terminology, to other cultures even when they don't do so, is common but in many respects rather dubious. Different (historical, religious...) backgrounds have also begot significantly different dynastic and nobiliary systems, which are poorly represented by the 'closest' western analogy.
      It therefore makes sense to treat these per civilization.
      
      The title of prince in various Oriental and other traditions and languages
      
      Arabian tradition since the caliphate - in several monarchies it remains customary to use the title Sheikh (in itself below princely rank) for all members of the royal family. In families (often reigning dynasties) which claim descent from Muhammad, this is expressed in either of a number of titles (supposing different exact relations): sayid, sharif; these are retained even when too remote from any line of succession to be a member of any dynasty.
      Malay countries
      In the Ottoman empire, the sovereign of imperial rank (incorrectly known in the west as (Great) sultan) was styled padishah with a host of additional titles, reflecting his claim as political successor to the various conquered states. Princes of the blood, male and female, were given the style sultan (normally reserved for Muslim rulers)
      Persia (Iran) - Princes were referred to by the title Shahzadeh, meaning "descendant of the king". Since the word zadeh could refer to either a male or female descendant, Shahzadeh had the parallel meaning of "princess" as well. Islamic traditions
      In ancient China, the title of prince developed from being the highest title of nobility (synonymous with duke) in the Zhou Dynasty, to five grades of princes (not counting the sons and grandsons of the emperor) by the time of the fall of the Qing Dynasty.
      In Japan, the title of prince (kôshaku 公爵) was used as the highest title of kazoku (華族 Japanese modern nobility) before the present constitution. The title kôshaku, however, is more commonly translated as duke to avoid confusion with the royal ranks in the imperial household, shinnô (親王 (literally king of the blood) female;naishinnô (内親王 (literally queen(by herself) of the blood) and shinnôhi 親王妃 (literally consort of king of the blood)) or ô (王 (literally king) female;nyoô (女王 (literally queen (by herself)) and ôhi (王妃 (literally consort of king)). The former is the higher title of a male member of the Imperial family and the latter is the lower.
      
      China
      Japan
      Korea
      See princely states for the (often particular, mainly Hindu) title on the Indian subcontinent in (former British) India (including modern Pakistan and Bangladesh) as well as Burma and Nepal.
      Indochina: Cambodja, Vietnam, Laos
      Thailand
      Philippines (Principalia) Far Eastern traditions
      Except for the Arabized, Muslim North and some other monarchies that simply adopted Islamic practices, or in cases where a Western model was copied (e.g. Bokassa I's short-lived Central-African Empire in Napoleonic fashion), usually the styles, or even the systems, are completely independent or almost.
      
      The title of prince in religion
      
      Heir apparent and Heir presumptive
      Prince-elector and Prince Regent
      Prince consort and Princess consort
      King consort and Queen consort
      King regnant and Queen regnant
      Crown Prince, Grand Prince and Infante
      First Prince of the Blood
      Fils de France and Petit-Fils de France
      Monsieur and Madame Royale
      Prince of the Church and Cardinal
      Prince-Archbishop, Prince-Bishop and Prince-abbot
      Principality and Princely state
      Auctoritas, Dominate, Potestas and Imperium
      Fürst
      List of British princes and List of British princesses
      Grand Duchy, Grand duke and Grand duchess
      Nobility, Royalty and Royal and noble ranks

2007-11-17T10:01:00.001-08:00

"Hunger circus" (Romanian: Circ al foamei) was a colloquial name for any in a series of identical buildings which were to be completed as part of Nicolae Ceauşescu's program of systematization during his period as ruler of Romania. Officially designated by the communist regime as "agro-alimentary complexes", the large domed buildings were intended as produce markets and public refectories. It appears to have been Ceauşescu's vision that they would serve as food hypermarkets, eliminating the need for selling or distributing food anywhere else.
The name "hunger circuses," now so universally used as to have almost suppressed the memory of the official communist-era term, derived from the circus-like domed architecture and the irony of constructing these massive food-related buildings during a period when food was scarce throughout Romania (due to Ceauşescu's policy of exporting most of Romania's agricultural produce in order to pay off the foreign debt). The irony was reinforced by the connotation of "circus" as ridiculous farce.
At the time of Ceauşescu's downfall and execution, only two hunger circuses had been completed: one of these, Pantelimon, now forms part of a public market in the Delfinului area of Bucharest; the other, also in Bucharest, is placed close to the Unirea shopping mall, nestled between Piaţa Unirii and Sfânta Vineri Street. Several others stood half-finished in scattered locations around Bucharest, surrounded by rusting construction cranes and vacant lots.
With transcendent irony, the hunger circuses left unfinished after the 1989 Revolution were later completed, under a revised architectural plan, as eminently capitalist malls such as Bucharest Mall, City Mall and Plaza România. The hunger circus in Rahova was demolished in November 2006 to make room for a new mall. Another hunger circus was transformed into a private university.

2007-11-16T07:28:00.001-08:00

For almost a century, governments in the United Kingdom have attempted to find a way to undertake a comprehensive reform of the House of Lords, which is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. When the Labour Party came to power in the 1997 general election, it had in its manifesto the promise to reform the House of Lords:
In 2001 the government undertook a public consultation. This helped to create an unprecedented public debate on the issue of Lords reform, with 1101 consultation responses and numerous debates in Parliament and the media. Despite this huge level of interest in the issue, and a second public consultation, no consensus on the way forward has yet emerged.

History of reform
For details see: Lords Reform - History

Reform before 1997
Originally, the two Houses of Parliament had equal legislative powers. The agreement of both was necessary before a bill could be submitted to the Monarch for royal assent, which if granted made the bill an Act of Parliament. After the English Restoration, a constitutional convention arose that the House of Lords would defer to the House of Commons on measures to raise and spend money. The Parliament Act 1911 divided Bills into three classes.
Together with the Parliament Act 1949, these two acts enable the Commons (in exceptional circumstance) to pass legislation without approval from the Lords but subject to certain time delays. In effect, they give the House of Lords the power to delay legislation but not to prevent it. Since 1911 there have been various attempts to reform the Lords, but none tackled the powers of the House except the Parliament Act 1949 which reduced the suspensory veto to two sessions and one year. By the time of the 1997 general election there was still no consensus on comprehensive reform of the upper chamber of Parliaments.

Money bills which, failing consent from the Lords within one month, could receive royal assent without it.
Other bills on which the House of Lords could exercise a suspensory veto.
On any bill extending the maximum term of the House of Commons beyond five years, the House of Lords retained equal legislative powers. Powers as of 1997 Election
In 1999, the Government completed a deal with the Lords to remove most of the hereditary Peers and passed the House of Lords Act 1999 leaving amongst the majority of appointed Peers a rump of 92 Hereditary Peers until the second phase of reform was complete. These 92 were elected from within those who had had a right to be members of the House of Lords as a result of their hereditary status. This arrangement was intended to be purely temporary until "the second stage of reform was completed". This led to some claims (perhaps not all serious) that the elected Hereditary Lords were the only democratic members of the House.

Reform process since 1997
In 1999 a Royal Commission was appointed, under Baron Wakeham, to examine proposals for Lords Reform and make recommendations. It published its report (See Wakeham Report But in a written reply on 6 March the Government stated there was little prospect of a Joint Committee being established in the present Parliament due to a failure of cross-party discussions. On 26 April 2001 the Queen confirmed her intention to create 15 new non party-political members of the House of Lords termed "People's Peers". In the May 2001 general election, all three main parties included statements on House of Lords reform in their manifestos.

It should have around 550 members of which 67, 87 or 195 should be elected.
There should be an independent Appointments Commission responsible for all appointments.
The new second chamber should have the capacity to offer counsel from a range of sources. It should be broadly representative of society in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 21st century. It should work with the House of Commons to provide an effective check upon the Government. It should give the United Kingdom's constituent nations and regions, for the first time, a formally constituted voice in the Westminster Parliament.
The Commons should be the principal political forum, should have the final say in respect of all major public policy issues, including those expressed in the form of proposed legislation. The second chamber should have sufficient power, and the associated authority, to require the Government and the House of Commons to reconsider proposed legislation and take account of any cogent objections to it.
The House of Lords should contain a substantial proportion of people who are not professional politicians, who have continuing experience in a range of different walks of life and who can bring a broad range of expertise to bear on issues of public concern. and representation of the reformed second chamber should match that of the country as expressed in votes cast at the most recent general election but it should not be capable of being dominated by any one political party and continue to include people who can help it to maintain a philosophical, moral or spiritual perspective on public policy issues.
Possession of a peerage should no longer be a necessary qualification for membership
Provisions should be in place to permit ministers to be drawn from the Upper House
The upper House should ensure changes to constitution are not made without full and open debate and that there is increased scrutiny of secondary legislation
The commission could not recommend: a wholly or largely directly elected second chamber; indirect election from the devolved institutions (or local government electoral colleges) or from among British MEPs; random selection, or co-option. Royal Commission
On 7 November 2001, the government launched a white paper and consultation stating:
In the white paper, although the government said it "strongly endorsed" the Royal Commission's views, it listed its own proposals:

The remaining 92 Hereditary Peers were to be removed, the number capped after 10 years at 600 and 120 members to be elected to represent the nations and the regions.
It was to include a significant minority of independent members; Its political membership should be broadly representative of the main parties' relative voting strengths as reflected in the previous General Election; Membership was to be separated from the peerage which would continue as a honour; There should be increased representation of women and those from ethnic minority backgrounds;No group in society should in future have privileged hereditary access to the House; *The House of Lords would remain subject to the pre-eminence of the House of Commons in discharging its functions; Its principal function should continue to be to consider and revise legislation; to scrutinise the executive; and to debate and report on public issues;
The statutory Appointments Commission would manage the balance and size of the House appoint the independent members, and to assure the integrity of those nominated by political parties.
The overall balance between, elected, nominated and ex officio members, and the balance between political and independent members;
Whether elections to the Lords should be linked to General Elections, those for the European Parliament, or over time linked to those from devolved and regional bodies within the UK;
The length of term for elected members;
The term of appointment;
What grounds should lead to statutory expulsion from the House;
Should there be a change from an expenses-based system of remuneration. White paper and first consultation
On 11 December 2002 the Joint Committee published its first report On 4 February 2003, the Commons and House of Lords voted on the seven options proposed by the joint committee and the Commons also voted on an amendment to abolish the upper House completely:
After this series of votes where the Commons failed to back a single option and the Lords only a fully appointed House, Robin Cook the leader of the Commons said:
With widely differing views in the Joint Committee, its report on 9 May 2003 effectively passed the initiative back to the Government. But nine members of the Joint Committee issued a statement coinciding with the publication which stated:
Creation of Department for Constitutional Affairs In June 2003, Tony Blair announced the creation of a new department to oversee constitutional change with Lord Falconer as its first Secretary of State. The department was tasked with:
When in 2003 Lord Falconer signalled the governments preference for an all appointed House of Lords, three members of the Liberal Democrats issued a statement:
Ministers responded saying

Establishment of an independent Judicial Appointments Commission.
Creation of a new Supreme Court to replace the existing system of Law Lords operating as a committee of the House of Lords.
Reform of the Speakership of the House of Lords.
New arrangements for the conduct of Scottish and Welsh business. Votes of February 2003
In September 2003, the Department of Constitutional Affairs issued Constitutional Reform: Next Steps for the House of Lords, which gave as its main proposals:
The paper also started a second consultation, on the Appointments Commission for the House of Lords requesting submissions on how the Appointments Commission itself would be appointed, even though no other alternatives to an appointed Commission had been considered. Reaction to the paper was hostile: for example, Lord Goodhart, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on Constitutional Affairs, said "the overwhelming reaction I have is a feeling of contempt and betrayal." that the government would not proceed with legislation to enact the proposals in the consultation. Although this suggested a lack of support for their proposals from the consultation, when the statistical analysis was published on 22 April 2004 the report stated that on the main issue (2a):
With such an apparently high level of support, it is unclear why the government choose not to proceed. The only insight available is unofficial reports putting the actual level of support at closer to third.
Moreover, as the government published most of the responses to both consultations, it is possible to see that many of these responses were highly critical of both the Government's proposal and the consultation process; some even went on to complain that the UK government breached its own code of conduct for consultations by failing to mention many of the new ideas arising from both consultations.
In the 2005 general election, all three parties included statements on reform of the House of Lords in their manifestos with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats promising "substantially"/"predominantly" elected Chambers. In December 2005, the Constitution Unit, part of the University College of London's School of Public Policy, released research findings showing "surprising levels of support from MPs and the public for the Lords to vote down government proposals":

A fully Appointed House of Lords
Removal of the remaining 92 Hereditary Peers
Establishment of a statutory independent Appointments Commission accountable to Parliament which would determine numbers and timings of appointments, select independent members of the House to oversee party nominations 2006 discussions
On 22 January 2007 the Power Inquiry launched a campaign for greater citizen involvement and provided statistics showing that 68% of the public felt a jury of the general public should decide "the future of the House of Lords," 17% thought elected politicians should decide and 9% appointed Civil servants.

Public opinion
On 8 February 2007, the Government published a new white paper Using the Alternative Vote for legislative proposals would have been a precedent for the UK Parliament. Resistance by Members on all sides of the House of Commons caused Leader of the House of Commons Jack Straw to drop this proposal on 19 February. The free vote was therefore held under traditional Parliamentary procedures.

2007 white paper
In March 2007 the Houses of Commons and Lords debated the proposals in the 2007 white paper and voted on a similar series of motions to those voted on in 2003. Unexpectedly, the House of Commons voted by a large majority for an all-elected Upper House. One week later, the House of Lords retorted by voting for an all-appointed House by a larger majority.
After the Commons vote, it turned out that some MPs supporting a fully appointed House had voted tactically for a fully elected House as the option likely to be least acceptable to the House of Lords. This called into question the significance of the larger majority achieved for 100% elected than that achieved for 80% elected. However, examination of the names of MPs voting at each division in the Commons shows that, of the 305 who voted for the 80% elected option, 211 went on to vote for the 100% elected option. Given that this vote took place after the vote on 80% – whose result was already known when the vote on 100% took place – this shows a clear preference in the Commons for a fully elected Upper House over the only other option that passed, since any MP who favoured 80% over 100% would have voted against the latter motion, having already secured their preferred outcome (76 MPs – including Jack Straw, his shadow Theresa May and Opposition Leader David Cameron – did exactly that). Had all the votes been held in the contrary order, those 211 would have voted against the 80% motion, which would consequently have fallen.
There was strong opinion about the votes. Lord McNally, the Liberal Democrat leader in the Lords said the Lords decision:
Prior to the debate Lord Lipsey, former Economics Editor of the Sunday Times, estimated the cost of the plans in the white paper at £1.092 billion over a 15 year term, :

End the by-elections for hereditary peers and turn the remaining ones into de facto life peers and finally end hereditary entry into our Upper House.
Create a Statutory Appointments Commission to replace Prime Ministerial patronage for new peers.
Authorise the government to proceed with a retirement package which should reduce the average age and decrease the present House of 740 by possibly 200.
Enable peerages to be removed from those guilty of serious offences on the same basis as the Commons. Votes of March 2007
On 19 July 2007 Jack Straw in his new position of Justice Secretary in the cabinet of Gordon Brown announced that "The Government is determined to proceed with this programme of reform with a view to its completion." . Jack Straw also stated that the powers of the chamber, the method of election, financial packages and the number of members will (yet again) be discussed by a cross-party working group. The opposition's response was to suggest that: "the real message in your statement today that Lords reform is on ice until after the next election".

The Brown Premiership
"Central to the future House of Lords is its composition. For the Lords to act with legitimacy as an effective and balanced second chamber, it must have the right form to deliver the range of roles and functions it needs". With 1101 submissions to the first consultation, several hundred to the second and many articles in the newspapers and various discussions, there were many different views on reform of the House of Lords. It is only possible to give a broad outline of the many different proposals and even then only those where the proposals were mentioned by a number of respondents.
Proposals are listed alphabetically

The range of options
Many legislatures, such as the parliaments of Sweden, Denmark and New Zealand (and within the UK, the Scottish Parliament) are unicameral, and do not have an upper house. Instead, scrutiny is carried out by parliamentary committees. A substantial minority of MPs voted for the outright abolition of the upper house in 2003, and it was Labour party policy until the late 1980s.
During the 2007 debates in the Lords, it was suggested by one Lord that the then relative strength of the Commons was close to a unicameral system.

Abolition
There was a considerable number of proposals in the consultation for an Upper House chosen by allotment (selection by lot). Proposals varied from a House chosen completely at random from the whole electorate to those where allotment was applied to smaller groups such as those volunteering or those selected in another way. Most proposals referred to the allotment of the governing juries in the original democracy in Ancient Greece, where selection by lot was considered to be more democratic than election:
However, at present within the UK, this form of selection is mainly restricted to the allotment of jurors. Opposition is based either on the practical need for some expertise amongst members of the upper chamber or on a belief that "Democracy means an elected second chamber".

Allotment/sortition
The reason that the UK almost uniquely (except the Canadian Senate) still retained an appointed House of Lords in 1997 was that, it was widely accepted that it worked effectively. In particular the large number of cross bench peers would be impossible to achieve in most electoral systems.
Those supporting a fully appointed House, reject the idea of a composite partly elected, party appointed House:
The main issues are:

Achieving a range of representation, bringing in those with skills and experience, allowing ex officio members and ensuring a continuity of membership
Maintaining the status and independence of the Lords without endangering the supremacy of the Commons
Maintaining the low cost of the present House
Preventing the possibility of a constitutional clash between appointed and elected members Appointment
By far the most commonly suggested proposal for reform amongst politicians is a combination of an elected and appointed House and this was the original proposal recommended by the Wakeham Report. Proponents suggest the combination would allow an appointed element to retain the skills and experience of the present House and elections would make it democratic without the problems of being fully elected which would allow the Upper House to challenge the primacy of the commons. Opponents say that the two types of members will inevitably conflict, voting for part of the House will have little support amongst an already sceptical electorate, and the lack of synergy will make it worse than either a fully elected or fully appointed house. Various proposals on the exact percentage of those elected and appointed have been produced:

In January 2002, the Conservatives unveiled plans for a 300 member "Senate", with 240 members elected by first past the post for 15 years
The Elect the Lords campaign set up by New Politics Network and Charter88 supports a predominantly elected second chamber.
In 2005, a cross party group of MPs chaired by Paul Tyler consisting of Ken Clarke, Robin Cook, Dr Tony Wright and Sir George Young proposed a 70% elected second chamber, elected in thirds at each general election using the single transferable vote. This proposal was largely adopted by the Power Commission. Combination
Under this proposal, a jury would appoint some or all members of the chamber so retaining the skills and experience of the present House and also making its selection more democratic not seen before the second consultation where it was supported by around 10% of submissions.

Democratic appointments
Many countries have directly elected Upper Chambers but they try to make their electoral systems for the second chamber as distinct as possible from the first chamber by holding elections on a different cycle or electing only a proportion of members on each occasion..
Most proponents support a system of Proportional Representation
The Tories have called for the second chamber to be elected by First Past the Post. Election
A large number of hereditary peers were crossbenchers with a wide range of interests outside politics - a valuable asset to Parliament. A hereditary right, which passes across the generations, may have the benefit of encouraging a longer-term perspective but this is at the expense of creating a divisive society. Moreover, in practice, the hereditary Peers had a natural bias on many issues (e.g., their support for the Conservative Party). There are now few in current British politics who openly support this form of selection. However, there is a feeling in many sections of British society that an independent house is needed to check the government and it has been suggested that this was achieved by the combination of hereditary and life peers pre-1997 era. Also, the more conservative sections of the political establishment still have sympathies towards this type of an upper house.

Heredity
About 30% of overseas second chambers are elected by indirect methods, including France, Ireland the Netherlands and South Africa. The electoral college often consists of members of local authorities or regional assemblies, and may include members of the primary chamber. There are various proposals:

Elections by Regional Development Agencies and voluntary regional chambers, the London Assembly would "would demonstrate a direct connection between these other bodies and the central institutions at Westminster" and because "many of these bodies had themselves been elected... it could therefore reinforce the democratic nature of an otherwise nominated House"
A variety of institutions such as the Royal Society and charities, are able to elect or appoint a member. Other groups could include the TUC, the GMC, and the Law Society. This would also involve keeping the Law Lords and Lords Spiritual.
It has also been suggested that leaders of local councils (who have already been elected to their position) sit in the House of Lords. Indirect election/appointment
A system proposed by musician and activist Billy Bragg (and endorsed by the Economist magazine) whereby the share of each party's votes at each general election is aggregated and each party is allocated a number of places proportionately using a closed list system[3]. Each elector would have one vote which would both determine their local MP and the composition of the Upper House.
The advantages of this system are claimed to be that: there would be only one election campaign to fund, it does not waste votes because votes for minority parties will count in the Upper House and so it should improve voter turnout, and as the upper house has no direct vote it has no separate mandate and so the Commons will remain supreme. Critics however see a single vote as a choice between voting for an MP or voting for the upper house; if large numbers choose to vote for the upper house instead of their MP it would undermine the mandate of the Commons and create a confused election (for example MPs might be ousted by a poor performance of their party in the Upper House and vice versa).

Secondary mandate

At present, the Scottish Parliament has devolved powers over areas like Health and Education. The Scottish Parliament does not have an upper chamber but instead MSPs scrutinise legislation in a committee system. This means that, for example, legislation on English health and education is subject to the House of Lords, whilst Scottish legislation is not.
There are some concerns that a reformed upper house may be "a feeder body" into the lower house (Charlotte Atkins MP) as has occurred in other countries with bicameral parliaments. Various proposals have been put forward to prevent this happening, including a five-year ban on former members of the Lords seeking election to the Commons. Others are concerned that the upper house may be filled by MPs who lose their seats.
The House of Lords has a judicial function, which will be clearly affected by the reform process, although there are already plans for a separate Supreme Court.
The future of peerages. One proposal is that peerages should remain, as part of the honours system, but that they should no longer be linked to membership of the upper house.
The name. Were the link between peerages and membership of the upper house to end, the name of the upper house might also change as a consequence. The Liberal Democrats, have proposed Senate, as in other countries. The Labour government has not put forward any proposed names, instead referring to the "reformed chamber" [4] although the Leader of the House of Commons committee has promised to consult on a final name. Further reading

Allotment
Election
Appointment
House of Lords
Constitutional Reform Act 2005
Canadian Senate Reform

2007-11-15T09:32:00.001-08:00

Alexander von Nordmann (May 24, 1803 - June 25, 1866) was a Finnish zoologist.
Nordmann was a professor at Odessa, and collected natural history specimens in southern Russia. He became professor of Zoology at the university of Helsinki in 1849.

2007-11-14T08:02:00.001-08:00

John F. Muth (1930 – October 23, 2005 in Key West, Florida) was an American economist. He is known as "the father of the rational expectations revolution in economics", primarily due to his article "Rational Expectations and the Theory of Price Movements" from 1961.
Muth earned his Ph.D. in mathematical economics from Carnegie Mellon University, and was in 1954 the first recipient of the Alexander Henderson Award. He was affiliated with Carnegie Mellon as a research associate from 1956 until 1959, as an assistant professor from 1959 to 1962, and as an associate professor without tenure from 1962 to 1964.
Muth asserted that expectations "are essentially the same as the predictions of the relevant economic theory." Although he formulated the rational expectations principle in the context of microeconomics it has subsequently become associated with macroeconomics and the work of Robert Lucas, Jr., Finn E. Kydland, Edward C. Prescott, Neil Wallace, Thomas J. Sargent, and others.

Holt, Modigliani, Muth, and Simon (1960)
Phillip Cagan, Milton Friedman and others used the ad hoc updating rule which they labeled adaptive expectations to forecast the hidden state y* (eg, permanent income). In his 1960 paper Muth answered the question for what stochastic process for y will adaptive expectations as postulated by Cagan and Friedman be the optimal forecast of y*. Muth's approach to find recursive optimal linear forecast of a "hidden" state vector, x, given an "observer", y is very similar to the Kalman filter, presented by Rudolf Kalman in his paper from the same year.
In his paper "Optimal Properties of Exponentially Weighted Forecasts", which was published in the Journal of the American Statistical Association in 1960, Muth rationalized Friedman's adaptive expectations model for permanent income. He did this by reverse engineering a stochastic process for income for which Cagan's expectation formula equals a mathematical expectation of future values conditioned on the infinite history of past incomes. Among Muth's insights was that the stochastic process being forecast should dictate both the distributed lag and the conditioning variables that people use to forecast the future.

2007-11-13T08:20:00.001-08:00

Napoleon Lapathiotis (31 October 1888 – 7 January 1944) was a Greek poet.
A native of Athens, he began writing and publishing poetry when he was eleven. In 1907, along with others, he established the Igiso magazine, in which he published his works. In 1909, he graduated in law from the University of Athens. His first book of poems was published in 1939. Poor in later life and a drug addict, he committed suicide with a revolver on 7 January 1944.
The movie Meteor and Shadow was based on his life.

2007-11-12T08:37:00.001-08:00

Anne (6 February 1665 – 1 August 1714) became Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland on 8 March 1702, succeeding William III. Her Roman Catholic father, James II and VII, was forcibly deposed in 1688; her brother-in-law and her sister then became joint monarchs as William III and Mary II, the only such case in British history. After Mary's death in 1694, William continued as sole monarch until his own death in 1702.
On 1 May 1707, under the Acts of Union 1707, England and Scotland were united as a single state, the Kingdom of Great Britain. Anne became its first sovereign, while continuing to hold the separate crown of Queen of Ireland. Anne reigned for twelve years until her death in August of 1714.
Anne's life was marked by many crises, both personally and relating to succession of the Crown and religious polarisation. Because she died childless, Anne was the last monarch of the House of Stuart. She was succeeded by her second cousin, George I, of the House of Hanover, who was related to the Stuart kings Charles I and James I via dynastic marriage.

Early life
Anne was born in St. James's Palace of London, the second daughter of James, Duke of York, (afterwards James II) and his first wife, the Lady Anne Hyde. Her paternal uncle was King Charles II and her older sister was the future Mary II. Anne and Mary were the only children of the Duke and Duchess of York to survive into adulthood.

Childhood
When Charles II died in 1685 (converting to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed), Anne's father ascended the Throne as James II.
Princess Anne's sister and brother-in-law, Mary and William, subsequently invaded England to dethrone the unpopular and despotic James II in the Glorious Revolution.

Accession of James II
Forbidden by James to pay Mary a projected visit in the spring of 1688, Anne corresponded with Mary and was no doubt aware of William's plans to invade. On the advice of the Churchills - Anne's conduct during this period was probably influenced a great deal by the Churchills The Bill of Rights 1689 settled succession to the Throne; Princess Anne and her descendants were to be in the line of succession after William and Mary. They were to be followed by any descendants of William by a future marriage.

The Glorious Revolution
Soon after their accession, William and Mary rewarded Churchill by granting him the Earldom of Marlborough. Their subsequent treatment of the Marlboroughs, however, was not as favourable. In 1692, suspecting that Lord Marlborough was a Jacobite, Mary dismissed him from all his offices. Lady Marlborough was subsequently removed from the Royal Household, leading Princess Anne to angrily leave her royal residence for Syon House, the Duke of Northumberland's home. Princess Anne was then stripped of her guard of honour, and the guards at the royal palaces were forbidden to salute her husband.

William and Mary
During this period, Prince George and Princess Anne suffered great personal misfortune. By 1700, the future Queen had been pregnant at least eighteen times; thirteen times, she miscarried or gave birth to stillborn children. Of the remaining five children, four died before reaching the age of two years. Her only son to survive infancy, William, Duke of Gloucester, died at the age of eleven on 29 July 1700, precipitating a succession crisis.

The Act of Settlement

Anne's reign
Almost as soon as she succeded to the throne, Anne became embroiled in the War of the Spanish Succession. This war, in which England supported the claim of Archduke Charles to succeed to the Spanish Throne, would continue until the last years of Anne's reign, and would dominate both foreign and domestic policy.
Soon after her accession, Anne appointed her husband Lord High Admiral, giving him control of the Royal Navy. Anne gave control of the army to Lord Marlborough, whom she appointed Captain-General. The Duchess of Marlborough was appointed to the post of Mistress of the Robes, the highest office a lady could attain.

The War of the Spanish Succession
In passing the Act of Settlement, in 1701, the English Parliament had neglected to consult with the Parliament of Scotland or Estates of Scotland, which, in part, wished to preserve the Stuart dynasty and its right of inheritance to the Throne.

The Act of Union
Anne's reign was further marked by the development of a two-party system as the new era of parliamentary governance unfolded and matured. Anne personally preferred the Tory Party, but "endured" the Whigs.
Anne's first ministry was primarily Tory; at its head was Sidney Godolphin, 1st Baron Godolphin. But the Whigs — who were, unlike the Tories, vigorous supporters of the War of the Spanish Succession — became much more influential after the Duke of Marlborough won a great victory at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. The Whigs rose to power on the strength of Marlborough's victory and almost all the Tories were removed from the ministry. Lord Godolphin, although a Tory, allied himself with Marlborough to ensure his continuance in office. Although Lord Godolphin was the nominal head of the ministry, actual power was held by the Duke of Marlborough and by the two Secretaries of State (Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland and Robert Harley).

Two Party politics
Anne's husband, Prince George of Denmark, died in October 1708. His leadership of the Admiralty was unpopular amongst the Whig leaders; as he lay on his deathbed, some Whigs were preparing to make a motion requesting his removal from the office of Lord High Admiral. Anne was forced to appeal to the Duke of Marlborough to ensure that the motion was not made.
Anne was devastated by the loss of her husband, and the event proved a turning point in her relationship with her old friend, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. The Duchess arrived at Windsor shortly after he died, and forced the Queen to leave the castle and move to St. James's Palace against her will. Anne pleaded to be left alone, and resented the Duchess for insisting that the grieving Queen be attended at all times.
The Whigs used the Prince's death to their own advantage, heartlessly using her weakness to disregard the Queen's wishes and form a predominantly Whig government, led by Lord Godolphin. Their power was, however, limited by Anne's insistence to carry out the duties of Lord High Admiral herself, and not appointing a member of the government to take Prince George's place. Undeterred, the Whigs demaded the appointment of the Earl of Orford, one of Prince George's leading critics, as First Lord of the Admiralty. Anne flatly refused, and chose her own candidate, Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke on the 29th November 1709.
Pressure mounted on Pembroke, Godolphin and the Queen from the dissatisfied Junto Whigs, and Pembroke was forced to resign after just a month in office. Another month of arguments followed before the Queen finally consented to put the Admiralty in control of the Earl of Orford in November.

Death of Husband
As the expensive War of the Spanish Succession grew unpopular so too did the Whig administration. Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer was particularly skilful in using the issue (of the cost of the war) to motivate the electorate. In the general election of 1710, discontented voters returned a large Tory majority.

Later years
Anne died of suppressed gout, ending in erysipelas, at approximately 7 o'clock on 1 August 1714. Her body was so swollen that it had to be buried in Westminster Abbey in a vast almost-square coffin.

Death
The reign of Anne was marked by an increase in the influence of ministers and a decrease in the influence of the Crown. In 1708, Anne became the last British Sovereign to withhold the Royal Assent from a bill (in this case, a Scots militia bill).
Preoccupied with her health (she suffered from porphyria), Anne allowed her ministers, most notably Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, as well as her favourite companions (Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough and Abigail Masham) to dominate politics.

Legacy

Titles, styles, honours and arms

6 February 1665 – 28 July 1683: Princess Anne
28 July 1683 – 8 March 1702: Her Royal Highness Princess George of Denmark and Norway
8 March 1702 – 1 May 1707: Her Majesty The Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland
1 May 1707 – 1 August 1714: Her Majesty The Queen of Great Britain and Ireland Titles
The official style of Anne before 1707 was "Anne, by the Grace of God, Queen of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc." (The claim to France was only nominal, and had been asserted by every English King since Edward III, regardless of the amount of French territory actually controlled.) After the Union, her style was "Anne, by the Grace of God, Queen of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc."

Styles
Anne's arms before the Union were: Quarterly, I and IV Grandquarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or (for France) and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England); II Or a lion rampant within a tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland). After the Union, the arms of England and Scotland, which had previously been in different quarters, were "impaled," or placed side-by-side, in the same quarter to emphasise that the two countries had become one Kingdom. The new arms were: Quarterly, I and IV Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England) impaling Or a lion rampant within a tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); II Azure three fleurs-de-lys Or (for France); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland). She used the motto Semper eadem (always the same).

Ancestry and descent

Ancestors

Issue
Although Anne and her reign have no direct bearing on the style personally, at the time Queen Anne architecture style became popular in the mid-1900s, her name connoted a sense of Old World elegance and extravagant, ornate details.

Legacy
The BBC drama The First Churchills depicts Anne's life from her childhood to her death, focusing on her friendship with Sarah Churchill. Anne was played by the actress Margaret Tyzack.

See also

2007-11-11T07:20:00.000-08:00

John Armstrong, Jr. (November 25, 1758 – April 1, 1843) was an American soldier and statesman who was a delegate to the Continental Congress, U.S. Senator from New York, and Secretary of War.
John Jr. was the son of Dr. John Armstrong and Rebecca (Lyon) Armstrong and was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1758. After early education in Carlisle he studied at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). He broke off his studies in Princeton in 1775 to return to Pennsylvania and join the fight in the Revolutionary War.

Revolutionary War
While in camp with Gates at Newburgh, New York, Armstrong became involved in the Newburgh Conspiracy. He is generally acknowledged as the author of the two anonymous letters directed at the officers in the camp. The first, titled "An Address to the Officers" (dated March 10, 1783), called for a meeting to discuss back pay and other grievances with the Congress and form a plan of action. After General Washington ordered the meeting canceled and called for a milder meeting on March 15th, a second address appeared that claimed that this showed that Washington supported their actions.
Washington successfully defused this protest without a mutiny. While some of Armstrong's later correspondence acknowledged his role, there was never any official action that connected him with the anonymous letters.

Later life

Skeen, Carl E.; John Armstrong, Jr., 1758–1843: A Biography; 1982, Syracuse Univ Press; ISBN 0-8156-2242-2.

2007-11-10T10:24:00.001-08:00

An island country is a country that is wholly confined to an island, several islands, an island group or several island groups, and has no territory on the mainland of a continent. Forty-seven of the world's countries are island countries (2007), including most of the smallest ones.
Island countries can be divided in two approximate groups. A group of large, relatively populous nations which are usually close to a continent including: Japan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Cuba, the United Kingdom, Madagascar, and Indonesia. These countries typically share cultural and political similarities with their continental neighbours. Island locations have frequently been advantageous, providing isolation from invasion and the the maritime abilities of the population gave advantage in regional and international trade.
The other group comprises smaller island countries such as Malta, the Comoros, the Bahamas, Tonga, and the Maldives. These countries tend to be very different from continental countries. Their small size usually means there is little agricultural land and rarely many natural resources. However, in modern times, smaller island countries around the world have become centres for tourism, which in many is the dominant industry.
Some island countries are centered on one or two major islands, such as the United Kingdom or Japan. Others are spread out over hundreds or thousands of smaller islands, such as the Philippines, Indonesia or the Maldives. Some island countries share their islands with other countries; these include the Republic of Ireland, Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic), Saint Martin and Papua New Guinea.

2007-11-09T07:48:00.001-08:00

For the Canadian politician, see Margaret Mitchell (Canadian politician); for the Scottish politician, see Margaret Mitchell (Scottish politician).
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell (November 8, 1900 – August 16, 1949) was an American author, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 for her immensely successful novel, Gone with the Wind, published in 1936. The novel is one of the most popular books of all time, selling more than 28 million copies (see list of best-selling books). An American film adaptation, released in 1939, became the highest-grossing film in the history of Hollywood, and received a record-breaking number of Academy Awards.

Life
From 1922 to 1926, Mitchell wrote dozens of articles, interviews, sketches, and book reviews, including interviews with silent-screen star Rudolph Valentino, high-society murderer Harry K. Thaw, and a Georgia prisoner who made artificial flowers from scraps and sold them from his cell to support his family. Even as a supposedly neutral reporter, her irrepressible personality shines through. This collection of Mitchell's journalism transcends fact-gathering, and shows Mitchell as a young woman and a compelling snapshot of life in the Jazz Age South.

Occupation
Mitchell is reported to have begun writing Gone With the Wind while bedridden with a broken ankle. Her husband, John Marsh, brought home historical books from the public library to amuse her while she recuperated. After she supposedly read all the historical books in the library, he told her, "Peggy, if you want another book, why don't you write your own?" She drew upon her encyclopedic knowledge of the Civil War and dramatic moments from her own life, and typed her epic novel on an old Remington typewriter. She originally called the heroine "Pansy O'Hara", and Tara was "Fontenoy Hall." She considered naming the novel Tote The Weary Load or Tomorrow Is Another Day. She wrote the last chapter first, and skipped around from chapter to chapter. Her husband regularly proofread the growing manuscript to help in continuity. By 1929, her ankle had healed, most of the book was written, and she lost interest in pursuing her literary efforts.
While Mitchell used to say that her Gone with The Wind characters were not based on real people, modern researchers have found similarities to some of people in her life, and people she knew or heard of.

Writing Gone with the Wind
Mitchell lived as a modest Atlanta newspaperwoman until a visit from MacMillan publisher Howard Latham, who moved to Atlanta in 1935. Latham was scouring the South for promising writers, and Mitchell agreed to escort him around Atlanta at the request of her friend, who worked for Latham. Latham was enchanted with Mitchell, and asked her if she had ever written a book. Mitchell demurred. "Well, if you ever do write a book, please show it to me first!" Latham implored. Later that day, a friend of Mitchell, having heard this conversation laughed. "Imagine, anyone as silly as Peggy writing a book!" she said. Mitchell stewed over this comment, went home, and found most of the old, crumbling envelopes containing her disjointed manuscript. She arrived at The Georgian Terrace Hotel, just as Latham prepared to depart Atlanta. "Here," she said, "take this before I change my mind!" But Latham had read enough of the manuscript to realize it would be a blockbuster. He wrote to her of his thoughts about its potential success. MacMillan soon sent her an advance check to encourage her to complete the novel — she had not composed a first chapter. She completed her work in March, 1936.
Gone With the Wind was published on June 30, 1936. The book was dramatized by David O. Selznick, and released three years later. The premiere of the film was held in Atlanta on December 15, 1939.

2007-11-08T07:02:00.001-08:00

Henley Royal Regatta is a rowing event held every year on the River Thames by the town of Henley-on-Thames, England. The Royal Regatta is still sometimes referred to as Henley Regatta, its original name pre-dating Royal patronage. It should not be confused with the three other regattas rowed over approximately the same course (Henley Women's Regatta, Henley Veterans Regatta and Henley Town & Visitors Regatta), each of which is entirely separate.
The regatta lasts for 5 days (Wednesday to Sunday) over the first weekend in July. Races are head-to-head knock out competitions, raced over a course of 1 mile, 550 yards (2,112 m). The regatta regularly attracts international crews to race. The most prestigious event at the regatta is the Grand Challenge Cup for Men's Eights, which has been awarded since the regatta was first staged.
As the regatta pre-dates any national or international rowing organisation, it has its own rules and organisation, although it is recognised by both the Amateur Rowing Association (the governing body of rowing in England and Wales) and FISA (the International Federation of Rowing Associations). The regatta is organised by the Stewards, who are largely former rowers themselves. Pierre de Coubertin is said to have modelled elements of the organisation of the International Olympic Committee on the Henley Stewards.

Format of competition
Entries for the regatta close at two o'clock in the afternoon fifteen days before the Regatta.

Qualifying
The draw is a public event that takes place in the Henley town hall. For each event the names of all selected crews are placed on pieces of paper which are then drawn at random from the Grand Challenge Cup. These crews are then placed on pre-determined positions on the draw chart, as far apart as possible. The remaining qualifying crews are then drawn from the cup, filling in from the top of the draw chart downwards, until all places have been filled.

Racing
At a public meeting in Henley town hall on 26 March 1839, Captain Edmund Gardiner proposed "that from the lively interest which had been manifested at the various boat races which have taken place on the Henley reach during the last few years, and the great influx of visitors on such occasions, this meeting is of the opinion that the establishing of an annual regatta, under judicious and respectable management, would not only be productive of the most beneficial results to the town of Henley, but from its peculiar attractions would also be a source of amusement and gratification to the neighbourhood, and the public in general."

History
At the regatta's inception it was intended for amateur oarsmen rather than those who rowed professionally. In 1879 Henley produced its first formal definition of an amateur:
"No person shall be considered an amateur oarsman or sculler, or coxswain:
1. Who has ever competed in any open competition for a stake, money, or entrance fee. (Not to apply to foreign crews.)
2. Who has ever competed with or against a professional for any prize.
3. Who has ever taught, pursued or assisted in the practice of athletic exercises of any kind as a means of gaining a livelihood.
4. Who has been employed in or about boats for money or wages.
5. Who is or has been by trade or employment for wages a mechanic, artisan or labourer."
In 1884, amateur status for overseas oarsmen was put on the same basis as for home oarsmen, thus ending the concession on racing for money prizes. By 1886 a phrase had also been added debarring any person 'engaged in any menial activity'.
These rules would become the cause of growing controversy as international entries to Henley increased; most foreign countries having a different definition of amateur. The adoption of Henley's definition of amateur by the Amateur Rowing Association of Great Britain would also cause a 66-year schism in British rowing, when in 1890 a rival National Amateur Rowing Association was set up, with a much more inclusive definition of amateurism.
One well-known incident was the exclusion of future Olympic champion John B. Kelly, Sr., who had served an apprenticeship as a bricklayer, from the 1920 regatta. According to the minutes of the regatta's Committee of Management, Kelly was excluded both because he was not eligible under the manual labour rules and because he was a member of Vesper Boat Club, which was banned in 1906 because members of its 1905 Henley crew had raised money to pay for their trip through public donations - making them professionals in the eyes of the Henley Stewards.
In September 1997, FISA removed all references to amateurism in its rules and in December 1998 Henley followed suit. The regatta is therefore now entirely open.

Amateurism
For most of its history, Henley Royal Regatta has only been open to male competitors but this has changed more recently. Women coxswains of male crews were permitted from 1975 and as such the first female competitor in the regatta was Christine Paul, cox of Furnivall Sculling Club in the Thames Challenge Cup in that year.

Women
In 1979, the Committee announced that there would be exhibition events for women in 1981, with entries by invitation only:
The Stewards announced in December 1979 that they were considering the possibility of adding certain Events for Women to the Regatta programme. As a preliminary step two invitation events are being held this year, with racing from the Barrier start used for the Special Race for Schools. These events will enable the Stewards to assess the feasibility of including races over the shorter Course during the normal Regatta programme, and the desirability of the considerable extension to the hours of racing which any full Events for Women would necessarily involve.
The entries were limited to four in each event (Coxed Fours and Double Sculls); two from abroad and two from the UK. The standard was good, but it was reckoned that the course from the Barrier start (over 600 m longer than the international standard 1000 m) contributed to there being no close verdicts.

Exhibition races
The change of the international distance to 2000 m and the addition of a fifth day to the regatta in 1986 allowed the Committee of Management to revisit the decision. In 1993 the regatta introduced an open Women's Single Sculls event and from 1993-6 this counted as a round of the FISA World Cup. The first winner was Maria Brandin of Sweden and she subsequently won a further four times. Fittingly, the prizegiver in 1993 was Peter Coni. In 1996 the Stewards purchased a silver cup as a challenge trophy and named it the Princess Royal Challenge Cup; it was presented for the first time in 1997.
An invitation event for women's eights was added in 1998. In 2000 this was replaced by an open women's eights event under the same rules as the Grand Challenge Cup. In 2002 the Remenham Challenge Cup was donated by Remenham Club as the trophy for this event. At the 2001 Regatta an open event for Women's Quadruple Sculls was introduced. In 2003 this event became known as the Princess Grace Challenge Cup in memory of Princess Grace of Monaco. Her father John B. Kelly, Sr. had been controversially excluded from the Diamond Sculls in 1920 because of the regattas rules on amateurism; her brother, John B. Kelly, Jr. had won the Diamonds Sculls in 1947 and in 1949. Princess Grace was the Regatta prizegiver in 1981.

Introduction of current events
During 1908 and 1948, when London hosted the Olympics, the Olympic races were held on the regatta course. The Olympic races in 2012 will be held at Dorney Lake in Eton, the only event to be held outside of London aside from sailing (which will take place at Weymouth).

Olympic Regattas at Henley
The racing can be viewed from a number of locations along both banks of the Thames. Areas open to the general public are generally on the Berkshire (towpath) side of the river. The other side of the river (Buckinghamshire) side is limited to the Phyllis Court club, private residences and areas for corporate entertainment.

Spectators
The enclosure situated on the Berkshire side, adjacent to the last part of the course and the finish line. It comprises two covered grandstands, a restaurant marquee, several bars, a bandstand and so on - all set in immaculately prepared lawns. It is only open to the Stewards of the Regatta, members of the Stewards Enclosure and their guests. Overseas competitors are also given the opportunity to purchase tickets.
The waiting list for membership of the Stewards Enclosure is several years long, although preference is given to people who have previously competed at the regatta. The waiting list has grown rapidly since the 1970s, when membership could be applied for and granted on the same day.
The social position of the event means that some in the Stewards' Enclosure (and elsewhere along the course) may have no interest in the actual rowing.
The Stewards' Enclosure is also known for a strict enforcement of its dress code. Men are required to wear a "lounge suit, blazer and flannels, or evening dress, and a tie". Women are required to wear a dress or skirt that covers their knees, and are "encouraged to wear a hat". Anyone not suitably dressed can be refused entry, no matter their prestige in rowing or elsewhere. Mobile phone use is also prohibited.
The regatta prizegiving takes place in the Stewards' Enclosure after the conclusion of racing on Sunday.

Stewards' Enclosure
The Regatta Enclosure is situated immediately downstream of the Stewards Enclosure and further away from the finish. This enclosure is open to all on payment of the admission fee. Competitors gain free access to this area. There is no dresscode.

Regatta Enclosure
Remenham Club is situated a little over half way along the course on the Berkshire side of the river. It is a social club run by and for members of seven rowing clubs on the Thames (the "Founding Clubs"): Kingston Rowing Club, London Rowing Club, Molesey Boat Club, Staines Boat Club, Thames Rowing Club, Twickenham Rowing Club and Vesta Rowing Club. Remenham Club members take a close interest in the racing and the "Remenham Roar" is a notable sound of the Regatta. Remenham Club is open only to its members and guests. It has a similar dresscode to the Stewards Enclosure, though the rules on women's outfits are less restrictive.

Remenham Club
The clubhouse and frontage of the Upper Thames Rowing Club is on the Berkshire side of the river, immediately downstream of Remenham Club. It has an informal atmosphere and no dresscode. It is only open to its members and their guests. UTRC lease the land downstream of their clubhouse to retailers, food vendors and bars.

Upper Thames Rowing Club
The grassland and farm buildings on the Berkshire side from opposite the Fawley box down to a point just upstream of the Barrier (approximately the 1100m - 700m points on the regatta course) is owned by The Copas Partnership. They lease the land to a large number of retailers, food vendors and bars including the well-known Barn Bar.

Remenham Farm
The clubhouse and grounds of Leander Club is situated on the Berkshire side of the river beyond the finish line of the regatta course, between the boat tents and Henley Bridge. Leander Club has a large marquee constructed for the regatta week and holds a large function on the Saturday night of the Regatta. It is open only to its members and their guests and has a formal dresscode.

Leander Club
The Phyllis Court Club is situated on the Buckinghamshire side of the river, opposite the finish line. It is open only to its members and their guests. Although it has an excellent view of the finish line, it is not generally frequented by rowers.

Events

Rowing (sport)
The Boat Race
Henley Boat Races
Jack Beresford
Sir Stephen Redgrave
Leander Club
Remenham Club
Henley-on-Todd Regatta

2007-11-07T07:47:00.000-08:00

A photosynthetic reaction centre is a protein that is the site of the light reactions of photosynthesis. The reaction centre contains pigments such as chlorophyll and phaeophytin. These absorb light, promoting an electron to a higher energy level within the pigment. The free energy created is used to reduce an electron acceptor, and is critical for the production of chemical energy during photosynthesis.
Reaction centres are present in all green plants and in many bacteria and algae. Green plants have two reaction centres known as photosystem I and photosystem II and the structures of these centres are complex, involving a multisubunit protein. The reaction centre found in Rhodopseudomonas bacteria is currently better understood since it has fewer proteins than the examples in green plants.

Capturing light energy

Bacteria
The bacterial photosynthetic reaction centre has been an important model to understand the structure and chemistry of the biological process of capturing light energy. In the 1960s, Roderick Clayton was the first to purify the reaction centre complex from purple bacteria. However, the first crystal structure was determined by Hartmut Michel, Johann Deisenhofer and Robert Huber for which they shared the Nobel Prize in 1988. This was also significant since it was the first structure for any membrane protein complex.
Four different subunits were found to be important for the function of the photosynthetic reaction centre. The L and M subunits, shown in blue and purple in the image of the structure both span the plasma membrane. They are structurally similar to one another, both having 5 transmembrane polypeptide helices. Four bacteriochlorophyll b (BChl-b) molecules, two bacteriophaeophytin b molecules (BPh) molecules, two quinones (Q_A and Q_B), and a ferrous ion are associated with the L and M subunits. The H subunit, shown in gold, lies on the cytoplasmic side of the plasma membrane. A cytochrome subunit, shown in green, contains four c-type hemes and is located on the periplasmic surface (outer) of the membrane.
The reaction centre contains two pigments that serve to collect and transfer the energy from photon absorption: BChb and Bph. BChb roughly resembles the chlorophyll molecule found in green plants, but due to minor structural differences, its peak absorption wavelength is shifted into the infrared, with wavelengths as long as 1000nm. Bph has the same structure as BChb, but the central magnesium ion is replaced by two protons.

Structure
The process starts when light is absorbed by two BChl-b molecules that lie near the periplasmic side of the membrane. This pair of chlorophyll molecules, often called the "special pair", absorbs photons at roughly 960nm, and thus is called P960 (with P standing for "pigment"). Once P960 absorbs a photon it ejects an electron, which is transferred through another molecule of Bchl to the BPh in the L subunit. This initial charge separation yields a positive charge on P960 and a negative charge on the BPh. This process takes place in 10 picoseconds (10 is reduced to P960) from a heme in the cytochrome subunit above the reaction centre.
The high-energy electron which resides on the tightly bound quinone molecule Q_A is transferred to an exchangeable quinone molecule Q_B. This molecule is loosely associated with the protein and is fairly easy to detach. Two of the high-energy electrons are required to fully reduce Q_B to QH₂ taking up two protons from the cytoplasm in the process. The reduced quinone QH₂ diffuses through the membrane to another protein complex (cytochrome bc₁-complex) where it is oxidised. In the process the reducing power of the QH₂ is used to pump protons across the membrane to the periplasmic space. The electrons from the cytochrome bc₁-complex are then transferred through a soluble cytochrome c intermediate, called cytochrome c₂, in the periplasm to the cytochrome subunit. Thus, the flow of electrons in this system is cyclical.

Green plants
In 1772, the chemist Joseph Priestly carried out a series of experiments relating to the gasses involved in respiration and combustion. In his first experiment, he lit a candle and placed it under an upturned jar. After a short period of time, the candle burned out. He carried out a similar experiment with a mouse in the confined space of the burning candle. He found that the mouse died a short time after the candle had been extinguished. However, he could revivify the foul air by placing green plants in the area and exposing them to light. Priestly's observations were some of the first experiments that demonstrated the activity of a photosynthetic reaction centre.
In 1779, Jan Ingenhousz carried out more than 500 experiments spread out over 4 months in an attempt to understand what was really going on. He wrote up his discoveries in a book entitled 'Experiments upon Vegetables'. Ingenhousz took green plants and immersed them in water inside a transparent tank. He observed many bubbles rising from the surface of the leaves whenever the plants were exposed to light. Ingenhousz collected the gas which was given off by the plants and performed several different tests in attempt to determine what the gas was. The test which finally revealed the identity of the gas was placing a smoldering taper into the gas sample and having it relight. This test proved it was oxygen, or as Joseph Priestly had called it, 'de-phlogisticated air'.
In 1932, Professor Robert Emerson and an undergraduate student, William Arnold, used a repetitive flash technique to precisely measure small quantities of oxygen evolved by chlorophyll in the algae Chlorella. Their experiment proved the existence of a photosynthetic unit. Gaffron and Wohl later interpreted the experiment and realized that the light absorbed by the photosynthetic unit was transferred.

Oxygenic photosynthesis
Photosystem II is the photosystem that generates the electron that will eventually reduce NADP. Manganese also forms strong bonds with oxygen-containing molecules such as water.
Every time the P680 absorbs a photon, it emits an electron, gaining a positive charge. This charge is neutralized by the extraction of an electron from the manganese centre which sits directly below it. The process of oxidizing two molecules of water requires four electrons. The water molecules which are oxidized in the manganese centre are the source of the electrons which reduce the two molecules of Q to QH₂.

Photosystem I

Light harvesting complex
Photosynthesis
Photosystem
Phycobilisome

2007-11-06T09:18:00.001-08:00

Jean-Sébastien "Jiggy" Giguère (born May 16, 1977, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada) is a French Canadian professional hockey goaltender currently playing for the National Hockey League's Anaheim Ducks. He was drafted 13th overall by the Hartford Whalers in the 1995 NHL Entry Draft. He has played for the Verdun Collège-Français, Halifax Mooseheads, Hartford Whalers, Saint John Flames, Calgary Flames, Cincinnati Mighty Ducks and Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.

NHL career
After brief and overall-mediocre stints in the Hartford and Calgary organizations, Giguere was traded by the Flames to the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim for a 2nd round selection in the 2000 NHL Entry Draft. He began the 2000-01 season with the Ducks' farm team in Cincinnati, until he was recalled to their parent club for 34 games. After working with famous goalie coach François Allaire, Giguere regained the confidence he showed in juniors and quickly became Anaheim's newest starter. In the 2002-03 season, "Jiggy" enjoyed the best season of his NHL career-to-date, with 34 wins, a .920 save percentage and an impressive 8 shutouts.

NHL beginnings
During the 2003 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Giguere led the Mighty Ducks to the Stanley Cup Finals, where they lost in seven games to the New Jersey Devils. He won the Conn Smythe Trophy as most valuable player of the playoffs for his efforts in series wins against the Detroit Red Wings, Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild and pushing the Finals to the seven game limit. He was a perfect 7-0 in overtime, setting a record for longest amount of playoff overtime played without allowing a goal at 168 minutes, 27 seconds, including multiple overtime victories in Game 1 of each of the first three series. He also held the Wild to an all-time best-of-7 series low of one goal in the entire Western Conference Finals, posting a shutout streak of 217 minutes, 54 seconds during that series. He finished with a 15-6 record, a 1.62 Goals Against Average and .945 Save Percentage (the best of all playoff goaltenders that year), and fewer losses than his Finals counterpart Martin Brodeur. He was the fifth player to receive the Conn Smythe Trophy playing for the losing team, the first since Philadelphia's Ron Hextall in 1987.

2003 Playoffs
After being rewarded with a large contract in the off-season, Giguère was inconsistent throughout much of the 2003-04 season as the Ducks missed the playoffs. Some hockey pundits speculated that he may have been rattled by coming so close to winning the Stanley Cup the previous season, yet ultimately failing.
After the lockout canceled the 2004-05 season, Giguere returned for the '05-'06 season and appeared to have regained a level of play approaching his 2003 glory. One incident, though, almost proved damaging for him. On January 25, 2006, Anaheim was playing against the Oilers at the Arrowhead Pond, the Ducks' home arena. Ryan Smyth of Edmonton was chirping Giguere consistently. He already drew one minor penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. When Smyth scored a goal off of a feed from Shawn Horcoff, Giguere got angry. The next time that he saw Smyth in the crease, Giguere tripped Smyth. When Smyth stood back up, he got pushed in the face by the disgruntled goalie. These two minor penalties, which were going to be served by Anaheim forward Samuel Pahlsson, were not enough. When an official led Smyth away, he gave a challenge signal to Giguere, who then charged at Smyth and knocked him down onto the ice. It resulted in a ten-minute misconduct. Giguere was awarded a total of 14 penalty minutes for the incident, and 16 PIM in total.
In April 2006, he and the Ducks again entered the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but were eliminated in the Western Finals by the Edmonton Oilers. Giguere appeared in just 4 games before being replaced in net by Russian rookie Ilya Bryzgalov. With the first round series on the line, management seemed to have lost faith in Jiggy. In fact, Giguere's club record of consecutive playoff shutout minutes was broken by his backup's surprising string of three consecutive shutouts. His overtime playoff shutout record however was extended to 8-0 but was ended April 27, 2007 in the second overtime against the Canucks.
Facing the prospect of being an unrestricted free agent at the end of the 2006-2007 season, Giguère started out hot and won his starting role back. In the first month of the season, October 2006, he did not lose a single game in regulation. He proceeded to put up the best numbers of his career, finishing with a record of 36-10-7.
Giguere won the Stanley Cup in a 6-2 game five win against the Ottawa Senators on June 6, 2007.
The size of Giguere's goalie pads caused minor controversy: Brett Hull said "Giguere's equipment in the Finals (...) looked a little suspect" and an unidentified member of the Ottawa Senators said "he looked huge out there".
On June 21, 2007 the club announced that the team had agreed to a multi-year contact with Giguere, keeping their Cup-winning starting goalie.

Recent years

July 8, 1995 - Drafted by the Hartford Whalers in the 1st round, 13th overall.
June 25, 1997 - Rights transferred to the Carolina Hurricanes when the Hartford Whalers relocated.
August 27, 1997 - Traded to the Calgary Flames with Andrew Cassels for Gary Roberts and Trevor Kidd.
June 10, 2001 - Traded to the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim for a 2nd round pick in 2000 (Matt Pettinger).
June 21, 2007 - Signed a 4 year $24 million contract with the Anaheim Ducks. Transactions

1997 QMJHL Second All-Star Team
1998 Hap Holmes Memorial Award (AHL) - shared with Tyler Moss as the goalies with 25+ GP for the team with the lowest GAA
2003 Conn Smythe Trophy
2007 Stanley Cup Champion Awards/Honors

Regular season

Trivia

2007-11-05T08:50:00.001-08:00

Czernina (from the Polish word czarny - black; sometimes also Czarnina or Czarna polewka) is a Polish soup made of duck's blood and clear poultry broth. In English it is referred to as Duck Blood Soup.
Generally the sweet and sour taste of the soup comes from the addition of sugar and vinegar. However, there are hundreds of recipes popular in different parts of Poland and Lithuania. Among the ingredients used are plum or pear syrup, dried pears, plums or cherries, apple vinegar and honey. Like most Polish soups, czernina is usually served with fine noodles, macaroni or boiled potatoes.
Until the 19th century czernina was also a symbol in Polish culture. It was served to young men applying for the hand of their beloved ones after the parents rejected their proposal. It is a plot element in Pan Tadeusz, a famous Polish epic poem by Adam Mickiewicz.
It is also be a regional dish in Kaszuby and Poznań.

2007-11-04T07:48:00.001-08:00

Usage and settings
The modern Cypriot dialect is not an evolution of the ancient Arcadocypriot dialect, but evolved from Koine. Cyprus was cut off from the rest of the Greek-speaking world from the 7th to the 10th century A.D due to Arab attacks. It was reintegrated in the Byzantine Empire in the 10th century to be isolated again in 1191 when it fell to the hands of crusaders. This isolation developed a lot of linguistic characteristics distinct from Byzantine Greek.
The legislation of the Kingdom of Cyprus in the Middle Ages was written in the dialect. Other important medieval works are the chronicles of Leontios Makhairas and George Boustronios, as well as a collection of sonnets in the manner of Francesco Petrarca.
In the past hundred years, the dialect has been used in poetry, major poets being Vasilis Michaelides and Dimitris Lipertis. It is also traditionally used for folk songs and poetry, including τσιαττιστά (battle poetry, a form of Playing the dozens) and the tradition of ποιητάρηες (bards). More recently it has been used in Reggae by Hadji Mike and rap by several Cypriot hip hop groups.DNA (Dimiourgoi Neas Antilipsis) a hiphop group from Cypriot released an album named "sihnotites" with 2 tracks in Cypriot. (See also Music of Cyprus).
Locally produced television shows, usually comedies or soap operas, make use of the dialect.

History and literature

Technical characteristics

Double consonants preserved the stressed pronunciation of Ancient Greek.

Double unvoiced plosives (ττ, ππ, κκ) are pronounced aspirated ([t] depending on the succeeding vowel).
The rest of the double consonants are pronounced as geminates. (e.g. λλ as [lː], μμ as [mː], etc.)
Extreme "palatalization" of Greek velars to palato-alveolars when followed by the front vowels [e] and [i] and the semivowel [j]. It should be noted that Standard Greek pronunciation exhibits true palatalization of velars to palatals ([k] > [c] and [x] > [ç]). The palato-alveolars in Cypriot Greek can be found both as affricates ([tʃ]) and fricatives ([ʃ]):
1. The "palatalalization" of kappa (κάππα), i.e. κ > κ̌: Standard Greek [c] becomes a soft affricate [tʃ]. This sound is usually represented with τζι or the more correct κ̌. For example, Standard Greek καί [ce] meaning and becomes Cypriot Greek τζιαί or κ̌αί [tʃe]. Also Standard Greek εκείνος [e'cinos] becomes Cypriot Greek κ̌είνος ['tʃinos]. Note however this is not a hard and fast rule (counter-examples include loans from Standard Greek: κηδεία, κέρδος, άκυρο, ρακέττα).
  The "palatalalization" of chi (χι), i.e. χ > χ̌: Similarly Standard Greek [ç] becomes [ʃ]. This sound is usually represented with σι or the more correct χ̌. For example, Standard Greek χέρι ['çeri] meaning hand becomes Cypriot Greek σιέρι or χ̌έρι ['ʃeri].
  While the σι spelling is common, it presupposes a following vowel: σιέρι = <sjeri>. Word-finally and before a consonant (in loan words), σι cannot be used: /paʃ/ < Turkish baş, "main", cannot be spelled as πάσι, since that will be interpreted as [pasi]. Since diacritics are not used outside linguistics, Cypriots will frequently recourse to English sh instead: παsh.
  Voicing of φ, θ and χ (aspirated consonants in Ancient Greek) before liquids and nasals, to β, δ and γ respectively. (e.g. γρόνος (Cypriot dialect) instead of χρόνος (Modern Greek) (= year), άδρωπος (Cypriot dialect) instead of άνθρωπος (Modern Greek) (= human)).This process is partially reversed in younger speakers due to the influence of Standard Greek.
  Deletion of β, δ, γ, voiced Intervocalic fricatives; e.g. κοπελλούδιν > κοππελούιν "little child". In linguistic texts, the deleted fricative is sometimes put in brackets for clarity: κοππελού(δ)ιν.
  /x/ > /θ/: e.g. άνθρωπος > άχρωπος "human"
  Defrication of [ʝ]/[ç] that function as semi-vowels in Modern Greek to [c] with most of the time modification of the preceding consonant. (e.g. ποιός [pços] in Standard Greek would be pronounced as πκοιός [pcos], σπίτια ['spitça] in Standard Greek would be pronounced as σπίθκια ['spiθca]). This is carried further in some parts of Cyprus where speakers use e.g. πσοιός [pʃos]
  External sandhi rules for word-final nasal consonants:
  - /n/ before bilabials becomes [m]: e.g. τον παπαγάλον [tom bapa'ɣalon] the parrot (acc.).
    /n/ before velars becomes [ŋ]: e.g. την κρατικήν [tiŋ grati'kin] the governmental (acc.).
    Standard Greek sandhi rules for word-final [n] do not apply to Cypriot Greek; the /n/ is used much more frequently in Cypriot Greek. Phonology
    Note: The incorporation of this particular type of Turkish morphology is also found in Standard Greek, however as the suffix -λίκι. Cypriot Greek used two κ to phonologically imitate the aspirated k of Turkish.
    
    Present participles ending in -οντα instead of Modern Greek -οντας.
    Archaisms such as the use of infinitives as nouns (e.g. το δειν, the gaze)
    In slang the Turkish derivational suffix -lik, added as -λίκκι(ν), is used to transform a concrete noun to an abstract noun as noted here. For example: "ο πρόεδρος" (the president) becomes "το προεδριλίκκι" (the presidency).
    
    Note: The incorporation of this particular type of Turkish morphology is also found in Standard Greek, however as the suffix -λίκι. Cypriot Greek used two κ to phonologically imitate the aspirated k of Turkish.
    
    The suffixes -ούης/-ούα/-ούι(ν) for masculine, feminine and neuter respectively, are used to derive diminutives of nouns, in place of Standard Greek -άκης/-ίτσα/-άκι. The Cypriot Greek suffixes derive from the original -ούδης/-ούδα/-ούδι(ν) with the drop of Intervocalic δ. Morphology
    
    The Modern Cypriot lexicon contains loanwords mostly from Italian, Provençal, Turkish and English, and other languages, as well as words unique to Cyprus. Thus typically non Muslim speakers use standard Muslim expressions such as i(n)shalla(h) or mashalla(h) which have become part of the vocabulary.
    The Cypriot lexicon also contains Ancient Greek vocabulary which is no longer used in Standard Greek. Example: Συντυχάννω/λαλώ (talk). Syntax
    
    Beaudouin, M. 1884: Étude du dialecte chypriote moderne et medieval [Study of the Modern and Medieval Cypriot Dialect] (Paris).
    Horrocks, G. 1997: Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers (London), ελλ. μτφ. υπό Μ. Σταύρου & Μ. Τζεβελέκου (Αθήνα 2006).
    Thumb, A. 1909: Handbuch der griechischen Dialekte [Handbook of Greek Dialects] (Heidelberg).
    Κοντοσόπουλος, Ν. 1994(2): Διάλεκτοι και Ιδιώματα της Νέας Ελληνικής [Dialects and Properties of Neo-Hellenic] (Αθήνα).
    Μενάρδος, Σ. 1969: Γλωσσικαί Μελέται [Language Studies] (Λευκωσία).
    Μηνάς, Κ. 1987: «Αφομοίωση του ερρίνου με τους άηχους κλειστούς φθόγγους στην ελληνική γλώσσα» [Assimilation of Nasal with Silent Closed Sounds in the Greek Language] ― Πρακτικά Β΄ Διεθνούς Κυπριολογικού Συνεδρίου, τόμ. 3, σελ. 253-283 (Λευκωσία).
    Μηνάς, Κ. 2000: «Φωνητικά και ετυμολογικά τής Κυπριακής διαλέκτου» [Phonetics and Etymologies of the Cypriot Dialect] ― Νεοελληνική Διαλεκτολογία 3, σελ. 151-188
    Newton, B. 1972: Cypriot Greek. Its phonology and inflexion (The Hague: Mouton).
    Παντελίδης, Χ. 1929: Φωνητική των Νεοελληνικών Ιδιωμάτων Κύπρου, Δωδεκανήσου και Ικαρίας [Phonetics of Neo-Hellenic Dialects of Cyprus, Dodecanese, and Icaria] (Αθήνα).
    Χατζηιωάννου, Κ. 1996: Ετυμολογικό Λεξικό τής Ομιλουμένης Κυπριακής Διαλέκτου [Etymological Dictionary of the Spoken Cypriot Dialect] (Λευκωσία).
    Χατζηιωάννου, Κ. 1999: Γραμματική τής Ομιλουμένης Κυπριακής Διαλέκτου [Grammar of the Spoken Cypriot Dialect] (Λευκωσία).
    Χριστοδούλου, Μ. 1970: "Περί των διαλεκτικών ζωνών εν τη νέα Ελληνική γλώσση και της θέσεως της κυπριακής διαλέκτου εν αυταίς" [The Position of the Cypriot Dialect within the Dialectical Zones of the Neo-Hellenic Language] - Επετηρίς Κέντρου Επιστημονικών Ερευνών Κύπρου, τόμ. 3, σελ. 119-138.

2007-11-03T09:20:00.001-07:00

"Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" was a phrase used by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in 1998 in defense of her husband President Bill Clinton and his administration during the Lewinsky scandal, characterizing the Lewinsky charges as the latest in a long, organized, collaborative series of charges by Clinton political enemies.

The Today Show interview
Hillary Clinton was referring to the Arkansas Project.

Context
Hillary Clinton's allegations included attacks against independent counsel Kenneth Starr, whom she claimed routinely leaked information damaging to her husband. Starr challenged these allegations in the federal courts, which found no evidence of any such leaks.

Left analysis
David Brock, a conservative-turned-liberal pundit, has said he himself was once a party to an effort to dredge up a scandal against Clinton. In 1993 Brock, then of the American Spectator, was the first to report Paula Jones' claims. As Brock explained in Blinded by the Right, after learning more about the events and conservative payments surrounding Paula Jones he personally apologized to the Clintons. He documented his experience in Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, wherein he alleged that Arkansas state troopers had taken money in exchange for testimony against Clinton which Brock had published in a previous book. Adam Curtis also discusses the concept in his documentary series The Power of Nightmares. Brock has confirmed Clinton's claim that there was a "Right wing conspiracy" to smear her husband, quibbling only with the characterization of it as "vast", since Brock contends that it was orchestrated mainly by a few powerful people.
Claims have also been made against Republican supporter and billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, whom former Clinton White House Counsel Lanny Davis once claimed was using his money "to destroy a president of the United States." Scaife claims to be public about his political spending (q.v. [1]). CNN stated in a study the news outlet conducted on Scaife, "If it's a conspiracy, it's a pretty open one."[2]
Hillary Clinton later said in her 2003 autobiography that, "Looking back, I see that I might have phrased my point more artfully, but I stand by the characterization of Starr's investigation [regardless of the truth about Lewinsky]."

2007-11-02T08:31:00.001-07:00

Scribal abbreviations (sigla) were abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in Latin.

History
The use of abbreviations is due, in part, to exigencies arising from the nature of the materials employed in the making of records, whether stone, marble, bronze, or parchment. Lapidaries, engravers, and copyists were under the same necessity of making the most of the space at their disposal. Such abbreviations, indeed, were seldom met with at the beginning of the Christian era when material of all kinds was plentiful and there was consequently no need to be sparing in the use of it. By the third or fourth century, however, it had grown to be scarce and costly, and it became the artist's aim to inscribe long texts on surfaces of somewhat scanty proportions.
The Romans possessed an alphabet known by the name of Notae Tironienses (Tironian notes), which served the same purpose as our modern systems of stenography. Its use necessitated a special course of study and there is still much uncertainty as to the significance of the characters employed. Inscriptions cut in stone make the most frequent use of abbreviations. At certain late periods - for example in Spain in the Middle Ages, this custom becomes abused to such an extent as to result in the invention of symbols which are undecipherable.
Scribal abbreviations have entered the news in the twenty-first century because the recently revived Scottish Parliament needs to find out what the old codes of Scottish law written in Latin say. Those who have learned Latin without having also learned Latin palaeography find these abbreviations incomprehensible. At a recent count, there were well over fourteen thousand abbreviations.

2007-11-01T08:52:00.001-07:00

This is a List of military engagements of World War I which encompasses land, naval, and air engagements as well as campaigns, operations, defensive lines and sieges. Campaigns generally refer to broader strategic operations conducted over a large bit of territory and over a long period of time. Battles generally refer to short periods of intense combat localised to a specific area and over a specific period of time. However, use of the terms in naming such events is not consistent. For example, the First Battle of the Atlantic was more or less an entire theatre of war, and the so-called battle lasted for the duration of the entire war. Another example is the Battle of Gallipoli (also called the "Dardanelles Campaign"), which in fact was a number of battles fought between 1915 and 1916.

Europe
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918

Battle of Liège
Battle of the Frontiers
Battle of Lorraine
Battle of Charleroi, also known as the First Battle of the Sambre
Battle of the Ardennes
Allied Great Retreat
Battle of Mons
Battle of St. Quentin, also called the Battle of Guise
First Battle of the Marne
Race to the Sea
First Battle of the Aisne
Battle of Loos
First Battle of Albert
First Battle of Arras
Battle of the Yser
Siege of Antwerp
Siege of Namur
Siege of Maubeuge
Battle of Le Cateau
First Battle of Ypres
First Battle of Champagne
Battle of Neuve Chapelle
Second Battle of Ypres
Second Battle of Artois
Battle of Loos
Second Battle of Champagne
Battle of Verdun
Battle of Hulluch
Battle of the Somme
Battle of Fromelles
Battle of Pozières
Battle of Ginchy
Nivelle Offensive
Battle of Arras (1917)
Battle of Vimy Ridge
Second Battle of the Aisne, also called the Third Battle of Champagne
Battle of Messines
Battle of Passchendaele, also called the Third Battle of Ypres
Battle of Cambrai (1917)
German Spring Offensive
First Battle of the Somme (1918), also known as the Battle of St. Quentin or the Second Battle of the Somme (to distinguish it from the 1916 battle)
Battle of the Lys, also known as the Fourth Battle of Ypres and the Battle of Estaires
Third Battle of the Aisne
Battle of Cantigny
Battle of Belleau Wood
Second Battle of the Marne
Battle of Château-Thierry (1918)
Hundred Days Offensive
Battle of Amiens
Second Battle of the Somme (1918), also known as the Third Battle of the Somme
Battle of Saint-Mihiel
Battle of Epéhy
Battle of the Hindenburg Line
Meuse-Argonne Offensive, also called the Battle of the Argonne Forest
Battle of Cambrai (1918)
Battle of the Sambre (1918), also known as the Second Battle of the Sambre Western Front

First Battle of the Isonzo
Second Battle of the Isonzo
Third Battle of the Isonzo
Fourth Battle of the Isonzo
Fifth Battle of the Isonzo
Trentino Offensive or the "Battle of Asiago"
Sixth Battle of the Isonzo or the "Battle of Gorizia"
Seventh Battle of the Isonzo
Eighth Battle of the Isonzo
Ninth Battle of the Isonzo
Tenth Battle of the Isonzo
Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo
Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo or the "Battle of Caporetto"
Battle of the Piave River
Battle of Vittorio Veneto Italian Campaign

Battle of Stalluponen
Battle of Gumbinnen
Battle of Tannenberg
Battle of Lemberg (1914)
First Battle of the Masurian Lakes
Siege of Przemysl
Battle of the Vistula River
Battle of Łódź (1914)
Battle of Bolimov
Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes
Battle of Warsaw (1915)
Brusilov Offensive
Kerensky Offensive
Battle of Mărăşti
Battle of Mărăşeşti
Russian Revolution Eastern Front

Battle of Sarikamis
Battle of Malazgirt (1915)
Battle of Kara Killisse
Battle of Koprukoy
Battle of Erzurum
Battle of Erzincan Caucasus Campaign

Battle of Cer
Battle of Kolubara
Battle of Morava
Battle of Kosovo (1915)
Battle of Ovche Pole Serbian Campaign
The Battle of Gallipoli (also called the "Dardanelles Campaign"), was in fact a number of battles fought between 1915 and 1916.

Battle of the Nek
Battle of Chunuk Bair
Battle of Gully Ravine
Battle of Hill 60 (Gallipoli)
Battle of Krithia Vineyard
Battle of Lone Pine
Battle of Sari Bair
Battle of Scimitar Hill
Landing at Anzac Cove
Landing at Cape Helles
First Battle of Krithia
Second Battle of Krithia
Third Battle of Krithia
Naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign Gallipoli

Sinai and Palestine Campaign

Fao Landing
Fall of Basra
Battle of Qurna
Capture of Amara
Battle of Nasiriyeh
Battle of Es Sinn
Battle of Ctesiphon
Siege of Kut

Battle of Sheikh Sa'ad
Battle of the Wadi
Battle of Hanna
Battle of Dujaila Redoubt
First Battle of Kut
Battle of Khanaqin
Second Battle of Kut
Fall of Baghdad
Samarrah Offensive
Battle of Jebel Hamlin
Battle of Istabulat
Battle of Ramadi
Capture of Tikrit
Battle of Sharqat Mesopotamian Campaign
None currently listed

South Arabian Campaign

Fall of Cameroon
Fall of German West Africa (Namibia)
Battle of Killimanjaro
Fall of Togo
Battle of Tanga or Battle of the Bees
Battle of Ruji Delta
Battle of Longido African Campaign
See also: Naval warfare of World War I

Naval engagements

First Battle of Heligoland Bight (1914)
Battle of the Falkland Islands (1914)
Raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby (1914)
Battle of Dogger Bank (1915)
Otranto Barrage (1915-1918)
Battle of Jutland (1916)
Battle of Dover Strait (1917)
Second Battle of Heligoland Bight (1917)
Zeebrugge Raid (1918) Atlantic Theatre

Pursuit of Goeben and Breslau (1914)
Naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign (1915-1916) Mediterranean

Battle of Friju Island (1914)
Battle of New Guinea (Kaiser Wilhelmland)
Battle of Tsingtao (1914)
Battle of Penang (1914)
Battle of Coronel (1914)
Battle of Cocos (1914)
Battle of the Falkland Islands (1914) Pacific Theatre
World War I was the first war to see major use of planes for offensive, defensive and reconnaissance operations, and both the Entente Powers and the Central Powers used planes extensively. Almost as soon as they were invented, planes were drafted for military service.
See also the following articles:

Aviation in World War I
Aviation history (1914-1918)
Flying aces
List of World War I flying aces
World War I aircraft
Zeppelins in World War I Contemporary wars

Mexican Revolution (1910-1920)
First Balkan War (1912-13)
Second Balkan War (1913)
Maritz Rebellion (1914-15)
Easter Rising (1916)

2007-10-31T08:58:00.001-07:00

Marcos Martinez Ucha (born October 15, 1985 in Madrid, Spain) is a professional racecar driver. Martinez Ucha competed in karting events from 1998 until 2002, when he entered Spanish Formula Junior. He would stay there with moderate success for three years, moving to Spanish Formula Three in 2005 with the team Racing Engineering and reaching the 2nd place in the B-Class. In 2006 he jumped to the A-Class, managing an outstanding victory in Cheste, Valencia. Meanwhile he participated in three races in the World Series by Renault, where he managed to start forth in the grid and run in the 2nd position in one of the races. In 2007, he began racing Spanish Formula Three with a new team, Novoteam. After 3 meetings and due to the results obtained he changed to Tec-Auto searching for an improvement in the championship.
He was due to take part in the latter part of the 2007 GP2 Series season for the Racing Engineering team, alongside Javier Villa and replacing Ernesto Viso. However, he will not compete in the races of the first meeting he has entered for, as he failed to lap within 107% of the pole position time after problems in qualifying.

2007-10-30T09:14:00.001-07:00

Coordinates: 36°8′18″N, 5°21′15″W
The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Gibraltar is the cathedral for the Church of England Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe. It is sometimes referred to simply as Gibraltar Cathedral, although it should not be confused with the Cathedral of St. Mary the Crowned, which is Gibraltar's Roman Catholic cathedral. The Cathedral is particularly notable for its imitation of Moorish architecture (appropriate given the period of Moorish control in Gibraltar's history), particularly in its use of horseshoe arches.

20th Century

List of cathedrals in the United Kingdom

2007-10-29T08:30:00.001-07:00

Rochester Cathedral is a Norman church in Rochester, Kent. The bishopric is second oldest in England: only Canterbury is older. It was founded by Justus, one of the missionaries who accompanied Saint Augustine to convert the pagan English to Christianity in the early 7th century. As the first bishop of Rochester, Justus was given permission by King Ethelbert of Kent to establish a church of St Andrew the Apostle (the same dedication as the monastery in Rome from which St Augustine and St Justus had set out for England) on the site of the present cathedral, which was made the home of a bishopric. The cathedral was to be served by a college of secular priests and was endowed with land near the city called Priestfield.
The cathedral and city suffered much from the Mercians (676) and the Danes, but retained its importance, so much so that, when William of Normandy conquered England in 1066, he gave the church and its estates to his brother, Odo of Bayeux. The church was reduced to near-destitution, a situation only remedied in 1082 when Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury visited and restored some of its lands and staff. Gundulf, the Norman Bishop of Rochester, also played a very active role; a talented architect himself, the bishop commissioned and probably had a major part in designing a new cathedral to replace Justus' church. He also replaced the secular chaplains by Benedictine monks, translated the relics of St Paulinus to a silver shrine that became a place of pilgrimage, obtained several royal grants of land, and proved a great benefactor to his cathedral city. By the time of his death he had built the nave and Western front, the Western transept being added between 1179 and 1200 and the Eastern transept during the reign of Henry III. The cathedral is small, being only 306 feet long, but its nave is the oldest in England and it has a fine Norman crypt.
The present building is widely regarded as one of the finest Norman cathedrals in the country, with a particularly fine doorway at its western (main) entrance. The tympanum depicts Christ sitting in glory in the centre, with Justus and Ethelbert flanking him on either side of the doorway.
After Gundulf's death, the cathedral had a somewhat chequered history. In 1130 the cathedral was consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by thirteen bishops in the presence of Henry I, but the occasion was marred by a great fire which nearly destroyed the whole city and damaged the new cathedral. It was badly damaged by fires again in 1137 and 1179. It was then looted in 1215 by the forces of King John and again in 1264 by Simon de Montfort, during sieges of the city and its castle.
However, besides the shrine of St Paulinus, the cathedral contained the relics of St Ithamar, the first Saxon to be consecrated bishop, and of St William of Perth, a murdered Scottish pilgrim. In 1201 the offerings at St William's tomb were so great, that by their means the choir was rebuilt and the central tower was added (1343), thus completing the cathedral.
The cathedral suffered a steep decline after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, during which time its estates were confiscated by the Crown, and it became dilapidated and disreputable. Samuel Pepys, the diarist, dismissed it as a "shabby place". It underwent some restoration work of mixed success during the 19th century before Sir George Gilbert Scott took on the task in 1872, renovating the cathedral and restoring it to a reasonable facsimile of its original 11th century condition.

Archdeacons of Rochester
Rochester Cathedral's Archdeacons have included:

Rev. Dr. Thomas Plume, B.A., D.D., founder of the Plume Library, Maldon, Essex, and the Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge.
Rev. Dr. Walker King, M.A., D.D., father of the Rt. Rev. Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln.

2007-10-28T10:17:00.001-07:00

John Seigenthaler may be:
John Seigenthaler, Jr., former NBC journalist
John Seigenthaler, Sr., founder of Vanderbilt University's First Amendment Center, assistant to former attorney general Robert F. Kennedy

Seigenthaler controversy involving Wikipedia and Seigenthaler

2007-10-27T08:35:00.001-07:00

Sandy Brown (February 25, 1929–March 15, 1975) was a noted Indian jazz clarinetist of Scottish descent, band leader and acoustic engineer who performed mostly dixieland.

2007-10-26T08:19:00.001-07:00

Vincent Pastore (born July 14, 1946 in Bronx, New York) is an American film and television actor, often cast as a mobster.
Pastore was born in The Bronx, New York, of Italian-American descent. He attended Pace University for 3 years before eventually going into the acting industry after befriending Matt and Kevin Dillon; he was previously a club-owner in New Rochelle, New York. He has made appearances in films ranging from Goodfellas (1990) to Shark Tale (2004), but he is arguably best known for the role of Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero on The Sopranos. He is also probably best known for his role in the comedy/crime film The Jerky Boys (1995) as Tony Scarboni, one of the three gangsters and Lazarro (Alan Arkin)'s clients. He still lives in the Bronx, on City Island.
Pastore also appeared in the HBO television movie Gotti as Angelo Ruggiero, along side fellow Sopranos cast members Tony Sirico and Dominic Chianese.
Pastore also hosts The Wiseguy Show on Sirius Satellite Radio (Raw Dog, channel 104).
Pastore lost 29 lbs on the fourth season of the VH1 reality show Celebrity Fit Club which ran from August 6 to October 1, 2006. Pastore is currently starring in the "Wusstock Conspiricies" in Dublin, Ireland, being filmed at Ardmore Studios.
He appeared in The Adventures of Pete & Pete in the "New Year's Pete" episode as Vincent Park, Bowling Agent.
On April 2, 2005, Pastore was arrested for assaulting his fiancée actress/director Lisa Regina in Little Italy, Manhattan. He refused plea deals for community service on May 6 and June 30, but reportedly agreed to plead guilty on September 26.[1] [2] [3] [4]
On February 20, 2007, the ABC television network announced that Pastore would participate in the fourth season of the American version of the competitive dance series Dancing with the Stars.
Also in 2007, he starred in the independent feature film "P.J." (http://www.pjthemovie.com - co-starring with John Heard and Robert Picardo).
He starred in College Road Trip with Martin Lawrence and Raven Symone, which will debut in 2008.

Trivia
The section could be improved by integrating relevant items into the main text and removing inappropriate items.
Pastore made cameo appearances in 1990's GoodFellas as well as in 1993's Carlito's Way. In GoodFellas, he is briefly seen rolling a coat rack through the kitchen of a restaurant and is credited as "Vincent Pastore" playing "Man with Coat Rack". In Carlito's Way, he is one of the friends of the Italian man that dances with Gail, whom Kleinfeld insults. He is listed in the credits as "Vinny Pastore" playing "Copa Wiseguy".

2007-10-25T09:57:00.001-07:00

These are tables of congressional delegations from Illinois to the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives.
Delegates from Illinois Territory
See also: List of United States Representatives from Illinois

2007-10-24T11:16:00.001-07:00

Law enforcement in Turkey is carried out by several departments and agencies, all acting under the command of the Prime Minister of Turkey or mostly the Minister of the Interior.

Turkish Police (Emniyet Genel Müdürlüğü)

Main article: turkish Gendarmerie Jandarma (Gendarmerie)
The village guard are very rare, and are mostly locals in villages of the Eastern Anatolia Region. They perform auxiliary and voluntary law enforcement duty. Their initial purpose was to defend villages against terrorist attacks. They were originally called Korucu or Köy Korucusu.

Intelligence

2007-10-23T11:03:00.001-07:00

Abolition is the act of formally repealing an existing practice through statutory legal means, either by making it illegal, or simply no longer allowing it to exist in any form.
Famous things that have been abolished include:
Things that are topics of debate over their possible abolition include:
A common and usually uncontroversial act of abolition is the abolition of electoral districts during redistricting.
slavery; see also: Abolitionism
the Soviet Union
alcohol; see also: prohibition
numerous monarchies
suffering
the death penalty
speciesism
abortion
firearms ownership and the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
religion
Age of Consent